Page 16 of Requiem

Brett 5

When I raise the door on our garage, I’m met with the familiar smells of oil and gasoline. The smells of my father. The chilly fall afternoon spills inside, washing sunlight across a big shelf in the back. I spot what I’m looking for right away, a box with my name on it. I promised Maggie I’d dig up some of my old pictures and my yearbook while we’re here.

I’m about to reach for the box when a glimpse of cobalt blue in the corner catches my eye. I leave the box for a moment, drawn to the long-forgotten treasure of my youth: my first mountain bike. It came to me the summer of my twelfth birthday, the summer that my mother’s mother spent here with us.

Grandma Ruth was, like my mother and Aunt Elise, a tall, strong woman. One Saturday morning, she shooed us from in front of the television, insisting we go out and play in the fresh air. I didn’t mind, especially with that new bike to show off around the neighborhood. Jeremy, on the other hand, was irritated at giving up his cartoons, and absolutely furious that I had something he didn’t.

We rode around for over an hour before making our way back to the front of our own house. My brother dropped his bike onto the grass and came into this very garage while I practiced tight turns in the driveway. I wondered why he came back out with the big broom. I didn’t have to wonder for long. As I rode past him, Jeremy stuck the thick wooden handle right into the spokes of my new bike. I literally flew over the handlebars, hitting the blacktop driveway hard enough to break my arm. Grandma Ruth, who had been sitting on the front porch reading her bible, saw the whole thing.

“Trudy!” she called into the house. “Trudy, come out here, Brett’s been hurt!”

My mother was out of the house in a flash, bypassing Jeremy to tend to me as I lay there, scraped up and crying. Grandma Ruth had another destination in mind. She made a beeline for my brother, approaching him with such momentum that he stepped back, for fear she would plow right into him.

“Jeremy Dean Corrigan! What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

He put on his sweetest, most innocent face and gave her a sheepish smile. “Nothing, Grandma Ruth. Brett fell off his bike.”

“Nonsense!” she said sharply enough for my mother to turn and watch. “I saw what you did, young man. Why did you hurt your brother like that?”

“I didn’t, Grandma Ruth,” he insisted.

“Oh, really? Who am I supposed to believe, Boy, you or my lying eyes? Hmmm?”

“Mama, please,” my mother called over to her. “I need your help getting Brett into the car so I can get him to the Emergency Room. I’ll talk with Jeremy later.”

It might have ended right there if my brother hadn’t folded his arms across his chest, put a snide smile on his face, and looked up at the old woman with one defiant eyebrow raised. He was claiming victory.

She laughed at him then. It started out as a stifled chuckle, but quickly escalated into a mocking cackle. My grandmother laughed and laughed, while we all looked on in astonished silence. I was so stunned that I stopped crying. Jeremy narrowed his eyes into little slits and puckered his mouth in disdain, looking as if he’d like to eviscerate her at that very moment.

Grandma Ruth, twice his size, looked down on him, eyebrows raised. “Is that all you’ve got, little boy?” she asked him mildly.

I could practically see steam coming out of Jeremy’s ears. No one had ever dared to challenge him. He was so enraged, that he actually growled at her. And then an interesting thing happened.

Ruth Purdy, widow, mother of five, grandmother of six, set her jaw, squatted down on the lawn so they were face to face, and she growled back at him. He stopped, looking at her as if she was crazy. Mom and I were rooted to the driveway, incredulous to what we were seeing unfold in front of us.

“You listen to me, and you listen good,” she hissed, now poking him in the chest with her index finger. “I see you in there. I know what you are. ‘For Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light’, doesn’t he, Jeremy?”

I watched in astonishment as my brother’s face turned a deep shade of scarlet, and his eyes grew as big as saucers.

“That’s right. You’re not invisible. God knows your black and wicked heart. God sees you, and keeps an account of every evil thing you do on the face of this earth. But you don’t care about that, do you?”

The eight year old shook his head no.

She smiled.

“No matter, Jeremy. No matter at all. ‘For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind.’”

“Mother! That’s quite enough!” my mother said, getting to her feet, the spell finally broken.

“No, Trudy. It’s nowhere near enough,” my grandmother said, getting to her feet again as well. She used her hands to smack at the grass cuttings, which had stuck to her skirt, then turned her back on Jeremy and walked toward where I was still sprawled. “But then, you already know that, my sweet child, don’t you?”

My mother didn’t answer.

Without thinking about it, I reach over and rub my left forearm with my right hand. It still puts out a dull ache when the weather is especially damp and chilly. A regular reminder of what my brother is capable of.

I’m not blind to my own behavior. I look back and I realize that I got over the broken arm … just as I went on to get over the stolen girlfriends, the missing money and the constant, systematic destruction of nearly every good thing that came into my life.

Will I get over this, too? Right now, in this moment, I can tell myself with absolute certainty that I will never forgive Jeremy for taking my father from me. What I cannot tell myself with any certainty, is whether I’ll ever be able to put aside the fact that he’s my brother. My blood. Only time is going to give me that answer, I suppose.