"Wake up, buttmunch. It's time to take Mom and Dad to the airport." I dropped down on the corner of my kid brother's mattress, hoping to make his splayed limbs flop for my amusement. I think it's terribly unfair that Jason got all the height in our gene pool, so I try to make it look ridiculous where I can. His face remained stuffed in his pillow, and he bellowed something indecipherable from its center. "Come onnnnnnnn," I stabbed the tips of my fingers into the exposed skin between the hem of his t-shirt and the waistband of his boxers, "we're going to be late if you keep laying there like a slug. I've been knocking on your door for a half an hour."
His right arm swatted at my poking fingers, King Kong trying to get some alone time at the top of the Empire State Building. "Dammit, Kate! Knock it off! I'm getting up already. Jesus." He heaved one shoulder back, tangling his lower half in the sheets and glaring at my from under his shaggy black bangs.
"You sleep in this much every day? Do
none
of your classes start before noon?" He yawned, stretching both arms out, then tried to sort out the bedclothes and sit up next to me on the side of the bed.
"Not if I can help it, no." Another prodigious yawn and leonine stretch, "but most engineering classes start early. Guess if I wanted to sleep in, I should have majored in English, right?" He elbowed me in the ribs just hard enough to let me know it was payback for poking him before.
"Yeah, because none of my classes ever actually
met
, per se," I played along with his light mocking of my major. It deserved to be mocked, at the moment. Not being able to get a job with my liberal arts degree was why I was here getting my brother out of bed, why he and I were spending the next three months together house sitting for our parents. "I got all my credit hours from sitting in coffee shops and reading Foucault."
"Why do we have to leave so early, anyway?" He heaved himself off the bed and searched the floor for a pair of shorts, back hunched, arms hanging slack from his shoulders. "The airport's only, like twenty minutes away and their flight doesn't leave for three more hours."
"International flight, doofus. They have to ask them if they're terrorists for a half hour before they can fly to London." Jason pulled on a pair of khaki shorts, squinted in the mirror a moment and opted not to change into a fresh t-shirt. His long, shuffling feet slid into a pair of athletic sandals.
"I wouldn't," I warned.
"What? You criticizing my fashion choices now? Think maybe I should have a pair of cowboy boots? Or bowling shoes?" It was another gentle dig at me. In college, I realized that a rockabilly style suited my taste in music and tattoos and flattered my pear-shaped figure, so I wore a lot of flared skirts, cigarette pants, and yes, cowboy boots. Jason's style, on the other hand, had always been Abercrombie & As Little Effort As Possible.
"No, I just think you'll want to wear something with some arch support. Mom packed half the house to take with them to Europe, and you're the one loading it in the car." I jumped up and grabbed his hand, pulling him with me. "Come on, the sooner we get them checked in, the sooner we can come back and jump in the pool. This is going to be the last sunny day for a while."
A three month trip to Europe is the kind of thing people talk about doing, but my parents are the only people I'd ever heard of actually doing it. They were going to all of the great museums and palaces, with side trips to Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, and other places I'd only ever read about. It should have been the kind of thing that makes you proud about your parents when you tell other people. Not me. I knew what it cost.
Dad had a successful machine parts business, and was semi-retired, able to take a few months off with careful planning. He met Mom long before that, when he was stationed in Okinawa and she was a waitress at a traditional restaurant. They married there two months later and have been together ever since.
Dad used to go to her restaurant every day he could get off base, just to see her. His spoken Japanese was passable but his reading was terrible. He didn't want to let on to her, though, so he kept ordering things by pointing to them without knowing what they were. He ended up eating squid, frogs, snails, everything on the menu. She just thought he loved Japanese food until he finally asked her out to dinner - at a hamburger joint. It's a cute story, and he told it to great effect at their thirtieth anniversary party two years ago, about an hour before I watched him getting a blowjob in the coat check from Deb Hansen, accounting department.
For practically as long as they've been married, Dad's been an uncotrollable cheater and extravagant apologizer. The European trip was the result of my mother sniffing out a close-call pregnancy scare with a mistress younger than me.
Deb Hansen's what got Mom the pool.
As Dad's apologies go, the pool was a good one, much better than a designer handbag or even the little sports car that Mom could barely drive. The pool took up most of the back yard, when you included the patio, half shaded by palm trees, and the stacked stone grotto at the far edge, trickling musically into the shallow end. Kidney shaped, tiled in bright blues and greens, and twelve feet down to the bottom of the deep end, which is where I dropped in as soon as we were home from the airport. I sank down halfway, then folded my legs like I was sitting Indian-style. I looked up at the bubbles racing to the surface and settled deeper into the pressing blue. I started the exercise I'd been doing every day since I came to stay for the summer.
I am building a time machine in my mind to save myself from making a very particular kind of mistake.
Kate, when you are a sophomore in high school, an outgoing guy named Matthew with beautiful hazel eyes is going to ask you to the homecoming dance. You should go with him. Making fun of the other couples booty dancing or too nervous to actually touch each other is what will start you out being best friends. He's going to give you your first kiss later, under the yellow glow of the porch light. You should probably let him do that, too. It's sweet, he's a good kisser.
Kate, when you are a senior in high school, Matthew will have been your boyfriend since that first dance. On prom night, he'll get an amazing hotel room but he's not going to be drunk enough to have sex with you in it. You'll want to ignore the fact that the four times you've had sex before then, he's been plastered. You'll still be planning on going to the same college
in the fall to stay together Don't do it. Tell him you love him, then break up with him. He's gay.
Kate, when you are twenty, Matthew will take you on a candlelight picnic and surprise you with his grandmother's diamond ring. You'll want to say yes, because you love him and can't imagine not seeing him every day for the rest of your life. He's going to look so handsome in his tux, waiting for you at the end of the aisle with tears of joy in his eyes. Don't marry him, even though it'll break both your hearts. He's gay.
Kate, when you are twenty-three, Matthew will get up enough courage to tell you on your first anniversary that he thinks he's bisexual. You should take him at his word, since he knows what's in his own heart. What you shouldn't do is keep telling yourself that it's alright that every time you have once-a-month sex after that, you have to tell him how hot you think it would be to see him with another man and describe it in detail first. It's not progress, it's not improving. He's gay.
Kate, when you are twenty-five, Matthew will sob and
shake in your arms, confessing that he's broken his marriage vows several times with men he's met online. You'll be shocked and destroyed. You can't be, not if you've been paying any attention or heard any of these warnings. The signs were all there. He's gay.
Kate, when you are twenty-six, you and Matthew will get divorced. In some ways, he'll still be your best friend. You'll leave him the dog and drive three states away to move back in with your parents. You will try to figure out how you lost ten years of your life and figure out the only way to get them back is to go back in time and send these warnings
.
I unfolded my legs and pushed off against the bottom of the pool, my lungs burning for air by the time I popped back up to the surface. I paddled over to the side of the pool and propped myself up on the tiled edge, resting my chin on my forearms. Jason was draped over a lounge chair in his swim trunks with aviator sunglasses covering half his face. I couldn't tell if he was looking at me, or if he was even awake. Jason got Mom's black hair and intense brown eyes. His tan is always going to look better than mine, though we both have a spray of chocolate freckles across our noses and cheeks. Where Jason is long and lean, an inch taller than Dad, I got a totally different genetic combination. I'm taller than Mom, but only by a few inches. I got her petite shoulders and small, pointed breasts, but the full hips and round ass of Dad's Midwestern ancestors.
Jason had been a track star in high school, but wasn't good enough to make the cut later on. It looked like little brother had put on some muscle in the two years he'd been away at college, thickening up through the shoulders and chest. His torso was hairless, but I didn't know if it was natural or if he shaved. The last time I'd lived with Mom and Dad, Jason had been twelve. That's where my mind had him set, it just kept scaling him up when I saw him grown taller and taller at holidays. I had been thinking of this summer together in some ways as babysitting my kid brother. Now I was looking at the man with whom I'd be sharing the house instead. I was about to say something about how grown up he looked when Jason interrupted.
"Is that seriously your bathing suit?"
"Huh?"
"That thing you're wearing. I mean, what is that? Some kind of dress? You look like an eighty year old at the Y who doesn't know she's not a pin-up anymore."
