A family story

My brother Arthur was born blue, partially strangled 
by the umbelical cord. He couldn’t catch his breath. 

After that, he was different from other kids. 

He made funny noises, couldn’t remember his address, 

said odd things. When he turned 9, St Joseph’s Elementary School 

said Arthur couldn’t keep up so my parents sent him to Mary Haven School for Exceptional Children in another state. 
He returned home when he was 18, 

tall and lean and strong. 
My mother got him dressed in a suit and walked with him 
from store to store but no one would hire him. 

So she sent him to the navy and to everyone’s surprise the navy took him and put him on a battleship. 
After three years, he returned to my parent’s house in Philadelphia. 
One day he typed up every page of a joke book 

just to have an extra copy of it. He watched a lot of TV and helped my mother with odd jobs 

around the house. Then one night he went to a sports bar and met Barbara, 

a frumpy little woman 15 years older, who told him she was dying of cancer. 

They began to date and soon she insisted he marry her. 
Not long after they married at City Hall, 

they rented a row house and she helped Arthur get a job as a bus driver. 

Then she forbid him to have any contact with his family. He obeyed her.  

After ten years of silence, my other brother, Frank, parked in front of Arthur’s row house

before sunrise one day and waited for him to come out. Around 7:30, the door opened 

and Arthur stepped down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. 
Frank jumped from his car and called to him. 
Arthur turned his head and when he saw Frank, he began walking faster. 
Frank ran after him, Wait! I just want to talk to you a minute. I’m moving to California. 

Arthur didn’t stop. He turned his head and in an anguished voice told Frank, 
Get out of here before she sees you! Get out of here! 

Twenty years later, Arthur was notified that his mother was dying, 
and then that she had died, and finally that she had been buried. 
Arthur didn’t respond. But his lawyer, inquiring about my mother’s will, 
which directed her estate be divided equally among her four children, 
instructed where to send Arthur’s check for $40,000. 
I pity my brother, strangled in the womb, strangled outside of it. 

I hope the money bought him a little happiness but I doubt it.

What I save

It occurs to me I frame photos

of their childhood for the same reason 

my mother framed 

so many photos of her children’s parties,  

dances, roller rinks, the poses around
the Christmas tree: 

Not so she’d remember us that way but 

so we’d remember us that way.  

Look, she shrieks when I blame 
her prickly temper for too much 
that’s wrong with me, 

See how happy you were. 

Your 8th birthday. So many gifts! 

The photos give me little clearings 

of pleasure in the woods of
my wearisome family ties. 

And now my children rebuke me for 
shortcomings as their mother which

worries me--do my failures cast 
too great a shadow on their childhood?

So from my album of ruddy flashbacks, 

I select the photos that remind them of their

three separate trips to Disneyland. 

To prove how very happy they have always been.

Notes

My mother writes me short notes and mails them 

even when we live in the same town. 

Ellie, Once I loved you with all my heart. Then you grew up and we went our separate ways. 

Read this interesting article about wrinkles. You have good skin. 
Use Ponds. Love, your mother.

Sometimes she asks, Did you get my note?

I reply, Yes, I did, thank you. 

She waits for me to say more but I never do. 

Now, 15 years since the last note arrived 

in my mailbox, I frame one or two and when 

I pass them on the bookshelf, 

I stand awhile and think of many things 

I might have said. 

Redemption

My father comes from a breed unkind to sons
so who can blame my brother for saying
Good riddens when I tell him the old man’s dead.
And when I trick him into a graveyard tour
and pull alongside the flat rock under which
the old man sleeps face up and barefoot in his uniform,
who can blame my brother for saying 
I’m not interested.
And when I stand at the grave, who can blame my brother
for staying in the car and when in a loud voice 
I read the words on the plaque about two wars and 
a purple heart, who can blame my brother for standing
at my side and saying, Go sit in the car, please.
And when I lift my face to the clear sky, to redemption,  
I hear a pelting, a cloudburst.
And when I turn my eyes to that flat rock, 
my brother is urinating on it 

and who can blame him?

The voices

The voices arrive one day without warning.

No troubling ideas, just constant chattering. 

But this scares my mother nonetheless.
This is her mind, her spirit, her ego. 

Her instrument for living in this world. 

I want to ask if the voices sound like her, 
if they have a German accent, 

but I don't dare. 

They have no physical being, she says.

Her mind is blank, just noisy, coming 

from another consciousness. 

She talks to the priest about the voices 

and he wisely sends her to a doctor 

and gradually the voices fall silent. 

When my mother tells me this, the voices
are long gone. 

She is calm, unconcerned. 

She says it was just an electrical problem.

She is sitting across from me at Howard Johnson's. 

I have not seen her in two years and she looks and sounds
like one who is able to bear what she must bear, 
able to adjust herself to any situation, 

and sometimes adjust the situation to her, 
as she does with that situation that is me. 

She does not seem vulnerable, nor like someone 
who will ever die.

But I dare not question her too much 
because she does not like to be questioned.

And so, because, I cannot read her mind, 
I study my mother's face politely 
as I would a stranger's on a train. 

I'm sorry

 
I was too afraid,
didn’t try for Harvard,
didn’t even try to run for mayor. 
It never registered you have
to put yourself in fantastic situations 
to do fantastic things. 
Did Hillary play it safe? 
Would she have chosen State 
over Cal just to save the BART fare? 
And it didn’t help to have a romance 
quandary in the works at all times 
(I was too terrified of being alone). 
My poor little fledgling self, 
my poor little lion, 
why didn’t you find your courage?  
You might have stolen the show.  
Isn’t that what it was all about for you? 
Love, uncommon love? 
Well, I’m sorry. For us old frady-cats
the ordinary stuff will have to do.

What I ate

There on the shore of the Bosphorus on 

that baking hot summer evening, 

hotter still when Rudy and I stood next to the bearded 

old man and his small grill, waiting for him to wrap 

two fish sandwiches.With sweat pouring 

down our faces, we searched for a place to sit 

but gave up and strolled as we ate. 

The fish was cheap and delicious. 

We went back for more almost every day, sometimes twice. 

Our hotel room was unbearably hot.  

The window opened to an alley so narrow 

no breeze could ever find us. Many times 

during the night, we stood up in the dark 

and soaked our bedsheets in water 

and then laid our naked bodies on them, 

feeling cooled only for minutes. 

But we were happy. We were still in love. 

I didn’t know if we would stay together forever 

but I felt sure that whatever happened

would be fine with me. Being very young, 

I expected my future to keep changing. 

No matter how delightful the present, 

I wanted the future to be even better 

and knew it would. When I returned to 

Istanbul a few years later with a different 

young man, one who was afraid to eat fish 

from the Bosphorus, who could afford a room 

with air conditioning, those wet sheets 

were much on my mind and for the first time, 

the past seemed a little sweeter than the present 

and I was no longer certain my future 

would be the one I desired.

Istanbul August 1970