Three Weeks With My Brother

  "Okay, I'm ready," he said, satisfied. "Let's go."

  "Are you sure you brought enough?"

  "Got everything I need."

  I stared at the suitcase. "It looks like you packed a small farm animal in there."

  "One thing I've learned is that you can never bring too much stuff when you're traveling."

  "I always thought the opposite was true."

  He winked. "No, that's just a myth put out by the airlines. Don't believe it. And when you run out of things on the trip, don't worry--I'll be happy to share."

  We found a restaurant in downtown Fort Lauderdale where we ate outside and watched people wander in and out of bars up and down the street.

  We bantered back and forth until finally Micah paused. Leaning back in his chair, he squinted at me.

  "You're still not into this, are you? What we're doing, I mean?"

  "I'm getting there."

  "Did you ever think you might be depressed?"

  "I'm not depressed. Just busy."

  "It runs in our family, you know. Some of our relatives are depressed."

  "I'm not depressed."

  "They have medication now. It might do you some good."

  "I don't need medication."

  "Denial is an ugly thing, Nicky."

  "I'm not in denial."

  "See what I mean? That's denial."

  "You're a pain, you know that?"

  "Yeah. That's what Christine says."

  "She's a smart lady."

  "That she is. But she's not here, and right now, we're talking about you. So why are you depressed, little brother? You're definitely not excited about this, and we're on the verge of leaving. Talk to me. I'll be your shrink."

  "I'm not depressed," I said again. "Like I said, I'm swamped. You have no idea how busy I've been. It's just . . . not the right time for something like this."

  "That's not true," he said, shaking his head. "You're choosing to let life control you, instead of the other way around. That's the big secret. You choose the kind of life you want to live."

  "You always say that."

  "Only because it's true. Using you as an example--you're busy because you're behind on all your deadlines and want to catch up, right?"

  "Exactly."

  "But what if you missed your deadline? It's not as if you're going to get fired, are you?"

  "No, but--"

  "But you think bad things will happen if you do," he finished for me. "So, in other words, you're making a choice. And if it's your choice, then accept it, but don't let it control you. In the same way, you can choose to be excited about the trip. That's entirely up to you."

  I looked away, shaking my head. "It's not always that easy," I said slowly. "You don't choose everything. Sometimes life throws you curveballs."

  "You don't think I know that?" he said softly. "Look, just so you know, this trip is going to be great. You just wait. After all this is over, you'll look back and be glad you came. And then you'll thank me for bringing you along."

  "I invited you to come, remember?"

  "Oh, yeah. You're right." He shrugged. "Well, in that case, be a good host, and stop ruining my buzz." He turned to get the waitress's attention. "This man needs a cocktail."

  Despite myself, I laughed.

  Maybe it was my brother's pep talk, or maybe it was the cocktail, but whatever the reason I gradually warmed to the idea of going. Whether I had time to go was now irrelevant, after all, and my brother's good mood was infectious. My brother has always had this effect on me. With his confidence and easygoing manner, he has always been a hit at parties, and he'd been the best man in six different weddings. Six.

  The next day, we went by the reception room TCS had arranged to check in for the trip. We signed in, gave them our passports, and got our luggage tags. Each was large, pink, and numbered, so that the TCS crew could easily make sure every bag was accounted for. One of the nice things about the trip, we would later learn, is that TCS handled all the luggage. Our only responsibility would be to have the luggage outside our hotel room at the appointed time.

  We spent the afternoon relaxing by the pool, and later that evening we attended an introductory cocktail party and dinner. It was our first chance to meet our fellow travelers.

  There would be eighty-six of us on the trip, most of whom were considerably older than Micah or I. We began the gradual process of getting to know our traveling companions.

  We mingled and chatted with a few people, and eventually made our way to the ballroom, where tables had been set up. As we ate, we were introduced to the TCS staff; quite a few would be traveling with us, to make sure everything went smoothly. We were introduced to guest lecturers and Jill Hannah, the physician who would attend to any medical issues that might arise.

  Only a couple of years older than we were, she smiled easily, and would end up becoming one of our closest friends on the trip. Auspiciously, she was seated at our table.

  "Any words of advice?" I asked her.

  "Don't eat the vegetables or salads, no matter how nice the hotel is."

  "Because of the fertilizers or soil?"

  "No," she said. "Because they wash them in the local water, and you never know whether it's been purified."

  "Anything else?"

  "Don't use the tap when you brush your teeth either. Take these precautions, and you'll probably be fine. I'm going to say the same thing to the rest of the group later, when it's my turn to talk. But just wait--half these people won't listen, and they'll end up sick. You don't want to be sick when you travel like this. Trust me. It's no fun."

  As she spoke, I could see her eyes darting from me to Micah and back to me again.

  "You guys are brothers, right?"

  We nodded.

  "Twins?"

  We get that quite a bit, actually. I shook my head.

  "No."

  "But you're older, right?"

  "No, he is." I grimaced.

  Micah leaned in, looking inordinately pleased by her comment. Micah enjoyed the fact that nearly everyone thought he was younger than I when they saw us together.

  "I've always told him he should take better care of himself," he chided.

  She smiled. "Are you guys married?"

  "We both are," I answered.

  "Why did you come together, and not with your wives?"

  We explained about our children and showed her pictures of our families. Finally, she looked up at us again.

  "I think it's great that you two are doing this together. Siblings aren't always as close as they should be. Were you always this close?"

  I hesitated.

  "Not always," I finally admitted.

  In 1973, halfway through the school year, we moved to Grand Island, Nebraska. Or rather, everyone in the family except my dad moved. At the time, my mom told us that we were leaving so that my dad would be able to finish his dissertation, and we moved into a small duplex just around the corner from my mom's parents' house. While my dad did indeed finish his dissertation that year, he and my mother had in fact separated. It was years, however, before we ever learned the truth about this. My mom was not above keeping secrets from us if she thought the truth would hurt us.

  Grand Island was a sleepy little town, nestled in the middle of the state, and as different from Los Angeles as a place could be. Wide yards separated the homes, and directly across the street from my grandparents was the elementary school we'd attend. Unlike the schools we'd been attending, Gates Elementary had massive grass fields, baseball diamonds, and--on the far side, just off the school property--a set of train tracks, where trains would come by regularly.

  It didn't take long before my brother and I were laying pennies and nickels on the tracks, waiting for the train to crush and flatten them, but unlike Los Angeles, there wasn't much else to do in the way of exploring or getting in trouble. There weren't any vacant, burned-out buildings in which we could build forts, there were no bridges to climb, and though there were ravens, none of
them ever attacked us. As she had in Los Angeles, my mom got a job--this time as an optometrist's assistant--and after school, we'd head to my grandparents'. There, my grandmother would make us chocolate malts and cinnamon toast (the most exquisite afternoon snack in the world) and we'd either play in the yard or go down to the basement, where my uncle Joe kept his collection of model airplanes. There were probably over a hundred models, including Spitfires and Japanese Zeros, and my uncle had assembled them as if they would someday hang in a museum. They were painted in exacting, excruciating detail, and though we weren't allowed to touch them, we spent hours looking at them.

  Entering a new school halfway through the year is always hard, and for the first couple of weeks my brother and I spent most afternoons together, as we had in Los Angeles. We discovered the parks and rode our bikes there; more often than not, we'd see dozens of other kids playing games, some of whom were in our classes. A month later, they would all be there again, sledding down the hills.

  But by that age, the differences between us were becoming apparent. Micah was taller, stronger, and more athletic than I, and seemed to fear nothing. He viewed the move as a new adventure, made friends easily, and carried himself with a confidence that I found elusive. I had always been less secure than he. And I worried constantly. I worried about getting in trouble, I worried about getting good grades, and I worried what other people thought about me. I worried about doing the right thing, and playing with the right kind of kids. Though I did indeed make new friends, it took far longer for me to adjust to my new surroundings.

  As spring overtook winter, Micah seemed to have less and less need for my companionship, and when I tried to tag along with him, he began treating me as a nuisance. Instead, Micah would pal around with Kurt Grimminger, a boy in his class whose family owned a farm just outside town. He would go there almost every afternoon, and they would spend hours wrestling in the corn silo, riding tractors and horses, and harassing the pigs and cows with BB guns. At home, Micah would regale us with one exciting story after the next over dinner. I couldn't help feeling envious, for no matter what I had done during the day, nothing ever seemed to be as exciting as what he was doing.

  Around that time, we had our first fight. I can't remember what we'd been arguing about, but one thing led to the next, and fists were flying. He punched me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me, and slammed me to the ground. Soon, he was on top of me and hitting me over and over. I was helpless to defend myself, absorbing blow after blow. The next thing I remember is the sound of my mother screaming. Jerking Micah up, she swatted him before sending him to his room. He skulked off, and as I struggled to my feet, my mom reached for my arm.

  "What happened?"

  "He hates me!" I cried.

  Even then, I didn't know whether my pain or humiliation was worse, and when my mom tried to comfort me, I shook her hand from my arm.

  "Leave me alone!" Turning away, I began to run.

  I didn't know where I was going, all I knew was that I didn't want to talk to anyone. I didn't want to see anyone. I didn't want to be small, I didn't want to live in Nebraska, and I didn't want anyone's pity. All I wanted was for things to be the way they used to be, and I kept going and going, as if somehow hoping to make time move in reverse.

  Later, I found myself at the railroad tracks, some distance from home. I sat beneath a tree, watching for the train. The trains were always on schedule, and I knew that another train would follow an hour after the next. I told myself that I would stay until both of them went by. But when they did, I barely noticed them. Instead I sat with my face in my hands, shoulders quaking, wishing that our fight had never happened, and crying as I'd never cried before.

  I could feel my family's eyes on me when I finally walked in the door. By then it was dark, and everyone was seated at the table, but my mom seemed to understand that I wasn't hungry, and she simply nodded when I asked if it was okay if I could go to my room. Or rather, our room. Again, the three of us were sharing a room, and in the darkness I lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

  While my anger had subsided, I was confused. I told myself that I wanted to be alone, that it was better for me to handle my feelings in my own way, yet I couldn't shake the desire I had for my mother to come into the room. Like most children, I believed that attention somehow equaled love, and of the three children I got less of the former, implying less of the latter. Micah, after all, had always been treated like an adult and because he was the first to experience everything from walking to talking to getting into trouble, he received the attention granted to those who occupy the head of the line. My sister on the other hand--both the youngest and the only girl--was accorded almost double privileges. She spent more time with my mom than either my brother or I, had fewer chores, seldom got in trouble, and was the only one of us who got more than one pair of shoes at a time, the reason being, "She's a girl."

  More often than not, I was beginning to feel left out.

  The knock didn't come for an hour, and by then, I was feeling downright sorry for myself.

  "Come in," I said, and sitting up in bed, I wondered what my mom was going to say. When the door opened, however, it wasn't my mom who entered the room. Instead, it was Dana.

  "Hi," she said.

  "Oh, hey," I said, glancing over her shoulder. "Is mom coming?"

  "I don't know. She wanted me to ask if you were hungry."

  "No," I lied.

  My sister came and sat on the bed. With long sandy-blond hair parted in the middle, pale skin and freckles, she looked like Jan Brady on early episodes of The Brady Bunch.

  "Does your stomach hurt?"

  "No."

  "Are you still mad at Micah?"

  "No. I don't even care about him anymore."

  "Oh."

  "I mean, he doesn't care about me, right?"

  "Right."

  "And neither does mom."

  "She does, too. Mom loves you."

  "Did she worry about me while I was gone?"

  "No. She knew you were fine. But she does love you."

  My shoulders slumped. "No one loves me."

  "I love you."

  Though my sister sounded utterly sincere, I wasn't in any mood to hear it.

  "Gee, thanks."

  "That's not why I came in here, though. To tell you that, I mean."

  "I said I wasn't hungry."

  "I didn't come to tell you that, either."

  "Why did you come in then?"

  She put her arm around me. "I came in to tell you that if Micah doesn't want to be your best friend anymore, I'd be happy to be your best friend."

  "I don't need a friend."

  "Okay."

  I looked around the room before finally sighing. "Wanna play with the Johnny West set?"

  She smiled. "Okay."

  Over the next couple of months, while Micah spent time with his friends, my sister and I began to spend more time together. She wasn't as exciting as Micah, but while she never wanted to jump out of tall trees, she was amazingly easy to get along with. Still, I was occasionally too rough with her, and every so often she would end up crying and I'd beg her not to tell mom.

  She would, though. Dana told my mom everything and even though she didn't intend for me to get into trouble, I'd often end up doing extra chores while my mom watched me with a frown.

  Without my father around--and the terror implied by the ever-present DEFCON countdown--my brother began testing his limits. He stayed out later than he should have, began picking on me even more, talked back to my mom, and pretty much began acting like a teenager at the ripe old age of nine.

  This couldn't have been easy for my mom. She was thirty years old, working full-time, and alone; the last thing she needed was any additional (as opposed to the regular and allowable) stress from the three of us. She began clamping down on Micah--who began talking back even more--but at nine, my brother was no match for my mom. She believed in both the carrot and the stick and wielded them
expertly, like a samurai using a sword. She had no qualms with saying things like "I brought you into this world and I sure as hell can take you out," and then acting sweet as sugar a moment later, arms open for a hug.

  Nor had she changed her views on sibling affection. For example, while my mom was pleased that my sister and I were spending more time together, she also recognized that things had changed between Micah and me. Though some parents would have considered our newfound sibling rivalry a passing phase, my mom didn't like it, nor was she willing to put up with it. She began making comments like, "You three will always have each other, so you'd better be nice now," and, "Friends come and go, but brothers and sisters always stick together." Though my brother and I listened--and perhaps even understood her words on an instinctive level--we continued to argue and fight and go our separate ways.

  One night, however, my mom came into our room, just as we were getting ready for bed. Micah and I had been in another fight earlier in the day, this time because I'd accidentally knocked his bike over. My mom hadn't said anything about it over dinner, and I supposed she'd just chosen to ignore it this time. She helped us with our prayers as she always did, then as she turned the lights out, she sat beside Micah as he was crawling under the covers. I heard them whispering for what seemed like a long time and wondered what was going on. Then, surprising me, she came and sat beside me.

  Leaning close, she ran her hand through my hair and smiled gently. Then she whispered: "Tell me three nice things that Dana did for you today. Anything. It can be big or little."

  I was surprised by her question, but the answers came easily. "She played games with me, she let me watch my show on television, and she helped me clean up my toys."

  Mom smiled. "Now tell me three nice things that Micah did for you today."

  This, I had to admit, was a little harder.

  "He didn't do anything nice for me today."

  "Think about it. It can be anything."

  "He was mean all day."

  "Didn't he walk with you to school?"

  "Yes."

  "So there's one. Now think of two more."

  "He didn't punch me too hard when I knocked over his bike."

  She wasn't sure whether to take that one, but finally nodded. "There's two."

  "And . . ."

  I was stumped. There was nothing, absolutely nothing else to say. It took a long time for me to come up with something--and I have no idea what I eventually came up with. I think I resorted to making up something, but my mom accepted it and kissed me good night before moving to my sister's bed. It took my sister no more than ten seconds to answer the same questions, and then my mom crept from the room.