Night Matters, Part 5

I shower, and when I walk out of the bathroom my brother Aaron is sitting in the living room. We look at each other and try to make sense of what we see. I'm confused as to how he let himself in, but he nervously holds up the old brass key to remind me when he'd periodically couch it here while still in college.

This was before he met Emily and bought the big colonial in Connecticut. They have a couple acres there with a horse farm in the back; Emily rides, but I wonder how often now since last I heard she was trying to get pregnant.

Dressed and combed, I take the ottoman in front of him, putting my brother even less at ease. He inspects the room like a prehistoric insect will come barging through the walls any moment. It's mainly the living room he slept in, albeit a few appliance switch-outs and new wallpaper. But it isn't the house in New Canaan, he seems to want me to know that. 

"Anything to drink? Eat? You want a blanket or something?"

"Erhm, no," Aaron says. "No thanks." He uses a generic office tone with me; whether I've wiped the man's ass crack or not, I'm mad at myself for feeling disappointed by this. It isn't entirely Sarah's fault, but I think it mostly is. You see, before Emily, there was a situation.

I caught them together. Right where I'm sitting actually. Sometimes I think I can still see traces of Aaron's spunk on the ottoman. (I'd have taken the rank diapers over his come stains any day.)

He'd just graduated business school. We'd thrown a party for him here; I'd written my lightweight self a large, uncashable check quick, and passed out in bed alone. It was the thirst pangs that actually got me up. I walked out to the living room and there's Aaron, in the middle of pile-driving my wife with all due diligence of the summa cum laude grad.

Catching your wife cheat is a mindfuck, but watching her get knocked up by your brother is the winner-take-all. According to Sarah, fucking Aaron would have only taken as long as it would to get impregnated. That night I was looking at month three or four.

We'd been trying for a few years already, and neither one of us was letting up, or considering the possibility one of us was no good. Such was my thinking, up until that initial irate dispersal of furniture artillery: an end table on my brother's face.

Aaron and I didn't speak for two years; Sarah and I went to counseling for three, up until the day of the accident.