The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait (11 page)

Sandra and her children made me feel a bit Caliban-like. Sandra was lovely in a brittle, porcelain sort of way, her strawberry blond hair stylishly coiffed, her frantic smile dissembling some pretty complicated emotional weather. Aaron resembled his mother to an almost unsettling degree, what with his big lashy eyes and rosy cheeks and snub nose (when he went bald at an early age, the effect was that of a depilated Kewpie doll), whereas Kelli was a bosomy, nonbrittle confection of both parents. Back then my stepsiblings seemed not only comelier than I but somewhat sweeter and saner too. A decided liability was my drinking. One memorable evening I was the big loser of a chugging contest, after which I perversely insisted that my friends take me home. This they did, dragging me past the startled eyes of Sandra and her children—Burck too—like a baggy old cadaver crossing the set of
Ozzie and Harriet
.

But if I was Caliban, what did that make my brother? And what would these überkinder make of him? My own feeling was that we should put off that
final
merging of our families as long as possible—at least until Scott’s face cleared up and he made the leap to solid citizenhood that one waited for like the spark from heaven. But no. Shortly before the wedding, Scott came to dinner so he could meet his future stepfamily. It could have gone worse. I’m sure that Sandra, determined to help my father by helping his older son, had said something to her kids beforehand, since they twinkled around Scott like social workers in the presence of a promising welfare mother.

“I’ve eaten there,” Kelli gushed, when Scott mentioned his present place of employment. “Oh my God, it’s so
good
. It’s like the best restaurant in town!”

“Was it fun living in New York?” asked eager Aaron at some point, whereupon his mother broke into a bright smile and said (not for the first time) how
wonderful
it was to be together like this, together at last.

Scott was on his best behavior—that is, a tad creepy but in control, a stylized version of a Nice Young Man. He was careful to enunciate in a way that erased most traces of the slight nasal slur, or blur, the slight drunken quality that had crept into his speech even when sober. When spoken to, he focused on the speaker with walleyed intensity, and toward Kelli, of course, he was courtly to a fault. At such times Scott seemed to sense his old handsomeness like a phantom limb.

After dinner he drew me aside for a private conference. I knew exactly what was coming.

“Have you seen her naked, Zwieb?”

I replied primly—as if the thought had never so much as cast a fluttering shadow across my sun-brightened mind—that she was our
sister
for Christ’s sake.

“Stepsister,” my brother corrected me. “And they’re not married yet.” This established, he asked me again if I’d seen her naked, and I said that I hadn’t.

SANDRA AND BURCK
were married on Good Friday in our living room. A friend of my father presided, a short Polish man who was the most liberal justice on the state supreme court; he seemed very fond of my father, touched to see him so happy, and his voice trembled with old-world sentiment as he performed the ceremony. We children and Oma from Vinita were the only witnesses, and I was the only one who didn’t cry a little. I’d volunteered to play Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” at the end, and I stood there worrying about that. My brother’s face shined with tears and sebaceous oil. He was wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt and a tie he’d borrowed from our father—come to think of it, that was another reason I was preoccupied: I couldn’t help wishing Scott had borrowed a
jacket
too. Sandra and her children had such impeccable fashion sense, and here was my brother looking like an assistant manager at Walmart.

My father was too distracted with happiness to take much notice of my conduct at the crowded reception afterward. While a jazz band played and our guests danced or milled around the caterer’s banquet and bar stations, I sat with friends at a table in the farthest corner of our backyard and got plastered. I’d just bounced a quarter into a plastic cup of champagne when Scott summoned me to the opposite side of the yard, where our family was gathering for a photo. He lingered a moment to chat with my friends, most of whom hadn’t seen him since high school, and I remember my peevish embarrassment over his bad haircut, complexion, short-sleeved shirt, and slightly off-kilter manner. I was not having fun. I felt like the family pariah. After the ceremony everyone had marched out of the house and left me there, smugly playing Mendelssohn, a random showoff who wasn’t trying hard enough to be a good son and brother. Scott, on the other hand, was embraced by all as a kind of philanthropic project, a lovable freak who would prosper in the bosom of a proper family. In that photo we took on the lawn, he occupies the filial place of honor between my father and Oma, while I stand apart with my hands plunged in the pockets of a khaki suit: a tipsy fop at a bus stop. A few minutes later I slipped away with friends to attend Good Friday mass, where I threw up in the vestry. I’d consoled myself that year by becoming a Catholic—more a matter of fitting in with friends, and distancing myself from family, than of spiritual comfort or moral aspiration. In any case it didn’t last.

THAT FALL I
left for Tulane—a random, even feckless, choice on my part. I knew nobody in New Orleans. I’d submitted one of those “common” applications, and rather than bother with the multiple essays required by better schools (Northwestern, Reed), I figured
What the hell
when Tulane accepted me early. My roommate was a Dutch exchange student named Koenraad van Ginkel, who rarely left our room at Phelps House except to attend meetings of the Karate Club, and who was so broke he ate Cocoa Puffs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and would often use my architect’s desk lamp by twisting it around on its bolted mount and training it on his side of the room. My other suitemates were almost as hopeless: a furry little
dese
-and-
dose
guy from Long Island who strutted around in his underwear; two pals from Hollywood, Florida, who wore matching shark-tooth jewelry; a depressive stoner whose dark room leaked a steady stream of dope smoke into our common bathroom. With the exception of Koenraad and me, just about everyone in Phelps was Jewish; ditto the girls in Butler, across the street. Jewlane, some called it. I wasn’t anti-Semitic as far as I knew, but then I hadn’t known a lot of Jews in Oklahoma, and hence their sudden abundance in college seemed another feature of my overall alienation. At a dorm party that first week I said as much to a couple of good old boys from Memphis, Marlon and Andy, the “Starr brothers,” who were actually first cousins and the only congenial people I’d met so far: “I dunno,” I said, when asked whether I’d checked out the “talent” yet. “Seems all the girls here are
Jewish
.” Marlon and Andy looked at each other. “Well,” said Marlon, “that’s not really a problem for Andy and me, since we’re Jewish too.” Mortified, I spluttered some kind of idiotic disclaimer that I refuse to remember, such is my lingering trauma. And the following year—in atonement, I like to think—I made a big stink among my Waspy fraternity brothers, demanding we give a bid to Jim Gold from Oklahoma City (one of Kelli’s friends), who became my “little brother” and later CEO of Bergdorf’s.

In those days Tulane was almost 50 percent Greek, and lest I become a Karate Clubber or Frisbee-tossing stoner, I pledged Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the first fraternity founded in the South (on the fertile banks of the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa). Dead drunk, I was practically dragged to the house that first night of rush by a girl with whom I’d made out at a riverboat party the night before. She delivered me like a sack of soggy, redirected mail and went on her way. Insofar as my eighteen-year-old self belonged anywhere at Tulane, he belonged there—that is, he dearly
wished
to belong with such supernormal specimens of the haute bourgeoisie: a lot of boozy, ruddy-faced blokes from Choate, Woodberry Forest, Lawrenceville, or their local country day, attired in oxford shirts starched stiff as cardboard and pants of khaki or startling plaid, all their haircuts done, it seemed, by the same no-nonsense barber.

A few months later I moved to the SAE house, encountering Koenraad (in his karate togs) as I skittered down the steps at Phelps with my suitcase in hand. I’d told him nothing. “You are leaving?” he asked in his wistful way. I hadn’t been a good roommate, much less a friend, but I was one of the very few people the poor guy knew. I clasped his hand feelingly and we parted forever.

FOR THE PAST
year or so, Scott’s public behavior had been almost exemplary: he was now a full-fledged waiter at the
best restaurant in town
, as Kelli would have it, he took classes at the Drahn School of Business (which prepared one for white-collar employment as a “data-entry specialist” or retail manager who could handle the books), and his Oldsmobile was still intact after several months in his care. Best of all, he continued to be a functioning, appreciative member of our new family: he was respectful toward Sandra, doting toward Kelli, and an eager playmate for Aaron—perhaps a bit too eager, as he broke the kid’s glasses once by drilling him in the head with a football. But nobody expected perfection, and by the time Scott’s twenty-first birthday came around my father was ready to make a large gesture, putting down the security deposit and first month’s rent on a sleek one-bedroom unit in an apartment complex not far from Nichols Hills. I never got a chance to visit Scott there, but I was told about the chromium furniture and mirrored walls, the gatehouse and swimming pool and so on.

And that’s not all. As my brother had proven himself a careful driver (my own views weren’t canvassed), he also deserved a better car than the stalwart Oldsmobile that didn’t even have a fucking
stereo
, he liked to point out. The car was Sandra’s idea—she thought my brother needed some extra incentive, a vote of confidence at age twenty-one: he was a true adult now, and as long as he did his best (“whatever that may be”) he should have nice, adult things. Since young men tend to identify with their cars to a morbid degree, this was deemed crucial to my brother’s self-esteem—and what was the matter with Scott, really, if not low self-esteem? With Sandra and my father, then, he went shopping one day for a car.

“So what d’you think?” the friendly salesmen would ask him after a test drive.

And eerily Scott would remain silent. With a nervous laugh perhaps (exchanging a look with Burck and Sandra), the salesmen would repeat their question.

As if pained to oblige them even that much, Scott would jerk his head
No
.

“You want to try the same model in a different color?”

No
.

“Something a little more compact maybe? Faster? Better mileage?”

No. No. No.

“So, um, maybe you’d prefer . . . ?”

“I’d
prefer
not to drive something that’s an
obvious
piece of shit.”

Truth be known, Scott was antagonized by salesmen, or anyone he suspected of tricking him or looking down on him in some way, however subtle. This included most people in service-related capacities—bartenders, store clerks, fellow waiters—and it got worse if Scott was in the company of family or someone he needed to impress. I can honestly say I was never in a particular kind of public situation with Scott when he didn’t embarrass me with that weird hostility of his. On the other hand, he was the kindest of men toward bums, minorities, old people, children, pretty girls, and women of a certain age.

Sandra had never quite seen this side of Scott, and for that matter had never seen
anybody
use that sort of language around perfect strangers, and even my father’s aplomb began to sag after a few hours.

“You know what?” Sandra told Burck that night. They were sitting on the patio coddling well-deserved cocktails; the long day of test drives had not borne fruit. “If anybody should get a new car, it’s
you
.”

And so they decided to give Scott my father’s five-year-old Sedan de Ville, which after all was immaculate (except for a salvaged right-front wheel that only I knew about). My brother tried to be gracious but was vividly downcast, viewing the old boat as a booby prize, hardly better than his Oldsmobile. I think my father might have soothed his disappointment by installing a state-of-the-art stereo system. Scott had said hard things about the radios in those cars he’d test-driven.

A week or so later, when Scott was due for dinner, Burck and Sandra stood on their front lawn getting some air and letting the dog pee; suddenly they heard what sounded like a swiftly approaching typhoon. The grass hummed under their feet; the dog bolted back into the house. Just as they thought surely the world would explode, the storm gulped out and was punctuated by screeching tires—my brother’s abrupt arrival at the curb. He’d been listening to a bit of music while driving around the streets of Nichols Hills as if on the Autobahn.

By then the car’s title had been transferred, and besides, “Scott’s an adult now!” as Sandra liked to say. There was nothing to do but wait. They didn’t wait long. Almost a month to the day after he turned twenty-one, my brother reduced an entire 1976 Cadillac Sedan de Ville to scrap metal. The details were sketchy to the driver and hence to posterity. The car was found strewn around an entrance ramp to the Northwest Expressway—a trail of glittering detritus that led like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs to a smoldering hull well beyond the guardrail. Scott had involved no other motorists in his accident; indeed the car seemed to have been driven by some mad ghost, since no charred or shockingly mutilated remains were found anywhere near the scene. That was another motif in my brother’s career. No matter how bad the mishap, he generally emerged unscathed, an outcome my mother summed up with an old German adage,
Unkraut vergeht nicht
: “Weeds don’t die!”

The only injuries Scott suffered that day came later—a few nasty abrasions that resulted from his smashing every bit of glass in his sleek new apartment. Scott would always insist that this was a sober, considered decision on his part.