I'm certain you'll forgive me for not really mentioning my other step brothers until now. If you've been reading these, you'll know that Caleb had been keeping me occupied...so to speak.
Michael was the middle brother, twenty four years old, and an aspiring Gordon Gekko type. He had stick-thin arms and legs standing in contrast with a pot belly, a kind of skinny-fat that almost excused his baseline hostility. Michael just barely masked his contempt for me, never failing to go on some Ayn Randian rant about how poor people—like me, I presumed—drained the resources from successful families.
But I was rarely Michael's target, mostly because he hated Caleb more. Michael, being the ultra-capitalist of the family, couldn't stand that Caleb was not only their father's consigliere, but also really good at it
That was why Michael hadn't been around much lately. For the last two months, he'd been interning at an investment firm in New York City, trying to get enough real world experience to match Caleb's business acumen. (Caleb never went to college or cut his teeth as an intern. Business just came naturally to him, which only fueled Michael's anger.)
Then there was Kevin, the youngest. When I first moved out here, I pegged him as a potential buddy. I could still remember when I got off the plane with Mom and saw Frank and his boys there, waiting for us.
Kevin looked like a mouse, with his nose jammed in a copy of
On the Road.
His sweatshirt caught my eye, a muted blue hoodie with a strange decal: the upturned body of a dead bird. He was seventeen with a faintly cherubic baby face, as if he'd been slightly overweight at one time. He was in good shape now—he was on the track team, I'd later find out—though his matted black hair and wireframe glasses made him look more like an aspiring librarian.
We left the airport in a limousine, where I ended up sitting next to Kevin. He kept squirming away from me, like he was afraid we might touch.
Mom was jabbering on about something. She was gabby when she drank, and she'd killed a bottle of wine during the flight.
Kevin had his nose in the book again.
Finally, it occurred to me. "Harper Lee," I said.
He jumped a little. "I'm sorry?"
"Your hoodie," I said. "That's a dead mockingbird."
He laughed nervously. "Oh, yeah. Love that book."
I nodded to the book in his hands. "Kerouac's okay, I guess."
Kevin shrugged. "Yeah, a little."
"Kind of a pretentious proto-hipster."
"Yes!" he said. He straightened up in his seat, suddenly engaged, smiling, but then our legs touched and his face turned red.
"Kevin!" Michael barked. "Close that book and listen to your future step mother. You're being rude."
"Sorry," he said, and that killed our conversation.
Hours later, after settling into my new bedroom, I found my copy of
Post Office
by Bukowski and headed to Kevin's room. I thought he might enjoy it.
Kevin wasn't there, but I was shocked at the shelves of books in his room. His collection ran the gamut from the greats to modern penny dreadfuls; the requisite heavyweights, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, to small-press lit mags and fringe poetry.
But what truly drew me in was the heavy antique typewriter set up in the corner. It was heavy, refurbished, and in working condition. A blank page sat in the carriage, with a pile of typed pages right next to it. I looked over his work.
The kid was a poet too!
It was a free-verse poem, divided into six four-line stanzas. I began reading it aloud, softly.
"That fleeting touch proved to be my winter's bane,"
I read.
"Candlelight, dying, but blazed the frost from—"
"What are you doing in here?" Kevin said from the doorway.
I held up the page. "Dude, you're fucking good."
He tore the page from my hand. "Please don't read that," he said, his face blistering red.
I put my hands up in apology. "Hey, sorry. I didn't mean to intrude."
He wouldn't look me in the eye. "Well you are."
"Okay, so I have this book you might like, especially if you think Kerouac was kind of a pussy."
He took the book and tossed it on the bed then led me to the door. "Yes fine Olivia thank you."
"Alright," I said as I stepped into the hallway. "Let me know how you like it."
He slammed the door in my face.
I nodded and raised my middle finger. "Right back at ya, asshole."
In the following month, Kevin and I barely spoke, unless it was polite conversation in front of Mom or Frank and, even then, it was like pulling teeth to get a word out of the kid.
Soon after, Kevin went to live with his mother for a while.
Good riddance kiddo,
I thought. No hair off my ass.
So imagine my excitement when I heard about Kevin's eighteenth birthday extravaganza. Birthdays, I came to discover, were a big deal for Frank Montgomery.
Caleb visited me at 18 Straight to break the bad news. He walked in while I was thumbing through a chapbook behind the register, sighed, and lay his forehead down on the counter.
"What's wrong, Richy Rich?" I asked him.
"It's Kevin's birthday this weekend."
"So?"
"You haven't experienced birthdays in my family yet," Caleb said, a look of distant sadness in his eyes. "Eighteenth birthdays are especially awful."
"It can't be that bad," I said.
"It will be extremely...Irish."
"That sounds fun. I grew up in an Irish family," I said.
"Olivia, you don't understand," Caleb answered. "My father had a rough upbringing and his family never had proper birthdays."
The horrifying prospect of it hit me. A man suffered a deprived childhood and now had the means to overcompensate for what he lacked as a boy.
"Oh no," I said.
"We'll need to look out for each other during this shit show," he said. "If it gets too bad, you'll be my excuse for leaving. Like, you say you have a stomach bug and need a ride home."
"And vice versa?" I asked.
"Absolutely."
I always was in favor of having an escape route for awkward gatherings, but something didn't feel right. "Wait, couldn't you do all this with Cortney?"
"I'd never subject her to a Montgomery eighteenth birthday party. It's too long, too insufferable, and has too many shamrocks."
"But you have no problem subjecting me to it."
"That's different. You're one of us now."
Damn it, he was right. "Deal," I said.
Caleb extended his pinky. "Swear it."
And thus we pinky swore, so solemnly that it might as well have been a blood oath.
