Ch 1: Not A Half Bad Half Brother
A First For Everything Ch 1: Not A Half Bad Half Brother copyright 2011, comidacomida
Most people who meet me are surprised to find out that Sullivan IS my real name... I guess they're expecting something more Dog-like... you know... like Born-at-Night or King-of-Everything. If you haven't spent any time around Dogs then you don't know I'm being serious-- I went to school when I was a pup with a Born-at-Night and I had King-of-Everything in an Algebra class with me in high school. Compared to other Dogs, "Sullivan" is a kinda weird name... pretty human-like, I guess, unless you hear the story behind it.
I grew up with my dad because my parents weren't married when I was born (my dad was an Akita, and usually they don't end up marrying outside their breed-- I think it's one of those tradition things). The way I heard it, he brought me home after winning custody (I don't remember it because I was still a newborn) and was looking around his place for ideas on what to call me. Eventually he sat down to look at his stock portfolio.
After going through his blue-chip stocks and passing on options like 'Nike' (Roman goddess? no thanks), 'Intel' (maybe if I went into the army), and 'P&G' (not even going to go there), my dad finally found 'Sullivan and McGinty' and settled on calling me Sullivan... so that's been my name ever-since. For awhile it was "Sullivan-is-Up", but explaining that that's embarrassment I'll save for another time.
Anyway, like I said, my folks weren't married when I was born so I lived with my dad... I guess I more lived in the same condo with him than actually spent time with him; he worked as a Corporate Procurement Officer for an L.A. based franchise of S&R LTD-- but I won't bore you with details. There were a few times I remember when my dad and I had a weekend together, but most of my time I spent with the nanny my dad hired to take care of me. Her name was Bright-and-Rosey, an older black lab who loved me like I was her own pup.
Rosey was my nanny for most of my pup years and she was the Dog I spent the most amount of time with so she was kinda like a mom and dad all rolled into one. She made me breakfast and dinner, took care of the laundry and made sure I was tucked in at night. She was the most important person in my life for my early pup years and was still in the top two for most of my school-- the only other Dog who held a candle to her was my half-brother, Jack-Daniels (he goes by JD). Of course, I didn't actually meet him until I was, like... two or three. I don't remember a lot from back then but I pretty much got most of the story figured out from what I heard later from him and from my mom.
See... my dad was always one of those kind of Dogs that thought adversity builds character, so he made sure I had a chance to meet my mom when I was still really young. My mom, a bull terrier named Runs-Into-Alleys lived over in Eastern Los Angeles. Now... you MIGHT think that Los Angeles is all glitz and glamor... at least that's how they show it on TV, but if you actually ever GO there you can see that not all of it is the glimmering city of beauty and commerce... there are some places, like most of East LA, that are... well... not.
Rita wasn't exactly what I'd call a loving mom, which I guess is fine because my dad wasn't exactly a loving dad. They each had their own styles for ignoring me-- my dad found his neglect in the hours and hours of work he had every day and my mom found her neglect at the bottom of a bottle. Other than Rosey, the only other person that didn't ignore me was JD. Even though it wasn't all that great at first, he kinda became the whole focus of my time at my mom's. Though it might be hard to believe if you looked at JD, he was my equivalent to Rosey when I spent time at my mom's house. You know... thinking of how that just came out, I know I'm gonna have to explain that one.
Like I said, I first met JD when I was around two or three because that's the first time my dad decided to let me go over there. Before then it was pretty much supervised visits with her in public places, either with Rosey along, or else under the care of some court appointed supervisor-- again-- that's second-paw information... two young, remember? Anyway, the first time I was allowed to spend time at Rita's place was something I could remember because it was just such a big change over anything else I'd done or any place I'd ever been.
My dad's condo was in downtown LA and we lived on a pretty high-up floor. He did okay for himself which meant that I spent the first few years getting used to a specific kind of surrounding and a certain kind of care (that is, being completely ignored by your father figure and having a hired nanny as your doting, loving, caring mother figure). I had tons of stuff to keep me busy, three square meals a day, lots of open space to 'chaos-around' in, but most of all, I had Rosey.
When I went to visit Rita and JD for three days everything really changed. Rita didn't really want anything to do with me and she spent most of her time watching TV or drinking... or both. What I ended up with over there was a different kind of care (being completely ignored by my mother figure and having an older half-brother as my grumbling, reluctant, eye-rolling father figure). I was pretty much on my own the first day, and I remember thinking that the small little dirty house was barely the size of my living room. Rita didn't feed me, and at first nobody wanted to play... and I had no Rosey.
My first real memory of JD was him yelling... well... him and Rita both yelling. I wasn't really used to yelling and I really didn't know what to think when Rita slapped him. I think I was scared because I remember crying. The two of them looked at me and I thought they were going to stat yelling at me next, so I started crying even more. For whatever reason their argument ended. Rita went back into the living room and started working in enlarging the pile of empty booze bottles around the sofa while JD stormed off into the kitchen. I stayed near the TV watching Rita until she said something like "Go away. Go bug someone else." She was drinking.
When you're really young any place you go feels really big because nothing is your size... somehow the house never really had that feeling to it, probably because I grew up in my dad's condo. It was only a few steps from the sofa to where the table sat, taking up two thirds of the kitchen. JD was sitting at the table and staring at the fake wood grain. His paw clenched and unclenched around a can of cola he held; it was open but it looked forgotten.
Something about his face reminded me of my dad, even if JD wasn't an Akita-- I think it was the disconnected, unhappy gaze of someone focusing more on what's in their mind than what they were looking at. I remember staring at him for awhile, watching a little droplet of red form on some white whiskers underneath his eye where Rita's ring had cut him when he was slapped... he ignored it just like he ignored me. He was probably about twelve back then I guess, but to me he looked like an old Dog.
I guess it's strange what you remember sometimes. I know Rita was drinking and JD had a can of cola in his paw and I don't know if I felt left out or what, but I remember seeing one of my juice boxes sitting on the table where Rita put it after lunch (JD made tuna sandwiches for everyone), and I really wanted it. Standing up on my tip-toes didn't help-- the table was just too big. I tried climbing and reaching but that didn't really do much... my fingers almost brushed the juice box a few times but I wasn't going to be successful... not without help.
"What're you doin, squirt?" JD asked, and I stopped right away. JD was looking at me and I didn't know how to respond.
"You want your juice?" he questioned. I think I was scared still because he was talking to me, like if I did something wrong he was going to start yelling at me like he did to Rita.
"Okay." he said. I remember he sounded really tired, kind of like my dad did when he got home after dinner time when I was getting tucked in. "Here ya go." and he reached across the table and slid the juice box to the edge. "Well?" he asked when I looked at it, "What are ya waiting for?"
I continued to look at him and he continued to look at me. In the end he sighed and stood up, "Whatever." and he walked off toward his room. Based on stories he's told me since, I grabbed the juice, followed right after him, and I was his shadow ever since. I know everybody has different brother experiences, and some people never had a brother so they haven't had one at all, but I think JD and I learned to get along so well because we weren't stuck with each other every day. The way he put it was "If you were my full brother you'd be here all the time and I'd probably try to kill you, but since you're my half brother you're not half bad." That's about as much of a compliment you can expect from JD unless one accidentally slips out.
He said most of the reason he didn't turn out as messed up as he could have been was because of me. He knew that Rita wasn't going to do it and I need to be looked after. And, if you're wondering, no, he wasn't magically the perfect older brother that never did anything wrong, but he tried... and I guess that must have accounted for something if JD was one of the things I always looked forward to when I visited Rita. Jack Daniels wasn't there for the first two years of my life, but I can't imagine what the rest of my early years would have been like without him.
In a way, JD was an older brother and a father and a mother all rolled into one... just don't mention that I said 'mother', or it'll get back to me... and that'd be bad. He made my visits with Rita worthwhile, and I think I could say for certain that he was probably my very first friend. That connection became a lot more important several years down the road when my dad died... heart issue. I was nine years old, and it really changed everything.
The first few weeks after my dad died weren't all that bad, really. He wasn't ever a major part of my life so not having him around didn't make that much of a difference. I guess that sounds kinda cold, but if you've ever lost a distant family member you saw two or three times a year then just think of that-- yea... my dad was distant too. Things were the hardest to get used to when that school year ended and the changes started to happen. The first thing was probably one of the worst: Rosey was dismissed-- the lawyer didn't think her services were worth the cost.
Like any well-prepared corporate executive, my dad had a will completed and updated. Even after he died he had everything spelled out for me with efficient and ordered clarity, completed with the "I"s dotted and the "T"s crossed. Since I had no other immediate family it was determined that I would be put into Rita's custody with funds from my dad's estate disbursed to her for seeing to my needs. The overseer of my dad's estate, a friend of his who worked at a lawyer's office-- I've had a chance to get to know that friend really well... Ron has kinda been running my dad's finances (on my behalf) ever since.
It was Ron's job to make sure that I was being taken care of and that all of my important expenses were covered. He worked as my trust officer, taking care of the money my dad left for me (a pretty big amount from what I'm told) that I'll get when I'm twenty three. I guess, according to him, a lot of kids and teens who lose their parents become spoiled brats because they expect to own the world when their funds get disbursed, but he's always told me that he's really proud how well I turned out considering the circumstances (that's his nice, business-like way of talking crap about my mom).
I moved into the house with Rita and JD, which was a bit of a surprise for them both. I was really unhappy about having Rosey out of my life, but I guess I got a consolation prize in the fact that I would be living with JD; things just didn't seem that bad with him around. It was weird for him, I guess, having his little half-brother move in. It was a major adjustment, I guess... to say the least.
At first Rita said that we were going to share a room, but that lasted about two days-- in the end, I got the living room... but, even with JD wanting his own privacy, he didn't complain the three or four times when I slept in his bed with him while I got used to my new home. If stuff seemed bad after my dad dying and losing Rosey, they got so much worse when he announced that he was going to be moving out and heading up north to go to college with his boyfriend (that did NOT go over well with Rita).
That was the real moment that everything felt like it was falling apart... like all the important people in my life were going away and I was stuck with a woman who was more interested in a bottle than in her own son. I got his room, but I would have rather had JD. I remember thinking one night that the best part of my life was gone-- everyone who meant something to me was out of my life and the woman who was supposed to be there for me was more there for the booze and the supplemental check she got from my dad's estate. The biggest surprise around that time, though, was the fact that Rita proved me wrong.
It was right around my tenth birthday when things in my new home started changing for the better. The first thing I noticed was that no new empty bottles appeared in the house. Later came the disappearance of already-placed bottles. Although Rita still got home late at night she didn't come in stumbling-- instead of going to the bar she was actually taking night classes. She started waking up before me, which meant she (most of the time) had a school lunch packed. It wasn't a flawless system, but it was obvious she was trying.
Once I was in Junior High, Rita was finally starting to get the mom thing down. She managed to have dinner ready at a reasonable hour more often than not and, even though it was usually pizza, fast food, or microwavable dinners, it was a warm meal. Believe it or not, for my eighth grade year she even migrated dinner from in front of the TV to the dinner table. Things were looking up and I can say that something happened I didn't think would be possible: I was happy living with Rita... mostly happy.
I guess, even with Rita improving so much and becoming someone a mom should be, I still missed Rosey. It had been almost a third of my life since I saw her, but she was such an important part of the first two thirds that she couldn't just disappear without a big hole being left. The same thing could be said for JD. In his case he left such a huge impression on me, he MADE my new life-- at a time I really needed someone he was the one that was there. Between not having Rosey and not having JD there was a big empty place where something should have been and, no matter how much Rita tried (and believe me, she did a lot better than I ever would have expected), there was always something missing... but, my god, she never stopped trying... which I guess is what explained the change of scenery.
After finishing her classes at the community college, she only had to pass the bar to become licensed to practice as a CNA. I think she was more surprised than I was when the score came back; I told her that she was going to pass the exam-- she did. Yea... it was by 2 points, but she still practiced. There weren't any jobs in the immediate area, but she managed to pick up some part time work. With a few extra bucks it only made sense that she looked at the next step to improve her life-- well... OUR life.
It was right before my freshman year of high school when Rita decided that we needed a change of scenery. I'm not sure if it was due to her new view of what family life should be about, her need to escape the surroundings of what had been her previous life, or maybe just the need to run somewhere fresh and new... I guess it could also have had something to do with the six stabbings in a single school year at the high school I was supposed to go to-- either way, she gave notice to the landlord and we headed north out of Los Angeles.
Rita had lived in Southern California her whole life, so we didn't go THAT far... a good sized town called Valencia just over the mountains. It was a pretty nice place if you ignored the cookie-cutter suburb houses that Orange County is so famous for (and the fact that your neighbor is so close that you can hear em say "Bless you" when you sneeze. Still, it was a lot better than the neighborhood we were at before so any complaints I could come up with are pretty much just nit picking... not to mention the fact that the high school I'd be attending didn't have the same kind of problems with... you know... people getting killed.
I was really proud of what she was able to accomplish. Rita got a job at a local nursing home. It was an entry position but, according to their director, the CNA there was going to transfer in a few months to a state hospital and she was a shoe-in as a replacement. And, at home, she was really becoming the kind of Dog someone might call a "mom-figure". Life was starting to come together and, no matter what I missed about life before, it was something I could grab onto and it helped me live in the moment.
I still missed Rosey and I still missed JD. They were two important people that left my life, but I knew I couldn't dwell on it. Rita could tell, I'm sure... which is I guess why, on the last week of summer vacation, we had a visitor. I went to the mall (Rita gave me two hundred dollars to pick up what I'd need for clothes) and, when I got back, there was a second car in the drive way. Walking into the house I issued my standard "Rita, I'm home!". The squeal of glee that came from the kitchen wasn't the standard response.
In a furry flurry of black blur, Rosey was right there, lifting me into the air like she used to do when I was a tiny pup (to this day I still don't know how she managed it-- I was like, at least twice as heavy as when I was little!). Rita had spent a month tracking her down; she knew just how much Rosey meant to me. A visit from my old nanny would have been the greatest gift Rita ever could have given me... but she ended up making it even better.
Rosey had just been laid off by her previous employer but things turned around pretty fast for her when Rita learned that my old nanny was looking for a place where the rent was cheap. Rita didn't invite Rosey over as a guest... she invited her to move in. It was my turn to pick Rosey up in a huge hug. Strange how a complete life could get even more complete-- it felt like everything was falling into place. I felt like I found somewhere I belonged and that my family loved me... my first mom and my second mom, I guess you could say... I had em both.
Yea... it was complete... well... ALMOST complete; there was still a big, dopey, lunky, older-brother hole where JD should have been. I was able to avoid focusing on it for awhile though because high school was more than enough to take up my attention. It was freshman year and I was in a new neighborhood surrounded by tons of teens I didn't know... but I think that's a story for another time.