Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Living Room
Before we could leave, my mother appeared at the side of the truck.
Eleanor was sixty-eight, a woman who had spent forty-five years managing Richard Vance’s temper by making herself as small and quiet as possible. She held a cardboard box containing the leftover sheet cake Ethan had blown the candles off of, wrapped haphazardly in aluminum foil.
Her eyes were rimmed with red. "David," she whispered.
I walked over and met her halfway. "Mom."
"You shouldn't have done that here," she said, her voice shaking with quiet despair. "You know how your father is. You know he won't let this go. It’s going to tear the whole family apart."
"Mom," I said, keeping my tone as gentle as I could while remaining firm, "Dad tore this family apart twenty years ago when he decided Daniel could do no wrong and I was an employee who stepped out of line. But I took that. I took it my whole adult life. What I will *not* take is him doing it to Ethan."
"He was trying to teach him a lesson about ambition!" she argued, though even to her own ears, the defense sounded pathetic. "He thought... he thought Ethan was too complacent. He wanted to light a fire under him."
"By giving him a ten-dollar McDonald’s card while giving Mason a car?" I looked down into her eyes until she was forced to look away. "If that’s what Richard Vance calls lighting a fire, then he’s a fool. That wasn't a lesson, Mom. That was cruelty. He wanted to see Ethan look small. He wanted to feel like a king distributing breadcrumbs to the peasants."
Eleanor looked down at the foil-covered cake in her arms. A single tear slipped down her cheek and soaked into the gray cardboard. "Mason is going to state this year, David. Richard just wanted him to have reliable transportation to Dublin and Upper Arlington for practice."
"And Ethan works forty hours a week between my site and Grandpa’s backyard," I said. "Does that not count as reliable need? Or does labor only count when you're swinging an aluminum bat?"
She had no answer. She had never had an answer for Richard’s double standards.
Just then, the sliding screen door opened again, and Daniel walked down the concrete steps toward us. He had his hands jammed deep into his khakis, his chin thrust forward in the posture he always assumed when he was about to give a presentation to an unhappy client.
"Eleanor," Daniel said smoothly, "Dad wants you inside. He needs his blood pressure medication."
My mother flinched, nodded quickly, handed me the box of cake, and hurried toward the house without another word.
Daniel waited until she was through the door before turning his attention to me. "You feel like a big man now, Dave?"
"I feel like a father who took care of his son," I replied, handing the cake box through the Tacoma's open window to Ethan. "You should try it sometime without Dad’s checkbook doing the heavy lifting."
Daniel’s face tightened. "Don't give me that high-and-mighty blue-collar crap. You deliberately sabotaged this day. Dad has been planning this Civic gift for three months. He wanted it to be a milestone for the family. He wanted Mason to feel special."
"And why did Mason need to feel special at the direct expense of Ethan?" I asked, stepping closer to my brother until I was invading his personal space. "Tell me that, Dan. Explain the logic to me. Why couldn't Dad give Mason the car privately on his actual birthday three weeks from now? Why did he have to bring two envelopes to a joint party?"
Daniel shifted his weight, his eyes darting toward the lawn before returning to mine. "Dad wanted Ethan to realize that there's a difference between just getting by and excelling. Mason has Division I scouts looking at him. He’s representing the Vance name out there."
I let out a short, harsh bark of laughter. "The Vance name? We’re not the Vanderbilts, Daniel. Dad was a middle manager at an auto parts depot, and you sell homeowner policies out of a strip mall next to a dry cleaner. What Vance name are you protecting?"
"We're building something!" Daniel hissed, his voice dropping into a snarl. "Mason has a future that doesn't involve wearing steel-toed boots and smelling like concrete dust! Dad sees that! He wanted to reward it!"
From inside the truck, the passenger door clicked open.
Sarah stepped out. She didn't say a word to Daniel. She simply walked around the bed of the truck, opened the front passenger door, climbed inside, and pulled the door shut with absolute finality.
I looked at Daniel. "You think you're better than this work," I said, pointing down at my boots. "Dad thought he was better than it, too, even though he spent forty years managing the warehouses where men like me loaded the pallets. But let me tell you something, little brother: when the economy turns, and people stop buying travel baseball packages and luxury insurance riders, the world still needs guys who know how to keep the foundations from cracking. Ethan knows how to build. Mason knows how to hold his hand out."
"You're jealous," Daniel said, though his voice lacked conviction now. "You've been jealous of me since high school."
"I don't think about you at all, Daniel," I said evenly. "Now get out of the way. My son is driving us home."
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Daniel stood there for three seconds, his jaw clenched so tight the tendons stood out against his neck. Then he turned on his heel and marched back toward the house, his polished shoes squeaking awkwardly against the damp summer grass.
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