Free My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover by Molly Haskell Page B

could, mostly to places within the United States and Can-
    ada. Unlike me, who seemed to have been born facing Europe, Chevey
    preferred Sausalito, historical places in Virginia, or places of great
    natural beauty, like the Pacific Northwest.
    They saw each other through family crises, of which they had more
    than their share. On our side, Chevey had a son by Beth who never
    quite found his place in life and may have had Asperger’s syndrome.
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    Pete was pretty much a loner, and when he came of age he took to
    travelling and drinking. He was a big, blond boy, the sweetest and
    gentlest of creatures, though when his eyes narrowed, as they did in-
    voluntarily, his expression could become quite menacing. When he
    came to visit us in New York, he walked around with his pants un-
    belted and hanging low on the hip in homeboy style, and immediately
    found his way to some bars. Feeling responsible for my young nephew,
    I was beside myself, but Andrew reassured me. “You should be more
    concerned about the other barflies,” he said. “Pete looks like he’s come to the city to kick some butt.” One night, hoping to induce him to stay put, I ordered pizza from our favorite East Side joint— thin- crust, with haute toppings like wild mushrooms, eggplant, smoked mozzarella,
    goat cheese, pancetta, etc. Pete took one look at it, hurried to the
    phone, and called Domino’s, where he had a charge account.
    He could be quite funny in his own way, a way that, not unlike his
    father’s, had its own weird logic. Plus, his addictions didn’t fall far from the tree of our own family, especially our mother, who was also a
    smoker, drinker, traveller. The trouble for Pete was he couldn’t do one without the other, and by now most of the airlines had banned smoking. So he simply went to those places served by Aeroflot, the Russian
    airline, which still allowed smoking.
    The tragedy came a few years later. Pete had gotten his own small
    place in Florida. He was quite proud of it, and was looking forward to
    a visit from his grandmother, Beth’s mother, who was driving down
    especially to see him. In preparation for her arrival, Pete became quite agitated, worried that he and his place might not be presentable. Having no social skills, no sense of ease to fall back on, he had been taking tranquilizers. The night of her arrival, he drank a good amount, and
    that, combined with tranquilizers, caused an accidental overdose. He
    died in his sleep. He was twenty- four.
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    Chevey, and Eleanor, too, had lived in terror that Pete would have
    a car accident, killing himself, perhaps killing someone else. At least that hadn’t happened. It was about the only ray of redemptive light in
    his death and sadly unfulfilled life— or so we think. But who knows if
    Pete didn’t get as much satisfaction from his offbeat pleasures, unable as he was to explain himself, as those of us who can communicate our
    desires and frustrations in a common language.
    And during all this, there was yet another reason that Chevey and
    Eleanor waited in terror for the phone to ring. She had a large family
    with various problems, and in a crisis she was always the one they
    turned to. And there were the mercifully normal but very difficult ag-
    ing and dying of our mothers, Eleanor being as sweet and attentive to
    mine as Chevey would be to hers.
    Now, after twenty years of deeply intertwined lives, she is suddenly
    forced to abandon not only her vision of the future, of growing old
    with John, but her version of the past. Of what she thought was love in every sense of the word. The marriage has to be revisited and reassessed; the past was not what she thought it was. Were the moments of
    intimacy completely hollow, a charade on his part? What had he