We all breathed in and then out, and then in again. Our hearts slowed their racing. It had begun to rain, and I shut the car door and cracked the window. We sat there for a moment, all of us quiet, and the sound of the rain on the roof was clear and beautiful. Margaret popped in the tape, and Ravel’s Bolero began its tentative way, the delicate melody dancing its way into our hearts. We put on our seat belts, and nobody said anything for a long time.
After a while Margaret, still half sobbing, exclaimed, “There he is! There’s the tape case, Mom! There’s Bolero!” She was so joyful. “Okay! That’s good manners, Mom!”
We all laughed a little hysterically and agreed with her. Then my mother drove us to dinner at a restaurant on Lake Union, where everybody, except for Margaret, had way too much to drink.
SUCH WAS A typical visit from my big sister. And the Bolero incident, I remembered, had happened early in the trip. Things hadn’t gotten any easier after that. The visit included more panic, more screaming, more failure, and my growing anger. Those were the years before I had learned how to treat Margaret’s outbursts like the weather, to be like a passerby caught in a storm: get inside out of it. Sit and watch from a safe place. Do what you can to help the person caught in it, but don’t get too close, or you’ll get dragged into the raging river.
That visit had happened years ago, but the tracks were still fresh. So what the hell was I thinking, I asked myself, by inviting my big sister to come visit me for a couple of days in Oregon? Even as I hung up the phone after talking with Clifford, her caregiver at the group home, I wondered if I was crazy. The plan was to have her down for three days and two nights, just the two of us. Like normal sisters.
“I’ve told Margaret the plan, and she is very excited about it,” Clifford told me. I’d met him several times. He was a tall, friendly man in his forties who made his living by helping care for my big sister and her three housemates. He’d told me that he thought it would be really good for Margaret to take this trip. His enthusiasm made me feel worse. Shouldn’t I, the family member, have been more excited? I mean, this was, after all, my idea. What did I think I was going to gain, realistically, by inviting my sister to come visit? And if I didn’t know, why had I suggested it in the first place?
Brendan had asked me the same question, in a different way, the first and last time Margaret had visited me in Hood River, when she’d breezed through with her housemate and two staff members on the way home from the coast the summer before. “What did you expect, Eileen?” Brendan had asked, not unkindly, as I recounted events, weeping. “Pretty much what happened,” I said, laughing. He smiled at me and shrugged, but when I came up with this harebrained idea, I had his full support—theoretically, that is. During the actual visit, he would be out of town.
The week before Margaret’s visit, I got organized. I caught up on work, cleaned the house, and planned our activities. I also made sure I had food in the house that I knew she would eat; that meant several boxes of macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, and Cheerios. I was nervous. I was making lists of things she might like to do. I told myself not to have grand expectations, to just accept what came. But underneath all this optimism was the current of the past pulling me back into the way things had always been, a hole in the river that threatened to suck me under and keep me in a place of uncomfortable sameness. As much as I wanted to move forward, to create a new frame of reference for us as sisters, as a family, I feared that we would remain stuck in the eddy that had held us for so long.
As I drove to the store to pick up the Margaret-specific items on my list, I reminded myself that people could change. Our visit could actually be different from the days of Bolero, the years I had lived in Seattle. For starters, I thought, this visit was my idea. That hadn’t been the case before.
DURING THE SEATTLE years, Margaret’s visits were my mother’s idea. Margaret was living in a group home and had a part-time job at a workshop for people with disabilities. My mother thought it fitting that she take a vacation just like everyone else. Somehow or other, I became the Vacation. Over the course of a few years when I was in my mid-twenties, it became an annual pilgrimage of sorts. “You’re going to Seattle to see Eileen; you’re going to visit the Space Needle,” was how my sister put it.
On some level, of course, I welcomed these visits. They were coming all that way to see me, right? And this was family. Here I was, blindly groping my way through the mysterious rules of our unique family code, bumping up against the acceptable and the unacceptable, all unspoken. I often found myself at odds with what was expected of me and what I really wanted. I did my best to act like the good daughter and kind sister. But every time Margaret and Mom appeared on my doorstep and my sister, ignoring my greeting, shoved her way past me and sprinted into my apartment building with her suitcase, signaling the start of the Vacation, I felt like running in the other direction.
For one thing, my studio apartment on Boren Avenue wasn’t exactly built for three. To make room, I slept on the floor and gave them my Murphy bed. It was a slumber party! Just us girls! But one of us girls kept getting stepped on in the middle of the night by people trundling to and from the bathroom. And that same girl was sleeping on the floor. The floor! Plus, I had become accustomed to my quiet little studio and the delightful privacy that followed nearly two decades of sharing a bathroom with six other people. So I lay awake at night listening to Margaret whisper or snore, feeling invaded, too cowardly to speak up. Why didn’t I ask them to get a hotel room? Because in an Irish Catholic family, asking someone to spend a little money to make life more convenient for you is practically a cardinal sin. So I didn’t say anything. I just became surlier as the week wore on and my sleep deprivation increased. But my mom didn’t say anything. This was the kind of passive-aggressive response my people embraced as normal.
I almost welcomed the early mornings of these visits, because they put an end to my exhausting attempts at trying to sleep. While my guests slept in, I’d get up off the floor, put the cushions back on the couch, shower, and walk downtown to work at the small publishing company where I was the only employee. My boss, a likable, anxious man, always made me a latte from his personal espresso machine during our mid-morning break. As he waited for the shots to drip, he would pull his hair out from the sides of his head with both hands and wonder aloud how in the world we were going to manage to stay afloat for another month. He’d tell me how hard it was to be a small-business owner, always teetering on the brink of disaster. I’d accept my latte, feeling like I might cry, and then I’d wander back to my desk believing I was supposed to save the company. Hours would pass, and then I’d hike back up the hill to entertain my houseguests.
Anxiety had always been a prominent feature of our family culture, a common interest, you might say, but in Margaret it played a starring role. Keeping a certain maniacal sameness in her life calmed her. And unless you were a complete idiot, you’d see that the order kept her happy, so you’d better damn well stick to the program, too. When she was at home, Margaret’s schedule was like clockwork: mealtimes, showering, work hours, bedtime. She rivaled the U.S. Marines for order. It was like boot camp, only she was the troops and the drill sergeant all rolled into one. I imagined that her routine had become even more rigid since she had moved into her group home and no longer had the rest of us screwing things up for her.
Whatever the case, visiting Seattle disturbed her careful routine. Even though she wanted to make the trip, all the change and upheaval was difficult for her to cope with. So, in an attempt to fend off the anxiety created by the change, Margaret created a program for the Vacation. She divided her day into two parts—Before Eileen Gets Home and When Eileen Gets Home. She’d enjoy the day sightseeing with my mother, but all the while they’d be talking about what we were going to do When Eileen Gets Home. At the Space Needle, on the monorail, at Pike Place Market—the conversation was the same.
“Mom? You’re going to go out to dinner?”
“When Eileen gets hom
e, we are going to go out to dinner, Margaret.”
“When Eileen gets home, you are going to go out to dinner, Mom.”
“That’s right, Margaret.”
“You’re going to change your clothes?”
“When Eileen gets home, you are going to change your clothes, Margs.”
“When Eileen gets home, you are going to change your clothes, Mom.”
“That’s right, Margaret.”
“Mom? Mom. Mom, you’re going to go back to the apartment, Mom?”
“Yes, Margs. When Eileen gets home, we are going to go back to the apartment.”
“When Eileen gets home, you are going to go back to the apartment, Mom.”
So it went for eight hours. Unfortunately for me, Margaret didn’t think of this time as After Eileen Gets Home. “After” could have designated an ambiguous stretch of time, aimless hours moving into the evening during which we could do any or all of the things they had discussed. My sister said “when” all day, so as soon as she caught sight of me climbing up to Boren Avenue, she was ready to hustle. There was no “Hi-honey-how-was-your-day?” Margaret would have liked to grab me by the arm and shove me into the car so that we could hurry off to the next activity, whatever it might be. The specifics didn’t matter. We just had to get on with the agenda for When Eileen Gets Home to feed the hungry beast of her anxiety.
I was usually hot and irritable after climbing up the hill from Pioneer Square. My childhood fear of the bus made me choose the walk instead of enjoying the convenience of public transportation. My journey home took me through Occidental Park, a crowded twenty-four-hour party of junkies and drunks who hollered at me and everybody else walking by. Sweating, tired, and worrying about how my job might disappear overnight, I rounded the corner to my street and found my edgy sister waiting for me on the front steps of my apartment building. As soon as she caught sight of me, Margaret hopped up, nervously twisting her fingers together, and said, “When Eileen gets home, you’re going to go out to dinner, Eileen. When Eileen gets home. When Eileen gets home, you’re going to go out to dinner, Eileen.”
If I were rewriting the screenplay of my life, this is where I would say something kind and helpful. The camera would zoom in on the younger, empathetic sister comforting her disabled sibling. We would share a moment as the sun set behind us and dramatic music came up. Our mother would look out the window at this scene and get tears in her eyes to see us connecting, our sisterly bond overcoming the obstacles created by the disorder of autism.
But this was my real life. Even though I’d been thinking to myself all the way home about how I needed to be patient, I said something like “JesusfuckingChrist, Margaret! Give me a minute!” and stomped into the building with my nervous sister on my heels. And there was my real-life, calm, patient parent holding open the apartment door, kindly urging me to get the lead out so that we wouldn’t have a scene. “She’s been waiting for you so patiently, Eileen,” Mom said.
Feeling guilty, I grumbled, “Yes, Margaret. We are going to dinner. Just give me a minute.” And then I swore not-so-under my breath as I made my way upstairs to change my clothes.
Part of the reason that I was so angry was that I didn’t want to give in to her anxiety. I wanted her to try being okay, without the repetition. I wanted to be the person to break through her crazy-making routine and help her be normal. I wanted that romantic movielike fantasy to be true. But she followed me up the stairs and kept saying what she was saying until I gave in and repeated it back. “Yes, Margaret. You are going to go out to dinner when Eileen gets home.” Pacified, she sat down on the couch and waited for me with her hands squeezed between her knees.
ONE EVENING DURING this challenging visit, I decided that When Eileen Gets Home, we should go to the Fremont neighborhood on the north side of Lake Union for dinner. Brendan and I had found this great little café, a just-discovered hot spot. The place had made a name for itself for the cheap, tasty Italian food, but also for the atmosphere, which was one part white linen napkins and two parts funky grunge bohemia. You could get a decent bottle of wine, but you could also draw on the paper tablecloth with crayons. It made all the lists that year for Seattle’s Best Places.
I knew it was a gamble going there. For one thing, I knew we would have to wait. Waiting is not Margaret’s strong suit. But they did serve Italian food, which is one of the few things I knew she would eat besides macaroni and cheese, so I thought it was worth a shot. Plus, I wanted my mom to see this place. I knew she would love it as much as I did, and the only way I was going to get her there was to take both of them.
Here lay the crux of the problem. During the course of my entire life, I had never had my mother’s attention to myself. The closest I came was spending time with her and Margaret. And after I had moved out of the house, my mother only came to see me when she brought my sister. We could go anywhere I wanted, and my mom would even pick up the tab. But no matter where we went, Margaret was coming along and would inevitably contribute a bit of ruinous behavior to the evening that would make me wonder if I should have just stayed home alone. At the time, I was young and stubborn. I was also filled with what felt like hope, but was really denial, that this time Margaret would behave beautifully. This time we would have the kind of normal mother-daughter-sister vacation that I’d seen in the movies. I know now that this was the wrong way to look at things, but I didn’t know any better. It was my best attempt at optimism, even though it never worked. So off we went to Fremont in search of a café called Bizzarro.
It was a busy night at Bizzarro. I put our name on the waiting list while my sister and mother sat outside. The café was so small that there was no lobby. We waited on a rough bench by the front door in the warm summer air, time dragging the sun lower and lower in the summer sky. I have a picture of this evening. Margaret has a huge smile on her face, and I am looking less than thrilled. I can’t remember what she had done, but I can guess that she was torturing me with loud displays of something: Spanking? Hooting? Pinching? And then a hollered apology, “I’m sorry, Eileen! That’s GOOD waiting!” followed by a bear hug. It was pretty easy to piss me off that week, and my irritation just seemed to increase her ebullient behavior. More than once I threatened to leave. But I really didn’t want to leave. Leaving would mean going home to eat spaghetti in my studio apartment with the two of them. And I only had two chairs.
Plus, telling Margaret we were going to leave made us even more noticeable.
Me (sotto voce): “That’s it, Margaret. If you can’t wait quietly, we are going home.”
Margaret (forte!): “No! No! No, Eileen! No! Ha ha ha! That’s good behaving! You’re going to eat spaghetti! That’s GOOD waiting!”
On this particular night she was laughing as she yelled this, not crying, which didn’t make her any quieter. But laughter was on the right side of normal, so we stayed. And we waited. And waited. After it grew dark and I could see the streetlight glinting across Margaret’s teeth as she teased me, they gave us a table.
As the three of us followed the very hip host through the crowded bistro to our table, I felt like everyone was staring at us, even though they probably weren’t, yet. This kind of paranoia was a family affliction. After years of being center stage during my sister’s very public outbursts, I always felt like we were being watched. Feeling that we were the subject of observation added a buzz to my already tense state of being, so I ordered a carafe of wine before we even sat down. I couldn’t complain about our table. After the long wait, it couldn’t have been more perfect. We sat near the window with a broad view of the entire room. I took it all in: Strings of tiny white Christmas lights cast a magical glow on the crowded tables of twos and fours. A man sat hunched over the piano in the corner, laying down a thread of music under the buzz of voices. The wine came, and we had bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. My mother and I drank and talked as Margaret grew more and more quiet. I felt so normal. What had I been worrying about? We looked over the menu and waite
d for someone to come take our order.
Looking back, I imagine that this part of the evening, the best part for me, was not so much fun for Margaret. The place was crowded, it was hot, and she was sitting with her back to a room full of strangers. The piano player started playing something lively, and then everyone was talking loudly to be heard over the noise. But I finally had my mother’s ear, and I was excited to show this place to her, share a bit of my newfound city life.
While Mom and I were chatting, Margaret decided that she had to use the bathroom, something she often does in a rather sudden way. Your average person might think, “Hmmm. I think I have to pee. Nope, I don’t . . . Yep. Yep. I do. I have to pee. Should I go? Hmmm. Wonder where the bathroom is? Maybe I’ll wait a few minutes and watch to see where someone else goes. I’ll wait until we order. I’ll wait until we finish this drink. I’ll wait until I can ask someone. Oh, there’s the sign. Hmmmm. Ah, looks like someone just came out of there, so it must be free. Well, okay, I think I’ll go now.” And then you’d say “Excuse me,” and push yourself away from the table, put your napkin down, stand up, and carefully make your way to the bathroom. Right?
I don’t know what goes through Margaret’s mind when she decides that she has to use the restroom. But it always looks like someone has just shouted “Now!” in her head, at which point she leaps out of her chair and launches herself through the crowd like Harrison Ford fleeing the police in The Fugitive. She’ll make a mad dash toward a perceived direction of the restroom, sometimes knocking into chairs, other people, sometimes ending up in the kitchen or the men’s room. Margaret has never been a petite person, so this kind of public sprinting tends to have consequences. My family is used to this, so usually one of us is not far behind, bowing and scraping our apologies to people she might have run into, and then we hurry to catch up with her and make sure the door is closed before she gets her pants down. I’ve chased her through lobbies, movie theaters, and cafés like this because I know that she unbuttons and unzips as she goes. She does not mean to be rude. She’s just made up her mind, so you’d better get the hell out of the way.
How to Be a Sister Page 17