�But I��
�No! Now go back to bed before Nanny comes in here.� He does have a point. Nanny Lucci is a notoriously light sleeper on our behalf�
�Ally, did I do something wrong? If I�ve wronged you somehow��
�Goddammit Patrick go to bed!� he hisses. I�m speechless as this is the first time I have ever heard my brother curse. It�s certainly not to be the last.
�All right then.� I climb back into my own bed. As I�m about to extinguish the candle Allen sits up again to face me.
�Paddy wait. I�m sorry. I�m really not mad at you all right? I just don�t want to trade with you O.K.?�
�All right Ally. Good night then.� I extinguish the candle. Several restless moments pass by. A light rain begins to fall against the window and distant thunder rumbles many miles away. Knowing he is not yet asleep I gently speak again through the darkness.
�Ally?�
�Yes?�
�I just wanted you to have the nicer mask.�
After a pause, he replies with all the infinite wisdom a 12 year old can possess. �I know that Patrick, but it isn�t really mine to have.�
All night long the rain continues to politely tap against the windowsill, never daring to develop into the storm that had been expected.
* * * * *
A lifetime of being noticed second will instill in one a sense of place whose conscious knowledge of grows like a cancer until it is hopelessly incurable. Allen would indeed come to move through life like the terminally ill, resigned to his fate and determined to live his remaining days as soberly cheerful and conflict free as possible. He developed and honed it into a charming sense of ennui normally sported by the offspring of the extremely wealthy. This world-weary, eternally bored, slightly sorrowful exterior was a huge success with the opposite sex for it appealed to those women (and even a few men) who possessed the natural instinct to want to �fix� or �save� him. Allen learned in no time how to use this to his advantage and his legend with regards to women preceded him before he was even old enough to shave. In this one field of play he did indeed come to surpass me, and Allen not only found this one inequality vastly amusing but also took great joy in exploiting it at every possible opportunity. During our young adulthood Allen will gleefully subject me (much to my own mortification) to an endless parade of double dates, blind dates and seemingly innocent �accidental� meetings by a constant parade of either his cast offs or their friends.
Once Allen and I began school, mother limited her European engagements to the summers when we could accompany her during school vacations. My brother and I both possessed a keen sense of direction and by about age 10 we knew we could get lost in almost any major European city and still find our way home. (Not that such a thing could conceivably happen under Nanny Lucci�s vigilant watch.) We found it ironic that the places we dreamed of seeing were all back home on American soil. The Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Yellowstone, The Old West, even Boston and New York seemed exotic to us as we had traveled very little of the Unites States outside of our home in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago, Illinois.
