A bottle green VW Beetle pulled up. I guess it was his wife or his girlfriend in the driver’s seat. He said a few words to her and got out of the car. I recognized him immediately, though he looked a bit shorter. He seemed so big to me when I was a little kid, almost larger than life. He saw that question on my face, “Is it really him?” “You see. You’ve made a mistake. I’m not your brother.”  

I showed him old snapshots of him and with him standing next to me at the zoo, with me on a pony, me feeding a giraffe, then a monkey “That’s not me,” he insisted, “I’m not your brother.”

“You have your driver’s licence with you?” I asked him as a policeman might. “You must have it.”

 He fumbled in his wallet. And he said, “No, sorry. I don’t have it on me. I must’ve left it in my other wallet or in the jacket that I left at home.” 

“Check again, will you?”

He rummaged through his wallet, pretending it wasn’t there, when I spotted it.

“There it is!” I cried out, pointing at his licence, not letting him hide it.

“Take it out,” I said, “and show me. What’s the Date of Birth written on it?”

“March 24, 1938!” I cried seeing the birth dates matched. “That’s my brother’s birth date!”

“My wife’s pregnant,” he said, and was now panic-stricken. He started quickly walking away from me, then running, dust flying.  He was a good distance away when he yelled out, “I CAN’T BE YOUR BROTHER!”

 The woman in the car was asking him what happened? Him ordering her, “Don’t ask me so many questions. Just drive. Let’s get out of here!”

Thirteen years passed. He finally agreed to meet me at a diner in Cabbagetown. It was near CBC-radio studios on Parliament Street. Wild Sonia from Sudbury came with me. We sat on vinyl seats in a corner booth. I looked at him. He was so on edge. He kept turning his head, trying to get his eyes away from mine. Both of us were almost bald. Both wearing horn-rims. He started by repeating. “You’ve made a mistake. I’m not your brother.” 

He kept saying that. God! That hurt!

We both had our elbows on the table with our thumbs and two fingers (the middle and index) up in the air as if holding a cigarette. Then he took out a pack and he took one out, lit it, and pointed it at me. (Father used to hold the butt of an Export A between his deep orange, rust-colored, stained fingers, a snake-like trail of ashes like a dangling question mark and he’d point his cigarette at someone like an exclamation mark to make his point. And I pointed my index finger at Pisti. My finger was telling him, crying out to him, “I haven’t SEEN you in THIRTEEN years!” 

 “You have the same gestures,” Sonia said to him, “You two even look alike. If you’re not his brother, I don’t know who is.” 

“I have to go,” he said. 

“It’s OK,” Sonia said, “I’ll pay.”

But both of us were paying, just not with money. And he was gone. 

 In all, I saw him four times. Not more, and it wasn’t because I hadn’t wanted to or didn’t want to see him. Because I did.

Four years later. Back in Montreal. I found his number again. Now I was calling to tell him, “Mother’s dying.” Seeing 514 was why, I guess, he didn’t pick up right away. 

“I can’t come,” he said.

 “Why?”  

“Because I don’t want to come,” he said. “What good will it do? Besides, I can’t.” 

 Well, he hasn’t changed. I gave his telephone number to my aunt Bözsi Néni and to Uncle Imre, and asked them to give it a try. They did. Since they didn’t call me, I called Bözsi Néni again, and she said, “He said, OK. He’ll come.”  I thought, it’s as if he’s doing me and Mother, us, a big favor. Or my aunt and uncle had told him that they’d pay for his trip and talked about their life insurance policies. Or maybe his wife, overhearing that, said, “You should.” 

There he was at the hospital in the corridor outside Mother’s room looking so nervous. He put some coins in a distributor and pulled out a bag of Lay’s potato chips. He popped a few potato chips into his mouth. (He took me to see Shrine Circus and bought me Cracker Jacks. I was six. He was nineteen.) The chips cracked and crumbled as he nervously bit into them. Chips kept falling on the hospital’s fake marble floor looking like bits and shards of broken glass. Other chips remained on his lips, on the edge of his mouth. Just the same, he kept popping more chips into his mouth. 

Mother was closely eyeing him from her hospital bed on rollers. I was suddenly a mind reader. ‘I waited almost thirty years to see him. Always so worried about him. And I haven’t met his wife, seen and kissed my grandchildren. He never called or came to see me, not once.  Now, I can’t clean up the mess he’s making.’ 

I was eight when he abandoned me! When he abandoned us! 

Less than four years later, Father put mother in that mental hospital! The same year Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published and the CIA-funded MK-Ultra “Monster” doctor Dr. Ewen Donald Cameron was one of the four psychiatrists there, though after the provincial inquiry, at the end of that year, he stopped with insulin coma therapy and LSD mind control human experiments. Every week I went to visit Mother. I was ashamed when kids asked me where I’d been on Sunday. But if I didn’t go, I felt as guilty as sin. Like I was a piece of goddam shit. So, I went, even if all the other boys were playing sports (hockey, football, baseball or swimming) and having fun. 

EVERY week her MIStaking ME for HIM, EVERY WEEK her WANting so BADly to believe it was HIM. that her PISTI had COME BACK. Then reALIzing it was ME, she’d say, “YES, of COURSE. HOW are YOU?”

In my stupidity, if that wasn’t bad enough, when I was old enough, I felt I had to go looking for him. And now every time I see him he’s got the gall, he’s got the nerve, to tell me, “I’m NOT your BROther!” I remember seeing On the Waterfront, and the scene with the two brothers in the backseat of a taxi and what Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) famously said. “You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda take care of me … so, I wouldn’t have to…”

In my head, I said, “It wasn’t Charley. It was YOU, Pisti. You SHOULDA looked out for me. (I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead…).”

I was telling Pisti, though he wasn’t there and he didn’t care. “But I’m NOT you, and I’m NOT like you!

I’m not like Him! I had to look after Mother. Someone had to and, if that wasn’t possible, I couldn’t just leave her there in Verdun, in the Hospital for the Insane. Not even visit her. 

And it’s what I was told to do over and over again, by my aunt Bözsi Néni and by my foster mother Mrs. P, And Mother said, “I was a good boy.” And my social worker Miss Brodie promised her, “He’ll come.” And assured her, “He’s intelligent, He’ll be alright.”

Mother didn’t have the strength to tell Pisti to stop eating those chips, that he didn’t need to be so nervous and act like a child.  I thought, ‘I’m going to piss in my pants. Or shit in my pants. And if I wasn’t, he was.’ 

“We’re going out,” Bözsi Néni announced and Uncle Imre said, “To get some fresh air. Buy some things. We’ll be back around six.”  

Great! They’ve ALWAYS left me holding the bag, to take care of her. And in-SIST-ed I tell MOTH-er, “Ev-ery-thing’s FINE”. 

‘Just hunky-dory!’ I thought. 

“I’m fine,” I said. 

Thinking, ‘Fine! Terrific!’

It was around 4 p.m., four in the afternoon, when Mother waved Pisti away with her hand. She didn’t have to say anything. He understood. It’s time for you to go. He went over, paid his last respects, “Kezit csokolom anyukám. Mom, I kiss your hand.” I thought, ‘You should kiss her feet!’ Then, as if he was wounded, he stumbled as he made his getaway, and left. ‘That’s it,’ I thought, ‘and after Mother had been waiting for him all these years! And me having to hear, and here we go again, her ask week after week the same question, “Have you heard from Pisti? Any news from him?” And I always answered her the same way, “No. But someone said a friend of his, Kenedi – you remember his very tall friend “The Giraffe” who had to lower his head to get in the door, remember? – he said he saw him in Toronto, and he’s doing fine.” And Mother always said, “Oh, yes. Do you know how your brother is? How is he doing?” So, I told her again and for the umpteenth time what she wanted to hear. “He’s married and has two children, two boys.” 

“Two boys?

“Yes, Sean and Ian. English, Canadian names.”

When I heard his son’s name was Sean, I thought of Sean Connery and James Bond, agent 007. 

 “Oh,” she said, as if surprised.

I didn’t tell Mother about his wife Pauline. (Pauline Watson was her full name. I thought of Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’ biographer, that exclaimed, “Your merits should be publicly recognized!” Concerning my brother, that’s a laugh!) She was Anglican and their children were being raised as good Christians, not Jewish like us God forbid! Because Pisti, whose Hebrew name was Yitzchak, was born the same week the war broke out. Also, when Hungary’s first anti-Jewish law was adopted. Nonetheless, he had his brit milah (his circumcision) in the apartment at Dob utca (Drum Street) 89 in Budapest. Now most everyone calls him Steve. HIS kids don’t EVEN know he was JEWISH. Or WANT to know. The mother of his children had the shoulders of an OG, an offensive guard. He’d found a woman with her head on her shoulders, not like Mother, a shoulder he could lean on.

Anyway, Mother had had enough! She isn’t EVER going to ASK me about him again, about her PISTI or his FAMILY. 

NEVER AGAIN! I knew now, she’s ready to die.