A Broken Kind of Life (4 page)

“Aaron,” he said tentatively, like a boy drowning in waves of his own self-hatred. He still smelled faintly of the aftershave he’d worn to impress his date. Before the attack, when he was still able to smile, Aaron might have teased him about it. It all seemed so frivolous. Allen pulled Aaron’s desk chair up next to the bed and sat down. With almost painful slowness, Aaron’s blank stare moved from the bare wall to his younger brother. Tears welled in Allen’s eyes as he looked at his big brother, nearly incapacitated by the drugs. Allen waited until Aaron’s eyes finally focused on him before he spoke.

“I am so sorry, Aaron,” Allen said, the tears beginning to fall. “What I said to you was unforgivable. I didn’t mean it, I was just….”

“Embarrassed,” his brother finished for him, his eyes glazed over.

“Yes,” Allen replied shamefully, looking down at the navy-blue comforter that covered his brother’s bed.

“Now, let me tell you something,” Aaron said, as he fought the hold of the drugs and depression. Allen looked up to meet his brother’s level, glassy stare. “I never climbed into that goddamned van. I was dragged into it, screaming and fighting.” The anger in his face, in his voice, was unmistakable, and Allen just nodded, wide-eyed and pale.

“I didn’t…. They never really told us what…,” Allen stammered.

Aaron could see that Allen’s own behavior, his words, sickened him, and he didn’t need to do anything else to drive the point home. None of this was Allen’s fault; it was Aaron’s. He had brought this horror down on his family, merely by surviving.

“As for the lunatic part, well, you’re probably right about that. Between the drugs and the flashbacks, I feel like a madman most of the time.”

Allen took several short, very shallow breaths and looked like he was suffocating, crushed by the weight of his older brother’s disapproval. Before the attack, Aaron knew, Allen had idolized him. He was everything Allen wanted to be—smart, funny, good-looking. “Aaron, I—”

“If you came in here looking for forgiveness, you needn’t have bothered,” Aaron said, his gaze still unfocused. “You had it before you ever left the house.”

Allen dropped his head, the tears falling in earnest, mumbling something about Aaron being a much better man than he was.

“It scares me,” Aaron went on, not commenting on his brother’s emotional outpouring, a dreamy quality to his voice, maybe because he rarely used it anymore. “What could happen to you, or to Anthony. I’m scared all the time, even with the drugs. When I saw you standing there, I thought it was me. It doesn’t make any sense, but I thought that maybe if I stopped us from going that I could have stopped it all from happening. It triggered a flashback, and all I could see was Juliette and me. I had to stop you from going, to stop Juliette from dying. I had just woken from a really bad nightmare, and it was all… jumbled in my head. I’m sorry that I embarrassed you.” This was the first time in two years Allen had ever sat and talked alone with Aaron. His parents had told him the basics about what had happened to his brother, but maybe he never really appreciated the extent of the damage until today, when he heard it straight from Aaron.

They both looked up at the sound of yelling—not screaming, as Aaron had become accustomed to in his dreams, but more like an argument. He couldn’t make out the words through the walls and closed door, so he couldn’t understand what was happening. His parents never fought, nor did they raise their voices to him or his brothers. Especially since Aaron’s attack, his family forced themselves to be exceedingly polite to each other.

Making his decision, Aaron glanced at Allen, threw back the blankets, and crept to his bedroom door. He placed a hand on the wood and used it to steady himself as he turned the knob. The small click sounded loud in the confines of his room, but not so loud that it would have been heard over the shouting. Once he swung the door slowly open, the voices became discernible.

“We are not having this discussion, John. I won’t do it.” A soft thump, like the slamming of a drawer, punctuated his mother’s disagreement. Slipping quietly from his room, Aaron crept down the hall with Allen right behind, each step bringing them closer to their parents’ bedroom. Their door was pulled to but not completely closed. He leaned heavily against the wall. The tranquilizer caused him to feel slow and stupid as he pressed his palm against his forehead to stop the hallway from spinning.

“You saw what happened tonight. It was Allen’s first real shot at something normal. We can’t keep sacrificing them to try to save him. It’s been two years, Michelle, and he’s not getting any better.” His father’s voice sounded heavy with tears that Aaron knew he would never shed, not over him, anyway.

“He has a name, John.” The sharp edge in his mother’s voice did nothing to cut the tension as it leaked from the bedroom into the hallway. Aaron stood listening in stunned disbelief. He looked back to see Allen’s horrified face staring back at him.

“Maybe we should let the professionals care for Aaron, because I don’t think we’re doing what’s best for him,” John said, and Aaron’s heart ached at the resignation in his voice. His own father had given up on him, written him off to the insanity. The throbbing in his head returned, and Aaron worked hard to keep himself from sliding down the wall.

“I am not sending him to some kind of institution.” Michelle’s voice trembled, and Aaron couldn’t listen anymore. Part of him wanted to stay and see what their decision would be, but his tenuous hold on himself made that impossible. He refused to listen to his parents’ plan to get rid of him like he was an old pair of running shoes—battered, scuffed, and torn. Instead, he ignored his brother and walked silently back to his room. Crawling back to the bed that had cooled in his absence, he slammed his headphones onto his head and turned the music just loud enough so he couldn’t hear the voices from the hall.

He spent the rest of the night wondering if his parents would ever love him again.

M
ICHELLE
turned and handed Allen a plate stacked with fluffy pancakes before nudging him in the direction of the table where Anthony and Aaron sat eating. The inescapable smell of syrup surrounded Aaron as he took another buttery bite. He watched her back as she made more pancakes and an expert flip almost made him smile. She frowned as she sat down at the table with them, a much shorter stack of pancakes on her plate. A quiet sigh escaped, of sadness or exhaustion, he couldn’t tell. Then, in a desperate attempt to pull her family back together, she told them they were going out to dinner to celebrate Aaron’s graduation. Allen made a crack about celebrating Aaron barely passing English when he himself would have been grounded for a getting a D in English. The joke came completely out of nowhere, but Michelle shot her middle son a stern look, showing she was not amused, just as the house phone rang. She answered it as Allen lowered his gaze, chastised after the hour-long lecture he’d been given earlier that morning. Aaron had heard most of it as he sat at the top of the stairs, trying to avoid the pitiful looks and imagined judgments he got from his family when they could see him. The expression Allen wore told him his brother was still disgusted with himself for what he’d said to Aaron, even after all had been forgiven.

“Mom, no, we won’t be home tonight, I’m sorry. Can I stop by tomorrow evening?” Aaron heard his mother say. Anthony had already left the table as Allen sat next to Aaron, looking deep in thought. “Yes, well, we’re going out to dinner… yes, Aaron too. We’re celebrating his graduation from high school. No, Mom, I won’t wear the red shirt.” Allen stifled a laugh as his mother rolled her eyes. “Sure, Mom, we’ll meet you at Clancy’s at seven. Okay, Mom. Love you too.” She hung up the phone and sighed. Dealing with his grandparents always stressed Aaron out, which in turn stressed out his mother. Aaron had heard his grandmother berating his mother once for coddling Aaron. If they just treated him like a normal kid, he would be normal. They really had no clue. So his mother got it from all sides, all because he couldn’t function on his own. No wonder they wanted to ship him off.

“M
OM
,
I’m so glad that you and Dad could make it on such short notice,” Aaron’s mother told his grandparents as they followed the host to their table at the restaurant. He was surprised when Allen grabbed Anthony by the back of the shirt and all but threw him into the seat next to his grandmother before taking the one next to Aaron. His parents sat opposite his brothers, leaving him at the opposite side of the table from his grandparents. Aaron could have kissed his brothers; they had put a human barrier between him and his grandparents. Whenever he saw them, his grandmother tried to hug him or his grandfather would pat him on the back. Neither of them was around Aaron enough to really understand why they could no longer touch their grandson.

After they’d been seated for a few minutes, Aaron quietly studying his menu, Michelle began to make small talk with her parents while John and Anthony talked about school. They were trying to keep the focus off Aaron, which he appreciated almost desperately. While they murmured in polite conversation, their server approached the table between Aaron and Allen, startling the older boy.

“Hi, my name is Juliette, and I’ll be your server this evening,” she said in a falsely bright tone.

Allen and his father, who were seated on either side of Aaron, noticed how his breathing seemed to accelerate at the mention of the server’s name; they both leaned forward in their chairs, looking anxious. Aaron scooted his chair toward his father in an effort to get away from her.

“What can I get you folks to drink?” the server asked, popping her gum as she spoke, her pen poised to document their beverage preferences. Probably in her late twenties, the girl wasn’t bad to look at with her frizzy red hair and freckles, but her high nasal voice was grating on the nerves.

“I’ll have a Coke,” John said. Each member of the family listed off a litany of liquid refreshments in turn, from Michelle’s iced tea to the grandparents’ wine. The two younger brothers both ordered 7Up, and then Allen ordered a Coke for his older brother, who flashed him a grateful look. Aaron hated to talk, especially to strangers who would just stare at him, causing him to stutter and repeat himself until he sounded like the freak he was.
Jesus, it was Thursday. Why was the restaurant so crowded?

“I’ve heard their lasagna here is excellent,” John piped up to keep the conversation going, once the server had gone to fill the drink order. Sweat trickled down the side of Aaron’s face as he sat in the claustrophobic restaurant surrounded by strangers. He could feel them on all sides, pressing against his space. It was hard to breathe.

“Yes, that does sound good,” their grandfather said as he looked over the menu one final time before closing it and setting it next to his plate. He sat stiffly in his chair, all but swallowed by the gray cardigan that helped to warm him in the air-conditioned restaurant. Thin and nearly bald, he pushed his thick, oval glasses back up on the bridge of his nose as he addressed his eldest grandson. “So, Aaron, have you decided on your major at college?”

“Aaron isn’t going to college yet,” Allen said, his voice full of trepidation for his brother. Aaron sat staring absently at his silverware on the table, his breathing fast and labored. Aaron was in the beginning stages of a panic attack, and he worried what that would mean for him in the middle of a crowded restaurant. His mother’s face swam before his eyes as he looked up at her helplessly.

“Thank you, son, but I was asking your brother,” his grandfather said pointedly, and looked to Aaron to provide a more detailed answer.

Anyone who knew Aaron knew that Grandpa was going to be disappointed on that score. Without raising his eyes, Aaron simply mumbled, “Thinking about it,” to his water glass.

“Grandpa, guess what!” Anthony said successfully grabbing his grandfather’s attention as he launched into a play-by-play of his last soccer game: the goal he scored, the perfect pass he set up for the next goal, and the head pass that helped to win the game. His eyes danced, and Aaron vaguely remembered that same excitement when talking about some of his more challenging debates, but that seemed like a lifetime ago. He envied Anthony’s glow as he watched from the corner of his eye, but silently thanked his brother as the conversation kept both Aaron’s grandparents busy and their attention away from him.

The server came back and distributed the drinks. When she set Aaron’s Coke in front of him, he grabbed it, discarded the straw, and drank every bit of it without breathing before returning the glass to the table. The sugar and caffeine felt like drugs in his system as the carbonation calmed his stomach. He closed his eyes as the server stared at him. After a moment, John started the process of ordering their entrees, much as he had with the drinks, deflecting the attention from Aaron, whose hands had started to shake under the table.

“I’ll have the linguini Alfredo,” John said with a forced smile for the server. The strain of keeping up the happy family front started to show in the lines around his eyes. Michelle ordered ravioli, as did her mother. Aaron’s grandfather decided to go with the lasagna, as he had talked about before things began to get tense. Anthony, always a lover of spaghetti, chose to have it with meatballs. Things were going well as Allen ordered manicotti, and then it was Aaron’s turn. In a very quiet voice, he asked his plate for chicken nuggets and french fries.