When he looked at me his eyes were strangely luminous, his pupils huge, like he might be able to see things that I couldn’t. I remembered his frailty then—that he could be easily broken, just like our mother. My brother was teetering on a knife’s edge; all it would take was a push in the wrong direction and he could end up tumbling off.
But I thought I knew the right direction! Oh, I was so proud of myself. A girlfriend, an amour fou! That would normalize him in a way that my parents’ overprotectiveness would not. Look at me, I thought. Giving my brother real advice, something that might actually help him function in the real world and get out of his messed-up head. I thought I could help him in a way that our well-intended but clueless parents could not. I thought I knew how the world worked for kids like us.
I was so very wrong.
* * *
—
Benny ended up taking my advice and kissed his little friend. He kissed her and then, apparently, he fucked her. Good for Benny, right? Except that our father caught him in the act and my parents both completely lost their minds. And my brother was shipped off to a summer camp in Italy, from which he sent me morose postcards: Who knew Italy could feel like prison? And: I swear I’m never talking to Mom and Dad again. And then, as the summer progressed, longer letters that were more disturbing. Do you ever hear voices talking to you when you’re lying in the dark and trying to fall asleep? Because I’m wondering if I’m going crazy or if it’s just some kind of coping mechanism because I am so fucking lonely here. And then, toward the end of summer, a letter on thin blue paper that was written entirely in Italian. I do not speak Italian. I wasn’t even sure it was Benny who had written it because the handwriting was so cramped and strange, except that it was his signature at the bottom.
I was pretty sure he didn’t speak Italian, either.
I was back in San Francisco at the time, for my first summer break. I had assumed that Maman would also be there with me, but she vanished not long after I arrived, off to a spa in Malibu where they hiked five hours a day and ate only liquefied vegetables and did colonics instead of facials. She was supposed to stay for two weeks but she ended up staying for six. When she came back home, just two days before I was heading back to Princeton, she was as thin as death, her eyes popping from her tanned skull. “I feel absolutely amazing, like all the filth from living was just sucked out of me, like I’ve been purified,” she gushed, but I could see how jittery her hands were as she pressed carrots into her fancy new juicer.
I found Daddy in the library, poring over earnings statements. “I think Mom needs medication.”
He gazed at me for a long minute. “She takes Xanax.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s helping, Dad. I don’t think the spa retreats are healthy for her, either. She needs real professionals.”
He looked down at the papers in front of him. “Your mom will be OK. She gets like this sometimes, and then she bounces back. You know that by now. Telling her she needs a therapist will just upset her more.”
“Dad, have you looked at her? She’s skeletal. And not in a good way.”
My father pushed aside the top paper with the tip of his finger in order to glance at the file underneath. I’d read online that my father’s position at the Liebling Group was tenuous; that my uncle—his younger brother—had just attempted a boardroom coup. The stress was visible in the pouches under my father’s eyes and the furrow bisecting his brow. But he sat back in his chair, as if he’d settled something. “Look. We’re going back up to Stonehaven next week, after your brother gets back from camp. Lourdes is an excellent cook, she’ll make sure your mother is eating. It’s good for her to be up there. Quiet and calm.”