I don’t talk to anyone before the funeral.  There’s no way that I can open my mouth and say anything normal right now.  I just sit by my mother, all sullen and quiet.  During the ceremony, with the priest going on and on about how great Jack was, I can feel his eyes on my back; feel them as if they were burning me.  I take a chance to look over my shoulder at him, all perfect and beautiful sitting in the back with Michael.  My mother taps my knee, giving me a look for not paying attention to the priest, but she can’t stop my mind from drifting on, and it returns to him. 

There were a lot of mixed feelings between us, a lot of unresolved emotions that seemed to always boil beneath the surface whenever we were around each other.  When my mother and Jack first got married I hadn’t really been taken with Brian, in fact, he was barely on my radar.  I never wanted a brother; I just wanted to do what all the other twelve years old where doing then, fucking off or something.  Later on, when I was old enough I started to notice things about Brian, wrong things for a stepbrother to be noticing. I just couldn’t stop myself.  He had this raw sexual tension that just seemed to radiate off of him and it amazed me.  He overwhelmed me by the way he just talked or walked.  He was this beautiful, alive creature that I could fill thousands of sketchbooks with but never did.  He was just so fucking surreal to me.  Then as I got older I began to understand these feelings, analyze and compartmentalize these emotions and then I realized that I was attracted to him and from the way he looked at me, I knew that he was attracted to me too.  Then something even bigger hit me, that I was attracted to a man, then something even bigger than that, said man was my stepbrother.  

We had a casual acquaintance relationship that I guess the both of us were happy with.  Then Jack was diagnosed with cancer and Brian started coming over more and more.  As much as someone could come over with Jack moaning and bitching about death all the time.  It had been a wonderful five weeks, a record, because not once did Jack hit or yell or fucking do anything to me.  Brian had come around and helped around the house and stuff, he took me to the diner where Michael’s mom worked at, and to my job and hung out with me there.  It was a really nice, fantastic five weeks.  Then it just fell through, Jack had fucking snapped.  I had come home one night after one of Daphne’s study sessions, and I was glad to be out of her house because she was always flirting or trying to push herself on me and I was stressed out because I didn’t know what to do with her at that point, because no way was I just going to announce all over the place that I was gay and I found this out from having an unbelievable attraction to my much older stepbrother.  The consequences alone from Jack made me shudder.  

I’d come in and I remember mom was just fucking screaming her head off upstairs.  Before I even thought about it I’d run up there, and running up there was one of the worse mistakes of my life.  I tense for a moment, alarming my mother beside me, but I can’t help it.  Like I told Brian that night it was like a switch went off in his head just from seeing me.  God I just fucking ran after he looked at me, I ran for all I was worth, but just as I was coming down the stairs he got me around the waist, taking me down in a tackle.  My knuckles were skinned raw with that move; and then they slid all over the carpet trying to get him off me.  I stood up and then the real hitting began and I was, god, I was relieved that I was just going to get the shit kicked out of me.  He had thrown me down to the floor when his hand started hurting him from punching me and he got a good kick in my right leg, a real strong solid hit, a hurt like that I hadn’t felt in awhile.  I’d laid there, bleeding and spitting on mom’s beige carpet that she had to wash a bazillion times to just get the blood out of it from times like this.  I had tensed as he lowered himself to the ground, half lying on me.

“Hey little one,” I froze and my mind became this terrified mesh of circuits and wires.  

Because that voice, that tone will always make me frightened, fucking terrified.  That drunken slurred way he said his little fucking pet name for me like I was his prized possession would always make me just stop and shiver.  I can still feel his hot breath over my ear; still smell all that fucking liquor on him.  I shiver and fight the urge to get up and run.  Before I can stop memories one comes.  To a cold December night, fourteen when he first came into my room, too late for him to want anything to do with me as far as I knew.  He stood by the door for a second, and I feigned sleep.  I remember being extremely uncomfortable because he had beaten me a week earlier and there were still bruises on my back, so I had to sleep on my stomach.  After that night, I never slept on my stomach again, no matter how badly my back was bruised or cut.  He had touched me softly and I jerked away and sat upright, confused, scared.  He put a work worn hand over my mouth and took my hand, I try not to remember much of that night or any of the other nights Jack came into my room that late, not just smashed on whiskey.  Sometimes he would bring things with him, and sometimes he wouldn’t.  Sometimes he’d have his kerchief over my mouth instead of his hand, and sometimes he’d bring a knife and sometimes he’d bring his lighter.  

Over the four years that he did those things to me, that he made me do those things to him, my mother never once said anything.  Not to Jack or me, but I know she knew, even with two walls between us she could have heard my frightened whimpers and half shouts or even goddamn Jack’s moans.  He had touched me in ways that, I clench my fists and shut my eyes, that he just shouldn’t had fucking ever did.  I was just a kid, just this kid that his new wife had already had, just this bastard kid that he didn’t have to have anything to do with.  Even in my mind I can’t go back there, to touching something hard and being touched in return, unwanted, non consensual, with a rough hand over my mouth and me almost too young to understand it, but I was old enough to, old enough to really, really understand.  I remember kids at school talking about sex, how great it was, I remember running to the bathroom, throwing up my insides and never feeling clean enough.

I choke for a minute, cough and look up at the priest with accusing eyes.  It’s too fucking small and crowded in here, and now I can’t run to the exit doors quick enough.  I can’t sit beside her for one more second, see that casket and not want to laugh with joy.  I can’t even distinguish Brian from the other guests when I rush along the aisle.  Once I make it out of the church I stagger to the area set off, it’s got stone benches and flowers covered with snow and I barely see any of this because a second later I’m leaning over the bushes dry heaving, because I haven’t been able to really eat in weeks.  I sigh and stand upright, my stomach crying out in protest.  I stumble to one of the benches by the graveyard entrance and manage to sit down, it was covered with snow and I could feel the dampness on the stone, making the expensive pants of the suit my mother bought me wet.  I reach inside my pocket and pull out a pack of cigarettes.  

I had always been a secret smoker but in the days since Brian and today I’d been seriously chain smoking, one right after the other.  It settles my nerves and that’s all I needed right now.  That night, God, it was so fucking bizarre, like it had happened to someone else.  The hand that holds the cigarette shakes slightly and I mentally curse my brain again but the memories won’t leave me and apparently my mind can’t wait till I’m in private to have its little breakdown.  

“It won’t fucking matter you little cunt!”  I squirmed and kicked, that fear that had clouded my brain slowly giving away and finally I’d start to see through the fog.  His hands had found my hips and they held firm, and fuck it hurt, like he was crushing me, doing his best to hold as tight as ever.  At that point I was crying, so frustrated with him over me and not being able to do anything.  “And you’ll love it, just like every other time.” He moaned and pressed closer to me.  I started to shout, started to scream and goddamn it all that’s when I had cried out for her, for my fucking mother.  She never came.  Jack laughed and leaned down over me, nuzzling my neck.  I had never felt so hopeless, so fucking tired in my whole life, and I had never felt so determined to do something in my whole life.  I try not to think about what could have happened if I hadn’t have managed to get a hand free.  If I hadn’t had overpowered him because even when Jack was fucking dying he was stronger than me, fuck, I’m still practically a skeleton walking, not eating, not sleeping, terrified of my fucking shadow, but at that moment, lying face down on the floor, Jack squirming on top of me I just felt this fucking urge of adrenaline like I had never felt before or probably never feel again.  I got free of him.  I got a hand free and then a leg and managed to twist out from under him, grab the iron lamp that Brian had sent them for their anniversary and knock him out.  I hit him with that damn thing and I didn’t think I’d ever stop.  

He had bruises on his head when they checked him into the hospital those last few days of his life.  Those were from me and I was never so proud of causing another human being damage before.  I was paying him back, it was small but it was enough for then. 

I realize now, sitting here, staring up at the flurries coming from everywhere that I shouldn’t have give into my mother’s badgering and come here.  After my little trip to Brian’s, god, he must think I’m so pathetic.  Who wants to listen to my sob story?  I feel so angry with myself for opening my mouth, and it wasn’t just Brian, it was Michael, too.  He probably can’t even look me in the face now.  I sigh and inhale the cigarette, the two acts verging as one.  I hadn’t gone home that night, or the night after that, or the next night.  Strangely I had found my way to the diner that Brian had taken me to after promising not to tell a soul and that was easy enough for me, I wasn’t exactly broadcasting that I was queer.  That’s how I happened to wind up at Debbie’s after three days of hanging out on Liberty Avenue and using the facilities and the couch at my job.  

Then Jack had finally given up with my everlasting mother by his side when he took his last breath.  Suddenly, I was filled with a peace I had never really known, but she wasn’t done with me, my mother, not by a long shot.  I don’t know how she found me at Debbie’s, more than likely it was one of the guys at work but it doesn’t really matter.  She had somehow talked me into coming here, going so far as to buy me an expensive suit to wear.  Maybe in her head that would somehow make up for all the shit her late husband did to me, while she just ... she just fucking stood by.

The cigarette that I’d been smoking was burning to the filter and I knocked it to the side, crushing it underneath my heel.  I couldn’t go back into the chapel that’s for sure.  I look back down at the ground, white and crisp and I wish I were at Debbie’s.  I had started a sketch of Brian, finally, on a real piece of paper, not just some snatch of an eye, or a mouth, or a jaw line on lined notebook paper.  I was in a room where I could finally just be and in an environment where I could be myself, where I didn’t have to live in fear of Jack.  It was great.  I sigh and then a snatch of black catches my eye and I look up.

“Got another one of those?”  He nods to the cigarette I recently crushed.  I pull out a pack and offer one to him.  “Can’t stand these things either.”  He says around the cigarette, nodding back to the church.  Strange how the first thing I notice that his lighter is silver and probably about thirty bucks higher than mine.  He doesn’t need to bum off me, I know that but when he sits down next to me and wraps an arm around my shoulder I don’t even think about a cigarette I really don’t need to smoke or a lighter I won’t be able to afford for awhile.  Brian nudged my shoulder, affection in his small gestures and I smile and nod, agreeing with the last thing he had said.

“I had a little bit of a meltdown in there.” I laugh and duck my head, hiding the blush that I’m sure is filling my cheeks.  He pushes toward me quietly, and his arm holds tighter around me.  He looks forward, his hand loosely holding the cigarette in his mouth.

“Couldn’t tell.”  I laugh again and relax into him.  Comfortable, and it’s been a long time since I was this close to someone and calm.  He’s trailing fingertips over my arm, and I can feel those soft touches even through the layers of clothes I have on.  I don’t think he even notices it.

“Bullshit, the only one who couldn’t was my Aunt Janice, and she’s blind in one eye.”  I grin up at him and he grins back and he’s fucking gorgeous when he smiles like that.  “I’m such a fucking drama queen, it’s so pathetic.”  He laughs again and shakes his head.

“I wouldn’t have done it in public, but if anyone deserves a mental breather it’s you.” I tense because I can’t help myself.  It’s fun to pretend that he doesn’t know what Jack did to me, that he might once look at me and not know that there’s a secret in the deep recesses of my mind.  He backs off slightly and maybe he realized that he said the wrong thing at just the right time.  He coughs and brings his hand up to cover his mouth, like he could take that casual statement back.  I felt sorry that I couldn’t just take those things like a grain of salt, that I might never be able to.

He stands up suddenly and scratches the back of his neck, rolling his shoulders with the gesture.  “Look, um, I know it’s difficult…” He laughs at himself, maybe that wouldn’t be the word that’d I’d use.  “It’s going to get better, because it just fucking has to, you’re in a place that’s nowhere near what you used to be around.  Deb’ll take good care of you and Vic’ll make sure you get the proper gay upbringing.”  He stops and looks at me, making a face, searching for words.

“What about you?”  He looks surprised and he’s sitting down again with the statement, his hand once again coming up to scratch the back of his neck, obviously a nervous tick.

“Me?”  He stops scratching and sneaks a look at me before quickly looking forward.  “I’ll be there … if you need me.  Deb’s got my cell number and you know where I live, it’s not like I won’t be around.”  I nod and look forward to.

“That's sweet of you, really.”  I can't help the sneer, and I wish I could take it back the second that I closed my mouth.  His eyes narrow and he leans back, looking back at the church and I want to mutter an apology but I can't bring myself to do it.  

“What about college?”  I blanch at the question, and scratch the bridge of my nose.

“Uh, I got accepted to PIFA-“ I catch his smile but don’t hold onto it.  “but I don’t have the money right now…” I know that I’m frowning but the prospect of a future that doesn’t involve PIFA just doesn’t suit me.  “With my SAT scores I could get into Penn or Carnegie, get some scholarships, probably just have to buy books and shit like that. I don’t know yet, I might take a little time off.”  He looks over at me and I can’t help myself from looking back at him.  His eyes, they’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

“I could help, you know, with PIFA, it’s a great school, if you have the opportunity to go you really should.  It’s something you fucking love to do and you’re fucking good at it, you shouldn’t let money get in the way.”  He looks as serious as I’ve ever seen him, counting all his fights with Jack.  I look away; suddenly nervous at the way he stares at me, like he can see right through me.

“It’s not your responsibility.”  I say softly, and I’m sure he can hear it by the way he straightens immediately.

“I’m your stepbrot-” I smile and look at him, all frustrated and using his hands when he talks.

“Not anymore.”  He stops talking and a small smile overcomes his face before he can stop it.  He’s stroking my back now and I’m positive he doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it.  It’s nice, maybe more than nice.  It’s wonderful to have some comfort, some touch that could reach me after so long living with Jack, and if anyone knows that, it’s him.  It’s like two survivors, clinging to each other.  I don’t want to see us like that but sometimes, sometimes I think that’s what we are.  He leans close to me, close enough I can smell that intoxicating aftershave that probably costs more than I do, and for one monumentally stupid second I think he’s going to kiss me like he wants to, like I really want him to.  He doesn’t, just leans his forehead against mine and closes his eyes.  We stay like that until the church bells ring.  

He leans back suddenly when we hear people approaching, his hand is still on me, resting on the small of my back.  He smiles at Michael, smiling already.

“You guys ready to get out of here?”  He asks quietly, still smiling softly at me.  It doesn’t irritate me like I thought it would, to just have him be nice to me just because of what happened weeks ago.  I know it’s not intentional; maybe he doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it either.

“Fuck yeah.”  Brian stretches and groans and I feel myself start to get warm all over just from hearing that.  He stands up and I look up at him, amazed that he’s just fucking real.  

“I guess we’ll go by the wake,” He grunts toward Michael and shakes his head.  “Justin, do you want to come with us?”  I see behind them, my mother coming out of the church holding up Claire because apparently she can’t make it down the steps herself.  She immediately spots me, out of all the people here, she just naturally sees me.  I don’t break her stare, I’m determined not to.  Brian’s hand comes into view; he’s offering it to me.

“Come on.”  I can’t stop myself from letting him help me up and following him to the car.   

The car ride’s quiet and mostly I just look out the window, watching the landscape change from city to suburb.  Before I know it we’re there and Brian’s opening the door for me to get out.  I trail behind the two of them up the walk leading to the little suburban love nest and think that I might not ever be able to escape from my mother’s world, her too quiet, secretive world that she wrapped around this house.  I’m glad that we aren’t going to be here for too long because now, all that I want to do is get out of here.  I don’t want to go into that house, maybe not ever again.  Brian looks back over his shoulder and smiles that little kid smile and makes me forget all the horrible memories, and as I step through the threshold I’m not thinking about late nights of terror or apathy, I’m thinking how he came to see me one time, still dressed in an outrageously expensive suit, bringing me a CD that I’d made some offhand comment about.

We stay for about ten minutes, long enough for my mother to know that I’m there and short enough for her not to pull me into a conversation.  I didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want to be around her, not after all those memories sprung up at me at the funeral.  She wanted me to play the mournful son, the son that was still living with her, and the son that used to love her.  I should feel bad for feeling the way I do about her, but when so much shit just goes by her, when she just fucking turns her head I can’t help but feel anger.  I mentally shake my head, just get this thing over with, and just get back to Deb’s.  It’s amazing how I could just come here everyday, for six years, just walk through that door and know that something bad was going to happen, one way or another.  I look towards Brian and smile, two ports in the storm.