Prodigal ( From the Book "A Beautiful Mess" )

   My oldest brother was my mother's favorite. Mike could do no wrong. He was the reason she married my father. She fussed over him like he was the crown prince. My father, on the other hand, despised him. I usually was of the same mind as my father.  My father called him "Testa del pene*", and "Goo goo". My brother was a fuck up.

 By the time I was eight my brother's profiles of stupidity were legendary. It got so bad that whenever my mother heard a siren she would say “That's your brother”. The sorry thing about it was that she was usually right.

  When he was nine or ten Mike was out with my other brother, Steve, playing in the woods. They came across a hornet's nest that someone had knocked down. Steve gave it a wide berth, but not Mike. He kicked it. Steve saw just what was about to happen and ran, so he only got stung a little. Mike lingered and got the full brunt of hornet anger. By the time he got home Mike was a lumpy mess. My mother rushed him to the emergency room and they shot him full of epinephrine. Until this day, if Mike gets stung by even ONE bee, someone had better take him to the hospital QUICK.

  Another time my mother, my sister Judy and I were walking home from downtown. I remember it was winter, and cold. The boys had been playing hockey on the (mostly) frozen Rockaway River when someone shot the puck out onto the thin ice in the middle of the river.

“Hey, look, there's a row boat. we can tie a rope to it and push Mike out to the middle. He can get the puck, then we'll pull him back.”

  (It was always Mike. He was the only one stupid enough to do most anything anyone suggested)

  So they got the boat out on the ice, Mike got in, and they pushed him out. Of course, the ice wouldn't hold a rowboat. That's why they called it thin ice. The boys couldn't pull the boat in, so they panicked and ran. (Or else they left him there on purpose.Mike was the kind of kid they'd do that to.) That was the first (but not the last) time I heard my mother utter that prophetic phrase “That's your brother” when she heard the rescue siren.

  The following summer Mike and his friend Tommy were barefoot, walking across a submerged dock. It was old, with nails protruding from most of the boards (Let's see how long it takes for you to figure out what happens next) Yep. The nail went right through Mike's foot. That was the NEXT time I heard my mother say her catchphrase. “That's your brother.”  Sirens?Of course. By this time, we were already answering "Yep".

   My father traveled a lot as a truck driver, so he always heard the stories afterwards. And promptly got a hold of Mike and tried to beat the stupid out of him. It never worked. All through High School his nicknames were "Harpo", and"Nauga"

   The story that went down in the annals of family folklore was one that almost became a memory to me, though of course I was too young at the time to have remembered it. We were at Lake Ronkonkoma. Now, by then my mother was already a hefty woman in an old lady's black one piece suit. (I remember the suit. She had it for years) She was sitting on our blanket when she heard her precious boy chick cry, and looked out to the water.There was Mike, going down for the second time. There was no third time. If there was one thing my mother could do, it was swim. My father said she looked like a huge, black torpedo skimming through the water. Her Baby was safe. (Later on in my life I wondered what would have happened had she not heard in time. My life certainly would have been different.)

   But my mother never wavered in her devotion to Mike. She had even named him after her brother, the one who threatened to have my father killed if he didn't marry her. Uncle Mike was smart, though. Not Brother Mike. There was only one thing similar about Uncle Mike and Brother Mike. They both loved their sisters just a bit too much.

© Rose Aiello Morales 2013

*Testa del pene ~Literally, "Penis head"