“FALSE ALARM”: JUNE 1997
Were your parents happy?
What was it like to be a child of Gus Voorhees?
And for your mother—what do you think it was like for Jenna Matheson to be Gus Voorhees’s wife for sixteen years?
“BECAUSE I SAY IT’S NOT.”
My weird brother Darren had it fixed in his brain, the way something stringy might fix itself between your teeth, and slowly drive you crazy if you couldn’t remove it, that our mother’s decision, or rather our mother’s sudden change-of-plans, was not a good idea.
I persisted—“Why not? What’s the difference?”
“It’s not good to change plans impulsively.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
Exasperated my brother glared at me. Deliberately my eye sought out the patches of acne on his forehead and cheeks, that kept Darren from being a strikingly attractive boy.
He said, with the righteous stubbornness with which he practiced his braying trumpet outside in the garage where my mother had banished him with a plea of Darren, please! Some of us are trying to retain our sanity: “She should call first.”
“How do you know she hasn’t called?”
“Because I asked her. And she said ‘That isn’t necessary.’”
Darren had caught the haughty calm of our mother’s voice but not the quaver beneath. Such mockery, if that’s what it was, made me uneasy for the obvious and abiding truth was, I loved our mother much more than I loved my difficult brother.
“Why don’t you call Dad yourself, then? If you think it’s so crucial.”
“Why should I call Dad! She’s his damn wife.”
In Darren’s lips she was a hateful hissing word meant to shock.
He added: “She’s got some agenda, she doesn’t want us to know about.”
“‘Agenda’—what’s that?”
“Some idea. Some reason. God damn motive.”
Lanky, loose-limbed Darren. At thirteen he was nearly as tall as our mother and he loomed over me when he wished as if to threaten me with his very being. Out of a strange sibling shyness he seemed to avoid Melissa whom he did not wish to bully but with whom he found it difficult to speak.
Essentially, Darren was protective of his younger sisters. If it came to that. For such protectiveness is a responsible brother’s duty.
“Oh, hell. Who cares.”
Darren spoke in sudden exasperation, disgust.
We were upstairs in the narrow low-ceilinged hall that buzzed faintly at times with flies you could not always see. Rudely my brother pushed past me as if my questions had annoyed him. Might’ve avoided bumping into me if he’d tried but he didn’t try, breathing loudly through his mouth like an animal hot-panting, eager to get away before he committed worse damage to his sister.
In a family of more than two siblings there is the inevitable oldest sibling, could be a girl, in this case a boy, burdened with a precocious knowledge of family politics that excludes the other siblings who remain therefore young, oblivious. Such responsibility is thankless, Darren seemed to know beforehand, as it is unavoidable.
One day I would be asked if my brother had been an angry child, or an unusually emotional child, before our father’s death, and I would say protectively My brother was a normal boy for his age, his class, and his time. We were a normal family and we were happy except when we were confused about whether we were happy or not because we were made to think about it, and to wonder.
And did we love one another?—yes. We did.
“YOU KIDS! C’MON! We’re late.”
From downstairs Mom called us. That voice!
A bright voice, a happy-seeming voice, a voice of motherly no-nonsense. The TV-Mom voice at the (playful) edge of patience lifting up the stairs—“Get down here, mes amis, or we’re leaving without you!”
Here was a festive voice. You might almost think.
Not the voice we’d (over)hear on the phone pleading begging Gus please return this call. Gus I am so worried about you where are you darling.
Melissa was already downstairs—or already outside, buckled into her seat in the station wagon—for (adopted, ontologically insecure) Melissa was never late.
Indeed, if Mom had wanted us to leave the house promptly at noon it was now several minutes after noon and it was proper for her to betray exasperation.
Quickly we descended the stairs. In the lead Darren was heavy-footed as often he was in the (rented) house on the Salt Hill Road which he resented, as if he’d hoped to break the wooden steps.
Close behind him Naomi did not—quite—dare to be too close for fear of treading on her brother’s heels which would provoke Darren to turn furiously upon her, striking her with the flat of his hand as you’d discipline a too-eager dog.
Sometimes (it might be confessed) Naomi trod upon her brother’s heels out of younger-sister mischief, or sibling-spite; such small assaults were deliberate enough, yet easily confused with accidental assaults for which it was unjust to be blamed.
“Watch out.”