His brothers used to always joke that he had the baby complex, because he was supposed to be the baby. His parents had treated him like a little king up until he was three when his mother’s illness turned out to be another screaming, shitting, angry baby with red cheeks and a full head of dark hair. He remembered feeling betrayed, staring down at the ugly little squirming slug in the bassinette feeling like the world had betrayed him. People stopped looking at him, playing with him, giving him attention. And all for what? The red-faced lump who didn’t know the first four letters of his name the way Lorenzo did?
It got more complicated though, when his parents came home and tried to explain to all the siblings that Rocco was deaf. Lorenzo didn’t quite know how to process the word, and being three, even his mother’s simple, “It means he can’t hear you,” wasn’t enough. Lorenzo still didn’t like him right away. He still wasn’t sure that this was a good idea.
It didn’t last, of course. With all of his other siblings off to school, Lorenzo spent most of the day with the baby and watched him grow. He learned to help—he learned to take pride in filling in the spaces where his chubby little hands would fit. He could feed Rocco and hold him sometimes—if he was very careful and had a pillow on his lap. And Rocco started to get bigger, and Lorenzo managed to coax his baby brother’s first smile out of him—and then his first laugh. Rocco made him feel important after that, because he was attached. Because he loved Lorenzo more than anyone else. Because Rocco cried and sometimes only Lorenzo could soothe him.
It didn’t take long for Lorenzo to start truly understanding the difference in his sibling. He reacted to lights, and to heavy sounds, and to things that made the floor vibrate. He made loud noises because he didn’t know he was doing it, and it annoyed everyone but Lorenzo.
Rocco was bright-eyed and so smart, and everyone overlooked him because they didn’t want to learn how to speak with him in sign. But Lorenzo did. He enjoyed being Rocco’s link to the rest of the siblings. Where his brothers and sisters got all the attention, it made him feel important. He enjoyed being the big brother with strong fists that could threaten little asshole kids down the street who mocked the way Rocco laughed and the way he sounded when he begged Lorenzo to push him on the swing higher and faster.
It wouldn’t last, of course. Lorenzo would have no idea how fast things would change when Rocco stepped into the world of porn—but then again, none of their family did.
Life was mostly a struggle for money before Rocco became Sylent and his career took off. Six kids and two parents were crammed into a three-bedroom house in La Mesa, they rode the bus everywhere, and his mother prepared pasta dishes made from boxed casserole kits and sauce from the jar while quietly mourning her inability to live up to her mother’s expectations.
Rocco’s first big check had changed everything. His first video that pulled in six figures and offered more money than his parents had ever seen in the entirety of their marriage. And it was just the first of many. Rocco showed up, asking Lorenzo to interpret, as he presented Pietro with enough money to leave his shitty, ambulance-chasing practice and start something that would light a fire in his gut. He bought Lorenzo his first condo and his first art gallery. He sent the girls to Florida, he sent Gio and his wife to New York. The money kept coming, and Lorenzo kept taking, and suddenly, he didn’t have to try anymore.
‘This feels wrong,’ he told Rocco one night when his brother was trying to hand him the keys to a new Bentley. ‘You can’t keep giving me this shit. I didn’t even do anything.’
Rocco had just laughed though and pulled him into a hug, because Rocco was always freer with his affections than any of their other siblings. He was the baby, but he held Lorenzo like he was younger, and smaller, and waited until Lorenzo’s body went relaxed in his embrace. ‘You spent your entire childhood taking care of me. This is the least I can do.’
Except, it never did feel right. He’d lie in his bed with sheets that cost more than his first car and stare