Page 6 of More Than Words

I bet Isobel wouldn’t think I was quite the dick I acted like if she knew exactly how I spent most of my time. I may flirt inappropriately or say sexist things at work, but it was a sham. Half my time was spent babysitting my senile eighty-five-year-old grandfather while the other half was spent trying to figure out how to make my twin brother’s life easier because I felt guilty my life had turned out so vastly different from his.

Maybe things would be different if his last tour hadn’t gone so far off the rails, but I’d always felt this lingering sense of guilt that I’d gone to college and made something of myself while he spent his youth devoted to a country that’d cut him loose the second all his body parts weren’t intact.

He’d missed out on a lot in the twenty-plus years he’d been in the service, and I knew it ate at him that his sacrifices were essentially forgotten after his injury. His ex-wife had dropped the bomb while he was recovering from his injuries that she wanted a divorce, and that she was carrying his former best friend’s baby. Then he was told he’d never leave a desk again if he stayed in the military, and they’d offered to discharge him when he told them that’d never happen.

He’d kick me in the nuts if he knew I was still feeling so intensely guilty because he was proud and tough and didn’t want anyone to pity him for anything. But I still had a hard time seeing past the imagery of him lying in a hospital bed overseas with part of his leg missing and bright red scars littering his face. He’d always seemed invincible and larger than life, and we’d almost lost him.

“Hey.” The bartender, Jeanette, nodded as I pushed open the door to the neighborhood bar Pops had treated as a second home since he’d retired twenty years ago. “He’s in the back with the other old fucks. They’re playin’ cards. He’s behaved himself tonight.”

“Do I need to close out his tab?” I asked, bracing myself for how much it’d be. Based on how much he’d drank, I could usually tell what kind of mood the old man would be in.

“Nah,” she smiled, waving my hand away. “He paid for the two he had in cash and has been nursing a watta.”

Thank fuck. I wasn’t in the mood to wrestle him down the sidewalk in the rain if he was past the point of being belligerent. Pops was mostly good-natured, but sometimes things got ugly if he was deep into the whiskey.

I knew most of the people at work thought I worked out so much to look good and because I was vain—to be honest; I did like the appreciative looks I got because of my physique—but it was mostly because of Pops. The old man was the same height as me, although he appeared a few inches shorter because he stooped when he walked; but he was wiry. I’d also bulked up when Hutch was discharged because I knew Ma couldn’t afford to have someone else come in when she was working, and I needed to be able to lift him when he was still heavily reliant on the wheelchair.

He wouldn’t let me touch him now, but before the prosthetic and all the physical therapy he’d done in the past year, he’d needed the help. Now, he could get around fine on his own, unless it involved rainy weather or lots of stairs.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, lightly patting the bar, shooting her a wink before I wove through the tables toward the back, where the old man coughs and dry laughter rang out despite the late hour.

“Ad, my boy,” Pops laughed as he clapped his hands, clearly happy to see me. So, it’d been a good day. He didn’t recognize me some days, and those were the hardest. Those days, I fucking hated dementia and what it did to people. Telling elaborate lies to a man I’d spent my entire life admiring just to get him to walk home at night made me feel like shit.

“Alright, Pops, time for yah beauty sleep.”

His cronies chuckled; some patted my arm as I walked around the table to lend my hand to Pops. He’d never admit it, but he wasn’t as spry as he used to be, his boxing days squarely in the past. It was hard to watch him get older, but I was glad he was still around. I knew he’d been lonely since my grandma passed on, but there were still enough of his old neighborhood buddies alive that he kept himself busy.

“Yeah, I guess yah right, Ad. Us O’Neill’s have to keep these mugs lookin’ good for the ladies. Wouldn’t want them to miss out by having to look at all these ugly old fucks. Isn’t that right, my boy?”

“Yeah, Pops. It’s all for the ladies,” I laughed and shook my head. My grandfather hadn’t looked at another woman since the late nineteen fifties. Even dead, my grandmother was the love of his life. But our family had a reputation for being pretty boys, which made running around the neighborhood as a teenager fun. Especially when there were two of us. Hutch had been more the heartbreaker between us, but neither of us had ever had to work much for female company. Sometimes, it was the same female—something we stopped years ago.

“See youse assholes tomorrah.” Pops yawned as he patted the shoulders of a few of his buddies while I cupped his elbow and led him away from the table. I knew he’d stay here all night if I let him, but then Ma would be worried. And she hadn’t worked her ass off for decades for the men in her life to give her grief. She’d already had enough heartache to last a lifetime when my father was killed overseas.

“Bye, Jeannie,” he called out, winking as the pretty bartender waved in his direction. I knew she had a soft spot for Pops. Plus, we were almost family, with her cousin technically being my ex-sister-in-law. Many of the original families in the neighborhood were related by those five degrees of separation.

I led my grandfather to the covered front stoop of the bar, instructing him to stay put until I pulled the car up to the curb. We could have technically walked home, but I wasn’t making him do that in the rain.

As soon as I pulled up, I cursed and grabbed my umbrella, hurrying around the car to shield him as he rushed as fast as he could toward the passenger side. “Oh, I get car side service now?” he joked while I held the umbrella over his head and pulled open the door.

“Careful with the drop,” I cautioned, and he gripped the handle inside the door to lower himself into the seat with a shaking arm.

“I can handle gettin’ in a fuckin car, Adrian. I’m old as fuck, not a toddlah.”

Biting back a sarcastic retort, I let him get himself buckled and closed the door, rushing back to the driver’s side.

“So, who sent yah out after me this time?” he asked as I settled in my seat, turning the wipers back up and checking my mirrors before pulling away from the curb.

“Hutch,” I sighed, hating that this was where we were. Pops felt like the rest of his family was always trying to keep him on a leash, but we’d had enough late nights, calling around the neighborhood when he didn’t come home at night, to scare us all.

“Well, can’t say I blame ’em,” he sighed, folding his hands in his lap. “Last week was kinda bad. I know I scared your Ma. Thought she was my Aileen and acted like a shit toward her when she came home one morning.”

Ma was an ER nurse, often pulling overnight or double shifts, and took care of my brother and grandfather during the day when she wasn’t sleeping. I told her she should think about getting a placement in one of the doctor’s offices closer to the house, but she told me she’d be bored outta her mind without the grueling pace of working in trauma care. I didn’t see the appeal, but I also fainted at the sight of blood, so we clearly weren’t cut from the same cloth.

She excelled at fixing the messes of people’s bodies. I excelled at fixing the messes of people’s words.

Hutch was more like her, joined the Marines at eighteen, served his first four years, then reenlisted in the Navy to act as a medical corpsman in a Marine combat unit for years before he moved to the Special Warfare Combat Crewman. It was during a SEAL extraction that everything had gone to shit.

“You know she understands, Pops,” I sighed, pulling up to the curb at the modest row house I’d grown up in.

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