10. Crybabies, Cigars and a Hog

The night before I married Jeff, the father of my daughter Maeve, my brother Brian stood up at the rehearsal dinner and said, Welcome to the family, Jeff. I wish you and my sister much happiness…but if you hurt her, you’ll have me to answer to.

This protective streak was nothing new to me. My older siblings were all very protective, even bossy at times, of their youngest sibling. To be fair, we were all protective of each other, and this was a directive that came from the top. We were raised to take care of one another. But Brian elevated this to another level, being more Cúchulainn than king. (The warrior Cúchulainn single-handedly and successfully defended Ulster from the invading armies of Queen Médbh).

Today Brian claims that I went to my mother on a monthly basis and asked her to intervene. Tell Brian to leave my friends alone. He’s scaring them. I don’t know. I may have done that once…maybe twice. Mom would then go to him and say, Brian, a punch in the nose is not the solution to every problem. And he would invariably reply, I find it useful in almost every situation. She would shake her head and say, Brian, let your sister be.

When Brian was about ten years old, he, Kevin, Joe, and Dennis participated in something they called The Crybaby Contest. One spring afternoon, they all got into Joe’s VW beetle with the windows rolled up. Joe and Dennis in front. Kevin and Brian in the back seat. I sat across the street watching from the steps. They each lit up a Rum River Crooks cigar and began puffing away. The first person to bail out was the crybaby.

Kevin rolled out onto the grass first, coughing and laughing. Dennis was next. A few minutes later, Joe emerged, hacking away. The three of them stood before the hood of the smoke-filled car, looking through the windshield. All they could see through the smoke was the lit end of a cigar brighten as Brian took another puff.

When Brian was 15, he found a guy in Mt. Rainier, Maryland who was selling a Harley Davidson dresser, a panhead from the 1950s. He asked Kevin to drive him over so he could take a look. Kevin agreed, impressed that Brian was thinking of buying a gigantic motorcycle before he even had a driver’s license. This would have been about the time the movie Easy Rider came out.

Brian bought the Harley, and Kevin drove it home since they figured the guy on the motorcycle was more likely to get pulled over. With some help from his friends, Brian carried the bike down into the basement and proceeded to dismantle it, rebuilding the engine from hundreds of parts. Kevin says today that Brian must have inherited our grandfather’s mechanical genius. George Boardman had worked for Hughes Aircraft as a tool and die engineer, working with the team that built the Gray Goose in the 1930s.

Brian and I were only 15 months apart, not quite Irish twins but close. There were many times in our teenage years when a boy would come to visit, and I’d step over the threshold to sit with him on the front porch — easier than navigating the nudges, winks and endless interrogations. 

If I were sitting in the kitchen with a boy, Brian would come in and take out the oversized chef’s knife kept in the drawer under the cooktop. He would slowly unwrap the whet stone and slice the knife in a wide arc across the stone, testing it repeatedly. Never satisfied.

As far as I know, no one was ever hurt. And if my guy friends were intimidated, my girlfriends were enchanted. Brian was very handsome with black curly hair and deep blue eyes with long, thick eyelashes that any girl would be jealous of. But he was also charming, a natural storyteller. And the way he got to be such a good storyteller was that he would talk with anyone and, more importantly, he would listen, retaining every word of a well-told tale.

Years later, Brian was at a party with some of my friends from high school. While reminiscing about high school shenanigans, one of them said to Brian, You know, your sister was a real pain in the ass in high school. Why do you say that? Brian asked. Well, every time one of us did something she didn’t like, she’d say, ‘You’d better cut that out or I’ll tell my brothers. To that I have only one thing to say: It worked.