Obama: Asleep at the Wheel

It is becoming more obvious every day that finally everyone else is noticing that Obama totally sucks as a president. I say this because of recent evidence that the upper echelons of his administration are as effective as Manny, Mo and Jack, or maybe Mo and Larry, or maybe Lucy and Ethel, or perhaps Martin & Lewis, or Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Groucho would be if they held high office. Here's the deal: Obama chose most of them, and guess what--he's even worse than they are; at least they go to work every day and make all those bad decisions, whereas Obama is obviously sleeping in and not even keeping current. When he shows up at all, he's always stunned, avowing he has learned about each new problem the very same day we all did.

Does he even know he is president? Perhaps he has had a recent head injury, a la Hillary Clinton on the day of the first Benghazi hearing. (Hey, it worked for her.) Obama's feigned ignorance of the evil surrounding him reminds me of an old joke: Two senior citizens, Sadie and Mabel, are driving to Bingo. Sadie, at the wheel, cruises through a stop sign. Luckily nobody was coming, and Mabel lets it slide. But a few minutes later when she goes through a red light, Mabel is quite alarmed. She says to Sadie, "Sadie, when you went through that stop sign I didn't say a word, but when you go through a red light, I have to speak up." Sadie, surprised, turns to her and says, "Oy, am I driving?"

Chapter 4: The Silver Lining

Despite the initial shock, Eileen was taking the situation in stride. After the phone call from the police, she had rushed to the scene of the accident and watched as they loaded Matt into the ambulance, then sped off behind them to a local hospital. But once they got him there, the decision was made by the ER team that he needed to be someplace better equipped to deal with his injury, so they sped off again to Massachusetts General in Boston, almost an hour’s drive away. Eileen went home to get herself together and to take stock. Finally, after calling her mother and Doug and her best friend Margie, who screamed and said “I’ll be right over,” and after she sat the two younger kids down and told them in a steady voice that, “Dad’s had a bike accident and will be okay, but will be in the hospital for a few days getting better,” she poured herself a glass of wine and tried not to be angry.

     It had been years since their marriage had been good, at least for Eileen. Matt was a total workaholic and always gone, either at the office until ten or eleven when he was in town or else in another city for days on end. The kids had written him off years ago as an authority figure, and instead regarded him as a cross between Santa Claus and a fun distant relative. They liked it when he was home but didn’t miss him when he was gone. Eventually Eileen began to feel the same way, and lately she noticed her spirits rose slightly whenever he announced an impending business trip. That was a bad sign, she knew. And even though she still found him attractive, his lack of interest in the family was a distinct turn-off, and so their sex life had dwindled to about once a month; even then, it was none too exciting. In fact, Eileen had started to look at other men as potential sex partners, and on more than one occasion found she herself fantasizing about the mailman or her son’s soccer coach while she was in bed with her husband.

“What an asshole,” she thought. She had waited for hours for Matt to come back from his bike ride, and suspected that he had simply forgotten about her back home with her new Victoria’s Secret satin nightie, hoping a birthday tryst was in the offing. Why did he have to go for a bike ride, anyway, when they had the house to themselves for a few hours? He said he wanted to get some exercise, but how come her needs never seemed to matter? Besides, sex is exercise, at least if you’re doing it half-right.

     By the time Margie arrived, throwing her arms around Eileen and crying as if it were her own husband lying at death’s door, Eileen was getting ready to face the fact that she would have to go to the hospital, even though she had little interest in doing so. “It’s like that scene in “War of the Roses” where Michael Douglas has a heart attack but not really, and Kathleen Turner doesn’t even bother to go see to him because she already hates him, or something like that,” she told Margie. “I mean, if he’s in a coma, what the heck am I supposed to do there?”

     “You are his wife! You have to go, and besides, what if he dies? You have to, absolutely have to be there, girl. Tory can drive you there tomorrow, and I’ll stay with the kids. And besides, you know what they say: every cloud has a silver lining.”

“I’m not sure I see what this one is,” said Eileen.

“Keep your spirits up, sweetie. There are plenty of cute doctors who will be running all over that place, and not all of them are taken. So look nice and show some cleavage.”

     “Margie, I can’t believe you are thinking such things. Really, how cruel,” she said with a smile, pulling the V of her V-neck sweater down a little bit. The two laughed at this. Margie and Eileen told each other everything, so it came as no surprise that her friend saw this an opportunity for her to get out of a marriage that had ceased to be much of anything years ago. They both knew that Matt had cheated on Eileen many times, and that his business trips always that Eileen stayed in the marriage, mostly for the kids but also for the money, the house, her BMW, her weekly manicures and her future facelift. Not that she was shallow or opportunistic, but she sincerely felt that she had earned these things simply by sticking by Matt, making him a beautiful home and raising his children, while he was out screwing waitresses and god knows who else until all hours of the morning, for all she knew. As if she had read her mind, Margie reached over and hugged her and said, “Honey, you earned this time.”

     So by the time Doug arrived at the hospital that first afternoon, Eileen was sitting quietly reading a magazine, dressed nicely if not a tad provocatively, and even wearing make-up, which was unusual for her. In all, she was far from the disheveled mess Doug expected she’d be after a night spent crying at her husband’s bedside. Instead she was calm and dry-eyed, unlike Doug, who burst into tears the minute he saw Matt’s still body hooked up to machines, his dark eyes open and staring but seeing nothing.

     “Please Doug, no crying in here,” Eileen said. “In case he can hear. I want everything to be upbeat.” Gentle sitar music was playing in the background, coming from a CD player on the bedside table. There were a few flowers in small vases placed around the room, and a stuffed teddy bear holding a balloon occupied the room’s only other chair. Eileen had certainly made things cozy in the short time Matt had been there.

     “Upbeat? He’s near death and in a coma!”

     “Nobody knows if he can hear anything, and if he can I want him to be reassured that he’s okay. That’s why I’m playing this music; he likes it.”

     “Okay? Okay? But he’s not okay, he is in a fucking coma! And if I were lying in a fucking coma I would damn well want to hear my family bawling like crazy,” Doug said. He had always disliked his sister-in-law, thinking her a phony and believing that she had married his brother as a way out of poverty after her failed first marriage. Well now the gloves were off and the pretense was over, and he would damn well cry over his own fucking identical twin brother if he wanted to!

     “I’ll keep that in mind,” Eileen replied sarcastically.

     “What are you all dressed up for, by the way?”

     “In case he wakes up, I want to look nice for him.” And so for the next eight weeks, whenever Eileen was in the hospital at Matt’s bedside, which was not every day but certainly three or four days a week, she was dressed to kill, wearing makeup, and actually looking a whole lot better than she ever had while Matt was awake. Doug didn’t know that it wasn’t only to look good for her husband; that she was hoping to meet a nice single doctor while her husband was out cold. With any luck, she could get one interested in her enough so that once Matt was up and around, she could tell him she was leaving and ride off into the sunset with a new man. To that end, she hoped he wouldn’t wake up too soon.

To be continued....

Chapter 3: The Ripple Effect

Not long ago I began seeing a shrink to help me figure out how to stop worrying that I had left a candle burning every time I left the house, even when I knew I had not lit one. I saw him for several weeks until I realized that he was getting more out of the relationship than I was, and not just money. He was always saying how glad he was to see me and how much he looked forward to talking with me. I decided that was not what you want in a shrink, and so stopped going and instead returned to my half-completed novel based on my brother-in-law's bike accident years ago that left him with a traumatic brain injury. The thing is, while writing is therapeutic, trying to sell the damn thing is not, and thus I am posting it here, starting with the first two chapters earlier this week, so my words can see the light of day. It's fun for me, and while I hope it's fun for the readers, I don't really care; after all, reading is optional.

The important thing to remember is that this is FICTION and, while based on a true story, it's NOT REAL. (The truth is both more and less shocking, but I'll never tell.) Anyway, here is Chapter 3, even though I wasn't going to post it until next week, but hey, it's my blog. 

Max had always had a flair for the comic, and the tragic.

Ever since he first played Captain Hook in a grade-school production of Peter Pan, Max Waldman wanted to be an actor. He was just seven years old at the time, and delighted by the fact that everyone in the audience had stood up and clapped for him when he came out for his final bow. They all thought he was a good boy! Right then he was hooked, no pun intended, and from then on it was clear that acting would be his career.        Turning his back on sports, music and homework, and eventually parties, dating and sniffing glue with his friends, Max auditioned for every theatrical production thrown in his path and was almost always chosen for the lead. Thus he had spent most of his childhood memorizing lines and talking to himself in front of a mirror. Half the time his parents weren’t sure who he was from week to week, since his method involved fully absorbing his character into his home life as well. Considering summer camps, regular school and acting school productions, by the time he majored in drama at college Max had already been, besides captain Hook, a giant molar in Santa & the Tooth Fairy, The Wolf in Hansel & Gretel, the Cowardly Lion in The Wiz, Lloyd Dallas in Noises Off, George Gibbs in Our Town, Orlando in As You Like It, The Stage Manager in Our Town, a cockroach in The Metamorphosis, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Harry the Horse in Guys & Dolls, Danny in Grease, Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie, both Vladimir and Estragon in separate productions of Waiting for Godot, and of course Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman, twice. Certainly his most memorable performance was during his senior year of high school when, completely immersed in the role of Claude, the lead hippie in Hair, he defied authority and appeared on stage stark naked, receiving rave reviews from the females in the audience and a week-long suspension from the principal.

     Overwhelming encouragement had come from his paternal grandmother, Grammy Charlotte, who was still disappointed that her own two sons had walked away from certain stardom--and after all her selfless sacrifices. “I took them into the city every weekend, and believe you me, that was not so easy with two little boys with ants in their pants,” she loved to say. “And they could have been something, don’t kid yourself! Between the movies and the TV and the Broadway plays, oy, what they gave up! And don’t forget, they were the Amazing Richie for four seasons, that’s not nothing.”  Max, always a stickler for the details, would gently remind her that both their plays were off-Broadway, not on Broadway. With a shrug and a wave, she would dismiss that little detail and declare, “It’s close enough.”

Charlotte always loved to dance....

     Grammy Charlotte, still quite a lively dancer even now,  also loved to reminisce about her own years in show business as a chorus girl, always finishing with, “but then I had children, and that was that.” When her grandson Max showed an interest, she was as impassioned as a born-again Christian. While her Florida friends spent their retirement playing cards at the beach, Charlotte would slather on the sunblock and sit nearby, perusing dog-eared copies of Variety and Backstage. Once a week she called Max long distance to tell him about auditions being held right in his own neighborhood. He appreciated it, and by the young age of 22 he actually had achieved a small measure of success in the few years since his official arrival in New York. After majoring in drama at Bard College, just 90 minutes from Manhattan by train, he spent a year honing his skills in acting school. His teachers always pointed out that he was especially good with comedy and rage, qualities he claimed he learned as a child from watching his father and uncle fight. Although he was handsome enough to be a leading man, with dark eyes, jet-black hair, broad shoulders and good teeth, Max went after character roles. Eventually he found steady work playing the mentally deranged son of a wealthy and despicable oil baron on the popular daytime TV drama, This Too Shall Pass.

     “Sometimes I’m glad I’m an only child,” Max said to Nina, his downstairs neighbor and now girlfriend of several months. An art student in her last year at Pratt, she was another in a string of young women who started out making Max happy and ended up breaking his heart. Each time he was sure that this one would be different. So far, things were good between them, and Max was optimistic that Nina was “the one.” The two were finishing up a pepperoni pizza in his tiny Brooklyn apartment when his mother cut short a definitely-maybe romantic encounter with a bad news phone call about his uncle’s accident the night before. “Now look at all the shit my Dad has to go through because his fucked-up brother got messed up in a bike accident. Who needs it?”
     Nina, herself one of four kids, disagreed. "Not everyone has bad siblings. You might have had a good one, a friend in need and all that other supportive stuff. Besides, how do you know it was even your uncle's fault? Maybe a car sideswiped him, you know they do that all the time. Or honked, or just spooked him somehow. Something." 

     “I know because my Uncle Matt is a major pothead, and he was probably totally stoned and going way too fast. He’s all about showing off and breaking records and outdoing my Dad. And everyone else, come to think of it.”

     “So now what? Will you have to go to Boston to visit him in the hospital?”

     “Maybe. I guess if he dies I’ll have to go to the funeral, unless I get that off-Broadway gig I tried out for yesterday. The show starts rehearsing in like two weeks from now. My fucking uncle--Jesus! How selfish can you get?”

     “You’re kidding, right? About him being selfish?” Nina was still never sure when Max was being real or just trying out a new character.

     “Yeah, I guess--but only a little. He really is a selfish dude, but this time I feel sorry for him. This really sucks. I guess I will have to go visit him, sometime. And my Dad too, he’ll be a big, sloppy mess over this. His brother is like his whole life—or at least half of it. He starts like every other sentence with, ‘My brother Matts says.’ Anyway, I’m not going tonight--I’ve got other plans.” He grinned at Nina and shoved the pizza box aside. But before he could lay a hand on her, the phone rang again. This time it was his father, his voice low and quivering.

     “Hey Dad, how are you doing? Mom told me what happened, that sucks about Uncle Matt.”

     “Yes, it does. I just wanted to hear your voice, and tell you how much I love you, and to please be careful. I know you ride your bike all over the city, and---“

     “Dad, I’m fine, don’t worry. I’m very careful and I always wear a helmet…”

     “My brother Matt was wearing a helmet.”

     “Okay, so I’ll be extra careful. I’ll wear two helmets. What else can I do?”

     “Nothing. I just wanted to hear your voice,” Doug said. He realized at that moment that he wouldn’t be hearing Matt’s voice for a long time, if ever again. That fact made him desperate to see Max, to hold him and hug him like he did when he was a little boy. “Maybe you can come see us soon, okay? This is all pretty shocking, let’s pull together as a family.”

     “Sure thing, Dad. Just say the word and I’ll be there.” Max hung up and looked at Nina, who had by now taken off her top and was lying half-naked on the couch. While Max was not usually one to shy away from such an opportunity when it presented itself, somehow this seemed like the wrong thing to do right now. “My uncle might be dying, my Dad’s a total mess, what kind of a worthless worm would have sex at a time like this?” he said.

     “Let’s find out,” said Nina.

     But Max couldn’t do it. He kept hearing his father’s pleading, and his mother’s crying, and his Uncle Matt’s boisterous laugh, and suddenly he was overcome with nostalgia for the whole damn bunch. With apologies to Nina, and assurances that it wasn’t because he didn’t find her wildly attractive, he asked her to leave, having suddenly decided to go up to Boston for a few days and see if he could help out somehow. And then, if he got that part in the play he could be back in time to start rehearsals.

     “Do you want company? I could go with you, I’ve never been north of Connecticut, and I don’t have another class this week until Thursday afternoon. We could take the train. It could be fun.”

     “Nina, I promise you, going to see my uncle in a coma with my father sobbing over his limp body will not be fun.”

      “When did he go into a coma?”

     “I think the term is ‘slip into a coma.’ Anyway, I guess today in the hospital. Or last night in the ambulance, I don’t know, when do people slip into comas? I don’t even know what a coma is, do you?”

Being in a coma doesn't really look like this.

     “Not really, but on my favorite soap opera that I started watching in junior high, there was always somebody in a coma, or just waking up from one. They didn’t seem all that bad.”

     Max stared at Nina, wondering if she was pretty enough to compensate for her lack of intelligence, when she said, “I guess that sounded dumb. I was just trying to make you feel better.”

     “I appreciate that,” said Max. “Anyway, sure, come with me. You can check out the Boston art museum while I’m at the hospital, and my father is staying at my aunt and uncle’s place like 45 minutes from there, and they have a huge house overlooking the ocean, with lots of guest rooms, and a pool. Actually, meeting you might help cheer my Dad up. And my cousins are pretty funny--you’ll get a kick out of them.”

     “That sounds great! I mean, except for the coma. Well, I better go home and pack a few things,” said Nina.

     “Don’t forget your bathing suit,” said Max. After she left, he wondered how long he could be with someone who had grown up in Delaware and still had never been north of Connecticut.

To be continued.....

Unemployment Woes

Every day I look for work online. Since I live in Maine, and since the print world is shrinking, and since I refuse to write for free or for less than a penny a word, or even a penny a word, I never find anything in my chosen profession. So I look in other professions.

This morning I was intrigued by an ad for a full-time, automotive, entry-level parts counter person. I know it sounds bad, but I could walk there. It said that the applicant "must possess above average work ethics." That got me wondering why they needed someone with above average work ethics. Not just good ones, but really extraordinary ones. I felt they were asking too much, it being an entry-level position. Couldn't you start off with just average work ethics and improve upon them over time? Ultimately I felt that, besides not knowing anything about automotive parts, I have only average work ethics and thus if I even applied for the job I would be lying, which would be an example of below average work ethics even before I got hired.

Another job for a sales associate in an upscale gift shop in a trendy little touristy town nearby sounded promising, except at the end it said that "offering samples of food products is a must." Too dictatorial. Besides, who wants somebody shoving food in their face while they're shopping?

So it's back to square one.

Keeping Current

Here is the Giant Yellow Ducky in Sydney Harbor. (He gets around.)

I know, I know: Just two days ago I said no more news. But today there are such great stories to share, I would be remiss not to pass these along to my friend who does not read the newspaper but does read this blog. After all, there are things worth knowing that happen outside your own four walls, Debra! Like these:

1. A Saudi man was apprehended and arrested at a Detroit airport for having a pressure cooker in his luggage. Naturally Hussain Al-Khawahir knew nothing about the Boston bombings--duh--and insisted it was a gift for his nephew, Nasser Almarzooq, a college student who wants to cook lamb in his dorm room.  What can we say except hahahahahaha Hussain, that's a good one?

2. A giant, inflated yellow rubber ducky is taking Hong Kong by storm. Hordes of tourists are booking rooms overlooking the harbor where the duck is now installed. He is thrilling to behold, by all accounts. Restaurants are serving duck-shaped foods, yellow bread, and of course, duck. I want to go.

3. Since water is so healthy but so boring, tasting as it does like water, there are now scads of new drinks on the market offering water with artificial sweeteners and coloring. Marketed with names like Vitaminwater, HintWater, Smartwater and Fruitwater, they are catching on big-time. Coming soon, only with real sugar and some bubbles: Cokewater.

Facebook Is Down!

Facebook is down, and has been all day, at least in my neck of the woods. And I must say, it is revolting. I checked online and it is back up for most people. But I am not one of them. Exactly how am I supposed to play Words With Friends? And Scrabble? Huh? As my grandmother said approximately 10 minutes after my grandfather died, "What about me?"
 
I am completely cut off. Cold turkey. Okay, I'm addicted. Of course my husband knows, and he grumbles about it, but then he says I should get an iPhone because then I could play on my phone, Facebook be damned. And I say no, never, I will not succumb to that technological crack cocaine. At least with my little AT&T flip phone I can maintain a shred of dignity. But now, I'm not so sure.

Chapter 2: Bet You Didn’t See That Coming

Dr. Lilly found Doug fascinating.

For most of his adult life, Douglas Waldman had tried very hard to be an individual first and a twin second. After all the fuss made over the boys when they were growing up, by the time he reached his twenties Doug just wanted to be himself. In fact, being a twin was the reason he ended up on a psychiatrist’s couch shortly after graduating from college. Finally out on his own, with his brother living in another city, Doug realized for the first time that he was paralyzed with fear. He had almost no experience in making a decision based solely on what he wanted; it had always been what they wanted, which almost always meant what Matt wanted. In fact, he still started sentences with “we” when speaking solely about himself. “When we were a kid” was, besides being grammatically incorrect, the wrong way to go about the business of living according to Dr. Lilly, the first of many shrinks Doug visited over the course of his life.
     So at the door of turning fifty, Doug had pretty much licked the “we” habit and was able to think about himself as an individual, which is why it was so important to him that he pass this particular milestone in his own way, on his own turf, and not as a satellite of Matt. It took him some time to muster up the courage to tell his wife he was not going to the big party up in Massachusetts; he knew she would flip out. First of all, Renee liked Eileen a lot and was looking forward to seeing her and the kids. More importantly, she felt it was about time Doug got over his “freaky twins” thing and embrace his brother as just that: a brother. “I get that you are tired of being a sideshow attraction, and living in his shadow, so tell him that! But by hiding from him, you’re not really dealing with the issue,” Renee said when Doug announced his plan to boycott Matt’s party.
     “I am not hiding!  I really do have to work, there are several people counting on seeing my preliminary drawings sometime this week, and I have barely even begun. Anyway, please let me deal with this the way I want. I don’t need to be challenged by you on every little thing.”
     “Sorry if you feel challenged, but you are being very unreasonable. This is not just some silly little kiddie party, it's a big deal--there are people flying up there who think they will be seeing both of you. Ed and Louise are coming all the way from London, for Christ sake! You’ll be disappointing them too.”
     “Oh get real, you know all those “mutual" friends are really Matt’s friends.  Hardly anyone who likes one of us has ever liked the other. That Ed guy has barely said three sentences to me since high school, and Louise is his second wife who met us once for five minutes at Tory's bar mitzvah, and she was drunk out of her mind the whole time."

     "You couldn't really blame her," Renee said, remembering the lavish party in a Boston hotel for 100 of Matt's closest friends and richest clients. "At least she didn't throw up like that other woman. God, what a mess that was...who was that again?”

At least one turkey had ended up in the trash.

     “Ed’s first wife. Anyway, admit it, all the people we like the most live right here in DC," Doug continued, "and we could have them over to our house to celebrate my birthday. Couldn’t we?” Besides, he thought to himself, Matt had certainly let him down often enough. There was the time he cancelled on Thanksgiving that first year he and Renee lived in DC, before Eileen was even in the picture, and it was just going to be the three of them and Max, who was only a few months old. The turkey was just about done, the table was set, and Renee and Doug had been peering out the window looking for Matt’s car for an hour when he called to say he was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Jersey turnpike, it was starting to snow, and he just wasn’t in a holiday mood, so he was turning around and heading back home. One of their classic telephone fights ensued, with Renee in the background whispering that Doug’s shouting would wake the baby. But he and Matt kept at it, hurling accusations at one another about who loved who more and who did what to whom back when. 

     Renee finally got so upset that she took the turkey out of the oven and walked outside into the snow, fully prepared to toss it in the trash. Doug slammed down the phone and ran outside to stop her. They finally decided the day was a washout and the only possible save was to donate the whole meal to charity. While Renee wrapped up the bird and all the side dishes she had spent days preparing, muttering under her breath that Matt was a selfish asshole, Doug bundled little Max into his warmest snowsuit and the three of them drove over to the Central Union Mission somewhere over in southeast DC. “At least these people will appreciate all my hard work,” Renee had grumbled. Their act of kindness helped deflect their sour mood, and by the time they picked up a pizza on the way home they were laughing it off. They had a pretty nice Thanksgiving after all, making a fire and enjoying the bottle of champagne they had bought for the occasion, but neither of them ever forgot it. 

     And Doug had been keeping score ever since of all the ways his brother had let him down or disappointed him in some way. “Believe me, I am so much nicer to him than he is to me,” Doug often said, seemingly out of the blue. And so Renee, who had to agree, gave in on the birthday party up north, deciding that really it was none of her business after all. She and Eileen cooked up the family celebration for a few weeks from now over this coming Thanksgiving weekend, and in reality Matt didn’t seem to care a bit. Doug knew it was because Matt always wanted to be alone in the spotlight, just like when they were kids on TV. “He’s probably glad I won’t be there, then he can have his stupid birthday all to himself,” Doug shouted out from the bathroom. “Get over it,” Renee yelled back.
     To compensate, Renee had planned a birthday dinner party to be held on Sunday, his true birthday--who wanted to celebrate the night before anyway? — with three other couples, close friends of theirs who had never even met Matt and who liked Doug purely for himself, and not for being half of a freak show.
     Matt was the “A” twin, being older, making Douglas the “B” twin, designations used the world over in twin studies and quite liberally in the Waldman family as the boys were growing up. Naturally Doug balked at the label, despite the fact that he really was second best to Matt in almost every area during their childhood. Matt was half an inch taller and always had been the more robust of the two. And although testing revealed that both boys fell within the “genius” IQ range, Matt was more diligent and had graduated high school six months ahead of Doug, going off to a much better college. As a result, he had realized greater earnings in his career, and so had all the trappings of success: the fancy cars, a pool, a summer home in Maine. Matt and Eileen had three kids, while Doug and Renee just had the one. And over the last few years, Doug’s burgeoning paunch and overall lack of fitness— he still smoked cigarettes and Matt had quit a half a dozen years earlier—stood out, literally, in sharp contrast to Matt’s muscular and toned body. 

Renee made a mean cherry cheesecake.

     All of these things contributed to Doug’s feeling like a second–class citizen whenever he was around his brother, so he was grateful that a day's drive separated them. And yes, he loved his brother, but he also hated him at times just as fervently. In fact, since that Thanksgiving so long ago, Matt and Doug’s adult relationship had been punctuated at least annually with horrible fights that brought out the worst in each of them. Their knock-down-drag-outs had reached the point where any and all onlookers, usually family members, just rolled their eyes and shrugged when the two of them got going.
     One such fight many years earlier had earned Matt the nickname of Big Bruiser, something Max never failed to mention whenever his uncle called. The incident occurred one summer when the two families were sharing a house for a week at the Jersey shore. Max and Tory were just toddlers and Ben and Alexandra were not yet born. From the very first day, Matt was annoyed that Doug had allowed Max to bring his best friend along, since he was hoping that the two cousins would spend the week together “bonding.” Some trivial slight involving the three children caused Tory to run crying to his father while Renee and Eileen were out on an early morning run. Matt then woke Doug and accused him of deliberately trying to make Tory feel left out by bringing the friend along. Tempers flared, and the next thing anyone knew Matt had hurled the still warm contents of his coffee cup into Doug’s face. Doug slapped him automatically, and Matt returned the favor with a serious punch in the face. Fortunately there was no lasting damage—the purple bruise around Doug’s left eye finally went away-- but his psyche was permanently scarred. And while accounts differed as to the true course of events, the only eyewitness was Max’s little friend Harry, who took to calling Matt “Big Bruiser.” The boys' friendship soon ended when Harry's parents heard about the fight and wrote off Matt as a suitable parent, but the nickname stuck.
     The twins had other fights even worse than that one, and though they had not yielded any nicknames they were still quite violent in nature and involved late-night ranting, screeching of brakes, jumping out of moving vehicles, hurling of hideous epithets, and even another ruined holiday turkey. (That one really did end up in the trash.) After each bout, a ridiculous number of phone calls back and forth between the brothers and their wives were required to achieve even a temporary peace. Matt and Doug’s relationship was similar to the volatile situation in the Middle East: few people ever dared hope for a permanent solution, and instead greedily settled for a short-term truce during which amnesty was bestowed upon all parties.
     In a way, Doug knew less and less about his brother the older they got, and often thought that had they not been related, they wouldn't even be friends. Doug no longer found it funny to be mistaken for Matt, something that happened frequently when he traveled for business, although less often since he had put on the extra pounds. What he found most disturbing was when a strange woman ran up to him in an airport, gleefully shrieking Matt’s name and throwing her arms around him in a sexual way. That sort of thing confirmed his suspicion that his brother was not always strictly faithful to Eileen, a fact that both angered him and also made him a little jealous. How did he do it? Douglas found it impossible to lie to Renee even a little bit, so he couldn’t imagine how he could have a fling with another woman without giving himself away.
     Doug reflected on all this after he got off the phone with Matt the morning of their birthday. As if she were reading his mind, Renee said, “I guess it’s best that you two celebrate this birthday separately. God only knows what kind of scene you might have had at that party last night!”
     “I was thinking the same thing,” said Doug. “It’s always better to let Matt be alone in the spotlight. When we see them next month, things will be much easier. After all, the shock of turning 50 will have worn off for both of us by then,” he said, only half-kidding. “Anyway, I’m really looking forward to my little party tonight, honey. It’ll be nice to have people over.”
     And so the dreaded day was turning out well after all, despite the big to-do over Doug’s not going up to Newburyport for the party. His phone call with Matt was conciliatory on both ends, and as usual they spent much of it talking about work. Matt claimed to be proud of Doug for landing such a big job; such praise went a long way with Doug and fueled his enthusiasm as he worked on the new project in his home office for much of the afternoon. Renee, a gourmet cook and professional caterer, was happily preparing a mini-feast for his birthday dinner. The exact menu was to be a surprise, but Doug was confident that there was a cherry-glazed cheesecake in his immediate future.
     Their dinner guests—The Welles, The Grants and The Pollards--were all fairly recent friends of Doug and Renee--no old college friends lived in the area. Doug realized, to his secret glee, that none of them had ever met Matt, which made them all the more special. Everyone arrived together and on the dot at 6:30, with gag gifts in tow and ready to give Doug a hard time about his age. “I remember turning 50,” said Renee, surprising everyone but Doug with her observation. “I’m not saying how long ago, but let’s just say I robbed the cradle.” Actually she was 57, but few people ever suspected she was a day older than Doug, owing mostly to her ever-vigilant attention to diet and exercise and his lack of it. She cooked up a storm but ate very little herself, instead finding pleasure in serving others.
     Several bottles of wine were enjoyed along with the grilled steak and salmon, piles of jumbo shrimp, and interesting side dishes that arrived in a steady stream. Eventually that cheesecake found its place in the center of the table, with candles glowing, albeit not 50 of them. Toasts were made and good-natured stories were shared about Doug, as the glorious day faded into what promised to be a cool evening lit by a bright moon.  “Let’s have a big hand for the cook,” Doug said, and everyone obliged. 

     Renee had really outdone herself this time, and Doug appreciated that. The only thing missing was his son Max, who as usual was not part of the celebration. Even though he and Renee were finally getting used to it, each of them always held out the hope that this time Max would surprise them and come through with a card, or at least a phone call.  At 21, Max still was as selfish as he had been during his teen years, with little thought for his parents until he needed something. But this time Renee had called him beforehand and literally begged him to call his father on his special day. So when the phone rang at 8:20, just as everyone was enjoying an after-dinner brandy, she let Doug answer it, thinking it was Max. But by the look on Doug’s face she could tell it wasn’t, and she ran over to be near him, sensing it was bad news. Naturally, her first worry was for her son. “Is it Max?” she asked. Doug shook his head no, and turned on the speakerphone so that Eileen’s voice filled the room. “It’s very bad, Doug. They’re saying he’s in critical condition.”
     “Critical! Oh my god, what happened? Was he hit by a car?”
     “No, a man driving by saw the whole thing and said Matt was by himself, and must have hit a rock or something, and that he flew right over the top of his handlebars and hit the ground on his face. Thank god he had a helmet on.” Her voice was steady and unemotional. “I told the doctor he has a twin brother, and he said you should get here as soon as you can.”
     “Get where? Where are you?”
     “He had just called me ten minutes earlier saying I might have to go pick him up because it was getting too dark. It was dusk…”
     “Eileen, where are you, what hospital?”
     “He’s in the ICU at Massachusetts General, in Boston. Just get here as soon as you can.” She hung up.
     Doug turned and faced the group, all of them sitting quietly, looking as somber as if Matt were  already dead. “They’re saying he’s in critical condition. I’ve got to go there right away, don't you all think?” Doug said, collapsing into a chair. “What is critical? That he might die? What if he dies before I get there? I’ve got to go right now, I’ll have to drive there.”
     “You can’t drive all that way, it’s like nine or ten hours from here. And you’re so upset, you can’t be alone all night. You’ll get there just as soon if you fly out in the morning,” Renee said. "Everyone agrees it's a bad idea to drive. You need to relax--anyway, maybe it’s not as bad as they’re telling her..."

Being in the ICU is never fun.

     Doug immediately got onto his computer to book a flight as the stunned dinner guests groped for words that might make the truth less awful. There were none. It was obvious the party was over. Everyone headed for the door, saying all the usual things on their way out, like, “We're so sorry, let us know how we can help, we’ll be praying for him.” Doug hardly heard a word. Life for the Waldmans had completely changed in an instant, and they didn’t even know it yet.

To be continued.....