I Say Too Much

“Help me?” he stepped forward, “I don’t need your help.”

Patience. Breaking point. I’d had enough.

And maybe I would say too much.

“You don’t have the first clue about what you need, Eddie. You don’t know because you don’t know yourself. But I do.”

He scoffed, “You don’t know me.”

“Oh but I do. Middle child with two successful brothers. Older brother, Mitch, is all-state, graduating next year. Gonna be a quarterback, get drafted, win two championship rings. Younger brother Roger is a genius and you hate the fact that he skipped two grades which put him in your classes but more than that you hate that when he joined your classes what few friends you had became his.

“Your mother, Martha, is a criminal defense attorney. She specializes in keeping assholes out of jail and she never had time for you. You worry that when she looks at you, she only sees you as one of her clients. Like you’re someone she’ll need to bail out of jail for something that goes beyond youthful indiscretions, something truly heinous because you think you’ve got it in yourself.

“But all of them you could deal with. You could deal with the success of your brothers, your mother, but you can’t deal with the absolute lack of it where your father is concerned.

“The house husband, that’s what you call him. Never got his name because you clearly don’t think it’s worthwhile to give him one, you don’t think he’s earned one. While your mom had her successful career, he stayed home to care for you and keep the house clean and neat and tidy and you think that made him weak. You think that he’s not a real man for that. You think that he’s less than you and more than that you’re terrified you’ll become him, not recognizing that he is a good and kind man who would fucking slit his own wrists if it meant that his kids could be happy.”

Eddie stared at me speechless as I told all of this to him, the words spilling out from my lips entirely out of my control. These were things that he’d said in confidence or things that he’d said when we’d reached the bottom of the bottle. This was shit that he kept from everyone, but not from me and who we’d been to each other.

“What else? Do you want more, Eddie? Do you want me to tell more, to prove that I know you?

“How about the fact that everyone in your family calls you Ed, except for your father who calls you Edward. None of them call you Eddie and you hate the name Eddie, frankly, but that’s the one name they don’t call you so you go by that to everyone else.

“How about the fact that Mitch was planned and Roger was an accident. You were a choice, but your mom couldn’t afford the time off from her career so you were born via surrogate while each of your brothers was not and you hate them for that, you wonder whether maybe they switched up the egg or the sperm and that you’re not really related to them but you know that you are, you just don’t want to admit it.

“How about the fact that you don’t want to even be taking your major? The degree you’re getting was a compromise between you and your parents, or they call it one at least. Truthfully they got what they wanted and you didn’t. You want to be a photographer. You want to shoot movies. You want to do anything but get what you see as a useless degree in liberal arts that will get you nowhere and so you’re already planning to not do anything, hoping that a few failing grades will show them that you’re not cut out for this and they’ll leave you alone to pursue your real passion but you’re wrong. They’re going to make you keep going here even though you have to take an extra year and even though you’ll graduate with no connections, with no means to get out there in the world and get any success as anything other than pushing paper in a fucking cubicle and that’s where you’ll wind up. That’s the fucking path you’re on, Eddie.

"That and so much worse."

Breathing heavily I stopped and stared daggers at him. Pale and shocked, eyes wide and swaying a bit from the drink, Eddie listened intently.

“But it doesn’t have to be. I don’t want it to have to be that. I want to help you, Eddie. But you’re too busy being an asshole to see that.”

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