Three Weeks With My Brother(30)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

“I could say the same thing about you,” I offered quietly. “And dad, too.”

“I know,” he said. “It kind of takes the joy out of those highs, doesn’t it?”

Dana’s radiation ended halfway through the summer and, remarkably, her CAT scan came back clear. The doctors were optimistic, my sister’s hair began growing back slowly, and for the first time since the seizure, our worries about her were relegated to the background.

With my sister’s improvement, my dad’s behavior toward me changed for the better as well. He began speaking to me on the phone again; it was tentative at first, a hesitant rapprochement. He still talked to Cat at great length, however, and we learned that he’d actually begun dating again.

He’d met a woman, he said, and he liked her a lot.

Dana, too, was getting along better with Bob; after the surgery, their relationship had been rocky.

And Micah, as usual, kept humming along, escaping for long weekends and avoiding all serious relationships.

In September 1993, Ryan was born, though I wasn’t at the hospital for his birth. Instead, I was out of town on business—a meeting I couldn’t miss—and Cat’s water broke just as the meeting was ending. I wouldn’t arrive to see my son until the following day.

In November, our family reunited in Texas for Thanksgiving with my dad’s younger brother Monty, and I was struck by the fact that my father seemed genuinely happy. He’d fallen in love, he said, and all three of us were pleased that he’d finally found someone whose company he enjoyed. This news, however, about our father suddenly seemed less important than what else we learned on that trip.

Dana told us that she and Bob had broken up again. This wasn’t entirely unexpected; the stress of her recent illness would have been enough to test any relationship.

“Oh,” I remember saying, “that’s too bad. I like Bob.”

“There’s more though,” my sister said.

“What’s that?”

She smiled, offering the faintest of shrugs. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t worry. I’ve stopped taking my antiseizure medicine.”

There was even more. In our family, I was slowly beginning to realize, there was always something more. Not only was my sister seriously jeopardizing her health—a worry that would plague us over the next seven months—but well on her way to becoming a single mother. We soon found out that she was expecting twins.

Then, increasing our worries, right after Christmas, my dad abruptly informed my sister she had to move out of the house, despite the fact that she had nowhere else to go.

Though I never told anyone, I secretly began to wonder if my father was not only manic-depressive, but mentally ill in other ways as well.

In December, my dad learned that the woman he’d been dating—the first woman he’d dated after my mom’s death—hadn’t actually been divorced. Instead, she’d only been separated from her husband, and had been using my father for the little money he had. By the end of the relationship, my father was deep in debt. When he could afford nothing more, she cut off contact entirely. I don’t know whether my dad kept calling the woman and she finally grew tired of his persistence, or whether it was accidental, but her husband eventually found out about the relationship. The husband was a burly police officer, and he’d physically threatened my dad in the driveway of my dad’s home. My father had been terrified by the confrontation, even fearing for his life.

It was this turn of events, right around Christmas, I believe, that finally broke him emotionally.

From that point on, my dad embarked on a downward spiral that only grew worse over time. His mood and attitude were bitter, and he became not only angry, but paranoid as well. Because he couldn’t go to the police—what good would it have done?—he bought guns and ammunition instead. He asked my sister to move out of the house. And then he bought a dog named Flame.

Flame, a German shepherd, had originally been trained for police duty, but because of his volatile nature, couldn’t be used. Though attached to my dad, Flame made everyone else nervous. The dog growled and snapped, seemingly at random, and wasn’t trustworthy. His combustible personality, combined with my father’s instability, made for a dangerous mix.

During the first few months of 1994, my brother and I talked endlessly on the phone, about both our sister and our father, wondering what, if anything, we could do.

“Should I invite Dana to live out here with us?” I asked.

“She can’t, Nick,” Micah answered. “Her doctors are out here.”

“What about dad?”

“He’s adamant that she can’t live at home anymore. And to be honest, I really don’t want her living there either. He’s really getting strange these days. And with Flame . . . no, Dana can’t stay there. Not if she has kids.”

“Can she stay with you?”

“I’ve asked, but she says she doesn’t want to. She says she can handle it. Her friend Olga has a small room that she says Dana can rent.”

Olga lived in the old farmhouse where we boarded our horses; she’d known Dana for years.

“How’s she going to handle it? She has no job, no husband, no money, she has a brain tumor . . .”

“I know. I try to tell her that.”

“What does she say?”

“She says that she’ll make do. She isn’t worried at all. She’s excited about having kids.”

“How can she not be worried? What if she has a seizure and no one’s around to help her?”

“She has faith that it’ll all work out.”

I hesitated. “Do you think that’s enough?”

“I don’t know,” he answered.

Thankfully, my sister made it through her pregnancy uneventfully, and in May 1994, she delivered healthy twin boys she named Cody and Cole. Within a week of her delivery, she was back on her antiseizure medication, and she began taking care of the babies in the cramped room she called home. Micah and I sent her money, and somehow it was enough for her to survive. Dana and the twins slept on a fold-out mattress on a wooden floor for two months; by the end of the summer, however, my sister had reconciled with Bob and had decided to move in with him so the boys could live with their father. Surprising us, she hadn’t told him that she’d been pregnant until right before the twins had been born.

During that time, my dad devoted most of his time to working with the dog. Despite my sister’s apparent good health, his anger only grew worse. In that six-month period, he began to estrange himself from the rest of his extended family. He refused to take calls from his mother, father, or siblings; if they sent a letter, he returned it unopened. Nor would he talk to me—or Micah and Dana—about his reasons for cutting them out of his life. If we asked him what was going on, he grew furious with us—right to Nuclear Launch—and through gritted teeth would tell us that it was “none of your damn business.” For whatever reason, he’d begun to blame his family for all the problems he had in his life. At the time, however, I’d been through so many ups and downs that I somehow believed my dad would get through this as well.

My father, I eventually found out, began seeing a psychiatrist around that time, which both my brother and I thought would help. But my dad, I alone seemed to recognize, had been maintaining a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence for years. He could fool people—indeed, no one at work ever mentioned that anything seemed amiss—and I think he was able to fool the psychiatrist as well. Instead of putting my father on antidepressants, which I think would have benefited him, the doctor instead prescribed Valium, which only made matters worse.

With Dana and Bob back together, the twins healthy, and dad limiting—though not cutting off—contact with us, Micah concentrated on work, excelled at his job, and continued to date.

As for me, three thousand miles from the rest of my family, life went on as usual with one small exception. Right after Cat and I celebrated our fifth anniversary, and using my wife’s grandparents as inspiration, I began writing again.

Throughout 1993 and 1994, my brother and I saw quite a bit of each other, despite the distance between us. The pharmaceutical company we worked for would hold national sales meetings to promote their new product releases. In addition, training sessions were conducted out of the home offices in New Jersey, and Micah and I would inevitably end up in the same sessions. He also visited me in North Carolina and I would make it out to California at least once a year. As always, we would talk about Dana and my dad. Because my brother was the conduit I used to follow the goings-on in the family, I needed to talk to him. Because I was the only one with whom he could speak freely, he needed to talk to me, too.

In late 1994, we were at a national sales conference and relaxing after a day of meetings when the same subjects arose.

“How’s dad doing?” I asked.

“Who knows. But I think he’s met someone new and he’s dating again.”

“Does he ever go to see the twins?”

“No, not really.”

“Have you asked him why?”

“He’d rather spend the weekend with his dog.”

“He didn’t say that.”

“Not in so many words. But that’s the way he acts. It’s like the dog and this new woman are the only things he cares about anymore.”

“Any word on why he won’t talk to his family?”

“No.”

“But he’s dating?”

“Yeah. Can you believe it? Half the time, I think he’s getting better. But when you look at the whole picture . . .” He trailed off. “I hope he snaps out of it, but this time I’m not so sure. He seems so angry all the time.”

“How’s Dana?”

“The babies are keeping her busy. Her last CAT scan was good. There’s no sign of the tumor. But man, you should see those boys. They’re so cute. It almost makes me want kids.”

“Almost?”

“Not now,” he said quickly. “In a few years, I mean.”

I laughed.

“So what do you think of all the buy-out and merger rumors we’ve been hearing lately?” Micah asked.

We’d heard that American Cyanamid—the parent company of Lederle Labs—was supposedly on the sales block, and thus all of the attendees at the meeting had been worried about the possibility of losing their jobs.

“Who knows. Whatever happens, happens. After everything we’ve been through, I’m sure we’ll land on our feet.”

Less than two weeks after the meeting, as 1994 was coming to a close, we learned that the company was to be bought by American Home Products. In January, the company began the slow process of restructuring; to keep my job, I had to move to Greenville, South Carolina. Micah was offered a position just south of Los Angeles. While I reluctantly took the transfer, my brother decided to give up his job.

“I can’t leave,” he said to me. “This is my home, and besides, I can’t leave Dana and dad.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll probably go back to real estate and see what happens. How’s your novel coming?”

“It’s just about done. Before editing, I mean.”

“Are you going to try to get this one published?”

“I think so.”

“Is it better than the first two you wrote?”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

“Hey, maybe you’ll be out of the pharmaceutical business soon, too.”

“Maybe.” I sighed. “We’ll see how it goes. I’ve given up trying to predict the future.”

CHAPTER 15

Three Weeks With My Brother

Lalibela, Ethiopia

February 9–10

We’d started the morning in Jaipur, had flown to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, and later that afternoon we boarded the plane once more for a flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We arrived late, landing well after dark.

Even in darkness Addis Ababa surprised us. Our impressions of Ethiopia were largely based on what we’d seen on tele-vision or read about in newspapers, and I suppose I imagined a city similar to Phnom Penh, or even Jaipur. Yet Addis was far more similar to Lima, and we were struck by its cosmopolitan atmosphere. Long, well-manicured greenbelts lined the main thoroughfare, the streets were clean, well lit, and used only by cars, and for the first time in weeks we saw elements of American culture; billboards advertised Coca-Cola and jeans from the Gap.

Our guide spoke excellent English, and when we asked him about the city, he nodded.

“Yes, Addis is a modern city. But it is not normally this clean.”

“What do you mean?”

“Last week, they held a major meeting with all the nations of Africa represented. The government has been cleaning the city for weeks to make a good impression.”

Still, there’s only so much cleaning one could do. Addis Ababa, on the surface anyway, seemed incredibly, almost shockingly, wealthy compared to the cities we’d recently visited.

In the morning, we rode back to the airport and boarded two small propeller-driven planes for the flight to Lalibela.

Lalibela is the spiritual home of the Abyssinian (or Ethiopian) Orthodox Church, but is most famous for the monolithic cave churches carved in the thirteenth century. King Lalibela had ordered their construction, and using forty thousand slaves, eleven cave churches were carved from stone. What makes the churches unique is that they don’t sit aboveground; instead, they had been carved into the earth so that the rooflines of the churches are at ground level.

The airport where we landed was located in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by peaks of the Ethiopian highlands. Aside from the airport, there were no other buildings at all and the land was reminiscent of southern Nevada, near the Sierras. Few trees grew in the rocky soil, and low-lying scrubs stretched across the valley as far as the eye could see.