3. Eddie’s Drunk Beans

The night my big brother died I dreamed we were arguing.  Not really a surprise, it seems we’ve been arguing most of our lives.  We both tell people that” we’re always right and we never lie.”  But that can’t be true because we never agree on anything.  In my dream, he was telling me “Sis, you’re blowin’ it” and I said, “No, you’re the one that’s blowin’ it!”  Then he said, "No you are!" and I shouted back, "No you are!"  It was a childish argument but it was so real that when I woke up, I felt my cheeks flushed from the frustration of being outwitted again by my big brother.  I shook my head and muttered, “I’m not blowing it!  If anybody’s blowing it, he’s blowing it!  He won’t listen!”  I got my coffee and started my day.  An hour or so later, I got the call.  He had died that night, about the time he entered my dreams. 

It is just like him to get the last word in and leave me with a riddle.  I spent next few months with that argument in my head.  I spent days on end arguing with my dead brother.  In the meantime, picked fights with everyone else.  I thought if I could be mad enough I could shield myself from the pain.  Anger as an anesthetic never really works.   The pain crept in slowly and would surprise me when I least expected it.  A flood of hot tears at the doctor’s office or a television commercial that had me sobbing.   I felt like I had a kind of Tourette's syndrome.  Today I cried over burritos.  

My brother died of kidney disease.  He was on dialysis but he never acted like a sick person.  The last time I spoke to him he was shooting pool in a bar.  It was crowded and noisy and I was upset with him for being so reckless.  He should be at home, listening to the meditation tapes I sent him.  He should be taking better care of himself.  He should be careful.  I lectured him.  He ignored me and went back to his busy, messy life. 

My big brother loved noise and people. He had a real talent for making everything a celebration.  With him, a simple dinner became a feast, a shopping trip became an African safari and just plain living became the adventure of a lifetime. He was always that way, even as a kid. I remember him at six and eight and ten, trying to care for his little sisters while Mom worked.  He’d try so hard to soothe us when we were hungry and there wasn’t food. He’d put us to sleep with dreams of waking up to a feast.  I can still hear him say, “Wait, look, we’ll just make a game of it.  You’re not really cold, tired, or hungry, you just think you are.  We can pretend life is good.  We’ll imagine that we’ve had a big dinner.  We’ll pretend that we’re rich.  We’ll pretend that life is good and we don’t have to be afraid.”  There was good reason to be afraid.  Our world was full of danger.  But my big brother was the eternal optimist.  He thought he could charm the danger away.  I thought he could too. 

We lived over a bar on Jefferson Avenue across the street from Belle Isle in Detroit.  It was the early fifties.  The neon sign for the bar, a little pink martini glass tilted back and forth all night long and became our night light.  Watching the glass dance would rock me to sleep at night.  I never noticed the name of the bar – we just called it the “Martini Bar”

Sometimes Eddie would take his shoe shine kit down Jefferson Avenue and shine shoes.  He sure knew how to put a shine on leather but mostly he knew how to tell a good story and put a smile on the customer’s face.  He’d come home with his collection of coins and sometimes even a paper dollar.  People said he was “Proud was as a Rockefeller” of his earnings.   Then we’d all go down to the corner store for noodle soup and white bread.  We’d eat real good that night.  No crying little girls to cajole.  Maybe later we’d watch the three stooges on television.  Then we’d tidy up and wait for my mother to come home from the late shift as a waitress.  We’d get her chair all ready.  Put her slippers next to it.  He found a little bell that we sat on the table. “Ring bell for service” the note he printed said.  He had a way of making her smile even after a split shift and ten hours on her feet with heavy trays.  He stayed that same kid all his life.  Always wanting to make things right.  Always wanting everyone to be happy and love each other. 

I adored my big brother.  I thought he was the smartest person in the universe.  So when he told me that my chocolate pudding was made out of squashed worms, I promptly handed him my dish.  I didn’t want any squishy worms crawling around in my stomach.  When I asked him to protect me from the hornets nest under the front porch, he told me that all I had to do was ignore them and they wouldn’t bother me. I believed him until five hornets stung my armpit so many times that I couldn’t lower my arm.  When I ran to him for sympathy, he just laughed at me.  “Sis, you just got to stop being afraid of everything.”  After the bee incident I stopped listening to him and for most of my life I was terrified of bees. 

The Carpenter Husband and I lived for a few months in the hills of West Virginia.  We lived three miles in from the hard road, down a winding path to some good bottom land.  The narrow path was lined with waterfalls and ferns till it opened up at the bottom of the hill into this magnificent meadow with an old hotel in the center.   It had been a stop for the Teamsters when they still drove horses.  We lived in a 200 year old house that had gas heaters, gas lights, gas stove and even a gas refrigerator and they all ran off a natural gas well on the property.  We had a root cellar and wild blackberries growing out back, we had a pump outside the kitchen door and a creek outside the bedroom window.  We were in John Denver heaven. But there was no indoor plumbing and no bathroom.  Did I say no bathroom?  This husband didn’t seem to like indoor plumbing.  Did I say I’m still terrified of bees?  

When my daughter was just an infant a honey bee held me hostage all day until my husband came home from work. I sat motionless in on the sofa, my daughter clutched to my breast in absolute terror.  To this day I believe that I instilled terror in my little girl that day.  She struggles with fear that she can’t define and blames me.  I know in my gut that it happened that day in the living room.  A honey bee did it.

The bumble bees in West Virginia are as big as yellow Volkswagens and just as slow.  It didn’t matter to me, I was scared silly.  One day while we were walking through the field, we had to stop to answer natures call. (This is what happens when you live without indoor plumbing.)  As soon as I pulled my pants down and started to pee, a bee stung me on my behind.  It kept stinging and stinging and stinging.  I was hopping across the meadow, trying to escape the bee in my pants and peeing all over myself in the process.  The Carpenter Husband was doubled over laughing.  History repeats and again I’m being stung and again by a bee and there is this laughing man.  When it was all over, I realized that the stings were not nearly as bad as the years I’d spent dreading them. The terror lived on for decades but the sting was gone in a flash.  After that, I stopped being afraid of bees. They buzzed around all summer.  Bumble bees and butterflies filled my kitchen. 

Of all of us, my brother is probably the best cook.  He mastered “noodle soup” when he was just a kid and got better with age.  He lived for a long time in Phoenix where he learned to make great Mexican food.  One of the few times we were all together, me, my sister, my brother and all of our youngins, it was at my sister’s house in Phoenix.  My brother made dinner for all of us. He spent all day in the kitchen, boiling the chicken, shredding the beef and making his special Frijoles and Eddie’s Special Drunk Beans.  When we all sat down to dinner, the table was filled with authentic Mexican dishes and lots of bottles of ice cold beer.  We filled our plates and started to eat.

The food was so delicious that we couldn’t stop eating but so hot that tears were streaming down our faces.  We drank the beer to cool down and then filled our plates again.  We ate, we drank, we laughed and we cried.  We sat around the table for hours, my disconnected family and shared one wonderful night of friendship and laughter.   We had one night, in all these years of the three of us living like orphans and only children,   one night of shared jokes and memories.  All thanks to my brothers Mexican food and his Special Drunk Beans. 

He wanted to enjoy life, every moment. He had given enough of his time to sorrow and tragedy.  He wanted to squeeze every ounce of joy from life before he was forced to give it back.  He was often impatient with me for holding on to petty things. I’m prone to brood and hoard my hurt.  He’d say “Let it go sis” or “Don’t sweat the small stuff” but I never could.  After all, he had lied about the bees.  How could I trust him again?  And now he’s gone.

It seems that for years I’ve been on the “white diet” - yogurt, oatmeal, boiled eggs, and boiled potatoes.  I am afraid of food, afraid of spice and color.  I am afraid of my own life.  So the last time I spoke to my big brother, I was hiding out and telling him to be careful.  I told him that being alive could kill you.  In the end it did.  But he was alive until the moment he died.  I’ve been playing dead for too long.  I have been blowing it.  My big brother was right.  We looked at life differently.  I could never let go of the pain and he was always hoping for the best.  I only remembered being hungry while he always imagined a feast.

I’m going out in the garden and to hell with the bees.