I’ve been angry at my brother for a few years. I don’t know how we came to be so distant. It’s not just the geographical distance, because he isn’t even close to our sister, who lives only a few miles from him. It’s something else. I don’t think I could honestly say that he and I have ever been close… except for what amounted to a few minutes at a time over the course of a lifetime. But this past decade, he has pulled away from all of his siblings.
I was the one my mother didn’t want; she didn’t mince words in telling me so, either. After me came Stephen, a baby lost at birth. She hadn’t wanted him either, but when she lost him, she was consumed by guilt over her resentment of him. She got pregnant again, very soon after Stephen died. She made up her mind that “this” baby was going to be loved, enough to make up for Stephen.
“This” baby was Evan. I don’t remember, but I suspect that I always sensed he had something I never could; our mother’s love. I didn’t resent him for it, necessarily, but I also didn’t want to be reminded of the difference between us. I do remember thinking (as a very young child) that he must not be very bright; this being because he smiled “too much.” He was one happy baby, that’s for sure.
We went to nursery school together while our mother worked, but our three year age difference was never far from my mind. We played school together, I of course being the reluctant and frustrated teacher of both Evan and Adam, the last of my brothers who was a year younger than him. Of course, both of them were far too young for learning, but that didn’t make me any less frustrated. I was all too happy to go off to school myself, at five, then being one of the big kids.
When Evan went to school, I recall feeling that difference again, more than ever. I was a perfect student, never getting in trouble and also never getting less than an “A,” but our mother seemed to think that wasn’t nearly good enough. When Evan’s teacher called her for a conference because he wasn’t applying himself, I watched her as she pulled him into her lap, laughing, saying, “Oh, that’s because he’s my little daydreamer!” It was as if I couldn’t do anything right, and Evan could do no wrong.
There were some happy memories, of course. Silly things, really. Once, we sat on our front porch with a measuring tape and measured each other’s feet and kneecaps. My kneecaps were five centimeters wide. His were eight. Even then, he was tall and gangly.
Though I gave up any resentment I may have subconsciously had long ago, we were never close. When my mother moved away with him and Adam, shortly after I got married after high school, any chance at closeness was stripped away. Thereafter, we would always live in different states, sometimes half a continent or farther apart. I have my life, and he has his. Crossing paths became less and less likely every year, except for the winter of 1996-1997, at which time I stayed with him for a few weeks following the collapse of my second marriage. I didn’t see much of him, but I liked and respected the man he had become.
Three summers ago, we attended a Midwestern family reunion, in honor of our maternal grandmother’s hundredth birthday. It was a happy time for most, and I hoped perhaps I could tear down the wall between Evan and I. “So,” I asked him, “What does a sister have to do to keep in touch, brother?”
He looked me square in the eye, and said, “I guess you will have to call me, because I won’t call you.”
Even my sister was taken aback by his demeanor. I blinked back tears, and the distance I’d previously felt between us became something even more. I was angry. Still, I decided “not to let it get to me.” Perhaps he didn’t mean it as it sounded.
At the end of the reunion, my husband and I were saying good-byes to various relatives. Evan and his wife were otherwise occupied, and my intent was to say good-bye to them last of all; I wanted to end the visit on a good note. At last, we turned to walk toward Evan, and he wasn’t there. They had left, without so much as a good-bye to us. I decided then that I would not reach out to him again, unless he did so first. A few days later, his wife, whom I barely knew called to apologize for leaving without saying good-bye, but I never did hear that from Evan. So we have remained, more distant than ever before.
Last week, my sister shared the news with me that Evan had some type of head injury resulting in a concussion, and that it was quite serious. He apparently fell, and doesn’t remember anything. It got me thinking hard about my brother, though. I suspect that if something were to happen to me, he is the one sibling who would not attend my funeral. He took a week off when our father died, after all, but he didn’t attend the funeral with the rest of us. He would also probably take time off for mine, but I doubt he would so much as call a family member. That saddens me.
When our sister told me about his accident, I was prompted to wonder whether I would have attended his funeral, if something had happened to him. I couldn’t decide. That saddened me even more than his turning his back on me.
We have two cats who spend most of their time on the lanai, along with the dog. Not a week goes by that my husband does not bring the hose in and clean the lanai from one end to the other, after tending to the pool. A few days ago, we had the windows open in celebration of the recent arrival of autumn, and as he put the finishing touches on his cleaning, I glanced out a window and saw a tiny anole, lying under the patio table.
I love anoles. They are among my favorite things about Florida, though I normally just refer to them as lizards. When I saw this one, I first looked to see if it had a tail. Josh, my youngest cat, loves anoles as much as I do, but she also loves removing their tails and playing with them till they die of fright or something even worse. Once dead, she walks away. I hate this about her, but she is, after all a cat. I wonder aloud at times, why she can’t be more like Peggy, who barely takes the time to notice them.
The anole’s tail was intact, so at first I thought I would rescue the tiny creature. (And it was very tiny.) I grabbed a tissue and stepped outside to catch it. I picked it up too easily; obviously, I’d gotten to it too late. As I walked toward the wastebasket with his tiny body, though I realized his tail was still moving, and I took a closer look. He was gravely injured. In fact, I quickly determined that he had not been one of Josh’s victims at all, but had probably been under the grill or a patio chair as my husband slid it across the deck. It had been crushed.
I found the realization devastating, and cried out for my husband, who was alarmed by my tone. When I showed him the tiny creature, his somewhat bewildered response was to say, “Honey, these things happen.” I know that. I know that accidents happen, but I stood there looking at that tiny creature, wanting to have the wisdom to figure out how to end its misery. I knew I couldn’t; that it was too late, but for some reason, that shook me badly.
I was fourteen, I think. It was a gorgeous spring day, and our windows were open wide. Mom was cleaning the oven, Dad scrubbing down the staircase with a bucket of soapy water and a brush. I was cleaning out the drawers of the big chest which stood in the hallway between the front door and the kitchen. Looking back, it was odd that there was no one else there, but the boys were likely all out enjoying the spring weather, and my sister had moved out not long before.
Suddenly, there was a strange noise… completely unfamiliar to my ears, and from the looks on my parents’ faces, they were just as baffled as I. It was a sort of wailing sound. Dad dropped his scrub brush, and I pushed in the drawer I’d been straightening. Mom’s face paled as she threw her sponge into the oven and our eyes met.
The noise was getting nearer, and as we heard another stumbling sort of noise on the front steps, it became clear what it was. It was Evan. His handsome face was twisted into some sort of painful grimace, and the sounds coming from his lips were heart-wrenching. He opened the screen door and both he and our dog, Shortstop burst through it.
I may not have been close to my brother, but at that moment, I felt a protective instinct come over me. Evan crumpled to the floor, sobbing, as our parents and I dashed toward him to offer comfort and to determine what was wrong. He looked physically sound, so it was a mystery. He was crying so hard that he couldn’t tell us, for several moments. When he finally calmed enough to speak, the words caught me completely off guard.
“There ‘s a baby Kildeer stuck in some tar, and I couldn’t get it out!” He bellowed.
In short bursts of almost unintelligible words, he told us how he and the dog were playing near the old railroad yard when he spotted the tiny bird in the tar pit. He approached it to try to free it, but the bird was startled by the dog, and in its terror, began to flap its wings, resulting in it becoming more stuck.
Mom cradled my lanky eleven year-old brother in her arms, and she and I were both in tears with him. I wasn’t sure how to help, but was heartbroken for my brother, and wanted to be there to help in any way I could. I guess we all knew the truth, without seeing it. There could be no way to free a terrified bird from a pool of fresh tar.
I saw the look on my father’s face. He was a tough man, not prone to showing emotion, but I saw some there. I don’t know what Evan saw, but my father was feeling something very similar to my own anxiety. Perhaps he couldn’t fully comprehend the pain my brother was feeling, but what he did feel was evident in his furrowed brow. He stood, looking helpless for a few short moments, and then it came to him; what he had to do. He had to do “the right thing.” My father’s grammar was always perfect, but if not, he would have said something like, “Being a grown-up really sucks,” before slipping down the basement stairs and returning with a shovel. I wished Evan didn’t have to see the shovel; the wailing had begun to subside, but it came back in full force, as he and I both recognized my father’s intentions.
My father put the shovel over his shoulder, and walked to the other side of the railroad tracks, where the tar pits were. When he returned a few minutes later, he didn’t say a word; just took the shovel downstairs and cleaned it off.
I stood looking at the tiny anole in my hand last Saturday, watching its tail twitching through the blur of tears. I wanted to reach out to my brother and see that heart again; the heart which was shattered by a doomed wild bird, the day that his “innocence” was lost and he knew that sometimes, you just have to make tough adult choices.
Then I became aware that the lizard’s tail had stopped twitching. I disposed of his tiny body, not by throwing him in the wastebasket as I’d intended, but by placing it gently under the hedge outside the patio door. I went back inside, still crying, and thought of Evan.
In that moment, I had my answer. I knew that I would, indeed attend my brother’s funeral if something happened to him. I would go, to honor that small boy’s enormous heart. I’m not sure yet whether I will ever again reach out to him in life, but my anger has passed, and I hope that someday, he will reach out to me.
