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CHAPTER 1
The name on my birth certificate is Daniel Robert Hyde but everyone calls me Even. I'm named after my father, Daniel Hyde Sr., even though I'm the second-born son. My brother, Gabriel, was born fifteen months before me, but our mother, Gina, and our father decided to name him after her father.
Grandpop was on his deathbed, riddled with bone cancer, when Gabe was born, and they hoped to give him one final legacy-like gift. Despite a falling-out years before, they also hoped to be included in his will. Grandpop went on to live seven more miserable, miraculous years, and when he died he left us a large sum of money, a silver Buick LeSabre, and a Boston Whaler named Cool Breeze.
Gabe should have been named after our father, and Gabe always thought it one of many injustices that I got the name. We grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, a city nestled in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains, about an hour northeast of Los Angeles. Nothing much has happened in Cucamonga, and no one of note has come from here. It's white-populated with a sprinkling of minorities, and with families whose main recreation is consumption, mostly at the massive shopping center, Victoria Gardens, a metropolis of stores and restaurants. In some ways, Cucamonga is synonymous with wandering through the consumer wasteland: a blur of palm trees and parking lots, escalators and promenades, mezzanines and restaurants, Muzak and lights.
When you drive along the 210 freeway, you can see the beige tract houses blended together in one giant swath, camouflaged like a sand field, all the way to the base of the mountains.
As a child I was quiet, on the tall side, gawky, and I didn't have many friends. Of the friends I did have, most were girls. I preferred their company, though by middle school this changed.
Once, I overheard my dad telling my first grade teacher that I was more like a girl than a boy. This was in 1994. I sat in the corner with the books, pretending to read, during their parent-teacher conference. Usually my mom attended these, but for some reason this time my dad was there. He was expressing concern, but my teacher told him that this was usually the case with exceptional boys, and that they grew into exceptional men. "It's a matter of sensitivity," she said. I'm convinced that she raised her voice just enough to ensure that I would hear. I looked at my dad. By his expression, I could tell that he believed her, and I still feel gratitude. I had enough trouble later on proving my masculinity, and I can't imagine what it might have been like had she not fed us this morsel of relief.
Gabe was jealous of me, which leads to how I got my name. According to family legend, when we were toddlers, Gabe pointed at me and said, "Even." The story has been repeated so many times that I can give a reenactment, as I imagine it:
Having bravely endured my pediatrician appointment, which included a series of immunization shots, I was granted a red lollipop from a bowl in the lobby by a cranky old woman who answered the phone and took down appointments. Gabe, on the other hand, had thrown a fit during his shots and was still red-faced. "Even," he said, pointing at me, his index finger and arm trembling.
Our mom, a stalwart of discipline and stoic in life, especially when witnesses are involved, knelt to look at Gabe and said: "No lollies. No lollies for bad, bad boys."
Gabe stared at her and then at me, and I stared back at him, a frantic acknowledgment of the injustice vibrating between us, my lollipop clutched in my fist at my side. I'd already unwrapped it from its plastic sheath.
"Even," he said again.
I also wanted to make it right, fair, equal, just, even, and my hand reached for the bowl to take another. I didn't want to give him mine. But the mean old woman pushed the bowl away.
Tears and red faces, now from both Gabe and me. We often spiraled each other into frenzies, appreciating the force in a coupled phobia, emotion, or tantrum.
Judgment from the old, cranky woman, from the other mothers in the waiting room, from the pediatrician, who poked his head into the lobby, and then Mom yanked us by our arms and shuttled us to the parking lot.
According to our mom, as we sat side by side in our car seats, I handed my lolly to Gabe, and his tears turned to a shuddering of breath. A smack and suck of lips, and then he passed the lolly back. On and on, our mom watching in her rearview mirror as we shared.
By the time we arrived home — our mouths sticky and red and the leftover fuzzy-stick on the car floor mat — we were holding hands and sleeping.
Gabe continued to say "Even" in his childhood quest for equality, when he received a larger portion of dessert than I did, or when there were more presents under the Christmas tree for me, or when he had better crayons — even, even, even — until he'd named me, and then my parents called me Even, too.
Even though Gabe is older, he's usually mistaken for the younger brother. He's the one who looks more like our dad, who inherited his nerdy features, including his nasal breathing and bad eyesight, though Gabe rarely wears his glasses or contacts and has a record of minor car accidents to prove it.
Small as a child, Gabe didn't reach his full height and weight until well into his senior year of high school. My maturation was steady — no sudden growth spurts — and so for most of our lives, I've always been a full head taller.
Our physical features are similar — downturned mouths, stooped shoulders, cowlicks at the backs of our heads, greenish-hazel eyes.
Our mom would often tell us, "The whole reason your dad and I decided to have two children is so that you'll always be there for each other. You'll look out for each other." We took her words to heart.
Our parents divorced in 2001, when I was beginning the eighth grade and Gabe the ninth. Dad's drywall business had boomed, and he bought a house in Newport Beach. After a bitter custody battle, when the judge pulled me into his chambers for a private conference and asked which of my parents I wanted to live with — my mom, in Rancho Cucamonga, or my dad, in Newport Beach — I said one word: "Dad."
I couldn't understand what was happening to our parents and to Gabe and me during those formative years, and I would have been surprised had someone pointed out that my personality was similar to our dad's, with my determination to separate, my stubbornness, a will toward self-creation, a sense of self-preservation, and an insensitivity to others if my own well-being was in the crosshairs. A ruthless work ethic pointed not toward the making of money, like Dad, but toward something intangible, something as formless as I felt during those years.
I worshipped him then, even though he wasn't around much: He worked all the time. But I believed that his success proved his superiority, and as his fortunes increased, most everyone seemed to grant him deference, which only reinforced my belief. Besides, he understood me in a way that our mom never had.
Mom believed anything art-related encouraged homosexuality and weakness. Dad encouraged my artistic sensibilities, telling me, "Making money's easy. You're going to do something with your life, something greater than making money, something creative, something that I could never do."
One time he brought home a bunch of leather-bound books for me — mostly classics, Remembrance of Things Past and everything by Thomas Hardy. He said he got them from a dead man's library — and though I was still too young to read them (I must've been about seven or eight), just having them made me feel enriched and different, a shifting of consciousness — they were for me, just me.
Mom never forgave me for choosing to live with him. She accused me of having a heart made of stone, and of being a materialistic and selfish child.
I learned later that Gabe felt that my leaving him was a double abandonment — first his dad, then his brother left. At the time, I didn't care, or rather I didn't let myself care. I couldn't afford to, so I didn't think about him.
I also learned later that our dad didn't fight for Gabe. "I had to let Gina have one of you," he explained. "It wouldn't have been right to take you both, and I felt that you and I were better suited for each other."
Mom's depression accelerated, culminating in a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, which seemed to make her happy. She has a talent for being happy with ever-increasing amounts of unhappiness, and a diagnosis of an elusive and incurable ailment pleased her.
"Your dad doesn't think I'm good enough," she would say. "Now that he's a big shot, he's embarrassed by me. That's why he divorced me." Her wardrobe consisted of a revolving array of nightgowns, robes, sweatpants, and T-shirts.
I'm embarrassed by you, too, I wanted to tell her.
Those first days before the school year began I spent wandering Newport Beach, celebrating my good fortune, stunned by and happy with the significant upgrade in my living environment.
Dad's new home was walking distance from the beach; the sky and ocean big and blustery, palm trees shushing in the wind, waves glittering and crashing on the rocks and shore. Moistness in the air that I didn't know I was missing until I breathed it in. A heavy, satisfying smell of ocean and seaweed mingled at night with the aroma of smoke from the fire pits on the beach.
His new house was a four-bedroom, three-bathroom colonial built in 1973, with a pool and an attached garage. Address: 111 Opal Cove. From the balcony off my room, over the rooftops of the other homes, there was a strip of an ocean view. Each morning at around eleven, the high school girls' cross-country team jogged past my window like a welcoming crew — lovely and lean in matching shorts and sports bras, with midriffs exposed — and I watched their ponytails swinging behind them, until they disappeared down the street.
I'd never seen beauty like this before, except sometimes on television, and now even the TV was better: Dad, though he didn't have much furniture yet, had a giant flat-screen with hundreds of channels.
Dad and I stared at it for hours after he came home from work (I was alone to do what I wanted during the day), numb, the super-bright colors vibrating: real cop shows and fake cop shows, movies on cable, CNN, Fox News, Law & Order, Survivor, and The Sopranos. Even the commercials were mesmerizing. Surround sound, so that the noise came from above and behind and below us.
We ate our meals — he specialized in omelets and grilled cheese sandwiches; I made pasta and meatloaf or else microwaved frozen dinners — in front of the TV, something that Mom would have prohibited.
Otherwise, we dined out. He preferred dark restaurants, themed toward royalty, with blazing fireplaces and thick slabs of steak and mashed potatoes on plates so hot the server would warn: "Don't touch, please don't touch, careful."
At the restaurants, he conversed easily with our servers, the bartenders, and the valets, his voice distinct and gravelly from years of smoking, though I believe he also practiced to make it intimidating: a low, grumbling, serious tone. (People noticed and commented on his voice more than anything.)
One night, we were passing through the bar on the way to our table at Banditos Steakhouse, following the swaying backside of the hostess, when a uniformed arm reached out and stopped my dad. The bar was bustling, men and women lined up behind those sitting on the barstools.
"Mr. Daniel Hyde," the man said in an exaggerated, friendly drawl, "my man."
"Sheriff Matthew Krone," Dad said. "America's favorite sheriff." They came toward each other, patted each other's backs in a loose-armed masculine hug, and then backstepped. "Wearing his uniform at a bar," Dad said, assessing him.
"Good Lord," the sheriff said, as if noticing how he was dressed for the first time. He took a long drink from his glass, wiped the foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand, and then said, "Ladies love a man in a uniform." He was balding, with wispy, pale hair. His head was big, full-cheeked, pinkish, and animated. Hooking a blond in a low-cut dress by the waist, he swung her toward us.
"Isn't that right?" he asked.
"What?" she said. "What?" It was loud and she had no idea what was going on.
"Say yes," he said.
She put her hands in front of her. She had a clownish downturned mouth, and she said in a baby voice, "You gonna arress me, mist-er shewiff? Pwetty pwease."
The sheriff pretended to handcuff her in a rather detailed mime, and when he was done, he slapped her ass.
To my surprise, my dad laughed. His head was tilted, and one of the lights from the ceiling streamed down on his receding hairline, a reddish-gray tangle like a tumbleweed. The glass from his spectacles glinted in the lighting, and his hands dug into his pockets in an aw-shucks manner. I felt both protective and embarrassed, as if the woman and the sheriff were the cool kids, making fun of him without his knowledge.
The sheriff made a big deal about Dad, telling the woman: "Hyde Drywall. This man who you're looking at right here, this amazing man, he invented it: porous, easy to use. Great noise control. Made a killing, first with the government. State of California said, 'Please let us use your product.'"
"That's not what the government said," said Dad, his cheeks flushed.
"What do they know," the sheriff said, flinging out his hand. "Fuckers didn't have enough evidence to sue. Case dismissed!"
"Oh, my," the woman said, putting her hand to her cheek. Then she turned back to the bar, seeming to understand — with a glance at the sheriff — that her time as the entertainment had ended.
Dad introduced us: the sheriff's handshake was firm and clammy, his breath beery. "Evan," he said, "nice to meet you."
"Even," I corrected.
He smiled, as if he didn't understand or didn't care.
In the blaze of his attention, I became hyperconscious of the acne on my chin and forehead. I've always been aware of how I must look to others, and during my teenage years even more so, painfully so.
"Handsome boy," he said. "Takes after his dad." He continued to stare, homing in on my insecurities and making me more aware of my dad's nerdy appearance. (He certainly wasn't handsome!)
Shy, awkward, embarrassed, and getting a bad vibe, I looked away.
He said, "Your old man's a helluva guy," as if my dad wasn't listening.
My dad beamed.
When we got to our table, I wanted to ask about the government trying to sue him (the first I'd heard about it), but instead I asked, "How do you know him?"
Dad pulled a leather wallet-like case from his back pocket and handed it to me.
I opened the fold. Inside was a badge. "Is it real?" I asked. The other side had a weapons permit, and I knew then that somewhere in Dad's house was a gun.
"Does it matter?" he said, adding, "I paid a lot for that." He took it from me before I got a better look and slipped it back into his pocket.
"I'm the reason," he continued, settling into his chair, "that man is a sheriff, and we both know it. It's real if and when I want it to be."
He was using his roughest Clint Eastwood voice, and for a second, I envisioned him as a small boy, trying to make himself threatening.
I must've looked at him strangely because he grimaced.
"Don't worry about him, Even," he said.
"Why'd you call him 'America's favorite sheriff'?"
He lifted a roll from the basket, split it with his thumbs, and inserted a knifed hunk of butter. "That's what Limbaugh calls him since he caught that scumbag," he said. "Look it up." (I did: America's hero, not America's favorite sheriff. National attention for the quick capture of the kidnapper of a six-year-old blond girl from Tustin.) He stared at the bread for a second and then took a bite. Chewed, swallowed, added, "A good man. My friend. A family-values guy. He's going far, just you watch."
Dad claimed to be "a family-values Christian," but he avoided church. He didn't really want to think about religion, God and spirituality, death and the afterlife. But he did believe in the sacrifice story line of Jesus Christ, and that Christ not only approved of his wealth, but also considered Dad's striving and possession of riches in this world evidence that he deserved a good place in the next.
Dad offered his own story as proof that radical transformation was possible. A high school dropout, he rose above poverty, neglect, and an abusive father and by his early teens was already working menial jobs and saving money to build his first business. What was your excuse?
Sometimes he would look at me for a moment, after a particular indulgence purchased with cash from his thick-wadded money clip — he kept the hundreds visible on the outside, the smaller denominations moving inward to the dollar bills — and then ask, "Happy, Even?"
I knew it was a rhetorical question.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Little Brother"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Victoria Patterson.
Excerpted by permission of Counterpoint.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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