The Little Brother (2 page)

I also learned later that our dad didn't fight for Gabe. “I had to let Gina have one of you,” he explained. “It wouldn't have been right to take you both, and I felt that you and I were better suited for each other.”

Mom's depression accelerated, culminating in a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, which seemed to make her happy. She has a talent for being happy with ever-increasing amounts of unhappiness, and a diagnosis of an elusive and incurable ailment pleased her.

“Your dad doesn't think I'm good enough,” she would say. “Now that he's a big shot, he's embarrassed by me. That's why he divorced me.” Her wardrobe consisted of a revolving array of nightgowns, robes, sweatpants, and T-shirts.

I'm embarrassed by you, too, I wanted to tell her.

Those first days before the school year began I spent wandering Newport Beach, celebrating my good fortune, stunned by and happy with the significant upgrade in my living environment.

Dad's new home was walking distance from the beach; the sky and ocean big and blustery, palm trees shushing in the wind, waves glittering and crashing on the rocks and shore. Moistness in the air that I didn't know I was missing until I breathed it in. A heavy, satisfying smell of ocean and seaweed mingled at night with the aroma of smoke from the fire pits on the beach.

His new house was a four-bedroom, three-bathroom colonial built in 1973, with a pool and an attached garage. Address: 111
Opal Cove. From the balcony off my room, over the rooftops of the other homes, there was a strip of an ocean view. Each morning at around eleven, the high school girls' cross-country team jogged past my window like a welcoming crew—lovely and lean in matching shorts and sports bras, with midriffs exposed—and I watched their ponytails swinging behind them, until they disappeared down the street.

I'd never seen beauty like this before, except sometimes on television, and now even the TV was better: Dad, though he didn't have much furniture yet, had a giant flat-screen with hundreds of channels.

Dad and I stared at it for hours after he came home from work (I was alone to do what I wanted during the day), numb, the super-bright colors vibrating: real cop shows and fake cop shows, movies on cable, CNN, Fox News,
Law & Order, Survivor,
and
The Sopranos.
Even the commercials were mesmerizing. Surround sound, so that the noise came from above and behind and below us.

We ate our meals—he specialized in omelets and grilled cheese sandwiches; I made pasta and meatloaf or else microwaved frozen dinners—in front of the TV, something that Mom would have prohibited.

Otherwise, we dined out. He preferred dark restaurants, themed toward royalty, with blazing fireplaces and thick slabs of steak and mashed potatoes on plates so hot the server would warn: “Don't touch, please don't touch, careful.”

At the restaurants, he conversed easily with our servers, the bartenders, and the valets, his voice distinct and gravelly from years of smoking, though I believe he also practiced to make it
intimidating: a low, grumbling, serious tone. (People noticed and commented on his voice more than anything.)

One night, we were passing through the bar on the way to our table at Banditos Steakhouse, following the swaying backside of the hostess, when a uniformed arm reached out and stopped my dad. The bar was bustling, men and women lined up behind those sitting on the barstools.

“Mr. Daniel Hyde,” the man said in an exaggerated, friendly drawl, “my man.”

“Sheriff Matthew Krone,” Dad said. “America's favorite sheriff.” They came toward each other, patted each other's backs in a loose-armed masculine hug, and then backstepped. “Wearing his uniform at a bar,” Dad said, assessing him.

“Good Lord,” the sheriff said, as if noticing how he was dressed for the first time. He took a long drink from his glass, wiped the foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand, and then said, “Ladies love a man in a uniform.” He was balding, with wispy, pale hair. His head was big, full-cheeked, pinkish, and animated. Hooking a blond in a low-cut dress by the waist, he swung her toward us.

“Isn't that right?” he asked.

“What?” she said. “What?” It was loud and she had no idea what was going on.

“Say yes,” he said.

She put her hands in front of her. She had a clownish downturned mouth, and she said in a baby voice, “You gonna arress me, mist-er shewiff? Pwetty pwease.”

The sheriff pretended to handcuff her in a rather detailed mime, and when he was done, he slapped her ass.

To my surprise, my dad laughed. His head was tilted, and one of the lights from the ceiling streamed down on his receding hairline, a reddish-gray tangle like a tumbleweed. The glass from his spectacles glinted in the lighting, and his hands dug into his pockets in an aw-shucks manner. I felt both protective and embarrassed, as if the woman and the sheriff were the cool kids, making fun of him without his knowledge.

The sheriff made a big deal about Dad, telling the woman: “Hyde Drywall. This man who you're looking at right here, this amazing man, he invented it: porous, easy to use. Great noise control. Made a killing, first with the government. State of California said, ‘Please let us use your product.'”

“That's not what the government said,” said Dad, his cheeks flushed.

“What do they know,” the sheriff said, flinging out his hand. “Fuckers didn't have enough evidence to sue. Case dismissed!”

“Oh, my,” the woman said, putting her hand to her cheek. Then she turned back to the bar, seeming to understand—with a glance at the sheriff—that her time as the entertainment had ended.

Dad introduced us: the sheriff's handshake was firm and clammy, his breath beery. “Evan,” he said, “nice to meet you.”

“Even,” I corrected.

He smiled, as if he didn't understand or didn't care.

In the blaze of his attention, I became hyperconscious of the acne on my chin and forehead. I've always been aware of how I must look to others, and during my teenage years even more so, painfully so.

“Handsome boy,” he said. “Takes after his dad.” He continued to stare, homing in on my insecurities and making me more aware of my dad's nerdy appearance. (He certainly wasn't handsome!)

Shy, awkward, embarrassed, and getting a bad vibe, I looked away.

He said, “Your old man's a helluva guy,” as if my dad wasn't listening.

My dad beamed.

When we got to our table, I wanted to ask about the government trying to sue him (the first I'd heard about it), but instead I asked, “How do you know him?”

Dad pulled a leather wallet-like case from his back pocket and handed it to me.

I opened the fold. Inside was a badge. “Is it real?” I asked. The other side had a weapons permit, and I knew then that somewhere in Dad's house was a gun.

“Does it matter?” he said, adding, “I paid a lot for that.” He took it from me before I got a better look and slipped it back into his pocket.

“I'm the reason,” he continued, settling into his chair, “that man is a sheriff, and we both know it. It's real if and when I want it to be.”

He was using his roughest Clint Eastwood voice, and for a second, I envisioned him as a small boy, trying to make himself threatening.

I must've looked at him strangely because he grimaced.

“Don't worry about him, Even,” he said.

“Why'd you call him ‘America's favorite sheriff'?”

He lifted a roll from the basket, split it with his thumbs, and inserted a knifed hunk of butter. “That's what Limbaugh calls him since he caught that scumbag,” he said. “Look it up.” (I did: America's hero, not America's favorite sheriff. National attention for the quick capture of the kidnapper of a six-year-old blond girl from Tustin.) He stared at the bread for a second and then took a bite. Chewed, swallowed, added, “A good man. My friend. A family-values guy. He's going far, just you watch.”

Dad claimed to be “a family-values Christian,” but he avoided church. He didn't really want to think about religion, God and spirituality, death and the afterlife. But he did believe in the sacrifice story line of Jesus Christ, and that Christ not only approved of his wealth, but also considered Dad's striving and possession of riches in this world evidence that he deserved a good place in the next.

Dad offered his own story as proof that radical transformation was possible. A high school dropout, he rose above poverty, neglect, and an abusive father and by his early teens was already working menial jobs and saving money to build his first business. What was your excuse?

Sometimes he would look at me for a moment, after a particular indulgence purchased with cash from his thick-wadded money clip—he kept the hundreds visible on the outside, the smaller denominations moving inward to the dollar bills—and then ask, “Happy, Even?”

I knew it was a rhetorical question.

When we were at home watching television together, his cocktail glass clinked with ice. He held the glass by the rim with his fingertips, let it dangle, a cigarette in his other hand and an ashtray nearby.

I'd get a warm sensation under my sternum, watching him get choked up during some movie or documentary, or even something I read to him, a Raymond Carver poem or a passage from a book that I liked.

“Isn't that something?” he might mutter, turning his head until he redirected his emotions.

He'd signal that he was going to bed by taking off his glasses, folding them, putting them in their case, and setting them on the table next to the remote.

“Good night, Even,” he'd say, stretching, scratching his scalp, squinting at me—he could barely see me without his glasses—the corners of his mouth downturned. “Sweet dreams.”

The rim of his glasses left a soft pink imprint in the flesh where they sat on his nose. Sometimes he pinched and rubbed this area with his forefinger and thumb.

He'd put his hand on the top of my head and smooth my hair.

“Night, Dad.”

No rules. I could stay up and watch TV until morning if I wanted, another reason that I preferred my dad's. Many nights I did, making microwave popcorn, letting the kernels drop to the floor as I watched mindless TV—the cleaning lady came twice a week, no need to worry—pulling a blanket over myself, and then waking on the couch the next morning to a muted TV and the bubbling sound of Dad brewing coffee in the kitchen.

No espresso machine for him. No lattes or cappuccinos or frothed milk. Those were for wimps, fags, and the French, he once told me straight-faced, and when I laughed, he looked confused,
and then more serious. But then we both laughed. We had no idea what was to come.

2.

A
N OLD-SCHOOL, HEAVY-BREATHING
, stethoscope-wearing dermatologist liberated me from the worst of my acne with a tetracycline prescription, so that through eighth grade and high school, I was able to blend into my environment. As in Cucamonga, I found peers who were prone to conformity, swayed by popular culture, and entitled. But they were also higher-income families and were apt to begin trends rather than just follow them. They manifested a confidence mixed with boredom and a willingness to wear blinders in order to create and maintain their insularity, knowing that their pasts, presents, and futures were anchored in the security of money. Every other family in Newport Beach seemed to own a golden retriever named Delilah or Charles, along with a second home in either Mammoth or Palm Desert.

Despite my camouflage abilities, I remained, in some aspects, alienated, heightened by hormones and a deep understanding that my exterior was a deception. But the way I looked allowed me to remain in the background like a chameleon: invisible, observant, protective. Teachers liked me. I made some friends in the eighth grade, and we ate our lunches together under an awning by the
commons, rode our skateboards after school, surfed, and played Xbox and PlayStation.

Fortunately, a popular kid named Mike, an athlete who didn't like the company of jocks, took a shine to me, saving me from much social misery. Big, good-natured, kind, and funny, Mike went on to play and star in varsity football and basketball in high school, and we remained best friends.

Gabe visited Dad and me on the weekends. According to the custody agreement, our mom was supposed to have visitation rights with me. But she banished me from my childhood home since I had chosen to live with Dad. Not that I wanted to visit her or Cucamonga anyway. Every other Tuesday, we had strained phone conversations, and one month she sent me three rambling letters, hoping to induce guilt for my “ultimate betrayal.”

During Gabe's visits, we pretended that nothing had changed. We went to the movies, ate, watched TV, slept, and acted like everything was all right.

Dad didn't normally spend time with us. But now he took us miniature golfing and go-kart racing, making an effort to be with us—to be with Gabe. These short bursts of entertainment-fueled activities were meant to be for our benefit but also appeased Dad's conscience.

Gabe, still a head shorter than me and twenty pounds lighter, wore his jeans low with untucked, baggy T-shirts, and he often smelled of marijuana.