The Brothers

The Brothers

The Brothers was previously published by aladreth antionette brown under her other name :)
copyright  2009,2010,2011,2012



Jim and Elaine lived in a nice small house with their two dogs. The house was surrounded by beautiful pine trees and it hung over a ledge. The ledge over looked the Pacific Ocean.

Northern California was their home and they loved everything about it. The beach was deserted most times of the year. Every so often there would be drifters walking on the beach and at least twice a week her husband's brothers would bring their girlfriends over to the beach for amorous adventures.

Elaine loved her binoculars.

The brothers didn't know she was watching them through her binoculars. She would go out on the back redwood deck with a tall glass of orange juice, sit in the lounge chair, and quite enjoy herself when the brothers were around.

Jim was far better in the romance department than both of the brothers put together. She could just tell. But, that didn't stop her from watching the brothers through her binoculars.

Tim was the younger brother in his late 20's. He was very tall and sinewy. Tommy was the middle brother in his late 30's. He was cute and sweet and helpful. She liked him. Elaine's husband, Jim, was in his 50's.

Jim was just perfect for Elaine. They had met at her office twenty years ago. She was barely 22. It felt as if he had scooped her up and solved all her problems. For one, she didn't have to work any longer. Secondly, she had a nice home and it was paid for. Her friends, twenty years later were still struggling to get a nice home, let alone one that didn't have a mortgage.

She sort of watched the brothers grow up. They were both younger than her and it was interesting to watch them with their lovers.

Tim had his own style with the ladies. Through the binoculars she could tell he would push them down fully clothed on the sand and then undress in front of them. He would stand stark naked towering over them. Elaine couldn't hear him above the wind and ocean waves but she had learned to read his lips. He would say, "Do you want some of this?" and then he'd pull up their skirts and pull aside their panties and just go at it. All of the women Tim brought to the beach would be fully dressed on the sand and he would be totally nude. Elaine watched him do this so many times she knew when to slip her hand down her jeans or pull her own panties to the side. When he asked, "Do you want some of this?" She'd respond from her redwood deck perched way up on the side of the hill, "Oh, yes, Tim, I do!" and "Yes! Yes! Give it to me, Tim!"

When Elaine was finished, she would leave the binoculars on the side table and just relax. She would sip her orange juice and breath deeply the air from the pine trees and the salty ocean and sometimes even her own sated desire, the glutted smell of satisfaction. She would think. Sometimes she would bring a book out to read and would giggle to herself that she was right above the lovers and she had already completed the task they were still bumbling along to finish.

Tommy was different with his women. Elaine would get a slight sunburn watching Tommy through the binoculars. It was a good pain, though. Tommy was sweet. He would always bring a blanket from the truck. He would sit with the women on the blanket. They both would be full dressed to begin with and he would whisper in her ear and stroke her hair and run his hands over her neck. Sometimes Elaine would see him running his fingers in circles over the inside of the ladies wrists or he would feed them fruit from baskets with red checker print lining. Elaine enjoyed watching Tommy. He was serious about foreplay. She would mimic his hands. His hands would become her hands and she would do exactly to herself what he was doing to his lady. She had dreams of what words he might be saying to the women. She could tell the women were happy as they would lean back their heads and laugh or toss their hair over their shoulders and smile.

Elaine loved her binoculars.

Then, one day, the most horrible thing happened.

The worse thing ever happened.

Jim died.

It wasn't exactly unexpected. Elaine had rehearsed his death in her mind a thousand times.

Somewhere she had read if you think of the most awful thing and worry about it it would be easier for you to handle when it actually did happen, so that's just what she did.

Jim was twelve years older than her so it was inevitable. Women live longer than men as well.

Every time Jim was late from work she would concoct all sorts of scenarios. Maybe there was a gas explosion, a drive by shooting, a 24 car pile up.

When Jim's early demise occurred it was the number one killer of men. Heart disease. Nearly silent. Jim was doing yard work and just dropped dead.

Elaine found him and none of her dress rehearsals for death prepared her for the reality. He was cold and that was not Jim. Jim was the warmest man alive, the dearest and best guy ever. He was funny and so alive - but not that late summer day. He was cold. He was dead.

Suddenly, the world as she knew it no longer cooperated with her. The world was working against her. Literally plotting. Out to get her. All the people she met were total cunts. They weren't worth the time of day. They were rude-ass cunts. How dare they go on with their lives when Jim's was over?

Elaine stopped eating. Why should she get to eat when Jim could not? He was rotting away, food for the worm. Why should she enjoy even a morsel of yeast free flat bread let alone a scrumptious cream cake? She lost 60 pounds almost immediately. It could have been marketed as the greatest weight lost secret. The grief diet. Wasting Away with Grief 101. Class in Room 1240. 450pm. Tuesday.

The dogs were grieving too. She didn't know how to help them so most days they would all three just lay around moping.

Other days she would sit and cry holding on to Jim's pictures and the last shirt he wore. She would carefully wrap and unwrap the items in his pants pocket when she found him.

She had wrapped the contents in one of his handkerchiefs. It was like a penny and a quarter were pure gold. Like a feather and rock with flecks of turquoise were the most special treasure in the world. She knew he would have shown them to her that evening and would have said, "Look what I found while I was digging in the back yard!" But, Jim was silent. Jim never said anything ever again.

There was no such thing as ghosts because if there were Jim would have come back to her. So fuck John Edwards, International Psychic Medium. Just fuck him. Fuck Demi Moore and her pottery scene. Fuck Patrick Swayze in the alley. Fuck them all.

Tim and Tommy would come around and they would help her. They told her, "We won't let this place fall down around you just because you want it to."

So, they would nail up things, dig things out, install things, hang things up, change light bulbs, screw things in, screw things out, move things around, plug things in, unplug things.

This grief predicament carried on for a great long while. Her tears were like a hurricane lurking off the Gulf Coast. It was coming, oh, yes, it was coming, just how severe it would be when it barraged couldn't be determined. But, yes, it would strike. Her sorrow much like the Bermuda Triangle, you knew you would disappear but just didn't know when. So, people stopped coming around. Who wants to be sucked in to the Bermuda Triangle of Sorrow? You have to be brave to like Hurricanes and you have to be adventurous to want to visit the Triangle. Let's face it. How many truly brave and adventurous souls are left?

Oh, "The Brothers" would still come around but they didn't like to talk about Jim or even allow her to. The thought of her breaking down in front of them was too much and besides they already knew she was falling apart at the seams.

Try as she could to suppress it, she still wanted to use her binoculars. Part of her mind would say, "You were cheating on Jim when you would do those nasty things on the deck!" And part of her mind was begging for some release.

Elaine started to wish she was living in bible times when the brothers always married the widow.

"Widow."

That word.

She changed her name on "Chat" on the computer to "Widow." She didn't really care what type of man she would attract. It was her "brand" now. At the end of the day, what did it matter? She had been tattooed with "Widow." all over.

No man in his right mind would ever want to compete with Jim, who after his death had become a Saint to the Nth Power.

The only close comparison were "The Brothers." They had the same blood as Jim and anyway, she was horny. Yeah, it sounded crass but primal instincts do not die and she found herself back on the redwood deck watching for the brothers on the beach.

They didn't come.

She thought about it, "I suppose they are feeling it almost sacrilegious to have sex on their dead brother's beach!"

She started wearing nothing but her robe when Tommy would stop by and sometimes she would unbutton the last two or three buttons and cross and uncross her legs in front of him.

One day in particular, she gave him a full frontal shot. As he was getting out of his truck, she met him on the porch outside.

He looked.

Damn straight he looked.

Elaine took her time buttoning the robe back up and didn't even apologize. "Write it off to the crazy crackpot kooky widow," she said to herself.

One day, Tommy asked her what she missed most about Jim. She answered without thinking about it, "His full body massages and pedicures."

Tommy just looked at her.

Tommy could fix the lights in the kitchen. He could nail up the bits of awning on the front porch that were coming loose.

The full body massage, the pedicures? Out of his league. This was Elaine. This was his sister-in-law. His 'big sis.'

So, days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months. Tommy came by for coffee most mornings. He told her there was a lot of work to do around her place. It was going to keep him busy for awhile he said.

So, he worked around her house.

She wasn't about to charm him or flirt with him. She would give him a peek beneath her robe as she had done before, hoping he'd get a hint but she was just too damn tired to be pretty and lovely. She wasn't about to lean her head back and laugh at his jokes or flip her hair over her shoulder like the girls he had brought to the beach.

She was still grieving Jim and the days of the binocular obviously were gone. She still checked the beach every so often but it must have been a dry spell for the brothers because no girlfriends were ever mentioned, let alone brought to frolic in the sand.

One morning she overslept the alarm. She laid flat on her tummy, almost dead herself. Almost dead to the world.

She felt hands on her feet. In an almost dream like state she thought, "It's Tommy, oh my God, it's Tommy!"

Her satin robe was pulled up to expose her calves, the back of her knees, then her thighs. Hands coarsely ran up her legs.

She slipped one hand under her. She sighed in to her pillow, "Finally."

She was startled to hear, "Do you want some of this?"

It wasn't Tommy! It was Tim!

She tensed up. She was apprehensive.

Then she felt a soft breath near her neck and hands stroking her hair. She turned her head to see Tommy kneeling beside her bed.

He continued to stroke her hair, "I called my brother, Elaine," he said.

"Yes, he did," Tim commented.

Tommy leaned in closer and breathed deeply in Elaine's ear, "I told him we have a lot of work to do here."