The Only Brother (8 page)

Buzz walked into a different Simmons family than the one he’d left back in April. We were talking to each other, for one thing. It wasn’t all hugs and sunshine, but at least I wasn’t locking myself in my room all the time, and Dad wasn’t getting in the way of my fist. Mum had dropped back into work, like she always did, and Dad spent half the time speaking to German people on the phone. But when we were depressed, or angry or confused, we talked about it. We’d found a family counsellor to walk us through things.

That didn’t go so well. Dad’s not one to talk to people he doesn’t know, so it was
mostly him being quiet for an hour and then going on and on as soon as we walked out of the door. But at least he’s talking about stuff that’s bothering him, and not just Will’s death. It’s like someone’s opened a floodgate to let out things he’s kept bottled up all the time. The olds fight a bit more, but at least they get it out of the way and realise that they still like each other. Dad has also found a group for parents who have lost children, and that’s helped him a lot.

And at least they now understand how I feel, even if they don’t agree with what I’m saying. Will never really showed that he cared much about me, and I’m fine with that. Like I’ve said, some people just don’t get along, and being related to them doesn’t make much of a difference. Will had a rough life, and lots of problems. I wish things had been better, and that he hadn’t resented me so much, and I wish I could have handled the situation better.

But that’s all in the past. Nothing you can do about it, so you should look forward. Which is what we did. I started to research
universities, and I worked and got ready for my last year of school. I knew that I’d probably end up staying in England with money being so tight, but I didn’t feel that I needed to flee the country any more anyway. I could stand being with my olds again, and they didn’t always wonder why I wasn’t part of the family.

Buzz wanted a private place to meet me, away from my parents. Trevor had let me use his house for many things, from a private place for Caroline and me, to a mailing address for my contest entries. I had a key, so I just met Buzz there. Buzz wasn’t a drinker but he didn’t say anything about my pouring a pint from the tap.

‘So what’s the big secret, Buzz?’ I sprawled out on the sofa downstairs in the bar room.

Buzz looked at me, exhausted. Exhausted for him, that is. Actually, he only seemed slightly tired for someone straight off a flight of six hours and still jet-lagged. He had stacks of papers in a bag, all different
kinds of documents and forms, and spread some of them out on the table.

‘It’s not a secret, Andrew.’ Buzz made some notes on a legal pad. ‘I just thought it best to let you know about what is going to happen, before we sit together with your parents to announce it all formally. I didn’t want to catch you off guard when it all comes out.’

‘Alright,’ I said, ‘so what’s going on?’

‘We read your brother’s will next week. Once we execute the will and it is certified, we can get money into the estate account, pay off the last of the bills, get money back to your parents and disburse the rest of the estate.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘What does this have to do with me?’

‘Come here, Andrew.’

I put my beer down and sat at the table. Buzz slid a document across the table to me,
neatly folded in a textured envelope.

‘Last Will and Testament,’ I read from the envelope.

‘Read it,’ he told me.

I took the will out of the envelope and opened it.

“‘I, William Simmons,’” I read aloud, “‘declare this to be my Will, and I revoke any and all wills and codicils I previously made.”’

‘Go on,’ Buzz said.

“‘I direct my executors to pay my enforceable unsecured debts and funeral expenses, the expenses of my last illness, and the expenses of administering my estate. I bequeath all my tangible personal property and all policies and proceeds of insurance covering such property in the following manner: Andrew Simmons, seventy-five per cent; Richard and Margaret Simmons, twenty-five per cent.”’

I put the will down.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘My olds told me just to use the laptop. We’ve already sold off William’s car, though, to pay for the funeral and the medical bills. I mean, what else is there?’

‘They never told you, did they?’

‘Told me what?’ I said.

‘You know how your brother got his nerve damage?’

‘Yeah, from the delivery, when he was born,’ I said. ‘Messed up his motor skills, made it hard for him to do things. Maybe it even caused all the other medical problems later on.’

‘Well, Will ended up with a settlement from the doctor and the hospital. From their insurance if you want to be more accurate. You probably don’t remember much about it, since you were young during all of the legal wrangling. Anyway, Will set up a trust for you.’

‘What?’

‘He wasn’t good at telling people that he cared about them,’ Buzz said. ‘And he knew how you lost out all the time. All the attention, all the money spent on him, all the… well, everything. He had lots of problems, some we saw and some he kept hidden. He wasn’t good at dealing with people or letting them know how he felt about them, like I said. And that hurt him.’

I could understand all of that. William wasn’t good with people at all. Grew up without lots of friends, got made fun of all the time because he was so clumsy, because of his weight and… well, lots of stuff. When they got to know him, people usually thought he was a pretty good person. I wish the same could be said of me.

‘Well, yeah, he never really showed
me
he cared. Can’t help it now. We just didn’t fit together.’

‘He left you a trust fund, Andrew.’ Buzz dug through his papers, pulling out a
financial statement. ‘He set it up out of the money he got from the settlement. Outside of university expenses and medical needs, you can’t touch it until you are twenty-five. But he left you this,’ Buzz said as he handed me the paper.

It was a financial statement for a trust fund. From what I could tell, it was established by William when he came of legal age. Right now, it had over £170,000 in it.

I was the sole beneficiary of the trust fund. No one else can legally touch the money. Not my olds. It was all mine.

‘He never knew how to show his true feelings for you, Andrew. He felt that he could never say the words,’ Buzz said, ‘and that you would never listen to him anyway. He was just as frustrated as you were, with himself and with the world. Somehow, I figured out how to talk to him. He was my friend. He wanted to show you how much he cared, and how bad he felt about you losing out on everything just because
he
hadn’t
come out right. So he took what he had, a big chunk of it, and arranged things so you wouldn’t lose out when it mattered.’

That was Will’s money. I’d heard about the settlement, but no one talked about it. I didn’t know how much it had come to. And the olds hadn’t been able to touch this part of it for his medical bills, because he’d set it up for me. That’s why everything had been so tight later on.

Damn.

‘He knew that he was sick and that he might not live all that long. Even if he did live through everything, he didn’t want the money. He had enough from his work, and anyway, it just reminded him of how messed up he felt. What he didn’t have was a brother he could understand, or who understood him. So he tried to find a way to make it up to you. Make up for the money and time. Well, the money at any rate.’

Damn.

‘You two were different, really. Except for the caring about people part.’ Buzz shuffled through more papers. ‘That you both did, in your own way. I see William every time I look at you, Andrew.’

DAMN!

Buzz let me run off to the bathroom. He didn’t knock on the door to see if I was OK when I threw up in the sink. He didn’t try to open the door when I sat on the floor and cried so loud you could hear me in the hall.

I know why Buzz was a good friend to my brother. Buzz knew when you needed him, and when you needed to be alone. Right then, I needed to be alone.

I came out of the bathroom after about twenty minutes. Buzz was sitting in the same spot where I’d left him, waiting to speak when I was ready to listen. I sat back down across from him, slumped.

‘Your parents know about the trust, but not how much is in it. They shouldn’t have
a problem with the will, though. He always talked to them about how bad he felt, and how he could and would make things better for you.’

Back in the bathroom, back to throwing up.

And he tied up all that money for me rather than spend it on his medical bills. Tied it all up so only I would have it, in a trust that meant no one else could take the money. Not the olds, not anyone.

But why had the olds gone along with it?

Because they didn’t want to take money intended for me? Because that would have been them always giving to William and taking from me?

Damn…

Will
had
cared, then. He’d never said it, never showed it. Or maybe I just couldn’t or wouldn’t see it. He’d never told me ‘hey, I’m leaving you a fortune, sorry about
everything’. It was like we were speaking two different languages and screaming at each other when we were together, just because we didn’t make any effort to understand each other.

Damn.

What’s past is past.

Now, and for all time, I know that I had – have – a brother who
did
care.

We certified the will the following week. My parents didn’t freak out over the details of the will, no questioning of the amounts or the trust. I figure that they must have been involved in drafting it. Damn. They’d known all along. If only they’d told me. But I can imagine that Will had sworn them to secrecy. The trust was mine with some law firm overseeing it.

My parents and I never talked about the money after that. It was there for when
I needed it. That was going to be for school expenses and planning ahead, figuring out where to go to university. It was a lot of money for the future. Maybe a house, maybe start a business after university. See how things go with Caroline if I stay here.

And maybe find a way to show Will that
I
cared about him, too.

It was clear glass, six inches thick and translucent, three feet tall. I had to arrange special permission to use glass rather than granite, but we all fought for it. The design was mine, with a company on the west coast of the United States carving and shipping it all the way over here. I set up a series of solar-powered LED lights to shine on the glass, a perfect display for day or night.

The logo was simple, a silhouette of a man standing in a super-trouper spotlight, shining down from a theatre lighting gantry. The man held his arms up triumphantly; the spotlight bore a
cross. Over the top of the spotlight it said ‘William Simmons’ in elegant text. Under the logo of the man in the spotlight, it read ‘A Million Lumen Life’, and to me, to all of us, that represents the brilliance of the light that Will’s life had brought to the world. To either side read his date of birth and date of death.

I ran my hand over the words, first William’s name and then the words underneath. I used my sleeve to wipe away the tiniest of smudges, polishing and brushing away errant fall leaves from a nearby tree.

‘How much did it cost, Andrew?’

I turned back and looked over my shoulder at Sara, who had flown over to visit for her holiday break. She shivered a bit in the cold, brushing dark hair from her face and bundling up again. She stared at my work, finally seeing face to face the design that had struck me in the middle of the night and had kept me up until sunrise working on it.

‘Just the right amount for what it is,’ I said, avoiding mention of the actual price. ‘Hang the cost.’

I stepped back and looked over the lone pillar of glass in a sea of granite and marble. It stood out, just like William. Different, strange, not quite fitting in with the rest. But still having its place, still reminding people that it was there and special and important.

Just like William.

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘It got me into Pratt Institute,’ I said. ‘The admissions board said it was ‘a unique tribute that showed remarkable potential’. Guess it’s another gift from William.’

‘How did your parents handle it? I mean, the tombstone?’

‘They both cried,’ I said slowly. ‘We all did. Dad loved the lights, said William would have taken them apart and put them
back together. They probably wouldn’t have worked afterwards, but Will would have just wired up a new set of lights ten times as bright.’ I smiled, making a shadow puppet on the glass for a brief moment.

I remembered Will making shadow puppets pretending to eat my head when I was younger; big shadows on the wall biting my shadow-head. I’d forgotten about it a long time ago, but it popped back into my mind as the big shadow dog I’d made chomped on the little man in the spotlight. It’s good to remember these things now, stuff I’d blocked out when I focused on all the bad things.

‘What about school?’

‘They said I had to do what was right for me. Mum cried, again, but Dad was pleased I’d found something that could make me money and make me happy.’

Sara put her hand on my shoulder. I put my hand over hers.

‘They thought the same thing about Will doing lighting design. “How are you going to make a living lighting up people on stage wearing too much make-up?”’ I said in my best imitation of my dad’s voice. ‘He showed Dad to be wrong, so I at least get a chance to show that I can make my own way now.’

‘Yeah,’ Sara said, kneeling down behind me and wrapping her arms around me. We just looked at the tombstone for a few minutes before she spoke again.

‘Lots of people are going to miss you here, Andrew.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Trevor wants to visit, said he wants to go to Las Vegas.’

‘Las Vegas is thousands of miles away from New York…’

‘I know that,’ I laughed. ‘But he’s seen the commercials and thinks they don’t have cops there for some reason.’

‘Glad you have enough money to bail him out,’ she said. ‘And Caroline?’

‘Well, not everything works out. She didn’t take my leaving England all that well, even though it’s months and months away. At least we had a good couple of months together, and she and I will at least try to stay friends. I’ll see how that goes.’

I’d been over this with Sara already. I guess she was hoping that Caroline had changed her mind and was going to stick it out with me. I wish Caroline had changed her mind, too. In an earlier time, rejection like this would have broken me. Now, it’s just part of life. Good things happen, bad things happen, but life just goes on.

‘I think she’s making a mistake,’ Sara reassured me.

‘Well, I know she is,’ I agreed. ‘She doesn’t think so, though. Trevor even yelled at her. But what are you going to do?’

‘Keep you for myself?’

We both stood up, still holding on to each other.

It was going to be a good year. Finish school, then spend more than half the summer in New York City before classes start up at Pratt. Enough time with Sara to see what happens, enough money not to worry about money…

And a wide, wide horizon ahead of me.

‘We should get going,’ Sara said. ‘Your parents want to take us out to dinner, remember?’

It was getting late, the lights aimed at the tombstone flooded the glass with brightness. In the matter of an hour, a single dim glow would stand out in the dark cemetery, just one of the ways I’d thought of to show that
I
had cared too, and still did.