I figured Dewy would be especially excited because it was his birthday, that maybe he would talk to me again. I found him sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper.

“Happy birthday,” I told him.

For a moment, he forgot himself and smiled. I realized, suddenly, how much I missed him: missed talking to him, listening to him, learning from him. I wondered, for the first time, if the distance between us might remain even if he did start talking again.

Before I could say anything else, Mom and the Weenie came through the door. The Weenie was holding a large white cake, which he brought to the table and set before Dewy.

“Happy birthday, sweetie,” Mom said, and kissed him on the crown of his head.

Dewy stared at the cake, as if he expected it to speak for him. Mom went ahead and lit the candles, and on her command, we started to sing. Dewy’s face puckered and paled. At the end of the song, we all held our breath, waiting to see if he would blow the candles. He inhaled, as if preparing for it, and then, without fanfare, hocked a gigantic loogie onto the center of the cake. There was something green inside of it, maybe a fleck of lettuce. More than ever before, I was in awe of him. My brother.

“You little shit,” the Weenie said, and slapped the kitchen table so that the cake rattled and the loogie shook back and forth on the frosting. “You’re going to eat this cake. You hear me?”

None of this fazed Dewy, who did not so much as blink.

The Weenie then grabbed Dewy’s hand—the dirty bandage still on the thumb—and plunged it into the cake, whose candles were still flickering. He then brought the cakey hand to Dewy’s mouth. All the while, Mom politely requested that he stop. “Stop it, Walter,” she kept saying, as if he were simply tickling the back of her neck. The Weenie continued, bringing Dewy’s hand from the cake to his mouth. Cake to mouth. Cake to mouth. “Eat it,” he said. “Goddamn it, you’ll eat this cake.” Dewy’s eyes soon disappeared behind a mask of white frosting. A whimper escaped his mouth.

I was not yet a large boy, but the force of my fists on the Weenie’s belly was enough to break his spell. He let go of Dewy and took me by the wrists, his thumbs digging into my skin. “Who do you think you are?” he asked, his face inches from my own. Frosting dotted his chin. “You two worthless shits don’t deserve the half of your mother. Do you know that? The poor angel. Stuck here with you little creeps. And what do you do? Tell me. What do you do to deserve this roof over your head?”

He expected an answer, but he was hurting my wrists and all I could do was look at my mother, to gauge her reaction to see whom she loved more: me or the Weenie. But she was not looking at either of us; she was busy cleaning the cake from Dewy’s face with a paper napkin. “It’s all right,” she whispered to him. “It’ll be all right.” Ever so slightly, Dewy nodded. Snot was running down his nose, carving through the frosting above his lip.