My little brother Ryan never got much out of life. The scraps he did get weren’t worth having. My dad and mom divorced when he was still in the crib, and from there, he was more or less on his own. Mom had to work, which meant no one was around to hold him, to rock him, to make sure he wasn’t just another forgotten object in the house. That duty fell to me, but I was nine years old—what the hell did I know about raising a kid? So Ryan stayed in his crib, flat on his back, so long that his skull started to misshape, the back flattening, his ears pushing outward until they cracked. It was somewhere between neglect and unintentional child abuse, but no one had time to notice, let alone fix it.
One day, riding his tricycle in the backyard, he flipped over and cracked his head on the concrete. But between him and the slab was a jagged rock, and it went straight into his skull. He had to be rushed to the hospital, stitched up, and sent back home like nothing happened. Maybe that was the start of it—the hard luck, the inevitable anger, the feeling that life was something that just happened to him instead of for him.
Ryan was different from my brother Nick and me. Darker, shorter, with an Italian nose that made him look out of place in our family lineup. When I was fifteen, I legally divorced my mother, got the hell out, left that house like a prisoner escaping from a burning cell. And in doing that, I left Ryan behind. He was five or six, too young to understand what was happening, but old enough to feel it.
Ryan grew up fast, or maybe he just never got to be a kid in the first place. By his teens, he was quick to throw a punch, already had a record, already had a girl knocked up. That baby didn’t slow him down—it just became another thing to run from. He was angry. At the world, at my mom, at my dad, at me.
One day, I got a call from Nick.
“Ryan’s been fighting with Dad. Called him a fucking loser. Said some things that made him cry.”
Dad didn’t cry. Not in front of us.
I was in San Diego at the time, but I didn’t hesitate. “I’m on my way.”
I was at that house an hour later, stormed through the door, and found Ryan slouched on the couch, eyes narrowed, already trying to measure whether he should fight or run. He made the wrong choice. I grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt, yanked him up like a ragdoll, and shook the hell out of him. I watched the defiance in his eyes melt into fear. He barely had time to react before his face started swelling, the bruises forming like ink spreading under his skin.
He begged. He apologized. He had my mother’s talent for switching gears. First tears, then rage, then denial, then back to tears.
Someone must’ve called the cops because they showed up, asked me what the hell was going on. I stood there, tall, dark, pissed off, but calm enough to explain. Ryan, standing on the other side of the street, pointing fingers, shouting about pressing charges. The cops weren’t interested. They’d seen real abuse before. This wasn’t it. They left.
After that, our relationship became a series of dead-end messages. A “Merry Christmas” text here and there, sometimes a response, sometimes not. I knew he resented me for leaving him in that house, and maybe he was right to. That guilt never really left me. It sat in the back of my mind like a tumor, growing, pressing down on my thoughts. Maybe I should have done something different. Maybe the only real way to save both of us would’ve been to kill my mother. Maybe then we would’ve both been free.
I still think about that sometimes.
Ryan never really escaped our mother. Even when he moved to Old Town Whittier, even when he got lost in weed and excuses, she still had her claws in him. One day, I called his phone just to check in. Got his voicemail instead.
“If this is my mother, go fuck yourself. I hate you. Leave me alone.”
The venom in his voice made my stomach turn.
His hate had roots. When he was younger, he knocked up a girl named Jennifer. Wanted nothing to do with the kid, but our mother took Jennifer and stood by her side for the 9 months till birth. She took the baby in, played the good grandmother, and then came after Ryan for child support with the precision of a seasoned debt collector.
She filed the paperwork.
She chased him down.
She turned his life into financial quicksand, where every paycheck got eaten up before he could even touch it.
At one point, he was $50,000 behind on child support. It wrecked his credit, his ability to rent, his job stability. And when my father died, my mother slithered into his estate, not to honor him, not to settle old debts, but to make sure Ryan’s cut went straight to paying off what he owed.
That was the family motto: Family First.
The first ones to screw you over.
When Dad got cancer, I visited as often as I could, juggling my time between him and running a tequila bar. On one of those visits, I ran into Ryan in the hospital hallway. We talked, casual at first. He seemed a little shaken, but who wasn’t? Cancer has a way of reminding you how little control you really have.
Then, at some point, something cracked inside him.
He started crying. Not the fake tears, not the manipulative kind I’d seen before. This was different. This was something buried deep, something old and festering that had finally made its way to the surface.
I knew what it was.
It was me, leaving him behind. It was our mother, poisoning every relationship he ever had. It was all the things we should have said to each other, but never did.
I put a hand on his shoulder, let him lean into me, let him feel something other than anger for once.
That was the last time I saw him in person.
His head against my chest. Me, apologizing. Our father dying in the next room.
Some scars don’t heal.
