{"id":20701,"date":"2012-05-29T19:57:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T00:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=20701"},"modified":"2012-05-29T20:11:19","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T01:11:19","slug":"seeing-stars-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2012\/05\/seeing-stars-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Stars II"},"content":{"rendered":"

read Part I<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

II. Blue Boy<\/p>\n

The kids and I are decorating Christmas gingerbread men when the phone rings. I sigh, knowing that even a few minutes\u2019 interruption could spell disaster in a kitchen full of rowdy kids wielding tubes of frosting. I head toward the phone, snatching the sprinkles away from twelve-year-old Ben, who\u2019s sprinkling them straight into his mouth. My mother\u2019s name shows on the caller ID; I pick up to tell her we\u2019re in the middle of a mess and I\u2019ll call her back. \u201cI need you for just a minute,\u201d she says, and her numb voice stops me short. When I ask her what\u2019s wrong, she clears her throat and says, \u201cI have some bad news about your brother.\u201d<\/p>\n

My brother. George. He is my only blood sibling, elder by two-and-a-half years. He was my ally when our parents\u2019 marriage ended, my witness in the troubled wake of our mother\u2019s remarriage, and my sole partner in the subsequent dance between two families separated by divorce. On holidays we\u2019d make our way through the maze of cheek-kissing Greek relatives crowding our Yia Yia\u2019s living room. Together we\u2019d survey the buffet table, snitching pieces of roast lamb and baklava from the shining silver platters. Together we\u2019d doze in our father\u2019s smoke-filled Oldsmobile on the long drive back to our home. Dad would drop us off across the street a half-block away from the house, because he couldn\u2019t tolerate any closer proximity to our mother.<\/p>\n

But we stayed close, George and I. Once a month we navigated an overnight stay at our father\u2019s dark townhouse in Capitol Heights, where we holed up in the wood-paneled den to watch Love Boat<\/em> and Fantasy Island<\/em> and eat Jiffy-Pop. During family vacations on the Delaware shore we spent days crashing through the green-gray Atlantic waves, popping bubbles of seaweed and poking jellyfish with sticks; in the late afternoons we\u2019d roam the tar-creased boardwalk, buying crappy novelties from the beachfront five-and-dime and wasting hours in the arcades, where I\u2019d faithfully stand at George\u2019s elbow and watch him play Spy Hunter and Galaga.<\/p>\n

Even after he outgrew family vacations he drew me to his side again and again, often sequestering me to listen to whatever music he was currently obsessed with: Rush in the early eighties, Metallica in the late; Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin throughout. I loved it all, because he loved it. Each track is a memory: \u201cFly By Night\u201d is the beach house bedroom we shared, with cheap prints of Gainsborough\u2019s Blue Boy<\/em> and Lawrence\u2019s Pinkie<\/em> on the walls. \u201cBrain Damage\u201d is his deodorant\u2019s musk-wood scent, which permeated his bedspread and drapes. \u201cOver the Hills and Far Away\u201d is the day he drove our mother\u2019s blue Ford van home from an explosive family therapy session; dizzy with rage, I picked a spot on the back of George\u2019s gingery head and stared at it, like a dancer spotting for a turn, while Robert Plant yowled poetically through the stereo speakers about following the open road.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The last time I saw George he was driving a van, a battered pea-green camper-top VW belonging to the guy riding shotgun, a deadhead with stringy black hair and vacant eyes. It was 1997, years since we\u2019d crossed paths during one of my trips to our hometown. The depression we\u2019d both suffered from a young age had followed us into adulthood, but while my life took a sharp upswing after leaving home, his continued its downward spiral, moving from substance use to abuse and addiction. He blew out a knee in a car accident just weeks before he was to join the army, and then blew the $60K insurance settlement that could have given him a life, leaving him broke and broken, drifting from state to state and sleeping on friends\u2019 couches. I knew we had grown apart, but until he pulled that van into my driveway I didn\u2019t realize just how different our lives had become: I had a house, three little kids, a stable marriage and a temple recommend. He had a rucksack of filthy clothes, a box of Grateful Dead bootleg tapes, and a pal named Jelly.<\/p>\n

The two men stank, so when they asked if they could do some laundry I readily led them to the basement, where they stripped naked right in front of me and put on the least dirty clothes they could find in their bags and threw the rest in the washing machine; when I came back downstairs to check the cycle, the wash water draining into the utility sink was muddy brown and heavy-looking, thickened with earth. I knew they must be hungry, so I made them vegetarian sandwiches\u2014grilled provolone on rye, my specialty\u2014and watched them devour several each. My kids watched too, from a slight distance, shy in the company of this uncle they didn\u2019t know. I wondered if George noticed how much two-year-old Ben looked like our father, but I didn\u2019t get a chance to ask\u2014as soon as the laundry was done, they hit the open road. I waved goodbye from the front porch, balancing the baby on my hip and holding Ben\u2019s hand to keep him safe as the van pulled out of the driveway.<\/p>\n

The crash came two years later. Nevada, fall of 1999. Two people died; a strict new DUI law held George accountable. He received two prison sentences, each two-to-twenty years. After serving his minimum four years, he was released on a writ of habeas corpus<\/em> due to controversies surrounding the new law and misconduct by his attorney, who was disbarred soon after George\u2019s trial. But now, just eighteen months later, in December of 2006, the state\u2019s appeal has been granted and my brother has been summoned back to prison to finish his full sentence, which might last longer than his life.<\/p>\n

But he hasn\u2019t gone back. This is what my mother calls to tell me: instead of complying with the warrant, George has disappeared. Nobody knows where he is headed\u2014Canada? Mexico? Nobody knows when, or if, we\u2019ll ever hear from him again. I stand in the middle of my kitchen, hands itchy with flour and apron smeared with butter, with my children chattering in the background and the smell of cinnamon billowing from the hot oven and gobs of frosting hardening on the countertops, while my brother runs scared, over the hills and far away, looking for a cave to hide in.<\/p>\n

read Part III<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

read Part I\u00a0 II. Blue Boy The kids and I are decorating Christmas gingerbread men when the phone rings. I sigh, knowing that even a few minutes\u2019 interruption could spell disaster in a kitchen full of rowdy kids wielding tubes of frosting. I head toward the phone, snatching the sprinkles away from twelve-year-old Ben, who\u2019s sprinkling them straight into his mouth. My mother\u2019s name shows on the caller ID; I pick up to tell her we\u2019re in the middle of a mess and I\u2019ll call her back. \u201cI need you for just a minute,\u201d she says, and her numb voice stops me short. When I ask her what\u2019s wrong, she clears her throat and says, \u201cI have some bad news about your brother.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":20702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/blue-boy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20701"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20713,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20701\/revisions\/20713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}