Aiding & Abetting

holly's brother is crazy, and his constant phone calls disrupt her family, so why doesn't he call when a life's at stake?

I here! The phone is ringing.

The call usually comes between six and seven, weekday evenings exclusively. Steven will hear the phone, and Holly, in the kitchen preparing dinner, will answer it quickly, before Steven or their 11-year-old son, Brandon, can get to it. He'll hear his wife's urgent voice, an anxious hello and then subdued murmurs of sympathy or encouragement, finally silence, for the person on the other end of the line is doing most of the talking.

The conversation seldom lasts more than 20 minutes. Once, Steven recalls, it lasted nearly an hour, and might have gone longer if Steven hadn't come into the kitchen to interrupt.

Tonight Steven is sitting in the family room adjacent to the kitchen with four-year-old Caitlin in the curve of his arm, listening to his daughter read aloud from one of her new, beautifully illustrated storybooks, a tale of imperiled but magically empowered talking animals, and he tries not to be distracted by Holly in the kitchen. He loves these reading sessions with Caitlin with a fierce, fatherly sense of privilege; he remembers with what swiftness Brandon's early childhood passed, how abruptly his son became a boy, no longer a little boy, whose measure of self-worth is drawn from his boy classmates and not from his adoring parents.

Steven resents this caller, who interrupts Holly in the kitchen, though she has asked him not to call her at that time. She loves cooking for her little family, as (continued on page 160) Aiding & Abetting(continued from page 120) she calls the four of them. Every evening for Holly means a serious, not elaborate but conscientious, dinner--seafood, omelettes, fresh vegetables, whole-grain rice, thick spiced soups--her reward, she says, for a day of purely mental work performed for the benefit of strangers. But dinner will be delayed on those evenings when the calls come. The children will become hungry, impatient; Steven will have a second drink. When finally they sit down to eat, he'll see his pretty wife's melancholy eyes, the downward cast of her smile, and feel rage in his heart for the person responsible.

By his watch, nearly 30 minutes have gone by.

As Steven enters the kitchen, Holly is just hanging up the phone. He sees her wiping guiltily at her eyes. "Honey, was that your brother? Again?" Steven tries to keep the exasperation out of his voice: In the little family Daddy is wise, compassionate, mature beyond his 37 years, inclined to settle disputes with a laugh, a well-aimed kiss. Holly is the emotional parent, quick to laughter, tears, effervescence, worry. She says, taking up a spatula and stir-frying vegetables in a large wok, "Don't ask, Steven. Please."

"Of course I'm going to ask. Owen just called, didn't he, last Thursday?"

"Well, he's having a serious crisis. The antidepressant his doctor prescribed isn't working out. He'll have to switch to another drug, and he's anxious, insomniac--" Holly frowns at the vegetables, avoiding Steven's eyes. "He's all right, I think. There's no talk of--you know. He's just lonely. He says he has no one to talk with except--" Holly's voice wavers. She doesn't want to say no one but me.

"But why does he have to call at this time? He knows it's a difficult time, with dinner, the kids----" Steven is trying to speak reasonably. Holly stands silent, and he realizes his brother-in-law has probably been calling her at other times, too; possibly he calls her at work. But Steven isn't supposed to know this.

Holly says apologetically, "Honey, I've tried to explain, but Owen says, 'I don't know the time. It's a luxury to be conscious of clock time.'"

"What's that supposed to mean, that gnomic remark?"

"He can't sleep at night. Sometimes he sleeps during the day, so it's 'night for day' for him, he says. He calls when he gets too lonely and can't stand another moment of himself. He isn't like us."

"Can't you explain that you're busy? You're tired, exhausted? You want to spend some time with your family?"

"But I'm his family, Owen would say. His only family." Holly speaks sharply, despairingly. The spatula slips from her fingers, falls clattering to the floor. Steven picks it up. "He says he's haunted by our mother, hears her voice with some of the drugs he takes. I wish you could be more sympathetic, Steven."

"Honey, I am. I try. But it's been years. He's 29 years old and seems incapable of growing up. He has no self-respect, no shame, he's never paid us back that $1500 he borrowed for the down payment on--"

"Steven, you can't be throwing that back on him, on me. Not now, when you're doing so well, we're doing so well. When we have everything and Owen has so little."

"I do feel sympathy for him, honey." Steven tries to stroke Holly's hair, but like an offended cat, she eases away. "I feel very sorry for him. But I feel sorry for you, too. He's eating you up alive."

"What an ugly thing to say," Holly says, shocked. For a moment the lurid image hovers before them in their comfortable suburban kitchen: an enormous moth devouring Holly, the rail-thin tawny-eyed younger brother she has always adored and protected and who plays an impassioned role of adoring her. She says, tears in her eyes, "You just don't understand, Steven, how desperate Owen is. He has tried so hard with his art. He has tried to make lasting friends, he's tried to fall in love. Don't smile--he has! He's tried to be, well, normal. But ordinary life is like a maze for some people. It's biochemical--he's inherited it from our mother's side of the family. He was telling me just now he's terrified of the future. He feels as if he were born with a hole in him--in the region of his heart--that he's tried to fill, it's his duty to fill, and nothing will fill it."

"Nothing will fill it." It's a statement of Steven's, not a question. Nothing will fill the hole in his brother-in-law's leaky heart.

Even if Owen devoured Holly, and Steven, and their children--nothing would fill it.

But Steven doesn't say this; it's an insight that he will keep to himself. The last thing he wants tonight is to upset Holly further and ruin their family evening. Unlike his predator brother-in-law, he wants Holly to be as happy as she deserves.

Now Caitlin comes bounding into the kitchen, eager to help Mommy, and Daddy has to deflect her with a task, setting the table. It's a game, but for Caitlin a risky one, for if she gets so much as a single fork in the wrong position, she'll be crushed with a childish mortification that touches Daddy's heart. No one wants so desperately to be perfect as a four-year-old girl.

Brandon too enters the kitchen, simulating casualness but glancing worriedly at his parents. "What are you guys fighting about?" It's a joke, Brandon is teasing, but underneath his teasing he's earnest, anxious to know, so Mommy and Daddy protest in a single voice: "Fighting? Nobody's fighting."

•

Those evenings when Owen telephones are the only evenings when Steven and Holly, who have been married 12 years, come dangerously close to disliking each other.

Owen, all that remains of Holly's original family. The family that predates the little family.

Owen, Holly's younger brother by two years. As a child Owen was so much Holly's responsibility--in a household in which both parents were alcoholics--that he came to take for granted his sister's uncritical love, her indulgence, generosity, forgiveness. And blindness to his faults. He has grown into a sneakily attractive young-aging man with lavishly blond-streaked hair trimmed up the sides, with a small pigtail at the nape of his neck. Though he's a clerk at the Green Earth Co-Op and complains of having no money, he wears black silk shirts that hug his narrow torso, stonewashed designer jeans, ostrich-hide boots. ("Gifts from friends," Owen explains with a droll smile. "Parting gifts.") He's shy and cheeky; he's self-loathing and self-absorbed. In profile he's strikingly handsome; seen head-on, he has a pinched, narrow fox face with small features, a pouty mouth that breaks into a smile as if on cue. Owen's laughter is wild and extravagant. (Brandon has begun to imitate this laughter, unconsciously.) Owen's tears spill easily. His teeth are small and faintly discolored, the hue of weak tea. He's frightened of blood and nearly collapsed once when Brandon, tumbling from his tricycle in the driveway, had a nosebleed. In the final month of Holly's pregnancy with Caitlin, when Holly was grotesquely, comically swollen, like a boa constrictor who'd swallowed a hog, Owen was hardly able to look at his sister without flinching. "Owen, please understand: Pregnancy isn't a medical pathology," Holly tried to tease him. When Caitlin was born, he sent flowers but avoided seeing Holly for weeks, on the pretext of illness; in fact, as he confided in Steven, as if man-to-man, he dreaded seeing his sister nursing the infant. "It's so atavistic. Primal. It must hurt. Ugh!"

Steven has to concede that he'd been charmed by Owen until a few years ago. In his early 20s Owen had been a serious artist, a figurative painter. That he lived on scholarships, fellowships, art colony grants and occasional loans from his sister made sense at the time. Owen was young, Owen was "very promising." If, in time, he came to rely upon these loans--of course, they were gifts--from Holly and her husband, this too made sense (and he gave them paintings--not always his best paintings, perhaps). He seemed bisexual, not exclusively gay--at least, he played at being attracted to the girls Holly introduced him to. If sometimes he stared long and longingly at Steven, Steven took care not to notice.

Once in their kitchen he overheard Owen say to Holly, "I love Steve. I love him as much as a real brother. Thank you for bringing Steve into my life."

Steven was suffused with warmth, tenderness, though later he would wonder if Owen, who calculated so much, had calculated these words' being overheard.

Though he drives a new-model Toyota (another parting gift from a friend?), Owen lives in a dismal rented apartment. He has a "servile, fawning" job he detests and will probably not keep long. His life appears to be cruising bars, sudden intense friendships, abrupt "misunderstandings," dismissals. He's been in and out of AA, rehab clinics (at Holly and Steven's expense). Artist friends have long since vanished. An MFA program at Temple University in Philadelphia "didn't work out." Owen lives amid a phantasmagoria of gay acquaintances, friends, lovers: Gary, Oliver, Mark, Kevin. If Steven remembers the name of Owen's new friend, by the time they speak again and he asks, "How's Kevin?" he's likely to meet with a stony silence from Owen, or a blithe, "How should I know, Steve? Ask him."

Yet Owen can be warm, caring. Steven tries to remember this. When Brandon was small Owen played with him for hours, filling in coloring books of his own invention with fantastical acrylic colors. For her third birthday, he gave Caitlin a handmade painted book, Frog and Beans, now one of Caitlin's prized possessions. ("Owen should have been a children's-book illustrator," Steven said. "He has a real talent for this." Holly said, offended, "Don't you dare ever tell him that. He'd be wounded.")

What Steven fears in Owen is that he has the power of weakness, the power to set Steven and Holly against each other, the power to erode the little family from within. Only recently has Holly confessed to Steven that when she was a child in Rutherford, New Jersey, Owen set small fires in their neighborhood and at school. When he was 16, he and another boy parked in the boy's car, ran a hose from the exhaust into the car and drank themselves unconscious, expecting to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. But they were found in time. And there had been other suicide attempts over the years. "Owen suffered from terrible nightmares as a child," Holly says. "He's never been secure. Our mother was sick so much, and sometimes deranged." Steven listens quietly, not about to say, Yes, but you aren't suicidal. Why's that? "Our father died when Owen was eight." Your father died when you were ten. Why not see it from your perspective for once? "'Small mother with claws,' Owen calls her."

"Who?"

"I've been telling you. Our mother."

"I think the phrase is Kafka's. 'Small mother with claws.'"

Holly frowns, annoyed with Steven. "I guess we shouldn't discuss Owen. It brings out something petty in you."

Steven says, stung, "Holly, what's petty to you is crucial to me. I hate it that you aid and abet your brother's weaknesses. He gets sympathy from you for being so pathetic. If you'd encourage him to be strong, independent, to have some masculine pride----"

Holly bursts into incredulous laughter. "Steven, listen to you. Masculine pride. I can't believe this. You sound like a parody. Owen is prone to illness, he is weak compared with you. If that makes him less of a man, that's a pity."

Steven says, trying to keep his voice even, "Remember a few years ago, that Christmas we were snowed in, and Owen helped me shovel the driveway? He wasn't weak then. He surprised us all." It was true: Steven and Brandon had bundled up to shovel after a two-foot snowfall in northern New Jersey, and, after a while, as if reluctantly, Owen had joined them. He shoveled awkwardly at first, then got into the rhythm, cheeks flushed and nose running, joking with Steven and Brandon, quite enjoying himself. Steven had felt an unexpected bond between Owen and himself as the men shoveled the 50-foot driveway, talking frankly of life, ideals, politics, family. He'd felt he had established a new, significant rapport with his brother-in-law, a kind that had made no reference to Holly. I like him. And he likes me. That's it!

But the rapport didn't last. What was genuine enough in the buoyant cold of a bright, dazzling-white winter day soon dissolved, and not long afterward there was Owen calling Holly to complain of his depression, his insomnia, his "faithless" friends--yes, and he needed money.

Holly says, annoyed, "Oh yes, the snow-shoveling. Fine. But my brother is a little more complicated than that, I hope."

Steven accepts this in silence. He has brought it on himself, he knows. It's pointless to argue with Holly about Owen: She loves him in a way impenetrable by Steven, in a way that preexisted even her love for Brandon and Caitlin. You can call the love morbid, or admirable, a symptom of childhood pathology, or an expression of adult loyalty. But there it is.

Relenting, as if she were reading Steven's thoughts, Holly says gently, "You have to understand, honey: Owen and I were Hansel and Gretel together. Once upon a time."

This is meant to dispel tension, as a joke. Steven laughs, and Holly laughs. But is it funny? Steven wonders. It seems to him dangerous, treacherous. To perceive your childhood as mythical, out of a Grimms' fairy tale.

•

One evening, when Holly is at the mall with the children, Steven has what will be his final conversation with Owen.

The phone rings, he answers, and there's his brother-in-law's reedy, drawling voice: "Is Holly there? Can I speak with her?"

"Holly isn't here, Owen," Steven says, more amused than annoyed that Owen hasn't bothered to identify himself, or to waste breath on a greeting to Steven. "What did you want with her?"

"I--I don't want anything. Just to talk to my sister." Owen's voice is flat, disappointed.

"Talk to me."

Steven has been watching CNN and now he lowers the sound. He's in sweat-shirt and jeans, drinking beer out of a can. Feeling good. Feeling generous. A productive day in his office in New York City and a warm, cozy family evening coming up. He's possibly wondering if, with Holly out of it, he and Owen can reestablish their old rapport, speak frankly and from the heart. But Owen sounds as if he's been drinking, or is drugged. He's vague, not very coherent, lapsing with no preamble into a monolog of complaints--his disappointing job, his botched life, migraine headaches, insomnia, night sweats, fever "and this new symptom, like an elliptic fit that doesn't quite happen, a really weird sensation like a phantom pain in a missing limb--an amputee? Like that."

Steven guesses that Owen has meant to say "epileptic." Steven is distracted by jarringly close-up newsreel footage taken in the Gaza Strip, where several rock-throwing Palestinian boys have been shot by Israeli border guards. He raises the TV volume slightly, not loud enough, he hopes, for Owen to detect. Politely he asks Owen to repeat what he has said, which Owen does, at length. His voice drones on, a litany of physical maladies, psychological woe, despicable "malpractice-worthy" behavior on the part of a formerly trusted doctor. In his self-concern, Owen has forgotten that he's speaking not to Holly but to Steven: He's alluding to Back in Rutherford, back there, remember when, dreamt about last night, Oh Jesus. The Gaza Strip footage breaks off and an antic SUV ad comes on. Steven laughs.

There's shocked silence. Then Owen says, in a small, hurt voice, "I'm sorry if I'm amusing you, Steve."

Steven will recall how easily he spoke, with no premeditation: "Owen, why be sorry to be amusing? I'd say, from you, that's a good thing."

Owen is silent for so long, Steven thinks he must have laid down the receiver. Steven has switched to network news--there's an exposé of deplorable conditions in the New Orleans Parish Prison, which detained Asian immigrants for the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, interviews with visibly scarred, injured men, protestations and denials from prison authorities. Steven listens, appalled, as Owen resumes his monolog of complaints with renewed fervor, how hurt he's been, how depressed, the past six months have been hell, his 30th birthday is imminent, his rejected paintings that are "every bit as strong" as Lucian Freud's nudes or Philip Pearlstein's overrated nudes, friends letting him down, and the world so vicious--sometimes he wonders whether it's worth it to keep going. Steven, listening to the testimony of a hospitalized detainee who'd been beaten nearly to death in prison, says vaguely, "I suppose so, Owen." Owen says, "What?" Steven says, "Or--maybe it isn't. It's your call." Again, there's shocked silence.

Then Owen says quietly, "You're saying, Steve, I should--give up?"

"From your perspective? Maybe."

There. Steven has said it.

Breathlessly, almost eagerly, Owen says, "You think----? In my place----? You'd----?"

"Owen, yes. Frankly, I would."

Steven switches back to CNN. The president is stepping out of Air Force One somewhere in Europe. Steven's heart is beating quickly, as after an invigorating sprint. But he's frightened, too, uttering words he has only fantasized. Die, why don't you, you pathetic loser. Put yourself out of your misery. Give us a break.

Of course, in the next moment, Steven regrets what he's said. He's been blunt, cruel. Owen must be crushed. Quickly, he says, lowering the television volume, "Owen? Maybe not. No. I'm sorry I said that."

He can hear Owen's humid breathing. Then Owen says, in a strange, elated voice, "Steve, thanks! You're the only person in my entire life who has ever spoken to me the truth."

This forced, phony circumlocution. Steven perceives that his brother-in-law is posturing, taking on a role. He hates Owen with a pure, scintillant, savage hatred.

Owen is saying, "You're the only one who has ever done me the honor of taking me seriously, not humoring me. Taking me as a man and not as a cripple. Thank you."

Steven has turned away from the TV. He's on his feet, suddenly sober, repentant. "Owen, hey: I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I was just----"

"Speaking from the heart, Steve! Yes. And I appreciate it. From you--I know you hate my guts, I admire you for that! From you, my sister's husband and the daddy of her children, I've just had the best fucking advice of my life."

"I only meant----"

"Believe me, Steve, I've been thinking of killing myself for a long time. I mean seriously. I mean the real thing. Not bullshitting." Owen pauses dramatically. He too is breathing hard. "I can't discuss anything serious with Holly, she's too emotional. She's too close to the edge herself. She tried some little-girl stuff, in high school, "slashing" her wrists--but not too deep. Bet she never told you, Steve! What I need to decide is how."

Steven is stunned. "How--what?"

"Not pills, not carbon monoxide," Owen snorts in derision, vastly amused, "not a razor blade--ugh! I was thinking of--in my car? Driving?"

Steven says in a lowered voice, "Driving would be good. An accident."

"Steering my car into a, what do you call it--abutment? On Route 1, by an overpass----"

"That would do it."

"That would! That would do it! And nobody would freaking know!"

Abruptly, the line goes dead. Steven, on his feet, not knowing where he is, colliding painfully with a chair, cries into the receiver, "Owen? Owen? Owen!"

But he doesn't call Owen back.

•

"Daddy, see?"

When Holly returns with Caitlin and Brandon and their purchases, Steven hugs them eagerly as if they've been gone for days, as if they've been in danger. His little family! He would die for them, he knows. Yet for their sake he must hide the ferocity of his love. Caitlin is wearing a new purple quilted jacket with a hood, peeping out at Daddy as he lifts her in his arms to kiss her. And Brandon is sporting new hiking boots--"Look, Daddy! Cool, huh?"

Through that evening, through the mostly sleepless night that follows, Steven relives the remarkable exchange between his brother-in-law and himself, disbelieving his own words. Did he really say such things? He's astonished. He's sick with apprehension. He's elated, exhilarated. Die, why don't you. Give us a break.

A terrible thing to say to another person, especially your brother-in-law. Family.

Steven smiles. Maybe the truth is terrible. And someone must utter it for once.

It's Holly's custom to take the phone off the hook each night when she and Steven go to bed, not wanting a ringing phone to wake the family. In the morning when Steven checks, with some apprehension, he hears only a dial tone. No messages recorded during the night.

He's relieved. It hasn't happened yet. Holly is Owen's next of kin, named in his wallet identification in case of accident. But there has been no "accident" involving Owen during the night, evidently. Steven tells himself that Owen will probably just forget their conversation. Probably he's already forgotten. The man is too narcissistic, too shallow and cowardly, for suicide.

Days pass, and a week. And no word from Owen. And no word of Owen. And no emergency call from a medical worker or police officer. Casually, Holly mentions that Owen must be away, he hasn't called in a while. Her dinner-hour preparation isn't interrupted. She's relieved and yet, Steven knows, she's beginning to worry about Owen. He tells her that Owen is fine, that he's spoken with him recently, briefly. And remember the numerous times when Owen has ceased to call? Once he'd gone to Morocco with a friend, away for a month without a word to Holly.

Then one evening when Steven returns from the city. Holly tells him happily that Owen finally called, and then dropped by the house, in a "very upbeat mood." He stayed for only a few minutes because he was driving to see a friend in Manhattan. Fine, Steven says. Didn't I tell you nothing was wrong? Steven isn't disappointed; in truth he's relieved. Of course he doesn't want Holly's brother to die. But Holly goes on to say, "Owen volunteered to drop Brandon off at Scott's house--he's staying the night," and now Steven stares at her, for a moment unable to react. Then he says, choosing his words with care, "You let Brandon ride with Owen? In his car?" Holly says, "It's just across town, honey. You know where Scott lives." Steven says, dry-mouthed, "Alone with Owen? In his car?" Holly answers uncertainly, "Well, why not? I mean----"

Holly sees a look in Steven's face he can't hide. She says:

"Do you--know something about Owen? What do you know about Owen?"

A moment's panic. Holly is thinking: pedophilia?

Quickly Steven assures her it's nothing. Only that he's disappointed--Brandon won't be with them at dinner.

There! The phone is ringing.

But it's only a solicitor. Steven hangs up rudely.

Now he's waiting for the phone to ring. Without Holly overhearing, he has called Scott's parents, who tell him Brandon hasn't yet arrived. It's been 40 minutes since Owen left, and Scott's house is a ten-minute drive from theirs. But Steven tells himself there's no need for alarm, yet. Owen and Brandon might have stopped at a video store, a McDonald's. Holly is in the kitchen preparing dinner. Steven sits in the family room, the portable phone at his elbow, Caitlin in the crook of his arm reading from The Wind in the Willows. The TV's on, CNN with the sound nearly inaudible, Steven's thumb on the remote control, poised and ready to strike.

"He's having a serious crisis. The antidepressant his doctor prescribed isn't working out."