by Rachel Simon
If only that were the way siblings remained as they progressed through the slow, muddy currents of time. But as almost anyone who’s been a brother or a sister knows, sometimes the bonds between siblings weaken. With us, our parents’ struggles, both between each other and within themselves, might have initiated the process. We were not unaware of this as it was occurring. We knew that, as their divorce molted into finger-jabbing, decibel-shattering showdowns when our father came to see us, our parents’ antipathy toward each other was instructing us in the ways of polarity and provocation, along with the impermanence of truce. But we did not understand that by the time our parents were no longer able to set foot in the same building, their feelings toward each other had seeped into their actions with us. My father expressed dismay when our habits reminded him of our mother’s less favorable qualities. My mother expressed despair that our presence frustrated her pursuit of a new man. Watching this, we would hunker down in each other’s rooms, trying to make sense of what was happening. But even as we sought to console one another, even as we observed the pain on the others’ faces and felt it in our own, even as we shared fears about the larger world of which we were uneasily becoming a part, we could not resist a pull toward competitiveness, mistrust, rash acts wrought by misaimed anger. Soon we developed into ever-shifting factions. We defined ourselves in opposition to the others. Our love ceased walking with our like.
Even among siblings who are spared such chaos, difficulties might still arise in their relationships, and the reasons are not hard to understand. Due to many details that vary right at each sibling’s birth, from order of arrival to time in a parent’s emotional life to the family’s fortunes, none of us is raised under the same roof. Each of us grows up in a house so unique it might as well have been designed by a different architect. Thus, as I framed my own rooms where I retreated with friends, so did Laura and Beth and Max, and there, whether our friends were school buddies or teenybopper magazines, solitary book-reading or lone bicycle-riding, ambition for careers or numbness about tomorrow, we grew into adulthood.
And that, as Hal and I have concluded many times, is why siblings—the very people who might be expected to be like-minded—don’t always get along. Despite all the overlaps that brothers and sisters have with each other, we also have such complicated affections and such separate histories that the most essential parts of ourselves—why we do what we do, how we believe people ought to behave, and what we want most out of life—might not overlap at all.
I wonder: what does it take for brothers and sisters to get along? Not just in the years soon after the cradle, but through all the decades that follow?
Barely a week after the rough-in begins, I find out that the first of our sea monsters has appeared.
Hal breaks the news when we’re in a discount warehouse for large appliances. As we amble up and down aisles looking for a stove, he happens to let slip something he’s failed to mention until now: we have encountered the infamous “unforeseen conditions.”
Two, actually. “Someone years ago cut a channel into the brickwork on the eastern wall of the dining room to run the drain line from the bathroom and ductwork to the second floor, and the remaining masonry crumbled a bit around those utilities. So that section of wall needs to be rebuilt. Plus, the bottoms of the joists above the dining room-kitchen aren’t level, so we have to fur them down to create a level plane for the installation of the ceiling.”
“Will this cost us anything?”
“A few extra thousand.”
“Geez.”
“That’s fair. None of this is Dan’s fault.”
“It isn’t ours, either.”
“I’m just glad we caught it. An uneven ceiling is an eyesore, but a major wall with a hole in the masonry might make the house structurally unsound.”
“We’ve been living in a place that could have fallen down around us?”
“People live with all kinds of things they don’t know about until they renovate.”
“This worries me.”
“You wouldn’t be you if it didn’t.”
“But I don’t only mean about the wall. I mean—”
“They might be the only problems we encounter.”
“I hope they are.”
“I won’t be surprised if they are.”
“That’s good to know.”
“But I won’t be surprised if they’re not.”
I shouldn’t worry, but life is well-stocked with surprises, as I’m reminded when I head out for a walk the next morning. Sometimes, of course, they’re pleasing, such as what happened soon after we moved last month to the rented house, when, knowing that we’d be leaving in four to six months, I was content to remain detached from our surroundings. But soon neighbors began crossing their lawns to initiate welcoming chats. I learned that this has long been a friendly corner of Delaware, a place where people settled in for decades and looked after one another, and before I knew it, I was coming to enjoy exchanging hellos. This, in turn, made a second and less heartening surprise easier to bear. A little after we arrived, two other households also moved onto the block, both of whom began indulging in behavior that the established residents, and Hal and I, found distressing: letting their dogs bark endlessly, parking cars on the lawn, blasting music. All of this rattled me, but because I was feeling a warm association with the old-timers, I felt hopeful that harmony would return to the street. It hasn’t yet, but here’s one more nice surprise. A few days ago, I found myself falling into a lengthy conversation with Ginny, who lives across the street, and discovered that we had much in common. She teaches special education. She and her five-year-old love books and the arts. Despite challenges in the past, she’s close to her family. And I started to make a real friend.
So stop worrying about the renovation, I tell myself, as my walk carries me into an adjoining neighborhood. Not all surprises are miserable, and the bad ones might be offset by the good. Besides, with Hal on the lookout, nothing truly terrible is going to happen.
Yet it’s hard to believe that fully. I know all too well that sometimes surprises of knee-buckling magnitude come bursting out of nowhere. I think about the conversation I had just last night with Ginny, when we were hanging out in her living room, her daughter Eliza drawing pictures, us eating snacks. Ginny asked me about Beth, and I told her that if I’d been asked as a young adult to peer into the future and describe my relationships with my siblings, I would have said that I’d be close to Max, distant from Laura, and besieged by guilt about my discord with Beth. That’s how things were then, so that’s how I imagined they’d stay. I sure did have it wrong with Max and Laura. Beth, too, actually, because in my late thirties I rode the buses and we came together.
This is where my discussions about Beth have concluded for years: at the plateau where she knows she can call whenever she wants, I embrace her right to make choices, and we enjoy a guilt-free, easygoing rapport. But last night I risked telling Ginny a bit more. I wasn’t sure I should, but with one troubling neighbor to her left and another to her right, our conversation kept returning to the topic of people not getting along, so it didn’t seem out of place. Not that I was detailed. I just joked, “But sometimes sibling relationships encounter unforeseen conditions,” and then I gave only the broad sweep. It’s not that I didn’t want to say more, but I knew I’d get overwrought if I did.
When I rode the buses with Beth, I came to feel a tender admiration for her boyfriend, Jesse, so after I stopped riding, I was happy to comply with Beth’s wishes to turn our visits with each other into visits with the two of them. I found him to be a soft-spoken, gentle-souled man, one who would talk about watching deer in the woods, riding his bike around town, staying up late to see the news about the war. Sometimes he would tell me stories from his childhood: wrenching tales of family troubles, an accident that left him blind in one eye, living for a while on the streets. I knew that a beloved uncle had been murdered when Jesse was a boy. Recently, a brother with whom he was c
lose also died under suspicious circumstances. I knew as well that Jesse had never received grief counseling for these losses, and that when I suggested that he might benefit from talking to someone, he would agree, but then a few days later do an about-face. I could hardly insist that he get help, so I just listened when he wanted to talk, which was usually while Beth ran around Wal-Mart and he and I stood in an aisle, my heart going out to him.
Then about a year ago I noticed a change. Was it untreated post-traumatic stress? Did he have some condition that I lacked the knowledge to understand? Was he mimicking the behavior of someone he knew at some time in his life, or disclosing a part of himself that he had kept from me? All I knew was that an unfamiliar pattern emerged: whenever I drove to see them, Jesse wouldn’t be waiting with Beth at the bus station, as he’d said he would. He’d show up ten minutes later, or a half hour, and then he’d be surly, cursing, belligerent. Sometimes he’d even eye us from a distance; then, as we headed down the sidewalk toward him, he’d jump on his bike and ride away. It was as if he’d become a different person. One day I actually saw the transformation happen: as he sat in the back of my car, his face switched in a second from the tranquil, kind face I knew to one filled with meanness. I didn’t recognize him. Nor was I feeling my earlier trust, or any pleasure in my visits.
It didn’t help that Beth insisted at each no-show that we drive around looking for Jesse, and then, when we came upon him, simply ignore his foul mood. I would tell her I was getting way too frazzled and plead with her to just turn the visit into a time with me, but her mind was on a single track. I would also ask him before every visit if he really wanted to join us. He would say yes, yet the problem would recur. Then I started asking if he would consider talking to his aide, a doctor, anyone, about why he’d changed so suddenly. He’d promise he would—and then be even more extreme when I came by again. I felt completely over my head.
Then around the time when I was packing up the house to move, I had lunch with a professional who works with Beth, and poured out my frustration. She suggested that I might benefit from speaking with her former colleague, Craig, a social worker with expertise in helping people who haven’t responded to traditional therapeutic treatments. People who might, in some ways, be like Jesse. I contacted Craig, and, since he lives far away, we began to meet over the phone.
In our conversations, he’s been telling me that there are several important things to keep in mind when interacting with Beth. One is to give her unconditional positive regard, which is to indicate at all times that I care about her, and that there is nothing she can do to make that caring go away—a suggestion that’s useful for interaction with any loved one. The same is true for the second tip he’s been giving me: that my time is as valuable as hers, and if I’m not enjoying myself, I need to address that with her—in a way that won’t be bossy or leave me feeling guilty. Most of our conversations have concentrated on the specific approach I can take to doing this, but at the heart of it lies my own understanding of what I want when I see my sister—which is, I now know, to see her. My responsibility is to Beth, not, as much as I care for him, Jesse. So, Craig said, I have a right to tell her that “Jesse isn’t being the kind of person that I want to be with right now. When he can show me that he is, I’ll want to spend time with him again. But for now, I need to see you without him around.”
When Craig first gave me this advice, I worried that Beth might just choose not to see me anymore. But that was a risk I had to take. I called Beth and told her, and it turned out that she had expected something like this. In fact, she did not argue with me at all. She just asked what we would do together if we weren’t with Jesse. I said we could still visit her favorite drivers, and we could go shopping, and I could take her for ice cream or to the movies. Immediately our visits became as peaceful and fun they used to be. Yes, I was sad not to have my almost-brother-in-law still in my life. But I was also relieved. It’s like what Hal said in the old house: you have to give something up to get something else.
Back on our street after my walk, I see Ginny sitting on her front porch, watching Eliza ride her bicycle in small circles. I go over, and we pick up where we left off last night. The dog belonging to one of the unruly neighbors is barking away, but when I sit down on the porch beside my new friend, I completely forget to hear it.
Some days later, when I meet Hal after work for our weekly grocery shopping, he greets me in the produce aisle by saying, “Well. We’ve just hit Problem Number Two.”
He discovered it, he tells me, at the job meeting this morning. His drawings called for conduits to be installed through the new foundation so that lines could later be run into the backyard for lighting and the HVAC unit. At every meeting he’d asked the job supervisor, Henry, when the conduits would be installed. Henry had said the equivalent of, “Uh, we’ll get around to it.” This morning, when Hal saw that the footings had been poured and the area under the slab filled in with stone, he asked if the conduits were there. “And Henry’s jaw dropped and a fly popped out.”
“You mean he screwed up.”
“That’s right.”
“So is this poor coordination?”
“Yeah. Sometimes poor coordination equals dumb forgetfulness.”
“I thought you said Dan was good.”
“Dan delegated it to Henry, and Henry messed up. But they’ll fix it.”
“Who pays for this?”
“They will.”
“Is this bugging you? It’s bugging me.”
“I’ll subcontract the being bugged to you.”
“Please don’t be blasé. This is our house. It’s a ton of money. Our lives are in limbo.”
“But what’s the point of worrying? So far our problems are minor. None of them is worth getting bent out of shape about. If I ever thought it was worth worrying about this kind of stuff on a job, experience has taught me otherwise. Anyway, I have a good feeling about this. No one’s acting devious or manipulative. No one’s drinking or not showing up. Dan’s totally on the ball. Okay, Henry’s a bit of an issue, but I can work with that.”
“So I should just relax? Trust that we won’t get to Problem Number Three?”
“I can’t tell you that for certain. But it just doesn’t seem as if it’s going to go that way.”
I look away. A middle-aged woman is examining a grapefruit. An elderly couple is picking through string beans. Maybe a plumber once flooded their kitchen, but you’d never know it to look at them.
“So?” he says, brushing my hair aside and looking into my face. “Not to worry?”
“Maybe this isn’t a dramatic phase, but that doesn’t mean there’s no drama playing out in me.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s always a little weird when your inner wife begins to crumble.”
“Save me, please,” I say, smiling and pushing him away.
“Got you to laugh,” he says, pulling me back. “My lovely inner wife. Now, can we get on with our shopping?”
So, okay. I won’t worry about the job. I’ll distract myself by obsessing about something else, which, wouldn’t you know, requires no effort. Whereas I spent the demolition thinking about children, it turns out that I’m spending the roughing-in having more sessions with Craig, visiting with Beth, talking on the phone with Laura, flying around the country to speak to groups and families who are cohesive or fractious, and coming home to a troubled neighborhood. People getting along, or not getting along, is simply what’s in the air. Plus, it’s the stuff of my conversation, even when I’m not with Hal: more and more often I find myself crossing the street in the evenings to hang out with warmhearted, hospitable Ginny. There, as Eliza draws pictures, we indulge in long discussions about our families, teaching, the conflict on our street. We still don’t know what we can do about the difficult neighbors. But, as I tell Ginny, I often haven’t been able to figure that out with people I know a whole lot better, the siblings with whom I once shared a roof.
Actually, I tell Ginny, I fin
ally understand some things about Laura. Like Beth and me, Laura and I remained distant for many years of our adulthood. We still called each other and visited when she made her annual return east from Arizona. But I was self-conscious about everything I said, because often I inadvertently offended her. Then when she’d express her annoyance, I’d despair that we were clashing again. Neither of us would know how to turn the conversation around, and the resulting strain would last until one of us, usually me, would send a card or make a call. How could this be? We thought so much alike, we loved each other, we were both trying, yet the bond between us was so twisted, it’s a wonder we held together at all.