lots
of things happened on days 1 through 4, too--and even more during days 6
through 16--and i'll eventually catch you up on all of 'em, but let's
start with this one, because i think mitch might find it instructive. oh, and if you're
expecting a tale of heartwarming reconciliation between long-estranged
brothers, you've obviously forgotten where the fuck you are.
day
5 found my mother and me rolling into tyler, texas fresh from atlanta, where i
had fetched her at my sister liz's house in the near-cherry dream benz i'd
just picked up for a song in cassville, pennsylvania (see? i told you a lot had
happened). there were two purposes for our presence there in our old hometown, but only one
of which is germane to this post; namely, some unfinished business i
had with my brother.
some context: for as long as i can remember,
it's always been my mother, sister and me over here, and mark over
there; he's always been separate and superior, alien and apart.
my
mother and sister have spent a lot of time agonizing over why this is.
one of my mother's theories, for instance, is that, as she was in traction and
hyped-up on morphine as a result of near-fatal surgery to remove a tumor
from the base of her skull when he was born and thus unable to hold
him for the first three months of his life, they never bonded.
liz
has never been able to figure out why he's always especially had it in
for her--maybe, she thinks, because he was the aggrieved middle child
and saw her as the indulged baby; or (my theory) maybe it's because she's the
only one who has ever consistently called him on his shit.
me? my relationship with my younger brother has always
been arm's-length and uneasy, probably because we've both always known it would all
eventually come down to what happened on day 5.
* * * * *
whenever i sit down to compose one of these little stories, one of the biggest challenges i face is what to leave out. in this case, for instance, i could double the length of this post by laying out a long list of the sorta family-destroying shit in which my brother specializes, in order for you to more fully understand what brought us to blows on this day 5--but, fuck that; let's just cut to the chase.
simply put, around thanksgiving 2011, shortly after the sale of my mother's little house in austin was complete, my brother backed her frail, 80-year-old ass into an emotional corner and, without allowing her to consult her other children (there was no time, he told her), helped himself to half the proceeds of said sale in the form a "loan".
my sister had handled the renovation of the house two summers prior (new kitchen, bath, flooring, roof, HVAC--it was beautiful), and i had ruthlessly negotiated the sale, gaining her top dollar, so it was a fairly tidy little sum. on closing day, liz and i talked, and the last thing she said to me that day was, "whatever you do, mike, do not let him anywhere near that money."
i remember laughing, saying, "c'mon, liz, even
he wouldn't..."
i shoulda listened to her.
* * * * *
on day 5, the deadline for repayment long passed, i gave him a call, told his voicemail i was in town and we needed to sit down and talk. he texted me back, said he had nothing to say to me. i replied that he could either come see me, or i was gonna drop by and see him--and, hey, was his wife at home, and did she know what he'd done? he replied that i could say whatever i had to say to him by text.
i thought about it a minute, decided a written record might be more enduring and useful than a face-to-face screaming match, and began.
i'll spare you most of it; while the resulting exchange has proven both enlightening and endlessly entertaining to various friends and family who know all parties involved, it would probably bore you, my readers--but, bottom line, the madder he got, the more infuriatingly reasonable i made sure to become.
finally, after he'd exhausted his entire laundry list of grievances, accusing liz of me of everything from parental neglect to embezzlement in an effort to deflect blame from himself, i coolly gave him a deadline of six week to pay up, or i was gonna get serious.
at which point, conventional arsenal depleted, he launched his a-bomb:
and, boy, he had been sitting on that one awhile--
33 years, i suspect.
and my reaction must've deflated him, because all he could come up with in response was the text at the top of this post. so, because i'm a giver, i decided to give him a little more--you know, remove any lingering doubts:
and finally, because it needed to be said,
nobody out-texts me, motherfucker.
* * * * *
my brother slung a lotta shit at me during that conversation, and most of it bounced off my smooth teflon surface. but one thing he said did stick--that i'd run away in 1989 and left him to watch over our mother.
and he was right; i did. and he'll never understand why.
see, when i was growing up, i was loved--everybody loved little mkf, and he knew it. hell, i was a sweet, happy little kid--what was not to love? i got along with everybody--i could shmooze the grown-ups, i could play army with the boys and barbies with the girls, and . . .
to this day, i dunno if it was something somebody said, or whether i just woke up one day and smelled the coffee, but when i was around six or so, my world started to shrink. i started avoiding the girls, i stopped dancing like nobody was watching--i didn't know why; i just knew it had to be done.
by the time my balls had dropped and my loins alit with fire, i knew why, all right. i knew it was because i was like my dad's cousin billy mike--the schoolteacher with the sweet smile who was so unlike his asshole-athlete brother alvin in all the wrong ways, the one everyone had always smiled at and then spoken of behind his back in tones of syrupy, southern "bless his heart" contempt.
and i started looking around at my family, all those people who had loved me all my life, and i started mentally dividing 'em up into the few who'd still love me if they knew, and the many who'd look at me like billy mike
who died in 1986 of "leukemia", bless his heart
and from then on, i played my role--i smiled to their faces, even as my heart hardened to them. i stoically endured my father's suicide, and steeled myself in the face of my mother's disintegration as she lost first her husband, then her mother, best friend and favorite brother in three hard years. and all the while, i planned my escape.
this process of shutting down made me a lousy older brother, i admit--cold, guarded, withdrawn--and i thank god mark and liz didn't follow my high-school example. but if my kid brother had told me back then he was sure there was a warm cock waiting for me somewhere, it woulda killed me, so i did what i had to do.
and i eventually found my place in this city of angels, became a successful, hard-hearted homosexual nobody can hurt.
it's been fun, but my mother needs me now, and it's time to go home.
and as for you, my brother: after all the shit that's gone down between us over lo these many years, would i still give you a kidney?
yeah, i would. but i'll see you in court first.
