It Runs In The Family, Part 2
The rest of this short story about a teenage girl who mourns her brother by taking revenge on her insensitive mother.
Photo & Text all rights reserved © Saint-Lazare, 2025.
See, Vic never wanted to have a daughter; she had been raised in a family of women. And when I say women, I say cold-hearted bitches of the worst kind. Brian calling me a feminist to excuse his predatory behavior is wrong on so many levels, but one is that, surrounded with femmes of that type, you certainly do not want to give them the power. You dread it. They are a threat for regular women the way guys like Brian are a threat to girls. My Great Grandma Tilda was a very unfortunate mother; she inexplicably gave birth to two of the meanest daughters ever, my Grandma Gloria and my Great Aunt Everly. From the first day, they loved hating each other as well as hating their parents. Now that Tilda is 93, Gloria resents her for still being alive, and not because her grandson died at only 21. Because it gives her a goal in life. Torturing each other seems to be the only hobby in this family.
When Gloria met my grandfather Marcus, she psychologically emasculated him with three daughters. Vic was the second one. The elder, Gillian, was also the weakest and all she received from this family was a good depression. The youngest, Lillian, was the jerk, always forcing the other gals into competition: the most ecological hotels for the nine times a year trips abroad, the best imported vegan products for the kids, but mostly the higher carbon footprint hypocrisy. Marcus is a coward, for sure, but living in the middle of the shitstorm summoned by these destructive creatures proves that life can survive the nuclear apocalypse. I said grandma psychologically castrated him, but apparently not physically; he surprised everyone when he porked his young assistant and knocked her up. However, nobody was surprised when she gave birth to a daughter. Marcus could only father girls, he had been tainted with the family’s curse. His mistress turned out to be a psycho and ended up in a mental hospital, leaving a seven years old Becca in the custody of her 70 years old father whom she tortures with cruel words on his old age. Karma is a bitch from my family.
But the wunderkind was Adrian. For a moment, the arrival of a male from their blood seemed to awaken their unsuspected benevolence. Plus, he had that genetically incurable disease, cystic fibrosis. They all wanted to take care of him, to surround him with love and safety. I see you coming; that brat Salome is whining because she did not receive the same kind of attention… you could not be more wrong. Have you seen that movie, Hereditary? So no, I am definitely not jealous, I sincerely pitied him. His life had been a miserable one, rythmed by the home visits of the physio to empty his lungs, by the lure of transplants and the hospital stays where he felt isolated. When he was feeling better, Vic insisted that he attend school. What for? He would never need a job and a social life was a hazard to him. They tortured Adrian with equations, French verbs and boy crushes he could never touch. What a life. Just so Vic could enjoy hers. Doctors accidentally gave him a new liver infected with hepatitis but I am pretty sure this is not what finally killed him. It is Vic’s behavior, already acting as if he was gone. The love from his childhood had vanished for a long time, his grandmother and aunts stopped taking an interest in him and his mother got into a frenzy of sex to get preggo ASAP. And she succeeded. Matheus was born with lung cancer. You cannot invent that.
"How can’t you see the message the universe is sending to you, Mum? Your eldest son is dying and the baby you have made to replace him has cancer … I mean, fucking cancer, Mom! Don’t you think it is time to stop being selfish?"
"Don’t you dare talking to me like that, Salome! You are just a little coke head tease, who do you think you are to judge me?"
It was one of those evenings; a regular ritual for Vic and me, I must say. It was one month before the death of Adrian. He had fought for twenty-one years, which was quite a miracle considering that all he ever knew was a public school system and the shit going on in this family. When this quarrel happened, I knew he was in his room at the end of the corridor but I did not mind him overhearing it. He was already aware that Matheus had been conceived to fill the void in Vic’s path to martyrdom. Now, it was this kid who had heartbreaking social media posts dedicated to his – I mean her – tragedy. Yes, hers, because it had happened to Vic, not to this innocent newborn. It happened to the #fuckingstrongmom who thinks she is entitled to tell our story. This drama queen usually enjoys it when I fight her. It gives her the opportunity to tell the world how this ungrateful girl is beyond control and will have her last breath. Like the time she wrote on Twitter how she was proudly teaching feminism to her daughter and that I commented "You’re full of shit” on her post for everyone to see. Those clashes – virtual or IRL – usually ended with her blocking me to forget about the truths I dared to say aloud. But not this time, in the garage. This was the night she decided to remove me from Adrian’s life and, incidentally, add me to his death.
When I was still around, he hung on. We talked for hours. I put a smile on his exhausted face. Fuck, I miss this smile. I miss him so bad… and I know I screwed everything with that moment in the garage, that trap I fell into. But it was only a question of time, I guess. I was growing into a woman and threatening her sex appeal and her power over the family as the only mother who gives birth to males. She did not struggle so hard in her bitchy microcosm of a family to get challenged by her own daughter. I was banished to my awkward father’s house, with the interdiction to approach or communicate with my brother. I was not there when Adrian died at the hospital. Vic called me two days later to announce his passing and that I was forbidden to attend the funeral and the cremation.
"Are you for real?" I cried, utterly shredded.
"He didn’t want to have you there."
"You lie! He is my brother; I need to be there… and he never wanted to get burned. You really think you can erase him from your macabre fairy tale like that?"
To be fair, I was not the only one to be prevented from saying farewell to Adrian. A lot of people who genuinely loved him were kept out of the ceremony, such as Calvin’s parents who considered him as their grandson. I do not even know if they were told about his fate. Vic needed to be the sole star of this moment, the one everyone will comfort and praise for her strength.
She already deleted me from the plot, but I have a plan. I cast a last glance at Vic enjoying the hugs and condolences while the morticians were loading the hearse with the coffin and the heap of wreaths covered in white flowers. As the automatic doors of the supermarket open, I hear yet another announcement, this time for discount oven roasted turkey. It is out of the question that they roast Adrian too. I run in the rain and jump on the driver’s seat of the hearse, turn the key and step on the gas. I hear the hatchback slam and the screams from the parking lot. But I am already gone. I look into the rearview mirror to check on the coffin. It is just you and me now, brother. And then I raise my eyes to watch Vic freaking out in the middle of the street. And I smile.
Don’t worry Mum, you still have the cancer surviving brat to make you shine. And if he too kicks the bucket, you know how to replace it; you are still young. But if the next one is a girl, I wish you the best of luck… you’re the one who poisoned the well after all, so don’t complain that your storytelling is dead in the water.
Oh, also, I cannot wait to answer the questions of the journalists.