Chapter 13 #3
“And neither did you,” I pointed out. “Neither did I. I should have said, ‘We have to clean the grease trap because if we get inspected, we’ll fail. I should have seen what was happening with Mom’s bookkeeping a lot sooner.
” I looked at the familiar cinderblock walls and noticed that the menu needed to be repainted, too.
“There’s a lot of misery attached to this place but I never thought it had to be that way.
I always imagined how fun it could have been to work with the brother I loved so much and my funny sister.
If we’d had a father who didn’t yell and a mom who stood up for us, it would have been great.
You could do that with your family, Max.
You don’t have to be like Dad and you don’t have to be the same guy you were before, either. ”
I’d said enough to make him mad, and that happened. “Are you fucking finished?” he asked me.
“Time to go,” Shane said. He glanced at my brother. “I’d say good luck but I don’t think you deserve it. Good luck to your fiancée instead, since she’s taking you on and you’re an ungrateful jackoff.”
Max glared but he didn’t respond as we walked out into the parking lot, which probably needed to be re-graded.
Before I started the truck’s engine, I added that to my list of problems and then I did send it along to my brother.
“I bet he’ll leave right behind us,” I mentioned as I turned onto the road.
I glanced in the mirror but there was no movement yet from Walter’s. “Any minute, he’ll book out of there.”
“I don’t know. He seemed pretty serious.”
“There’s just no way,” I said. I talked through some of the items on my list, not only the physical stuff they’d reviewed but also things like staffing and the outdated equipment. And then there was Max’s personal work history, which was—
“He seems to want to try,” Shane broke in as I was recounting the failure of my brother’s bathing suit swap plan.
No one had wanted a used, stretched-out suit and anyway, the business would have been severely limited by seasonality in an area where our beaches were inhospitable for two-thirds of the year.
“I’ve seen guys make major changes in their lives,” he continued.
“I was scouting one.” He reminded me about the community college player he had seen in Indianapolis, a guy he’d had his eye on not only due to his football skills but also because of his persistence and tenacity.
“He’s a few years older than everyone else because he missed so many days in high school that he couldn’t graduate, and he spent all that time messing around.
But not anymore. He’s really trying and he may get there. ”
I thought of the things that could go wrong, stuff that Shane himself had told me about. An injury, for one. That guy also could have fallen back into the bad influences that had distracted him before. Maybe he had a hidden, degenerative condition that was slowly robbing him of his sight…
I stopped myself from saying only negative things, though. “I hope it works out for him,” I stated. “Maybe it will for Max, too.”
“I don’t like how he was just treating you. You drove all the way out there and he acted like it was his due, not like you did him a favor.”
“We,” I corrected. “We drove out there and did him a favor.” I was so glad that Shane had come, getting out of the house and standing up for me.
“But he was only rude to you.”
“Well, you’re a lot bigger. Max has an innate sense of self-preservation,” I explained.
“He always knew when to cut short the presentations for his business ideas and duck out of the house, for example, in case things blew up. But actually, Dad never acted very mad at him. He would just stare and shake his head, like he was confused. Disappointed.”
“It must be hard to watch your kids fail to rise up to their potential,” he said. “Or when things happen, even stuff out of their control, it would be terrible to see them fail to live out their dreams.”
He was looking through of the window as he spoke and I wondered what he was seeing there—a professional football career that had passed him by?
I had been a fan of the Woodsmen forever, and I knew that even the third-string quarterback earned a living that was more than comfortable.
Their salaries were shocking, really. If you managed to hang around for a few years in the pros, you could have been set for life.
“I know my dad felt really, really let down by my brother. But he wasn’t sorry for Max.
He was sorry for himself, for his own missed opportunities,” I said.
“He would have liked to be the father of a successful son and coast along on that. I have to say that I wouldn’t have minded a little kickback for the restaurant, either.
Now it looks like my brother will be getting that from his fiancée and I don’t like that it’s her responsibility. ”
“Why? That’s what people do.”
“Fork over money to failing businesses?” I asked.
“No, they support the people they love,” he told me.
“My mom worked to put my dad through school and then he did the same thing for her. When she was starting out her business, he used to come in during his lunch hour and do administrative stuff, and she did his bookkeeping for free. They helped each other.”
“It was mutual,” I pointed out. “But all Max does is take. That was what my father did, too, and I feel sorry for Avonlea. She’ll be the person who’s always going to give and never get anything back. Maybe she’ll see that before they get married.”
“Or maybe, he’ll see that in himself and want to change,” Shane suggested. That was definitely the best-case scenario but I didn’t have a lot of hope that it would happen.
We did go for a walk together once we got home, but we were both quiet.
I was thinking a lot about Walter’s Café and I was also fielding texts about the place from Max and our mom.
Shane had seemed more like himself when we were there and he was telling my brother to STFU (not literally, since he didn’t curse), but he had now retreated into the glumness that I didn’t like a bit.
It continued through dinner, grilled fish (we opened all the windows, because I felt sorry for our nice neighbor next door) and mixed green salad with purslane and lots of chopped vegetables. Now that I was accustomed to it, eating this way wasn’t so bad.
I went to bed a while later to be ready for my early shift at the drug store the next morning, but I heard Shane sitting in the squeaky chair at the table for hours longer.
It seemed like my mind was too full to quiet down that night.
I listened to him get up and go into the bathroom.
The water ran through the pipes next to my bed before he went into his own room.
I could hear him in there, too, if I listened hard enough. He didn’t seem to be sleeping either, because his bed creaked again and again. I heard his door open and then there was a soft knock.
“Come in,” I called, and a large, dark form filled my doorway.
“I heard you tossing around. Can’t sleep?” he asked.
“No.” I sat up. “You, too?”
He moved closer, hands outstretched. I thought, suddenly, that this room could have been a lot easier for him. Why did I have a chair sitting right in the way? In fact, the whole house could have been better organized for a person who couldn’t see as well.