After Brian
Part 5
Claire
Post Rage Party
"This is completely unacceptable behavior, Brian, completely. For Christ sake, at least pretend to be helping me here!" Claire grunted as she half dragged, half pushed her hulking brother toward his bathroom to clean up the mess that was his life, inside and now, on the outside.
"Shut!..the..fuckkin up." Brian slurred, but tried to help his big sister with her weighty package. She was strong, having given birth to two boys, and having dealt with her drunk shit of a father and ex-husband, she was also well versed in the petulant sick drama that played out before her.
"This is getting old fast, Brian. You're a grown man with too many responsibilities to be acting like this." Claire dumped her brother on the slate bathroom floor and went back out to the kitchen to gather up cleaning materials. Brian pressed his face against the soothing coolness of the tiles and moaned. A few minutes, hours - whatever - later he felt his shoes being pulled off, then his pants being undone.
"What? No foreplay?" he giggled.
"Fuck off, Brian, give me a little help here would you? You're dead weight!" Claire dragged his black jeans off - they were caked with vomit and god only knows what else. She threw his clothing into a trash bag and then went to the shower to fill up the dish basin she retrieved from the kitchen. Brian lay curled in a fetal position on the floor, shivering from the cold. Claire went over to the thermostat and kicked it up as far as it would go, and then put some towels under his head for whatever comfort they could give him. "Bri," she said softly, kneeling next to him. "Bri, I 'm sorry…I know it's cold. Here, give me your hand." Brian complied with his sister's request and closed his eyes as she began to wash his hands, and then his face. Brian's hair had recently been cut short, shorter than she had seen it for ages, and she couldn't help but think how young and innocent he seemed, naked and crying softly. Her mind was swamped with images and memories of both him as a child and the father of her childhood, and those images were filling her with dread and love at the same time.
The smell of bourbon oozing from every pore of Brian did little to quell the bad images and memories. She was grateful that Brian didn't inherit a single feature of that man. Brian was perfect, beautiful, otherworldly in comparison to the other mere mortals of her family. But that smell. The smell of man and bourbon and cigarettes. The memory of the smell was overpowering and she found herself staggering over to the toilet to retch.
"Clairee? Clairabell??" Brian teased in a sing song voice, "Clairabell What cha doing? Am I making you sick, Clairabell? I'm dirty, Clairabell. I'm a dirty and bad boy, my sins are unforgivable!" he started chanting almost hysterically. Claire pushed away her bad thoughts and rushed back over to Brian and grabbed on to him tightly.
"Boo Boo is a good boy," Claire said, over and over, gathering up as much of his torso as she could lift from the floor. "Boo Boo is a good boy, a very good boy!" she whispered fiercely, holding on to her brother for dear life, rocking him gently.
Claire didn't know how long they sat there, clinging to each other on the bathroom floor, but after a while, Brian finally passed out from exhaustion. She carefully began her cleaning and care of her baby brother, and the only sound he made was the little rasping in his breathing. Brian had a deviated septum. She knew where that came from - his 12th birthday 'party'. Brian had had the misfortune of turning 12 on a payday and Jack never let a holiday go by without a celebration!
Claire went to the bedroom and dragged all of Brian's expensive bedding into the bathroom to build a make-shift bed on the floor. There was no use trying to get him into the bed. He had long ago passed out into a deep and fitful sleep and if he woke up vomiting, well it would be easier to clean him up in the bathroom.
Claire walked out into the dark loft, leaving the bathroom door open so she could hear whether or not Brian needed her. It was well past sunset now, two days after the launching of Brian's friends comic book party. She had no clue as to what had happened at the party, but it couldn't have been good. Earlier in the day, Lindsay had made a frantic cell call to Claire who was busy monitoring her son's Sunday afternoon hockey practice. Lindsay had tried to sound cool and collected when she asked if Claire had seen Brian. Claire had stood up in the bleachers and then practically swooned from fear, steadying herself on some unsuspecting hockey mom. Claire tired valiantly to remain conscious as she began to scream into the cell phone, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY BROTHER!" She screamed, not being too successful at remaining composed.
Claire made quick arrangements for one of the other hockey moms to take her sons home for a sleep over. Her eldest, Ben, had heard her voice as she began to scream into her mobile phone and had broken away from practice to investigate his mother's outburst. "I need you to take care of your brother for a little while. You are going with Mrs. Williams and Toby. Ok, honey?" she said grabbing hold of her son, goalie mask and all. "Your Uncle Brian isn't…feeling well and I am going over to his apartment to make sure he gets some chicken soup into him, ok, hun?" Ben took off his mask and looked up at her with those big, beautiful sad eyes, his wide smooth face betraying his fear. God, he was a gorgeous thing, his hair sticking out all over just like his Uncle Brian. The men in her family got all the looks!
"Ok, Mom." He said simply. Claire's heart stopped beating as she took in her son's face, and the memories of Brian at his age flooded back. Ben's eyes conveyed years of sadness and wisdom beyond his years. Claire silently hoped it was just the Irish in him, some sort of historical sadness passed on by the generations, and not damage she had inflicted on him by raising him in her household.
Claire went straight to the loft. Of course he wouldn't be there, Michael and Lindsay would have checked there first, but she had no clue as to where to look for him. The knowledge that she knew less about her brother's life than she knew about astrophysics was terrifying to her. If Michael and Lindsay didn't know where he was, who would? Her mobile phone rang and she checked the caller id. It was a number she didn't recognize. "Hello!" she practically screamed into the cell.
"Um, yeah, um, are you missing someone?" A male voice asked.
"Who is this?"
"Well, I …um, is this Claire?"
"Yes, yes, Brian! Are you with Brian?"
"Um, yeah, um. Well, look, he's in my cab and he has passed out. I went into his wallet and found your number. I thought I would give you the chance to pay the fare and get him back to you before I called the police. He's pretty messed up."
"Thank God!" Clair said through tears of relief.
"So what should I do with him, you know, the body, so to speak?"
Claire gave the taxi cab driver Brian's loft address and went tearing around the loft looking for cash. In those few minutes of frantically opening drawers, Claire learned more about Brian's private life then she was ever meant to know. There were condoms. He must buy them in bulk, Claire grinned, letting herself feel good for a brief moment knowing he was being safe with this at least. There was one drawer next to the bed with plastic things, rubber things and God only knows what things. Jesus, were those handcuffs? There was a small box on top of the small dresser that contained a stash of pot, some pills and a fat roll of twenty dollar bills. Claire unwrapped the rubber band from the money and took half of the cash and shoved it in her pocket.
Outside, the cab pulled up and the driver poured Brian out of the back seat. "Here," she said, thrusting the cash she took from her pocket into the cab driver's hand. "Could you give me a hand getting him upstairs?"
"Yeah, sure." He said taking hold of one side of Brian while Claire grappled with the other. "Yeah, I have picked this guy up before, lots of times. He's smart enough not to drive in this condition…'cept I never took him home alone before," he snorted, laughing.
"Yes, I am sure. I can't tell you how grateful I am that you called me."
"He's a good tipper. Has a bit of a temper, but always a good tipper."
"That's my boy!" Claire snarked at a semi-conscious Brian. "Always a good tipper, uh Brian!" Claire said, trying to gauge how out of it he was.
"Tipper…" Brian slurred.
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Claire picked up Brian's cell phone and called Lindsay at home. She picked up on the first ring. "I have him - he's going to be ok," Claire said simply. "Could you get hold of Michael and let him know? He's probably frantic."
"Yes, yes, of course. Claire, are you ok?"
"Yep. "
"Where are the boys?"
"At a friend's house. Listen, Lindsay, I am thinking that it's going to be a bad morning. Do you know how to get hold of someone at work and let them know he won't be in?"
"Yes, yes of course, I'll call Cynthia. Don't worry. Should I come over?"
"Naw, pointless now, he's passed out for the time being. I will have him call you when 'His Highness' regains his ability to speak."
"Thanks for calling, Claire."
"Yeah, you too."
Claire hung up the phone. Lindsay knew better than to ask more questions about where Brian was and Claire knew better than to ask why Brian got there in the first place. The unspoken Brian rules of life - 'hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil'. Simple rules really, rules that are meant never to be broken. The beast in the bathroom began to stir. Claire rushed back into the bathroom just in time to pull Brian's face out of his now vomit-soaked pillow. Leaning down, she made sure his airway was clear - he hadn't even woken up. After rolling Brian away from the puke, she went out into the living room and began to hunt for a camera. When Claire was in the hospital, Brian had brought over some new toy and took some pictures of Claire with her face swollen and jaw wired shut. Whenever she felt down and vulnerable to Robert trying to weasel himself back into her and her kids life, an email would arrive with a nice 8 by 10 color picture of the mess that was her face with the caption "Claire's family trip to the hospital, 2002!" She found what she was looking for - a Polaroid camera. She also found a few things she would have rather not found. Brian didn't have a dog to walk or a horse to ride, nor did any of his friends, so let's just leave it at that.
Walking quietly back into the bathroom, Claire disposed of a roll of twenty pictures. Brian, naked, lying in his own puke! Brian drooling in his own puke! She started to compose the captions, "Brian's Excellent Bathroom Adventure 2002!" Payback's a bitch, she thought, smiling for the first time since Lindsay called.