#'uncle hank' is different from canon voight okay

[gregorygerwitz]

Brandon Platt

“I dropped out after two years so I could move to LA with my boyfriend. I played keyboards in a heavy metal rock band called Black Ice. What could possibly go wrong?”

That question had more answers than Trudy was prepared for, the kind that stacked on top of each other and built into a mound of responsibilities. It started as a positive pregnancy test, then a break up, and moving back home to Chicago. There were plenty of other options, of course, like giving the baby up to a couple who would actually be able to give him a life that was significantly more stable. There was only so much that a single mother could offer, no matter where she decided to settle down or what job she tried to hold down. But from the moment she saw the first blurry black and white images of an ultrasound, she knew that wasn’t an option for her, no matter what her parents or their friends said about it.

So, on the morning of June 8th in 1985, she gave birth to her son and rest of her responsibilities fell onto her shoulders.

There were diapers to buy and another mouth to feed, and then schools to research and lunches to pack, and one life turned into being fully responsible for two. And that was made a lot easier by the fact that she’d gotten extremely lucky by having the son she did. Brandon threw his tantrums when he didn’t like dinner, or when the bathroom light was a little too bright, or if his blanket was covering too much of him after nap time. But he was otherwise well behaved.

He was the kind of kid who was excited to go to school and then talk about what he’d learned that day as soon as he got in the car to go home. He could spend hours sitting in one spot reading or coloring or any number of things occupying himself so that things could get done around him. There was never a call from school about fights or misbehavior. There were good grades, and an enthusiasm to learn, and just as much eagerness to help once he got old enough to drag around a laundry basket or stand on a stool in the kitchen. Too many of her friends joked that he was more capable of being a self-sufficient person at the age of nine than the rest of them combined. 

Of course, that part of his personality didn’t change as the years passed.

After she went through the academy and started wearing a uniform to work, Brandon learned to be subtle about his worries. He could sit at the kitchen table and work on homework until she walked through the door every night, pretending he hadn’t been listening to the police scanner in the living room from the moment he got home. He could leave the lights off when he got ready in the morning after shifts that ran into the early morning hours. He could make his own dinner or get food from one of his uncles so there was even less to worry about around the house. It didn’t matter that he wondered every morning if he would see his mother again or if she’d even still be alive by the time he sat down to eat lunch. The fear was a part of his life, just like school and his part time job and all of the other things that he couldn’t avoid.

It was hard, deciding where to go after high school graduation. He had the pick of almost any university he could think of, between grades and his work history and the essay he rewrote three times about the woman who raised him. And there were half a dozen places he wanted to go, but then he would have to leave. There would be no one to put on the pot of coffee in the mornings if he went to Boston. There would be no one to get laundry done during overtime weeks. No one would be home to answer the phone if Uncle Hank called for a favor that required his car. There would be too many holes in the fragile fabric of his family, but that didn’t stop everyone from encouraging him to find a life beyond the responsibilities he’d inherit by living at home even through the summer.

After MIT was an internship, and then a job offer, and it was too good to turn down, and it meant living in Boston full time. He even got the time off to visit home a few times a year so that he never had to miss anyone too badly. His family in Chicago would still be there, no matter how long he spent away.