The other day, my brother Scott asked me if I’d be willing to move his car on street-cleaning days, if he ever became too sick to do it. “I can’t drive a stick shift,” I said, relieved to have the excuse of ineptitude.
“I’ll teach you.”
“But what if I’m on a big hill and do it wrong and slide backwards and crash into the car behind me? . . . It could happen.”
“I was scared at first, too. But you’ll be OK,” he said.
Several thoughts rushed through my mind: If he thinks I’m Mother Teresa, he’d better think again. I get my own street-cleaning tickets at least once a month; I can’t worry about his, too. Besides, I have enough car troubles. All the tow-truck drivers in the city know me and my rattletrap Toyota with 160,000 miles on it.
I have a photograph of myself and Scott when I was ten and he was two, on Easter morning. We’re smiling out of freckled faces. I’m wearing my flouncy green-and-white gingham dress. He’s dressed in navy blue pants, a crisp white shirt, and a pin-striped jacket, topped off with a pert blue bow tie.
Seven years after that picture was taken, I graduated from high school, left Kansas to attend college in San Francisco, and never went back. Scott grew up while I wasn’t looking. He moved to New Orleans, went to work as a waiter, and told the family he was gay.
Over the years we lost touch. Scott went through a religious period, then a wild, leather phase. I became a starving poet and an unwed mother. Except for a couple of brief visits, he and I didn’t see each other again until three years ago, when he tested HIV-positive and decided to move to San Francisco, to be in a more supportive environment. When I first saw him standing in the doorway — thirty-one years old and six feet tall, with a sunken chest and freckles scattered across his too-pale face — I remembered the little boy in the photo.
He moved into a studio apartment in an old brick hotel that had been converted into a low-income residence for people with AIDS, on the edge of the seedy Tenderloin District. It had a matchbox kitchen and one window, which looked out onto a gravel roof across the air shaft. Tacky mirrors covered the sliding closet doors, which wouldn’t slide. I offered to help brighten up the place with a new coat of paint. On the way to the paint store, we cruised a few garage sales, looking for aqua throw pillows to go with the aqua trim on his coffee table. It was a lazy day, perfect for shopping in the sunshine, but I couldn’t help thinking, Here we are decorating what might be the last place Scott will ever live.
He eventually got a bigger apartment in the same building. As his neighbors died off one by one, he moved up on the waiting list for a one-bedroom unit, finally making it to the top last spring. Now he has a fifth-floor view of the city and three rooms full of artworks, furniture, rugs, plants, cookware, and knickknacks — all left to him by now-dead friends.
The other day, I told a friend I was glad Scott had gotten a better apartment. “At least,” I said, “he’ll die in a place with six windows and a great view.” My friend was silent, and I realized that my comment had struck him as callous.
All I can say in my defense is, I’m forty-two and have never experienced the death of someone close to me, so I’m afraid. And sometimes fear can make you flippant. My only previous experience with a dying person came when I was twenty-five and worked briefly as a hospice volunteer. My first and only client was Henry, a black man dying of throat cancer. He lived in a housing project for the elderly, and his most-prized possession was a huge round bed covered with a red velvet spread. It dwarfed his tiny bedroom. I figured maybe I could turn Henry — a former tap-dancer and blues singer — and his colorful bed into a short story someday. Mostly I was caught up in the drama of watching myself watch someone else die.
My relationship with Scott is more visceral. When I call him on the telephone, it hurts to hear nothing but coughing for thirty seconds and then, finally, his raspy, tired “Hello?” When he’s feeling up to it, we go out to a movie or dinner, and I always have fun. Scott makes me laugh, as when he offers to drive my car: Without fail, he tries to turn on the ignition and accidentally activates the windshield wipers instead. They start swishing noisily back and forth, and, with every swipe, Scott flaps his arms up and down, crying, “Oh, oh, oh!” and having a perfect tizzy. He’s not typically so theatrical, but I love his occasional lapses into “queenliness.”
He also makes me cry, like the other day, when he gave me power of attorney, then made me take down the name of the funeral home that offers the best deal on cremations.
I tell myself that maybe Scott will somehow outwit the virus, even though he jokes about having so few remaining T cells that he’s given each a name. Or maybe they’ll find a cure in time, and I won’t have to muster up the courage to face the later stages of his decline. What if he’s covered with lesions? Crazed with dementia? Who will handle the nitty-gritty of care-giving — the cleaning, cooking, shopping, laundry? Who’ll keep track of medication schedules, drive him to doctor’s appointments, empty bedpans? If his friends were alive, they’d help. But, lucky Scott, he’s outlived them all.
I suspect that, in the back of my mind, I’ve been counting on good old Mom to come to the rescue. But aside from the fact that she doesn’t live in this state, she was just diagnosed with cancer and starts chemotherapy next month.
How dare she get sick now, when we need her?
I’ve heard that anyone can be heroic, that we all have it in us to be noble. I’ve heard that people who have given selflessly often insist that they got back much more than they gave. I think, Who are these people? And why can’t I believe that I could ever be one of them?
Sometimes Scott calls in the afternoon. “So, do you have time for a cup of coffee?” he asks. “I want to hear all about your last date.” I’m usually at my desk working, but I take a break. I don’t know how much longer we’ve got to hang out at my kitchen table and get to know each other, finally, after all these years.
The last time Scott climbed my front stairs, he was bent over like an old man, his arms covered with red blotches caused by an allergic reaction to a new drug. But he isn’t giving up hope. He refuses to, even though Louis, his last boyfriend, died only four days ago. Now that Louis is gone, Scott says he’s looking at “a clean slate.” At this point, I’m practically the only person he’s got left — a frazzled single mom who can offer little more than a reheated cup of coffee and a rushed game of Scrabble.
I think about learning to drive a stick shift. Maybe it will be OK. Maybe I’ll become like some heart-of-gold character in a made-for-TV movie, and everything will work out. Or maybe it won’t. I’ve got an eleven-year-old son with a broken wrist. The furnace won’t stay lit. The dog just had surgery. My new boss and I can’t stand each other. My boyfriend has another girlfriend. I need a root canal. And I’m broke.
To top it all off, my car has just collapsed again. The mechanic says he can keep it going, but how much longer is anybody’s guess. What it boils down to is: how much more do I want to invest in a run-down old car — or, for that matter, in a run-down brother?
I want to invest whatever it takes. I want to go to the best mechanics and the finest doctors. I want my car never to break down again, and I want my brother to be well.
But what I want is one thing — what I can do is another. Scott knows this, and he has never asked me, or anyone else in our family, for more. If he did, I’m not sure what he would get. We have two sisters: One lives in Iowa, has three kids, just got a divorce, and works in a hardware store. The other lives in LA, and has four kids and some serious medical problems of her own. Another brother lives in a halfway house for drug addicts.
As far as I’m concerned, Scott is a hero. He lives in poverty on his disability income; scrapes by with MediCal, which pays for only the most minimal of health care; and avails himself of special services for AIDS patients (those that haven’t been cut). He has helped countless friends during the last stages of their illness, and continues to assist those worse off than he. His courage, like that of so many people with AIDS, is quiet, unassuming, and remarkable. Last weekend, when he had a little extra energy, he took a massage course because he wanted to learn “how to be better at giving to others, rather than always receiving.”
I should have told him that, for me, he already gives back more than he takes. Above and beyond the gift of his presence, he gives me the reminder that I am fortunate to be not only alive, but healthy. He also helps me remember that the clock is ticking — that if I want to be a writer, I’d better write; that if I want to be in love again, I’ll have to leave my house, learn to flirt; that if I want to stay close to my son, I should take him boogie-boarding even though I’ve always been terrified of the ocean’s fierce power.
I remember the night my mother went into labor with Scott. The next day, she returned holding my tiny new brother wrapped in flannel. I helped change his diapers, feed him his bottles. But it has been a long time since I took care of my baby brother. And now Mom may not be able to pick up the slack.
I open the photo album and look again at the fading snapshot, memorizing the details: We’re out in the front yard. The top of Scott’s head comes up to my elbow. His little ears stick out. He’s standing up very straight. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and I am holding his hand.
This essay originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
— Ed.
