To say that my brother resented me would be an understatement. For seven years he was the “baby” of the family, the star of the show, the center of attention. Before I came along he played the lead role in a one-man performance for which he garnered rave reviews. Of course he resented me when I upstaged him and, ultimately, took his place under the spotlight.
Understanding his attitude, however, was far easier than coping with it on a daily basis. My earliest and most persistent memories of him entail near constant harassment, psychological and, yes, even physical abuse. Worse, however, was the way in which he belittled me and went out of his way to embarrass me in front of guests, his friends and our other (even older) siblings. The damage that was done to my self-esteem over the course of the first eleven years of my life can’t be measured. But it’s something for which amends most definitely need to be made.
Not surprisingly I grew up to be withdrawn and bookish. I escaped by reading and, by the time I was a teenager, had acquired a large collection of books. My brother never tired of criticizing my literary taste. That I could handle. What drove me to tears, literally, was the fact that he was always ‘borrowing” my books. The ones he didn’t “lose” he returned in such terrible condition that I’d simply toss them out; something he’d watch with a smug smile. The release I felt when my brother moved away to college was almost sexual in its intensity.
I wish I could say that our relationship improved as we aged. It’s true that we grew more tolerant of one another but that was mostly a result of the fact that we came into contact so infrequently. It was certainly not because we’d achieved some sort of mature understanding. We’d rub shoulders at holidays or, occasionally, at other (dysfunctional) family gatherings but, mercifully, that was about it. The old wounds still festered.
As a grown man, my brother coped with his own self-esteem issues by becoming a near pathological liar. In fact, if you asked him a question, he’d assume you didn’t know the answer and would thus believe anything he had to tell you by way of a response. Whenever I spoke with him I couldn’t help but recall the lyrics from an old Frank Zappa tune, “Look here, brother … who you jivin’ with that cosmic debris.” I quickly grew tired of tricking him and catching him out in one increasingly outrageous fabrication after another. I took no pleasure in doing to him the kind of thing he’d done to me for years. Besides, I had far more grandiose plans. Karma might be rather slow moving but she was a bitch with a long memory and a bad attitude.
My father and my brother were especially close. As a result, the old man’s death hit him like a ton of bricks. It’s all so clear to me now when I look back on it. I had given my dad a copy of Graham Greene’s The Human Factor one Father’s Day. He was reading it the evening he succumbed to a massive heart attack.
A short time later, my uncle … another of my brother’s “favorites” … was killed in a car crash. On the passenger’s seat was a gift wrapped package containing The Comedians which I had presented to him on the occasion of his retirement. I think that was the point at which I began to intuit some eldritch, even cosmic connection.
My brother’s fiftieth birthday is less than a week away. Thank God for the Internet. I finally found the perfect present; a first edition of The Power & The Glory. It cost a bundle but I just know it’ll be worth it!
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©2009 James C. Clar
James C. Clar teaches and writes in western New York. His work has been published in print as well as on the Internet. Recently he has placed short fiction in the Taj Mahal Review, Golden Visions Magazine, Bewildering Stories, Apollo’s Lyre, Orchard Press Mysteries, 365 Tomorrows, Antipodean Sci-Fi, Shine: The Journal of Flash, Everyday Fiction, Powder Burn Flash and Flashshot. His story “Starbuck” was voted story of the year for 2008 by the editors of Long Story, Short.
Tags: James C. Clar
July 11th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Nice story, James!