Farther Away : Essays

OUR RELATIONS: A BRIEF HISTORY

Once there was a mansion in which there lived five brothers. The four oldest brothers, who had played and fought and survived the diseases of childhood together, lived comfortably in the beautifully furnished older wing of the mansion.

The fifth brother, Joseph, was much younger. By the time he came of age, there were no comfortable rooms left for him, and so he was given the raw rooms in the mansion’s newer wing. Joseph was a strange, solitary, somewhat frightening child, and although his brothers loved him, they were relieved to have him out of their hair.

Joseph wished to be a gentleman like his brothers, but life was difficult in the raw wing of the mansion. The new wing was a place of Protestant industry, and Joseph went to work.

In time, the old wing grew crowded — too many children, too many mistresses. There came bitter internecine feuds, disastrous debts, terrible drunken brawls. For a while, it appeared that the mansion might fall into ruin and be lost altogether.

But Joseph had been working hard, and his businesses were thriving. The strange little brother turned out to be the person who could rescue the family. Among themselves, the older brothers made fun of Joseph’s puritanism and the gaudy style in which he’d decorated the new wing. They were irritated that the little kid was acting like the big brother now. But there was no denying that they’d made a mess of their lives, and they were grateful for Joseph’s sacrifices on their behalf.

Joseph, for his part, disapproved of his brothers’ lax morals — the mistresses, the too-liberal spending. But he was loyal to his family, and he tried to show his brothers the respect that older relations deserve.

His businesses were doing so well, moreover, that he himself began to relax. He and his new girlfriend, a great beauty from Arkansas, threw lavish parties to which the brothers were usually thoughtful enough to bring a few bottles of wine. Some of them grumbled that the parties were in bad taste, and some of them worried that Joseph was still secretly a prude, but they accepted him as the head of their family, and they adored his new girlfriend.

After eight years of partying, the time came for Joseph to settle down. He assumed that he would marry his good, sensible friend Albertine; but Albertine, alas, was not remotely sexy. One night, in pursuit of a last bit of fun, Joseph flirted with Georgina, a dirty girl from an ambitious family down the street; they ended up fooling around in the backseat of her SUV.

The next morning, Georgina’s parents came to the mansion with five lawyers and said that Joseph had to marry her.

“But I don’t even like her!” he protested. “She’s spoiled and stupid and mean.”

Georgina’s parents, who had long had designs on the mansion, insisted that marrying her was the only honorable thing to do. And Joseph, who wished to be a gentleman like his brothers, and who felt remorseful about his eight-year party, married her.

How unhappy the mansion was then! Although Georgina was a dirty girl herself, she voiced horror at the loose morals of her brothers-in-law, and she went out of her way to be rude to them. She invited her parents and her parents’ lawyers to move in with her. Chiding Joseph for his own liberal spending, she took his money away from him and gave it to her parents.

It looked as if the marriage would be short and unhappy. But then, one night, a bully from a poor neighborhood threw a rock through the window of Joseph’s study, scaring Joseph badly. When he went to his brothers, he found that he’d forfeited their sympathy by marrying Georgina. They said they were sorry about the rock, but a broken window was nothing compared with what they’d suffered, over the years, in the old wing of the mansion.

Although Georgina was too stupid and spoiled to think for herself, her parents were shrewd opportunists. They hoped to use Joseph’s momentary fright to gain control of the entire mansion. They went to Joseph and said: “This is the logic of war. You’re the head of the family, Georgina is your wife now, and only her parents can defend this house. You must learn to hate your useless brothers and trust us.”

The brothers were enraged when they heard this. They went to Joseph and said: “This is the logic of peace. Your wife is a bitch and a whore. As long as she’s in this house, you’re no brother of ours.”

And the rich little brother clutched his head and wept.