Kira Salter-Gurau
Oh Brother, How Art Thou?
My brother doesn’t get enough hugs. Each time he wraps his arms around me it feels like he’s breaking sobriety. He breathes so deeply. He hugs me as if he’s a suicide bomber, that beneath his white hoodie are packs of explosives, taped to his skin, tugging on his slim chest. When he hugs me, I don’t hold him as tightly and guilt starts to seep from my own skin, staining his sweatshirt blue.
The doorbell jingles and he sees me in the back of the shop–his coworkers have let me in. Jason and Mike. They are kind and as my brother walks by them, his back hunched like my father’s, he grabs their hands and pulls them into a quick bro hug. He lives above the card trading shop in the West Village and in the past five years that I’ve visited him I’ve never met one of his coworkers. I watch them interact, eyes meeting and cheeks sharp with toothy grins. I think about my own coworkers I’ve had over the years, how at work I’m a different person.
My brother sees me and his eyes light up. Like in the final scene in Dirty Dancing when Patrick Swayze shimmies to the stage, my brother dances towards me, scooping me into his arms. I let myself become slack in his embrace. I am 4 again and he is 13. I unlatch and he’s almost 30. I can see it in his eyes and in his fingernails. He takes my bags and puts them away. His face is fuller than the last time I saw him and this settles something in my stomach.
“You hungry?” He’s antsy, but happy.
He reeks of cigarette smoke. Not the kind of smell when you only have one outside before rushing in for your shift ten minutes late. Not the kind of smell when you only have one after a hard conversation on the phone. Not the kind where you’ve only had one. The smell is laced into his clothing, a stale odor that’s been threading itself through his linens for the past decade.
As he lists off places we could go to eat, he paces through the back of the shop circling me like a sheepdog. He doesn’t do it on purpose, his hands shoved in his mouth, gnawing at his cuticles. He spits out the dead skin onto the floor of the shop. He mumbles to himself about restaurants, then something about sushi. I stand still in the center and stop turning to face him as he orbits me. I’m dizzy and shut my eyes for a moment.
Mike comes out back with a question about Justin Verlander, a pitcher from the Giants. My brother disappears behind the front wall of the store. I stand there in between portraits of Kobe Bryant and a signed Ken Griffey Jr. jersey. His father Ken Griffey Sr. was known for playing on the Cincinnati Reds in the 70s, winning the world series with them a few times. Yet, he was never inducted into the hall of fame and his son was. They were built with the same muscle tissue. One from another. Skin into skin. Insides making outsides.
I spoke to my dad on the phone before leaving for the trip. “Wow, you’re going on your own?” I nod. My dad repeats himself, incredulous, “are you?”
“Oh! Yes. I was nodding.” Dad says he’d never do that, do this trip. He doesn’t know how to talk to my brother.
My brother is very private. He keeps a tight hand, his fingers curling around the spades and kings of his cards. He’s hard to keep in touch with. Over the phone, he speaks in pockets of advice. He doesn’t ask how I am, but asks me what my dreams are and where I want to be in 10 years. He croons, “fear not, grasshopper, there’s plenty of time.” He tells me work is good. This trip is the first time I’m seeing what good means to him. Good must mean busy. Good must mean rush hour, when kids come in the store to trade cards after school. Good must mean the rhythmic bass of Lauryn Hill swirling through the store as customers come in and out.
For the past two years, he’s been begging for me to visit him in New York. He runs this sports card trading shop. He’s a god to the people who enter through his doors. They come to him with offerings, cards and signed paraphernalia. He gives them commandments: recommendations for their drafts. He consumes sports media and statistics. He doesn’t eat. I believe in breakfast. I pray for oatmeal and worship yogurt. My god takes form in a fried egg, over medium.
We decide to get pizza. At first, I don’t tell him I’m gluten free because I know how he’ll react. An eye roll or even a sigh through gritted teeth. After that I’ll text my mom and tell her that this is typical, that this trip was a waste.
When he’s looking up bagel places in the area, I let it slip and he looks up. I expect him to explode like he used to when we were younger. I expect him to erupt into a fit over my request telling me something like how I’m such a whiny bitch. Instead he says, “I can totally work with that.” Examining his face, I searched for some sign of irritation or anger. I feel like I’ve brought a bazooka to a knife fight. I lower my weapon.
At this point we’ve moved outside. His nose is drippy with snot from the cold air flowing past our faces. His nose is bigger than mine, but it has the same general shape. I could draw my finger along the ridge of his nose and mine at the same time. Like sister cities, they share the same map.
We walk onto Christopher street over to L’Industrie Pizzeria where the line corners the block. The city feels so expansive to me. Living in Boston for the past 3 years as a student has made me feel like a big fish in a medium pond. I know the gruff and beautiful city like a classmate. I feel equal to it. Boston is a peer to me. New York is horrific and massive. My brother moved to the city 10 years ago for college and never left. He took a sports marketing job setting up events for big beer brands and getting into the hip hop scene. He helped to open up the Hip-Hop Museum in the Bronx and then proceeded to work in cards and trading, meeting players like Derek Jeter and entertaining singers and A-listers in his store, flipping cards below his apartment where he barely sleeps.
Derek Jeter is essentially a member of my family. I first encountered him in my living room, playing shortstop for the Yankees up on my television. Each night we’d take our bowls of noodles and tofu and watch the game. My mother whispered magic to the sink where the dishes sparkled clean and danced while the kids were unnoticing gluttons in the next room.
I knew my brother liked the Yankees. To me and my other siblings that meant we liked the Yankees too. I memorized the lines of Jeter’s face, his eyes and his throw. When I see him now it’s like seeing an old family member after many years. We had an equal amount of Jeter photos in our house as we did of loved ones: a cutout pasted to the wall of my brothers’ room, a Jeter bobblehead on the shelf from when my mom and brothers went to see the Yankees spring training in Sarasota, a magazine cover with Jeter cut out and modge-podged to the wall. When my sister and I did yoga in the living room, the Jeter’s head bobbled as we toppled over in crow position.
When Jeter came to my brother’s store, the entire family was beside themselves. A line of Salters falling down like dominoes. I saw a photo of my brother shaking Jeter’s hand. They were leaning in together in the front of the store next to the green walls and yellow lettering of the logo. My brother’s eyes were wide open, like he was experiencing a supernatural event. Business only went up from there.
Last month, my brother’s hands were on the front of the New York Times. I found this out scrolling on my phone as I perused the news that morning. I paused on a set of gnawed cuticles I knew well. Letting out a guffaw, I giggled and sent the picture to my siblings.
I’d never realized how successful his store was. I texted him but he didn't reply. My mom confirmed it was him. I returned to the picture and my stomach raisined, should I have asked about this? Should I have asked if he had any articles published about him? Should I have pushed further even if he had said no?
I’ve had a handful of essays published online and I’ve never told my family except my sister. I feel like I have a second family online, like I’m cheating on them with another version of themselves. This is one of my few secrets.
I send the picture of my brother’s hands to my sister and other brother who hadn’t seen it either. We worry together.
Our brother in the news. Our brother’s hands, the most famous hands in our family. Our brother is fulfilling his dream. Our brother was the furthest from Maine he’d ever been. Our brother, the mystery. Our brother, the wonder.
When he didn’t tell me about friends, I assumed he had none. When he told me he had no love interests, I crafted images of a lonely man in his apartment quietly in the middle of the big, breathing city. Oh, how wrong I was.
My mom worries about him as if he were a chia pet. She waters him with words like “lonely” and “isolated” and “touch starved.” She worries like a sponsor, checking in on him constantly. Texts. Unanswered calls. Heavy conversations with her own mother about how these are signs of her own failings. Supposed signs of his depression. I hear weeping in the kitchen when I’m home from breaks. “Why doesn’t he call?” My sister and I watch the game on the tv. The summer before, we’d gone to New York to see a game and one of the players, Judge, had hit a home run. The whole family jumped into the air. I’m pretty sure I threw my fist into the air. I don’t even like baseball. The rest of the trip we fought.
For a long time my brother had addiction problems, starting when he entered college. He came home a smattering of times, his presence like heavy fog entering the house when I was in middle school. I’d return home at 3pm and there would be a dark creature in the living room, coming home after rehab and down drug induced psychosis, too depressed to eat anything except pizza toaster pops. I didn’t know how to view him, this figure in my life who was supposed to have it together. He was supposed to be the blueprint.
During those years, we took a trip to the beach in early fall. My brother sat in the front seat in a grey sweatshirt with the hoodie covering face, head buried in his own shoulder. I remember wanting to speak with him. My mom wanted us to be together as siblings. I could see her pulling on strings while not knowing what was at the end of them.
My two other siblings and I begged for some music for the long drive up the coast of Maine. We popped on Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas, the intense drums, the plea of the lead singer, our ears begged for the melody. Lay your weary head to rest. Don’t you cry no more. NO! In the back, we headbanged our skulls to the rhythm of the electric guitar as the salt air pulled us north to the beach. I sang along as I fingered the small hole burnt by a cigarette into the back of the driver’s seat. My brother had left it when he was in high school: a youth that seemed irretrievable.
During the extensive guitar and organ duet, my mom looked over at her 19 year old son, twisting uncomfortably in his seat, his body contorting like a muscle spasm you can see beneath the skin. He writhed with frustration, something churning in his head. She turned off the music. My other siblings and I were annoyed. We rode the rest of the way in silence.
The coast of Maine looks like fingers. To get to the good beaches you drive up to the top of each finger and then all the way down to the very bottom. It takes forever. When you go to the beach you commit. It’s so worth the journey past the marshes and the shipyards. You listen to an audiobook. You must go all the way up and all the way down. Up and down and up and down. The journey is repetitive and predictable. At times it can be impossibly long and as a kid, it feels treacherous. What even awaits you at the beach? You don’t go to these kinds of beaches alone, the trip requires companions.
Angry and growing boy leaves home to go somewhere big and make it on his own. When he comes back home he becomes angry and boyish once more.
In the card shop, this boy doesn’t exist. I watch my brother gracefully handle customers with a kind hand on their back. He slides a fresh pack of cards into their hands as one of his coworkers asks him about some sports stat or what he thought of the Knicks’ last season he relaxes into a small smile, thinking hard about the question. He laughs and grumbles something about all he knows is that he knows nothing.
Later on in the day one of his coworkers, an illustrator who designs some of the baseball cards, sits down with me. I’m nursing a bellyache after a gluten-full piece of cheese pizza with hot honey, pepperoni and basil.
“He never talks about you guys,” the illustrator says. I wonder what he thinks I’m going to say. I wonder why he asks me this. He wants insight. He’s trying to get some sort of reaction. I consider breaking down into tears to see what he would do. I consider stripping off my shirt to reveal a hyper realistic tattoo of my brother’s face on my stomach. I consider falling asleep.
“He never tells me about you guys,” I say, smiling. We cheers our slices of pizza. He laughs. We discuss the art world and I tell him how I’m not interested in cards. We talk for some time as my brother runs across the store grabbing fresh boxes and signed memorabilia. Regulars sit at tables in the back flipping cards and laughing over hot drinks. A leak in the ceiling resulted in a bucket near my chair catching all the droplets. I usher customers out of the way so they don’t trip and I’m glad to be helping in some way.
My brother picks up another pizza for his friends and shoves hot slices into everyone’s hands. When I went to pick up the order with him at the restaurant next door, all the cooks behind the counter of the bustling restaurant cheered my brother’s name in unison. They came and gave him hugs, dapping him up. He asks about their spouses and children. This is what good must mean when he answers my questions over the phone.
Back at the store, the boys that he has on each Friday for Shabbat have come to flip some cards. He introduces me to each new person who enters the store. I feel like I’m reading his journal, happening upon his secrets. No one else in my family has seen this side of him, this life he lives. No one in the store has any idea who I am.
The illustrator goes on, “I love your brother. One of the good ones.” I nod. He’s in the middle of a vibrant conversation over a basketball in his hands that’s signed by the entire Knicks team. I tell my mom about what the illustrator said on the train ride home the next day and she starts to cry.
“You don’t know how happy that makes me.” I don’t know what to say. I can imagine what she looks like crying, her shaking her head, releasing a small gasp slowly like she always does just before she cries. I conjure years of tense dinners of an angry boy storming off to go smoke after the Thanksgiving dinner. He leaves through the front door and everyone rolls their eyes. Those dinners and this man don’t line up.
For the longest time, I didn’t know how to talk to my brother, didn’t know who I was talking to–my mother’s version of him or his version of him. My love for him changes form all the time, like how the shoreline of a beach changes shape each summer. New wave patterns change the shore. Each year I return and choose a new spot to put down my blanket. The water is the same, smells the same. The drive is the same length and I make the trip knowing the effort that goes into taking it. I’m prepared for the change each summer.
From January to September we don’t speak. He doesn’t call me except on my birthday at midnight. I’m always asleep. He never leaves a message. Our distance in age becomes apparent to me when I think about the feelings I was having at 19 and how I dealt with them, how at 19 I picked up smoking. How at 19 I found my own kind of despair. How at 19 I would never explain to a 13 year old how I was feeling, how a 13 year old would never understand.
One night, at 19, I called my brother while high. I’m in the Boston Common and it’s around 8pm.
“Oh, I used to hear voices too,” he says. I bite my fingernails as I listen, my mind floating behind my body like a ghost. I beckon it. “Might be good to take a break.” There’s no judgement in his voice, he says it very matter of factly, like leaving a Yelp review on my headspace. The Common is quiet on this Thursday night, couples walk past me. The air is warm. I feel lonely and isolated, but less so than I did before the call. I thank him and toss my dab pen the next day.
When one of my other siblings, Caleb, went through his own psychosis at age 21, my brother flew to Boston to guide him through it. He caressed Caleb’s head while reassuring him it would be okay. Caleb preached about God and finding someone to sacrifice. When afraid, my brother pushed Caleb’s impulses away, like foam on top of saltwater.
I don’t know why we don’t talk. I don’t think I want to talk more. I’m okay with it.
When I take off for Penn Station the next day, I tell my brother it was good to see him and he gathers me up into a hug. I’m bigger, taller and heavier than him but his hug is tight and warm. He smells of smoke. I thank my fried-egg god that I won’t be smelling him for a while. When I see him at home for the next holiday, I’m sure he’ll be short tempered and antsy. I pull away from him and squeeze his arms like I’m a TSA agent checking for a weapon. “Okay,” I say. We exchange I love yous and he tells me not to trust anyone on the train, handing me a wad of cash. I try to reject it but he shoves it into my pocket. His face flashes in annoyance when I try to give it back once more and then he waves me off. He gives me one more quick embrace and then leaves, frustrated. I deflate a little but am content as I start walking up Christopher Street, my fingers blue from the cold. For once, I don’t think about the hug. I let it be.
Kira Salter-Gurau is a nonfiction writer from Portland, Maine. Her work has appeared in Yourmag, The Quinobequin Review, and Concrete Magazine among others. She's a fiend for artichoke dip and will look at any picture of cats you have.
