The Writer Pt. 4

Robert stood in the entrance hall of his baby sister’s massive home. He dreaded coming here, because it was more or less the same each time he visited.

‘Oh big brother, guess what? My office has chosen me as Worker of The Year and The Commonwealth wants to do a piece on me. How fitting.’

She’d rub into Robert. Abby was always being awarded for something in her life, no matter how mundane. She especially reserved the announcement until she had her big brother Robert within earshot. Or if she wasn’t boasting about another one of her many accolades, he’d hear:

‘Andrea, darling, I pity you for being matched with a lesser man. Brother, you know my adoration for you, but you don’t try hard. Not like my Chadwick.’

Robert moved forward towards the kitchen and common area like the electric chair was the final destination. To his right, the pictures and murals hung of Andrea and her numerous exploits across England and all of greater Europe. Robert always wondered why Chadwick was subjected to the back of the pictures, or never featured. He was just as impetuous and vain as his incapable-of-loving-anyone-else wife.

Robert began to notice a trend with the pictures. The further down the hall he went, they were descending in time, getting younger. This made Robert nervous. He was seeing less of an adult Abby, and more of a teenager, and now child Abby. He wanted more than anything to not to have to remember his shortcomings as a growing boy.

“Marvelous, isn’t it?” a snapping, curt voice nearly sang. Robert stopped in his tracks, squeezed his eyes shut, and like an actor jumping into character, turned toward his sister and rushed to show her what love looked like.

“Sister! I came as soon as I heard you required me,” Robert said as he greeted his sister and kissed both cheeks on her face. Abby had a tall, lean frame, who leaned more to the right and always had a fabulous smoke in the left hand. She kept her yellow hair short:

‘It’s all the style these days.’

She’d say. Abby had a beautiful face, but wore a smile that inspired the invidious position she was frequently apart of. Her makeup was in place, but Robert thought this day she was… off. Her snow-like skin and sunny hair on a perfect afternoon looked mismatched. This snowy, cold, and dreary morning made her look dead pale and more tired than a house mother of four.

“You look tired little sister, what has kept you awake?” Robert stated ever so unsympathetically. Abby reacted as if she had been shot by Mark David Chapman himself. She pushed past Robert and unskillfully glided to the very first picture on the wall of Abby. She rubbed her fingers on it ever so softly, as if it had a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hanging, but the touch was worth breaking the rules over and over. She pulled her fingers back and looked back at Robert with a brusque smile.

“This will always be my favorite day Robert. Always. Look how happy I am. Father threw me a magnificent birthday party and told me I’d be beautiful and popular enough to have all I ever wanted,” Abby stated as her voice trailed off as if she might cry. “And there… in the back you can be found crying. Pity.” Abby remarked, cheering herself up a bit.

“Delusions. It was my birthday. You were selfish,” said Robert through past realizations that had begun to resurface.

“Brother, father wanted to throw a party. I had more friends, so I figured if you didn’t want it, I’ll have it. It was a day I’ll never forget,” Abby said as if it were to cheer Robert up.

“Rubbish!” Robert barked. “It was my birthday and I wanted something small with our family. If you hadn’t thrown such a fuss, father wouldn’t have had to be guilted into pleasing you,” Robert asserted. Abby nodded and walked away. Robert reluctantly followed.

Robert sat the end of the long, wooden, quite marvelous kitchen table, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and avoiding eye contact with Abby. She sat at the opposite end of the table and starred daggers at Robert, who would smile awkwardly. Her leg started to shake faster than a horse racing The Royal Ascot. Robert leaned over to the side of the illustrious expensive Rain Tree table to watch her leg shake and thought for a moment how much he could wager if he signed her up to race the other horses. Moans and ghoulish sounds could be heard from far down the clean, white, empty hall way.

“Today is day number ninety, Abby. Do you have any idea what that might mean to me?” Robert asked, attempting to fill the cold, crispy dry spell. A grown man moaning and emitting ghoulish sounds could still be heard, yet Robert wanted all he could to distract.

“The same thing it meant the eighty-nine other days before today. I know. We all kn-” Abby began to say before the phone rang and she jumped up so fast, she gave poor ole Robert such a scare he fell backwards in his chair.

“Hi! Thank you for calling me back-,” Abby said before she abruptly stopped. “No! He’s weak. He’s turned into a weak man. When we got married he said I’d be pampered and kept happy or else risk losing me-” Abby said before stopping again. “I’ve tried! His phone is going straight to voicemail and his receptionist is a twat,” Abby said as she sat back in the black steel chair. “Oh! You’re the receptionist… I’m sorry. I’m having a bad day?” Abby tried to say, but turned into a question. She removed the phone from her ear and just starred at the screen, before looking back at Robert with doleful and tear-filled eyes.

“I need you to visit Dr. Feeny. I’d go, but I’m afraid I’ll never come home again,” Abby said honestly. Robert balked at the very idea.

“I will not. Today I cannot have these kinds of interruptions. Just call the doctor, I’m sure he’ll help you over the phone,” Robert said, motioning his arms as if to say “no way.”

“Robert I-I can’t do this. I didn’t sign up for this,” Abby blurted out, all the while turning around constantly checking the black cat clock, with a ticking tail, and the telephone next to it. “This man has been ill all week. He is a-a big baby,” Abby continued. She walked to Robert and squatted next to him, placing her head in his lap. “Brother, when we got married, I thought I’d be the one taken care of. I didn’t know he’d be a big lump about a common illness. I looked it up ya know? It’s a cold- a common cold and listen to him,” Abby said as she stared into Robert’s eyes. Moans and more moans could be heard. It was depressing and awkward. “You’d think he’s dying!” Abby sharply said.

“Maybe we can talk about me for a bit and take your mind off things. Plus sickness affects men differently than women. But-but It might help for you to pay attention to someone other than yourself,” Robert tried to reason. She just stared back at Robert and in that moment with her gloomy and dejected face, Robert knew he’d do anything for his baby sister, even if it meant her passing her stress like the baton onto his own. Deep down, he knew she didn’t have many people she could call upon, no matter how critical or exaggerated her needs were. This was simply a permanent transaction of the person she had become and the people she didn’t have any more outside of her big brother Robert.