Read Online All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison - Free Book Online Page B

but from Big Bill. The remarkable part was that neither of them chastised Ross for quitting. Doug seemed a little afraid of Ross. At the very least, he was a little suspicious.
    “What’s the deal with Ross, do you think?” he asked me one day in the kitchen.
    “Got me.”
    “You don’t think … ?”
    “What?”
    “You don’t think he’s, you know … ?”
    “Depressed?”
    “No. I mean … you don’t think he’s an ass clown, do you?”
    Was I wrong to despise my brother Doug? Can you blame me?
    Have you any idea what it’s like to look at your own fl esh and blood and wonder what happened? How you awoke in the lair of your mortal enemy?
    After Ross quit pumping iron completely, he moped around the house for a few weeks, a little dazedly, not really knowing which direction to turn. More often than not he parked himself on the couch and gazed at the television set, or turned toward the kitchen and the curative powers of meat, devouring entire hams in a sitting, picking at cold chickens until nothing remained but a greasy cage. And when the miracle of meat failed Ross, and he had nowhere else to turn, he turned to me.
    “What are you doing?” he said, from the doorway.
    “Sitting on the bed.”
    “Oh,” he said. “You care if—?”
    “Whatever.”
    He sat down on the foot of my bed and started gazing, like me, in the general direction of Lulu’s door.
    “What are we staring at?” he said.
    “Nothing,” I told him. “Or what’s left of something.”
    “Oh,” he said again, and kept staring at nothing.
    We stared at nothing for a long time.
    “Where’s Doug?” I said, just to be cruel.
    “At the gym.”
    “So, why aren’t you?”
    “Didn’t feel like it.”
    There was a hard little lump inside my chest. I wanted to laugh at him. I wanted to hate Ross for walking away from Doug like Lulu had walked away from me. Nobody should ever walk away from anyone.
    “Remember when we used to go to World Gym?” I said. “When Mom was still alive?”
    “I remember. Of course I remember.”
    “You were only fi ve.”
    “I know,” he said defensively. “But I still remember it.”
    “You guys were working out even then.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    “Big Bill was proud of you. He used to tell Kenny Waller that you guys would win the Olympia before him.”
    “Waller,” said Ross. “Yeah, I remember.”
    “He used to make you pose for Arnold and Franco. ‘Show them the triceps! Let’s see the crab, show Uncle Arnie the crab.’ And you guys would perform like little monkeys.”
    Ross smiled faintly, as though it were his duty to smile.
    “Goddamn, I hated it,” I told him. “The gym, I mean. I hated every last second of it. I would’ve rather been at the hospital, that’s how much I hated it.”
    “So you quit. So what?”
    “I just couldn’t give two shits. Big Bill knew it, and it really bugged him. It bugged him that I sat outside in the car and read comic books.
    Especially because they weren’t even the superhero kind. They were just Archies.”
    “I can’t remember,” said Ross.
    “He never really had much to do with me.”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Dad’s weird sometimes.”
    “Why did you come in, anyway?” I said.
    “No reason. I just saw you sitting there, so … I don’t know.”
    “So, what is it?”
    “It’s nothing.” Then, after a pause, Ross said, “You want to know something?”
    “What’s that?”
    “Don’t ever tell Doug, and especially don’t tell Big Bill.”
    “I won’t.”
    He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell me.
    “I promise,” I said.
    “I hated it, too. I’ve always hated it, from then until now, I’ve hated it. I would’ve been happier if Dad were a professional roller skater or a fucking dentist.”
    For the fi rst time in my life I wanted to hug Ross, I suppose for having endured something I never gave him credit for. “Why did you do it?” I said.
    He paused to wonder at this himself, and shrugged. “No pain,