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Independence Day
Billy Livingston sat in his car, in front of his brother’s house, with the air conditioning blowing full blast for what had to be at least 25 minutes. It was the Fourth of July, a hazy, humid day that seemed to make even the slightest exertion of energy feel like moving an antique sofa up two flights of narrow stairs. It was three in the afternoon. Billy finished drinking the can of Old Milwaukee he’d opened at home and threw it in the back seat. He was confused, sweating. He clubbed the dashboard in fits of rage yelling, “Shit, shit shit,” every time he felt himself reaching for the door handle.
For the past two years, Melinda, who insisted people still call her Mindy, had invited Billy to every family function that came along. She was Jared’s wife. Billy’s sister-in-law. Most times the conversations were kept short. “C’mon Billy, it’s Christmas,” she’d say. “No, I can’t, he’s a dick.” Other times she’d begin to sob and he’d hang up, knowing they’d go through the routine again when the next holiday came. Mindy always insisted it was time to settle this thing between the two.
“Why would I want to come over there, Melinda?” he said the last time she’d called.
“He’s your brother, Billy. For God’s sakes, we’re family.”
Then, Billy heard himself say, “I’ll come for you and the kids. That’s all. He’s a real dick, and you can’t deny it.” She stayed silent. He said goodbye and hung up the phone.
Now, sitting in front of the house he began to have second thoughts. The thought of seeing his brother’s face disgusted him. And the sight of the house itself was enough to make him puke. The place had a palatial, English cottage feel to it—if that were possible. Billy imagined it would have probably looked better sitting somewhere in the woods or on an estate, instead of 30 feet away from the next-door neighbor’s nearly identical house. Billy imagined his house and the way he was attached to his neighbors. Then he began to imagine Jared’s next-door neighbor looking out the window to spy on Mindy as she changed in the bathroom. He lit another cigarette, ignoring the hot ashes that bit at his hands and blew all over the car from the force of the AC. He decided he’d ring the doorbell as soon as he finished smoking it.
The garage door was open and Billy could see a Lexus, a Chrysler minivan, some bikes hanging from the ceiling and a golf bag. ”Golf,” he thought, hearing the gaucheness of the word as he spoke it in the sanctuary of his car. “Golf.” The cigarette burned to the butt in a speed Billy thought to be, “way too quick,” and he considered lighting another one, knowing the sick feeling in his stomach would only get worse if he did. Finally, he grabbed the door handle and opened the door. The humidity of the day instantly covered him, a hot, wet blanket that reminded him of suffocation. He raised his hands to his throat, simulating strangulation. “Jesus, it’s hot,” he said. Walking toward the front door he noticed some mulch had spilled out onto the pristine walkway so he scraped it back into the dirt with the side of his foot.
Billy rang the bell and waited. The doorbell chimed a song that he recognized immediately, but he couldn’t put a name to it—probably because he didn’t know it. Jared was the one who blared classical music throughout the house when he was in high school.
“Jared, can you please turn that music down?” their mother would say.
“What, would you rather listen to that garbage Billy tries to play on his guitar all day long?”
The music stopped, no one answered the door, Billy dragged his feet back to the car. Coming here was a huge mistake.
Just as he was about to put the car in gear, Mindy came barreling through the front door, apologizing. She’d put on some weight since Billy had last seen her and he automatically found himself revising the fantasy he’d begun to have earlier about her changing in the bathroom. Then he remembered she’d recently had another baby, number three.
“Wait, wait,” she shouted as she delicately jogged through the immaculate front lawn, her heavy, full breasts bouncing under a “USA 2007” T-shirt.
Billy exited the car again and approached her. They met about halfway between the house and his car, beside an oak sapling that would someday be burdened with adding maturity and some form of atmosphere in the neighborhood. Mindy tucked a tuft of her rich black hair behind her ear. She was dark and still a knockout, even with the extra weight.
She said everyone was outside. They couldn’t hear the bell from there and she just so happened to be upstairs laying Zachary down for a nap and, “Oh my god give me a hug for crying out loud.” She wrapped her arms around Billy and squeezed him, hard. Her breasts were much firmer than he’d expected they would be from watching her walk toward him. She gave Billy a big, lipstick-smearing kiss on the cheek. “I’m so happy that you came,” she said. The smell of vanilla and her warm breath on his neck made him dizzy.
Mindy led Billy around the side of the house. A walkway of uneven slate stones ran parallel to the vinyl-clad wall. “This is a beautiful place,” Billy heard himself say and it suddenly occurred to him that he had made a habit of saying things he didn’t mean around Mindy. He slid his fingers along the beige siding. Stucco on the front, vinyl on the sides, “dick,” he thought. Out back, a sea of salmon-colored polo shirts swam about the yard. There must have been 10 or so men, all vaguely resembling one another, both in features and dress. They wore pleated chino shorts and brown loafers. At least one of them had tassels hanging off of his shoes like testicles. Their wives sat in a herd by an in-ground pool filled with kids of all ages, boys and girls, splashing and making an unbearable amount of noise. “Sam Jr. would you please stop splashing your sister in the face,” Billy heard one of the mother’s say. The mothers wore beige and white linen pants with lo-cut tops. Their hands and necks were covered in jewelry, each one more brilliant and disgusting than the next. Billy was reminded of a time his parents took him and Jared to the beach and a seagull, squawking, swooped down and stole his slice of pizza. He felt sick to his stomach.
The back of the house had a large, composite wood deck jutting from a sliding glass door. On the deck sat a large stainless steel grill, a six burner with a direct gas line at the very least. There stood Jared, holding a metal spatula and wearing a green, “#1DAD,” apron over his very own salmon polo shirt. Billy, perhaps because he’d drank too much, or perhaps due to the heat, felt something like honest sentiment for his brother. “What a dick,” he thought.
*
Billy and Jared had six years between them. The Livingstons were convinced one child was enough after Jared. He was a difficult child. Some nights the Livingstons would have to lock their bedroom door to keep the young Jared from interrupting what daddy Livingston referred to as “the deed.” Jared screamed and cried and kicked the door while inside mommy Livingston would say, “Gerald, what if something’s wrong,” and daddy Livingston, pounding away himself, would say, “Now goddamit, I’m almost there.” Then he’d collapse on top of her as she struggled to wriggle herself out from under his seemingly dead weight. It was under these circumstances that one day, by an accident that would later be described as a miracle, from God no less, Billy was conceived. Jared did not take well to having to share his home with a baby brother.
The age difference ensured the two would never have much of a relationship, aside from Jared tormenting and inflicting pain on his younger sibling every time he got the chance. One day, while Billy was sitting in his high chair, squishing his hands in a nice bowl of “goody,” Jared threw a small metal car straight at baby brother’s head. His forehead split and the Livingstons rushed Billy to the hospital for stitches. In the car, daddy Livingston drove with his left hand as his right hand swung wildly in the back seat. Jared crawled into the rear deck and daddy promised he’d get him eventually. That’s just how things went.
By the time Jared was a senior in high school, he carried a thick head of curly hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He went to school sporting creased khaki pants and a sweater vest over a button-down shirt every day. His height and the extra twenty or thirty pounds he carried mostly around his midsection were only accented more by the cuffed, pleated pants. For Christmas that year, daddy bought Jared a bow tie as a gag. “Now, you’ll really look like a geek,” said the hipper, twelve-year old Billy.
“You’re a loser,” replied Jared as he punched Billy in the kidneys. “You’ll end up just like dad working in the mill.” Both were, in many ways, correct.
*
“Hey, sweetie,” a too loud, and too drunk, Mindy shouted toward the grill, “look who I found loitering in our front yard.” The naked sun shone overhead causing Jared to squint to look toward his wife. As Mindy and Billy approached, though, Billy noticed the smile on his brother’s face twist and contort into a confused and painful opening that reminded him of that boy in sixth grade who was forced to wear the orthodontic headgear contraption. The poor kid always had his mouth hanging open in an awkward grimace. Billy remembered feeling sorry for him, when he wasn’t too busy laughing at him. Imagine what it would be like to feel pain every time you smiled. What ever happened to that kid anyway?
Jared recovered quickly, though, Billy had to give him that. Surrounding Jared were a few of his colleagues from the firm and there was no way Jared would let them know that this guy, this dirty-looking hobo who wore cut-off jeans and flip flops, who was his goddamn brother mind you, was not only an unwanted guest, but an uninvited one as well. No way.
Jared had put most, if not more of the weight back on. There was a period when he was in college where he trimmed up and cut his hair short to hide the curls. He started wearing contact lenses. It was during this time that he bagged Mindy, who Billy always thought was way too nice and way too hot to be with his dick brother. But now, Jared was fat again, and he’d made Mindy fat too after knocking her up three times. Billy caught himself swaying.
“There he is,” Jared said with huff, “my baby ‘bro.’ Did you have any trouble finding the place?” Still smooth.
“No, no,” Billy said, “Mindy gave me excellent directions.” Billy felt the inclination to give Mindy a little pinch or a slap on the backside, for effect, but he resisted. Mindy excused herself to go check on Zachary and Jared looked at his wife as if she were a dog who’d just shitted on an expensive rug. Once Billy got close enough to Jared and the group surrounding him, he realized the salmon-colored shirts had the company emblem, “Stevenson, Taylor and Briggs,” embroidered on the left breast. He couldn’t help but imagine the meeting that must have been held about the shirts and the importance of wearing them to Fourth of July get-togethers.
Billy reached out his hand for a shake and Jared put down the spatula, grabbed Billy’s hand and pulled him in aggressively, patting him on the back and giving him one of those shake hugs, as grown men seem to do in these scenarios. In the car, Billy had imagined this moment, the moment when the two came face to face, to be much more awkward. He thought Jared would be speechless, or that he’d stutter over his words, as he did when he went through that nervous phase in his mid-teens. Then he thought the two would do the “should I shake his hand or should I give him a hug?” dance for a while until eventually, one or the other, would take a swing and, as they say, all hell would break loose in Jared’s perfectly manicured backyard.
These were the things that went through Billy’s head as his brother hugged him with what felt like the intention of suffocating him and putting an end to it all right there. Jared squeezed him for a beat too long and released him with a hush. There were introductions all around. Dale, junior partner. Tom Sowers, vice-president of something or other. Rich Tomlinson, “pleasure to meet ya.” Billy shook hands and greeted all of them. The guy with a mustache kept cocking his head around. He was a short, wiry little man who stood with his chest puckered out. Billy couldn’t remember his name, but he reminded him of an asshole dog, like maybe a Chihuahua mixed with an English bulldog or something.
“So you work down here at the mill,” said the asshole dog, pointing in the direction of town, where the smoke rising from the stacks could be seen.
“Yup,” replied Billy.
“Say, you wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Trevors would you? I went to school with him. Think he’s in finance.” Billy shrugged and shook his head slightly. He was about to say something along the lines of, “No, can’t picture him,” but Jared finished it for him.
“He wouldn’t know him. Billy here works on the floor.”
“Oh, is that right?”
“Yeah, he works in the cutting department. Right bro. You’re still in cutting aren’t you? Just like dad?”
“Yeah, I mean, I don’t cut anymore, but I’m in, I’m still there.”
“Oh,” said the colleague once again, “Oh.”
Billy felt his own chest pucker out. He began to entertain the idea of taking this guy and his brother on at the same time. Maybe he’d smash both of their heads together, like in the movies. Although, he did consider the fact that Jared was much taller than the asshole dog man, and that probably wouldn’t work. A dropkick maybe? Instead, Billy smiled, reveling in the fact that only his brother would be capable of finding friends, if that’s what these people were supposed to be, that were bigger dicks than he was. He looked down and amused himself even further. The small man wore testicle shoes.
The other colleagues sensed the tension in the air and each went to the cooler by the sliding glass door for a fresh beer and made excuses to check on the wife or the kids or take a leak or something. “Hey Dale,” one of them said, “I think your wife’s looking for you,” pulling him away as walked toward the pool. Of course, the moment Billy heard one of the others call the fellow Dale he immediately knew he meant Dale, junior partner, Chihuahua/Bulldog mix.
“So,” Jared said, holding the ‘o’ for an extra beat, “how’ve you been?”
“Not bad, ‘bro,’” Billy said. “It’s hot. Sure is hot.”
“Did you bring your trunks? Take a dip in the pool maybe?” Jared had put on what Billy liked to call his cock face. It was a smile that twisted to the side arrogantly and ended in a wink with a clicking sound he made with his mouth. It was the same face he’d put on showing Billy the brand-new Lexus at mommy Livingston’s final Christmas.
“No thanks. I’ll sweat it out,” Billy said.
Jared walked to the cooler and dug his hand deep into the ice for a can of beer. “You want one?” he said.
“Sure,” Billy said. “You are a gracious host.”
“Fuck you.” Jared replied, fishing two out and tossing one to Billy.
“Didn’t mean to chase your friends away,” Billy said.
“Jesus look at you, Billy, you look like shit.”
“Sorry, I forgot to wear my pink shirt, Christ,” Billy said, pretending to brush off his pants. The two brothers stood, silent, for a few long minutes. Billy stared at the can of beer, the immediate condensation that formed on the can. Jared stared into the grill, moving a hot dog or flipping a burger here and there.
“So what brings you here?” Jared said, closing the lid to the grill, perhaps a bit more forcibly than intended.
“I came to see the kids and Mindy.”
“That Mindy, what are you out of money, already?
Billy had imagined this scenario in the car too. For some reason he thought the mention of money would take longer to come about. He knew it would come out eventually, just not so soon. It was their mother who’d always said time heals everything and Billy felt tightness in his chest thinking that his mother had been wrong about that too. What had it been, three minutes?
“I didn’t come here to bring up that shit,” Billy said.
“Easy for you, you got the whole lot handed to you.” Jared flung open the grill, flipped a couple of the burgers and closed the lid again. Mindy walked out of the sliding glass door. She walked toward the two brothers and put her hand on Jared’s shoulder. A cloud wrenched its way over the sun, darkening more than just the light. It had rained every year for the Fourth for as long as Billy could remember.
“You boys OK,” Mindy said, “Can I get you something?”
“You can start by minding your own goddamn business,” Jared replied.
“Take it easy, Jare,” Billy said, taking a step toward his brother and
just as quickly taking the step back. “She didn’t mean any harm by it.”
Tears welled up in Mindy’s eyes. She stepped off of the deck and started toward the other women by the pool. About halfway there she turned.
“You know, he’s right,” she said. “Sometimes you really are a dick.” Jared kicked a chair and sent it sliding in the grass.
“Fuck,” he yelled.
“Not sometimes,” said Billy.
The colleagues and their wives, much to their children’s’ disgust had begun to pack up the corning ware and the Tupperware and head for their SUVs. “Gotta, run,” said one of the wives. “Looks like rain. Call me Min, all right?” She made the sign for a phone with her pinky and thumb and wiggled by the side of her head.
*
The night daddy Livingston died, Jared was away at a conference. Mommy Livingston was a mess and while Mindy tended to her, she was always better at that sort of thing, Billy was put in charge of talking to his brother. In some ways, their distant relationship made Billy’s task a bit easier. He might as well have been calling a stranger. When Jared finally answered, Billy wasted no time. He didn’t ease into the news as he’d rehearsed. He just said, “Hey, dad’s dead, man.” Billy didn’t know what kind of response to expect. The Livingstons, the men anyway, didn’t cry or make a fuss.
“I can’t come home,” Jared said. “Not now, do you realize how important this is? I’m in a fucking meeting with the head. I’ll get there for the funeral.”
Billy didn’t respond. As he hung up the phone he heard his brother’s voice, distant, fuzzy, static. “Dad would understand.” Click. He was right. Daddy Livingston, if he had the chance to say anything about it, would have said, “Hey, I’m already dead. Keep doing what it is you gotta do to move forward.”
Billy walked slowly back into the living room, each step heavier than the next. His mother cried hysterically into the arms of her daughter-in-law. “I couldn’t reach him,” he said.
Sitting in daddy’s rocking chair, he rubbed both his mother’s and Mindy’s backs as they cried and held each other. After mommy Livingston passed out from exhaustive hours of crying, Billy picked her up off of the floor and carried her to the bedroom she had shared with her husband. He came down the steps to find Mindy with a bottle of tequila in one hand, a phone in the other. He listened to Mindy scream at her husband. “I can’t believe you,” she said. “I can’t fucking believe you.” She drank, and later still, she drank too much. That was the night she crawled into Billy’s bed and nothing happened.
…
The guests left and Mindy walked her two sons toward the house. Each one stopped to high-five their uncle before going inside. Jared had calmed himself and he now sat at the Billy walked over and sat facing his brother whose countenance had changed. The anger was gone and something else had taken over his features. The two sat and neither spoke for a while. The sun was finally swallowed by the clouds. Wolf clouds was what they called them when Billy was a kid. Now he was sure. It would rain.
“Do you remember the night of mom’s wake?” Billy said.
“Yeah, I do.”
“I’ve been thinking about that night for a while now. The way we sat up all night, talking and drinking.”
“Here we go with the sentimental bullshit. You’ve always been such a pussy.”
Billy felt himself begin to close up. It was hard to talk to his brother. And on that particular night, it was probably the drink talking more than anything. But they did talk, and laugh, and cry and drink some more.
“You know,” Billy said, “that was the first time I ever felt like we were brothers.”
“Oh for fuck sakes,” Jared said. “Are you serious with this shit? Fuck.”
“What is it then, man? If it’s not the money, then what?”
“You don’t get it do you? You’re too much like they were to get it.”
Jared’s contempt toward his own family had never been a secret. He was close to mommy Livingston—for a while anyway. But about the time he became all business, he just went through the motions.
“Dad hated me.”
“Fuck you mean he hated you? He only treated you like that ’cause you were a dick to him.” Billy said, but he knew better. The tension between Jared and their father loomed over the Livingston home like a storm brewing over a nearby town. You see the dark clouds, flashes of lightening, a crack or a rumble over there but it’s only a matter of time before a breeze carries the thing over your own roof and it explodes.
“He held it against me that I was born, Billy. He held it against me, and he held it against Mom. Mom was miserable and he treated me like shit. Then you came along and everything seemed to fix itself. By then they’d settled and dad gave up on doing something about leaving this town.”
Raindrops began to appear on the table. Sporadically. Billy felt one or two hit his arms. The sky grew darker still and Billy imagined it slowly coming down to smother them both. There was a feeling burning in his stomach he’d never known. The pain twisted and stretched and pulled at his insides. He opened his mouth to speak but words did not come out. He was speechless for the first time ever. He felt something like pity, for the first time ever. Confusion and disorientation couldn’t begin to describe it. The feeling made him want to react, maybe spit in his brother’s face. He wanted to hurt him, yet somehow make it all better. He wanted to tell Jared about that night when he held his wife close in his bed while she cried about her husband who refused to come home. He wanted to tell him how she’d buried her head in his neck and her hot breath and how her shuttering body sent wrong thoughts through his head. He wanted to tell him how he could feel her erect nipples through her shirt against his own chest and how he kept slowly inching his hands lower and lower down her back until he was sure his hands were resting on her ass, but then he held back because something kept blocking him and he wasn’t sure if it was love for his brother or love for his father. He just knew things couldn’t go any further, even if she wanted them to, so he stopped.
It was then that something rushed into Billy, at once, like a punch to the gut. After years of hating his brother, of envying his brother, he realized how things fit. Mindy knew Billy could do more. She knew that sitting Billy in front of his brother’s smug, bloating, sweaty face would be enough to send him over the edge. It would be enough to make Billy do something, anything, to move forward. And she was right. Everything that had happened in the 32 years of his life had all been leading to this moment.
Billy rose from his seat. His knees wobbled and he steadied himself by holding on to the table. The rain increased slightly, drops falling like the rhythm of a waltz that can’t find its bearings. Billy’s chest tightened and his throat felt like it was closing.
“I’m putting the house up for sale.” Billy said, the words sounding childish as they left his mouth. “Better yet, I’ll just sign it over, it’s only fair. Mom should have changed her will. I didn’t deserve it all, you’re right. Take the fucking house and buy yourself a new car with it. It’s time I leave this fucking town for good.”
“It’s not necessary. That’s not the point.” Jared said, wiping at the rain tears that flowed down his face.
The two were silent for a moment, Billy standing, Jared seated. Jared took a swig of his beer. Billy did the same.
“Look,” said Jared, but he stopped there and took another drink.
Billy waited, but he wasn’t sure for what. There wasn’t anything left to say. The house was the last thing tying the two brothers together—the looming sickness that hovered over the house and the few dollars it was worth.
Billy put his beer down on the table. He took his brother’s hand and shook it. He did not hug him. “Give my best to Mindy and the kids, ‘bro,’” he said, knowing he and Jared would have nothing ever to talk about again. He turned and made his way around the house. Walking across the front yard to his car, he stepped through the mulch around the shrubs and kicked some onto the walkway. He got back in the car, turned the ignition and laughed, like a child, like he hadn’t laughed in a long, long time.
Vito Grippi writes and lives in South Central Pennsylvania with his wife and two daughters. His work has appeared in The York Review, Nightlife Monthly, Unsung Hero and Fly Magazine, among others. He's been a finalist in the Bob Hoffman Writing Contest, and has spoken at the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Conference.