I carried two heavy boxes marked "kitchen shit" up the stairs. A woman with two kids, twins, walked out of a neighboring apartment. "Morning," I said cheerily.
"Morning and welcome to the neighborhood." They walked past me, and I tapped the ajar door open with my toe. Colin was putting glasses in a cupboard. His phone was on speaker,and Dad was giving him pointers for his next snowboarding competition. My old man had never even been on a snowboard, but he had that unshakeable confidence that allowed him to believe that he knew best about everything.
"Anyway, Colin, I'm proud of you. You stayed focused and worked hard and it's paying off. Now, if we can just get your damn brother to focus on anything besides his next glass of beer and next pussy conquest."
Colin spun around, spotted me, grabbed the phone and switched it off speaker.
"Too late," I said as I set down the boxes. "I already heard the big love fest. And here I thought I was his favorite twin," I said wryly. It had always been that way between Dad and Colin and me. Colin was the fair-haired, blue-eyed wonder boy, and I was the dark-haired black sheep of the twin set. I looked more like Mom and that seemed to make Dad dislike me even more. They'd had a rough few years of marriage. Colin and I were too young to remember, but Zander said they fought all the time. My mom even threw a heavy beer glass at Dad's head once that sent him to the emergency room for stitches. Apparently, according to our mom, she came home from work one day and found Dad in bed with another woman. When she threatened to take us back to Ireland, he hired one of his friends, a real slimy pit bull of a lawyer to go after her green card and immigration status. She raced back to her homeland, leaving her two twin boys in the care of their very unstable and mostly fucked up father.
Colin finished the call fast and turned back to his task of filling dish cupboards. "You know Dad. He's always big on complaining about one of us when talking to one of the other sons. I'll bet he says shit about me all the time when he's talking to you."
"Nope. You're the golden boy, remember? I'm the piece of shit who just happened to be born on the same day as you. Can'teven blame his hate of me on Mom because you came out of the same woman."
Colin stopped what he was doing. "Ro, I think you're reading him all wrong."
"I'm not and it's all right because I've already figured this all out, and I don't expect it to change or him to change or our relationship to change. Look, Zander was his first born, and he's massive and tough as fucking nails and doesn't back down. They butt heads plenty, but it's easy to see how proud Dad is of him. And now that he has Nev, well, that was just a big red bow on top for Zander. Jameson was always the kid who was going to make a success of things no matter how hard Dad made it. Even on his worst days in high school, when he was constantly in trouble and fighting the guilt of causing Indi's Dad to drive off the rainy road, even then, it was easy to see that he was going to do something, he was going to be someone. And he took Dad's half-assed excavation business and turned it into a gold mine. He works hard for his success, and he's earned every penny. And you, well, you excelled at every sport, whether it was soccer or baseball or skateboarding or snowboarding."
"You were just as good at all those sports. Better even," Colin noted.
"Except I didn't have the discipline and focus to make a go of any of them. Dad's right in that respect. I was given talents, but I didn't use them. I liked fun. I liked things that didn't take discipline or focus. In a way, I took more after the old man than any of you, and I don't say that as a brag cuz it's definitely fucking not. And then, of course, there's the true golden boy, Nate. He was kind of perfect from the start, and his mom stuck around longer. Dad had slowed down on his sketchy business deals and sleeping around and partying. He became more human, so Nate probably had a better version of him than the rest of us. Besides that, he's so fucking cute." We both laughed. Itfelt sort of good to get all that off my chest. Sometimes thoughts like that got bottled up inside, and they built pressure like a shaken can of soda.
I ripped open a box with a few pots and pans. "Dude, you have a lot of kitchen stuff. Do you have some of those frilly aprons, too?"
Colin threw an empty box at me. We started putting away the dishes. "Hey, bro," I said, "thanks again for asking me to share the place with you. Your offer came at the exact right time."
"Hey, I'm ready to rock and roll in our new place. Going to be a good time. And for what it's worth, Ro, I never felt like I was more loved or better than you. You've always been my other half, in good times and in bad, and I hope it stays that way even when we've had our balls clamped like Zander and Jameson."
"That sounds painful. I think if I could find someone like Nev or Indi, I'd gladly have my boys clamped."
We both stared at each other as we imagined that. Colin bent over in pain first. "Terrible fucking analogy. Never say it again."
"Agreed." I opened the next box and laughed. "Fucking coffee cups with matching saucers. Who the fuck are you, and where did you put my brother?" I pulled out the cup and was immediately reminded of Rachel at the diner. Nowshe'dbe a catch but then who was I to think that I deserved a catch?
twelve
. . .
Ronan
Iplaced the ten-foot two-by-four on top of the stack. I leaned down to look at the stack, pulled the long piece of timber off and tossed it onto the pile with the bent pieces of wood. The shipment was delivered this morning, and I'd been given the shit job of taking the lumber and stacking it so the framing timber would stay flat. The only problem was the lumberyard had delivered so many crooked pieces, they couldn't even be stacked.
"Hey, Wilde, the boss wants to see you!" Jeremy, the assistant supervisor, yelled from his cart. Dust flew up from the cart's tires as he sped by. I wanted to point out the shitty timber, but he was already gone. I took off my gloves and jammed them in my back pocket. I glanced over at the pile of rejects. Half of the delivery was unusable. I was new to the construction game, but that seemed like a lot.
I headed across to Doris's trailer. I pounded up the steps and knocked.
"Come in, Ro," she called back.
"Hey, boss, about that wood I'm piling," I started.
She put up her hand to stop me and finished writing something down. Doris had a great smile, and I noticed that shewas sparing with it, but she managed one for me most of the time. "What about it?"
"About half of the pieces are so bent they can't be used. I can't even set them in a stack."
"Half?" she asked sharply. "Are you sure?"
"I can count them when I go back. I've pulled out the bad ones to set aside."
"No, you don't have to count them. I've got an important job for you. I'll go look myself and then I can take a picture to show Lawson's Lumberyard that they're delivering a lot of garbage two-by-fours. I've been meaning to switch suppliers. This will give me a good excuse."