He went out for something, I don't know, and he never returned. Brian. My brother, Brian Rubin. Son of my mother, stepson of my stepfather, father to no child. A child himself, a youngster myself, ages undefined. Plagued by anxieties, fears, shouting, blaming, loss. No one's fault, everyone's fault.
A press conference. I was to stay home, answer the phones. Soothe myself with music, stay out of the liquor cabinet. I wanted badly to go, to plead to the televisioned public to find my brother, to bring him home safely, no questions asked; I was deemed "hysterical" by my stepfather, although it was my mother who was most angry and frantic. A lot of shouting, so much anguish, kept company and mood-lightened by anonymous, middle-aged family friends. My head pounded, I was full of rage for being forbidden to help.
Where was my brother? Where was Brian? How could we sit there, drinking iced tea and eating fried chicken and surfing the cable channels while he was out there, small, frightened, probably caught off guard by this sudden change in the weather and wanting one of his cardigans, maybe his Arsenal jacket? I readied some things for him, I made tea, I got extra blankets. He was just a child, a thin, pale child, stubborn and afraid of everything and nothing at the same time. He and the world, alone together, tooth and nail.
The pink protective skin on my phone was peeling, but I didn't care. Small children, not mine, ran around joyful and oblivious to the crisis and the clock; it was very late, early morning nighttime, I longed for sleep, my eyes heavy, I begged for a bed in the home that I'd never occupied. The familiar strangers offered theirs, it was covered with coats and cat hair and laundry but I didn't care, I couldn't, I was exhausted. I slept fitfully for an hour, the rage and anguish still boiling in my center, I awoke to no news, the phone needing a charge to field the phone calls that wouldn't come through, anyway. There was nothing to report, he was gone, he was not to be found.
