A Song for Julia

“She’s not my girlfriend.”
    “Holy Moses, you got yourself a girlfriend?” Tony asked. “How did that happen?”
    “She’s not my girlfriend.”
    “Then why is she coming to your brother’s birthday party?” my dad asked. He grinned.
    “Because you asked her to come?”
    “Eghhh, only because you wouldn’t.”
    I shook my head. It was going to be a very long afternoon. Tony went rummaging in the fridge for a beer, so I said, “Toss me one, Tony?”
    He did, and I sat back in my seat at the table. “What time’s Mom getting here?”
    “Soon,” Dad said.
    I nodded.
    Let me clarify one thing. Yeah, I’ve got way too much hostility toward my mom. It’s not that she was a bad mom. In fact, in some ways I’d say the opposite. She gave me my love of music and started teaching me piano years before I was able to reach the pedals. I’ve got a lot of good memories—of going with her to the park when I was a little kid, of her taking me to the museum, having picnics at the park, going out to Revere Beach. I was probably ten or so when Mom and Dad realized there was a problem with Sean, and the rounds of doctor visits started. Two, sometimes three times a week by the time he was six. Speech therapy, physical therapists, vision therapists, allergists. When he was six, we spent all night in the waiting room at Brigham and Women’s while he was going through a sleep study to determine if he had sleep apnea.
    My mom started to fade. That’s the only term I can use. Her temper became shorter over time; she’d lose it over the smallest things. If I left a sock on the floor, that was worth a ten-minute lecture. What kind of example are you setting for your brother? What will your father think? Why can’t you be more responsible?
    By the time I was thirteen, my daily existence was trying to stay the hell out of her way. Her face was set in a permanent frown, she was stressed to the hilt, and the mother who had taken me to Revere Beach, the mother who had laughed with me while making cupcakes as a little kid—she had all but disappeared. And it only got worse. I went from being trouble to being invisible. Everything was tied up in Sean: the endless round of doctor visits, therapies and interventions stole both of my parents.
    My eighth grade year I got the lead role in the musical, and my parents didn’t show. Sean had a meltdown, and they were tied up dealing with that. I remember standing backstage, peeking through the crack in the curtains, searching and searching for my mom and dad, wondering where they were, wondering why they weren’t there, dreading finding out that my brother had somehow caused them to not be there.
    Yeah. I’m not proud of myself. When I think about how I reacted to all that…to be honest, it makes me ashamed. But I was a frickin’ kid and didn’t know any better. When the second act started and my parents still hadn’t shown, I got in my position on the stage. I looked out at the crowd, with too long a pause after my cue. Backstage, they thought I’d forgotten my line and stage-whispered it to me, urgently, as if that would help. But I hadn’t forgotten. I’d forgotten nothing at all. I thought of my parents, both of them, somewhere else, missing the most important thing that had ever happened to me, and I called out in a clear, loud voice, projecting all the way to the back of the auditorium, the title of a Gangsta Rap song I’d been listening to constantly for weeks.
    “Fuck the police!”
    There were shocked titters in the audience. I saw the horrified faces of parents and laughter from the kids. I grinned and opened my mouth, about to say something else equally offensive, when they dropped the curtain. Thus ended my dramatic career.
    Let me tell you, that got my parents’ attention, very effectively. And I learned another very important fact from that experience. Girls think it’s hot when you break the rules. I was grounded for a month, but it was worth it, because I lost my virginity in the art supply closet three days later with Hannah O’Reilly, a hot little redheaded number who thought my performance was worthy of an Oscar.
    So, anyway. After that, I was trouble. And the more trouble I was, the more girls were hanging around. I didn’t understand it, but I sure as hell took advantage. But the one thing I counted on, the one thing that was a constant in my life, even as my trouble got worse and worse, was my mother. I counted on her being there. I counted