19. Leprechauns, a New Home, and the Same Old…
Note: This is the ninteenth installment of the serial publication of my memoirs, “What’s Left Behind.”
To read previous chapters, go to https://medium.com/whats-left-behind.
Sean looked nothing like Eric.
He was much shorter; he had orange hair, a beard and mustache to match, and intense blue eyes. Sean was, for all intents and purposes, what I imagined a leprechaun to look like — albeit somewhat taller and not so pudgy. My mother obviously sought men in life who made her laugh — God knows she needed it — and Sean had a patent sense of humor coupled with a raspy, side-splitting laugh that kindled your own amusement whether or not you even caught the punchline.
Like she had with Eric, my mother never explained who Sean was, and, truth be told, I didn’t care — even when, scarcely one month after meeting him, my mother told me he’d be moving in with us.
“Where?”
(The why didn’t matter.)
“We’re gonna try to find someplace in Bellmore,” she replied, knowing that was the only answer I wanted to hear.
A couple of weeks later, we moved into a significantly smaller — albeit nicer — apartment on the other side of town, only two short blocks from my school.
When we moved, Colin, now 18, didn’t come with us.
For the past year or so, he’d been bumming it with friends, living on the streets, or burning daylight in cyclical stints at jail or rehab. He stayed with various members of the family, all of whom had given my mother a lot of flak for kicking Colin out of the house, criticizing her for not having more patience and compassion — until, that is, they learned for themselves that my brother’s moral indifference and utter lack of responsibility could break even the most idealistic soul.
In my opinion, his absence was a welcome relief.
I hated Colin.
Notwithstanding all the suffering he had caused me in life, my brother’s presence was a constant reminder of all that pain.
Worst of all, Colin posed a perpetual threat.
Despite his pursuit, I never let my brother touch me again, and, mercifully, he dropped out of school before we ever had to share the same building, stripping me of practically all interaction with him. But, I never trusted Colin. I didn’t put it past him to run off at the mouth when he was drunk or if my friends were around, revealing my darkest, most humiliating secret, ruining me and everything I had come to love.
The less I saw him, the happier I was.
As was my nature, I welcomed Sean into my life without resistance. He made my mother happy; he provided the financial stability that allowed me to stay in Bellmore with my friends; and, considering he was sober, and Colin was gone, it was the first time in my life there was no alcohol in the house.
But before that first summer even ended, life resumed its usual course — an inevitable path forever paved in the compulsion and consequences of alcohol. Almost simultaneously, Sean started drinking and Colin came back home begging my mother for a place to live — two events which, already distressing in themselves, converged to make life in that apartment utterly intolerable.
It was late. Pushing midnight. Colin and Sean were in the kitchen, playing cards and drinking. My mother had already turned in and I was trying to do the same but couldn’t sleep with the stereo blasting just outside my bedroom and the two of them bickering loudly over who was winning, and who had or hadn’t cheated.
I wondered if my mother was actually sleeping, or if she had simply retreated into her little echo chamber of acquiescent denial.
As time passed, the music got louder; the voices grew more animated and less coherent.
CRASH!
I jumped up in a dazed somnolence, I felt the rapid rhythm of my heart pounding against my chest wall, its vibrations mingled with the foreshock of the floor as a tussle erupted outside my room. Sean and Colin were no longer laughing; the tone had changed to one of anger and hatred as they began to fight. A sudden silence gave me hope that it was merely a hasty encounter that had blown over. Moments later, I heard my brother retching in the bathroom, vomit pouring into the toilet.
Idly, in the background, Anita Ward sang Ring My Bell, as I conjured up a mental image of what unfolded on the other side of my door. Anyone could see that my brother, rendered helpless by his own body, posed no threat. Yet, Sean persisted in striking him and attempting to drag him from the bathroom. My mother emerged from her bedroom, pleading with Sean to leave Colin alone, as I heard Colin heave once more and the distinct splatter of sick hit the floor.
“I want him OUT of my fucking house!” Sean shouted.
I felt a distinct, sharp pang of sadness for my brother who vomited again after Sean knocked him to the floor.
“Sean, STOP!” my mother begged, “you’re hurting him!”
In my mother’s voice, I could hear my own, years before, as I watched my father beat her.
“I want him OUT!” Sean wailed in a drunken rage. “If he’s not out of here in five minutes I’m calling the police. You have a warrant out on you, you little piece of shit,” he raged at my brother.
I heard muffled voices amidst a rumble. Then, a series of tremors after Sean pushed Colin down the stairs.
I lie in bed, crying.
As much as I hated my brother, it sickened me to hear him get beat on. I wished I had a phone in my room so I could call 9–1–1; I wished that my neighbors would just make the call themselves. Surely they could hear everything.
But no one ever did.
The next time I heard Sean’s voice, it came from my cracked window as he screamed at Colin from downstairs.
A moment later Sean returned, complaining to my mother that he didn’t want Colin coming to the house anymore.
I lie crying, my nerves wrought with a confusion of anxiety and sadness. It was a bitter winter night and considering how things transpired, my brother likely had neither shoes nor coat. I thought of his feet, freezing on the concrete, nothing to protect him from the biting cold. I worried where he would go, where he would sleep…or if he even had any money to get food. Most likely not. And I recoiled at an instinctive urge to try and save him.
