Brian began tending to minimal arrangements for their father. No need for Trevor to get into it, though. Their crazy old man had run the Brandon YMCA for thirty years without ever engendering a moment’s sympathy. Their childhood house of horrors and whatever was in it Brian would leave to officials.
Trevor stared at his feet and disagreed. “He was my daddy, too, Brian. I need to be at his funeral.”
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“No funeral. I’m having him cremated.”
“I meant figuratively.”
Brian paused on the brink of teasing him. Figuratively, Trev? But the word that sounded funny for a second really signaled distress. Brian had never seen Trevor so somber and—rational.
Maybe they should smoke a bit of ganja in commemoration: an idea Brian dismissed without mentioning it, because he felt like a hypocrite. After all, how often had he insisted that Trevor not smoke in the car? Not smoke when the side-stream affected Brian, who had less tolerance? Not smoke in front of certain people?
Trevor slumped, dispirited on the couch. Brian watched from the glass walls as winter sunlight wove through naked branches. Hailey was on the phone with her mother, explaining why Brian wouldn’t be joining them for Christmas as planned. Moving the phone away, she stood on tiptoes, whispering, “Momma says if you want me there for moral support, she’ll move the dinner; we’ll celebrate the Epiphany instead.”
Brian had forgotten what the Christian Epiphany was, if he ever knew. But he’d rather Hailey not witness the grim details awaiting him. In response then he whispered, “Tell her Trevor’s coming with me. We’ll be back in a few days.”
“I-Rey!” Trevor bounded off the couch, throwing an arm around Brian. “Full-up right. I-and-I, Bri.”
Hailey smiled and zipped her coat, leaving to work as Kaya’s secretary. “Don’t leave without saying good-bye.”
After the door closed behind her, Trevor’s seraphic grin beamed all through the room. “Let’s go to my place, share a bowl, and make these plans.”
At Trevor’s, the girl in the knit cap had left him a note. And Crescent hoped to see him after lunch. “She wants me to steady her feelings. No idea how to do that, but Crescent believes I have magic that calms her down. An’ sumptimes just believing makes it so. Not true for our daddy, though. He was a crazy bastard no matter what you believe. Nuh, true?”
“He was cruel, bald, and bitter as long as I can remember,” Brian said. They were leaning over the deck and trading hits from Trevor’s pipe. “The old man was too smart for his life but nowhere near smart enough to change it.”
“Like everyone, no?”
“Well, yeah—like lots of people. He never cared a damn about us, Trev, but he loved Mom. And she hated him. Who knows why she stayed with him?”
“You don’t know? For you, Brian. When you went to college, she was happy. You getting out—your scholarship—gave her courage to escape. And she trusted you to take care of me. Big job, no? Takin’ care of me, making da money, an goin’ to college.”
“She’s not gonna be there, Trevor. Even if she knows he died, she won’t show up.”
“You know why I used to say she got sick and died? She told me to. Made me swear. Because she was the same as dead. No worries, though. You’d raise me.”
“Great. So she was just as crazy as our crazy-angry father.”
“Not that crazy, Brian. Mommy talked and talked so I wasn’t too scared. Just excited. I stuck to her story till the day you called me a liar.”
Trevor lit the pipe for Brian and drawing back, Brian coughed, watching Trevor’s lucent face. “Lying’s against my religion.”
“That so?”
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