Brothers (Pt. I)
“Not today,” he said, pulling the sleeves of the coat down to his wrists. “It’s not quite cold enough.” It was heavy, made of wool, with a argyle-like pattern on one side. The early morning light shone through our window, outlining his thin frame against the far wall.
“It looks to get colder, though,” Mother said. “Shouldn’t you take it anyway, just in case?”
“I’ll be alright. We’ll be in the car most of the time anyhow.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I said. My bedroom was near the closet, just a few feet away. I turned off the light, closed the door, and joined the conversation.
“It’s ‘isn’t’,” my mother said, her voice carrying a slight disdain.
I walked past the two of them and into the kitchen. The coffee was hot and I filled two traveling mugs for me and Steven. We had a decent drive ahead of us “The meaning still holds, Ma,” I told her. “Doesn’t really make any difference, does it?”
She shrugged, content to not take the conversation to another level. “For someone who wants to write you certainly don’t seem to practice proper grammar.”
“I am who I am,” I said, placing the lids on the coffee. “Who still love me, right?” I walked back to where the two of them were standing and she kissed me on the cheek. I handed a coffee to my brother and adjusted the beanie I was wearing. “We should get going,” I told her. “It should take us about five hours or so, I think.”
“Depending on how fast he drives, of course,” Stevsie said (this is what I call him, my brother: “Stevsie”). I was known to have something of a lead foot, a fact our mother disapproved of. I was never much of a car person though. I just enjoyed the speed, the need to go fast, away from everything, I suppose.
My brother started sleeping in the living room on a brown corduroy sofa that our mother inherited when Granddad passed on. It was the only thing he left her, the only thing she has of his. But it’s more of my brother’s now, I suppose. He started sleeping there about a month ago. “I can’t stay there. I can’t do it anymore,” he’d say of his room, a small spare space tucked away in the corner of our house, no larger than one of those walk-in closets you’d see on the television. The mattress was pushed up against the wall, leaving only a couple feet for his legs to hang of the end. Stacks of clothes outlined the remaining border punctuated by a single window above his shoes. This was his life, the life he was trying to leave behind.
