4
BRANDON
“Brandon James McGee!” As her face turns the color of a beetroot, Melody crawls through the crumbling ropes surrounding the ring. To an outsider, she seems upset. Luckily for me, I’ve been her best friend for over twelve years, so I know every one of her moods. Today’s isn’t fueled by anger. Don’t get me wrong, she’s concerned for her father, but she’s also proud of me.
How do I know this? The ghost-like smile stretched across her face is a good indicator, but what she signs next most certainly keeps my worry at bay. “Stop standing there with your rooster chest puffed out and go get some ice.” She only calls someone a rooster when the person gloating is someone she likes. If she isn’t a fan of theirs, she calls them a peacock.
With my house closer to the Greggs’ shed than theirs, I nod before hot-footing it toward the barbwire fence that separates our properties. When the tread on the bottom of my sneakers fails to gain traction with the recently varnished floorboards on the back patio of my family home, I crash into the rusty steel material my family likes to call ‘the drinks fridge.’ I hit it with an almighty bang, but I doubt anyone heard my collision. It’s hard to hear anything over the shouted voices coming from the living room.
I can’t tell who my mom and dad are fighting about, but I guarantee it’s about either Madden or Phoenix. Mom uses the word ‘unacceptable’ too many times in a row for it not to be about my older brothers. Phoenix’s wildness calmed a little bit when he left for college. The same can’t be said for Madden. Between a suspension for fighting last month and an arrest for underage drinking just this past weekend, he’s been keeping my parents on their toes.
They’ve got enough issues on their plate right now, but Madden is too selfish to see that. He hasn’t noticed that our father doesn’t come home for the weekends anymore, and the only time he’s here is when there’s a mess to be cleaned.
Mom says it’s because he’s busy with work aspirations. I know it’s more than that, and as much as this sucks to admit, I hope today’s fight will extend my father’s absence to indefinitely. Phoenix and Madden will never agree with me, but our lives would be a whole heap less complicated if our father wasn’t a part of it. He isn’t necessarily evil. He’s just someone I hope never to become.
My hand freezes halfway between the ice bag in the freezer and the cloth I’m filling when my father’s roar reaches my ears. “They’re boys for crying out loud. Let them be!”
That’s his excuse for everything.
They are boys which means they’re more adventurous than girls.
You don’t understand them, Barbara, because you’ve never been a boy.
You didn’t seem to have any issues when I pursued you in the same manner.
And my mom replies with the same retort. “Just because they’re boys doesn’t give them the right to be bullies.”
I recommence filling an old rag with ice when my dad shoots out the back screen door that leads to the patio a few seconds later. He runs his hand over his slicked-back hair before dragging it down his reddened face. The military uniform he paraded around in when I was a kid has been switched to an expensive-looking suit. Although his shoes are still polished to perfection, they’re no longer military-issued boots. They are a funky pair of leather loafers that cost more than my parents’ first car.
My father’s first twenty years in the military served him well. He used his connections to shift his skills from the battlefields to court chambers not long after my tenth birthday. Then, when he was no longer satisfied being a ‘mere JAG officer,’ he sought a much-higher position in a chain of command that could take him to the White House.
Shockingly, he’s been given everything he has demanded.
Mrs. Gregg isn’t as surprised as me. She said the sections my father works in are very male-orientated, and my father is seen as ‘one of the boys.’ Her husband is not. Along with an undying pledge to protect his wife and daughter, Mr. Gregg is a huge campaigner for women’s rights. He believes in equality in both the home and workplace.
It’s another thing he doesn’t have in common with my father.
My mom attended the same college as Wren. She was studying law and had planned to use her degree to help those less fortunate. Her ideas went up in smoke when she bumped into my father one rainy afternoon twenty-three years ago. She stupidly believed military men had values higher than those out of uniform.
She learned otherwise only a few short months later.
Two months after their whirlwind relationship started, they wed in a low-key ceremony. Three days after they married, and on the day she discovered she was pregnant with Phoenix, my mom was encouraged to postpone her studies, so she’d have time for ‘a more important role of wife and mother.’ She agreed on the stipulation she’d finalize her degree once Phoenix was twelve months old.
That never happened. Madden was born only a month after Phoenix’s first birthday, then Joey and I followed closely behind them.
My mom says she doesn’t mind that her dreams were placed on the back-burner to become an at-home mom and wife, but I saw the disappointment in her eyes when my dad took it upon himself to borrow her dreams.
My father’s step up from JAG officer to General adjourned his need to rule supreme in all aspects of his life for almost four years, but once the military couldn’t satiate the craving any longer, he looked at America as a whole, aka, he shifted his focus to politics.
His run for Congress started at the District Attorney’s Office a few years ago where he became an ADA. During his stint there, he chaired many charities, but it was my mom who did most of the heavy lifting. At my father’s request, she signed on for way too many charity events than a woman raising four boys could handle. It put a toll on her time, and her relationship with her kids and marriage has suffered since—not that my father has noticed.
With one stepping stone out of the way, he’s now vying for the top job. He wants to become the DA before using his connections there to help his bid for Congress. Mr. Gregg argues that a senator has more power than a congressman, but my dad is quick to disagree. He states it’s the congressman who runs the state, so he must have more power than the Senate. Since politics have never been my thing, I tune out their debates as quickly as I try to ignore my father’s attention when he notices me awkwardly standing at his side.
As his eyes glide down my half-naked form, the agitated expression on his face doubles. I’m not surprised. Disdain hardens his features every time we cross paths. Instead of appreciating that I haven’t given him anywhere near as many gray hairs as my older brothers, he objectifies it. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because I never grew a love for hunting. Or maybe it’s because I’m more like our mother than him. Whatever it is, we’ve never seen eye to eye, and it has nothing to do with the fact I don’t stand as tall as him.
I’m saved from being scrutinized by him further when Madden’s 1971 Pontiac GTO rockets down the driveway, producing a bloom of dust to follow its trail. He was gifted the rebuilt car on his birthday a little over eight weeks ago. I was pleased with my father’s generosity—he’s always been more stingy than lavish—but I was also pissed.
Mr. Gregg and I have been rebuilding a 1969 Charger Hellcat for years. It took us over three years to return the motor to its original condition, and for the past six months, we’ve worked on the interior and bodywork—which just happens to be the exact style and color to the car Madden was gifted.
