My brother, Del, is ten years older than me, and ten years younger than our oldest sister, Marie. As the only boy in a family which included 4 sisters, he was...differently-treated. To a certain extent, he also made sure he would be viewed as an individual: by achieving abysmal grades in the same schools all of his sisters excelled in, by dropping out of three separate undergrad programs at two different schools, by just generally sowing his wild oats. I remember visiting his apartment one time when I was about 13. He barely outweighed me and the only thing edible in his house was dog food--for the dog. He was working nights at a gas station and training to be a cop, a career which lasted for him about 4 months...until his first call to a gun-related suicide.
Eventually he staggered onto a path for his life: he became an EMT, and then a firefighter, and then a fire chief. In the course of working as a firefighter at the airport in
They had a baby boy within the first year. There was a lot of drama, not helped by Del's unilateral decision to move to Montana to work at an airport there. There were marital problems, but every marriage has problems. Right?
Sometime during the late winter in my senior year, I was in my room preparing to head to dinner and meet Beast--we were engaged by this time--when my phone rang. It was Del. I don't remember if he was crying. I do know that the first words out of his mouth were to the effect of: "She left me. She took the baby and the Kirby [vacuum] and left while I was at work today. Just packed up a couple of suitcases and drove back to Wyoming. She was fine this morning. Now she's gone." He hadn't called our folks yet.
Needless to say, he was a wreck. And I was 1000 miles away without a clue of how to help, what to say.... No one in our family had EVER had a separation, much less a divorce. He kept asking me how he was going to tell Mom and Dad about this, how to lessen their disappointment in him. One more failure on his part, was what he was saying wordlessly.
In the midst of listening to him, and crying (hey--it's what I do best!), I saw Beast come flying up the stairs. He rounded the corner into my room, furious. He muttered, "We were meeting for dinner a half hour ago!" I'll never forget the look on his face, nor will I forget the reaction when I covered the mouthpiece and hissed, "C. drove back to Wyoming today with the baby without telling Del she was going. She wants a divorce." He stopped immediately and sat down and waited for the rest of the story.
It was only in the next weeks that I realized the extent to which emotions in a relationship can mutate: from love into disgust, from respect to manipulation. C. told Del that if he contested the divorce, or tried to get joint custody (sole custody was right out of the negotiation--in spite of her drinking, partying, adultery...'women always get custody in Wyoming,' according to Del's lawyer), or made life difficult for her, she'd get a paternity test done on the baby. Her contention was that she didn't know who the father actually was; if the test had proven Del wasn't the father, he'd have no custody rights. Or so he feared.
So for the next 18 years, he bit his lip, held his tongue, played nice, listened to her tales of woe and worse, just so he could have summers with the child he claimed as his own.
All this was a very loud lesson to me at time when my feminist consciousness was flourishing. The lesson I had been getting, the Official Story, was that Women are Oppressed. And, I hasten to say, that I'm still a staunch feminist, and a lot of women are oppressed. However, the part of the story that feminists tend to gloss over and/or ignore is that women can be just as horrible and evil as men, given a modicum of power. Hello: women are people! Not inherently better or worse than men, just as fallible and prone to abuses if given the opportunity. This did not make me popular, or "empower" me among rabid feminists. Oh, well.
In the event, Del's son, Ham, is turning 22 this week. As soon as he graduated from high school, he moved two states away from his mom to live with his dad--my brother--the only dad he ever has had, in spite of (because of?) C.'s philandering and general fuckability by any and all. [She was married twice (?) more, and has lived with at least two other guys during those 16 post-divorce years.] Ham has nearly graduated from college, has a steady girlfriend and job, and is one of the kindest young men I know. He's also damaged, really damaged, by his relationship with his mother. One example: at one point Del was able to drop in unexpectedly when Ham was in 7th grade. Del found him home alone at about 5 p.m. "No problem. I'll call Mom," says Ham, while dialing, from memory, the phone number of the bar where his mom was spending the afternoon.
My brother, after a decade of ... mourning? carousing? navel-gazing? dating? hiding out? ... remarried. His current wife is also an alcoholic, but otherwise bears no resemblance whatsoever to his first wife. Inconveniently, her first name also starts with C, just like a well-known Simon & Garfunkel song about a girl. Del's personal life is a mixture of fun and frustration, but he is determined to hold this marriage together. He told me a couple of years ago that he will do anything not to be alone again. They have a good relationship, but it doesn't seem like a great marriage. I don't see how it can be when one person (maybe both) are at the edge of an abyss of loneliness clutching each other in an attempt to stay safe.
Then again, what do I know? I'm not part of their marriage. I can only look at it with outsider's eyes and compare it to mine. I can compare it to other marriages I've seen, too, at which point I realize that, even though I've been married for 20 years, I don't have a freakin' clue what holds people together and what spins them apart. I do know that what is acceptable in some peoples' marriages would be grounds for divorce as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure the opposite is also true. I know my sisters and my mom don't understand Beast's and my relationship sometimes.
The great lesson: Time Passes. And Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged.
I really love my brother. I wish we were as close now as we were that night in college when he called me first.
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