This same year, his high-school classmates merely graduated.
Other kids say “My big brother can beat you up.” I was able to say “My big brother is a genius like Einstein.”
It’s twenty-five years later, and I’m home at the computer, e-mailing my friend Suzanne in California. She is telling me she found the head of a rat in her driveway, and I’m writing her back saying it’s a sign. “You’re only half a rat away,” I tell her, but away from what, I don’t say.
My brother calls. “Woof,” he says, his standard greeting for friends, family, the president, were he to call. “Hey,” I say back to him.
My brother’s rock-band days are over. He owns a very successful car dealership and service center where he sells previously owned Range Rovers, Rolls Royces, and other staggeringly expensive cars. He takes photographs—thousands of them—with his nine-thousand-dollar digital camera and then e-mails the images to me, which take hours to download. He is married now, and he has a son. We speak on the phone each day because he calls me on the way to work in the morning. If I am sleeping in and don’t answer the phone, he will simply call again and again until I am forced to answer.
My brother never asks how I am or what I’m feeling. He simply begins speaking, as though we have already been on the phone for an hour. Often, he begins midthought. “So the kid,” he says, meaning his son. “He’s not very happy with me.”
I ask why, what did he do now?
“Well, I told him about Santa Claus.”
There is helium in his tone of voice, a lightness that means mischief.
“I said, ‘You know kid, Santa can’t earn a living working just one day a year.’ And then I told him how on the off-season, Santa works at Europoort in Rotterdam, unloading container ships. Only he got fired for drinking on the job, and now he’s depressed, so there might not even be a Christmas this year.”
My brother laughs, and I smile at how awful he is to his ten-year-old son, who already takes his father with a grain of salt. “That’s horrible. You shouldn’t tell him things like that.”
He laughs. When my brother laughs, there is something mechanical to the sound, like the noise a train would make if it could chuckle. “Yup. And he believed it.”
My brother has been telling his son stories like this for years. Jack once believed that you can tell a nuclear-powered artificial horse from a regular horse in a field because the nuclear-powered horses have steam venting through their nostrils.
“Oh, and I went to a psychologist, and she said I have Asperger’s syndrome.”
I think I don’t hear him. “What?”
“She said I’ve had it my whole life, and it explains why people think I’m weird.”
I try to get him to slow down. “Wait a minute, what? Why did you see a psychologist? What is this thing called again?”
He tells me the name again and spells it (because I thought it was “Ass-Burger”) and then says, “I gotta run.” And he is gone.
I go online to read about this condition, which my brother suddenly has, which sounds like a sandwich made from donkey flesh.
Asperger’s syndrome was named for Hans Asperger, a Viennese physician who published a paper in 1944 describing autisticlike behavior in several young boys. But it wasn’t until 1994 that Asperger’s syndrome was added to the DSM IV, and only in the past few years has AS been recognized by professionals and parents. So for fifty years, these kids were driving their families insane, undiagnosed, and wanting to chase trains in the car. And now, suddenly, Asperger’s syndrome is chic. Bill Gates is said to have Asperger’s. It is also suspected that the condition afflicted Albert Einstein. It is associated with geniuses, and this is why Manhattan parents are often secretly thrilled to have their bratty, brainy, introverted children diagnosed with this condition. It is the first trendy thing ever to occur in the atmosphere surrounding my brother.
People with Asperger’s tend to be obsessed with trains and cars. My brother’s first word was “car.” He owns a car dealership that fixes high-end automobiles. And all his life his walls (and now office) have been hung with pictures of trains. Check.
People with Asperger’s tend to have “fanciful vocabularies.” Immediately, I know exactly what this means. When my brother’s dog is happy, he describes it as “tail up.” As in, “Yup. Dog-o is tail up ninety percent of the time.” He also speaks of Fire Lizards. These, he claims, are employed in shops by glass artisans. They sleep on the floor in the work area, and then the glass blower steps on the Fire Lizard’s tail, and it exhales fire, which the artist uses to melt and shape the glass.
The more I read about this condition, the more I read about my brother, an individual unlike anybody I have ever met before. Clearly, not only does my brother have Asperger’s syndrome, he is the poster boy for it. A lack of interest in other people. Avoidance of eye-to-eye contact. A lack of social skills. Check, check, check.
It was a list. But when you combine the elements on the list, the result is a person most kindly described as “extremely eccentric.”
A weight has been lifted. And I understand why sometimes people speak in clichés because sometimes there is simply no other way to describe something. A weight has been lifted. It’s not all my fault. I’m not retarded. Or slow. It’s him. It’s always been him. And nobody knew it.
My next emotion is one of protection. I will now beat the shit out of anybody who is mean to my big, lumbering brother with his unusual, one-in-a-trillion brain.
Animals gravitate toward my brother. All farm animals, including chickens, dogs, and cats, as well as zoo animals such as tigers and llamas. My brother photographs animals, and in every picture the animal’s nose is pressed nearly to the lens, its eyes soft and loving. I see these pictures, and it is proof to me that my brother is wholly good.
Six months after I met Dennis, when I felt more serious about him than I’d ever felt about anybody, I brought him to Massachusetts to meet my brother. I’d warned him beforehand. “He’s very abrupt. He has no social skills, so don’t take it personally. My brother’s going to ask you too many personal questions and maybe not give you eye contact.”
Dennis was nervous.
We took the train, and when we pulled into the station and walked down the stairs, I saw my brother’s Rolls Royce (chosen not for its snob appeal but rather for its machinery, its finish, and its mechanical perfection). My brother climbed from the car and walked over to us.
I introduced them.
And my brother moved in, and he hugged Dennis.
I’d never seen anything like it. I was stunned. I could do nothing but stand there on the sidewalk next to the car and stare.
Then he got behind the wheel and started talking, nonstop, about the new hydraulic lifts he had installed in his garage.
This summer, Dennis and I bought a grill for the backyard of our house, and then we invited my brother, his wife, and son over for hamburgers.
But my brother just stared at his plate while the rest of us tucked into ours.
“Is something wrong, John?” Dennis asked.
“Well,” my brother began, slouching down in his seat and furrowing his eyebrows. “The thing about ground meat is that you have no idea how many cows are in a given pound. So the opportunity for contamination is great.”
Dennis said, “Oh, well. Shit. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you don’t eat meat. Next time, we’ll . . .”
Without missing a beat my brother interrupted and said, brightly, “Oh no. I’ll still eat an animal. As long as it’s local and hammer-killed.”
Then my brother stood from the table and announced, “Oh, I got you a present.” He stepped outside and returned a moment later with what looked like a lawnmower engine. He set it on the floor and it immediately began to leak oil into the floorboards.
“Get that fucking thing out of here,” I said. “What is it?”
“What do you mean, ‘What is it?’ It’s a gas-operated pump. What did you think it was?”
> As always with my brother, I hadn’t a clue. “But why?” I asked.
He looked at me as though I had just asked him to recite the first twelve lines of Macbeth.
“Why?” he said. “Because there may come a day when you need a gas-operated pump and now you’ll have one.”
Once again, my brother was unlikely and correct.
LIFE CYCLE OF THE NORTH AMERICAN OPOSSUM
B
ecause Bentley is a city dog, he’s accustomed to relieving himself on pavement. We’ve trained him to go in the gutter against the curb, and not on the sidewalk. So when we first started taking him to our weekend house in western Massachusetts, Bentley became constipated and confused.
“It’s okay, boy!” I would coach enthusiastically while I pointed at the ratty grass behind the house. “Go ahead!”
And Bentley would continue to stare at me, a pained expression on his face. When Bentley is troubled, his French Bulldog forehead crinkles together and his gigantic bat ears twitch.
“But watch,” I said as I crossed the backyard and stood next to the tree. “See?” I crouched down and pretended to take a dump. “Just like this.”
Bentley simply ran back up the stairs and barked for Dennis to let him inside. So I was forced to put his collar and leash on him, then take him for a walk along our asphalt driveway. And here, he was able to go.
Just like in New York, I slipped my hand into a little plastic bag, and I picked up the turd, then slipped the bag off my hand, inside out. So now I had a nice pouch of poo.
In Manhattan, I just toss this into the trash can on the corner, but what to do out here? I decided to place the baggie on the floor of the small, falling-down barn next to our house until Dennis and I could figure out a proper “system.” Even though it was a little gross to just lay this bag on the floor of the barn, how much trouble could it possibly cause?
It turned out, quite a bit.
The next morning, we walked Bentley on the driveway again, and once again, I had a plastic baggie to dispose of. I walked over to the barn, thinking I’d leave it right next to the other one. Later, I said to myself, we’d go to Home Depot and buy a container.
But the other bag was gone.
My first thought was, Impossible.
I was certain I’d placed the bag in here. It had been a big mental production to do so. But where was it?
Then I realized, of course. Dennis. Dennis probably saw the bag and was horrified by my sloppiness. He has probably solved our poo problem.
I walked inside. “So what’d you do with the shit?” I said, smiling. I was curious to see what he’d thought of. Dennis thinks of a lot of great things.
“What shit?” he said.
“The bag in the barn. His,” I said, pointing to Bentley, who was looking at us, first one and then the other, exactly as a child would.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
And I almost gave him a playful shove but then realized that he actually wouldn’t joke about something like this. It was unworthy subject matter.
I explained the situation. “And then when I went out there just two seconds ago, it was gone.”
“It was gone?” He stopped scooping coffee into the filter. He just paused, midair. He said, “Did it blow away?” But I could tell he didn’t think it was the wind. And neither did I.
“Okay,” I said in the same flat tone of voice you hear cops use on TV. “What kind of psycho would go into out barn at night and steal dog shit?”
He let the coffee fall into the filter, and then he hit the switch.
We were silent for a moment.
“I don’t like the idea of somebody walking around here at night,” he said. “We may need to get a submachine gun from your brother.”
That evening we were having dinner, sitting at our long table. The table is long because I had originally purchased it as a combination desk/writing table. But I never write at it, so it’s only for the two of us. So each night we feel as though we are members of a large family, and they prefer not to dine with us.
Bentley sits on the floor between us, praying in his doggie way that a scrap will fall to the floor. Nothing ever falls, but he never gives up hope. I love this about him, his relentless optimism. This is a trait that we share.
He started barking, growling, actually, in a voice he never uses. He ran to the sliding-glass doors and pressed his already mashed-up nose against the glass. He sounded ferocious, like a pit bull. Although only thirty pounds, I could clearly see that if he wanted to, he was capable of causing harm.
“What the fuck?” Dennis said.
I instantly pushed back from the table and ran to the wall. I hit the light and looked out the door.
It was the shit-stealer; this much was clear. And it wasn’t human. This much was also clear. But what the hell it was? This part was entirely unclear. “Oh my God,” I said, my default expression for everything from joy to horror. Inflection is the only difference. Here, it was shock, horror, and curiosity. “Oh my God, you have to see this . . . thing.”
Dennis got up from the table and rushed to my side. He peered out the window and looked at the creature in our backyard.
It had a long nose, thin, like a Swedish man’s penis. A water-balloon–shaped head and a full, hairy body. The tail was pink and at least a foot in length. It had rodent eyes, and it was nuzzling a plastic baggie of Bentley’s shit.
Whatever it was, it was fearless. Because even though I pounded on the glass with my hands and shouted, “Die, motherfucker!” it refused to so much as glance in my direction. Very briefly, it made direct eye contact with Bentley, which caused Bentley to literally jump in surprise.
I went online immediately and did a Google search. Keywords: “snout, Massachusetts, horrid, tail, garbage, pest.”
And to my amazement, I almost immediately located a photograph of the exact creature in our backyard. “It’s a North American opossum,” I called to Dennis.
Neither of us had been able to finish dinner. The creature had a powerful appetite-suppressant effect.
Dennis leaned over my shoulder and peered at the image on the computer screen. “That’s it,” he said, poking the screen with his index finger. Poke, poke, poke. “That’s exactly what the hell it is.” Then he said, “Scroll down and see if it says how to kill it.”
I did this, but unfortunately, I was at a website created by some varmint-lover at a university. Instead of instructions on how to kill, it provided useless information such as life cycle, eating habits (where it didn’t even mention French Bulldog shit), and mating rituals.
We both walked back to the sliding-glass doors and looked. It was still there, though now it was on the prowl. It moved slowly, but I was worried that if I opened the door and threw something at it—an egg, a spatula, a can of Pepsi—that it would suddenly display speed and charge me at my own door.
We’d finally calmed Bentley down with a rawhide chew, but every once in a while he would glance in the direction of the glass and growl.
I went back to my computer and saw that the Undertaker was online. The Undertaker is a friend of mine, an actual former undertaker who now works in website development.
I sent him an instant message. “Hey. There’s a opossum loose in the yard. How do I kill it?”
He replied instantly. “Tylenol.”
I wrote, “U sure?”
“Yup.”
“How do u no?”
“Cause. Killed neighbor girl’s kitten with it.”
I said to Dennis, “I have to call the Undertaker, can you hand me the phone.”
After rummaging though my sixteen-year-old Filofax, I found the Undertaker’s phone number scrawled on an old, yellow Post-It note. I phoned him, and he answered on the first ring, as though expecting my call. “Yup?”
“Hey, it’s me,” I said.
“Yeah? So?” he said.
“So wait. You killed the neighbor girl’s kitten?”
He chuc
kled. “The fucking thing would come to my basement window, and it would make all these little yowling sounds all night long. So I went online and found out that Tylenol is fatal to cats. So I gave it some crushed up and mixed into a can of tuna.”
“That’s horrible,” I said. “You live in a basement?”
He said, “Yeah, well. The house has two floors, but I like the basement best.”
“Oh, you would. You really would. You are such an undertaker.”
Again, he laughed, pleased.
“And I can’t believe you killed a little girl’s kitten. That’s something serial killers do. That’s how it starts, with pets.”
“Oh, stop,” he said. “Cats are a dime a fucking dozen.”
I couldn’t argue with him. As much as I’m a dog person, I’m not a cat person. Still, I would never kill one. Shave it and paint it blue with food coloring? Okay, twist my arm. But I certainly wouldn’t kill one. I killed a mouse that crawled in my tub once, and I still feel guilty about it, ten years later.
“I think you’re a bad person,” I told him. “But do you think the Tylenol trick would work on this creature?”
He said, “It’s worth a try.”
After I hung up, I thought about this some more. Did normal Americans kill everything that caused them trouble? Was this what normal people did? Dennis and I were not only new to the country, but I am not normal in any way. So it’s very hard for me to know.
It was pretty clear that more mothers than you’d think routinely killed their kids with bathtubs and heavy rocks. My own mother was of this same strain. But that was appalling and certainly not representative.