But there were three bedrooms and the all important two baths. One bedroom for Morrie, one for his son, Palmer, the other for his daughter, Tuesday.
That was how much Dee had changed. Morrie had been named after Jim Morrison who our father idolized. I had been named after the month Valentine’s Day fell in, Mom’s favorite holiday and my middle name was Valentine, not to mention Mom said I was conceived on that day. Morrie had talked Dee (and she loved him so much it didn’t take much effort) into keeping the family tradition, naming his son after Robert Palmer, since Morrie was a Led Zeppelin freak. He’d also talked Dee into naming their daughter Tuesday, which both of them swore was the day of the week she was conceived, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day that year. Dee had barely made a peep naming her kids these crazy names.
Then again, Morrie and I never suffered from our names and Dee had loved my brother back then. Loved him enough to let him name their kids. Loved him so much she couldn’t hack doing without him, seeing her family losing out to a bar.
All this meant I didn’t sleep on their pull out couch in their TV room, which was what I did all those years when I came home, sometimes, the times I didn’t stay with Mom and Dad, doing the rotation, sharing my time between family members. I’d come home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or some other family event, like the kids’ birthdays or Mom and Dad’s 40th anniversary. Instead, all this meant I slept in Tuesday’s single bed last night.
My bed at home was a queen. Some nights I slept like the dead. Other nights I moved.
Last night I moved and almost fell out of Tuesday’s bed twice.
And my cat Wilson, unused to his new surroundings, steered clear.
I couldn’t sleep without Wilson on my feet or, when I was moving, he slept somewhere close. Wilson was a cuddler. He liked my warmth and even when I shifted he didn’t mind, he just shifted with me.
So I didn’t sleep.
I hadn’t slept well, not for years. But at least I slept some.
I needed to go home.
Morrie went straight to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup.
He didn’t speak or look at me until he was well into his third sip.
Then he did. “See this arrangement is gonna work out great.”
I loved my brother but he was such a f**king man.
He slept in his own bed, a big bed, in his own home. I slept in a foreign bed, a little bed, away from my home. But he got up and there was coffee brewed, coffee he didn’t have to make, so it was all going to work out great.
“Morrie, this isn’t going to work. Tuesday’s bed…” he looked at me, “I don’t sleep enough as it is.”
“Colt’s couch pulls out.”
Oh f**k. No way. No way in hell.
“I’ll move in with Jessie.”
Jessie’s husband was a chemist, he worked at Lilly and he got paid a shitload. They didn’t have kids because that would cut into Jessie’s affinity for having fun whenever the hell she wanted and doing whatever the hell she liked whenever the hell she felt like it. They had a three bedroom house. One bedroom Jessie converted into a workout room. One had been decorated by some interior designer that Jessie hired when she’d got a wild hair up her ass. It had a double bed with a big, down comforter on it and lots of toss pillows and I knew Jessie put mints on the pillows when her Mom and Dad or her sister and her sister’s husband would come to visit.
I could do mints while I was displaced because some creepy, sick psycho had fixed onto me and was murdering people I liked and sending me notes from high school and forcing me to spend time with Alec, time where he touched me.
“No offense but Jimbo is a dweeb and he doesn’t own a .45,” Morrie dismissed my suggestion by slightly insulting Jessie’s husband who was, unfortunately, a dweeb but he also wasn’t a pushover.
I changed the subject. “Please tell me you don’t have a gun in your house with kids.”
“I do. I’m an American. I know how to use it, my kids know to avoid it and it’s locked in a safe anyway so they couldn’t get it even if they wanted to make trouble.”
I let it go and tried something else. “Al’s not a dweeb and it’s highly likely he owns a gun.”
Meems’s husband Al was anything but a dweeb. He’d been the center on the football team, on the line, right next to Morrie. Time had made him a little soft but it hadn’t made him a slouch. And he was a hunter, I knew he had guns. And he loved me, I knew he’d blow the brains out of anyone who tried to hurt me or got near his wife and kids.
No, that wasn’t true. Anyone got near his wife and kids, Al would not use his gun, he’d go in with his hands and rip them apart.
“They got no room for you, Feb. Theirs is a full house.”
This was true, they had four kids and Al wasn’t a chemist at Lilly. He worked on the highway crew. It was union, it paid well and the Coffee House was nothing to sneeze at because Meems could bake. Her muffins were orgasmic and her cookies and cakes were so good, you’d sell your soul to the devil if she made you do it just so you could have one. Still, they had four kids and Meems had a fondness for catalogue shopping. Bob, her postman, blamed her for the hernia he suffered last year and he wasn’t joking.
“Colt works a lot. You wouldn’t have to sleep on the pull out. He’d probably let you use his bed.”
If Morrie was being funny, I wasn’t laughing.
“If he’s gone all the time, what purpose would it serve me staying there?”
I watched Morrie’s face change, resistance drifting through it in a hard way, and I knew part of the bucketload of shit that sifted through my brain while I wasn’t sleeping last night was going to come spilling out just then.
I wasn’t wrong.
“We gotta talk about Colt.”
I shook my head.
His coffee cup came down with a crash and I jumped back a foot. I looked down, seeing the mug had split right down the middle and coffee was all over the place, spreading, spilling down the side of the counter, dripping in a coffee waterfall to the floor.
I looked at my brother. “Holy shit, Morrie.”
He turned and with an underarm throw he tossed the handle to the coffee mug, a jagged section of mug still attached to it, into the sink with such force it fractured again, bits flying out everywhere.
I didn’t jump that time but I took a step back.
“Morrie –”
Morrie leaned forward. “You’re gonna talk to me, February, talk to me right, f**king, now.”
That was how much Dee had changed. Morrie had been named after Jim Morrison who our father idolized. I had been named after the month Valentine’s Day fell in, Mom’s favorite holiday and my middle name was Valentine, not to mention Mom said I was conceived on that day. Morrie had talked Dee (and she loved him so much it didn’t take much effort) into keeping the family tradition, naming his son after Robert Palmer, since Morrie was a Led Zeppelin freak. He’d also talked Dee into naming their daughter Tuesday, which both of them swore was the day of the week she was conceived, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day that year. Dee had barely made a peep naming her kids these crazy names.
Then again, Morrie and I never suffered from our names and Dee had loved my brother back then. Loved him enough to let him name their kids. Loved him so much she couldn’t hack doing without him, seeing her family losing out to a bar.
All this meant I didn’t sleep on their pull out couch in their TV room, which was what I did all those years when I came home, sometimes, the times I didn’t stay with Mom and Dad, doing the rotation, sharing my time between family members. I’d come home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or some other family event, like the kids’ birthdays or Mom and Dad’s 40th anniversary. Instead, all this meant I slept in Tuesday’s single bed last night.
My bed at home was a queen. Some nights I slept like the dead. Other nights I moved.
Last night I moved and almost fell out of Tuesday’s bed twice.
And my cat Wilson, unused to his new surroundings, steered clear.
I couldn’t sleep without Wilson on my feet or, when I was moving, he slept somewhere close. Wilson was a cuddler. He liked my warmth and even when I shifted he didn’t mind, he just shifted with me.
So I didn’t sleep.
I hadn’t slept well, not for years. But at least I slept some.
I needed to go home.
Morrie went straight to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup.
He didn’t speak or look at me until he was well into his third sip.
Then he did. “See this arrangement is gonna work out great.”
I loved my brother but he was such a f**king man.
He slept in his own bed, a big bed, in his own home. I slept in a foreign bed, a little bed, away from my home. But he got up and there was coffee brewed, coffee he didn’t have to make, so it was all going to work out great.
“Morrie, this isn’t going to work. Tuesday’s bed…” he looked at me, “I don’t sleep enough as it is.”
“Colt’s couch pulls out.”
Oh f**k. No way. No way in hell.
“I’ll move in with Jessie.”
Jessie’s husband was a chemist, he worked at Lilly and he got paid a shitload. They didn’t have kids because that would cut into Jessie’s affinity for having fun whenever the hell she wanted and doing whatever the hell she liked whenever the hell she felt like it. They had a three bedroom house. One bedroom Jessie converted into a workout room. One had been decorated by some interior designer that Jessie hired when she’d got a wild hair up her ass. It had a double bed with a big, down comforter on it and lots of toss pillows and I knew Jessie put mints on the pillows when her Mom and Dad or her sister and her sister’s husband would come to visit.
I could do mints while I was displaced because some creepy, sick psycho had fixed onto me and was murdering people I liked and sending me notes from high school and forcing me to spend time with Alec, time where he touched me.
“No offense but Jimbo is a dweeb and he doesn’t own a .45,” Morrie dismissed my suggestion by slightly insulting Jessie’s husband who was, unfortunately, a dweeb but he also wasn’t a pushover.
I changed the subject. “Please tell me you don’t have a gun in your house with kids.”
“I do. I’m an American. I know how to use it, my kids know to avoid it and it’s locked in a safe anyway so they couldn’t get it even if they wanted to make trouble.”
I let it go and tried something else. “Al’s not a dweeb and it’s highly likely he owns a gun.”
Meems’s husband Al was anything but a dweeb. He’d been the center on the football team, on the line, right next to Morrie. Time had made him a little soft but it hadn’t made him a slouch. And he was a hunter, I knew he had guns. And he loved me, I knew he’d blow the brains out of anyone who tried to hurt me or got near his wife and kids.
No, that wasn’t true. Anyone got near his wife and kids, Al would not use his gun, he’d go in with his hands and rip them apart.
“They got no room for you, Feb. Theirs is a full house.”
This was true, they had four kids and Al wasn’t a chemist at Lilly. He worked on the highway crew. It was union, it paid well and the Coffee House was nothing to sneeze at because Meems could bake. Her muffins were orgasmic and her cookies and cakes were so good, you’d sell your soul to the devil if she made you do it just so you could have one. Still, they had four kids and Meems had a fondness for catalogue shopping. Bob, her postman, blamed her for the hernia he suffered last year and he wasn’t joking.
“Colt works a lot. You wouldn’t have to sleep on the pull out. He’d probably let you use his bed.”
If Morrie was being funny, I wasn’t laughing.
“If he’s gone all the time, what purpose would it serve me staying there?”
I watched Morrie’s face change, resistance drifting through it in a hard way, and I knew part of the bucketload of shit that sifted through my brain while I wasn’t sleeping last night was going to come spilling out just then.
I wasn’t wrong.
“We gotta talk about Colt.”
I shook my head.
His coffee cup came down with a crash and I jumped back a foot. I looked down, seeing the mug had split right down the middle and coffee was all over the place, spreading, spilling down the side of the counter, dripping in a coffee waterfall to the floor.
I looked at my brother. “Holy shit, Morrie.”
He turned and with an underarm throw he tossed the handle to the coffee mug, a jagged section of mug still attached to it, into the sink with such force it fractured again, bits flying out everywhere.
I didn’t jump that time but I took a step back.
“Morrie –”
Morrie leaned forward. “You’re gonna talk to me, February, talk to me right, f**king, now.”
