After Brian
Part 2
Claire: Pre Rage Party Memories
Claire
To say that my little brother and I have a complicated relationship is the kind of understatement that the word understatement was created to describe. Like many families with a bully drunk running things, Brian and I had one of two options, band together or break apart. In our own sick little Kinney world we banded together, hard and fast.
From the outside, anyone looking at us, watching us in a room, watching how he treats me, would think he fucking hates my guts. In a way I know he does. He has always hated opening himself up to any type of affection because in our house affection was treated like an affliction. He knows how I absolutely hate the word cunt - too filthy for even me, a total potty mouth, to utter - so my name is now synonymous with that word, spit out into my face whenever he wants to rile me up. Which is often.
I was young when Mom told me that I was going to be a big sister. I remember thinking 'poor shit', and hoping that my real parents would come and rescue me from this horrible place. Back then things weren't as bad as they would become, but I knew that this world, this family, wasn't going to be good for anyone, especially for this new baby.
Things did get better for me once Brian started to grow out of his baby fat and into a young man. At eleven, he was taller than my mother, and already a lightening rod for Jack's anger. He became a diversionary target for those times when Jack would try to get me alone when my mother was at some church event. Brian had a knack of drawing Jack's wrath like nothing else. These are things that Brian and I don't ever even speak about, but they are things that shaped our lives forever. Let's face it - without Brian, I would have been dead by my own hand or by Jack's. Without me, Brian would probably still be Brian, just without me. He is a fucking rock, and I am not saying that like it's a compliment. In so many ways his stony exterior covers up a stony, cold inside but there is just something there I love so much. He was - is - my protector, my confidant, and all around pain in the ass. The man that I adore.
At sixteen I had one foot out the door, and the other wrapped around my fuck head of a husband who was kind enough to knock me up and take me away from that house of horrors. At first, it was kind of nice; he was sweet, caring and a fantastic lover. A friend of Jack's, Robert had been an apprentice down at the union when I first met him. We were married two weeks after I turned seventeen by the family priest that would one day bury my father. The same priest that told the room full of mourners that he didn't know Jack enough to say anything about him. Fucking liar. That priest knew enough from my family's confessions to fill up 20 seasons of the Jerry Fucking Springer show.
We settled a few blocks away from my parents, Robert and I with our baby, a son. Brian would spend the weekends in the extra room all the time, coming and going as he pleased. I was pleased that he was here, away from that house. After Jack moved the family to the other side of town, we stayed and things went down hill. Robert had a thing for booze, something I hadn't picked up on at first. Who am I kidding? I picked up on it, I just didn't want anything getting in the way of my escape plan. Brian was isolated from me, only visiting occasionally, growing up with a new set of friends and school mates. Occasionally, when things would get very bad he would show up on the steps, smoking a cigarette, and let me take him inside to clean him up. I got to be good at taking caring of bruises and cuts, the stuff on the inside - that was harder to care for. But Brian knew I loved him and he loved me and somehow we managed to hammer out a relationship amongst the crap that was our lives.
Then Brian was off to college and I was off to the hospital to have another son. Money was good, Robert moved up in the union, politicking, organizing and making more and more money. I was able to help Brian out with college money, not much but enough so that he could get out of that house when he graduated at seventeen. He used to come by on Sundays after church, and I would slip him some cash as he ate lunch and played with his nephews. While things with my husband grew worse, at least his job kept him away from the family more and more, and I went on about my life with my sons and my weekly visits from Brian. My mother and Jack were dead to me. Dead. I never asked Brian about them, and he never mentioned them. There was no need.
I know what you want to know. When did I realize Brian was gay? Nosy, aren't you? What fucking business is it of yours? The truth is I never realized anything about Brian other than he was always the way he was. He was always fucking beautiful to me, inside and out. Perfect. As a baby, he had the most beautiful sad eyes. He was soft and plump and never cried. That's what I remember most about him as a baby - he never cried, never showed his feelings, but he would always let me hold him and kiss him and love him. I used to carry him everywhere with me, even to the store or church, carrying him around like he was mine, all mine. His love and my love…it was the only love in that house. It changed, when he changed, grew up into a boy and then a man, but I will always remember the baby with the sad eyes that let me love him, hold him and kiss him.
My story doesn't have a happy ending, none of our lives do. My husband turned out to be my way of dealing with my fucking drunk of a father, and of course like any bad soap opera, he turned out to be a fucking drunk of a husband. History repeats itself, the cycle of abuse continues, all that shit rolled up in one. Richard never laid a hand on my sons. That I would not tolerate. I protected them in ways my mother never did, but I did stay in the fucking marriage because I had been stupid enough to get knocked up at 16 and not bother to finish my high school education. I was trapped, like my mother was. Fucking beautiful.
One day, the fucker beat me hard enough in front of my children to put me in the hospital. It was a particularly memorable fight over… What? Was it, spaghetti vs. lasagna? Whatever the fuck. My eldest had called 911 and then he called Brian on his cell as Child Protective Services had shown up at the hospital threatening to take them into custody. Richard was in jail. Since this little drama that was my life was playing out as my Mother had predicted, I chose not to call her for help. However, lucky me, Mother was kind enough to come by the hospital room the next day and let me know how embarrassing this all was for the family and kindly reminded me that divorce was not an option for a nice Catholic girl like me. After that we didn't speak to each other until Jack showed up and told me he was dying.
Child Protective Services. That snapped me out of the delusion that I had created anything other than the same home environment that my mother had created for Brian and me. The social worker at the hospital and the domestic violence counselor police officer were sympathetic to my plight but they also made it clear that my children's safety was at issue. I had put my sons at risk. I had. Me. Not that fucking Jack, or my mother or my husband. Me. This time I chose to end the cycle myself, not waiting for anyone like CPS or the police to do it for me. But I didn't have to do it alone. How did my son know to call Brian? How do all children know how to protect the ones that protect them? Know instinctively who is good vs. who is harmful? All good children of abuse who are survivors know how to set up an escape plan. Brian was that plan for my sons, and for me. Beautiful Brian with his big sad eyes.
Brian had the moving van at the house before I was even released from the hospital and moved me into a comfortable apartment as far away from Richard as possible but still in my boys' school district. He sent over Melanie, a lawyer he was acquainted with who walked me though the protective order mess and helped me find a divorce lawyer that would leave Richard the penniless fuck he deserved to be. There was no room for Richard to apologize, beg, or plead to come home. There was no home for him anymore - four broken ribs and a wired shut jaw took care of that. The rest that needed to be taken care of, Brian did.
When Jack showed up and told me he had cancer it was as if I was watching a television show, that some actor had come in to my house, and told me his tale of woe. I was waiting for the swell of the sad music and the director's call for a commercial. But it never came. I had been in counseling since I got out of the hospital, enough that I could tolerate my mother's intrusion ever so slightly back into my life, (xoxoxo Xanax!) and had reached a point where I needed to make peace with these people that the world kept insisting were in actuality my parents. Brian did not approve. Brian stayed away from any attempts to reunite our 'happy' little family. My concern reached only as far as my mother, a person I began to understand more and more as my own therapy progressed.
Brian was off busy with his life, but always found time for me and made sure that I never went without. My sons were terrible during this time, completely out of control, driving everyone nuts including myself. I spend a lot of time trying to discipline them without 'disciplining' them, but they are boys, and boys will be boys. I tried to limit Brian's exposure to the little shits as much as possible but remained in almost daily contact with Brian thanks to emails and phones. Brian was a very busy man - work was killing him, some nice boy was killing him, and he had created a son in very Brianesque fashion. I kept up with the life and times of Gus thanks to a new friendship with Lindsay which had first gotten off to a rocky start when she and Brian were in college. To say that I was jealous of her relationship with Brian at the time would be another understatement. She was beautiful, smart, and educated, and made Brian laugh so loud and so much, his sad eyes would laugh too. I had felt small and ugly in her presence. But now, we had sons in common, and Brian's happiness. For a while things were touch and go with her and Mel but…enter stage left, Brian on his white shining horse to save the day!
After the man who claimed to be my father passed away, Brian and I shared what would be our last sick day together in that horrible house. I was a wreck and weakness is my middle name. Brian couldn't cope with me crying, ever. It would send him up the wall and out a room faster then anything, making him even more sullen and withdrawn - as if that were possible! The night he came to the hospital and I was crying though my stupid wired jaw he started screaming at me not to feel sorry for myself and that everything was going to be fine, he would take care of everything, and fucking stop my fucking crying! Oh yes, the Kinney men know how to show affection! I love that fucker.
It was a sick and perverse game I was playing, the martyred daughter at the funeral and then the wake. Slow torture for my mother, that's for sure. If I had a dick I would have asked Brian to join me in pissing on Jack's grave. Instead I opted for public humiliation, asking the group of people in his house to try and say something nice about him. Hah! As if I had feelings of kindness toward the man. I have nothing left in my heart for him other than contempt. Brian was able to work out the good son, 'gay' demon with Jack before he died and even introduced him to his grandson, but if you ask me, Jack didn't deserve it. None of it.
That afternoon, that horrible afternoon, I felt so guilty after Lindsay and Michael tried to say something nice about Jack, and then I felt my heart break in two after Brian left so upset and was so very angry with me. Word to the wise, Xanax and wine don't mix well with abject grief and relief. Trust me on this one.
I didn't speak to Brian for a week after the funeral. He showed up on my door step and I knew all was forgiven and I knew enough not to mention any of it again. Brian's like that, he can hold a grudge for life but he can forgive anything if he wants to. And I am so very grateful that he forgave me.
You want to know what I know about Justin? Not much. Brian and I never really spoke about the relationship while it was going on. Brian's personal life is just that, personal. Neatly tucked away, compartmentalized, in a clean and razor sharp part of his heart. After he and Brian ended up in the papers when the poor kid was attacked, there was nothing I could do but watch him self destruct. Michael for some unknown reason had chosen this time to leave Brian alone and go off to Oregon. The safety net that he had created for himself, his escape plan completely failed. I tried to do what I could but there was only so much he would let me. There was no question that Gus was not exposed to his father at this time - it was as if Jack Kinney had returned from the grave, fueled on JB and modern scientific pharmaceuticals. So, neither Lindsay nor Mikey were there for him. I came over to the loft one afternoon and found him lying on the floor bathed in his own vomit. Those were not good days for Brian and those who loved him.
What do you do for a man who thinks he has everything but in fact has nothing? What do you do for a man so afraid to love another human being that he would rather kill himself then admit it to himself? You do what you can, that's all. All that you can.
And for a while after Justin returned to him, things were good for Brian, or they seemed to be.