The Brother

Because this may be my only chance to write something today, I feel obligated to take it.

I had my mom and my brother over last night for a meal. I haven’t seen them since my Aunt Linda’s death and funeral back in late October. This was sort of our “Christmas Visit” since we couldn’t get together on the day itself.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from my brother. He’s 48 and extremely dysfunctional — he lives with our mom in a cramped 1-BR efficiency meant for the elderly and down and out. This is because he’s been unable to find a job in the past 4 years, since late 2018 when he was let go (read: unofficially fired) from a tech writer gig he had in New York.

The first couple of years out of work he barely looked for something new. He pretended to be looking but didn’t look. He admitted this to me in an email early last year — admitted to not looking for a job for a good long while, instead preferring to “give himself a break” playing video games, over-eating, and feeling sorry for himself.

The third year — this would be early 2021 — he started looking in earnest but it was too late: He’d been out of the workforce for over two years, plus he’s now at a phase in life where age-ism is a real thing. He got a bunch of interviews but they went nowhere. Companies took a look at him, listened to him talk, reviewed his lackluster resume, and said no.

Three years in New York without a job is too much — whatever money he had ran out. He even burned through his meager retirement savings. In a desperate move, toward the end of spring this year (2022) he decided to leave New York to be with my mother in Massachusetts, crammed into that tiny 1BR apartment together. He has a host of mental issues — anxiety, depression — a shrink he had in his teens diagnosed him with “borderline personality” features — I personally believe he is also a narcissist although I’m not a medical professional and have zero qualifications to make this statement other than observing him over the decades. As an overweight man firmly in his late 40s, he has accompanying health conditions that you might expect: issues with his feet and high blood pressure to go along with being pre-diabetic.

But back to the last time I’d seen him. It was late October — my Aunt Linda’s funeral. This was my mom’s older sister. She had a long struggle with Parkinsons and my mom was OK with the death, describing it as “a relief.” I remember that it was the weekend before Halloween. We went down to the funeral, the three of us — my mom, my brother, and my mom — I drove them from MA to CT where the funeral was being held, three hours in the car together. Super long story short, when we got to the funeral home where the wake was being conducted, my brother started shouting at my mother over ‘mask’ issues (he didn’t want to wear one) — he badgered her, he wouldn’t let the issue go, and it looked like he was about to hit her, so I got in between them and yelled directly in his face, told him to walk around the block a few times to cool off or “You’ll have bigger problems than having to wear a mask.”

So we fought — we “made a scene” as my mom would say — then he pouted and didn’t go to the ceremony at all. I never fight. I’m a pacifist. But I couldn’t let him continue to shout at my mom in the parking lot of a funeral home where friends and family were arriving, and I saw in his body language the same swagger and forward lean that I used to see in my own father before he would physically lash out at us, and I felt certain he was about to push her or poke her or worse.

I haven’t seen him or talked my brother since that day. Once we’d returned home, I told my mom that my brother Mike was “too sick” for me to invite to any family stuff. I couldn’t imagine him getting together to meet my wife’s family for the very first time. What if he got aggressive in front of them? What if he disagreed with Thomas (Jennie’s brother) over something and couldn’t let it go? He’s unpredictable and fussy and unstable. I couldn’t allow it, I said to my mother. He can’t come to Thanksgiving and he can’t come to Christmas, he needs therapy desperately, medical evaluations, medication probably, help. I felt terrible even as I was saying these things because I felt like I was shutting Mike out — giving up on him. And I also knew that my mom would decide to skip the holidays with me if that meant she had to abandon Mike. She wouldn’t come without him. So I was indirectly uninviting her as well.

So we had our Christmas visit last night. I made food: Fresh salad with a cut up boiled egg on top, a rump roast, garlic bread, then chewy brownies for dessert. I tried to keep the conversation light. I avoided any subject of jobs, even though the thing that Mike most desperately needs is employment — not just for the money, either. For the socialization, for the sense of purpose — a reason to get out of the house, a reason to walk somewhere, swing your arms, look at the world around you instead of staring at screens all day every day. I talked about our adjustment to our new house. I asked my Mom how the services she played in on Christmas Day went (she used to be an organist and still does subbing sometimes). We gossiped about my sister who lives in Seattle and my Dad in Michigan.

My mom and I exchanged a few small gifts. Every year we try to accumulate some odds and ends for one another and then gift them all at the same time on Christmas. My mother found a few unique homemade jams from farm stands and church events — a marmalade, rasberry-rhubarb, strawberry-kiwi. I gave her blueberry tea from PEI, a cute little book to store computer passwords, a little Anne of Green Gables doll, dried apple crisps from a shop in Concord, peanut brittle from a place in Wellesley.

My brother and I exchanged the timeless gift of nothing. I wondered before he came if he would even try to bring anything and decided, no, he probably wouldn’t. It wasn’t even awkward like I thought it might be. He commented on a few of the things my mom and I gave to one another and that was that.

Then my mom brought out the final present: A bunch of my old school stuff — report cards, papers I wrote in 3rd grade, my middle school yearbook. I took a minute to flip through stuff with Jennie.

You used to get perfect grades! Jennie said.

Yeah, I was so bored when I was a kid that I viewed homework as entertainment — I looked forward to it.

Nerd alert, Nerd alert!

My mom added that she never made us kids do schoolwork. She said Mike would do it “some of the time” — a statement my brother did not deny, he knows his output was irregular — and my sister tried to avoid it at all costs. She said that my sister, as an adult, complained that Mom should have “forced” us to do homework — she (my sister) blamed my mom for some of her academic failures later in life, her tendency to procrastinate — she felt it all stemmed from Mom’s lack of strict parenting when it came to homework. But there I was: Proof that you didn’t have to be strict. Proof that some kids will just do the work because it’s assigned. Proof that some people are naturally conscientious.

Somehow the conversation turns to pop culture and media. This is my brother’s favorite thing to talk about — he is probably the one who steered the conversation in that direction. He brings up the following shows: 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Community. He mentions a few youtube channels that he’s watching. My mother grows bored during this part of the evening — disengaged. I see her slip into herself and wonder what she’s thinking. I try to bring it back to her, ask how she’s doing with the loss of her sister. She had mentioned a couple of weeks prior, on a phone conversation, that she was still grieving.

Well lately I feel like I didn’t do enough for her leading up to her passing, she said. I didn’t see her enough.

You saw her like twice a month, drove hours down to Connecticut to spend a few hours. That’s a lot.

It wasn’t enough.

Jennie says that’s more than most people do. Then my mom’s face kind of drops and I can see she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore so I try to move on — I ask if they watched any Christmas movies this year, offering that Jennie and I watched Scrooged. My brother decides to pretend, for a few minutes, that he is smart — he is guaranteed to do this at least once every time I see him. He puts on his Professor Hat and tries to lecture us, with comical results. Last time, in the middle of summer, he brought up Jane Eyre and tried to give us a literary critique of the book but then couldn’t even remember who wrote the damed thing (Bronte!) and struggled to recall who exactly was locked up in the attic (Rochester’s wife ffs!!). This time, he said he prefers the Dickens classic story to any of the movie adaptations. And went on to say that one of the main lessons to learn is that we are all going to die, and it’s important to live first, it’s important to recognize that living should come first and foremost. (Gag.)

Then, the kicker — this is what he likes to do — get more meta by mixing in a bit of philosophy that he probably just read about on the internet a few days ago. He tells me that the imminent death of Scrooge is “the signifier” while the already-dead ghost of Christmas past (Scrooge’s partner Marley) is “the signified.” Of course I don’t know what the terms “signified” and “signifier” mean in this context so I ask him to explain, and his explanation is so dense and convoluted that I don’t understand it at all, and neither does Jennie or my mother, and Mike gets increasingly frustrated that we don’t understand his incoherent ramblings. He sputters. I try to reframe his explanation… “Do you mean that the signified is the reference point itself and the signifier is the source of the reference?”

NO NO NO, that’s not what I mean at ALL, aren’t you listening?

Jennie later tells me that she had trouble stifling laughter during this conversation. She said this was the highlight of the entire visit, our lack of connection on this topic. She asks if I think that Mike behaves like this when he interviews with companies. I say what do you mean by “like this?” She says: Like a know-it-all. Like talking to other people is tedious. Like he’s irritated with the idiocy of the world.

Yes, I say. I’m certain he does.

She says well that explains at least part of why he can’t get anyone to hire him.

Conversations such as this — well, that’s why I think he’s a narcissist. Somewhere inside of himself he’s decided he’s brilliant, but when he talks to normal people he just comes off looking like a colossal prick.  A try-hard.

Later in the evening my mother asks for help with her phone — she just moved from an Apple to and Android and needs assistance with some simple things. How to answer calls. How to change certain settings. My brother inserts himself in our conversation and says mom we’ve talked about this, you shouldn’t have gotten an Android, if you’d only gotten another Apple, it would behave exactly the same way and you wouldn’t need help. I told you I wouldn’t help you with your Android, this is your problem.

But I’m not asking you, I’m asking Joey.

It’s just so STUPID, you could have avoided all of these problems by staying on iphone.

I tell my brother to not yell at my mom, he’s a guest in my house. I can feel myself getting tense again. Jennie doesn’t know where to look.

After a pause he walks into another room, gives up, stews. I help my mother with the phone stuff.

A few minutes later I’m wrapping leftovers for them and they’re leaving.

As with most visits, when it’s all over I feel, overwhelmingly, relief.

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Today is week 4 of lexapro. I am finally up to 10mg. It’s interfering with my sleep — I can feel that much for sure. I wake up at three almost every night now and feel my brain spin around. Last night it spun around thinking about Mike, about what a problem he’s always been in my life. My dysfunctional older brother. I thought about how he didn’t even come to my wedding back in May. I thought about how he used to beat me up all the time, how he killed one of my hamsters, his suicide attempts in his teenage years, his trouble making friends, his hypochondriac tendencies, his phobias, his awkwardness, his weight problems and health problems. I thought about all of the times I’ve tried to help him in the past and how he accepts some help (money… and an “ear to listen to him”) but rejects virtually everything else (advice, job suggestions, etc.) I thought about how Jennie describes him as “difficult,” but I describe him as “stubborn” and “willful.”

I wonder why I am writing so much about this today. But then it comes to me.  We write about the past to reframe the present. We write about the past to solidify our own identities in the here and now, to make sense of the world and who we are in it.  We try to understand our changes — and perhaps even use our self-made documentation as sort of a map to chart a new path, if that is what is necessary.

In the current map of my world, I am no longer close to my brother. In this world, he has made his own choices — choices I am not responsible for, choices that have led him to be who he is — alone, living with his mother, poor, depressed, unhealthy, unemployed.

I realize he’s cooked — he’s a finished product. At age 48 — I just don’t see much of a rebound for him — I’m not sure he’ll ever have another real job again, unless some kind of miracle happens.

It’s not your problem, Joe, you didn’t make him this way, you didn’t screw him up, you aren’t responsible for the mess he’s in, you didn’t create this outcome, not your fault and not your problem, ok? 

But it still hurts to see how painfully damaged he is.  I want — what I have always wanted for my brother — is for him to be stable.  For him to have a job, some kind of footing underneath him, so that he could have a chance at something resembling happiness.

These kind of thoughts unsurprisingly did not help me relax last night.  After some amount of brain spinning, I remembered a trick. I put my hand on Jennie’s waist and feel her breathe. I listen to the quiet filling the room, pressing in on my ears. I concentrate on the warmth of us together. And my mind eventually loosened, sloughing down the sides of my skull into the bottomless chasm of sleep.