My brother went crazy at nineteen. I guess, at the time, it felt fast but in retrospect, it was a slow process. People don’t just go crazy, do they? No. They become that way.
Sometimes I’d wake up before everyone else and find him sitting on the porch, lost, staring at dawn, bathed in the warm light. When I found him like that in the summer, it didn’t scare me quite so much. It was always better in the summer.
“Are you okay out here?”
He’d turn and look at me like he didn’t recognize me.
“It’s Marla.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sis. I’m okay. Want to come sit with me?”
He’d hold my hand and I’d sit with him. Out of nowhere, he’d start to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
His face would fold up like a crumpled piece of paper and he’d move his hand over his eyes, trying to bat everything away.
“Nothing.”
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“My skins too tight, sometimes.”
“You’re my best friend.”
“You’re mine.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I just had a lot of bad dreams.”
“Should I get Mom?”
“No.”
It was better in the summer; the outbursts were more frequent and sometimes he got violent but at least you felt like you could get through. In the winter he’d get so skinny it was like he disappeared.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to get Mom?”
“Yeah. I’m just being a pussy.” Then, he smiled. “I think I’m going to go back to bed, chickenhead." He clucked.
I should have gotten my Mom but he was so funny sometimes in the summer. His sense of humor gave you the impression that everything would be okay. Some nights we’d stay up so late laughing that my stomach hurt the whole next day.
He was around sixteen when he started spending whole nights away, and the laughter went with him. Eventually, it became days. Once, it was almost a week. I knew it was done when my father found him wandering around the neighbourhood shoeless before dawn in January. He had blisters on his feet that didn’t heal for months. The hospital said he was lucky he got to keep them. I used to find him watching t.v, scratching at the blisters until they bled.
The night everything changed, I remember sitting by the window with my mother, watching the snow fall, waiting for my father to return. He’d left three hours earlier. When you’re a little girl, you know your Daddy will return. I wish, more than anything, that I could know things like a kid again.
The snow fell so heavy that night.
“I’ve never heard such a beautiful silence in my whole life,” I told my mother. She sat, a part of the beautiful silence, not moved by any word I spoke.
When they walked through the door, my father was holding Matt up. He couldn’t walk alone.
I was young but I knew something was very wrong.
As soon as Matt saw my Mom he ran to her and attached himself to her hours, until finally, mid sob, he fell asleep and didn’t really wake up for three days.
Later, she and my father sat in the kitchen. I watched from the door frame. Her head was in her hands, her shoulders moved heavy with sobs. I remember thinking she looked like a tiny bird crushed under big rocks.
My father paced.
“He just doesn’t have the killer instinct I do. He’s weak.”
“Don’t talk like that Frank.”
“He’s weak, Laura. He’s weak.”
“Don’t--”
“He makes me sick.”
I knew it was over then.
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