So far this hasn't really been the LIFE OF BRIAN as much as the "Life of Sam." This will be a sort of transitional entry. We'll have him arrive in person tomorrow, Valentine's Day.
Over the years that followed, my brother's existence was rarely mentioned. I got older, left home, married, started a family very early, then went to college. My mother was consumed with her new career as corporate paralegal. She worked in a downtown high-rise (on the 42nd floor) and maintained a very active social life, bar-hopping and partying with Harvard lawyers and so on. She did receive one letter from the state during this time, when Brian was two years old. Tests had revealed, the letter said, that Brian was potentially very high functioning. He was educable. Trainable. And given normal family surroundings there was no telling how far he might go. And wouldn't she please reconsider and take him? That they would dare to contact her at all enraged my mother. She'd believed relinquishment absolved her of all responsibility or connection, that she could live as though he didn't exist. She put the letter away and never mentioned it again.
Brian lived his first year in a state "mental hygiene facility." When he was a year old they determined he was sufficiently advanced that he should be kept in foster homes. They conditioned him adequately: he learned to use the bathroom and to dress himself. All effort went into ambulating and self-maintenance. Nothing was invested in anything beyond the most rudimentary communication skills. The muscles in his mouth never learned to form words. He never learned to think, to try and grasp the meaning of language. At seven he went to live in the Brown Home, a group home in Inglewood. It was a house in a residential neighborhood that looked like all the other houses except a little more fortress-like--sturdy bars on windows and doors, heavy locks. There he was absorbed into a sort of herd, loaded en masse into and off of buses morning and night, shut up in a darkened TV room with the others afternoons and evenings, transported to amusement parks and zoos on weekends and holidays. In his program he learned some sign language--"bathroom," "candy," "girl," "boy," "horse," "cat"--and at home he learned from his comrades some very recognizable speech: "You a dead man"; "Ah mo kick yo ass"; "Fuck you." Mrs. Brown herself taught him to say "God is great, God is good, and we thank him for this food" (somewhat less recognizably) and to hug and kiss perfect strangers on command.
It was when Mrs. Brown decided, when Brian was thirteen, to pursue adoption that a certain pesky social worker got involved. It took her months of single-minded effort to track my mother down, and when she finally found her the letters never stopped. She mailed reports, pleas, even a school photo. She begged Mom to take him. Mom was near to nervous breakdown, I think. Why couldn't they leave her alone? How did they keep finding her? Weren't they obligated to let her forget? She was moving in some pretty exclusive circles, now, going on cruises, staying on yachts. Oh, this would never do.
At last, I could make a move. My brother and I shared at least this in common: by and large, we were not people who made things happen. We were people things happened to. And although I'd thought about my brother and my promise to him every day of his life, I never had got up the courage to ignore my mother's wishes and look for him. Out of respect for her feelings (and convinced of my own inadequacy) I never mentioned him. Maintaining a healthy distance between my family and Los Angeles (Iowa, Colorado, Northern California) hadn't helped. But here was my chance. As she railed on the phone about busy-body social workers, I interrupted: "Please let me have him." Silence. "Please. No one will ever bother you about him again. And you'll never have to wonder where he is and whether he's all right. You'll know." I remember she became very quiet. And that she seemed stunned. And she never gave me a go-ahead as such. It was more like, "It's your life. Do what you want." And so I got the letters from her, and the phone numbers I needed, and began my campaign. My boys were intrigued, my domestic partner, not. The issue ended a relationship and instigated a marriage--to a grad student in literature (another romantic) who'd grown up with a retarded sister and thought this was a great idea. By then I lived in a pleasant, green college town and worked full-time as production editor for an academic publisher. We were buying a house. The time was right.
11:31:47 AM 
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