Three Weeks With My Brother (31 page)

And then she slept again.

A week later, we had the results of the biopsy. My sister had essentially three types of cancerous cells in her brain: oligodendroglioma, astrocytoma, and gliobastoma multiforme; all are fast-growing tumors that spread in spiderlike fashion; they are only partially susceptible to radiation and chemotherapy. As we learned what we could about it, only one fact about the tumors stood out in our minds.

Though all could be deadly, one form of her tumor was essentially so. After five years the survival rate for those with gliobastoma multiforme was less than 2 percent.

My sister had just turned twenty-six.

I returned to North Carolina three days later, the morning my sister was to be released from the hospital. In addition to learning that she’d need radiation, my sister was put on the antiseizure medication. With her head bandaged, she began the slow process of healing. The guilt I felt about not being with her left me aching for weeks, and I threw myself into work.

Yet, life eked on, bringing with it additional sources of stress. My new boss immediately began exerting pressure on me to perform; Cat and I bought our first house. In the span of three months, we’d moved, changed jobs, bought a house, began the process of remodeling, and worried incessantly about my sister.

That wasn’t all. My sister’s diagnosis was almost too much for my father to bear, and my relocation to North Carolina only seemed to feed the anger and guilt he felt inside. Again, I was the outlet for his rage and sense of helplessness. When I told him about our new house, for example, he responded by tersely informing me that I better not expect any help with the down payment. When he called, he spoke only to my wife; usually I stood by waiting for my chance to visit only to hear Cathy say, “Well, Nick is here. Do you want to say hi?” There would be a long pause before Cat would go on. “Oh, well, okay, then. ’Bye, Dad. Love you.” Then, ever so quietly, she’d hang up the phone.

“He didn’t want to talk to me?” I’d ask.

“It’s not you,” she’d whisper, taking me in her arms. “He’s just scared.”

With Dana, my dad kept up a brave front. He brought her to her appointments, and in April, when the radiation started, she moved back into the house. The radiation made her sick and caused her to lose a good deal of hair on the side of her head, but she sounded upbeat whenever I’d call. My sister, always an optimist at heart, knew she’d be okay.

“I’ve been praying, Nick,” she told me once. “And I think it’s working. It’s like I can feel the tumors dying. I like to imagine them screaming in agony as they’re dying.”

“I’m sure they are. You’re young and strong.”

“Will you pray for me, too?”

“You don’t have ask, Dana. I’ve been praying for you every day.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“How’s dad holding up?”

“He’s been great. You can’t believe how helpful he is. He cooks me soup and even bought me a television with a remote so I don’t have to get up to change the channel.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“So how are you doing? Anything exciting going on?”

I hesitated. There was something more, but part of me didn’t want to answer. How could I tell her? At the same time, I knew my sister would find out eventually; others in the family, including Micah, already knew.

“Well, we just found out that Cat is pregnant again,” I finally said. “The baby’s due in September.”

For a long time, my sister was silent.

“That’s wonderful,” she finally said. Her voice was subdued. “I’m happy for you two.”

“Did you tell her?” Micah asked me a few minutes later. I’d called him immediately after hanging up with Dana.

“Yeah, I told her.”

“How’d she take it?”

“About like I expected.”

“It’s terrible, isn’t it? I mean, she’d be a great mother. She’s just like mom was.”

I said nothing; there was nothing really to say.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” Micah finally added. “And the way things have been happening lately.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about the highs and lows. First, you get married and you’re on an incredible high. Six weeks later, mom dies, and it’s impossible to get any lower. Cat gets pregnant for the first time, then has a miscarriage. You and Cat make the decision to move and you’re excited about starting a new life; a month later, Dana has a seizure and we find out she has a brain tumor. Then, you learn that Cathy’s pregnant again; at the same time, we find out that Dana can’t have kids and she isn’t likely to live more than five years. It’s like you’ve been living on a roller coaster that’s racing up and down, without hitting a level area. For you, it’s been the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.”

“I could say the same thing about you,” I offered quietly. “And dad, too.”

“I know,” he said. “It kind of takes the joy out of those highs, doesn’t it?”

Dana’s radiation ended halfway through the summer and, remarkably, her CAT scan came back clear. The doctors were optimistic, my sister’s hair began growing back slowly, and for the first time since the seizure, our worries about her were relegated to the background.

With my sister’s improvement, my dad’s behavior toward me changed for the better as well. He began speaking to me on the phone again; it was tentative at first, a hesitant rapprochement. He still talked to Cat at great length, however, and we learned that he’d actually begun dating again.

He’d met a woman, he said, and he liked her a lot.

Dana, too, was getting along better with Bob; after the surgery, their relationship had been rocky.

And Micah, as usual, kept humming along, escaping for long weekends and avoiding all serious relationships.

In September 1993, Ryan was born, though I wasn’t at the hospital for his birth. Instead, I was out of town on business—a meeting I couldn’t miss—and Cat’s water broke just as the meeting was ending. I wouldn’t arrive to see my son until the following day.

In November, our family reunited in Texas for Thanksgiving with my dad’s younger brother Monty, and I was struck by the fact that my father seemed genuinely happy. He’d fallen in love, he said, and all three of us were pleased that he’d finally found someone whose company he enjoyed. This news, however, about our father suddenly seemed less important than what else we learned on that trip.

Dana told us that she and Bob had broken up again. This wasn’t entirely unexpected; the stress of her recent illness would have been enough to test any relationship.

“Oh,” I remember saying, “that’s too bad. I like Bob.”

“There’s more though,” my sister said.

“What’s that?”

She smiled, offering the faintest of shrugs. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t worry. I’ve stopped taking my antiseizure medicine.”

There was even more. In our family, I was slowly beginning to realize, there was always something more. Not only was my sister seriously jeopardizing her health—a worry that would plague us over the next seven months—but well on her way to becoming a single mother. We soon found out that she was expecting twins.

Then, increasing our worries, right after Christmas, my dad abruptly informed my sister she had to move out of the house, despite the fact that she had nowhere else to go.

Though I never told anyone, I secretly began to wonder if my father was not only manic-depressive, but mentally ill in other ways as well.

In December, my dad learned that the woman he’d been dating—the first woman he’d dated after my mom’s death—hadn’t actually been divorced. Instead, she’d only been separated from her husband, and had been using my father for the little money he had. By the end of the relationship, my father was deep in debt. When he could afford nothing more, she cut off contact entirely. I don’t know whether my dad kept calling the woman and she finally grew tired of his persistence, or whether it was accidental, but her husband eventually found out about the relationship. The husband was a burly police officer, and he’d physically threatened my dad in the driveway of my dad’s home. My father had been terrified by the confrontation, even fearing for his life.

It was this turn of events, right around Christmas, I believe, that finally broke him emotionally.

From that point on, my dad embarked on a downward spiral that only grew worse over time. His mood and attitude were bitter, and he became not only angry, but paranoid as well. Because he couldn’t go to the police—what good would it have done?—he bought guns and ammunition instead. He asked my sister to move out of the house. And then he bought a dog named Flame.

Flame, a German shepherd, had originally been trained for police duty, but because of his volatile nature, couldn’t be used. Though attached to my dad, Flame made everyone else nervous. The dog growled and snapped, seemingly at random, and wasn’t trustworthy. His combustible personality, combined with my father’s instability, made for a dangerous mix.

During the first few months of 1994, my brother and I talked endlessly on the phone, about both our sister and our father, wondering what, if anything, we could do.

“Should I invite Dana to live out here with us?” I asked.

“She can’t, Nick,” Micah answered. “Her doctors are out here.”

“What about dad?”

“He’s adamant that she can’t live at home anymore. And to be honest, I really don’t want her living there either. He’s really getting strange these days. And with Flame . . . no, Dana can’t stay there. Not if she has kids.”

“Can she stay with you?”

“I’ve asked, but she says she doesn’t want to. She says she can handle it. Her friend Olga has a small room that she says Dana can rent.”

Olga lived in the old farmhouse where we boarded our horses; she’d known Dana for years.

“How’s she going to handle it? She has no job, no husband, no money, she has a brain tumor . . .”

“I know. I try to tell her that.”

“What does she say?”

“She says that she’ll make do. She isn’t worried at all. She’s excited about having kids.”

“How can she not be worried? What if she has a seizure and no one’s around to help her?”

“She has faith that it’ll all work out.”

I hesitated. “Do you think that’s enough?”

“I don’t know,” he answered.

Thankfully, my sister made it through her pregnancy uneventfully, and in May 1994, she delivered healthy twin boys she named Cody and Cole. Within a week of her delivery, she was back on her antiseizure medication, and she began taking care of the babies in the cramped room she called home. Micah and I sent her money, and somehow it was enough for her to survive. Dana and the twins slept on a fold-out mattress on a wooden floor for two months; by the end of the summer, however, my sister had reconciled with Bob and had decided to move in with him so the boys could live with their father. Surprising us, she hadn’t told him that she’d been pregnant until right before the twins had been born.

During that time, my dad devoted most of his time to working with the dog. Despite my sister’s apparent good health, his anger only grew worse. In that six-month period, he began to estrange himself from the rest of his extended family. He refused to take calls from his mother, father, or siblings; if they sent a letter, he returned it unopened. Nor would he talk to me—or Micah and Dana—about his reasons for cutting them out of his life. If we asked him what was going on, he grew furious with us—right to Nuclear Launch—and through gritted teeth would tell us that it was “none of your damn business.” For whatever reason, he’d begun to blame his family for all the problems he had in his life. At the time, however, I’d been through so many ups and downs that I somehow believed my dad would get through this as well.

My father, I eventually found out, began seeing a psychiatrist around that time, which both my brother and I thought would help. But my dad, I alone seemed to recognize, had been maintaining a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence for years. He could fool people—indeed, no one at work ever mentioned that anything seemed amiss—and I think he was able to fool the psychiatrist as well. Instead of putting my father on antidepressants, which I think would have benefited him, the doctor instead prescribed Valium, which only made matters worse.

With Dana and Bob back together, the twins healthy, and dad limiting—though not cutting off—contact with us, Micah concentrated on work, excelled at his job, and continued to date.

As for me, three thousand miles from the rest of my family, life went on as usual with one small exception. Right after Cat and I celebrated our fifth anniversary, and using my wife’s grandparents as inspiration, I began writing again.

Throughout 1993 and 1994, my brother and I saw quite a bit of each other, despite the distance between us. The pharmaceutical company we worked for would hold national sales meetings to promote their new product releases. In addition, training sessions were conducted out of the home offices in New Jersey, and Micah and I would inevitably end up in the same sessions. He also visited me in North Carolina and I would make it out to California at least once a year. As always, we would talk about Dana and my dad. Because my brother was the conduit I used to follow the goings-on in the family, I needed to talk to him. Because I was the only one with whom he could speak freely, he needed to talk to me, too.

In late 1994, we were at a national sales conference and relaxing after a day of meetings when the same subjects arose.

“How’s dad doing?” I asked.

“Who knows. But I think he’s met someone new and he’s dating again.”

“Does he ever go to see the twins?”

“No, not really.”

“Have you asked him why?”

“He’d rather spend the weekend with his dog.”

“He didn’t say that.”

“Not in so many words. But that’s the way he acts. It’s like the dog and this new woman are the only things he cares about anymore.”

“Any word on why he won’t talk to his family?”

“No.”

“But he’s dating?”

“Yeah. Can you believe it? Half the time, I think he’s getting better. But when you look at the whole picture . . .” He trailed off. “I hope he snaps out of it, but this time I’m not so sure. He seems so angry all the time.”