Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(13)

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    I heard him taking two steps at a time up to my mom’s room, so I ducked my head under the covers, where I was snuggling with my mother in our usual spot. My mom was the definition of a snuggler, and she always had some form of chocolate close by. A Snickers, or an Almond Joy, or a brownie wrapped in cellophane. Lying in bed with her was like sleeping with cotton candy.

“Where is she?” Chet asked, menacingly, when he bombed through the bedroom door, smelling like the woods. My brother always smelled like a bonfire. He smelled like the beach and the woods all at the same time. He smelled like home.

“She’s not heeere,” my mom sang in the singsong, flirty way she spoke when she was being playful, which was a large percentage of the time.

“I don’t believe you,” he told her and then pinpointed exactly where my feet were, grabbed them, and dragged me out of the bed, until he was holding me upside down by my ankles, with my head an inch above the floor. I used my arms to climb up his legs, and then he spun me around until I was over his shoulders.

“Be careful, Chet,” my mom scolded my brother, which was silly because a) she knew I loved this, and b) my mother telling any of us to be careful didn’t even go in one ear and out the other—it just turned around and went right back into her mouth.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked me, as we bounded down the steps to the kitchen.

It was after ten P.M., and whenever Chet came home from work that late, he wanted cereal. When I was nine years old, preparing cereal felt culinary and also made me feel like I was running a household, which no one else in my family seemed to be doing at that point. I fancied myself a homemaker, taking care of my brood.

    Being the youngest of six doesn’t beg a lot of service from your siblings; no one ever asked me for anything—but Chet did. I loved making him cereal when he came home late. I could make any kind of cereal. I knew the right milk-to-cereal ratio he preferred, so I’d fold a paper towel into a napkin (my parents had either never heard about napkins or they were able to buy paper towels cheaper and in bulk), and place a cereal spoon beside the bowl because, unlike anyone else in our family, I knew the difference between a cereal spoon and a teaspoon. (To this day, I always prefer a cereal spoon, even when I’m drinking tea.) Then we’d sit at the kitchen table and talk about our day—like a couple.

My brother Chet was the oldest, then twenty-two, and I was the youngest. I was his little plaything. I knew that the more outrageous I was, the more he would howl, and I loved the feeling of making him howl, with his head thrown back, laughing. Chet was tall and skinny—but strong enough to throw me over his shoulders. I always braced myself when I saw him charge through a room, headed in my direction, with his eyes dancing. I’d try to duck or run, but would freeze in the end, covering my head in my hands, kicking and screaming, only to be thrown up over his shoulders and taken somewhere that I pretended I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go everywhere with him. He could build a shed, he could sail a boat, and he could fix a car—three things my father could never do, but pretended to do frequently.

    I would watch Chet and my father in the garage, while Chet would mimic closing the hood of the car on my father’s head or dance around making funny faces at me while my father asked him for some tool that he thought would aid in restarting the engine of whatever outdated jalopy he had his head under. Even as a kid, that felt so silly to watch; sitting there, I was embarrassed for my own father, pretending he could do things that he couldn’t. Chet was an actual engineer, so he understood mechanics, and when my father would eventually throw his hands up, having exhausted all possibilities (known to him), Chet would step in and actually fix the car. Chet was a man the day he was born. My dad seemed like a boy who got big.

They call it a macher in Yiddish. All talk, very little action. My father always made grand sweeping hand gestures when he spoke, which is one of the various bad habits I picked up from him. My brother never moved his hands when he spoke. He didn’t have to.

Most nights, I would fall asleep on the couch in Chet’s room—or I’d pretend to fall asleep, because that’s how I got him to carry me. He’d pick me up off the couch in the same way you’d pick up a handicapped person, and that’s when I felt the warmest feeling in the world—like I was being looked after. I knew in those steps to my room that I was loved. That the man I loved the most loved me right back.

Having an older brother is a lot like a crush—in fact, it is a crush. You have someone you love and adore, who never loses his temper with you, who is always looking out for you and looking after you, and that becomes your definition of what love means.

    Maybe I’ve canonized my brother into something much more than he was. Did his smile linger a little longer at me in my memories? Perhaps. But maybe he smiled even more than I’m giving him credit for. Maybe he was even more than I remember. But this is my memory, the one that has been stuck in my head for over thirty years…collecting dust.

One August, we were coming back from Martha’s Vineyard at the end of our summer—a five-hour car ride from Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to Livingston, New Jersey. Chet knew how much I loved the cold air, so he wrapped me up in blankets and rolled down the windows, and we drove like that the whole way home, listening to Neil Young. When I’d open my eyes a crack to make sure he wasn’t too cold, he’d shiver dramatically in his flannel shirt and say, “God, this is miserable,” with a huge smirk on his face—or maybe smirk isn’t the right word. It was less than a smile and more than a smirk. It was a grin. Chet always had that grin.