Marcus

I knew from a young age that my brother and I would never be close. He was from my mother’s first marriage and with a full twenty years between the two of us he was out of the house well before I ever arrived. Our sister, his full my half, was young enough to babysit for the first few years of my life before she married and moved out as well. She was “sissy” then and “sis” now, I’m not sure I’ve ever called her by her name. My brother has always been “Nick”.

It never bothered me much, having a brother who was more like a distant cousin I saw on holidays and at family get-togethers. I think even when I was young I knew that distance and age would never really permit much more than that. It worried me though, sometimes, that I wouldn’t have someone there to do the things older brothers are meant to do for their younger brothers. I wondered who’d help me out of binds and give me advice about movies and music and life and toast me at my eventual wedding; things that I knew were often left to brothers. I didn’t dwell on it, but it certainly occurred to me from time to time.

Marcus is eccentric; I remember thinking that shortly after we started working together, and I told my then girlfriend as much. Some people are eccentric and it drives people away; they single out the eccentric as “other” and avoid and judge and whisper to one another, sneering with their self-assured “normalcy”. Marcus, instead, is an eccentric who draws people to him. He intrigues and engages; lures people in with wit and charm and confidence and the good humor of a man who doesn’t take himself too seriously. When my then girlfriend had the reaction of avoidance, of dislike, of singling him out as “other”, I knew that something was wrong with her, not with him. Marcus was eccentric and I admired him for it; a part of me hoped that he might lend some of it to me.

When I first started thinking that the woman I’d eventually marry might be somebody I’d like to one day marry, I was still lingering in a long dead relationship. I went to Marcus, asking his advice, and he told me in encouraging words what I had known for quite some time, but was unwilling to admit; that I wasn’t happy and needed to let myself be so. When the time came, he made a trip with me to my former apartment to claim my belongings and we packed what we could into the back of the trusty, aged bronco. The next day he gave me a box of kitchenware he could spare; pans and utensils and things he said were essential for civilized life and that night I unpacked them into the still empty cupboards of a still empty studio apartment that, somehow, did feel a bit more civilized for having them.

I had told Marcus and Alyisse that, as a near three decade teetotaler, I didn’t need a bar or “gentleman’s club” for my bachelor’s party; spending those dollar bills on a good dinner with good friends was perfectly fine. When the day came Marcus apologetically told me of the bars and dodgy clubs that waited patiently in the evening ahead, assuring me that he’d tried to rein in Alyisse’s grandiose plans but was outnumbered when Todd joined the planning committee. When we left the second bar and Marcus was the first to scale and straddle a just-more-than-life-sized public sculpture of an elk, I started to wonder how much he’d really tried to dissuade Alyisse from what would turn into my first drunken night out with friends. I’m glad he was there though, handing me a glass of water for each White Russian Alyisse sat in front of me and staying sober enough to ferry a barely coherent, babbling, stumbling version of me safely home later that night.

One of Marcus’ eccentricities I most admire is his skill as a storyteller, especially since I’m so self-conscious of my own abilities. He’s always sure of the next word; always charming and clever enough to please the masses but subversive enough to keep you wondering if the next sentence will make you blush and look away embarrassed. His wit is quick and his vocabulary and intelligence staggeringly broad. Because of that he can say almost anything and get a smile or laugh in response. I count myself lucky then to have had Marcus stand with me at my wedding and to toast my new bride and I in front of our assembled friends and family. As always his words were eloquent and heartfelt; funny and poignant. I realized, standing there watching him recount his version of Jess and I, that it was exactly what I imagined my brother would say at my wedding, just as all the other things Marcus has done for me in the ten plus years I’ve known him have epitomized those early ideals about what one brother does for another, and I realized that in those ten years I hadn’t worried about not having an older brother.