That my brother showed up at all that Sunday was the insult, or so I thought at the time. Robert1 knew better. He knew what it had been like for me living in my in-laws’ large home in Chicago. Trying to fit in, trying not to make waves, trying to earn a semblance of acceptance from them. And he knew what my in-laws were like: quiet, peaceful people, shy of conflict and anger. They had generously taken my husband, Antonio, and me in after we both lost our jobs.

I told Robert all of this, and more, that summer during our long phone conversations, which had formed themselves into a pattern. I’d call Robert one day; he’d call me a few days later. Then it would be my turn again. When I called him two days in a row and got only his voice mail, with the rock’n’roll blaring behind his cheerful recorded voice, I knew. Even before the calls from his landlord and business associates and girlfriend, I knew. My brother was drinking again.

There are some things you should know about him—the sober side of him. He’s smart, he’s funny, he’s talented. He has many friends, mostly women, who fuss over him, worry about him. He listens to opera. He lives alone. He dotes on his three cats, brushing them, stroking them, chastising them to eat from their separate bowls. (They never listen.) His house is filled with plants and things in chrome frames: old coins, abstract paintings, his color photographs of roof peaks shot at odd angles. I idolized Robert for many years: my big brother. He wears tweed jackets and faded jeans, Western boots and a cowboy hat. His wavy hair is peppered with gray. He’s in love with Emmylou Harris and lets me in on a secret: if he ever disappears, he says, it’ll be to follow her concert tour. He plays her music at ear-splitting levels.

But the music stops when Robert starts drinking; his house becomes a whisper. The curtains are drawn against the traffic whishing by on the street. The cats make no sound as they rush, bewildered, onto his bed, only to be shooed away by him. I know this because I’d seen it. Several times in the prior six months I had driven to his house, let myself in, and stood quietly at the foot of his bed, reassuring myself that he was still alive. He waved me away.

The heavy drinking started two years earlier, when he had landed a job as the lead art director at a big advertising agency. He was excited and proud, calling everyone in the family to announce his promotion. He was supposed to start the new job on a Monday morning. Inexplicably, he never showed up for work, never even called the ad agency. Instead, he started drinking on Sunday evening and kept drinking all through Monday.

I shouldn’t have taken Robert’s car; I knew better. I’d gone to a few Al-Anon meetings. I believed the alcoholism counselors when they told me I couldn’t control his drinking. That I’m not responsible. That I couldn’t cure him. That I shouldn’t rescue him. But I have children. And when I walk with them down city sidewalks, I hold their hands firmly and place them on the side of me away from the road, away from the cars, some of which are driven, I know, by drivers who are drunk.

Others had tried to stop Robert’s drunk driving, and failed, during prior binges. His landlord removed the fuse for the ignition switch; Robert simply called his auto club. His girlfriend, Trixie, took his car keys away and brought them to me; he used other sets hidden in his house.

So on a sweltering Saturday night, when I found the strange set of car keys in my purse, an idea began to form. I had the power to protect, if not him, at least the children and mothers walking down the street. Fathers in pickup trucks coming home to supper, paused in the middle of an intersection with their signal lights blinking. Old people with canes who would only be able to look over their shoulders and stare if a black Trans Am jumped the curb and careened toward them.

I penned two notes in a bold, shaky hand that looked foreign to me. “I’ve taken your car,” I wrote, “so no one gets hurt. I’ll return it when you’re sober again.” I taped the notes, folded, to each entrance to Robert’s house, and fumbled nervously with the gate latch leaving his yard. Antonio watched quietly, soberly, from our car, which idled in the glow of a streetlight. He pantomimed: Do you want me to drive? No, I motioned, it has to be me.

My brother’s car smelled of stale beer, and the air-conditioning didn’t work. I rolled down the windows. As I drove it through the dark neighborhood streets, I imagined a conversation with a judge. I would be calm, unemotional, matter-of-fact. “Your honor, I know I had no legal right to take his property. Would you be willing to consider these special circumstances?” I sat up straight as I drove and practiced looking dignified.

The judge in my mind was dismissing the case as I stopped at the Ashland Avenue light. It turned green; I accelerated. There was a delay before the car responded, sluggishly. I slowly pushed the pedal to the floor. Nothing. I shifted into neutral and managed to glide to the curb. My husband flashed his headlights behind me: What’s wrong?

Of course, I realized. No gas. My husband pulled up behind me and parked. He squeezed himself up against my car door, protecting himself from the cars gliding by. I rolled down the window. “Don’t you just love him?” I said. It seemed like nothing with my brother was ever easy. Then I remembered the empty gas can he always kept in his trunk and asked my husband to wait with the stalled car.

The gas station was a block away. When I returned, Antonio stood at the curb, his mouth set, his arms folded across his chest. He hadn’t bargained for this when we first met. Then, one by one—my father, my mother, and now my older brother—had revealed themselves to be, well, drunks. My father had died at home of a heart attack after an extended binge. My mother had been in and out of treatment. Alcoholism had destroyed my family.

I removed the gas cap. Gasoline dribbled down the side of the red can and onto my sandals when I hefted the spout toward the opening behind the license plate. I knew my shoes would be ruined. A thin trail of greasy fluid wound its way from my toes toward the sewer grate. Antonio stood there and watched.

“That’s okay. No use both of us getting full of this stuff,” I said, suddenly feeling sorry for myself. Antonio hadn’t offered. “Got a cigarette?” I joked, to cover up my shame. He frowned impatiently.

That was a Saturday night in July. When Sunday noon came and Robert hadn’t called, I began to relax. I imagined him coming upon my note early that morning when he usually ventured out to make his booze runs. He would see the empty spot in his driveway and return to bed, a bit angry at me but understanding—feeling, well, even grateful toward me. My fear had been that he would call the police and they would show up at my in-laws’ front door, my note in hand, asking, “Did you write this, miss?”

I planned to stand up straight. “Yes. Won’t you please come in?”

But none of that happened.

I spent Sunday afternoon talking with the crowd of my husband’s relatives scattered throughout my in-laws’ home. We’d finished our usual Sunday lunch. My four-year-old daughter, Eleanor, and her little cousins were out on the backyard swings; the men watched old movies on television in the sunroom; the women prepared fruit salad in the kitchen. Around five o’clock I was upstairs changing Alana’s diaper when my husband hurried into the bedroom.

“He’s downstairs,” he said. “In the dining room. Demanding a drink.”

I was astonished. I hadn’t imagined Robert walking the fifteen city blocks to our house. I was struck by the absurdity of it. He didn’t need a car to get booze. The grocery store, which, foolishly, still accepted his rubber checks, was around the corner from his house. If he could walk all the way to my in-laws’ house, he could certainly manage the walk to the corner store. I handed the baby to my husband and rushed down the stairs, with him following.

My brother stood—swayed, really—in the carpeted dining room. He was a mess. His faded shirt hung open. His hair looked greasy. He wore no socks. Dried blood streaked across his forehead. Something like disgust waved through me. When he saw me, he lifted trembling hands to his belt loops, trying unsuccessfully to hook his thumbs there. Thus composed, he said with great indignation, “Where’s my car?” The men in the sunroom continued to look at the television, but all conversation had stopped. I was grateful they kept their backs turned. The women in the kitchen fell silent.

I went to the front door and pulled it open. “You cannot be in this house when you’re drunk,” I said. “I’ll talk to you outside. Not in here. Come on. Now.” I turned to lead him out the door and heard glass clinking. I spun around and saw him lifting a half-gallon bottle of wine from my father-in-law’s liquor collection on the credenza. I told Robert to put it back, it didn’t belong to him. He clutched the bottle to his chest. I reached to grab the bottle but saw he had already uncapped it, so I hastily pulled my hand away—too late. He jerked away. A splash of burgundy turned black as blood as it sank into the royal-blue carpeting. Behind my brother one whole wall of the dining room was covered in mirrors. I could imagine the bottle hitting the mirrors and shattering both, perhaps shattering me as well. My husband stood nearby, still holding our baby. On a chair behind him a cousin’s newborn slept.

“Go ahead, take it!” I said. “Just leave.” My brother staggered out the door and I slammed it behind him. I leaned against the door and trembled; my knees felt weak. I’d brought danger and ugliness to this house of peaceful people. My brother had turned into a drunken menacing stranger. I was afraid of my own kin. I began to cry. My husband grabbed my arm firmly.

“Get ahold of yourself,” he said. “There are decisions to be made. Should we call the police?”

I shook my head. “No. What’s the charge? Stealing a bottle of wine? Your parents let him in.” My husband corrected me. Robert had entered the house unannounced through the unlocked kitchen door, startling my mother-in-law and the other women. She had politely offered him food.

“No,” I told Antonio, “just let him go.”

“Where’s my car!” My brother was hollering through the closed front door. “I want my car!”

My husband passed Alana to me and yanked the door open.

“South on Clarendon,” Antonio shouted back, gesturing to the right. “Now get out of here!”

My brother staggered away. I held our squirming baby tightly. It’s over, I thought. He’s gone. Maybe all the kids playing in the backyard, Eleanor included, hadn’t even seen him.

We watched from the front windows as my brother stumbled down the driveway and across the street, holding the wine bottle by its neck. Passersby dodged away from him. He stopped on the sidewalk and downed whatever was left of the half-gallon jug in what looked like one long gulp, smashing the bottle onto the pavement when he was done. I ran from the window, up the stairs, and into our bedroom. I threw myself across the bed. My husband followed me with Alana and in a rush of words comforted me. A few minutes passed. Then I heard Eleanor hollering as she came up the stairs.

“Mommy!” she said. “Uncle’s by the gate and he says he wants his car and for me to come and tell you!”

I pulled her into my arms and hugged her close.

“Honey, did he hurt—?” She shook her head. Then it dawned on me. I’d parked my brother’s car two blocks north on Clarendon, not south. My husband had deliberately misled him. Alana reached gleefully for her big sister’s hair. “Thank you, honey. You stay here with Daddy, okay?”

“I’ll call the police!” I shouted from the porch steps to the man at the gate. “I mean it.” He looked at me a long moment and said quietly, “Where’s my car? I couldn’t find it.” I gave him clear directions and repeated them twice.

“Now go!”

My brother swayed down the driveway again, touching the row of parked cars for support. He’d never make it. The wine had taken effect; he could barely stand upright. I ran back inside the house. “If he finds the car, he’ll probably pull out right in front of somebody,” I said to my husband. He nodded. I saw him talk to one of his cousins. I pulled my brother’s car keys from my purse and tossed them to my husband. The two men rushed out the door. From the window, I saw my husband run down the block. He caught up with my brother under a billowing tree of heaven. Slowly they turned the corner together and were gone. The baby squirmed to get down. Eleanor turned her face toward mine.

“Mommy, is Uncle going to be all right?”

Tears stung my eyes and I lowered Alana into her playpen. I lifted Eleanor into my arms. “I hope so.”

Antonio drove Robert’s car, with Robert in it, back to his house. The cousin followed in another car. As Antonio left him, my brother turned to him and muttered, “Asshole.” Antonio told me this quietly as he dropped my brother’s extra car keys back into my purse.

I didn’t talk to my brother for many days. But I talked to Trixie, I talked to our mother, I talked to our cousins, I talked to my friends, I talked to his friends. What to do, what to do. I talked and talked on the phone, reliving the horror and the sorrow and the confusion. My brother was addicted to booze, and I had become addicted to the drama of my brother. He had the disease, but I was the one getting emotionally ill. Obsessed with Robert’s every move, Trixie and I talked on the phone for hours every day, wondering how he was, wondering if his landlord was going to kick him out, wondering what we could do or say to stop this terrible unspooling.

“Come on, honey,” Antonio whispered. “Hang up. Let’s take the kids to the beach. We’ll bring a lunch.” He was silhouetted in the doorway to our bedroom, the midmorning sun flowing in through the hallway windows. I was stretched out on top of the covers with the phone in my hand.

“Not now. I have to call my mom and figure out what we should do if Robert gets evicted.”

Antonio turned to leave, then came back into the bedroom. He spoke in a tone I’d never heard before. “You know, the kids and I could die,” he spat out, “and you wouldn’t even notice.” A tremor of fear ran through me. He glared at me and left.

I thought I was going to be sick. But I couldn’t fully take in what he was saying. If I didn’t save my brother, who would?

A few days after the Sunday he came to my in-laws’ house, my brother flagged down a policeman and asked to be taken to a detox center, where he spent two nights. A few days after he returned home, he called me one night after supper. I was scrubbing creamed corn from the baby’s high chair and my mother-in-law handed me the phone, whispering, “It’s him.” I stepped around the corner into the empty dining room with the phone and leaned against the credenza. I didn’t feel like looking in the wall of mirrors.

My brother was full of apologies and the usual reassurances. “Everything’s fine now, Sis. I’ve licked it!”

I pictured him pacing through his kitchen as he spoke, picking brown brittle leaves from the scented geranium on the windowsill by his sink, clean shaven now, his house once again tidy. The only sign to an untrained eye of the ordeal he’d been through—one he would repeat for several more years—was the slight tremor in his hands.

“Robert, I’ve finally learned something,” I said softly. “Your struggle is yours. Not mine. Dealing with your problem has been damaging to me. And to my family.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“I wish you no ill will,” I continued, “but I don’t want to see you for a while. I want you to know, though, that I still care about you very much.” My voice quavered.

“Yes,” he said. “I know that too.”

Then I joined my husband and daughters out in the garden. I slid my arm around my husband’s waist. We smiled as baby Alana, hiccupping, crawled between the rows of lush greenness and tugged at frothy carrot tops. Together we drank in the sight of Eleanor chasing fireflies in the dusk.

But before I went out the door, I had rummaged through my cluttered purse. My brother’s extra car keys gave a soft thud when they landed on the bottom of the wastebasket.

*All names have been changed.

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