The Little Brother (27 page)

As I sucked up my line, I thought of Sara telling me, “It's an awful drug, don't ever do it, not worth the pain.”

Immediately, my head rang and buzzed with pleasure, my tonsils numbing as the excess drained down the back of my throat.

It felt as if someone had taken the angst-ridden brain from my scalp and replaced it with the zinging, animated brain of a cartoonlike, happy, carefree, loving, and very talkative Even.

But this new Even also thought he could drink and talk more openly. He had no hang-ups or reservations, and the rest of the night became a manic blur.

I remember using an elliptical trainer in Karen's parents' basement gym, stripped to my boxers, the music pulsing in my veins, and watching myself at every angle, surrounded by mirrors, as Karen and the others worked out on various machines in their underwear.

A silvery coiled snake named Anderson Cooper in a glass case in Karen's brother's bedroom fascinated me. Karen had told us about her younger brother's homosexuality, and this was well before Anderson Cooper, the news anchor, came out. But looking back, maybe her brother sensed something in the intrepid reporter.

I hate snakes. Hate them. Yet that night, I wrapped Anderson Cooper around my neck and ran around the house yelling, redundantly, “I'm not afraid of snakes!”

I came to in the morning in the master bedroom, naked underneath the sheets and the nose-clogging down comforter of a king-size bed, a shaft of sunlight beaming down from the skylight above me.

My stomach churned and my head throbbed. A leg twitched next to mine, a foot at my calf—toes tickling me like feelers.

I moved to the side and saw Tina's long, dark, disheveled hair, loosened and freed from her braid.

Terror went through me. Had we had sex? Was she okay? And—terror deepening into my bowels—a memory—a faint whiff
of a memory—a confession. What had I told her? Did she know about the video camera?

Her bare shoulders and back moved with her breathing, outside the comforter and sheets.

A yelping noise alerted me to Honeybun, ever loyal at the side of the bed. I rolled to my side, and when I looked over the edge, I saw her tail-thumping wag. I shifted to my back for comfort. Not looking at Honeybun, I gave the top of her head a few-fingers scratch. She licked my wrist in appreciation.

I tried to go over what I remembered about what I might have said. What came back to me: a long, earnest conversation outside on the dock—all four of us—a boat creaking in its berth, sitting cross-legged in a circle on the wood planks, staring up at the endless black and star-studded night, Honeybun at my side.

I couldn't remember what had been said, only the expressions on their faces, flashes of intense compassion and identification.

Someone crying. Me.

I sat on the bed, breathing deeply, and Honeybun lifted herself to greet me.

Tina stirred, moving to sit up. “Oh,” she said, clutching the sheet around her, “I feel awful.”

“I know,” I said, looking over my shoulder at her. “Me, too.”

“I don't think I'm going to try that again.”

The blood pounded in my temples. “Hey, Tina,” I said, adjusting my back against the bed frame to face her, “did I say anything weird last night?”

“We all did,” she said, her expression giving away nothing.

“Like what?” I said.

She gave me a shy smile, and pulled the sheet to her chin. “Don't you remember?”

“Sort of,” I said, and a sense-memory did rise, of my tongue swishing in her mouth and grazing the bumps of the braces on her teeth.

We heard a knock at the door, and then Karen and Mike came into the bedroom, fully dressed.

They appeared refreshed, as if they'd already showered and had breakfast. But they also seemed awkward, as if playacting at being adults.

“Sleepyheads,” Karen said, tugging playfully on Tina's toes beneath the covers. She thumped around on the bed with her other hand, looking for my foot.

My stomach lurched, and before she yanked my toes, I moved my leg and groaned.

I lay back on the bed, explaining, “I don't feel so good,” envisioning Karen or Tina calling R. Sam Michaels to give him a great story. But maybe they'd keep my secret? Maybe they wouldn't tell anyone?

Mike came to the side of the bed. He stood beside Honeybun. My heart shot through my throat, thinking he was about to tell me that I'd blown it and confessed to the girls.

But he said, “My cocaine career is over.”

I nodded.

“And to think it had only just begun,” he said.

“There's always heroin,” I said.

A slight smile, and then he turned his attention to Karen and Tina and said, “We've got to go. I promised my parents we'd be there for my sister's soccer game.”

D
URING THE CAR
ride back to Mike's (there was no soccer game), I gathered from him that we'd had a deep and long, coke-addled conversation on the dock, where we'd each confessed a dark secret.

Mike: He didn't like football. Never had. And now, for the first time in his life, he was doubting the existence of God.

Karen: She struggled with depression, and once, after a bad breakup (she wouldn't say with whom), she even thought—very briefly—about killing herself.

Tina: An eating disorder in the eighth grade had left her hospitalized for two weeks.

I'd told the group about my responsibility for my brother's legal woes. “If he goes to jail,” I'd said, “it's my fault.”

The girls had protested, saying that I felt a false sense of guilt. I was adamant to the point of tears. But before I could back up my claim, Mike pulled me into an embrace and let me weep onto his shoulder, and then he whispered into my ear, “Now's the exact right time for you to shut the fuck up.”

30.

T
HE TRIAL—WHICH
lasted over a month—was a bizarre, disjointed time for me. I helped myself to a generous portion of Gabe's Xanax, as well as Dad's Percocet and Demerol. It began in mid-June and lasted till the end of July—over a year elapsed between the rape and the verdict.

Those first weeks, Dad insisted I come over for dinners to show my support. I didn't want to, but I did sometimes, and we ordered in: Mexican food, Chinese, Thai, and, one night, sushi, which Gabe hated.

After Dad went to sleep, Gabe and I spent much of our time zoned out on the couch and on Dad's recliner in front of the TV, smoking Dad's cigarettes and drinking six-packs of beer, often falling asleep.

One night, near the beginning of the trial, I noticed Gabe was wearing Dad's watch, which dangled loose at his wrist.

In the last nine months or so, he'd grown at an alarming speed. He still wasn't as tall or big as the Ks, but, nearing five feet nine inches, he was closing in on me.

“Why're you wearing Dad's Rolex?”

“He gave it to me,” he said. “I didn't want it, but I can't tell him that.”

“It's big on you.”

“I know. I don't like it.”

“Do you have to wear it?”

“Yeah. At least sometimes. He said it'd give me strength.”

“You don't look so good.”

He touched his palm to his forehead. “I need another Xanax.”

“Are you out?”

“Yeah. You took some and I took more. But I know someone.”

“What about your Klonopin?”

“Yeah. I've got those. Also Effexor.”

“What's that?”

“Antidepressant. Doctor says that I have ‘substantial maladaptive personality traits, compounded by my substance abuse and depression.' Probably has to do with me telling him that I'm hopeless, helpless, useless, and worthless.” The back of his hair had flipped up like a mushroom-cloud explosion.

“The first night of the trial,” he said, “I woke Dad up. I'd had a nightmare. I told him that I wanted to go to the judge. Told him that I wanted to man up and end this thing for everyone.” He paused. “But he won't let me.”

“The point of the game,” I said, adopting Dad's voice, “is to win.”

But Gabe didn't respond, looking away from me.

“You don't need his permission,” I said. “You can go to the judge without Dad.”

“He'd kill me,” Gabe said, looking at the wall. “Do you know how much money he's spent?”

“I don't want to know,” I said.

The media coverage had intensified and shifted somewhat against our dad, portraying him as an absentee father, disconnected by his money, prone to spoiling Gabe. “What do they know,” Dad said, “about love?”

They were simplistic, undemanding news accounts, blaming Gabe's behavior on the rap music he liked or his substance abuse problems, but not digging deeper.

“Gabe could use your support in the courtroom,” Dad said. “I'd like you to make an appearance, Even.”

Both Sara and Mike offered to go with me, but I sensed their relief when I told them that it wouldn't be necessary.

At about the midpoint, I went to one day of the trial (that was all that I could take), and during a break, I saw Ben Kagan in the bathroom, and we had our awkward conversation about paper towels.

When I got back to the courtroom, Cavari was looking over his notes, preparing to grill Tove on the witness stand. Dad had paid for a full-time audiovisual specialist, a bald man with a pointy mouse face, who pushed aside the prosecutor's twenty-seven-inch television for his own setup: four high-tech television monitors in the jury box and a fifty-inch Hitachi plasma screen, reminding me of our TV at Dad's house.

The courtroom itself seemed to be from an episode of
CSI,
swinging doors leading to the blond-wood-paneled room, and
opposing sides for the prosecution and defense, with tables and lawyers and clients before the judge's bench. Jam-packed and with a body odor smell. A court reporter, plenty of officers in uniforms with their clunky gun-holstered belts, and the spectators' area filled with family members, friends, reporters, and what our dad called “looky-loos.”

Gabe and the Ks wore suits and ties, and they sat solemnly with hands folded on the table. Sometimes Gabe pressed his forehead against his hands, elbows on the table, as if in fierce concentration or prayer.

Not only was he taller, but the bones in Gabe's face and body seemed to have spread—he looked swollen—and his eyes had become darker and more wary.

Tove wore a blouse and skirt, demure and ladylike, and sat with her parents, but she had a strong determination in her expression that I recognized from our childhood. Her eyes grazed past me—ignoring me as she had that afternoon at Dad's house—but then I caught her looking right at me and my whole body went hot. When she saw me notice, she quickly glanced away, and I watched her face go red.

Ben and Luanne avoided looking at me as well, though once Luanne sent me a look that pierced right through me, as if I'd been the one in the video, not Gabe.

I sat next to Dad—his labored breathing somehow a comfort to me—and in the row behind us, Mom murmured with three of her friends from her walking group.

Dad turned in his seat, gesturing for me to do the same, and then he pointed to a man four or five rows behind us.

He said in his gruff, angry voice, “See that nerd right there with the beard and the blue shirt”—staring the man down—“I'm pretty sure that that's R. Sam Michaels.”

The man looked back at Dad, and then Dad raised his hand in a makeshift pistol, shot the man, and turned back around.

The man shifted his gaze to me, and his expression seemed to say, Your dad just shot me with his hand!

I know, I said with my eyes, I just saw it happen. What did you expect? and then I turned back around.

Judge Bissell had a thick black beard sprinkled with gray and a natural confidence and authority, but with a tinge of swaggering charm. With an eye-patch, he could have been a pirate.

The jury—mostly white men—seemed openly bored, and they were yawning, though they perked when Cavari approached them.

Cavari nodded to the jurors, as if they were old friends, cleared his throat, jingled the keys in his pocket, and stared at Tove, now seated in the witness box.

He approached her, promising that he didn't want to shame her.

But then he asked if she'd had sex with all three of the defendants the night before the alleged rape.

Tove said that no, she hadn't. She'd had sex with two of the boys the night before. Gabe Hyde and Kent Nixon.

Cavari asked if it was true that her favorite rap song was “Put It in Your Mouth,” and whether she liked anal sex, giving blow jobs, or doggy-style sex the best.

“Objection!” shouted the prosecutor.

Halfhearted groans came from the spectators.

Cavari asked Tove about the video of her having consensual sex with Kent Nixon a week before the alleged gang rape. “Why didn't you mind being filmed?” he asked.