Gettysburg
By WICKHAM BOYLE
Miraculously the world keeps spinning despite wars, global warming, and our own self-centered tsunamis.
I am not so delusional that I believe my personal crises affect the sway and pitch of our orb’s rotation. Yet I see parallels between my explosive, seemingly irresolvable relationship with my brother and the world’s warring nations.
If I cannot make peace with this boy/man whom I adored from the minute he arrived, if I cannot find understanding with the 53-year-old man to whom I was once protector and confidant, then I fear we are lost. I loved this kid. I cherish the crazy household we grew up in, and how by its insanity we forged a world under the bed with trains, and trained the dog to perform in our tiny circus. I love the badminton played in the kitchen with raw eggs, and even the ensuing punishment. My brother made light shows in the ’60s using overhead projectors and cooking oil, delighting all the tiny trick-or-treaters. I also recall when he started doing drugs, lots of hallucinogenic drugs, when I went away to college and he stayed weathering home-front storms alone.
I know I was not the best sister. I cheated at Clue, and made fun of him. I taunted and tattled. But I also bought him his first car, got him a job in Italy, and tried to love him.
And he was tough to love – unpredictable, volatile, judgmental. I know now that he hates me because I am (he feels) between him and our ancient father. Our father who art in Hartsdale, as Pop used to say when we lived in Hartsdale.
My brother and I have had Cain-and-Able explosions constantly, but three years ago I drove to North Carolina from New York City at my father’s behest. My brother had taken up residence in the house down there where our father was living alone after our mother passed away. Whether my brother thought he was being helpful or just taking advantage, I don’t know. But the place was a disaster. The housekeeper fled in fear, every dish in the place was unwashed, there was no food, and the beds were unmade. There were bottles of weird liquor, cough medicine, and assorted “old people” prescriptions in the basement. My father was miserable and my brother pontificated, saying the old man had advanced dementia. Certainly craziness ran rampant.
Let me digress to tell you that my brother, a well-educated, revelatory artist, has been formally disabled for decades. His disability, according to him, is that he sees through people. Not literally, but rather he sees falseness and foibles, which compel him to blurt out his version of the truth. Thus he is unemployable. Thus he gets to be an artist and judge everyone else as beneath him. Okay, this sticks in my craw, and in my father’s.
So when I got to the house in North Carolina, our father grunted: “Get your brother the hell out of my house.” My brother stepped up to me and growled: “I will punch you into dust.” He later said it was a metaphor – and of course I was too stupid to understand. We are all idiots to my genius brother, just as I see many countries that believe they’re the enlightened ones, and so fighting rages.
I called the sheriff and they banished my brother back to Rhode Island. Angry missives ensued, but then he seemed to quiet down …
Now he has re-erupted. He believes that my father, who at present lives in a nursing home in an undisclosed location, is being kept from him. My brother believes I am plotting to keep him and our father apart.
And yet every time I broach the subject of reconciliation, our old man bristles. I tell him that amends and forgiveness are healing. “Ducks, that’s a crock of bullshit,” he hollers.
Let me give you another fact: My brother is gay. I don’t think anyone in my family thinks this is negative. I worked in theater nearly my entire life, my children have gay godparents, two gay uncles; and pop always seemed to be an equal-opportunity curmudgeon — grumpy to all. But when he became adamant about never talking to or seeing my brother again, I had to ask: “Is this because he’s gay?”
Pop sat up in his chair. “GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!” he screamed. “Gay is a small part of what your brother is. ASSSSHOLE is his defining characteristic. So no, I do not want to see him. I wish he would get lost. Will you help me with this?”
I promised. I believed Pop would soften. But the pronouncement he made at 89 seems to not have softened at 91.
Last month, as the Middle East exploded yet again, my brother began a new e-mail salvo. He threatens to put me in jail or the loony bin; he called me a bitch and told me how everyone hates me. He told me I forced his demented father to be taken away from him. And I wondered, maybe this would all go away if they could have a visit together. So I called my father’s nurse and, thinking that a neutral party might have better luck making headway, asked her to ask him to reconsider.
She called back ten minutes later: “Wow, your father is clear on this. He says he would like to spare no expense to fix it so that he never sees your brother again. He says your brother is a drug addict, that he was terrible to your mother, and he really never wants to see him again. And then, you know, he did his swearing thing that he does when he really wants someone to go away or stop bothering him.”
I wrote my brother saying the decision was final, and if he had to pursue me for carrying out our father’s wishes, then so be it. But I felt like a failure. I still wanted to affect some sort of détente between them. I wanted both of them to become infected with the sentiment of forgiveness and the spirit of starting over. It would be dishonest of me to say that I’m not afraid of my brother; his horrible invectives terrify me, and I crave peace and safety.
Yet somewhere inside of him is the little boy I adored, protected, and giggled with. Why can’t we find that again? Why does it seem as if those who fight the most, from countries down to siblings, are those who should be the most allied? If I can’t find peace in my own little corner, I can only imagine how afraid and undone is the home where bombs drop nightly.
