It was sort of exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.Ī car door slammed, prompting me to jump up from the couch and straighten my wrinkled shirt. I started muttering to myself, thinking about what I would say to him, what we would talk about, what I could introduce him to here. It was weird picking stuff out for someone you didn’t know.
Mom and I had gone to Walmart together to buy sheets and other necessities. She had turned the office into a bedroom. My mother seemed just as nervous as I was as she repeatedly ran up and down the stairs to get Elec’s room ready. It’s not about siblings per say, but I convinced myself it was a good omen. This morning, I heard an old Coldplay song I never even knew existed called Brothers and Sisters. I laughed at how stupid I was, fantasizing that this was going to be some kind of fairytale relationship overnight, like friggin’ Donny and Marie Osmond or Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. As an only child, I had always wanted a sibling. The frigid Boston weather would be a rude awakening for my California-bred stepbrother. He struggled with that and said he looked forward to the opportunity to set his son straight over the next year.īutterflies swarmed in my stomach as I stared out at the dirty snow that lined my street. Randy claimed he had encouraged Pilar to take a temporary position teaching classes run by a London art gallery so that Elec, now 17, could come live with us.Īlthough Randy took two short trips out west a year, he wasn’t there on a daily basis to discipline Elec. Randy blamed Pilar for being flighty and too focused on her art career, thereby allowing Elec to get away with murder. That included getting tattoos when he was only fifteen and getting into trouble for underage drinking and smoking pot. He was clean-cut then, but Randy said Elec had entered into a rebellious stage as of late. From the picture, I could see he inherited dark hair, probably from his South American mother, along with tanned skin, but had Randy’s light eyes and fine features. I hadn’t ever met my stepbrother before and had only seen a picture of him that was taken a few years ago, shortly before Randy married my mother. Here’s what little I knew about Randy’s former life: his ex-wife, Pilar, was an Ecuadorian artist based in the San Francisco Bay area, and his son was a tattooed punk who, according to Randy, was allowed to do whatever he wanted. My stepfather and I got along well enough, but I wouldn’t say we were close. Randy and my mother, Sarah, had only been married a couple of years.
He’d gone to Logan Airport to pick up his son, Elec, who would be living with us for the next year while his mother took a yearlong work-related assignment overseas. Any minute now, Randy’s Volvo station wagon would be pulling into the driveway. Cold air fogged the bay window in our living room as I nervously waited in front of it and struggled to see outside.
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