To Build a Home

1 | It Began with an Ending

My brother and his wife died on the Pennsylvania turnpike in the middle of the night. It's a shitty way to start my story, I know. But it gets worse.

They were on their way home from a small-business conference in Monroeville, about sixty miles west from where we grew up and my brother Phil later started a family. Knowing Phil, he didn't want to spend another night in the hotel and raced the GPS home. He always had to win, even if winning meant arriving only two minutes faster than the estimated time. He had managed to beat me at everything my entire life––marriage, house, kids, career––as if he always knew his finish line was before mine.

I don't know what they were thinking, my brother and his wife, Theresa, and I don't know if they got one more glance at each other before the collision. I wasn't there. But the officer who called me around three in the morning––after the turnpike was cleared, the ambulance onto the next emergency, bodies identified, statements taken, traffic resumed––told me it was very quick and they probably felt no pain. What does he know?

He told me the road was winding, the night was dark, the truck was large, the driver exhausted. Both cars were speeding towards each other.

As I drove down the same road towards Windber, the morning sun rising in my rearview, I wondered if each spot––every small mark on the divider, each broken branch on the side of the road––was the spot where it happened. I looked at oncoming traffic as if the cars were flying at me, through me, ready to take me too.

Windber was a two-square-mile rural hill town nestled in the southwestern part of Pennsylvania, surrounded by green and mountains. The small box houses were squished into rows on hills, dipping and rising, the roads zigzagging to the top and back down again. From the tallest points, there was a panoramic view of the entire town, the people moving like ants in the valley of the town center, framed by forest and highway.

It hadn't changed since I left ten years before. There was still the large white inn with the wrap-around porch that hosted weekly community meetings; the small Catholic school attached to St. Mary's; the cemetery where my parents were buried and, eventually, where my brother would go; the deli and the post office we shared with neighboring towns; then all of the brick and sided homes that generations shared like matryoshka dolls.

When I arrived in town that morning, I drove past our childhood house first as if it would prepare me for everything that waited for me in Windber. There was a for-sale sign in the yard. The yellow siding Phil and his best friend Darren had installed with my father's guidance that final spring––when he was too weak to carry more than a sandwich and mostly pointed and nodded––was no longer there, not surprisingly. It probably hadn't even lasted that winter. The siding had been replaced with dark green panels and it didn't even look like the same house. So much for comfort.

I continued through town, well below the speed limit, taking in the sights and counting the numbered streets, trying to spot other changes. The trolley graveyard, Windber's premier makeout spot in the woods behind the high school, still had rows of graffitied cars from as early as 1940 whose roofs were being flattened by gravity. I thought about walking through the graveyard and reading every single tag, phone number, and insightful piece of advice scrawled over the aged metal with colorful marker and spray paint by heartbroken teenagers. Maybe there would be an answer to what I had asked myself the entire five-hour drive back to Windber, just sitting there since long before I ever needed it, waiting for me to walk past it––maybe I would have sooner if I hadn't escaped Windber, or maybe I wouldn't even have to ask myself the question if I had stayed––what do you do when your brother dies before he turns thirty?

Phil lived on the south side of town, which was mostly trees and road, on the side of the tallest hill, only a few houses away from his childhood best friend and business partner. While Phil was the loud, competitive, and creative kid growing up, it was always Darren, quiet and patient, who talked sense into Phil. I don't know this for sure, but I think Darren was the only reason my brother didn't beat me up when he found out I was gay. Instead, he ignored me for a month, which, when you're sixteen, feels like forever.

They had started flipping houses their senior year of high school. I was still a sophomore when they'd drag me to small projects that homeowners were willing to hire kids to handle in order to save a buck. I'd sit in the back of our parents' Honda with my arms crossed and watch them carry supplies from the truck to the customer's bathroom or patio. Both of our parents had died the year before, months apart, succumbing to two different but equally devastating cancers, and left us the house. I suspect it was a mixture of sympathy, Phil's persistence, and Darren's good looks that kept the business going.

Phil, already eighteen and still adjusting to his new role as my guardian––though he looked more like a thirty-year-old in a letterman's jacket––came into my room one night shortly after they died and told me he had sold the house. I didn't even know it was for sale. I thought he had done it because of me, too ashamed to have his gay brother tarnish the memory of the family home by living there any longer. But I know now he had a plan and the money from the house was the first step. He probably wasn't even ignoring me, occupied with grief and responsibility prematurely. Or maybe he was grieving the life I was giving up to be gay: a home down the street from his, a family that would look similar to his own, carpools and birthday parties.

Even though Phil's business took off and things between us got back to some form of normal, I moved to Pittsburgh after graduating high school and used my half of the inheritance to attend art school. My studies took me to New York, where I lived, but I never really made it as an artist. I never really made it as anything. That's the thing about escaping––no one ever tells you it doesn't get you where you want to go, it only gets you away from where you were.

I finally pulled up to the house. Phil's house. I had only been there once before, shortly after Noah was born. It had been a complicated delivery, Theresa and Noah stuck in the hospital several weeks after the birth. As soon as they were both cleared to leave, Phil brought them home to a huge barbeque he had planned. The house was barely furnished, the open rooms wafting with the scent of fresh paint and wood. Somehow Phil, a new father, had found the time to decorate the backyard. There were lanterns everywhere, benches and picnic tables, a fire pit, a grill. Theresa waddled onto the patio and right back inside when she saw the crowd. She must have yelled at him for twenty minutes––"I just had a baby!" "I haven't been home in weeks!" "Get these people out of here!" "There's nowhere for anyone to sit!"––before coming back outside and greeting the guests.

I knew which house it was before the GPS announced my arrival. The sign for the business was prominently placed in the middle of the front lawn, Phil's smile plastered for the neighbors to see each time they drove by. I was going to wait in the car, catch my breath, collect my thoughts, but Darren appeared at the front door almost instantly. He was taller than I remembered and had grown a short beard as dark as the hair on his head. He looked tired and sad and there were dark circles under his eyes competing with his freckles.

I got out of the car and it felt like we were moving in slow motion, through water, towards each other. But I know we were running. We ran so fast that our bodies collided and I felt myself turn to dust at the impact––just like I had imagined happening to Phil and Theresa every time my mind wandered to their final moment. Like a quick burst of glitter or fireworks and then nothing. But I was still a complete, solid form because Darren wrapped his arms tightly around me and we both exhaled into each other with quick vibrations that turned into tears. I'm not sure how long we stayed there on the lawn next to my brother's smile––a minute, an hour, a day, forever––but eventually I heard a tiny voice and peaked above Darren's shoulder on my tiptoes. Little Noah was standing at the front door, half hiding behind the frame.

"Look, Noah," Darren said. "It's uncle Ryan. He's home."

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! It's always exciting to get to know new characters and settings. If you liked it, please vote or share it. Or let me know if you have any feedback.

What do you think is next for Ryan?