I think I’m pretty normal looking. My hair is pretty long, but that’s not uncommon. It might look odd to some that, at forty-three, I look old enough to be Anthony’s mother. No one ever says anything about it, though. They’ll tell me I need to grow up, blithely ignoring the fact that I look twice his age, knowing that he is my brother.
Stephen says we’re lucky to get to make this sort of choice. Stephen also tells me that I am beautiful, even though I look so much like Alan.
But I know he thought Alan was beautiful. He put away all of the photographs only last year. After that, I couldn’t compare my reflection to them anymore. Trying to compare from memory is just too frustrating.
Dark hair and dark eyes, skimpy lips.
It has just been so many years since Alan lit himself up, and nothing looks the same as it did when I was nineteen. Not even the backyard. Looking back is a bark of a laugh.
Eventually I’ll probably meet my mother. They didn’t keep pictures, though Stephen did manage, quite drunkenly, to describe her to me once. Seems there was a whisky voice, and tits out to there. Seems my father liked these things for a little while, so Stephen had learned to like them as well. For a while.
Three years later a blonde one came along. Seems they liked me enough that they thought Anthony would be a good idea. Eventually maybe Anthony will meet his mother as well.
Even after what must have been a couple dozen jack and cokes, Stephen said, “Christ, don’t say it like that.”
I shrugged and said it didn’t mean I was mad about it.
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