Taking a Turn

I’m talking to one of my sisters and trying to figure out what to blog about and she says, “I think you should blog about firsts. You know, the first time you. . .went ice skating or kissed somebody or had a music lesson.”

She paused. She’s driving through Boulder traffic in the snow, trying to merge, so I give her a minute and wait for it. She adds, “And how the first time isn’t always that great.”

And I say, “Oh, wow, that will get dark very fast.”

And she says, and she’s riffing here, and I’m really appreciating her effort, “but, but, it’s the first…that…that leads to the second. And so on.”

Thanks. It’s practically written itself.

Actually, it has. I’m writing about sisters. I have three of them, all wildly funny, all beautiful. And unlike our brother, all still alive.

Well, that took a turn.

So maybe this is actually about my brother. Or maybe it’s just about how we all get through the worst of it the best way we can, by taking care of each other. My sisters are famous for that.

My brother died suddenly, in Alaska, in a glacier calving accident. He was thirty-six. Our Dad had already died the year before, and it was before Bruno became part of the family when he married Mom, so Mom was handling things the best she could, which is to say, she was going a little crazy.

All four of us sisters had come up to Alaska to help. We’d gotten through opening the door to his place. Boxing things up. Taking things to remember him by. We’d come through the memorial service, attended by so many people that there weren’t enough pews. Our brother was astonishing, singular, and even in death, people needed to talk through their stories about him, just to get a handle on what he’d been.

Everybody from the Mayor of Anchorage, Tony Knowles, to my broadcaster friend, Herb Shaindlin, had shown up. Our brother had mowed lawns–he had a modest gardening business–and one of his clients was Tony. Geno–that’s my brother–worked for an energy auditing company and flew into native villages to figure out how to shore up houses before winter. Often he stayed on his clients’ floors. They returned the honor by attending the service, standing in a silence as deep as the redwoods at the back of the church, and slipping away just as quietly at the end.

Geno had also guided disabled skiers, mostly women, down Mount Alyeska and they showed up. Two women actually had a heated shouting argument at the front of the church when they were eulogizing him, arguing about whom Geno had cared for the most. It had ended with them lunging at each other to find a good grappling spot before they both seemed to remember there were witnesses and in the same instant, pulled back.

He inspired that kind of wildly inappropriate behavior.

And of course there were complete strangers. A couple talked haltingly about how they had been part of a tour group in Fiji, and suddenly realized, there was an extra person in the group, on the bus, at dinner. Geno had just inserted himself into the tour.

The man had pursed his lips and frowned, looking skyward, remembering. My sisters and I were laughing. It was exactly the kind of stuff Gene had been famous for.

At first, they’d been appalled, the man continued. “But he kind of grew on us. And we ended up staying in touch, all these years. . .” His voice had trailed away.

We were in that country my sisters and I knew by heart. The place where things take a turn. We were almost able to call it back. One sister had insisted on having the Lord’s Prayer sung by everybody, and the pianist pitched it so high that nobody could get through it. We dissolved in hiccupy laughter, and then we dissolved in tears.

Afterward, we were completely exhausted and Mom was just revving up. Grief had made her unstoppable. After the wake, she insisted she was still going to make us dinner, just the family.

Understand, we had been eating non-stop. Casseroles, pies, salads, people had been bringing things to the door in a steady stream of mute offerings. Mom pushed the food out of the way and cleared a place on the counter.

“Party potatoes,” she announced. “I’m making this and you’re all going to eat it.”

My sisters and I stared. We watched as she peeled the potatoes, layered them, her movements brisk, brittle, every turn of the scraper a little wilder than the one before, as if some delicate mechanism had come unhinged and in a moment, she would come flying apart into a million tiny pieces. She kept going. Right about the time the potatoes would have gone into the oven, it finally caught up with her and she put her head down and took a shuddery breath.

“I just need to sleep,” she said. Her voice was small.

We asked her if she wanted us there for awhile until she did. She nodded. We sat in the quiet dark bedroom until she fell asleep, and then the four of us, in one voice, walked out the door.

It was a dazzling bright Anchorage day. Two teams of old guys were playing a game of baseball on the park strip, the runner pounding heavily down the baseline toward first as if his knees hurt.

We headed toward La Mex for margaritas. We raised a glass to the little kid we’d known and the man he’d become. And then we came home and ate party potatoes.

Susan is author of The Timer Game, released this month by HarperPress.