Three Weeks With My Brother (32 page)

“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.”

C
HAPTER
15

Lalibela, Ethiopia

February 9–10

W
e’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.

Lalibela, we learned, was roughly twenty-five miles away, and two thousand feet higher in elevation. The winding asphalt road curved through the valley and along the peaks; in the hour it took to reach our destination, we never saw another vehicle.

We did, however, see a young boy around ten years of age, eight miles from Lalibela. Walking along the road, he was hauling a monstrously overstuffed burlap bag of charcoal that he intended to deliver to the city. The bag, both taller and wider than the child, had been strapped to his back and looked many times heavier than the child himself. When he saw our bus passing, he smiled and waved a greeting before continuing his slow march to the town.

Most of the town of Lalibela was situated off the main highway, along bumpy gravel roads. Its thatched-roof adobe homes featured few glass windows, but the town boasted numerous places to eat, small, family-owned businesses, and souvenir shops. Nearly everyone we saw wore western clothing. A number of tables lined the roads, offering various T-shirts, most emblazoned with American logos. For all intents and purposes, the town of Lalibela was an Ethiopian tourist trap.

Our buses parked near the carved rock churches, and as soon as we stepped off the bus, we were besieged by teens; unlike other places we’d visited, they had no trinkets for sale. Instead, they asked for money; every child who came up to us told us that he needed money either to attend school or to buy the books he needed at the school he was currently attending.

In the end, they were forced back by Ethiopian guards swinging sticks.

Lalibela was one of the least-known sites we would visit on the trip; few knew what to expect. We weren’t disappointed. The vast amount of labor needed for construction—literally carving through rock by hand—was evident as soon as we gazed upon the first church we would visit. It was far larger than we’d imagined; at least sixty feet long and forty feet wide, it was surrounded by modern scaffolding that supported a roof over the top.

“The roof is to prevent leaks,” the guide informed us, “and to keep the churches from decaying.”

We spent the next couple of hours wandering from one church to the next. The churches were dark inside. Few had windows, and though fluorescent lights had been strung inside, they barely permeated the blackness. The floors were slick, polished by eight hundred years of use to an almost icy smoothness. Because the churches are still in use today, throw rugs had been placed throughout. Unfortunately, they didn’t cover the floor in its entirety, and we moved slowly, like blind men in foreign surroundings, to prevent us from falling.

In all, we would spend three hours in Lalibela. Toward the end of our visit, Micah and I wandered off to take pictures; because the churches were so different from everything we’d seen up to that point—carved
into
stone, rather than built
with
stone—we tried to find vantage points that could capture how unique they were.

The visits to the churches had left Micah strangely silent, and as I was snapping away, he went to sit on one of the ledges overlooking the site. I eventually walked over to join him.

“So what did you think of this place?” Micah finally asked.

“It was worth seeing, if that’s what you mean.”

“They’re not exactly like the churches we have back home, are they?”

“I don’t think the kids would appreciate having to stand the whole time during the service.”

He smiled. “Are you glad you still go to Mass?”

“As opposed to what?”

“Going to another Christian church?”

I thought about it. “Yeah,” I said. “I am. But Cat is Catholic, too, so we’ve never considered changing.”

“I like the church I go to now. Or used to, anyway.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just got bored that Mass always seemed the same. And I couldn’t relate the sermons to my life. I think church should make you feel close to God, but I wasn’t getting that. With the new church, I did for a while.”

“Do you think you’ll ever feel that way again?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t felt . . . close to God lately. I’m not even sure that I believe in God anymore.”

“Really?”

“Not God, per se. I think God exists, but I’m not so sure that he takes an active role in the world. I think he put everything in motion and since then he’s just sitting back watching how it’s going to turn out.”

“Hmm,” I responded. “Go on.”

“It’s not what they tell you in church, obviously. In church, you’re supposed to pray and be thankful, but like I said before I’ve come to the conclusion that prayer doesn’t work. And for a long time there, it wasn’t easy to be thankful for much. We went through one big challenge after the next. They just didn’t let up. And everyone kept telling me to be strong, that it would work out in the end.”

I knew Micah wasn’t looking for a response.

“And after a while, it just kind of hit me. What do I really believe? I followed the commandments, I believed in Jesus, I went to church, and I prayed all the time. And when I really needed God’s help, it was like the only answer I got was,
Who cares
? I didn’t want God to give me strength to endure whatever was happening, I wanted God to put an end to what was happening. And he didn’t. So I quit.”

I said nothing. When it comes to matters of faith, the best response is to say nothing unless you’re asked directly.

“Didn’t you ever feel that way?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “All the time.”

“But it didn’t hit you the way it hit me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” I sighed. “I guess I didn’t think any of the bad stuff was really God’s fault in the first place. Things just happened. And if God didn’t cause them, I guess I didn’t expect him to change it.”

He nodded, then said, “I still get sad about everything that happened. Every now and then, it just hits me. Sometimes, it takes days for me to get over it.”

I put my arm around his shoulder. “That happens to me, too.”

“What do you do?”

I shrugged. “Work,” I offered.

He laughed. “Yeah. Your balance is totally out of whack.”

“Yours, too. Work, spirituality, family, friendships, health—you can’t ignore any of them or it’ll get you in the end.”

“Are you saying that I’m as bad as you?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’re brothers. We reacted to the stress in different ways, but to be honest, I think our situations are more alike than you realize. We went through the same things, didn’t we?”

By early 1995, my sister had been in remission for two years and had become a mother. Her CAT scans continued to come up clear. With every passing month, our worries began to diminish. At the same time, though, all three of us became more and more concerned about our father.

His behavior outside work was growing worse. Though heavily in debt, he began spending money like crazy; he remodeled the house and bought a new SUV, and whenever he spoke to us on the phone, his only interest seemed to be in talking about Flame. Despite having a new girlfriend, his world seemed to revolve around the dog.

The estrangement from his family continued; frequently, I’d get calls from relatives wondering what was going on, yet there was nothing I could say except that I didn’t understand what was happening any better than they did. He was distant and on edge whenever I called, his conversations with Cat had grown short, and Dana was busy with twins and living on the far side of town, which brought them into little contact with each other.

Even Micah was having trouble making sense of what was going on. When pressed, my dad would swear that he’d never been happier, that work was going well, that he loved his weekends with the dog and his girlfriend. Twenty minutes later, however—long after Micah had asked him how he was doing and had moved on to discussing other things—my dad would launch into DEFCON 5, suddenly turning to Micah and snarling:

“My life isn’t your damn business anyway, so why don’t you get the hell out of here!”’

Bizarre. Hurtful. Worrisome.

Yet Cat and I were so far removed from the situation that we wouldn’t learn the full story of what was going on until years later. We were caught up in yet another move, while raising two young boys. For the first couple of months, Cat had to stay in New Bern to try to sell the house, while I lived in a small apartment in Greenville. During the days, I worked at establishing a new territory; in the evenings I’d drive around looking for a house we could buy. On the weekends, I’d either head back home, or Cat would come to Greenville to view the homes that I’d found.

By the end of May, we finally moved into our new home in Greenville, and spent the first few weeks meeting our neighbors, learning the layout of the town, and making new friends. Miles had always been outgoing and friendly; he met lots of kids and frequently played with them. Ryan, not yet two, was still a toddler. He hadn’t learned to talk yet and seemed much more introspective. He showed little of the curiosity that Miles had at his age and it often seemed as if his mind was elsewhere. He screamed in terror whenever we put him in the car, and seldom responded when we tried to get his attention. When we discussed it with our pediatrician, he said not to worry and assured us that Ryan would grow out of it.