Let Me Know When You Are Finished

A Story by B. Stearns

Of siblings moving out.

My phone was ringing on the other side of the room. I was busy. Busy tending to the floors. Only a week left of summer. The floors felt nice to relax on. They called to me more than the phone did, though I will admit the ringing got more annoying with each passing second. I made it to the phone on the last ring.

It was my brother, and I took a long hard stare at it. The glass and metal in my hand felt heavier today.

It was absurd, waking up at 5:30 in the morning in the summertime. I hadn’t gotten much sleep from staying up past two o’clock. It felt unfair for whatever reason, like waking up for school early in the morning. It was bitter and hard to hide that feeling especially when you know you could have gotten a few more hours of sleep, but I was mad for other reasons too.

It felt like an unreasonable kind of mad. I never understood why either. It just hit me yesterday, and especially this moment.

He was leaving for Minnesota. I stood in the driveway at 5:30 after he called me to go outside. It was cold, even though it was summer. That was something unusual to me, spending most of the days in hundred-degree weather. The cold left a lasting impression.

He was there leaning against his car. He looked bored talking to my mom. She was telling him all the reasons to stay. She hates the idea of her ‘babies’ leaving. She always loved her son the most though, she never fails to tell him that.

He listened to her with dull ears, but I saw it in his eyes. Waiting for something. Waiting for life to take his hand, he would be gone with it as soon as he could. As soon as he could get his hands on the steering wheel, I’m sure. My mom has a strong grip with her voice, but how could someone listen to the words of the ground when their head is already so far up in the clouds?

That's the thing my mom doesn’t really get. She cries because she thinks he doesn’t care. I resent her for crying. I resent her for being her, but that is a story for a different time. I feel as if I am her own mother, telling her that she needs to let her son live his own life, though I know it feels as if I am just trying to tell myself those things. I was afraid to admit that her crying wasn’t something stupid.

I looked at my mom for half of a second. There she was, with a red face and watery eyes. I cringed. It felt like she was drunk, even this early in the morning. I looked to find something more friendly than her face. Even when there is everything else to see, my eyes feel like their faces are the most prominent things on Earth.

It was a different kind of green beside the street. The type of green you only catch in the morning before the water has evaporated. My eyes lingered on it, and my body focused on the cold. I felt selfish for wanting to go back inside. It was bitter. Everything was bitter. My fingertips hurt.

Yesterday

“What’s wrong?” he asked me. It was lighthearted. It almost looked like he was dancing like a child in the grass. He is older now, but I’m sure he would still play with Legos if you offered them to him. It’s more sophisticated though, in the ways he could pay such close attention to the intricate details. But I will not call him an artist. He doesn’t have patience.

He was smiling, he wasn’t looking at me though. He was interested in the task at hand. The trail ahead beamed with something. Maybe it was the sunlight. It felt hot and sweaty. It felt like the urge to want to stay home, to lie in bed. Anything but the bugs and dehydration. It was funny with it being so humid I felt dry to my bones, searching for some kind of water.

There was a jealous admiration in me. How? How was he not tired? Did he not want to go home as I did? But something kept me there, like how something kept him there too. He had a different reason though, something far out of my reach. He had grown muscles for years built off of sheer will and tenacity. He was thirsty for life, and something about here was never enough. I wanted something. I am not sure what it was I wanted.

“I don’t know,” my voice was quiet, I didn’t want him to hear what I would say. “I just missed you, I guess.” I shrugged and brushed it off. This wasn’t something I could brush off though. For as much as I could ‘brush it off’, it would still be there, lingering. You can’t brush off a stain, no matter how hard you try.

It's deep in your clothes, deep to the point where you could still smell it if you really tried.

My eyes took to the ground and some moss that lay on a rock. I didn’t want him to look at me. I didn’t want to see him.

He didn’t see me though, and strangely some part of that hurt a lot more than I expected. He was far ahead, chasing after the moth. Chasing after the sunlight, and to the top of the hill. He was only a few paces ahead of me, but it felt like he was further than the sun. He was always walking. Always taking another step. It was tiring trying to keep up with him all my childhood. If I stopped to take the breath that was desperately calling for me, I am sure I wouldn’t be able to catch him by then.

I guess that's where I made my mistake. Time caught up with me a long time ago. It caught up with me when my only memories of him were of his back. He was long gone. He had been long gone the day he was able to crawl.

The humidity dripped onto my head. My hair was wet and it rolled off onto my face. I tried to wipe it off quickly, but it didn’t stop running. Tears don’t stop when you want them to.

I truly thought for a second that maybe, just maybe if he saw me, he might stop for just one moment.