I guess happy families are all alike, but unhappy families are much more interesting.

I knocked once, and my brother pulled the door open and left it that way. A few steps in, I stopped and adjusted to the smells in the air—Pine-Sol and scrambled eggs mixed with baby diaper, I believe. My brother was perfecting the knot of his Jerry Garcia tie, guided by his blurred, stainless reflection in his industrial refrigerator. Before I could say a word, Carrie, my sister-in-law, entered the room, insisting that my brother come take a look at some heinous mold on the shower curtain. She had one leg in her sweats and her hands scrunched around the waist of my nephew Newton. Newton was red faced, crying and probably on the low ebb of a tantrum. His hazel eyes, just like ours and our mother’s but cute, were aimed at the ceiling, filled with a huge sadness that couldn’t conceive an end to pain. Carrie nodded at me with her sweet and stilted smile, shut the door with her foot then swung herself and Newton’s puffed-up body back to the bedroom.

I was one minute early; so they weren’t late, yet. But my brother didn’t even have his socks on. And noticing me looking at my watch sent him into as close to a panic as he gets. He grabbed the fat end of his tie, tugged it through his collar and tossed it back over his head. It landed in the sink, but he just shook his head at it. They needed to get going.

If there is one thing in the world you can’t be late for, it’s an intervention. It’s like a surprise party but serious—deadly serious, at least theoretically.

I was jealous, I’ll admit. Not just because my brother’s life in general and his condo in particular are pretty fucking perfect, but also because I’ve always wanted to witness a real intervention. Almost more than anything. Maybe even more than my own funeral, especially if no one showed up to my funeral. The whole phenomenon stews together everything I like about life: illogical self-destruction, high drama, do-or-die choices, emotional speeches arrayed in a staid and steady order. I think my favorite aspect is what a complete leap outside of normality it must be. It’s too organized to be real, like a mini-Nuremberg trial. It’s a way of saying: We all know we all mess our own lives up in a million ways every single day, but not like you. You’re the real deal. You’re like a Nazi of fuckups. Everyone in this room agrees and we speak for the millions and millions of non-fuckups who love you and want you to get your stupid life together. It’s tough love, bitch. Get used to it. Now we’re sending you to some expensive rehab where you’ll live in a dorm and do chores and shit.

I should have figured my brother would get to go to an intervention almost as soon as he moved to Seattle. Cocaine is like coffee in the morning for lawyers up here. Seventy-five percent of them are addicts. And when they spin out, it’s always interesting—car crashes, indictments, alleged kidnappings. My friends can’t even mess up their lives right. I’ve been loosely associating with loser boys on downward cycles for years, and the closest I’ve gotten to an intervention was blocking someone on instant messenger. I guess the kind of people I know don’t inspire organized attempts to save their lives, probably because there isn’t much to save. We aren’t lawyers or married to lawyers. We fuck up by moving in with someone who kind of reminds us of some unrequited teenage love and by not having health insurance. Then we contract diabetes, COPD or some other TV commercial disease that will ensure that our offspring’s self-esteem will be low enough to maintain stability in the military-industrial complex.

Where if my brother and his friends fuck up, it has to be dealt with. It matters.

Though I lived in the same physical structure as him for most of my life, I’m used to being in a different social class than my brother. Because he has always done everything right. And that isn’t just annoying. It’s oppressive. We went to the same schools. All the teachers liked him, knew his name. Some even knew his locker combination. He was smart and funny and he was even kind for a teenager. He actually enjoyed the mandatory visit to the old folks’ home and kept going back on his own until he finished reading them all of A Christmas Carol. I’ve gotten used to him being the kind of spiritual anomaly that might have been crafted by Charles Dickens to remind me how much better my life could be in the past, present and the future. He went straight to college. Then law school. Got married at twenty-five. Had a kid at thirty. He was always haunting me, always on stage for something. The only thing I ever did better than him was leaving LA.

I did it right after high school. He followed me a bit over a decade later with his perfect lawyer wife and my nephew. But when he did it, he did it for a job that paid for everything. And I was still unemployed or underemployed since selling two sculptures in three years and face painting at consistently rained out farmers’ markets barely counts as a job. So babysitting gigs that rewarded me financially to bond with my nephew, the only completely redeemable human being on the planet, were a beyond a Godsend. They were like an intervention from God but a nice one.

The phone rang. From nowhere, Carrie appeared and grabbed it, Newton was still clinging to her side crying and barely holding on to his bottle. My brother walked up to her and popped the baby from his mom’s arms into my lap. Newton nearly smiled as he fell backwards into my stomach, loosing his bottle the space between cushions. Carrie told the car downstairs they were coming, slammed the phone then stared at me as if I’d done something terrible to her entire family.

“She’s half chamomile,” my brother said to her, trying to explain Newton’s sudden silence. “And she’s new.”

My sister-in-law umphed, shooting traces of snot of her nose, and walked into the other room, one leg of her sweats trailing.

“Do you have a?” my brother asked, making the American Mime Language indication for a cigarette.

“Yeah,” I said.

“She needs it.” He began to whisper. “The nanny has been sick for three days; Carrie’s sure she’s been deported.”

“You think?”

“Well, she’s still answering her phone. I won’t even look for another until she falls off the earth. That woman is my savior. I’m encouraging her to start a religion.” He pointed at Newton. “He would too, if he would speak.”

As we spoke, we kept our eyes on the baby, which is what you do when a cute little baby is around, especially when he expresses the only cuteness inherent in your genetic code. It’s normal.

“And he has seriously can cry for an hour, sometimes longer,” he said, reminding me to reach into my purse for the pack. “This morning she got online and started Googling baby therapists.”

“Do they exist?”

“She only found one. In Northern Ontario Canada. I thought that would dissuade her, but I caught her looking for flights an hour later.”

“So who’s the guy? Not the baby therapist. The addict guy.”

“Oh, Josh. He’s funny. A real Republican. Comes off real straight-laced. But he’s a nut. The kind of guy who would steal your wallet and then’ll help you look for it.”

“Like Tim!” I said, too eagerly. Tim was some kind of addict and our step dad for a couple of years. When he moved out, he took my brother’s coin collection with him.

“Yeah, exactly like Tim,” he said and rubbed his forehead to erase the memory.

Just from Newt’s posture, I could tell he was beyond exhausted. His big, round head seemed to be crushing his little neck. I handed my brother the cigarette and gave Newton the deck of cards I keep in my purse. He loves them. I think they’re tasty from the massive amounts of my skin droppings and traces of chocolate they must have on them. In the other room, I heard drawers being slammed. “You better give that to her.”

“Right,” he said and stepped off with the beginning of a perfect gait.

The bedroom door shut, and I could hear words close to screams but contained by walls. I set Newton next to me and reached for the remote. They have cable, another reason I hate them. Shows were all starting, which meant life was getting later. I flipped channels, looking for the finest member of the harem, so to speak, and kept an eye on Newton who was only playing with one card, the three of hearts. The rest were in something resembling a pile.

I set the remote down, put my glasses on the arm of the couch and lifted Newt from under his shoulders so he would face me. With my fingertips holding the back of his head still, I stared into his eyes. I had decided when I first met him I wanted to stare into his eyes every chance I got. Then I’d be implanted in his brain in a deep and unconscious way that made him long for the serenity and knowingness of my eyes. And when he brought home some girl two decades from now, some girl who looked just like me but thinner, I would know it had worked. And even if it didn’t, he seemed to enjoy the staring as much as me. We were completely plugged into each other’s brains studying the intense shapes that really make up the pupil and the cornea when you study them. I had to blink, but I fought it off as long as I could. As soon as my eyelids wouldn’t listen to reason anymore and dropped to rewet, the phone rang. Then at the same moment on the table two cell phones began to ring and beep and vibrate. I put my glasses back on.

Newton watched my confusion until his mother appeared. Then he began to scream. I pulled him into to me and tried to rock a bit, like they do on TV. Carrie’s eyes skipped from the three phones to her baby and decided to go for her iPhone. She picked it up and walked into the bedroom with a hand over her ear. My brother appeared and studied the two ringing phones back and forth.

“How about I get this one?” I said, pointing to the house phone.

“Nice,” he said, grabbed his iPhone and disappeared off into the bedroom.

As I kept rocking, I picked up the receiver. The man told me the car was ready. I said they’d be right down. “Thanks,” the driver said. “I’m triple parked right now. Now quadruple.”

“OK, I’ll let the missus know,” sounding a hint like Mammy from Gone With the Wind, one of Literature’s most beloved and stereotypical supporting players.

I turned the sound down on the TV and sat Newton, who’d quickly cried himself out, next to me, with his back against the couch. His bunched up legs were sprawled out and he looked like a little, relaxed slacker, just like his aunt. I anticipated a whirlwind of action then screams as his parents decided they’d better leave immediately. But there was just silence. Until a minute later, I swore I heard laughter.

And when they walked out together, smiling, I knew I was right.

“You’re going to love this,” my brother said. “You’re going to want to marry this guy.”

Before he could get the next line out, Carrie said, “Josh gets to the intervention early, sees his grandpa and falls to the floor. Josh does. He’s shaking and everyone thinks it’s a seizure. So when he stops and they take him to the hospital so he doesn’t swallow his tongue or whatever.”

In the half-second of his wife’s doubt, my brother picked up the story, “At the stoplight right before the hospital, he opened the car door, fell out into the gutter and ran off into the night. Twenty lawyers are out looking for him, but I bet he went to Canada. That’s my gut.”

“No intervention,” Carrie said, like she was announcing no school for a week.

“God,” I said. “That’s so great. I wish I could’ve seen it.”

“I know. I know!” my brother said. “Damn, we should’ve been there.”

“Next time,” Carrie said.

“You think he’ll come in tomorrow, to work?” my brother asked the room.

Newton answered with a certain scream that hinted at a yes. I pulled him on to my lap, considered covering his mouth with my hand and decided that would make me a terrible person, a mild child abuser. I picked up the three of hearts, which was about to fall off the couch, and put it into Newt’s hands. Then everything was really quiet, except for the TV, which seemed like it was broadcast from a much simpler, more logical world.

I noticed Carrie’s eyes on me. And my brother’s eyes on her. And I guess I was staring at both of them. “So, do you still need me tonight?” I asked, half of me, the honest half, hoping to avoid all and every form of work, hoped for a no. The other half, the half that likes to eat and pay bills, would have been fine with a yes.

The TV kept going, but the rest of the world stopped. Carrie kept glaring at Newton and me, until her chin dropped. She was crying. Not sobbing, crying. Tears darting out like they’d been stuck inside forever and just discovered that gravity really works. She tried to get out some words, an apology I’m sure, but she could only cry. I wanted to cover Newt’s eyes, but I knew how much worse that would make her feel.

“Well,” my brother said.

Carrie covered her whole face with her hands and turned toward the bedroom.

“Yeah, if you could,” my brother said, gazing up at the ceiling, like pain would never end. “We may just stay in the bedroom.” He looked at me.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked, raising my eyebrows in that mock sexy way, that old-man-horny-Groucho-Marx way.

“I wish,” he said and followed his wife.

When I heard him set the door into place, I lifted Newton from under his arms and turned him toward me again. He had the three of hearts stuck to his lip with saliva. I peeled it off. Then with my thumbs, I held his head still and looked deep, deep, deep into his eyes. “From all this, you’ll only remember me,” I said. “Just me. Just me. Just me.”

This story is based on Jeff Hurlow’s Myspace Portrait Project.

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