This is the second part of a three part story. It began with Mitch: Perdition.
It is the story of a brother and sister, Jack and Mitch, who come of age in a small town and a small house, discovering each other along the way.
-----------
Nothing quite prepares you for university life if you come from a small town. Mine wasn't particularly small at twelve thousand people, but it had been twelve thousand people for as long as I could remember and I knew for a fact that we were losing more citizens than we were gaining. Everyone suspected that the mayor's office was avoiding updating the sign because they didn't want to give a number to what we all knew was bad news. We weren't idiots, we could see the boarded up businesses and see the loaded up trucks and cars, always headed out of town, but it was one of those topics no one ever talked about. Most of our parents worked at the plants just on the edge of town, making plastic in all of its incarnations, and maybe we thought that if we talked about how badly the industry was off, we would jinx things, bring it to a close all that much sooner. After a while, you got used to people looking over their shoulders, even when something wasn't there. It was normal.
My parents, luckily, didn't have to help me with university. I had a scholarship through Dad's company, but it was kind of an unspoken thing that I had best not fuck up this opportunity. I wouldn't get another and we all knew it. I was the first person in my entire family, all back through the ages, who had ever attended university and the pressure to perform was pretty palpable. Dad gave me the big shoulder grab that all fathers do when they are trying to be serious, exhorting me to try my best and that he would be proud of me regardless, but I knew that if I failed this, we would never be the same.
Mom, on the other hand, was so quiet that she freaked me out. I knew that she was having a hard time with me leaving. My older brother was never leaving home and we all knew it, so I was the first child to leave the nest. Now that I'm older and seeing that exquisite pain for myself, I know now why she couldn't speak. The knots won't let you.
So when they packed me up in the old Ford Wagon for the drive into the city and what I thought was freedom, glorious freedom, I was on the verge of tears the whole way. Everything I had ever known was in that damn town and even though all through High School I couldn't wait to get out (a fact I certainly didn't keep secret), when the day came and I knew I was off to a larger world, I was pretty darn scared. It almost broke me to ask my Mom to drive me in instead of my father and I know that it hurt him to hear it, but I really needed Mom's face to be the last one I saw when I hit the residence. You'll never hear a teenage boy say that, I know, but sometimes when we get older, we get at least a little honest with ourselves. I had a bank account full of money from my summer job at a farm outside of town, the residence was completely paid for, as was school, and I was about as prepared as I could have been. I just had that feeling that something was missing, though. Something damn important.
Doug gave me the bear hug he always gave me, the kind that near breaks ribs and told me he was proud of me. My younger brother couldn't be bothered to even say goodbye. He knew, maybe, that I would be back nearly every weekend until I got my feet underneath me. Dad, as I've said, gave me the man talk and the man shoulder grab. That almost made me laugh. Mom just sat there looking defeated with the keys in her hands. Mitch jumped up into my arms, a trick she used to do when we were kids, but which was a lot harder to handle when she was nearly my size. I caught her and felt her face against mine, both of us leaking tears.
"I love you older brother. Knock 'em dead."
I couldn't speak and I think they all knew it, so she hopped off and I near jumped into the car so that they wouldn't see me crying. I can tell you now that no matter how this story goes after this point, the absolute last thing on my mind at that moment was sleeping with my sister. I was about as woebegone as a boy can get.
The drive took a couple of hours and if I had known then that this would be one of the last times I would have some honest to goodness alone time with my Mom, I would have made more of an effort to say something important. As it was, I sat staring out the window, petrified, and just wished that the whole day would end. We got there, though, and she helped me cart up my boxes to my little room, two at a time. When we were done, I actually felt a bit better because I could see the potential, what little there was, for my closet of a room. The mattresses were encased in plastic and about as thick through as your hand, neither aspect giving me much confidence, but I could move the two beds together to make a double bed and a plant would go OK on the windowsill ...
And then Mom hugged me, hard, and we busted out crying all over again. Within a couple of minutes, we were laughing like fools. She gave me a weird look and cupped my face in her hands, and I wish I would have told her that I loved her then, because I honestly did. We had a bit of an awkward goodbye and then she was off for the lonely drive home. Outside my room, there was a growing cacophony as parents left and long pent up angst boiled over in to a right proper toga party, but at that exact second, I was about as alone as anyone can ever be - utterly anonymous.
And that was that. I was a university student.
------------
The first week really did go by in a blur, mainly because I was drunk as a fish nearly every night. The residences hold dances for each of the six major buildings, so the entire first week is a bunch of corny, undersexed, overdressed and completely obliterated students groping each other to make up for the heavily supervised dances back in their respective home towns.
There were no parents, no chaperones and only the omnipresent campus 5-0 there as a security presence. They were nearly as drunk as we were and not a heck of a lot older. Without a word of a lie, I fell in love a dozen times a night, but staggered home through the underground tunnels to my room empty handed and didn't care a whit until the headache started the next morning. When it did, there always seemed to be a beer back in your hand to start the whole mess all over. The dances were neat to see because hardly any of the new students knew anybody and so they stood back like a ring around the dance floor, sipping, but the returning students knew this week was the last they would have before real work, so they got right down to it. It was hard not to catch onto that wave, and so I rode it for all it was worth. The ring collapsed after a few drinks and everyone was one giant mass of sweaty humanity; deaf, drunk and loving life.
By Thursday, though, I was damn good and homesick. It was then that it really started to hit me. What was missing, that damn important thing ... was Mitch.
I missed my whole family, of course, but Mitch and I, well, we just were. There is no denying it, now. In my head I was looking at the freckles on her nose, the tiny ones you couldn't see more than a few feet away, and watching her smile and wrinkle them up like a fool. It damn near broke my heart and I had a giant knot in my chest that just wouldn't go away. There were some darn beautiful women in residence, let me tell you, with better bodies, better faces and at least some of them with better minds, but you can't account for intimacy, really knowing someone. It really makes up for a lot.
And so I sat, half corked, looking out my tiny window, in my tiny room, in my tiny little existence where I could disappear tomorrow and no one would ever know, and I missed my sister more than anything I've ever missed in my life.
I was too proud to call and I sat there until it was nearly midnight, just staring, before I screwed up my courage and phoned my parents to see if I could come home for the weekend.
My Mom just about exploded and handed the phone to my Dad. In a conspiratorial voice, he told me that Mom had been messing up my bed the whole week, just to make it look like I was still living there and that perhaps I should come home for the weekend to help her along. You know, just as a favour. My God, I could have kissed the man for not making me ask, but I managed to mumble that I could probably manage it, so he told me he'd pick me up after classes the next day and take me back late Sunday night.
I was grinning the whole time and then Dad said what I really most wanted to hear, "Oh, Jack, Mitch wants to talk to you, give me a sec."
And he handed her the phone. I could hear some fumbling as she ran up to her room with it. A few seconds later, I could hear her breathing on the other end, neither of us able to really speak. We sat like that for a minute or more, the air heavy between us.
"Uh, are you home for the whole weekend?"
"Yeah, I suppose so."
"I ... I miss you."
I really couldn't hold back by that point. Her tiny voice was honestly more than I could bear.
