Three Weeks With My Brother (34 page)

By late August, Ryan was coming up on his third birthday. His latest evaluation showed little, if any, improvement. Now, instead of having the skills of a fourteen-month-old, he had the skills of a fifteen-month-old.

In other words, after eight months of running from doctor to doctor and after dozens of tests and evaluations, Ryan was even further behind his peers than he’d been when we’d first found out he had a problem. And he still never spoke at all.

As all-encompassing as my worries were, I continued selling pharmaceuticals by day, and by early summer had begun work on a second novel. Working in the evenings— and drawing inspiration from my dad and his struggles with grief—I started
Message in a Bottle
. The work was an escape of sorts, for only while I wrote was it possible to keep from thinking about Ryan.

Micah and I stayed in frequent touch throughout those first few months of 1996. He was the one I talked to about my fears, and he would always listen. At the same time, Micah was moving forward in his own life. In April 1996, he called to tell me that he’d decided to give up his real estate career.

“I’m thinking of buying a business instead,” he said on the phone.

“What kind?”

“A manufacturing business. Garage cabinets, closet organizers, and home office systems.”

“What do you know about that?”

“Nothing. But the owner says he’ll train me.”

“Good for you.”

“There’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Can I borrow some money? I’ll be able to pay you back in a few months.”

After telling me the amount, I hesitated only briefly. “Sure,” I said.

“Thanks.” Then, with a quieter voice, he asked: “How’s Ryan doing?”

Micah, alone among my family, was the only one who never forgot to ask.

There were, however, two bright spots in the first half of 1996. Again, my sister passed her CAT scan with flying colors and seemed perfectly healthy. Other than being tired—twin two-year-old boys can do that to you—she was in good spirits, and we seldom talked about her health.

My dad, too, finally began to find his way again. As 1996 progressed, he spoke less about Flame and began talking more about the woman he was dating. He spoke about work as well—work was the one area of his life where he continued to function normally—and by the summer he’d even begun listening to my requests that he start talking to his family again.

“They miss you,” I said. “They’re worried about you.”

“I know,” he admitted. “And I’ll talk to them again. I just have to be ready first.”

I think that my dad’s hesitation had less to do with a continuing anger than fear of how they would respond to his attempted reconciliation. In the end, he put aside whatever fears he had and called his brother. Later, I would hear from my uncle Monty that my dad did almost all of the talking, that he’d rambled a bit, but after the call, my uncle had broken down. He loved and missed my dad, and the sound of my dad’s voice—even if it was less a conversation than a speech—was something he’d longed to hear. It was a step my dad had needed to make, not only for his brother, but for himself, and as the summer wore on, they began speaking more and more.

After I learned what he’d done, I told my dad that I was proud of him, and for once my dad seemed touched by my words.

“I love you, Dad,” I whispered.

“Love you, too.”

And a couple of weeks later, my dad called to tell me something else.

“I’m getting married,” he said.

“You’ll like her, Nick,” Micah said on the phone.

I’d called to ask him about the woman my dad intended to marry. While I’d never met her, my brother had. “And she’ll be good for dad, too.”

“He seems happier.”

“I think he is,” Micah said. “He even went to see Dana and the twins last weekend.”

“That’s good,” I said. I paused. “It’s been a long seven years since mom died.”

“Yes it has. The poor guy—I was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to be okay. Did you hear he called Uncle Monty?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m glad. He needs his family. He always has. How’s your business going?”

“It’s hard. I’ve been working day and night, but it’s paying off. Sales have been going up every month.”

“Congratulations.”

He paused. “There’s something else, too.”

“What’s that?”

“I think I finally met my Cathy,” he said. “But her name’s Christine.”

“Really? That’s great!”

“Nick, you’re going to love her.”

“Sounds pretty serious.”

“It is serious.”

“Yeah, but is it marriage serious, or Micah serious?”

“Ha, ha.”

My eyebrows shot up. If he wasn’t willing to joke about it, I realized I already had the answer.

“Well, good for you,” I said. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

Two days after my father told me he was engaged—and a month prior to the publication of
The Notebook
—the CBS tele-vision show
48 Hours
arrived at our house.

One of the producers, Andrew Cohen, had read an advance copy of the book in the early part of the summer, and decided to run a segment entitled “The Making of a Best Seller.” In addition to filming me, they’d also been filming at Warner Books all summer; sitting in on marketing meetings, conducting interviews with Larry Kirshbaum, the CEO of Warner Books, Maureen Egen, the president, and Jamie Raab, my editor, in addition to filming a book group (composed of strangers) who would discuss the novel.

They came to the house on a Thursday; two days later, on Saturday, I was supposed to fly to Los Angeles for the Southern California Booksellers Association dinner, which would be the first promotional event of my career. I was, as you might imagine, a basket case of nerves.

The producer and crew had arrived early in the morning and followed me throughout the day. The crew filmed me both at home and on the job, and host Erin Moriarity interviewed me throughout the day about the process of writing and whether or not the book would be a success. Though Erin and Andrew left in the early evening to catch their flight back to New York, the film crew stayed at the house to get some last-minute footage of me working on my new novel. At around 9:00
P.M.,
while I was staring at the screen and typing for the camera, my wife came into the office, phone in hand.

“It’s Micah,” she said.

“Can you tell him I’ll call him back in a half hour or so?”

“He needs to talk to you now,” she said. “It’s important.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. But he sounds upset.”

I took the phone and felt the cameras swivel toward me.

“Hey Micah. What’s up?”

“It’s dad,” he said. He spoke in a low, dazed voice.

“What’s going on?”

“I got a call from the police department near Reno. He’s been in a car accident. I just called the hospital where they brought him in.”

I heard him draw a long breath. I knew enough to say nothing. I could hear the cameras from
48 Hours
whirring behind me.

“He’s dead, Nicky,” Micah said quietly.

“Who?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Dad,” he said. “Our daddy died an hour ago.”

I was paralyzed. My eyes welled with tears at the same instant that Micah started to cry.

“Dana and I are driving up to see him now,” Micah went on. “I just called her, and I’m going to pick her up on the way. I know he’s gone, but we have to go see him.”

“Oh . . . Micah . . .”

“I know,” he said. “I gotta go . . .”

I hung up the phone. Throughout the conversation, Cat hadn’t taken her eyes from me.

“What is it?” she asked.

I told her. My wife burst into tears and opened her arms to me. Behind us, the camera finally clicked off. Everything, I realized, had been caught on film, but the cameramen were sensitive enough to pack up and leave quietly.

I stayed up most of the night, talking and crying with Cat. My brother called me sometime in the middle of the night and said that he and Dana had reached the hospital and seen my father’s body.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Micah told me. He was clearly in shock. “I just talked to him last night, and now I’ll never talk to him again.”

“How’s Dana doing?”

“Terrible. She hasn’t stopped crying since we got here, but we’ll be leaving in a couple of minutes. I mean . . . I don’t know what else to do.”

“I wish I was with you guys right now.”

“Me, too.” He paused. “When will you be coming out?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “As soon as I can. I’m supposed to be flying out to California for a booksellers dinner this weekend, but I’ll cancel . . . Jesus, I still can’t believe it.”

“It’s unreal, isn’t it?”

And then we both started crying again.

In the morning, Micah called again. As we talked about dad he grew quiet.

“Nick, I’ve been thinking about your book tour,” he finally said.

“Me, too.”

“You’re still going to do it, right?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “How can I?”

“You’ve got to go,” he said, growing serious.

“It seems wrong—”

“Dad was proud that you wrote the book,” he said, cutting me off. “He’d be the first to insist that you’ve got to go. He knows how important the tour is. It’s your first book. It might be the only chance you get.”

“But . . . I don’t know if I can.”

“You can, Nick. And you will. I know you loved dad, and he knows you loved him. He loved you, too. But you’ve got your own family to consider, too. Mom and dad would want you to go.”

After hanging up the phone, I thought about what he had said. He was, I thought, both right and wrong. I understood his point, but at the same time, it felt . . . callous. It was like trying to choose between my dreams for the future and respect for my father. If I stayed home, would I ever get another chance? And did that matter?

But if I decided to go, what then? If someone asked if I was enjoying the tour, or excited about what was happening to me, what on earth was I supposed to say?

There was no easy answer to that question.

I talked it over with Cat, with Dana, with Micah again, and with my relatives. I talked to my agent, publicist, and editor—all of whom said that I could cancel the tour if I felt I needed to. In the end, I reluctantly decided to go. The guilt I felt inside, however, was enormous. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was disrespectful to my dad’s memory.

Andrew Cohen, the producer, called soon after. In shock, he offered sincere condolences, and I asked him not to air the footage that concerned my dad’s death. We both knew the show would garner higher ratings were it to air—the current state of television bears that out—but Andrew didn’t hesitate, saying he’d bury the footage. Despite my anguish over the loss of my dad, I was reminded once again of the goodness of people.

I flew to California with my stomach in knots, and somehow made it to the dinner. I remember nothing about the evening except for a feeling of disembodiment, as if I were watching what was happening through someone else’s eyes. People asked about the new book and I answered on autopilot, saying all the things I was supposed to say. But as I spoke, all I could think about was my dad, how wrong this felt, and how much I longed to see my siblings.

After the dinner, I spent the following week in Sacramento with my brother and sister. Micah and I stayed at the house, which suddenly seemed to be nothing but a shell. At the same time, nothing seemed to have changed at all. There was a coffee cup on the kitchen counter, and fresh milk in the refrigerator. Mail continued to arrive; there was a stack on the table that Micah had already brought in. The grass had just been mowed. It was easy to imagine that my dad would be driving up any minute, or even that my mom was cooking in the kitchen. The memories of both of them were vivid, and as Micah and I moved from room to room, we could think of nothing to say.

I was exhausted. My mom. My sister. My dad. My son. Too many worries in too short a time. Micah had the same worn expression I did.

We made arrangements for the funeral. Relatives began flying in. Everyone was in shock, and my uncle Monty couldn’t stop crying. Nor could we.

My dad was buried next to my mom, and the same people who’d gathered together seven years earlier came to the funeral. My uncle Jack spoke at my dad’s grave and offered the sweetest eulogy I’d ever heard. The estrangement had wounded most of our relatives, but they loved him nonetheless. At the graveside, Cat and I held hands, as did Bob and Dana, and Micah and Christine.

This is what I thought when I was at the funeral:

My dad was a good man. A kind man. But my mom’s death had wounded him, and my sister’s illness had wounded him again. He spent the last seven years of his life struggling with sadness, in a world he no longer recognized. Yes, he’d been angry at times, even bitter. But he was my dad and he’d helped raise us. And I not only respected him for that, but loved him for what he did. He’d fostered independence, showed us the value of education, and taught us to be curious about the world. Even more important, he’d helped the three of us become close as siblings, which I consider to be the greatest gift of all. I could have asked for nothing more in a father. And really, who could?

Later, Micah, Dana, and I stood alone in front of the casket, our arms around one another, saying good-bye one last time. We missed him already. With the sun coming down hard, we were together and alone at exactly the same time, as orphaned siblings always are.

After the funeral, Cat and I stayed on in California for a couple of days. Miles was old enough to understand what had happened; Ryan still seemed to understand nothing at all.

Over the year, Cat and I had begun to close ranks when it came to Ryan’s condition. Only she and I, we believed, fully understood how challenging the year had been, and in those early years of struggle, we divided people into two groups: good and bad. Those who were kind to Ryan, and those who ignored him.

We were under no illusions that he was like other children. He didn’t laugh much, he didn’t look at people when they spoke, nor did he understand what they said to him. Yet, we wanted nothing more than for Ryan to be accepted for who he was.