(Saturday) Fiction Story Tellin'

Older Brothers

Mom says you used to sing Raffi songs to her tummy when I was just a little nugget growing in it. I imagine your small face pressed into the bottom of her extended belly and your little fist cupped around your mouth as a megaphone. Did you ever see a moose kissing a goose? Dad dressed you in a World's Greatest Brother t-shirt the day I was born and you refused to remove it from your body for several days. You are always wearing the shirt and red fleece footed pajamas in every yellowed baby picture of mine, your arms threaded beneath my armpits and hands clasped in front of my chest. I never look quite comfortable in these pictures- my triple baby chin making my face appear as though it was folding into itself- but there you are smiling in every single frame. 

I never knew an existence without the presence of you- even as my cells divided and multiplied at exponential speed in utero- so I guess it is kind of funny that I now either have to time travel or dream in order to see your face again. Even without you present I can hear you tell me: They haven't smashed enough atoms in our lifetime to even fathom the possibility of actual time travel. So I rely on the per-chance-in-dreams that I might be lucky enough to encounter you again. The unfortunate part of this type of encounter is that I am never quite prepared and I always wake from the dream as though a bandaid has been ripped from my brain. 

Last night's dream starts as usual: without you. Until I realize that I am looking for you. And it is funny that in my dreams I rarely look for you in the shared familiar spaces of our childhood such as Dad's workshop, our living room at Christmastime, or the cabin we rented every summer in the eighties. I am usually searching for you in our old high school (which sometimes morphs into a cruise liner). It is in that industrial building that I wander the rows and rows of lockers, climb and scout the rooftop and the science labs, look under tables and weave through lunch lines in search of you. Most dreams end before my search is successful but last night's dream I found you in the gym balcony laying supine on a gymnastics mat next to Paul. You were both smoking. Paul has the same thick, brown pony tail that he had in high school and I join you both, laying down between you and Paul. In my dream I know you have been missing from my life. In my life, I daydream almost daily what I would share with you if we met again. 

"Where have you been?" I ask. 

"Paul and I took a road trip to Arizona in the LeSabre. It broke down somewhere downstate and we hitchhiked here and have been smoking on this mat ever since. Where have you been?"

I am at a loss of words despite all the hours I spent dwelling on what I would tell you when I saw you again. Anxiety about my inability to answer swells. I don't recognize his red guayabera button down shirt but his long hair is the same as his sophomore year photo id. This is when I realize that we are not in a high school gym but the top deck of a cruise ship and the night sky spreads out above us.

"We took a road trip too. We drove to North Carolina and saw the Blue Ridge Mountains." He knows the gravity of the "we" I am referring to and I begin to reel. I want to tell him that he can be a part of the "we" again- that I want to start our conversation over again and that I have so much to tell him. Paul coughs, rolling over on his side which moves the mat out from underneath me and then I am awake.