Brownies

I should probably talk about the sobbing.

If you’re following along, you’ve probably noticed. There is quite a lot of sobbing in this story. Sobbing in parking lots, on yoga mats, in temple, in the car. Sobbing in the bathroom with my cheek pressed against the door. I sob at the site of a highway accident with a police officer standing beside me and sob, at the Abbey Ice loading dock, into the arms of a plant manager I’ve never met.

I sob into Matthew’s arms. I sob after a phone call with Leonard Lopate. I sob when I can’t go to Paris. I sob, quietly but continuously, the entire day of Max’s graduation from the moment the bird’s nest is discovered in the window to the end of the graduation party.

So, what’s with all the sobbing?

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I have theories. Sobbing replaces anger. Sobbing is a reflex — a defensive wall that stops the action, that changes the subject. That keeps something that I do not want to happen from happening.

I also have memories. How the sobbing would just . . . take over. Moving through me in a tidal wave of emotion swept everything else away. I became sobbing and whatever else I was had fled the scene. It was raw, reflexive and outside of my control. Like vomiting. Like childbirth. Paroxysms of outrage, disappointment and fury that I could not, at that time in my life, put into words. So, my body took over and I sobbed.

There’s a reflex at work here. A way of changing the subject. Of shutting things down. The way that a spinning cyclone moves across the plains states and for a period of time, it’s the only thing anyone sees.

Other people stand their ground. Other people shout. Other people stand there, stiff upper lip twitching with fury.

I make cyclones. Well, I used to.
I sobbed.

—

I don’t know if my sisters sobbed like this. They have always seemed more skilled than I at talking out their feelings. At asking for help. At seeing the dysfunction and working on it, working at it, until it was understood. Maybe that is their version of sobbing. Attention paid to something irksome — talking about it, puzzling over it - until it is under control.

This is hard to write. I am still protecting them. I am still the big sister, shielding them.

I remember the sense that I was standing between them and … what? Shielding them — from what? — with my body. I remember the sudden impulse, when I was out in the world and they were still at home, to send them money. I wonder if they remember that. I do. It’s one of the few things I remember. Coming home from college and Jen, only 12, sunning herself on the deck. And Beth, 16, up in her attic hideout.

I remember small things — flashes of light in a dim room. Mostly though, I remember this pressure. I would drive away from the house and it would release me. I would drive toward the house and it would tighten around me like a corset. The kind the Victorians wore — where you’d need another person (or in the movies, sometimes two people and come to think of it those people were often two sisters) to pull on the strings tightening and tightening until you could only take in shallow gulps of breath. What I mean is: I would drive away and the stays would loosen, the strings would come undone. I would shed the corset and finally breathe.

The sobbing, I think, has something to do with that pressure. The way it built up inside while also sucking something away. Breath. Freedom. Movement. Of being contained in too small a space. Of sensing that if I didn’t create a commotion they were going to take everything I had for themselves. And by ‘they’ I do not mean my sisters. They were behind me, safe. I mean my parents, who sucked us all to the bone.

That pressure and the release valve of the sobbing.
That pressure and the relief of driving away from the house.
That pressure and the distance I had to place between me and them.
The sisters laughing on the telephone, loosening the corset strings, letting it out, letting it be there, letting it let us go.

That pressure and also, a kind of hunger. A genuine hunger for food but also, for something else. Something stable, predictable. Something I could count on when I came in the kitchen after school. I would find my mother painting, cigarette burning down to the filter tip. Maybe she was holding a martini glass. Maybe she and Edith next door had already had one. I would do all the dishes. I would clear the table. I would check the fridge — was the milk sour? Was there anything to snack on? If not, I would walk to Jack’s on the corner. I couldn’t have a friend over until I checked. Had to make sure there was something on for my sisters— and of course, for me.

So, the hunger — for that after-school snack, waiting on a gingham covered table. For the plate of home baked cookies, the frosting covered brownie that sometimes but not always came. Hunger for the always. For the rhythmic. For the reliable.

For something that I will not be able to name during the landscape of this book, not for several more years but it will come. I will see.

For now, though, in this story, I’m the family sobber. Maybe because I’m the oldest and believed it was my job to take care of everyone — including our parents. Maybe I learned it from my Dad. Clearly, given what I saw in the hospital, he was a sobber himself. But that I don’t remember. But that I don’t remember.

—

This is a scene from The End of Men, a memoir I started years ago. The previous chapter, Unmoored, is here. If you’re new to the project, read the first chapter here: Keys. The full list of scenes, in order, is here. Want to support the work? Leave a comment. Share a chapter with a friend. To receive the chapters by email, subscribe here. To support the writer (me) and the project, become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers also get SOSI: The School of (Words and) Images.

Photo by Tom Caillarec on Unsplash