Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family

by Ezekiel J. Emanuel,

  Finally came the summer when Ari found more predictable, but equally demanding work at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The heart of the “Merc” is the trading floor, where different commodities are bought and sold in areas called pits. Traders in red jackets scream and use hand signals to make deals that are scratched onto slips that are then handed to runners, distinguished by gold-colored jackets. The runners make sure the paperwork gets to the right destination and at the end of the day reconcile the buy and sell orders they facilitated.

  For most people who view it from the visitors’ gallery, the Merc floor looks like a dozen cockfights crowded into a space the size of a basketball court that’s been invaded by some hooligan fans of the Arsenal football club. As hundreds of traders shout offers and bids, the prices of commodities are flashed on lighted signs that ring the room. It’s enough to make anyone who doesn’t suffer from ADHD feel dazed and confused. For Ari it was a bit of capitalist heaven on earth. Where others experienced chaos, he was able to see patterns and understand exactly what was expected of him. He loved the work so much that he didn’t mind getting up before dawn to drive to work and he gave serious thought to diving right into it as a full-time career. His bosses, recognizing something familiar in him, would have welcomed him to train for a full-time job. Ari declined.

  It was not that Ari felt ambivalent about the world of business. He was just determined to go to college. He chose small Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota. There would be time for big business successes in the future. Like Lowell and Nate, who would become quite rich and successful in business, Ari was destined for success.

  Rahm, on the other hand, was a bit of a quandary. He made friends easily and did well at whatever he pursued wholeheartedly, whether it was soccer or dance. But he was also an underachiever.

  I know, it doesn’t seem possible that a guy who became famous for his focused intensity and political aggression stayed on the sidelines in high school, but it’s true. Some of this hesitance may have been related to his size. He was so tiny in junior high that he participated in trials for a growth-promoting drug. It worked, and he grew about six inches in a year, but even with this increase he remained one of the smallest boys in school. I also think Rahm was affected negatively by living in my shadow at New Trier West, and I wasn’t much help.

  It was not that I didn’t care about Rahm. I loved him. My neglect had more to do with being a teenager—self-involved, immature, and, to a degree that now embarrasses me, naturally insensitive to the needs and feelings of others. I often find it difficult to recognize what other people may feel and what they might need from me emotionally. I’ve never been good at reading people’s faces and understanding what they are feeling. I am pretty sure it’s a neurological thing, like color blindness or left-handedness, and the source may be genetic. In the past thirty years, a body of psychological research has confirmed that many animals pass on traits like social awareness and, for lack of a better term, emotional sensitivity. Similarly, neuroscientists have seen that some of us are simply “wired” to catch the subtle, nonverbal cues people send with an imperceptible tilt of the head or a raised eyebrow. This ability is a real advantage because it helps those who have it to work well with others and navigate social situations.

  Others, like me, are simply bad at catching on to hints and clues about the feelings of the people around us. We need to be hit over the head with direct statements like “Hey, pay attention to me!” or “Stop it, you’re being annoying!” This makes me atrocious at office politics or grasping the hidden messages. I think this inability to read social situations may be why I am so explicit in expressing my feelings and views. Few people say, “I wonder what Zeke is thinking,” or “I can’t figure out what Zeke means.” Social situations are much easier for me to navigate when everything—the good and the bad—is out there. I don’t have to work as hard, and guess so much.

  I was especially clueless about young women. It wasn’t ignorance about sex. My parents regarded sex as normal and healthy. Indeed, having come of age in Europe, my father could never understand the American prudery and obsession with keeping sex hidden. He gave us plenty of information. The problem was that I was so bad at sensing any other person’s mood or interest. My numbness was so profound that no amount of attention could reach me.

  During the late fall of freshman year of high school, I was sitting in the study hall room on the first floor of New Trier West’s social studies building arguing with some friends. A sparky, self-confident young woman came over to me and announced that her friend Melinda Dorner had been looking at me and found me attractive. But, she lamented, I had not seemed to take any notice of Melinda. Indeed, I had no idea who she was or what she looked like. Her friend gestured about twenty feet away to a tall woman, with shoulder-length light brown hair, and suggested that I meet her because she was “interested in you but too shy to come over herself.”

  Startled, and probably a bit flattered, I rose from my chair, walked over, and awkwardly inquired if Melinda was interested in going for a walk. We coursed through the first-floor corridors that connected the six buildings that made up New Trier West. I learned that she too was a swimmer. We held hands and promised to see each other the next day.

  The manner of meeting Melinda—having someone come up and alert me to the fact that a woman found me attractive but utterly failed to seem to catch my attention—would be repeated over and over throughout my life. Of the three women I dated in high school, two asked me out. In college the pattern continued. In my sophomore year, my suite-mate Harold Kahn had to tell me that another woman, Eliza, was interested in dating me. Later, when one of the older women who were admitted to Amherst at the start of coeducation asked me to tutor her in chemistry, I utterly failed to perceive the romantic overtones, despite the fact that she regularly sat with me at dinner in the vegetarian room and she cut my hair because I refused to pay for a barber.

  Rahm, on the other hand, is completely different. While today he seems unabashed about saying what he thinks, he was always much better at reading people and elucidating their real motives—even when they did not understand those motives themselves. In high school, Rahm took real delight in the variety of personalities and attitudes he encountered at our big school and not infrequently made fun of their foibles. As his friend Darcy Goldfarb recalled, “Rahm did not want to be mainstream. New Trier was a very traditional community where the cheerleaders and the basketball players were the popular ones but Rahm didn’t care about that. Other people did not do the things he did, like ballet, but he didn’t care.”

  The ballet classes were a school-approved activity, which meant that Rahm and Darcy were dismissed early and allowed to go to the Evanston studio on their own. To avoid being seen and subsequently harassed, Rahm generally rushed into the building on Davis Street and ran up the stairs to the studio, where he changed into his tights and shoes. But once he was on the dance floor he was comfortable. As one of the few males in the school, Rahm was valued. However, the teacher, a taskmaster named Phyllis Wills, was merciless in her demands that he improve.

  “She sat on the stool and would clap her hands and say, ‘No! No! No! That’s all wrong.’ Rahm would beg her to let us try again. He would give her that smile and she would. ‘All right, from the top.’ She taught us to be very disciplined,” recalled Darcy. “I think it gave Rahm a sense that if you really poured yourself into something you could get an amazing result.”

  Dance probably was the first place Rahm was really rewarded with success for being passionate and intensely engaged. It is no surprise that dance was as far from anything Zeke-like as you could get. In school Rahm couldn’t surpass me no matter what he did, so he decided not to compete. This led him to not try very hard and to dismiss intense academic work. Indeed, he probably dismissed doing anything zealously until he discovered dance.

  As one of Rahm’s closest friends, Darcy quizzed him on his decision to attend Sarah Lawrence College. He would be one of th
e few males entering a traditionally all-female institution. She worried about how other people might react to the choice. Rahm, in typical fashion, said he didn’t care what people thought. He liked the idea of attending a school where they focused intently on the liberal arts and offered him the chance to continue dancing if he chose. He also liked the fact that girls outnumbered boys by a significant ratio.

  I helped Rahm choose Sarah Lawrence over his other main collegiate option, Lewis & Clark College, in Oregon. Both schools would get him far away from home and allow him to test himself as an independent young man. However, I pushed him toward Sarah Lawrence because it was out east and had a superior academic reputation. With two years at Amherst, I had become an East Coast collegiate snob and thought Rahm should graduate from one of the elite schools. Also, I thought at Sarah Lawrence he would get an Ivy-level education and personal attention from outstanding faculty. I pressured my parents to support this choice, even though at the time Sarah Lawrence was the second most expensive private college in the country.

  “Remember what Dad would say about the cost?” Rahm reminded me. “He found Lawrence University in Wisconsin, which was much less expensive, and kept saying, ‘Why do we have to pay so much more to get that extra name, Sarah?’ ”

  The cost of Sarah Lawrence stopped being a joke when Rahm almost lost his chance to go anywhere for his freshman year. The crisis arose out of a freak accident with a meat slicer at an Arby’s restaurant not far from our house in Wilmette.

  As I mentioned earlier, Emanuel family policy did not include allowances. While mostly our parents gave us money for things, it wasn’t much. Routinely buying pizza, going to concerts at Ravinia Park, and other activities cost more than our parents would indulge, so we worked for spending money. In my senior year I delivered pizzas. I am still not sure I really made much money when I consider the gas and wear and tear on the car. Rahm took the job at Arby’s, gamely donning a uniform and hat that Darcy considered especially ridiculous. Rahm was assigned to the machine that turned big slabs of roast beef into slices for sandwiches. At the end of the day, while he was cleaning the slicer he somehow got the middle finger of his right hand too close to the edge of the super-sharp blade. The cut was quick and deep.

  After jumping back in pain, Rahm did what you are supposed to do when blood is gushing from a wound. He grabbed a cloth and applied intense pressure. Soon enough his blood began to clot and the flood was reduced to a modest flow, then a trickle. Rahm then bandaged the wound tightly to make sure the flow was stanched. Rahm always had a peculiar relationship with his hands. As a kid he refused to wear gloves even during the coldest winter days or during snowball fights. Painful stimuli on his fingers never seemed to bother him the way they do the rest of us. So the bandage was super-tight and Rahm didn’t seem to notice. When he came home Rahm was able to report to my mother and father that he had cut his finger at work and he had taken care of it.

  My parents would remember that Rahm did not complain at all about his finger. But why my father didn’t insist on examining it to verify Rahm’s rendition is still a mystery no one can explain. In any case, Rahm wasn’t slowed a bit as he went through graduation and attended the parties and dances that celebrated the New Trier West class of 1977. As part of the festivities Rahm even joined some classmates for a chilly June swim in Lake Michigan. At the beach, Darcy asked him about his finger and said, “Your dad’s a doctor. Don’t you think you should show it to him?” According to Darcy, Rahm said, “I can’t. He’s going to be really mad at me because I didn’t show it to him to begin with.”

  The next time Darcy saw him, though, he complained about the pain and looked, to her, to be pale and sweating. A day later he called her to say he was going to be admitted to Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

  Our father made the decision to rush Rahm to the hospital when his son, lethargic and feverish, finally showed him the injury. When the finger was unwrapped my dad knew right away that Rahm had not properly washed the cut and that he had bandaged it too tightly. The distal phalanx, or end segment, of the finger was blackened by gangrene, and streaks of discoloration were working their way down toward his hand.

  At Children’s Hospital tests and exams showed that the bacterial infection had invaded the bone, causing osteomyelitis. It was also spreading into his bloodstream and the rest of his body. Rahm was admitted to the intensive care unit, where his fever rose and he drifted in and out of consciousness.

  My mother hardly left the hospital after Rahm was admitted. More than once she lay next to him on the bed and prayed for his life. The extremely high fevers made Rahm suffer from hallucinations and episodes of babbling and angry outbursts. He would later tell me, “I woke up one night screaming at Mom, unloading on her about how she loved you more and about how she treated me as the second son. Dad was saying, ‘Shh, shh,’ but whatever sibling jealousy I had ever held inside me came out. I said everything, plus some more.”

  Ari, who was sixteen at the time, visited the hospital once, just after Rahm was admitted. He took one step inside the room, which smelled of rotting flesh, glanced at Rahm, who was completely out of it and hooked up to intravenous lines, and broke down crying. Ari is extremely sensitive to suffering, especially when the person in pain is someone he loves. He is also a hypochondriac and a germophobe. Back then, Ari was powerless to help Rahm and traumatized by what he saw in the ICU. Although my parents reassured Ari that Rahm was getting the best care and would be fine in the end, he wasn’t any less worried or ready to come back to the hospital. They decided it was best for all concerned that he go to Israel, where family and friends could take care of him and he could spend some time at a kibbutz in the countryside. He agreed to go.

  At the hospital Rahm’s doctors deployed an array of intravenous antibiotics in high doses to fight the infection. Their main concern was sepsis, an inflammatory response to bacteria circulating in the blood, in which a person’s blood pressure drops precipitously and fatal organ failure can occur. As the battle for Rahm’s life raged, our parents suffered through every hour. They worried and they also argued. My mother could not understand why my father—a doctor—had not investigated Rahm’s injury until it became life-threatening. All he could say was that he had trusted that Rahm, the son of a doctor, knew how to clean and dress a cut.

  During this time very few people were permitted to visit Rahm. Darcy Goldfarb recalled that she went to the hospital every day and, on occasion, was allowed into Rahm’s room. “He had labored breathing and a fever,” she said. “Marsha was crying. I remember I shoved him over and sat next to him on the bed. I whispered in his ear. ‘Don’t you dare check out now. You have to use every ounce of energy we ever put into every grand jeté we ever did. But don’t give up.’ He made a little noise like a grunt. I took that to mean he wasn’t ready to leave.”

  When he’d recovered enough to be aware of what was happening around him, Rahm noticed that his roommates, who had cancer or complications from cancer treatment, were extremely sick. In fact, three of them died during his time in the room. After the third one passed away, our mother insisted our father finally pay to have Rahm moved into a private room. Typically, initially he resisted, which led to an argument that was amplified, no doubt, by the terrible stress—and sense of guilt—that both my parents were feeling. Eventually my mother won. In relenting, my father gave some ground without explicitly accepting responsibility for Rahm’s condition.

  Rahm’s general condition improved as the medicine began to take effect. His fever came down and he became more lucid. The nurses caught his eye and he began flirting with them to get their attention and extra helpings of ice cream at lunch and dinner. However, even as Rahm’s sepsis abated and his general health improved, his finger did not get much better. At the point of the injury, where the slicer may have actually nicked the bone, Rahm’s bone infection resisted every drug the doctors tried. After about four weeks using intravenous antibiotics, the doctors told Rahm and our parents that
the best option would be to amputate his finger and send him home.

  As my mother noticed, Rahm had become a different person during his illness. He was still quick-witted and still joked and flirted with the nurses and the girls from school who came to visit. But he was also more sensitive and prone to worry. When a friend, whom he would recall as “a schmuck,” said that Rahm was likely to miss his first semester at college, Rahm became so upset that he grabbed a glass bottle that contained intravenous solution and threw it against the wall, smashing it to pieces. He was determined to get out of the hospital and get on with his life.

  Faced with the facts, my brother eventually agreed to the amputation. Less than a day later the surgeon discovered that half of the finger was okay, and cut just below the second joint on his middle finger. With no more bacteria breeding in his bone, Rahm quickly recovered. Darcy was startled by his good humor. “When they unwrapped the finger after the surgery the first thing he did was flip the bird,” she recalled. “He said something about how he’ll have to do it twice from now on, for people to get the full effect.”

  Between his hospital stay, recovering from the infection, and letting his finger heal, Rahm completely lost the carefree summer between ending high school and starting college. After he recovered, no one ever said much about Rahm’s semiconscious tirades or the arguments that raged between my mother and father. Rahm told me much later that “nearly dying was the single most important thing in my life.” He said it changed him from a quiet, relaxed kid into a young man filled with the need to succeed and make something of himself. “Before the accident I was very relaxed,” he says. “Post the accident: no.”