The Aftermath of Brody

The Aftermath of Brody

I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and started across my driveway, sucking down the remains of my iced coffee. I was exhausted. Four days out at the lake with the girls had wiped me out, and I did not bounce back like I used to. Starting towards the walk-way, I quickly noticed that something wasn’t right. There were cigarette butts in the grass and as my eyes started to trace them towards my front door, I saw my newly planted flower garden had been demolished. 

Heat rose in my cheeks as I tried the door and it was unlocked. My first reaction should have been to stop right there and call 911. A more logical person probably would have done that, but I had seen this scene one too many times. I walked inside the entryway seeing a trail of discarded cups littering the hallway along with a few cigarette butts. The place reeked.

This meant only one thing: my brother, Brody, had come to visit.

I pushed the suitcase to the hallway closet and stomped towards the living room, cussing under my breath as I tried to find my phone. I was going to kill him. It had been months since I had seen Brody, and of course the moment he realized I was out of town he took the opportunity to pull this. It had been an ongoing cycle for years now. I had once been the little sister who thought my older brother was the coolest guy in the world. He was charming and funny. He brought life into whatever room he stepped into with his big, goofy grin. Everyone wanted to be around Brody.

Something had during college for him. The nights out partying became a nightly habit. Brody wasn’t showing up for class and then ended up dropping out entirely. He had always been a bigger guy, not fat but stocky. Soon those muscles withered away and what was once a joyful gleam in his eyes was replaced with a sunken dullness.

By the time I graduated college, Brody was couch surfing, couldn’t keep a job, and had developed a nose candy habit along with drinking. My parents had gladly sent him to rehab when he first admitted that he had a problem in his mid-twenties. Then he relapsed, got sober, relapsed again, got arrested, went to rehab, and the cycle continued.

“Brody!” I yelled out. “I swear on everything you are – “

“He’s not here,” a deep voice came from behind me. I screamed, quickly ripping the can of pepper spray I kept in the side pocket of my purse out. I spun around, ready to aim.

“Whoa, Cass!” The man yelled, throwing his hands up. My heart felt like it was going to bust out of my shirt.

“Deacon!” I barely managed to breath out. He smiled back at me, his eyes crinkling like he was trying to hold back his laughter. He was standing in my kitchen holding a trash bag. His light brown hair was tousled as if he had joke woken up, and it had been a few days since he had shaved.  

“You scared the crap out of me,” I said, tossing the pepper spray on the kitchen bar and taking a couple more breaths. I blew a strand of my strawberry blonde hair out of my face, quickly redoing the messy bun I had thrown my hair up in. I was now well aware how haggard I must have looked with light oversized blue sweatshirt and black capri leggings. I had applied a million coats of sunscreen while at the lake, but I was still burnt, my freckles popping out like never before. “Where is he?”  

“I don’t know. He called me a few hours ago, belligerent that he messed things up. I asked him where he was and he said he had been crashing at your house. Of course I knew something was up since you haven’t been on good terms in a while.  The front door was opened when I got here and now, he’s nowhere to be found.  I tried calling him a few times, but he’s not picking up.”

Deacon had been Brody’s sponsor for the past couple years. They had met at a meeting after Brody had went on a bender and stumbled in there half wasted. Despite Deacon’s tough looking exterior with how tall and built he was and his arms covered in sleeve of tattoos; he had a huge heart. He was about the only one Brody would confide in. I used to be that person until one day I just couldn’t anymore.

“He said he’s been trying to get ahold of you for a while now,” Deacon continued. I shrugged. I had gotten better about toughing up and not taking those calls or responding to the text messages. “He just celebrated his six-month sobriety and wanted you and your parents to come to a meeting on Saturday.”

Six months? Had it been that long?  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the sliding screen door that led out from the kitchen to the back deck was off the tracks, the screen of the door pushed out.

“So because no one showed up for his gold star, this is what he does?” I snapped. I walked around the bar, grabbing a trash bag out from under the sink. “I knew I should have hidden that key better.”

“He’s had a rough week,” Deacon said.

“Yah? Well now I’m having a rough day. Do you think he’s going to bother coming back and clean this up? Or even pay for anything he destroyed?” I started prying the trash bag apart, getting more frustrated as I jerked it around in the air. Deacon reached over, taking the bag from my hands and opened it for me. “Sorry, I should not be taking this out on you.”

“It’s okay. I get your anger. You know I do. Brody is messed up. He knows this, but he’s been trying, Cassie. I’m not saying that to try to smooth this over for you because that’s not my thing. This time just seemed so different for him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Brody has had a million chances to get it together and all he does is cause chaos and pain.” I walked into the living room putting a couple of pizza boxes into the bag.

“He finally told me about the car and the money.” Deacon walked over to the sliding glass door, maneuvering it to get it back on its track. My face went hot again. “I knew something had happened between you two. I didn’t know if it was what I said…or…”

Deacon and I had gotten into at the beginning of the year when he called me an enabler. My parents had almost drained their retirement fund trying to help Brody until my father decided enough was enough. It broke my mother’s heart to turn him away, but my father insisted it was for the best. That was the tough love he needed, but it took me longer to make that choice as well.

 “You don’t have to stay,” I said, not wanting to re-hash that conversation out. “I can clean this up.”

He proceeded to keep wiggling the door, trying to get it back on its track. “I don’t mind to help.” He smacked the top of the door with a loud whack! “He was trying hard to make things right this time. I knew without the support-”

“Really? Now you’re coming at me with not supporting him when before I was supporting him too much?” I snapped.

Deacon put his hands up in surrender mode. “Hey, hey. No, that’s not where I was going with this.” He ran his hand over his chin. “He lost his job last week and not because he didn’t show up or messed up, but because the restaurant had to make cuts to keep afloat.” He cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but when he was getting a paycheck, he would give me a cut of it to put back for him. Said he was working on paying you back. That he couldn’t show up empty handed. He wanted to show you he was serious this time.”

The familiar sting of tears pierced my eyes. I had never saw myself as being the enabler to Brody. I was just his little sister, the one who was holding onto a thread and a chance that the next time he would sober up it would stick. I could see it sometimes. That goofy grin coming back and the light in his eyes, and I just knew this would be it. Even though he lied to everyone else and screwed up countless times, he didn’t do it to me. He was always truthful with me. Until one day he wasn’t.

It wasn’t just the fact that Brody had stolen my car, but that he also had stolen the cash I had stashed away. It was my own stupid fault I had thought to even have it in the house. It should have been in the bank, but I grew up in a household where you put back money. Tucked it away in an envelope. My mother had tons of them: school clothes, vacation money, retirement. Him stealing from me crushed me. The realization that I had been the enabler all this time when all I wanted to do was help smacked me in the face.  

“Why did you think this time would be different?” I asked Deacon.

Deacon sighed, taking a moment to answer me. “When I went to prison for possession something in me just woke up. I knew I couldn’t be that guy anymore. It was like,” he snapped his finger, “all those times before never mattered. This time I was going to do it.” He said it so simply. As if it was just that easy to change, but I knew it wasn’t. “I started seeing that in Brody. Just that,” he snapped his fingers again, “moment was there.” He shook his head. “What’s the first thing you think about when you wake up?”

“Coffee,” I said.

He smiled. “Then what?”

“Going for a run then getting ready, going to work, checking my calendar to see what needs to be done.” I shrugged. “Nothing too exciting.”

“Think of that cup of coffee or run as your drug. Could you manage your mornings without it?”

“Probably. I mean, it would be hard, but coffee and running aren’t exactly cocaine and whiskey either.”

“True, but you have to remember that we’re all wired differently. What might come easy to you as simply giving up your coffee or your run or whatever it is that gets you by isn’t that easy for the next person. That’s why people fail at diets or changing any habit. The commitment has to be there. So when you have to think of an addict whose only focus in life is to get high it’s like a mountain they don’t think they can ever climb. Getting high in whatever form is the first thing that a recovering addict thinks of when they wake up. Then they have to think of ways they’re going to get through this day without it. Sometimes it’s not even the day. It’s down to the hour or the next ten minutes.”

“Deacon,” I said, “I get what you’re saying.  We’ve discussed this so many times. I know his faults probably better than you. I just can’t keep giving myself the false hope anymore. It’s…” I stopped, sucking in a breath.

“Why didn’t you call the police when he stole your car? When he took that money from you?”

“Because…” I threw my hand out, “I didn’t want to put him in jail! You know he wouldn’t survive that. That’s not where he needed the help. He needed to be in rehab, but I can’t make him go. That doesn’t work. Our parents made him go. The court made him go, and yet it hasn’t stuck. I’ve basically let him keep doing this and I…I can’t watch him kill himself anymore. I can’t watch him die.”

My biggest fear in the back of my mind was just waiting for that phone call to let me know he was dead. That he had died because he had taken it too far. The guilt of knowing I had allowed him to continue this was killing me.

“You have not let him do anything,” Deacon said firmly. “He didn’t need your permission to get high or drink or pull this crap.” He waived his hands around the room. “He knew that no matter how many times he screwed up, you would forgive him. That part is on him. When you realized that you were not helping him by constantly being his source of refuge that’s when you did the right thing by stepping away. He needed you, his anchor, to tell him enough was enough.” Deacon grabbed the remainder of the beer bottles off the coffee table and closed up the trash bag. “Does it feel any better having him out of your life?”

I bit back my lip. Was it nice not having the stress of him constantly around? Sure. Was it hard not knowing where he was? Absolutely. But was I really ready to fully give up on him? I didn’t know anymore.

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t feel better, but it doesn’t feel that great having him in my life, either. What I wish is for my big brother, the real Brody, to just come back.”

Deacon reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “You’ll never get the real Brody back. He’s not there; not the way he was. But what you might get is a reinvention of the person he used to be.”

I threw my hands up and plopped down on the couch. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Deacon. I hate him thinking none of us care or are there for him.”

Deacon sat down next to me on the couch. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in. “You can still love your brother and hate what he’s done. Addiction is nasty. It’s hell on this Earth. You don’t have to listen to his lies. You don’t have to make excuses for him. You don’t have to let him stay with you or buy his next meal. You can still support him without allowing him to fully be in your life. Dealing with an addict is not black and white. There is so much gray.”

I let out a groan. “Some days I just really hate him.”

“That’s okay. Some days I want to knock him out,” Deacon said simply. I let out a small laugh. “I’m not just in your life as his sponsor. I’m here for you too, Cass.”

I nodded. Before I could say anything, Deacon’s phone started to ring. He stood up, pulling it out of his back pocket and looked down then turned it around for me to see.

It was Brody.

I wasn’t sure if my brother could ever stay clean. I knew I couldn’t be the one who allowed him to keep using even when that had never been my intention. Deacon answered his phone while I let those last words he said sink in. This didn’t have to be black and white; there was so much gray I could probably paint the night sky with it. I wasn’t sure what it looked like to still support my brother without allowing him to fully be in my life, but I had a feeling Deacon just might.