Educated

Tyler was still reeling from Dad’s threat when his phone rang. He thought
it was Dad calling to apologize, but it was Shawn. Dad had told him
everything. “I can have you out of this family in two minutes,” Shawn said.
“You know I can do it. Just ask Tara.”
I listened to Tyler relate this story while staring at the frozen image of
Sarah Michelle Gellar. Tyler talked for a long time, moving through the
events quickly but lingering in a wasteland of rationalization and self-
recrimination. Dad must have misunderstood, Tyler said. There had been a
mistake, a miscommunication. Maybe it was his fault, maybe he hadn’t said
the right thing in the right way. That was it. He had done this, and he could
repair it.
As I listened, I felt a strange sensation of distance that bordered on
disinterestedness, as if my future with Tyler, this brother I had known and
loved all my life, was a film I had already seen and knew the ending of. I
knew the shape of this drama because I had lived it already, with my sister.
This was the moment I had lost Audrey: this was the moment the costs had
become real, when the tax was levied, the rent due. This was the moment she
had realized how much easier it was to walk away: what a poor trade it was to
swap an entire family for a single sister.
So I knew even before it happened that Tyler would go the same way. I
could hear his hand-wringing through the long echo of the telephone. He was
deciding what to do, but I knew something he did not: that the decision had
already been made, and what he was doing now was just the long work of
justifying it.
It was October when I got the letter.
It came in the form of a PDF attached to an email from Tyler and Stefanie.
The message explained that the letter had been drafted carefully,
thoughtfully, and that a copy would be sent to my parents. When I saw that, I
knew what it meant. It meant Tyler was ready to denounce me, to say my
father’s words, that I was possessed, dangerous. The letter was a kind of
voucher, a pass that would admit him back into the family.
I couldn’t get myself to open the attachment; some instinct had seized my
fingers. I remembered Tyler as he’d been when I was young, the quiet older
brother reading his books while I lay under his desk, staring at his socks and
breathing in his music. I wasn’t sure I could bear it, to hear those words in his
voice.