Read My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover Online
Authors: Molly Haskell
facility. He’s not here, they report. He’s been transferred to the emergency room at St. Luke’s Roosevelt, on 114th Street and Amsterdam.
When I find him, he has only the oxygen mask over his nose. I tell him
I watched
Rear Window
earlier in the evening. He smiles and says something that I can’t make out. Those are his last words. I sit with
him as his breathing gets slower, slower. I time the space between ex-
halations, from ten seconds to eleven seconds, to twelve . . . to twenty, thirty. . . . Five hours later, he dies.
It’s Wednesday, June 20, 2012. On my cell phone, I call Ellen. She
. 208 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 208
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
Looking Backward and Moving Forward
wants to come up. I tell her not to, as I delusionally think I’ll make arrangements for Andrew’s cremation and then get back to work. For
now I have people looking after me, and want to save Ellen for later,
when the whole thing hits home. That’s when I’ll need some consola-
tion. But twenty- four hours later I realize (or my friends make me realize) I need to have people over, and by then it’s too late for her to come.
On that brilliantly sunny Sunday, as people arrive bearing flowers
and food, warmth and support, I realize the need for ritual as an ex-
pression of common bereavement. I regret Ellen not being here. I want
her to meet more of my friends.
Never mind— she’ll come up for the memorial service in the fall.
It’s now October, seven years to the month from the last time I saw
Chevey as my brother, the visit on which he broke the news. The me-
morial service I’m planning will be an elaborate affair— film clips
from the movies Andrew loved, interspersed with friends and col-
leagues speaking about him. It’ll take place at the Walter Reade The-
ater at Lincoln Center, with a reception afterward in the adjacent
gallery. It’s taken weeks of planning with my young cinephile film-
making team. I’m anxious about it all, of course, but glad Ellen will be coming, and especially glad the two ex- wives will come as well. Beth
will come up several days ahead, and take us all out for dinner the
night before the service. Eleanor will stay with Jeanne and be on call.
Ellen knows enough people to be comfortable— still, there are many
who are aware of the situation but haven’t seen her yet. Will they ogle?
Will she stand out in the crowd? Will all attention be focused on her?
Will I care?
One night I dream that she’s come to town and I’ve gone to meet
her at the hotel where she’s staying. (In real life she will stay with me.) I’m in the lobby waiting when she appears . . . but as Chevey! In coat
. 209 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 209
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
My Brother
My Sister
and tie, smiling sheepishly. I understand she’s left Ellen behind for a few days, and come up as my brother. My sense in the dream is that it
hurts her, that it’s a sacrifice, and I feel terrible. But when I wake up, I forgive myself. In our unconscious, past and present meet, fantasy co-habits with reality, and wanting my brother doesn’t mean that I want
my sister less.
The memorial service goes off beautifully, as does the reception, or
at least as far as I can see. Ellen hasn’t brought a warm jacket so I’ve lent her one of mine— black wool, designer resale— and she looks terrific. My cousin Preston meets her for the first time, but another relative can’t bring herself to approach. People tell me she’s beautiful.
“Elegant” is a word I hear. And that she looks like me. I remind myself of my friend Ethel’s warning as to what they
really
think, but find that I’m long past worrying, at least on my own behalf.
Afterward friends call. My agents, husband and wife, both think
she’s lovely. “She’s charming,” Georges says, “but like a woman, not
a man.”
A friend reports that another “good” friend, tipsy no doubt, kept
going up to people, giggling and saying “Tee- hee, have you seen Mol-
ly’s ‘sister’?”
My own opinion is that she carried the whole thing off with great
poise. There were, however, a few glitches. Eleanor and Ellen are at
my apartment the next day to console and help me. We are reviewing
the previous evening and Eleanor has a bone to pick.
“Ellen, you introduced me to someone as your ex- wife. You can’t
do that. They’ll think we’re lesbians.”
“Oh,” says Ellen, to whom the thought hadn’t occurred. “Next
time I’ll introduce you as my friend.” That seems to satisfy Eleanor,
but of course it’s not right either. Once again we’ve landed awkwardly
in a linguistic no- man’s- land.
. 210 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 210
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
Looking Backward and Moving Forward
During the day, Ellen fixes things in the apartment— the tele-
phone, a light— and answers some business questions. She and Elea-
nor open jars and pill bottles. I’m more helpless than usual, as my
arm’s in a cast from a fractured wrist— overexcitement on a quick trip
to Paris before the memorial service. I’d thought I was walking on air
rather than the cobblestones alongside the café Les Deux Magots.
Looking everywhere but down, trying to swallow the whole city in one
gulp after a long absence, I tripped over one of those heavy chains
draped across the sidewalk to keep cars in their place.
Ellen and Eleanor want to help me organize my life, so we begin
with the coat closet. Some of the coats, hats, and gloves are Andrew’s; most are mine. We start a box for the Salvation Army and implement
a filing system: long coats on the left, short ones on the right; sum-
mer hats on the unreachable shelf, winter ones nestled into each
other like Russian dolls; gloves, scarves, in perfect order. How long
will it stay this way? Will the red rain hat and the neon- green and
blue scarf, now in the box, find their way back into my closet after
they’re gone?
Ellen is about to start on a systematic rearrangement of my kitchen
drawers when Eleanor says to her, “Just because you’ve thought and
thought about these things, and have found the most efficient way to
do everything, doesn’t mean it’s the right way for everybody.” Ellen
closes the drawer.
At dinner, as we make our way through several bottles of wine, we
toast Andrew, and reminisce. We are like three people at a train sta-
tion, on our way somewhere, but with no signposts, no clear idea
where we are going, and no grand arches overhead like those of Broad
Street Station, where Mother, Chevey, and I once said our good- byes.
It’s just a whistle- stop platform in the middle of nowhere under miles of open sky. I’m now a widow; my brother is my sister; and Eleanor is
. 211 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 211
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
My Brother
My Sister
an ex- wife, trying to move forward while stuck in a melancholy that
won’t let go. But if the intense happiness of being together on this
night is inflected with ambiguity, full of uncertainty, and edged with
sadness and loss, we are not forlorn. We don’t feel abandoned, nor do
we wish to turn away from each other. We are together on our separate
journeys.
. 212 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 212
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
Acknowledgments
[to come- - 2 pp]
. 213 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 213
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
Acknowledgments
[to come- - 2 pp]
. 214 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 214
4/23/13 4:12 PM