Two years ago
“Wake up! Dad puked in his bed,” I shouted directly into my brother’s ear.
Oscar rolled over and squinted. “What?”
I reached down and yanked the blanket off him. “Dad puked. Get up and help me.”
We ran across the hall and stood at the foot of Dad’s bed. My dad was covered in spaghetti-sauce puke, and the room smelled like a mixture of an Italian restaurant and the floor at the bar. “I’ll roll him over to the one side, and you grab the sheets.”
Oscar opened his mouth as if he had something to say but then closed it.
“What?”
“He’ll get the mattress dirty.”
“Yeah.” I snorted. “’Cause he’s not already covered in the shit or anything. It doesn’t frigging matter.” I tried to find the least puke-covered portion of his body, and there wasn’t one. I ran into his bathroom and grabbed a towel. I wasn’t a pussy, but I didn’t want it on my hands. I rolled him once, and he didn’t make a sound. Oscar reluctantly got to work removing the sheets from the one side. Then I rolled him back, and Oscar finished the job. “Wash them in—”
He cut me off. “Hot. I know. I’ve done this before.”
We always let Dad sleep the day away and did our own things. Even though I was pretty sure he was done throwing up, I still rolled him onto his side. Just in case. He was the only parent I had left.
I heard the laundry going, and Oscar’s classical bullshit music blared from his room. What fourteen-year-old dude listened to that?
I grabbed my lacrosse stick from my room and banged on his closed door with the handle. “Turn it down. You’re gonna wake up Dad.”
He turned it down, and I shook my head in the empty hallway.