Brother Naked

Walking down the corridor running off at the mouth he puts his foot in it, again.

"...now I go in there unprepared and they say 'brother' and I say 'naked' I'm gonna be explaining myself away for the next two weeks."

Of course the minute he says it Fraser's on him like a hawk on a titmouse. 'You'd say naked?'

Oh dear.

"Well you know my brother and me, we used to take baths together when we were younger."

"It just seems like an odd response."

You could tell Fraser had never had a brother.

Funny when you think of it, how you fight with someone every day like cat and dog, but you never think that it will ever really end. Some relationships, they're so much part of you that you can't imagine them being gone. Little Paulie walked, and Ray blames himself.

For a start he should have stopped calling him Little Paulie.

"I'm not a baby," his dimple kneed brother was crying because Ray wouldn't let him play.

"You won't like this game, it's for big boys."

The game was marbles, and the big boys were only eighteen months older than little crying Paulie, but for Ray it was an exclusive club, him and three others. Who wanted a little brother tagging along?

Perhaps he should have let him play.

But you know, Little Paulie didn't have it all bad. The old man tended to overlook him... God knows why. And when Pa did notice him and bring out the fist Ray would get between them as often as he could. That should have counted for something.

And Little Paulie grew up to be Paul, and married Angelina. Only photos remain, the whole clan grinning, baby Raimondo in his happy uncle's arms. The baby's puckered rose of a mouth, his soft peach cheeks, that long solemn gaze, trapped in the camera's amber, dressed in family lace.

Ray hasn't seen baby Raimondo in years. He hasn't seen the nephews and the niece who followed. His brother is a silence on the phone, and he stopped trying to call him a long time ago.

The last fight, it was the last fight that did it, and it was the same as always. It was always the old man.

Paulie stands with his fists clenched, a grown man now in the stance of a little boy, pouting about marbles. "I can't believe you're letting him do this. I'm his son too, he should have left something to me."

"It's only because we're all still living there. He knows if I keep the house that I'll keep the family. What with Ma, and the girls, and the kids and the cousins, there's ten of us in there. If he gave the house to both of us then we might decide to split it and sell, and he wouldn't want that. He knows that you're set up okay."

"Yeah, right, because he always cared so much about Ma, about keeping a roof over our heads."

Ray says nothing, because the boy has a point.

"You know he's only done this so that we'd fight, one last gift from Pa... well, I wish you joy of it."

"Paulie," Ray tries to follow him, but his brother throws up his hand, palm out, like slamming a door in his face. "Paulie, come back."

"No, no, you have what you wanted. You were always his favourite."

"He had his funny way of showing it. You know how often I stood up for you?"

"Yeah, and didn't that make you proud. What did it make me? You know, sometimes I'd have killed for him to hit me. He never even saw me. Little baby Paulie, can't stick up for himself. Well, I'm done. I know when I'm not wanted, and he never wanted me."

"Paulie..." Ray's voice fades into silence, and his brother is gone.

Florida, what do you find to do in Florida all day?

He hasn't had a brother since, until now. Benny, walking with his hands behind his back, always in a military stance, even when relaxing.

Yeah, brothers are a pain. They get in under your skin, and leave you naked.