Bloodlines

He looked like Dad. Janie and I had seen enough of Dad's pictures when he was younger to say so.

  The same blonde hair, the same round nose, and square face. The same dark eyes. He was even dad's height, which was only 5'7, and taller than me anyway.

  We didn't even know about Jared till a few days after Dad passed. One of Dad's old friend's, Clint, apparently had kept an eye on Jared and his mother after the split. Well, it wasn't really an official divorce. Jared said he just remembered Dad leaving. Coming back every now and then, and eventually not at all.

  He helped us plan the service, help with programs. But he was quiet, and somewhat meek, at first, doing his best to be unoffending. He was the secret, what Dad had kept hidden for years. He was ten the last time he saw Dad. Janie and I would have been four.

  Mom didn't look at him, not directly. Finding out had kept her locked in the back bedroom for three days. And in all honesty we weren't welcoming to him either. How could we have been?

  He was our Dad. He had taught us to ride our bikes, and tie our shoes, and picked us up, and swung us around. He taught us to drive, and kissed us when we were sick. We were his kids. Just us,and then there's a call telling us that he had done half of those things to someone else first.

  I wasn't welcoming when Jared came to us. I was short with him. I refused to let him sleep at the house. I didn't help him fold the programs. We'd tell him, with stress on the word "we" were going to eat then go to bed. We made a point to say "Our Dad." Tell him to get us things, from an address book to a glass of water, no please or thank you. Janie would remark offhandedly, that Dad was assertive.

"That's what'll be in the program. A strong, assertive, man." Stress on the word man. Jared said noting about what she implied. "A strong, assertive man...who only approved of strong assertive men."

Jared said nothing. I think this amused and frustrated her, it did me.

"You're easy going."

"Yep." That was all.

It had been childish, we were all adults, but we didn't care.

  He offered to clean, do the dishes. Mom let him, then told him what he could do afterwards. And then told him he better get back to the hotel, because "we" were tired.

  We let him know he was a stranger. That he wasn't Dad's kid. He wasn't our brother. He wasn't anything to us. How could he be? And I hated how much he looked like Dad. I hated how he scratched his head like Dad and how his voice reminded me of Dad. I hated he was left-handed like Dad.

  People had always said we were our Mother's girls. And Daddy always joked about needing a son to even it out. Here was the son. What Dad wanted. No, what he didn't want. He left them, and forgot about them. But Jared was still here.



"We're going to the store you might wanna head out." I said.

  He was looking at some old pictures. We had three or four boxes, pulled out to pick which one's were going on the program and in the slideshow. Jared was standing over one, his hands full of them.

"Did you hear me?"

He nodded. And he was crying. Or he had been, his sleeve came over his eyes as I stepped closer. "Just looking."

"We'll you'll have to look tomorrow."

"He did like taking pictures...didn't he?"

"Yeah. Took he must have taken a million."

"I see...Well good for you." He dropped the pile into the box. "Sounds like you had a pretty good life."

"What's that suppose to mean?" I was offended by his tone.

"What do you think?" He said. "Was he a good Dad?"

Before I could answer, he snapped, "Because I wouldn't know would I?"

"I don't know what makes you think you can talk to me like that!"

"The same reason you can treat me like crap! I hadn't seen him since I was ten, and then I get a call from Clint that tells me I have two half-sisters. I came down here to help you guys! I've been doing my best to help, and you don't even look me in the eye! You're not looking at me now!"

  I thought I was, and I didn't say anything, I waited for him to continue. Part of me hoping he was just spouting angry words, and he would soon blush then apologize, in the soft spoken way I was use to hearing from him, but he didn't. He went on.

"Your Mom too, and our sister-"

"My sister-"

"Shut up! You heard me, shut up! As much as you hate to admit it, I am your brother! Half or whole, I am your brother, and Janie is my sister too." His eyes were misty, and I scoffed at him for it, but I knew what he said was true. "I didn't hate you, or Janie, or your Mom. I didn't hate any of you, but I hated him for the long time. And if anyone has any right to be angry its me!"

I didn't get a chance to snap back at him.

"I'm the one who had my Dad taken! He left us without a penny in the jar! I'm the one that grew up in hotels and slept in the back of my mother's car, I spend my sixteenth birthday in the hospital watching my mother die! You think he cared she was sick? You think he would've cared I was suddenly left alone in the world, before I was seventeen?"

  He picked up a handful of photographs. "I look at these, and see vacations to the beach, and Disneyland, and a Grandmother I never met. You know where I was when I was twelve? I wasn't horseback riding like you and Janie-I was with my mother who was paying rent to live in flea-bag hotel room! I was fishing clothes out of the school's donation box!"

Tears fell down his cheeks, his voice was steady.

"And when I hear, that if he left me anything at all, it was two half-sisters...I wasn't angry. I wasn't. I thought, "At least he was a good man to someone". And maybe I didn't have to be alone anymore. So I came down here. And I'm met with you pissants!"

  I cursed at him, and he cursed me until Janie and Mom had come to see the what was happening, but Jared was already out the door. Janie asked what that was about, and I think I must have made a crack about emotional men or something. Men raised by their mommies. But I knew he was right, and he was right to be angry.

  I thought about what he said when I looked back at the pictures. And what he had said about his Mother. I was hurt over what he said, and decided I didn't care. What was it to me this stranger was orphaned at sixteen? He came here expecting what he had no right to expect. But, I also knew, that we hadn't been particularity nice to him. And it wasn't only Dad's death.

'At least he was a good man to someone.'

  He was good to his girls, but I wondered (and still do) if he ever thought about Jared, and his Mother. Did he keep in touch with Clint only to know where they were? If he did, perhaps he didn't care the Mother of his son was dying. That his son was left all alone.

  But, I thought again, what was it to us? Mom, Janie and I? Jared was a stranger. But I kept thinking about him till the day of the funeral, and wondered what it would have been like to grow up with a brother.


  No one except Clint paid Jared any attention. He stood next to him during the service, probably not for the first time. And stayed with him after. A line to comfort the family, but again no one paid Jared any attention. Mom didn't say a word, or look him in the eyes as she went to the parking lot. Janie, though, stayed with me.

"Are you going to the dinner?" She asked him. Dinner after the funeral.

"I might."

"Yes or no."

"No."

"That's all I wanted to know." She said reproachfully, as though she was a teacher and he a difficult student.

"How long will you be in town?"

"Till the day after tomorrow. I can't miss anymore work."

"We'll keep in touch?" I offered, half sincere, because I knew we should; that we were blood, half or whole, and his words were true. And half out of a guilt I still didn't understand.

"Though Clint." He said immediately. With finality. Janie humphed and said she was going to the car. So we were alone.

"Jared...You were right."

"I know." He said. "I didn't think you guys would automatically love me. I didn't think it would be easy, either. But after a week and a half, of cleaning, and sorting, and helping organize things...and paying some of the expenses, and...just being there. I thought it would count for something. Look me in the eyes."

Dad's eyes. I thought.

"I knew it would be a shock. Your Mom...poor woman. You and Janie, I thought..." Now he did stop, embarrassed. He wasn't sure what to say, so he just said he wouldn't hold me up anymore.

"Come by the house tomorrow."

He nodded and smiled sadly, then turned and went to the parking lot.