Ch. 14 - Aren't You Lynn Hornbrook's Brother?

In which I conclude Part II - A Game of Chess from my memoir "My Own Private Waste Land"

Photo by Michael Jin on Unsplash

This chapter presents a trimmed down version of famous family lore, the story of the first time I drove (and crashed) a car. I “borrowed” my sister’s car when I was 15 and crashed it. Of course, somewhere in the story, my brother’s presence helped save and diffuse the situation.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the first two parts of my memoir, My Own Private Waste Land. Parts 3 and 5 deal with two major toxic relationships influenced by Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, job losses, divorced, parental deaths, complete estrangement from my family, and a final break that led to a personal crisis — and how I navigated out of the waste land.

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14 – Aren’t you Lynn Hornbrook’s brother?

1978.  Once, I got in trouble and could not get out of it. I was 15 years old, and I took my sister’s car for a joyride and crashed it. It was the first time I had ever tried to drive a car. There’s a story.

At the last possible second, on a narrow, residential street, slickened with rain, I decided to turn left . . . at 35 miles per hour . . . while already in the intersection. I felt the back wheels skid, and with two successive bumps, I was on the curb of a corner lot with a thump thump as the car landed on top of two soft-trunked trees. My head hit the windshield, I think.

I got out, shaking. Shit! There was a deep V dented into the front of the car to the windshield. I crushed out my cigarette. I so didn’t want to get caught smoking again.

Fortunately, the VW engine was in the rear. I thought, If I can get the car home, I can pound out the dents. It’s not quite noon, I have plenty of time . . .

A male and female emerged from the house, grown-ups, definitely out of school.

“Are you okay?” They were genuinely concerned.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Do you have a license?”

I looked at them from under my wet hair. It was raining steadily now.

“Oh.” They looked at me closely.

“Whose car is it?”

“My sister’s.” I was dripping in the rain.

A look for recognition brightened their faces. 

They asked, “Aren’t you . . . Lynn Hornbrook’s brother?”

 “I am.”

“We thought so. We went to school with him. You look so much like him.”

I stared at my feet in the steady rain. 

“We won’t call the police, but we will take you home so you can call your folks.”

I said, “I almost wish you’d call the police.”

It took two tow trucks to extract the car from the tangle of tree roots clutching the chassis. We cut up the logs in this rain and raked the muddy yard back into shape.

At home, as Dad scolded me about trust, mom asked the $64,000 question: “Whatever possessed you?” Such a mom thing to say. On the verge of tears, I blurted out in a single breath: “Dad-said-I’d-never-be-able-to-drive-a-car-if-I-didn’t-learn-how-an-engine-works-and-my-brother-and-sisters-never-had-to-do-that-and-I-don’t-think-that’s-fair!”

“Bill, did you say that?”

Dad’s anger dissipated behind a sheepish grin, but he didn’t say a thing.

I drained my bank account paying for the car and repairing the yard. I bought new trees, two mere sticks at a hundred dollars per. It took years to restore trust with my parents.

The next night, the family wore their car keys on strings around their necks, a stunt instigated by Aunt Marilynn who rarely passed an opportunity for a joke. In a different family, I might have ended up bruised, a father who swung a fist, or waited in jail for my parents to bail me out, or not. But not in our family. I wasn’t that kind of kid to get into that kind of trouble. 

Even in his absence, my brother had cast his protective cloak around me.

*     *     *     *     *

After his death, he continued to assert his influence, though in more subtle ways than physical resemblance. Over the next decade as my life spectacularly exploded, I felt his presence more and more. The more I tried to distance myself from the withering family tree, the more my life fell apart, wracked by emotional upheavals and psychiatric conditions not my own. It took everything I am, everything I owned, to not become my brother. I thought my special curse was to become like him. So I ran away from his influence into the waiting jaws of other people’s struggles. What I couldn’t fix in me I could fix in others by being the best person I knew how – giving of my time and support, light in spirit, hopeful. 

 The more I ran to distance myself from him, the more I struggled. What I didn’t know was that despite the tragedy of his death, all I needed to do was trust in him all the more. What I didn’t know then is that he was reaching a hand from beyond the veiled curtain to save my life.

Who is that walking always besides you
Who is that walking
Who is that walking always

The dead cast no shadows

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I write about:

• writing, literature, and the writing life

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