Unspoken of (Part 2 of 2)

            We meet up in this café across town.  I haven’t told Mum and Dad about this.  I haven’t lied or dissembled, I just haven’t brought it up.  Isn’t that the way we handle all things Sean?  A big broom, a loose, heavy carpet.  Best he never happened.

            His crime shames us all.  That’s the way they look at it.

            Do I? 

            I guess I’m younger, further removed.  Never had to feel the dirty looks, the hateful eyes.  Never had what Mum and Dad had: the blame of raising him, the constant suggestion in the air that they were responsible for what he did to Tina.  Tina’s mother, screaming at Dad when he tried to offer that apology.  Reaching for a vase and ready to throw it at him.  Don’t even walk along Raven Avenue.  Always taking the long way to school.

            Chloe tells me: “He’s doing good.  He’s got himself a job now.”

            “Doing what?”

            “He’s a cleaner, down at the hospital.”

            I ask, “Why would they want him?”

            “For goodness sake, don’t say stuff like that when he gets here.”

            “I won’t.  But don’t they think he’s dangerous, you know, to the patients?”

            “Gina.”

            “Don’t they?  Isn’t he?”

            “He’s got people working around him.  He doesn’t really interact with the patients…  Gina, he’s trying, he’s doing the best he can with himself.  It’s not easy.”

            “I suppose.”

            “Give the guy a chance.”

            And there he is.  He’s cleaned up somewhat, clean shaven, his hair a little longer, neat, just beginning to show those family curls.  He’s dressed sort of tidy.  But you can’t get past that shifty look, the way he’s checking everything out: for what?  Danger, opportunity.  I wonder what he’s thinking when he looks at the women in here.

            We eat pie.  We talk about the cartoon he used to watch as a child.  We laugh at the fact that I was still watching repeats of all the same things when I was a kid.  He asks me about the school, about old Mr Duffy, the maths teacher, who must be close a hundred or something. Old when he taught Sean, wrinkled and fossilised now when he’s teaching me.  Sean remembers some kids he went to school with and Chloe tells him that one of them became a doctor; the other married young and has a family to rival our one in size, two jobs to support them, and a drinking problem on the side.

            “You can’t tell,” Chole says, “how people are going to turn out can you?”

            “Yeah, not really.  Joe Bracken becoming a doctor!”

            “He’s a changed man, Sean.”

            “He was seventeen last time I saw him.  Broke his tooth.”

            “You did?”

            “Yeah.  He called me some name or somesuch.  Just a dumb punk kid.  I never thought he’d amount to shit.”

            She murmurs: “People surprise us.”

            “Some do.  Sometimes.”  A sour note dumped there in the middle of the table.

            It doesn’t blossom though.  Chloe talks around it, finding gently words, honey-touched memories: there are some somewhere, it seems.

            And he asks about me.  Last year at school?  And then what?  Any boys I might have my eye on, and does he need me to sort any out?  Any troublemakers?

            I find I can laugh with him.

            I almost ask, I don’t: what happened with Sindy?

            When we leave I discover that he’s got a car.  It’s a bomb, but it seems to move.  He asks if I want to see his flat, but Chloe says no, we gotta get back.  Text him to catch up again.  Does he need any money?  Well, if he does, he can always come to her, he knows that right?
            He leans over: “Good catching up with you, Gina.”

            “You too.”  And I mean it.  And I watch him driving away, wondering about all the years of his being my brother that I’ve missed.  And I know I won’t say anything to Mum and Dad about today, probably ever.  And that’s just how it is.

            I walk home the long way with Chloe.  We stop for ice-cream and we feed the ducks, before arriving home at sunset.

Picture credit/descredit: author's own work