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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 16 young couple lied to everyone about their wedding anniversary to allow enough time for the conception to be respectable. I was haunted by this every time I caught a sidewise glance of Brandon, my boisterous older brother who never spoke anymore unless he was spoken to, and then only in insults to me, only in whispers to Mom, clipped half sentences to everyone else. When he came home from Sheila's there would be a quiet while between the time I heard the garage door hum and the click of the kitchen door marking his entrance. He would sit in his car in the dark garage all that time thinking God knew what. It seemed everywhere I went I was confronted by rumors of girls I had heard of now getting pregnant on purpose to trap boyfriends I had once known. "That's ridiculous," Michaela told me. "Brandon isn't stupid. He knows he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to," but I wasn't so sure. Brandon didn't want to have a kid, he didn't love Sheila; looking at him it was obvious. He aged with every passing day; for him the wedding march would be a funeral dirge, and his marriage was doomed already. The resentment Sheila's family felt for Brandon extended to Mom. She went over there one day to offer her services in planning the wedding and making arrangements for a florist and cake. She came home almost immediately. I don't know what they said but she had obviously been rebuffed. She whispered something pleasant about how they had everything under control and didn't need any more help, but she was visibly upset-she'd wanted to be part of her son's wedding, grave an occasion as it was. Suddenly I was very scared for Brandon. I kept thinking about the brief times in our lives we had been buddies and a gorge rose in my throat. The finality of it seemed |
