Life Will Be the Death of Me Read online

  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faces at me while my father asked him for some tool that he thought would aid in restarting the engine of whatever outdated jalopy he had his head under.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.

  When we finally pulled into our driveway late that night, I wasn’t asleep, but I pretended to be. He carried me up the stairs to my room, singing some silly commercial about a ferryboat in Falmouth, Massachusetts, that was always on the radio. Sail away to Falmouth, / Sail away on the Island Queen…Then he tucked me in bed—wide-awake, with my eyes closed—and turned the fan that was sitting on my nightstand to high. He was the only person in my family who understood that I was born going through menopause, and that whenever I ate soup, I had to take my top off. He always made me feel like precious cargo.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Why do you want to go hiking? For what?” I wanted to know, through bites of cereal. “Is it because you have a girlfriend?”

  “No, it’s not because I have a girlfriend.” My brother crinkled his nose a lot when he was teasing me, and then I’d crinkle my nose back—like we were on the show Bewitched, minus the sound effects.

  He told me that he was going to California to rent a car and then drive from there to the Grand Canyon and Zion Canyon, and then on to hike the Grand Tetons.

  “You’re going to be on the Vineyard, anyway. You won’t even be here,” he said through bites of my signature dish of Raisin Bran and sliced bananas.

  “Why do you have to go?” I asked him. “Why don’t you just come to the Vineyard with us? I don’t want to drive with Mom to the Vineyard.” My mom drove very slowly, hated having the windows open on a freeway, and listened to Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

  “I want to drive with you,” I whined.

  I was too young to think about anyone else’s interests but my own. Too young to think that maybe he deserved a fucking vacation after graduating from college and looking after our whole family his entire life. Too young to consider what it must have been like to be him and the sense of responsibility he must have felt to all of us—including my parents. Too young to know that people take vacations without their families.

  “It’s only two weeks. I’ll be back before you know it, and then I’ll come straight to the Vineyard when I’m back. You won’t even know I’m gone. By the end of the summer, you’ll be wishing I had stayed on vacation because I am going to make sure that every single day we go sailing, you are going to end up in the bay with Bruce.”

  I flicked a banana slice off my spoon in his direction.

  Bruce was the mechanical shark from the movie Jaws. Parts of Jaws were filmed in Katama Bay in front of our house on Martha’s Vineyard the year I was born. My brothers and sisters believed he still lived in the bay—even though filming had concluded nine years prior.

  Sailing with Chet was the best adventure ever. He had a little Sunfish sailboat and would take some of us, or all of us, out on the bay in front of our house, and almost every single time, at some point—you’d never know exactly when—he’d suddenly tip the boat over, and whoever was in the boat ended up in the water screaming. Laughter combined with the terror of bumping into the remains of Bruce.

  Then he would tip the boat back on its right side, get himself up, and come lift me out of the water. Then he’d pin me down on the boat and accuse me of tipping over the boat. For some reason, the silliness of this made me laugh even harder, and all my siblings knew that if I was laughing hard, peeing in my pants was right around the corner. That’s when he’d throw me back into the water again. Rinse, cycle, repeat. The thrill was real every time. Danger, but with the cushion of safety. I can still smell the orange life jackets he made us wear, and not because they smelled like urine. They smelled like my brother—salt and wood and beach and home.

  * * *

  • • •

  “I need a little vacation, Chels. Do you really think I’d leave you with these people?” His nose was crinkling again, and I made a sad face and tried not to cry. My brother was like a father to me, but far less embarrassing. He was handsome and he wasn’t obese. My father wasn’t obese at this point in our lives, but all the signs were pointing in that direction.

  My dad was in charge of everything. He ran the show and he was the person who said no to things. My mom said yes to everything. Candy at any time during the day, she didn’t care whether or not you cleaned your room, or what time you went to bed, or if you brushed your teeth—or hair, for that matter. I could have gone to school pantsless if I wanted to—it’s actually surprising I didn’t.

  My mom was the one you always wanted to be home. She was fine with whichever way the wind blew. I once walked into our summer house on a rainy day with a six-pack of Heineken that my friend and I stole from her parents’ fridge. “We’re going to try beer,” I told my mom, who just rolled her eyes, and went back to crocheting my father a sweater. I was ten.