Brothers (and Me)

by Donna Britt

  This time, we made it stick.

  Once again, our “other son” left us. Grateful for the respite, we lived without Jason for months before realizing that a year had passed with no sign of him. Most of our frustration with his myriad complexities had drained away, leaving just our love. Another year passed. Was something wrong? He’d missed so much: Silverado, the dog with whom he’d enjoyed countless long walks, had gotten sick and been put to sleep. Kevin’s book Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas had debuted to great acclaim. Darrell had nabbed a role as a drug enforcer on the acclaimed HBO series The Wire. Mani’s screenplay about a sweet, directionless Latino kid was generating serious interest in Hollywood. And we had no way to tell Jason.

  I started searching for him everywhere: Among the throngs at movie theaters and outdoor concerts, in the face of every honey-colored, five-foot, six-inch guy in line at Starbucks. Any wiry, curly-headed brother with his head thrown back in laughter could be him, but wasn’t. Was he with family in Puerto Rico? Had he returned to Florida? His mom had moved; I’d lost his father’s address. Friends of Jason’s whom we ran into reported he was “okay, living with his mom, I think.” Calls to other buddies got the same response: “I don’t see him much. But I’ll say you asked about him.”

  Did he now count us as among those who had abandoned him? Had my disappointment been so palpable he was afraid to face me?

  My failures with Jason (I should say “our” failures, but no one had invested as much in him as I had) forced me to examine my need to give. I didn’t regret having him in our lives; even as things dragged out, he’d more often been a source of joy than frustration. I was proud of my family for having reached out to him, enfolded him. Yet this prolonged, unexplained absence hurt. I had been the one who’d invited him in, who’d been most free with my time, imagination, money, and experience. Jason knew our family’s most intimate workings. And he’d dropped out of sight as completely as if we’d never met. Didn’t he miss us at all? Didn’t our connection mean anything to him?

  It had to, I told myself. But he was still gone.

  The God who’d years ago insisted Jason move in wasn’t done with us. Here’s how it happened:

  Driving to pick up Skye from school one April afternoon, I swerved away from a speeding motorist. Scraping the curb, I heard a loud pop. A flat. Dammit. Pulling into the parking lot of a nearby tire store, I saw a new Mercedes pull up beside me. A tall, handsome young man got out and exclaimed, “Donna! It’s me, Loren!” Gaping at his hugeness, I hugged him, saying, “I’ve been thinking about you! Remember the fight you and Mani got into in fourth grade that Jason broke up?” He laughed. I asked, “Do you have Jason’s number?” Said Loren, “It’s in the car.”

  Two days later, I was headed to see my prodigal son. It had been three years since he’d left us, since I’d started searching for his chin-to-the-sky canter on every street. It was the season’s first balmy spring day. Moms were out enjoying the sun with their kids, strolling, riding bikes. A weightlessness filled me, lifted the corners of my mouth.

  Heart pounding, I’d phoned him immediately after seeing Loren. Jason’s voice answered, “Donna?!” in a tone so happy, it seemed that we’d spoken just weeks ago. Catching him up on big events in our lives, I was reluctant to ask why he’d disappeared. His voice in my ear was too precious to risk. It wasn’t until I pulled up before his mother’s home eight miles from ours and saw him, on a porch twenty minutes from ours, that I could relax. Finally I could ask, “What happened to you?” without worrying that he would disappear.

  After leaving us, Jason began, he felt totally demoralized by his cousins’ deaths. The friends of his that we’d seen had told the truth. He was “okay.” But he was withdrawn. Sadder. More aware of time’s passage and his own mortality. Then his grandmother died, causing him to retreat even deeper as he worked construction jobs. The day I’d phoned, his family was facing a new tragedy: the drive-by murder of the husband of the cousin with whom he’d been living when he’d first moved in with us.

  Listening, I felt the old puzzlement stir. Why did such epic heaviness attach itself to this charismatic young man, follow him like a lovesick puppy? How many other men and women were similarly enmeshed? Jason’s formative years had been steeped in drama—the clamor of too few opportunities clashing with too many dreams. Drama is what he knew. It knew him too, finding him when he wasn’t looking for it. What could free him from its grip?

  Yet he’d stuck with his deepest passion: music. Working with one of his innumerable cousins, Jason had set up a small recording studio in his bedroom. Once he’d haunted other artist’s studios; now he was the one “making the beat, recording it,” he said. “I have control.” His company, Calesent Music Academy, helps artists write verses, record tracks, produce CDs. Living with us did set an example, he said—just not the one I’d envisioned. We’d seen him as “a kid in a bad situation who needed a couple of pushes,” he said. “But everything I did—apartment managing, selling cars—I kind of hated. I only loved the music and I didn’t know how seriously I could take it.” My intense focus on writing and Mani’s on movies used to fascinate him. “Sometimes when you’d write, we’d be talking loud, you’d be in the zone, tell us to shush…. Now when somebody talks to me when I’m trying to put some music together, I’m like that,” he said. “You have to feel it.”

  Later, watching Darrell, Kevin, Mom, Jimmy, and Skye each wrap Jason in a crushing hug, I reflected on love’s doggedness. For three years, Jason had made it impossible for us to share our lives with him. Not once had he bothered to see how any of us (particularly Mom and Jimmy, who were getting along in years) were faring. A voice inside me raised tough questions:

  Why didn’t you forget him like he forgot you? Doesn’t his inattention suggest a lack of gratitude, of love? What if his sense of rejection means he’ll always abandon the people he cares for?

  The questions made sense, but I didn’t care. None of us did. Jason belonged to us. He’d long ago seeped inside us in ways that time, distance, and frustration were powerless to affect. He’d made me aware of young men everywhere whose lives seemed foreign, unknowable. Searching for him in their faces, I saw their humanity because I’d seen his. These strangers resembled Jason not only in their youth and beauty, but in their hidden, inestimable preciousness. They weren’t other people’s kids. They were mine.

  Yet the voice wasn’t convinced:

  C’mon! Hasn’t a decade of letdowns cured you of wanting to support and be connected to this complex, perplexing young man?

  And I heard my answer:

  As if.

  The Death Look

  Donna getting exasperated, 1975.

  All my life, I’ve been the lone girl among boys. Even my mother was so potent a force that her arrival home from work inspired Bruce to whisper, “Death rides in polka-dot hot pants!” The most feminine resident in our testosterone-steeped home, I immersed myself in the study of four very different males, especially my brothers. Men in training whose protective shells haven’t hardened, boys show their sisters the vulnerability they’ll one day take pains to hide. Melech, Darrell, and Bruce taught me to question men’s bluster, to sense the hurt that can burrow beneath a man’s bleakest scowl. Loving them taught me to trust guys I shouldn’t have, to open wide my heart and other areas I should have slammed shut. My brothers taught me something else I relearned, over and over:

  That a girl—yes, me—might be stronger than any man.

  At long last, I was ensconced with my friend in a booth at the cheerful suburban eatery where we’d been trying for weeks to meet. Ilena and I grinned like madwomen over having pulled off this brunch despite everything—her job as a media personality, my book writing, our kids’ schedules—that had conspired to keep us apart.

  A girlish redhead, Ilena enthused about a recent mother-son rafting trip she’d taken with her eight-year-old. When she asked about my writing, my face fell. I kept getting distracted by obli
gations, I confessed, invoking a Michelle Obama speech I’d recently stumbled upon in which the then candidate’s wife admitted to waking up wondering how she would pull off the “next minor miracle” to get through the day.

  As the primary caretakers in most homes, Mrs. Obama said at a 2007 campaign event, women manage an endless swirl of duties: “Scheduling babysitters, planning play dates… supervising homework, handling discipline. Usually we are the ones in charge of keeping the household together. [You men] try to do your part, but the reality is that we’re doing it, right?”

  The soon-to-be First Lady had joked that her famous husband “had her back.” Audience members cracked up at that, at the thought of a man running for president, or any man, pitching in equally.

  I was smiling myself until I noticed a deep sadness inexplicably suffusing Ilena’s face. “That speech made me want to cry,” she explained. “I know I’m far from perfect. But sometimes my life as a wife and mother and career woman is so unbalanced, I think it’s making me crazy, or just making me forget who I am.”

  Grabbing a napkin, she dabbed her eyes. “There’s a real irony here,” she continued. “Women who grew up after the women’s movement wanted careers, to be strong individuals before partnering up. And we are that independent woman, outside the home. But in our family relationships, that power is lost.”

  This woman who minutes before had exulted in racing her son up a mountain looked beaten. “We hate admitting that,” she said. “We hate how we just give in and do whatever’s asked of us. Until the day we ask, ‘What have I done?’ ”

  Ilena shook her head. Sitting across from her, I watched as her face changed, hardened. Within moments, it wore the grim expression—my friends and I call it the Death Look—I’d seen innumerable times in the mirror. Ilena spoke: “I am tired of acquiescing.”

  Who isn’t? I wanted to shout at her. What woman doesn’t wrestle with her acquiescence, with giving, and giving up, too much? I told her about the innumerable times I’d carried more than my share in my home, how often I’d halted my writing to soothe, instruct, scold, lecture, or advise the resident males who’d do anything for me but leave me alone.

  Surprised by my sudden bitterness, I asked, “Why do we keep doing so much with so little help?” Ilena snorted. “Because no one else will do it.” she said. “Because we can’t live in a house that looks like a cyclone went through it,” I added. “Or wash our clothes and leave theirs dirty,” she countered.

  Because we’re the wife, we agreed. The mom. The girl.

  Millions of Death Look–wearing women ask, “What can I do?” yet few embrace the obvious answer: Stop! Stop with the cleaning, the arranging, the cheerleading, the shopping, the whole relentless shebang. Some who do stop see their homes’ disarray devolve into a chaos that’s unbearable—for them, not for their families.

  Driving home after brunch, I considered for the first time how much more rewarded I felt for the work I did for the Post than for my offerings at home. A woman can be a waitress or a CEO, but her contributions at work have a better shot at being acknowledged than anything she does at home. A paycheck alone is an acknowledgment. Whatever its size, it’s proof that its recipient’s efforts merit payment. I knew I was lucky: I got paid for work I loved, regular raises, praise from readers and my bosses.

  Few of my time-and spirit-consuming duties at home got noticed, let alone earned praise or thanks.

  It’s natural for disparity to exist between reactions to the work we do for our families and the jobs we perform for our employers. Yet the gap between the two felt so huge to me, I began to wonder: Was my time somehow less valuable than that of my husband? Than of my kids, who seemed to avoid, forget, or grouse about every chore?

  Like most women, I enjoyed doing everything I could to enrich my loved one’s lives. Like countless moms, I spent my days in a blur: Moving fast, swallowing hard, managing a challenging job while pressing family members into contributing something while I did everything else. “Doing it all”—all the while sensing an unnamed, mounting resentment.

  Then the inevitable happened. Jason left for good, Mani settled in Los Angeles to write screenplays, and Darrell started his freshman year at Hampton. Left at home with Kevin and just one child, I slowed down. Caught my breath. And saw—really saw—what should have been obvious: My life was completely out of balance. And like Ilena, I was no longer sure who I was. When I measured the time, thought, and energy I spent ensuring my guys had all I could give them against what I received in return, I was incensed.

  Even in my fury, I still felt blessed to be a wife and mother. Yet I was so much more: Still the voracious meaning-seeker who’d asked five questions in class for other kids’ one. Still an award-winning writer and columnist. Still a sought-after public speaker. Still me.

  So why was I the person doing an inordinate amount of our family’s scut work? The one whose writing Darrell, twenty-one, felt he could interrupt for the third time one afternoon to quiz me about a shirt stain? “You already think I’m your nurse, your maid, and your shrink,” I snapped. “Now I’m a laundress?”

  Like a hospital orderly calming a mental patient, Darrell patted my shoulder, saying, “You’re a mom. You’re all of those things.”

  Surprised, I laughed rather than asking, “So what are you?”

  Whatever he was, he felt no compunction to tackle duties he could easily have performed, that my own parents had no problem making my brothers and me do. Why had I allowed that?

  But I had allowed so much, mostly without realizing it. Working at home had changed a lot more than I’d bargained for. Abandoning the office had seemed so simple: I’d save money on work clothes, lunches, gas, parking. “Commuting” from my bed to my desk rather than driving downtown would give me more time to write and to mother Skye, then an infant. Sure, I’d be vulnerable to distractions, interruptions, the misperception that I was always available. But I’d also be freed from so much: Pointless meetings. Making myself presentable before rushing with my boys out of the house. Envying unfettered coworkers who never missed a deadline to dash home to a feverish kid.

  Not once did I acknowledge a major factor in my work-at-home decision: my wariness of the world that had killed my brother. As Mani and Darrell moved into their teens, I wanted to keep them close. Mom had left home to go to work… see how that turned out? So what if Darrell had been an independent adult when he died? My subconscious had no use for such distinctions. Working at home, I could keep tabs on my sons, give them counsel, protection, discipline—stuff I was as good at providing as I was inept at demanding help. Once I began, my sons were glad to have me around and never got into real trouble. I didn’t regret it.

  Yet my world shrank. Abandoning the office meant jettisoning stimulating adult conversation, collegial lunches, after-work socializing. Months later, I noticed: my home and the people in it had gone from being important to being my entire focus.

  No wonder my family’s untidiness ate at me: their messes sullied my workplace, the symbol of an identity I still cherished, even as it became less evident to everyone but me.

  In 1996, my twice-weekly column was syndicated, eventually appearing in more than sixty newspapers; articles in Editor and Publisher and U.S. News and World Report cited me as an influential new voice. Suddenly I was receiving fan letters from Seattle, Grand Rapids, overseas, even Gary. I loved syndication—until a family emergency sent me into a tailspin in which I struggled to produce even one of the week’s two columns. After Skye’s birth, I cut back to one column per week, effectively nixing syndication. Kevin supported the decision, though it meant less money for our family. Feeling I had to choose between my kids and syndication, I chose my kids—and my sense of balance and well-being. Many of my colleagues didn’t understand.

  There was plenty I didn’t understand: My absurd assumption that married life would be easier. My unease that Kevin’s success at the Post had made my former stomping grounds his province. My confusion about whether
I could be a “real” journalist as well as a stay-at-home mom. The executive editor’s failure to mention me as a former ASNE award winner at my friend DeNeen’s celebration despite my standing right in front of him confirmed what I already sensed:

  A valued part of me was disappearing. And I wasn’t happy about it.

  Nothing disheartened me more than those moments when the kids whose lives my presence was meant to enrich bore the brunt of my frustration. Hour by hour, I alternated between displaying Buddha-like forbearance and the shortest of fuses.

  Darrell was in seventh grade the day his Spanish teacher phoned about a letter that I had allegedly signed alerting me that he was failing her class. Having never laid eyes on such a document, I told the teacher to inform my little forger that the jig was up. “That day dragged on longer than any day in the history of the world,” Darrell recalls. Walking home, he prayed either to be hit by a car or to learn I’d been in an accident—anything to avoid my ire. Entering the house, he found a note: “We’ll talk later.” When I finally walked in, Darrell, steeled for mayhem, was heartened to encounter only silence. Thrilled, he thought, Maybe I beat the rap! When Kevin got home, we sat Darrell down. His life for the next month, I explained, would consist of “doing nothing”: No TV. No pals’ visits. No video games. No movies. No phone calls. Nothing. “It was a classic example of you taking no shit,” he said.

  That time, I was the picture of motherly restraint. A year earlier, I’d been anything but. After sharply telling the boys for the third time to stop arguing, I was stalking upstairs when I felt a tennis ball slam hard against my butt. Turning, I flew down the stairs with so much rage blazing in my eyes that Darrell, the hurler, screamed, “MANI DID IT!” Mani, still grappling with the fact that his insane brother had thrown something at this she-devil, froze. Mistaking his silence for a confession, I smacked him. Mani wailed his innocence; Darrell shouted him down. “I don’t know why you believed me,” Darrell says now. “But I loved that the people I was mad at—you and Mani—were mad at each other.”