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11
My twin “has issues” our mother used to say. It’s a nice way of describing the out-of-control behavior that often haunts my brother’s attempt at mainstream manners.
I should have gone home with him. I should have predicted this might be an issue. Though my pussycat doesn’t live far from the mansion, I still break quite a few traffic laws to get to my brother before he starts punching holes in the walls.
The second my vehicle is secured in our ten-car garage, I race into the house and follow the sounds of grunting up the double-wide marble staircase toward his bedroom.
Giovanni is sweating outside Domani’s room, and I know it’s because he tried to stop Dom from destroying something, and failed.
Giovanni looks relieved to see me as I jog toward him. “Brunello, I…”
I clasp my baby brother’s hand and then let it go. “I’ve got him now.”
I know the rest of my brothers feel helpless when Domani is lost in his own head like this. My parents were equally without a plan. But Dom and I understand each other, so I know that when I enter his room, I need to duck.
Sure enough, a lamp whooshes through the air and crashes into the wall.
Damn.I thought I’d had that thing nailed down.
I hold up my hands. “Domani, it’s me.”
Though that much should be obvious, when my twin gets like this, sometimes he needs the reminder of who I am. That helps him get on the road to remembering who he is.
He squints suspiciously at me. “You…”
I don’t get close to him because it’s too soon. I have to wait until he verifies with whatever internal monitoring system he swears by that I am who I am. “It’s your Brunello. I’m here now, and I’m going to stay right here until you feel better. Until you see me.”
My brother squints, and I can tell he is sizing up my voice and measuring it against the distorted version of reality he is seeing.
His mind doesn’t play tricks on him often, but when it does, someone has to come and patch up the holes in the drywall the next day.
Dom is shirtless, sweating and breathing hard through his nose like a bull with its target locked in. His bicep is bleeding, though I don’t know from what. His hair is damp, sticking to his forehead in a way he would never tolerate if he was in his right mind.
I keep my cadence level and unantagonistic. “Do you want to go to the watering hole?” I ask him. I can’t remember when I realized that this worked in bringing Domani back down to reason, but sometime in our teen years when our parents considered having him committed, I stumbled upon this trail of breadcrumbs that eventually led him back to me. It’s from a song we used to sing with our father when we were little.
“The watering hole?” Domani asks. And before he opens his mouth again, I know what he is going to say. “I don’t have my fishing pole.”
My shoulders lower but I keep my arms raised so he knows I am not a threat. “I have one. We can share.”
The long pause is to be expected, though it doesn’t make the wait any easier.
Finally, Domani blinks rapidly, fusing reality with what he can now see before him. “Brunello?”
Now it’s safe to clear the gap between us, so that’s exactly what I do. I’ve had no sleep and no release, but none of that matters when my twin loses himself to the darkness that never stops haunting him.
I wrap my arms around my half-naked twin, squeezing the demons out of him as best I can. “It’s alright, brother. I’m here now.”
Domani sags in my embrace, his lower lip quivering as humiliation and fear find him. My brother’s knees go out, and it becomes a struggle to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself more than he already has. “It’s my fault,” he mutters. “She wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for me.”
I shake my head as I lower him to the wooden floor. He used to have carpeting, but after so many incidents exactly like this one, the stains were too many to deal with.
I sit beside him with our backs resting on the wall, my arm around his shoulders so he can slump against me. His chest heaves while his legs sprawl without direction before us.
“It’s not your fault,” I remind him, but I’m certain no amount of reasoning will ever make a dent in the iron wall he has built to hold his childhood trauma. I know what haunts him when he loses his mind. It’s the demon that never dies. “Mom and Dad shouldn’t have put you in charge of a child. You were a child yourself.”
“They told me to watch her.”
The story hurts me to walk through with him, but I’ve learned through the years that there is nothing I would not do for my brothers.
