Estrangement

Our mother used to come home from parent-teacher night upset. My brother and I were only two years apart, so she had to visit both of our teachers in the same night. Almost invariably, Greg’s teachers revealed that he hadn’t been doing his homework, even though he told Mom he didn’t have any homework, every time that she asked.

When Greg was in middle school, he skipped a project worth 15% of his final grade. That was the last straw. Our mother put a new rule in place: Greg couldn’t play any video games unless he got at least B- in every subject.

Greg used to calculate how many homework assignments he could skip and still get a B-. Sometimes he didn’t do as well on tests as he thought he would, and he ended up with Cs. There were whole summers during which he couldn’t play his video games.

For Greg, losing video games was the worst punishment imaginable. He loved video games enough that he’d lie, cheat and bully me just to play them. Our mother had to lock up the video game console, hiding it from him, to keep him from playing when she left the house. With the video games hidden, Greg’s punishment became mine. Whenever he got a bad grade, I was punished alongside him, even though I had done nothing wrong.

It didn’t really matter to me that I couldn’t play video games; I didn’t like them as much as Greg did. A summer without video games was not the same torment for me that it was for Greg. It upset me on principle, though. It bothered me that I was being punished when I’d done nothing wrong.

* * *

Looking back, there’s a part of me that can almost understand Greg, as he was then. He resented our mother for forcing him to do his schoolwork. He resented our father for siding with our mother. He resented me for being the perfect little sister; for setting a standard that he didn’t want to live up to. He resented our family, because he didn’t want to be a part of it.

In hindsight, it’s all clear. Sometimes, I think I should have seen it coming. Greg must have imagined himself to be like the heroes in the comic books I remember seeing lined up across the top of his dresser. He must have imagined himself escaping from the mundane reality of his life, moving toward something bigger and more exciting. He never thought of who he might be hurting by leaving. Of course not. He never thought about anyone but himself.

Maybe the whole thing was predictable. Or maybe I only see it that way because I know what happened. I can’t tell what’s true any more. My memories are too colored by knowledge for me to distinguish the truth.

* * *

The first time, he was only 20. He vanished to Australia chasing a woman as old as our mother who he met playing World of Warcraft. Her name was Liz, and she had a daughter older than him. She had the same birthday as me. He spent two weeks visiting her, before deciding to move in with her. I didn’t hear from him until a year later, not even on the birthday that his girlfriend and I shared.

The call for help was sudden, unexpected. He called our parents directly. My mother called in all her favors to get him out of trouble. She got our uncle to arrange an emergency flight for him out of Australia because he claimed to feel endangered. He returned a married man, even though we had never even heard of the engagement. Our parents gave him the money they had saved for him to go to college to get himself out of debt. Two weeks later, he was corresponding with her and considering going back using that very money. Our parents informed him that he would have to pay our uncle back for the emergency flight first if that was what he wanted. He decided to remain in the US.

I’ve never even seen a picture of his first wife.

* * *

He met the second woman on Craigslist. Her name was Stephanie. She was 26, had been married twice and had two children from two different fathers, only one of whom had been a husband of hers. She was 300 pounds and she smoked. You did introduce us to Stephanie, unfortunately. She came into our house like a tornado, destroying any sense of peace that might have existed. She scoped out our home like a burglar, even going so far as to act what time the last person left for work in the morning. She then accused our mother of being a negligent parent to him, and informed our parents that they did not have the right to speak to him without her present because their love was too strong for their disapproval to break them apart. He said nothing to contradict her.

The second disappearance lasted only six months. He called me, instead of our parents, with a long story about how he had never realized that Stephanie was manipulative, and that she was cheating on him and never at home, but that she wouldn’t let him go. He kept me on the phone until six in the morning. He claimed that the only thing he had gotten out of his relationship with her was “more drama with you guys.” He told me he was in debt, and followed the claim directly with the words “I love you.”

When our parents rescued him from Stephanie’s home in Massachusetts, they only relocated him to our grandmother’s house in Michigan to get him away from her, and didn’t give him a cent. He left after two months, throwing all of his belongings into a sheet that he slung over his shoulder, and walking out of our grandmother’s house to a waiting taxi, without telling her where he was going.

This separation feels much more permanent than the first two. He’s vanished: deleted his facebook, his email, and disconnected his phone. He’s completely cut off contact. The first two times he disappeared he merely ignored our messages, now he’s cut off our means of sending them.

Grandma opened his next bank statement. It showed gas stops every ten days heading to Connecticut, where the father of his girlfriend’s younger child lives. She splits custody with him in ten day rotations. That means she’s with him, and he used us to get a fresh start away from the filthy apartment he was being evicted from. He was never sorry, and he never changed.

In hindsight, I realize his story was a mess of contradictions. How could Stephanie have been holding him captive if she was never there? How could he have not noticed that she was manipulative? She wouldn’t let our parents speak to him without her in the room! Greg may be lazy, but he’s not stupid.

His story was a ploy to get money by forcing me to be the intermediary, because he knew our parents didn’t trust him. He cut off contact afterward because we weren’t giving him money anymore, so we had no more use.

* * *

The last time we spoke, the night I stayed up until six in the morning, he said the word suicide. He only said it in passing, and I didn’t realize it was like a threat until I woke from a dream of him strung up from the ceiling. He had the body of a chicken, like the ones we used to see strung up from the barn door at Mrs. Kunz’s house. His face was purple.

Maybe he’ll call and ask me for money again, the next time he’s in trouble. He’ll kill himself out of spite when I tell him I don’t want to hear it.

Maybe the call will never come. He’ll wind up dead in a gutter somewhere, and no one will know to contact me. I’ll live out the rest of my life, not knowing that my brother is dead.
Or maybe, sixty years from now, I’ll drive past a funeral procession and never know that it’s his.