The Brother from Hell

 

Mick - 13 years old

When he was 13, my brother Micky convinced my 10-year-old sister Debbie to explore our new Grand Island neighborhood. Debbie, skipping down the streets with her jump rope, was delighted to accompany her big brother on this pleasant excursion. She shouldn’t have been so shocked when Mick abruptly hauled her over to a stranger’s front porch and tied her to the railing with the jump rope - then rang the doorbell and ran away. She shouldn’t have been shocked because, well, this was Mick. Vintage Mick. It’s what he did. 

The Brother from Hell turns 65 today, and for an entire year my ten siblings and I have looked forward to this day like it was Christmas. At long last we planned to have our day to shame Mick for every hideous humiliation he ever subjected us to when we were kids. 

Except that he abruptly announced he wouldn’t be attending his own birthday party.

“No way,” he groaned. “Let’s leave that young Micky in the past where he belongs.” Now a successful business owner and loving family man, he had no desire to revisit his ill-spent youth. We, on the other hand, had spent the last 365 days planning our revenge and refused to be cheated out of it simply because Mick was suffering from late-in-life pangs of remorse.

“That’s fine,” I said. “If you don’t want a party, I’ll write a blog instead. That way your wife and kids and grandkids and former classmates and neighbors and business associates and Aunt MaryLee and Uncle Al and even your pastor can read about how you mistreated us and made our lives completely miserable. I mean - if that’s what you’d prefer instead.”

Mick, third from right, with his wife
Lori and children

I sent this message in a group text inviting my brothers and sisters to send their worst stories about Mick for the blog. After a long silence, Mick responded with the single emoji of a perfectly suspended middle finger.

Who did he think he was? Game on, little brother.

My siblings were equally incensed, and subsequent group texts were filled with Mick’s atrocious behavior as an adolescent. I had forgotten many of them - stories terrible enough to ruin a man’s good name.

Were we willing to share them with an entire community of family and friends, I wondered?  It was a very long time ago. Perhaps it was best to let bygones be bygones. What was the point of sharing Mick’s sins with everybody he knows? Some of his mistreatment was pretty tame, after all - like the way he used to revel in pinning my sisters and me to the floor every time he ate Oreos and drool out long wads of chocolate spit to dangle perilously close to our faces. Sometimes he sucked it all back up. Sometimes he didn’t.

And there was the time Mick ordered our little brother Tommy to the basement, before Dad arrived home, to clean up the dog vomit  -  which Tommy hastily did and which turned out to be Mick’s vomit.

But that was kid stuff. Aside from those harmless pranks, wouldn’t people be fairly shocked to hear that Mick set our mother’s enormous garden on fire?

My little brother Mick - before 
he was possessed by Satan

“To heck with this,” he said one summer afternoon, throwing down his hoe when he and our little sister Terri were supposed to be pulling rows and rows of weeds. “Get the gasoline,” he commanded Terri, who fetched the gas and obediently stood by as Mick doused the weeds, struck a match, and was amazed when the entire garden exploded into flames around him. It was the end of Mom’s garden. And very nearly the end of Mick.

Our sister Mary was usually Mick’s victim. He could be merciless. One winter evening we were playing hide-and-go-seek in the house. Gleefully, Mick turned on the clothes drier as soon as he realized Mary was hiding in it. It was only two or three spins, but Mary was furious.

My youngest sister Carry will never forget the day Mick invited her to McDonald’s.

“Order whatever you want. It’s on me,” he said. Carry happily ordered a burger and coke while Mick chowed down on two Big Macs, a large order of fries, and an extra large shake to wash it all down. Carry had no idea she’d just treated herself and Mick to a large meal until she arrived home and discovered her empty billfold.

There’s no reason to resurrect all that anger, though. Besides, my sisters and I ultimately exacted our revenge in 1972. Yes, I remember the date. Enough was enough. Just that week he’d locked me in my room with his horrible screaming Cockatiel, a bird the size of a small hawk, and laughed at my cries of terror. Then he jumped with my little sister Terri on Mom and Dad’s big bed and bounced Terri so high that her head banged the window sill and required three stitches. During that same week, he painstakingly planted a quarter in Mary’s Fig Newton which nearly broke her front teeth in half.

Livid, we carried our plan into action and hid ourselves all over the house waiting patiently for an unsuspecting Mick to walk through the front door. As soon as he was halfway through the living room, the five of us howled murderously, tackled him, and dragged him to the floor. 

Then we beat the crap out of him.

Even my four-year-old sister Carry straddled his back and pummeled him with her tiny fists.  Not a day before or since has given us anything close to the satisfaction we enjoyed in that moment more than 50 years ago.

Even though our brother Joe was pretty immune to Mick’s torture and brothers Jeff and Nolan were too young, Mick did goad Rick and Tom once in a while. Rick was a year younger than Mick and a gifted athlete. When he was in the fifth grade, he won the MVP award for the Denver Athletic Club football league. Not only did he receive a small trophy for his achievements, but he also took home a football autographed by the Denver Broncos. Joe, not long before, won the Denver Duncan Yoyo contest, so it could have been that Mick was feeling a little underappreciated. His only achievement that year was the construction of a small clubhouse in an unobtrusive spot behind our house which he dubbed "Paradise Alley". It had to be unobtrusive because Mick and the only other member of his club, our next door neighbor Bobby Smith, had sneaked in Bobby's dad's PLAYBOY magazines - thus, the inspiration for "Paradise". It didn't take long for Mr. Smith to discover the missing issues of his vast collection or for our parents to discover the discreet little clubhouse in the alley, and Mick was grounded for a month.

Rick, Mick and Joe - 1964

His nose a little out of joint, Mick took possession of Rick's well-deserved trophy and, as Rick watched, grinned and dropped it out a second floor window to send it crashing into the driveway below. Rick, in thunderous rage, reached for his newly autographed football to fling at Mick's head only to realize it was missing. Mick had thought of everything. Rick never saw that football again.

But Rick exacted his revenge, too, many years later when he cleverly managed to resurrect Mick’s senior picture. Mom had purchased Mick a powder blue leisure suit and paisley shirt for his big picture day back in 1976. At the time Mick was quite taken with the ensemble. However, when Mom picked up his senior photo and made soft cooing noises over it, Mick was horrified to discover that in it he appeared astonishingly effeminate. The paisley and blue did nothing to dampen the gentleness of his smile or the soft glow of his eyes. He could have been one of our sisters.

“What a pretty picture,” Mom murmured in delight.

Mick's senior pic

The rest of us crowed with laughter, and when Mom hung it in the tv room, Mick could hardly stand it. One day, before Mom could find out, he ripped it off the wall and destroyed it - determined to remove all evidence of its very existence. None of us thought we'd ever see that picture again.

Rick, however, many decades later, found it in the Grand Island Central Catholic High School photo composite and immediately took a picture on his phone. He sent it to every one of us. Quite honestly, it’s our most prized possession. If any of us had to flee from our burning homes, Mick’s senior photo would be the first thing we'd rescue.

In a group text, it occasionally pops up in the middle of some intense conversation, and we all scream with laughter. Mick still hates that photo and has pleaded with us to stop posting it.

Really, it would be a shame if everybody in Mick’s life took a good, long look at that photo. Or heard about the way he tortured us. 

That being said, he could have had the damn birthday party. 

Mick, you might be 65-years-old, but you’re still my little brother. Don’t ever forget it. What’s that they say about karma? Oh yes - that when you screw around with your big sister, it always comes back to bite you.

Happy birthday, Micky. Insert middle finger emoji here.