How we were held over the Styx

I can feel this weekend settling into me like a fine dust, covering and permeating every surface.

I've never cared for weddings -- never planned them as a little girl, never desired one as a straight-faced adult -- and I haven't felt connected to Tyler for years, now. When people said "Oh, that will be fun!" about my trip to see his Vermont wedding, I faked a smile and nodded, then changed the subject. It would be a fun weekend, I thought, but only because I had planned a side-trip with friends, to Canada.

It caught me off-guard, then, which is the only way I can be (truly) caught.

At the rehearsal dinner, at a tasteful and spacious house in the country, I saw Tyler as he is with friends instead of family. I watched him transform into an adult version of the tender, quick-to-laugh, open and vulnerable child I knew before (before hospitals and ambulances and screaming and police and sharp, consuming bitterness). I glimpsed in his speech of thanks to his best man and the maid of honor what sort of person he had secretly become -- secret to his family, because we would have crushed it. Even I would have.

He is a good man, my brother, and I am unspeakably relieved.

Spencer and I sat and laughed the entire dinner, on a corner of the wraparound couch, balancing plates on our knees and making jokes told by mothers, bearable. I asked what he had gotten them as a gift, and he shook his head. I shook mine in response; I hadn't gotten them anything, either. Raising his eyebrows in mock desperation, he reached into his back pocket, pulled out a pen and his wallet, then a twenty dollar bill. I burst out laughing.

"Are you going to put my name on it, too?" I asked Spencer, his pen poised above the old bill.

"Yes," he said, and laughed.

I pushed him away, palm flat on his shoulder, and he pretended to fall over on the couch and protested: "Hey! That's my Achilles...armpit..." I laughed so hard that I had to lean back on the couch to breathe.

I felt the connection like a tangible cord. He is so often distracted, with video games or girlfriend or movies or Mom, and I am so often guarded and only-sarcastic -- but laughter fed on itself until I had no choice: "You know, I don't know how our family ended up related," I said to him, "but this...this makes sense."

Spencer grinned and seemed sorry to leave me at the end of the night. I was sorry to leave him.

During the ceremony the next day, when I knew I would not cry though others would, I peered down the aisle as Sarah approached, then looked back at Tyler. His face, red and teary and terrifyingly grateful, moved something in me to understanding: Sarah is my sister.

At the reception, I remembered how Mom had fretted over the mother-son dance she and Tyler had spent only ten minutes discussing. He had joked that they should dance to The Spinners' "Rubber Band Man" -- a disco tune Tyler loves -- and she had been talking about it since, wondering if she should practice, wondering if he had been serious. She had asked me to drive her to the mall that morning to buy props: giant rubber bands like the ones the band used in concerts.

When Tyler and Mom got onto the dance floor, soft instrumental music began playing, and they clung to each other in the middle, swaying awkwardly. About a minute in, the DJ played a scratching sound, switching songs, and Mom and Tyler pulled out large elastic bands and began to dance. In sync, they stretched the bands up, down, over their necks, walked in circles, stepped through them -- Spencer and I gaped at each other in disbelief. This mother was different than the one we knew; this mother was young and ready for the discotech and happy. This mother was pliable and eager. I jumped up in my heels. I felt like an evangelist: Did you see? Did you see what they did? I was absurdly proud, absurdly ready to cry.

I have fought for years for these pieces of them -- some safe, small parts of us, vulnerable and good -- to see even the heels of my family members pass by still soft and untouched by the trauma and darkness of our pasts. These were answers.