Laurie Breton - Die Before I Wake

“Don’t be oblique. It’s obvious to anybody who isn’t deaf, dumb and blind that there’s some kind of bad blood between the two of you.”

“Maybe you should be asking Tom.”

“Tom’s not here,” I said brightly. “So I’m asking you.”

Riley casually pressed the button for the car window. A little too casually, I thought. The window lowered with a soft hiss and he turned his face to the fresh air. “There’s no bad blood,” he said, scrutinizing the passing scenery. “We just don’t always see eye to eye. Maybe you’ve noticed that we don’t have a lot in common.”

Looking at him, with his torn T-shirt, wrinkled jeans and shaggy hair, I thought of my husband. Thought of his buttoned-down neatness, his trim haircut, his meticulously clean fingernails with the cuticles pushed back to reveal the white half-moons. Thought of his closet, the clothes hung with such precision that he could have measured the distance between them with a ruler. “Yes,” I agreed, “I think it’s safe to say that your styles don’t quite mesh.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“What’s another way?”

He thrust his arm out the window and held it there, his palm open to deflect the wind as we drove. “Tom,” he said, waggling his fingers, “was always the golden boy. Star quarterback, class president, head of the debate club. National Honor Society. Prom king. Everybody loved him. Everybody knew he’d go far. He played basketball. Soccer. Golf, for Christ’s sake.”

“Golf?” I said skeptically.

“Stupidest game ever invented.”

“And what did you play?”

“The Doors and Kurt Cobain, for the most part.”

It explained a lot. “So you were one of those anti-establishment types.”

Riley drew his arm back into the car. “I was a loser. That was my assigned role in the family. While Tom was out running touchdowns and winning awards and getting laid by every blue-eyed blond cheerleader in sight, I was sitting in my room with the curtains closed, smoking weed, contemplating my teenage angst, and plucking minor chords on my Gibson.”

“It must’ve been hard,” I said, “growing up in his shadow.”

“It was torture. Everyone thought he was God. That he could do no wrong. I was always being compared to him, and always falling short. I wasn’t perfect like he was. I was actually capable of making mistakes. I wasn’t interested in the same things Tom was. Athletics bored me to tears. I was into music. I wasn’t a clone of my brother, and it made people uncomfortable. They didn’t understand me. Because I wasn’t like Tom, I must be defective in some way.” His voice held no bitterness; he was simply stating facts. “It never occurred to anybody that there was nothing wrong with me, that I just needed to be me.”

“So you rebelled.”

“I smoked and drank and raised hell. I totaled a couple of cars, got into fights, got kicked out of school two or three times. I didn’t go looking for trouble, it just seemed to follow me around. Which, of course, made my faultless older brother look even better. If they’d only known.” When he smiled, his eyes crinkled the way Tom’s did. “Tommy wasn’t anywhere near as perfect as Mom wanted to believe.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t a bad kid. Just a normal one. He did his share of wild and crazy things, only he was smarter than me. He never got caught. But everybody—the entire town—had him on a pedestal. It wasn’t any easier on Tommy, growing up here, than it was on me. That’s the big drawback to living in a small town. Everybody knows you, or at least they think they do. You get a certain reputation, a label, and it sticks. The perfect kid. The troublemaker. In a small town like Newmarket, those labels are the kiss of death, because people wear blinders. They see exactly what they expect to see, and nothing more. Most of them wouldn’t know the truth if it hit ’em upside the head.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why should you be? You had nothing to do with it. It all happened a long time ago.”

“Maybe so. But a lousy childhood sucks, no matter who or where you are. How did Tom deal with it?”

“He played the game, the same as I did. Except that it was a different game he played. After Dad died, as far as Mom was concerned, it was Tommy who’d be our savior. He was the good son, the one who always did exactly what was expected of him. It was actually easier on me, because I was the invisible one. Everybody’s attention was so focused on Tom that most of the time, they forgot I was even there. I did pretty much whatever I wanted. Tom was the one who toed the line. He graduated with honors, went to college on a full athletic scholarship. Continued on to medical school. Married Elizabeth, started his own practice, and started raising a family. He’s almost forty years old, and he’s still doing what Mom wants him to do.”

“Not necessarily,” I pointed out. “He did marry me.”

“His one act of rebellion. I have to admit I was impressed when I heard what he’d done. It was so out of character. Turn left at the next intersection.”

Following his directions, I lost speed during the turn. The car shuddered and nearly stalled, but I feathered the accelerator and pulled out of it. Riley nodded approvingly.

“And you,” I said, once I’d upshifted again, “it looks as though you’re still playing your assigned role, too. Bad boy. Prodigal son.”

“We humans are most comfortable with the roles we find most familiar.”

“There’s another little ditty I’ve heard: Familiarity breeds contempt.”

“I manage to sleep quite nicely at night, thank you, in spite of being the black sheep of the family.”

“Good for you,” I said, not sure I really meant it. Riley was the classic underachiever, and I identified with him more closely than I wanted to admit. It wasn’t necessarily an admirable trait. “Can I ask you something else?”

“I doubt I could stop you if I wanted to.”

“Tell me about Elizabeth.”

Silence. It stretched out for an endless five seconds before he said, “Why?” There was something in his voice, something that hadn’t been there before, but I couldn’t identify it. “Shouldn’t that be Tom’s job?”

It was too embarrassing to admit that my husband had told me virtually nothing about his first wife. Instead, I left Tom out of the equation. “I want to hear what you have to say about her. For starters, why aren’t there any pictures of her in the house?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask. I don’t even live there anymore. I have my own apartment, upstairs over the carriage house.”

“It just seems odd. If only for the sake of the girls, there should be something. But it’s as though she never lived there.”

“The Lord and my family both move in mysterious ways. I gave up years ago trying to figure either of them out.”

“Then tell me about her. What was she like?”

“She was the ideal life partner for my brother, so much like him it was nauseating.”

“In what ways?”

“She was perfect. Maybe a little too perfect. Smart, pretty. Not in a glamorous way. More a Katie Couric than a Sharon Stone. Elizabeth was the quintessential freckle-faced girl-next-door. She was a cheerleader in high school, one of those girls you love to hate, except that in her case, it was impossible. Nobody could hate Beth. She was sweet, in a genuine way that softened the heart of even the hardest cynic.”

“So you liked her.”

“Everybody liked her. Just like Tom, she was universally loved, and placed on a pedestal by the good citizens of our fair city.”

Wondering how I could possibly measure up to this paragon of virtue, I took a deep breath and tightened my fingers on the steering wheel. “Did she and Tom have a good marriage?”