The Year I Stopped Being Invisible - 36. Chapter 36

"What kind of fucking parents do that to their own kids?"

I grinned as Rex's exclamation woke me up on Sunday morning around 9:15. Looking at my trophy sitting on the dresser, I got out of bed and threw on my light blue International Thespian Society t-shirt, with the comedy and tragedy masks in dark blue, and a fairly tight pair of thin blue Ocean Pacific corduroy shorts. I knew that the drunken Rex could only be talking about one thing, and I was right.

"Taine and Blaine? I mean...what the hell were they thinking?"

"Oh, honey, I think it's cute," said Tynah.

"Cute? Okay, shit...let's call your daughter and have her pop out a Dick, a Prick and a Sick for Rick."

"Rexxxx!!!"

Chuckling, I threw on my Reeboks and ran a comb through my hair, then made my way to the kitchen to watch the show. If I could have, I would have brought popcorn.

As I grabbed a cup of coffee, an obvious shit-eating grin on my face, Tynah fled the room, her purple caftan billowing behind her in a show of regal disapproval. Rex sat in his usual chair with an expression of drunken disbelief.

"Good morning," I said, joining him at the table and lighting a cigarette.

"Sly just called," Rex said. "He said he wants you to come over and spend the day with your girlfriend TAINE and his brother...BLAINE."

I could only laugh. As accepting as he might be of my smoking -- even smoking pot -- and as tolerant as he was trying to be about my relationship with Taine, there were certain things about the modern world, starting in about 1960, which he could not accept. Matching baby names were one of them.

"Taine and Blaine," he repeated. "Un-fucking-believable. What's the sister's name? Brain? Train? Piss Drain?"

Rex could be charming when he was drunk. Simply charming.

"Her name was Patty," I said quietly. "She died when she was still in the cradle."

"Blaine, Taine...and Patty," he went on, not acknowledging the death part. "So at least somebody came to their fucking senses at some point!"

"Whatever," I said, annoyed, stubbing out my cigarette and washing my coffee cup. "Did Sly say when I should go over?"

"Go on over now," Rex replied, trying to focus on his Sunday crossword. "You're not going to miss anything. Your team plays on Monday night, for all the good it'll do them."

"Cool," I said, zipping toward the hall to the bathroom. "I'm going to go get ready!"

"Fucking Blaine," I heard him mutter. "Jesus Christ."

* * * * *

I got to the Maxwell home at around 10:30, leaving Rex -- clad only in boxer shorts with the fly hanging open -- yelling at the neighbor about borrowing his tools without returning them. I rolled into the driveway around the red Lambo and the black Charger, dropped my bike next to the garage, and went to the door.

Sly answered, clad in gleaming sunglasses, an old Mach 1 sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off, black nylon shorts with a Pennzoil logo, and black New Balance sneakers with no socks. He led me out to the pool, where Taine and Blaine were sitting in deck chairs in board shorts and t-shirts drinking Hawaiian Punch. I took one from the cooler and took a seat next to Taine. I wanted to kiss him hello, but was wary of his mood and of his older brother's reaction. Taine nodded to acknowledge me, but it was difficult to read his expression.

Sly came from the bar with a fresh margarita and reclined on his own deck chair, removing his sunglasses and speaking to his three attentive listeners.

"Boys," he said, "I wanted the three of you together with me today because you are all my family. When Taine had to accept me, and I had to accept Rick, we had these little talks out here. Now, we need to hear from Blaine. Taine has heard most of this already, so this is mostly about Blaine and Rick."

This was making me very uncomfortable, as I didn't know Blaine from Adam, but Taine put a reassuring hand on my knee, and Sly leaned forward to look me in the eyes.

"Rick," he said, "Taine loves you, and I think of you as a member of this family. There's another member of this family, too. And I want you two to get to know each other, and understand each other. This isn't something I want to leave to chance, hoping you'll figure each other out on your own. I want us all to be together for this, so I'd like to ask you -- and I know you may have feelings on this already -- to just listen to Blaine for a while. Is that okay with you?"

I looked from face to face, noting that Blaine was looking at the ground, feeling as uncomfortable as I was. I understood that Sly wanted to manage this process, trying to make it as smooth as possible for everyone, but this whole thing struck me as really strange. My family was pretty uncommunicative when it came to emotion -- except for rage and sarcasm -- so I wasn't prepared for this sort of tribal meeting by anything in my past. Not knowing what to say, I nodded my head. Sly smiled and ruffled my hair, then looked toward his first son.

"Okay, Blaine. Whenever you're ready."

It took a few minutes. Lots of heavy sighing. Finally, Blaine looked at me, very seriously, and there was confusion in his eyes. I gave him a nod of encouragement, trying to manage a smile which I wasn't feeling.

"Hey, Rick," said Blaine at last. "I don't really know how to start. I guess when we were little kids, Taine and I were really close. We played together, rode bikes together...Taine always had bikes when he was little. Then something changed. He started to get bullied, and even though I was willing to fight for him, like you, I have to admit that I started getting more concerned with being popular than with protecting my brother."

Taine started to say something, but Sly held up his hand. The cap came down, and I caught a glimpse of his green eyes shimmering as Taine looked back to the ground.

"Mom was always there for him," Blaine continued. "But she couldn't be there for him at school, or in the woods, or just walking down the street. And I wasn't either. And...sorry, Dad...neither were you."

Sly nodded sadly. Taine didn't react, but his grip tightened a little on my knee. I put my hand on top of his, stroking the back of it as his brother went on.

"So, anyway, the house started to get divided. Mom and Taine on one side, Dad on another, me feeling all alone. And you know that thing about 'a house divided against itself cannot stand'? The Civil War thing? Well, that was us. The last thing was when Mom get pregnant with Patty. We were all pretty psyched about getting a new baby, I think. We were hoping that she would change the dynamics in our house. Well, that happened, but not in the way that we thought it would."

Blaine turned to his brother then, and squeezed his thin shoulder, leaning toward him nervously.

"Taine, I'm sorry if some of this is going to..."

"Just go on," Taine said, holding back tears. "Just tell him."

Blaine removed his hand from Taine's shoulder, not wanting to force anything. I took note of how much care he was taking with Taine during this painful story, and my ambivalence toward Blaine began to soften. Just a little.

"Anyway, once Patty was born, Mom was of course super-preoccupied with taking care of her. She was born a little prematurely, and she was small and weak, so Mom had to keep an eye on her health all the time. Dad, too. He really seemed to be trying to do everything right, and it looked for a while like Mom and Dad were getting closer again. Taine and I would take turns holding her at night, when she cried. It started to bring us closer together, too. I felt like we were on our way to becoming a family again."

"I did too," Taine said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper as he looked behind me at nothing, his mouth open as he tried to hold in his feelings.

Sly nodded in agreement. I looked back toward Blaine, who was struggling to find the right words. There was a lot of tension in the air, and I felt as if Blaine was tiptoeing through a minefield.

"Anyway, one day some older boys took Taine out in the woods by our house. I don't know what happened out there, but he was gone for a long time, and we were about to call the police to go out looking for him. I finally found him, sitting on this big rock out there, just crying. He had been crying for hours. Well, I was a stupid kid. I thought I was tough, thought I was a bad-ass. I just told him to man the fuck up and dragged him home. I don't think I even asked him what had happened. I still don't know."

Taine had his head in his hands now, crying. I stood up, knelt by his chair, and put my arm around his shoulder. He just kept shaking his head back and forth. Sly shot me a silent look and I reluctantly went back to my chair. This wasn't a family meeting, I thought. This was an exorcism.

"And when we got home," Blaine said, his own voice quivering now, "I told him to 'go run to Mommy. Or tell Patty, she's a crying baby like you.' He went into Patty's room, and found Mom standing there over Patty's cradle. She was rocking Patty in her arms. Not crying. Not saying a word. Just rocking Patty back and forth in her arms. Taine screamed, and I came running into the room, with Dad right behind me. Patty was fucking blue. Just fucking small and blue and so still...so fucking still..."

We were all bawling now. Four guys sitting around a swimming pool on a quiet Sunday morning, just crying our damn eyes out. Sly got up and fetched us a box of Kleenex, then went to Blaine and wrapped him in his strong, muscular arms, calming and soothing him while I did the same to my Babes. After a time, the tears subsided and Sly returned to his chair, while I returned to mine. Blaine composed himself and continued.

"After that, everything changed. Mom was a basket case, stayed in her room all the time, just rocking back and forth on her bed. The doctor gave her tranquilizers, and she kept getting refills, rarely bathed, never cooked dinner for us anymore. Dad started taking more and more trips, entering more races all around the world, so he was never home. Taine never left the house unless he had to go to school, stayed in his room all the time, wouldn't talk to me at all. The house was like a graveyard, so oppressive, so bleak, I just had to get out. I couldn't stay there or I'd go crazy. I had to get out."

"So you joined the military," I said.

"Yeah," said Blaine, surprised that I knew anything about his life. "I joined the military. I didn't really fit in very well. I was so skinny, I had problems with PT, and I didn't really get along with all the 'rah rah gung ho' kind of guys. I was scared, lost, lonely...about the only thing I could do well was shoot. I was really good at shooting, so I became a sharpshooter. But after a while, I just...my heart just wasn't in it. I tried to get a 'COH'...a change-of-heart discharge, but they told me they only gave those during boot camp. So I did this."

Blaine slowly removed his right shoe, which I realized was specially built. Blaine only had half of his right foot remaining.

"You shot your foot off?" I said, shocked and fascinated.

"I shot my foot off," Blaine said, replacing his shoe hurriedly. "And they fixed me up, and then I got a Section 8 discharge. I had $227 in my pocket and I couldn't go home. I couldn't go anywhere. So I hitch-hiked to this little town in North Carolina. Teeny little backwoods shit-hole of a burg. Anyway, there weren't a lot of jobs for one-footed sharpshooters in that place, and there really wasn't much else that I knew how to do. I tried being a mechanic for a while, but I wasn't very good at it. I was always fucking something up, and I had a really bad attitude. I was drifting and lost and messed up in the head. So..."

He stopped, taking a deep breath, and looked me in the eyes, his gaze searching for...I don't know what. Something. Suddenly, it made sense to me. His initial feelings of anger toward me, the reason he wanted to come after me, all of this mystery. It finally made sense.

"So you met a man," I said. "An older man who promised to take care of you. He had money."

Blaine nodded, seemingly relieved that I understood.

"His name was Elden Croyle. He owned like a third of the town, and he told me that he was a philanthropist, and he liked to help young men like me. He had this big house, he called it 'Elden's Home for Wayward Boys'. Creepy fucking place, and not just because of Elden, who kept giving me these strange vibes over the first week I was there, even though he never did anything. But there had been all kinds of murders in that house. People thought it was haunted."

I leaned forward, fascinated by Blaine's story. Even Taine was rapt with attention now, and I guessed that he hadn't heard this part of his brother's tale until now.

"Anyway, nothing happened during that first week. But I went into this kind of combination coffee shop and bookstore one day. There was this strange hippie-type guy there, long hair, really haunted-looking eyes. Once he found out where I was staying, and who I was staying with, he took me into the back of the store and he told me that I needed to leave that town as fast as I could. That Elden knew all kinds of strange people who came to visit every so often."

"Johns?"

"I could have dealt with johns at that stage of my life," Blaine replied. "But these weren't just johns. These were sadists. Perverts. Rich guys who paid a whole lot of money to inflict inconceivable pain on Elden's 'wayward boys'. I thought the guy was out of his mind, but when I got home, Elden told me that we were receiving some company a few days later, and that I would have to be prepared. That was when I knew the guy in the bookstore was telling the truth."

"So did you get out?" I asked.

Blaine looked at me sadly and shook his head.

"Not soon enough," he said.