Out Here

Andy called and asked if I’d go up with him. Chris has gotten worse, he shouldn’t be alone, and Eileen and Michelle went to Victoria for Michelle’s iron man race and Louie works ‘til eleven. Andy doesn’t want to do this alone, so I go.

*     *     *

The room is dark and he’s curled in the bed in the way of someone in pain. I sit down by the bed and he grabs my hand. My poor little brother. He holds my hand ‘til the pain pulls him away.

The note in the kitchen says it’s time for his morphine, so we bring it in. He says it’s too dark in here, Please open the bathroom door. Then he has to pee first, but it hurts too much to move.  He curls further into himself and cries for a while. My poor little brother, with the face of an old man and skinny little arms that just a few weeks ago used to row him down rivers in rafts.

Rivers are what bring him life, his metaphor for life, and here’s what he wrote.

…the cancer has begun to catch up to me, and is taking a toll on my body. The river’s getting rougher, and the support that I am so honored by can only help so much. When you’re swimming through a class four rapid, it’s really just you and the river.

He lies there crying and time is passing and I say, “Chris, the morphine is right here. The pain will get worse if you don’t take it.”

“Don’t remind me!” he yells. It comes out of nowhere and it hurts.

I did nothing to deserve this. It’s not my fault he’s in pain. I don’t have to take this. Blah, blah. The stuff I always say. The stuff that always sends me away.

“OK, then I’m leaving,” I say. “I’ll be out here.”

“Out here” is Eileen’s kitchen and out here are the bag of brownie ingredients and the recipe card written in my second grade handwriting.

Out here is away, my place to hide from family hurts.

Out here is where I live most of the time and even if I drive an hour to be with my dying brother, even if being with him is all I have to offer, still I wind up out here.

I pull out bowls and bags and boxes, measuring cups and spoons. I don’t bake, don’t believe in piling together sugar and flour and fat for no good reason. Empty calories and all that. But here I am with my second grade recipe in Eileen’s kitchen, baking brownies.

I measure the flour and salt and soda and sift them together.

Why does Chris get so nasty with me? I’ve asked the question for years, but I was too busy telling myself I didn’t deserve it to find an answer.

And really, the answer is obvious. People go through trauma, they get irritable. They are suffering and they want to control everything and everyone and they get angry out of nowhere. We’ve had plenty of trauma in our lives.

Why am I out here? Because I learned very young to escape what hurt. Leaving stops the pain—sort of—and it may be the only power I have, or at least it was then. So I leave.

And because in some deep place pain and family go together, I stay away even from the ones who never hurt me.

That’s why I’m out here.

I sift the flour and soda and salt together.

Andy comes out.

“He finally took the morphine,” he says. “And he asked me to make sure you’re alright.”

“He really said that?”

“Yup.”

I stir the pan where the butter and chocolate are melting. It’s not about not loving me; he does. I think of that hand reaching for mine. It’s just a reflex he has. Like a wounded animal that bites you even when you’re trying to help.

I beat the sugar into the eggs, blend in the melted chocolate and butter, then the flour. Chop the walnuts, stir them in with the vanilla, pour it all in a pan and put the pan in the oven.

Andy and I sit on the floor. He tells me about the road trip he and Chris took in Mom’s old mustang only two weeks ago, driving through the mountains with the top down. I tell him about Chris and me as kids rolling around on the floor laughing about a witch’s red nose, Dad yelling at us to stop as we laughed even harder. That must’ve been fifty years ago.

The timer goes off and I pull out the brownies. I cut them long before they’ve cooled, looking for the solace I imagined from warm chocolate and flour and butter. I eat half of one and then another half: my teenage fantasy that two halves don’t make a whole.  I haven’t had a brownie in years.

Chris said when I mentioned brownies that they sounded too rich. When my brother doesn’t want junk food he’s surely on his way out. Still, I go in to see if he’s awake and if he might eat even a little bite.

He’s out. The morphine did its job and he’s peaceful, sleeping.

Maybe the brownies weren’t really for him, anyway. Maybe they’ve done their job. Maybe it was the stirring and mixing I needed.