I didn't go to the brothers' meeting with Mary Lou. Since the initial time with her, I had not had any contact. It was a kind of a morose thing for lack of a better term. I guess it's all going to come to us, the aging process. No way to stop it but of all the things that could happen, losing it was not one I wanted or anybody that I knew for that matter. Putting Cal in a nursing home somehow didn't seem right but then again, I didn't have to live with him. I wanted to understand. There were the stories of him getting lost, flying into rages. And, the effect on the family. It just seems that for him to be in a controlled environment would be better. Go along with it. Well, what choice do we have?
I don't know when Cal's life spiraled out of control or if it did. I was gone most of the time, school, graduate school, the military. Most of my info came from the brothers. Bad business decisions, trouble with the IRS, possibly drugs. I wasn't totally sure. Cal had always been more than a little secretive, disappearing off the radar screen for days, telling you only partially what was happening. When he was absent, the brothers often speculated where the mystery man might be. "I think he's got another woman," Larry allowed.
"I don't think so," Michael would chime in.
But, then again our big brother wanted to believe the best about the rest of us. Most of the time I was silent. In my own mind, there was no evidence of another woman or anything. And besides, it was not like we were the moral gate keepers but there was a code, but I didn't always know what it was.
What all the brothers had to admit, however, was that his secrecy had about ruined him financially. It all happened fairly innocently, the IRS assessed him $70,000 more in taxes one year and instead of getting a lawyer and fighting it, he sat down and wrote them a check for 75 grand. It was a license for them to come after him.
His downfall came slowly. There was no better entrepreneur than Cal. He lost his business, started another and another. One day when I was in town during this bleak period, I chased him down where he was working, pumping gas. It was heartbreaking but somehow he didn't seem to feel as badly about his plight in life as I did.
I was lost in thought still when the brothers dropped me off, resigned that Cal was going to be put away. Well, guess it was for the best. I was not around. There was still some mystery, hovering on how it all came to be. There was one thing for sure; I had lost the friendship of my sister-in-law. I guess it was a little like divorce. Have to choose sides. Damn. What right did I have to say anything? Out pursuing my own life, I hadn't been around. And, if I had been, what difference would it have made. You can't control another's behavior and surely can't be responsible for it.