Only Child by Jennifer Bouchard- written version
Only Child
I have felt like an only child for most of my life. I have two half-brothers, 10 and 12 years older than I am, but I don’t remember them being around much. Until last month, that is, when my brother Jimmy moved back home at age 25.
It’s not that I mind having him around, it’s just different. On the plus side, Jimmy diverted some of my mother’s attention away from me, which anyone who knows mom will tell you that she can be a bit over the top. I’m her baby boy. That’s what she tells me every day as she hugs me and kisses the top of my head. I want to tell her that I’m almost fifteen and I don’t need to be babied anymore, but she means well, so I humor her most of the time. You’d have to be heartless to be mean to mom; she’s that sweet. Anyone will tell you that.
So Jimmy moved in and I go from being an only child to having this strange guy sleeping two doors down. He doesn’t talk much but it seems like he’s always around. When I get up for school, he’s in the kitchen drinking coffee and, if mom’s not around, smoking a cigarette. When I get home from school, he’s on the front steps reading a fishing magazine and smoking a cigarette.
“Those things will kill you,” I tell him and he tells me he’s heard that before. “You could get lung cancer, emphysema, throat cancer, and don’t even get me started on all the mouth diseases and carcinomas you could develop. I saw this picture once of a guy with half of his jaw removed because of smoking. It was pretty gross.”
Jimmy just looks at me and nods before taking a big drag of his smoke and then crushing it with his foot. “You happy now?” he asks me, the smoke leaving his mouth with his empty words. He won’t quit. I know the type.
I’m going to be a doctor someday. I’m already taking advanced classes and reading extra books that my science teacher loans me to help me prepare. I want to go to Harvard Medical School but first I’m going to college at Penn State University because my dad works there and I can go for free. I don’t mind though; it’s a good school. My older brother Ian went there and now he’s a scientist; he performs tests on animals to see which drugs shrink tumors. He lives in Massachusetts and writes me letters with all sorts of data in them. He doesn’t come home much. Too busy I guess.
Jimmy never went away to school. He took a few classes at the local community college but it didn’t stick. He says the world is his teacher, but I don’t know how much a person can learn on the front steps of the house he grew up in.
“You’re just a kid, Stevie,” he tells me, when I ask him about the learning on the front steps thing. “What do you know?” he says and goes back to reading his magazine.
I think to myself that I know a lot more than he does, but I don’t say it because I know better than to pick a fight with Jimmy. I saw him and Ian go at it once when I was in the third grade. Ian was home from college and they were arguing, and then Ian called Jimmy stupid or something like that. Next thing, Jimmy plowed his head into Ian’s chest and knocked him right off his feet. They were in a tangle for what seemed like hours and by the time it was over Ian had two black eyes and a bloody nose. Jimmy had a bruised fist. I think that’s when Ian stopped coming around.
Jimmy hasn’t even unpacked. His clothes are in this giant duffle bag that he leaves open and just piles things on. There are also clothes on the back of the chair and strewn across an old desk that belonged to my Grandma. Mom put it in there after Grandma passed away. I used to find her sitting at it with her head on the desk, one cheek pressed to the surface. She said the cool feel of the finish reminded her of Grandma. I wonder what she thinks of the desk now being used as a makeshift laundry basket but she never says anything. She’s been nothing but nice to Jimmy since he came home. I mean, she’s always treated him like he was her own son, but she hasn’t even said anything to him about not having a job. Maybe she realizes that Jimmy has bigger problems than unemployment. I caught her crying one day while talking to Dad about him. She had a letter in her hand that looked pretty official but I couldn’t tell what it was.
Before Jimmy came home, he was working construction over in Harrisburg. He said it wasn’t much fun but he liked how he could turn around at the end of the day and see what he made. Plus it was the kind of job where, if you did your work, nobody talked your ear off and nobody hassled you. That’s where he picked up smoking. And swearing like a truck driver. He never told me why he left or if he got fired, but Jimmy doesn’t stay in one place for too long so I’m not that surprised. I don’t think he’ll stay with us long either.
Dad tells me that Jimmy has always been a tough kid. He says that before he met Mom, when it was just Dad and “the boys,” Jimmy would get into a lot of fights. Dad tried to get him to talk but Jimmy just crossed his arms and refused to speak. I can picture him on the couch, eight or nine years old, with a black eye and clenched fists, staring straight ahead. Dad said he couldn’t blame Jimmy for being angry so he just told him he loved him and hoped it would pass. When Dad met Mom, Jimmy stopped fighting.
The other day after school, I am walking down our street towards home when I see Jimmy standing at the end of the driveway talking to a girl I had never seen before. She is waving her arms and pushing her hair back from her face while Jimmy does a lot of shrugging and shuffling his feet. A cardboard box fills the space between them. By the time I get to our front yard, she has jumped in her car, slammed the door and is pealing out of the driveway. As she speeds by me, I catch the tail end of her cigarette on my arm.
I look over at Jimmy who has knelt down to inspect the contents of the box. He grabs a few things from it and shoves them in his pocket. Then he swings back his right leg and kicks the box clean across the road. I stand there watching cardboard tear and tumble while all of his stuff rains down on the pavement. Jimmy must have gone inside because all I can hear behind me is the sound of a slamming door and Jimmy yelling, as loud as I’ve ever heard anybody yell, “FUUUUCK!”
I walk out to the middle of the road and start picking up and examining some of the things. I find some old ticket stubs from a Black Crowes concert, a postcard from a friend in Colorado, a key chain shaped like a mermaid that says Florida!, a fishing lure and some fishing line. I pick up an old photograph of a woman I don’t know. She’s standing on the beach waving. One look tells me it is Jimmy and Ian’s mom. I don’t know anybody else who has dimples like that. I find a VHS porno tape, Savannah’s Mysteries, that I think I’ll keep for myself, an old sweatshirt of Jimmy’s that smells sweet like a pretty girl’s hair and a photo of Jimmy with the girl from the driveway up close and big-faced like one of them was holding the camera. They both looked dizzy with laughter. Jimmy had a look I’d never seen on him before. His eyes grinned and sparkled. His cheeks were flushed and the dimples released like the wings of a superhero. He looked happy.
I get so caught up in the picture that I don’t see the car flying down the road. The driver honks rather than slow down and so I have to drop everything and run off to the side of the road. I can feel the breath of the engine, and static electricity tingles my arms as he passes. That’s how close it is. The porno tape shatters, its black ribbon fluttering in the wake of the car. Disappointed, I gather what is left of the items and get out of the road.
Inside I can see the back of Jimmy’s head hanging low over the kitchen table sucking down a beer and smoking a cigarette. I dump his pile of stuff on the kitchen table.
“I almost got hit by a car,” I tell him.
“I didn’t ask you to nose around my stuff.”
I shrug, grab a Coke out of the refrigerator and slump down beside him. Jimmy eyes me curiously and abruptly stands up.
“I’m going fishing.”
“Can I come?” I ask, positive he’ll say no.
“You have a pole? Never mind, you can use one of mine.” I have a pole. Anyone who is anyone in Western Pennsylvania has a shotgun and a fishing pole. Except I don’t have a gun – Mom says it is too dangerous. So when the schools close on the first day of hunting season, I go fishing. But even then she makes me wear an orange vest.
We drive about a half an hour in silence to a spot off of route 120. Jimmy pulls his truck into a small dirt patch off the shoulder. He grabs the gear from the back and I follow Jimmy into the woods. There is no trail to follow but Jimmy seems to know where he is going. As I hear a gun shot in the distance, I kind of wish I wore my vest. We walk for about ten minutes until the trees give way to the river. Checkers of sun sneak through the trees and land on the river. It shimmers. I feel like I have been let in on a secret.
We climb down a small embankment and I settle in on a big rock beside the river. Jimmy walks right into the water and bends down. At first I think he has gotten sick, but when I look closer I see he has his arms in the water. He is scooping up sediment from the bottom of the river. When he stands up I can see that he is picking through the sediment, inspecting insects.
“What are you doing?” I shout to him.
“Flies.”
I hunt through the tackle box looking at all of the various types of flies and fishing line. I don’t really know what I am doing but I pretend I am looking for something specific. I am used to fishing with worms. I had always planned on learning to fly fish but Dad never got around to teaching me and during the school year, I’m usually pretty busy with homework and Science Club and my paper route.
The flies are kind of beautiful. The girls at school always shriek and climb out of their seats whenever a fly or bee comes in the classroom windows. The bugs rarely leave the windows unless they fly up to the lights on the ceiling. But, inevitably some tough guy takes a book or a shoe and slams it against the glass, and the poor insect falls in pieces on the dusty radiator. Everyone cheers. I never got that. Those boys probably have mothers who let them have guns. Or maybe they don’t have mothers at all.
Jimmy walks over to the rock, peers over the box and selects a special fly based on what he saw in the water, a nymph. “Nymphs,” he explains to me, “look like tiny black bugs and have a weight attached. They resemble flies that have wings so that once they go under water, I pull the line to make it look like it is flying or swimming to the surface.” He ties it to the line with the deftness of a surgeon and walks back into the river. He eyes the water. It is like he can see the bass beneath the checkerboard of light and shadow. He is getting ready to cast.
There is something I always wanted to ask Jimmy, but I never quite know how to bring it up. This time I just come out with it. “So your mom died, huh?”
I couldn’t stop thinking about the picture of her on the beach. I sit by the tackle box picking through all the flies, petting the soft feathers, admiring the careful craftsmanship like my dad does with his model trains.
Jimmy casts his line before answering - back, forth, back, forth, release. His wrist moves like it is not connected to his arm. “Yeah. Cancer.”
I can only see the side of his face as he flicks his wrist and sends the line and the nymph over the water but I can tell he is sad. Something about him softens. He slowly drags his line through the water pulling the fly up towards the surface. No bites.
He walks over to the tackle box and takes out a fly with a long yellow and black tail. “Here. Try this one - a streamer,” he says. “It’s weighted too. In the fall, when it’s colder, there aren’t many insects on the surface so the fish stay deeper in the water. You’ll do better with a weighted fly.”
I take the fly from his hand. It is the first time I noticed how calloused his hands are. He has the hands of an old man.
“How do I tie it?”
“A surgeon’s knot. I’ll walk you through it.” He puts some line in my left hand while I hold the fly in my right. I figure I’m going to need to learn this knot someday so I pay careful attention as he explains. “Place the line through metal hole here on the fly. Then bring the end out and twist three times, run the end back through the hole in the line between the last twist and the hole on the fly. You got it. Now pull the line to tighten it and snip any excess line.”
He hands me a piece of wire cutters and I snip the end. A surgeon’s knot. I am proud.
“You’re a good teacher,” I tell him.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time.” He lights a cigarette, his first since we came out here, and casts again. “But usually it’s to get away from people.”
“How come you let me fish with you?” I ask.
“You’re never gonna get laid fishing with worms. It’s bad enough mom makes you wear that stupid vest.” He eyes me and we both crack up. His dimples appear and I think of the photo again.
I walk into the river a little ways and immediately feel the water rush through my boots and soak my socks. We should be wearing waders. I mimic Jimmy’s wrist-flicking cast, and though it doesn’t go as far as his, I throw some decent line and manage to drop my fly politely in the water. I look at my scrawny arms and baby-smooth hands. I drag the line a distance to simulate life and movement. I imagine the fly is alive. The water, cold and heavy, is a shock and eventually the fly finds itself sinking. It bats its wings fighting to get to the surface. I can see the yellow and black feathers, drenched, exhausted. Suddenly, a fish pounces and I am jerked back into reality. The streamer disappears. The fish is tugging and I can feel it moving away from me. “Jimmy, I caught one!”
“Pull up on the line! Then let him fight a bit, tire out.” He reels in his own line. My rod bends and bows as the fish struggles to get free. I hang on. Jimmy wades toward me. “Ok, starting reeling him in.”
I crank up the slack in the line while trying to hold the pole steady. A few minutes later, a bass emerges, silver and shiny, flailing in violent arcs. I look over at my brother and he gives me a thumbs up.
I reach for the fish to unhook it but Jimmy grabs my arm. “Wet your hands first. If you touch him with dry hands, you could shock him.”
I bend over and stick my left hand in the water, then my right, as Jimmy walks to the box to get a pair of pliers. “Ok, hold on to it gently, lower it into the water and I’ll take the hook out.”
The fish feels slimy and I try to hold tight without pressing too hard. Jimmy sticks one finger in its mouth and uses the pliers to grasp the hook. He twists his wrist and the hook slips out. I let go. With barely a splash, he is gone.
I have felt like an only child for most of my life. I have two half-brothers, 10 and 12 years older than I am, but I don’t remember them being around much. Until last month, that is, when my brother Jimmy moved back home at age 25.
It’s not that I mind having him around, it’s just different. On the plus side, Jimmy diverted some of my mother’s attention away from me, which anyone who knows mom will tell you that she can be a bit over the top. I’m her baby boy. That’s what she tells me every day as she hugs me and kisses the top of my head. I want to tell her that I’m almost fifteen and I don’t need to be babied anymore, but she means well, so I humor her most of the time. You’d have to be heartless to be mean to mom; she’s that sweet. Anyone will tell you that.
So Jimmy moved in and I go from being an only child to having this strange guy sleeping two doors down. He doesn’t talk much but it seems like he’s always around. When I get up for school, he’s in the kitchen drinking coffee and, if mom’s not around, smoking a cigarette. When I get home from school, he’s on the front steps reading a fishing magazine and smoking a cigarette.
“Those things will kill you,” I tell him and he tells me he’s heard that before. “You could get lung cancer, emphysema, throat cancer, and don’t even get me started on all the mouth diseases and carcinomas you could develop. I saw this picture once of a guy with half of his jaw removed because of smoking. It was pretty gross.”
Jimmy just looks at me and nods before taking a big drag of his smoke and then crushing it with his foot. “You happy now?” he asks me, the smoke leaving his mouth with his empty words. He won’t quit. I know the type.
I’m going to be a doctor someday. I’m already taking advanced classes and reading extra books that my science teacher loans me to help me prepare. I want to go to Harvard Medical School but first I’m going to college at Penn State University because my dad works there and I can go for free. I don’t mind though; it’s a good school. My older brother Ian went there and now he’s a scientist; he performs tests on animals to see which drugs shrink tumors. He lives in Massachusetts and writes me letters with all sorts of data in them. He doesn’t come home much. Too busy I guess.
Jimmy never went away to school. He took a few classes at the local community college but it didn’t stick. He says the world is his teacher, but I don’t know how much a person can learn on the front steps of the house he grew up in.
“You’re just a kid, Stevie,” he tells me, when I ask him about the learning on the front steps thing. “What do you know?” he says and goes back to reading his magazine.
I think to myself that I know a lot more than he does, but I don’t say it because I know better than to pick a fight with Jimmy. I saw him and Ian go at it once when I was in the third grade. Ian was home from college and they were arguing, and then Ian called Jimmy stupid or something like that. Next thing, Jimmy plowed his head into Ian’s chest and knocked him right off his feet. They were in a tangle for what seemed like hours and by the time it was over Ian had two black eyes and a bloody nose. Jimmy had a bruised fist. I think that’s when Ian stopped coming around.
Jimmy hasn’t even unpacked. His clothes are in this giant duffle bag that he leaves open and just piles things on. There are also clothes on the back of the chair and strewn across an old desk that belonged to my Grandma. Mom put it in there after Grandma passed away. I used to find her sitting at it with her head on the desk, one cheek pressed to the surface. She said the cool feel of the finish reminded her of Grandma. I wonder what she thinks of the desk now being used as a makeshift laundry basket but she never says anything. She’s been nothing but nice to Jimmy since he came home. I mean, she’s always treated him like he was her own son, but she hasn’t even said anything to him about not having a job. Maybe she realizes that Jimmy has bigger problems than unemployment. I caught her crying one day while talking to Dad about him. She had a letter in her hand that looked pretty official but I couldn’t tell what it was.
Before Jimmy came home, he was working construction over in Harrisburg. He said it wasn’t much fun but he liked how he could turn around at the end of the day and see what he made. Plus it was the kind of job where, if you did your work, nobody talked your ear off and nobody hassled you. That’s where he picked up smoking. And swearing like a truck driver. He never told me why he left or if he got fired, but Jimmy doesn’t stay in one place for too long so I’m not that surprised. I don’t think he’ll stay with us long either.
Dad tells me that Jimmy has always been a tough kid. He says that before he met Mom, when it was just Dad and “the boys,” Jimmy would get into a lot of fights. Dad tried to get him to talk but Jimmy just crossed his arms and refused to speak. I can picture him on the couch, eight or nine years old, with a black eye and clenched fists, staring straight ahead. Dad said he couldn’t blame Jimmy for being angry so he just told him he loved him and hoped it would pass. When Dad met Mom, Jimmy stopped fighting.
The other day after school, I am walking down our street towards home when I see Jimmy standing at the end of the driveway talking to a girl I had never seen before. She is waving her arms and pushing her hair back from her face while Jimmy does a lot of shrugging and shuffling his feet. A cardboard box fills the space between them. By the time I get to our front yard, she has jumped in her car, slammed the door and is pealing out of the driveway. As she speeds by me, I catch the tail end of her cigarette on my arm.
I look over at Jimmy who has knelt down to inspect the contents of the box. He grabs a few things from it and shoves them in his pocket. Then he swings back his right leg and kicks the box clean across the road. I stand there watching cardboard tear and tumble while all of his stuff rains down on the pavement. Jimmy must have gone inside because all I can hear behind me is the sound of a slamming door and Jimmy yelling, as loud as I’ve ever heard anybody yell, “FUUUUCK!”
I walk out to the middle of the road and start picking up and examining some of the things. I find some old ticket stubs from a Black Crowes concert, a postcard from a friend in Colorado, a key chain shaped like a mermaid that says Florida!, a fishing lure and some fishing line. I pick up an old photograph of a woman I don’t know. She’s standing on the beach waving. One look tells me it is Jimmy and Ian’s mom. I don’t know anybody else who has dimples like that. I find a VHS porno tape, Savannah’s Mysteries, that I think I’ll keep for myself, an old sweatshirt of Jimmy’s that smells sweet like a pretty girl’s hair and a photo of Jimmy with the girl from the driveway up close and big-faced like one of them was holding the camera. They both looked dizzy with laughter. Jimmy had a look I’d never seen on him before. His eyes grinned and sparkled. His cheeks were flushed and the dimples released like the wings of a superhero. He looked happy.
I get so caught up in the picture that I don’t see the car flying down the road. The driver honks rather than slow down and so I have to drop everything and run off to the side of the road. I can feel the breath of the engine, and static electricity tingles my arms as he passes. That’s how close it is. The porno tape shatters, its black ribbon fluttering in the wake of the car. Disappointed, I gather what is left of the items and get out of the road.
Inside I can see the back of Jimmy’s head hanging low over the kitchen table sucking down a beer and smoking a cigarette. I dump his pile of stuff on the kitchen table.
“I almost got hit by a car,” I tell him.
“I didn’t ask you to nose around my stuff.”
I shrug, grab a Coke out of the refrigerator and slump down beside him. Jimmy eyes me curiously and abruptly stands up.
“I’m going fishing.”
“Can I come?” I ask, positive he’ll say no.
“You have a pole? Never mind, you can use one of mine.” I have a pole. Anyone who is anyone in Western Pennsylvania has a shotgun and a fishing pole. Except I don’t have a gun – Mom says it is too dangerous. So when the schools close on the first day of hunting season, I go fishing. But even then she makes me wear an orange vest.
We drive about a half an hour in silence to a spot off of route 120. Jimmy pulls his truck into a small dirt patch off the shoulder. He grabs the gear from the back and I follow Jimmy into the woods. There is no trail to follow but Jimmy seems to know where he is going. As I hear a gun shot in the distance, I kind of wish I wore my vest. We walk for about ten minutes until the trees give way to the river. Checkers of sun sneak through the trees and land on the river. It shimmers. I feel like I have been let in on a secret.
We climb down a small embankment and I settle in on a big rock beside the river. Jimmy walks right into the water and bends down. At first I think he has gotten sick, but when I look closer I see he has his arms in the water. He is scooping up sediment from the bottom of the river. When he stands up I can see that he is picking through the sediment, inspecting insects.
“What are you doing?” I shout to him.
“Flies.”
I hunt through the tackle box looking at all of the various types of flies and fishing line. I don’t really know what I am doing but I pretend I am looking for something specific. I am used to fishing with worms. I had always planned on learning to fly fish but Dad never got around to teaching me and during the school year, I’m usually pretty busy with homework and Science Club and my paper route.
The flies are kind of beautiful. The girls at school always shriek and climb out of their seats whenever a fly or bee comes in the classroom windows. The bugs rarely leave the windows unless they fly up to the lights on the ceiling. But, inevitably some tough guy takes a book or a shoe and slams it against the glass, and the poor insect falls in pieces on the dusty radiator. Everyone cheers. I never got that. Those boys probably have mothers who let them have guns. Or maybe they don’t have mothers at all.
Jimmy walks over to the rock, peers over the box and selects a special fly based on what he saw in the water, a nymph. “Nymphs,” he explains to me, “look like tiny black bugs and have a weight attached. They resemble flies that have wings so that once they go under water, I pull the line to make it look like it is flying or swimming to the surface.” He ties it to the line with the deftness of a surgeon and walks back into the river. He eyes the water. It is like he can see the bass beneath the checkerboard of light and shadow. He is getting ready to cast.
There is something I always wanted to ask Jimmy, but I never quite know how to bring it up. This time I just come out with it. “So your mom died, huh?”
I couldn’t stop thinking about the picture of her on the beach. I sit by the tackle box picking through all the flies, petting the soft feathers, admiring the careful craftsmanship like my dad does with his model trains.
Jimmy casts his line before answering - back, forth, back, forth, release. His wrist moves like it is not connected to his arm. “Yeah. Cancer.”
I can only see the side of his face as he flicks his wrist and sends the line and the nymph over the water but I can tell he is sad. Something about him softens. He slowly drags his line through the water pulling the fly up towards the surface. No bites.
He walks over to the tackle box and takes out a fly with a long yellow and black tail. “Here. Try this one - a streamer,” he says. “It’s weighted too. In the fall, when it’s colder, there aren’t many insects on the surface so the fish stay deeper in the water. You’ll do better with a weighted fly.”
I take the fly from his hand. It is the first time I noticed how calloused his hands are. He has the hands of an old man.
“How do I tie it?”
“A surgeon’s knot. I’ll walk you through it.” He puts some line in my left hand while I hold the fly in my right. I figure I’m going to need to learn this knot someday so I pay careful attention as he explains. “Place the line through metal hole here on the fly. Then bring the end out and twist three times, run the end back through the hole in the line between the last twist and the hole on the fly. You got it. Now pull the line to tighten it and snip any excess line.”
He hands me a piece of wire cutters and I snip the end. A surgeon’s knot. I am proud.
“You’re a good teacher,” I tell him.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time.” He lights a cigarette, his first since we came out here, and casts again. “But usually it’s to get away from people.”
“How come you let me fish with you?” I ask.
“You’re never gonna get laid fishing with worms. It’s bad enough mom makes you wear that stupid vest.” He eyes me and we both crack up. His dimples appear and I think of the photo again.
I walk into the river a little ways and immediately feel the water rush through my boots and soak my socks. We should be wearing waders. I mimic Jimmy’s wrist-flicking cast, and though it doesn’t go as far as his, I throw some decent line and manage to drop my fly politely in the water. I look at my scrawny arms and baby-smooth hands. I drag the line a distance to simulate life and movement. I imagine the fly is alive. The water, cold and heavy, is a shock and eventually the fly finds itself sinking. It bats its wings fighting to get to the surface. I can see the yellow and black feathers, drenched, exhausted. Suddenly, a fish pounces and I am jerked back into reality. The streamer disappears. The fish is tugging and I can feel it moving away from me. “Jimmy, I caught one!”
“Pull up on the line! Then let him fight a bit, tire out.” He reels in his own line. My rod bends and bows as the fish struggles to get free. I hang on. Jimmy wades toward me. “Ok, starting reeling him in.”
I crank up the slack in the line while trying to hold the pole steady. A few minutes later, a bass emerges, silver and shiny, flailing in violent arcs. I look over at my brother and he gives me a thumbs up.
I reach for the fish to unhook it but Jimmy grabs my arm. “Wet your hands first. If you touch him with dry hands, you could shock him.”
I bend over and stick my left hand in the water, then my right, as Jimmy walks to the box to get a pair of pliers. “Ok, hold on to it gently, lower it into the water and I’ll take the hook out.”
The fish feels slimy and I try to hold tight without pressing too hard. Jimmy sticks one finger in its mouth and uses the pliers to grasp the hook. He twists his wrist and the hook slips out. I let go. With barely a splash, he is gone.
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