He's Too Heavy, He's My Brother

Still reeling from the Whose Bra Is It Anyway situation, I head into the weekend a little uneasy.

But I have desserts and side dishes to prepare for a party we’re attending and kids to reacquaint myself with – habits to unlearn from the week with Lars, bed times to adhere to, routines to reintroduce. It is like breaking two young horses each week. I am forever saying things like “Remember where you are, we don’t eat in front of the TV here,” or “You don’t get your way just because you say you’re sorry,” or “It’s a gorgeous day and I will not spend it in a dark theater eating popcorn and soda and not talking.”

My phone rings. The ring tone is “I Want to Be Sedated,” indicating that it is either my mother or brother.

This can’t be good. I can’t decide which one to hope it isn’t. In my indecision and while I wipe couscous salad fixins’ from my hands, it goes to voicemail.

I take my time retrieving the message. It is my brother. He wants to come over to measure my daughter’s furniture.

As my daughter teeters on the precipice of teenhood, I am about to part with the little girl décor of her room – the room I lovingly decorated in the exact shade of bubblegum pink when she was just a tot of 5 years old. We have chosen a theme – lavender and plum, and girly and Parisian with new furniture just detailed enough but not too detailed to be frou frou. Paris will take care of the frou frou. We’ll have to part with her lovely flower-embellished junior furniture. Perhaps Joe’s 5 year old daughter would like a new set.

I call him back and it of course goes to his voicemail, as all calls to their home do. I am not sure who they think is stalking them and trying to force them to converse. The introductory message is stiff and measured and sounds as though he is reading from a teleprompter. A slow teleprompter.

I offer that we’ll be home for a couple of hours and he can stop by, but we need to be on the road by 1 (actually 2, but I need a little debrief time.)

He calls right back. He’s on the road and he’ll be by shortly.

I cringe at the thought, forewarn the children (my son instantly leaves) and go back to assembling my side dish and dessert.

Joe arrives and I show him upstairs. He is hardly at all interested in really looking at the furniture. I have to force him to write down the measurements. He describes his daughter’s room as enormous but full of crap. He may not be able to take all the pieces. There might be too much crap.

What?

As my daughter prepares a collection of little girl things his daughter might enjoy and he asks for more coffee to put in his Dunkin Donuts cup, he states that he’s brought “this little gem” with him. I am baffled and nearly cover my eyes as he pulls something out of his pocket. You never know with him.

It’s a letter. And quickly, I realize just as he is about to place it into my upturned palm that it is the letter from my sister.

I recoil as though he is about to place a live snake into my hand.

“None of my business,” I say. “That letter is between you and Charlotte. I am not getting involved and I am not about to take sides."

And as we head down the stairs into the kitchen where I could refill his coffee cup and resume side dish and dessert detail, he begins the hours long campaign of trying to get me to read the letter.

And when I have finally convinced him that I will not, he reads portions of it aloud to himself. I remark from the kitchen that I can not hear him above the din of the rolling boil I’ve got going for the couscous and it is a good thing because it is none of my GD business.

And as he hints that he’d like to mooch lunch from me, he also tries to reinvent the facts of the Door-Open/Xbox/Cat-Poop debacle to try to gain a little support for his lame-o position on the matter.

I feel like I am at work. (“I know it was inconsiderate of Mr. Firestone to insult your sexual preferences with his off-color joke, Mr. Perillo, but that really doesn’t excuse the fact that you set his desk on fire.”)

I restate over and over, using different words, and increasingly more simplistic words just to be sure, that I’d made my position clear at the time and it is unchanged. He’d been wrong, whether it was his son who “started it” or not. It was an intrusion and he’d bungled the situation by not handling it with respect for my sister and her family and with an immediate call and a sincere apology.

And then he pulls the Mom card.