Missing Page

By Alan Sivell

I’ve written a bit in the last 50 years. Here’s a chapter from a book I’m writing. I’ll post more throughout the summer.

I still miss my brother.

It’s been so long now – more 50 years – that initially it’s hard to remember anything but the great adventures we shared. Page pushed me to do things I was too afraid to do on my own initiative. Without him, I probably wouldn’t know what it was like to sit in the principal’s office or a police station, watching the big clock move at half the speed of time in the outside world.

Still, it doesn’t take long to recall him beating me up 3-5 times a week. He marked every conquest on an old, heavy-duty, cardboard wardrobe box from the Greyhound Moving Company. It stood at the end of the hall, filled with my father’s Navy dress uniforms, my mom’s wool clothes from the 40s and the scent of mothballs.

He’d squeeze my head or neck with controlled viciousness until snot was coming out my nose and I was croaking “Uncle” in a hoarse whisper because I had no air or sense left in my body.

Our bedrooms were on the third floor of a well-built, turn-of-the-century house, too far away for my parents to determine whether my airless cries were for help or were of joy. There were hundreds of marks of conquest for Page on the wardrobe box. And just three for me. Mine all involved surprise attacks.

I would jump out of the darkened bathroom and get him in a chokehold. A real one, like I was going to choke the life out of him. Because I had to or I was going to see another mark on his side of the wardrobe.

Most of the time the surprise attacks failed. But three times over the course of the eight years we lived together in that house, I made him say uncle. It means nothing to anyone else, but I’m still proud of it.

Page was a tough guy. He didn’t just rule the 3rdfloor of the house on Beverly Road. He was known throughout town. When we got to high school, he worked for and earned a reputation as the one guy you didn’t want to fight. As more and more kids began avoiding him and his fists, he went looking for them. He would stand outside the town dances and either beat up people before they went in to the dance or if they came outside for a cigarette. If either of those failed, he’d knock a couple of kids out after the dance.

He rarely went inside himself, which, to me, was nuts. He was tall, good-looking and girls swarmed him. Well, not the good girls. He was too dangerous. In our white-bread suburb, he was a hood. The popular girls wished he were a bit less crazed and slightly more predictable because he was very smart and could be charming.

They went out with the football players and jocks that were a bit easier to control. Page would ask them to do things they didn’t want to do. Like have sex, of course, but also riding around town with him in whatever car he happened to steal that day.

The girls he did attract were needy and not very sure of themselves. They gave themselves to Page to keep him around. They liked his decisiveness. Unlike other boys their age, he had an idea of what he wanted and went after it. Even if it was often illegal.

One of the few times he did go into a dance brought trouble. I had my first steady girlfriend and she, Page and I were talking between sets of the band when some guy about 2/3 Page’s size walks up and starts mouthing off.

“Hey, tough guy,” the squirt began.

Page didn’t look at the kid, but his eyes flickered a bit, like they do when you think a fruit fly has crossed your vision.

The kid got closer, violating our personal space.

“Hey, tough guy,” the squirt tried again. “I hear you’re not so tough. I hear you only fight pussies.”

Page slowly turned toward the kid and stared.

“Keep it up, pipsqueak,” he snarled. “In about five seconds you are going to be flat on your back.”

The little guy attempted an exaggerated laugh, full of bravado. “I hear you’re nowhere near as tough…”

Wham!

Page didn’t wait the full five seconds. He swung a left hook to the side of the intruder’s head and the kid dropped like a sack of flour.

But it was a setup. As the kid hit the ground, all the hoodlums from the other side of town seemed to descend like the endless hordes of Roman soldiers in Ben-Hur. They came from everywhere, some of them seemingly dropping from the ceiling. Page was at the bottom of the pile in an instant. He got a couple of punches in, but he got the worst of it, with bruises all over his face and body and a permanent ban from town dances. Yeah, he was known around town – by the kids, the adults and the police.

I don’t know when his troubles started, but when we moved to West Hartford, Connecticut in 1959, it seemed that Liz, who was only 2, and I, then 8, did just fine. None of us had wanted to move. We had lived in a great neighborhood in Elsmere, New York with loads of kids and places to play. We resisted West Hartford and hoped our parents might change their minds and take us back. No such luck.

Once I got to school and had a chance to meet some of the new kids at recess or on bathroom breaks, I learned that kids are kids everywhere. I realized these Connecticut kids were reacting to me the same way my friends in Elsmere had. It was just a different cast of characters. It might take some time, but I would eventually rebuild my social life.

Page and Carol had a more difficult time. Carol, who was 12, because she was entering a new junior high school and neighborhood at a socially awkward time of her life. Page because he was Page and because at our new school, he drew a very short straw as far as teachers go.

Mr. Klienman may not have been the worst teacher for everyone, but he was the worst for Page. The guy was very strict. Even stricter than our parents, who were mighty strict. This guy believed in the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic) but he added his own, fourth R: rules.

Page chafed so much under those rules that even before it was commonly done, my mom went to the class to “help out.” At least that’s what she told us but we later learned it was to keep an eye on Mr. Klienman at least as much as it was to keep an eye on Page. Her conclusion was that Mr. Klienman was right near the edge of sanity and Page was doing his best to push him over it.

And several times, he nearly succeeded. In Page’s mind, that was great fun, and he kept pushing authority for the rest of his life.

Page and mom in Levittown, N.Y., a few months after he was born, 1949.

There were lots of times Page tried to get me to rebel. The first time was when we were about 5 and 7, on a warm summer night after we got home from the county fair. We were piling out of the car when Page got it in his head that we should just run around the yard and avoid going into the house as we’d been instructed. With the sun down, the heat of the day was gone and it was almost cool. We ran around the yard chasing fireflies. Nobody called for us, but we knew the rules. When we got home and were told to go in the house, we were supposed to go in the house.

We knew there would be a price to pay. And that price, if the infraction were serious enough, was the belt. Our dad was in the “belt” stage of discipline.

Now, as I look back as an adult, I realize it’s a parent at the end of his rope, unable to think of another way to control a life that is spinning out of control with kids and work issues. He had 4 kids under the age of 10 and he was used to an orderly life, especially during the day when he was at work. But life at home with 4 young kids isn’t always orderly. Oh, we learned pretty quickly to be well behaved, but every once in a while we broke the rules. And this night, with the excitement of the fair and our bodies rushing through the cool country air was not a night for rules.

Eventually, I knew, we had to go in. Page wanted to keep running. He figured we were already in trouble; it couldn’t get any worse for us. That reasoning would not help him in future escapades. I finally decided to give myself up. But I was afraid of the belt. Page started to give me advice, as if he were a prisoner who had been serving hard time all his life, talking to a new inmate in the system. Mind you, he was 7 and I was 5.

He told me about the time he put a magazine in his pants for padding. However, we were outside and didn’t have any magazines with us. Besides, he said once Doom – we called our dad Doom and I’ll explain in the next chapter – once Doom realized he had a magazine, he got another couple of whacks. We looked for some other stuffing for our pants, but couldn’t find anything in the dark. Then Page started psyching me up for being able to handle the punishment and not having it hurt too much.

We marched in and Doom was standing there with the belt. I got it first – 2 whacks with the belt – and it didn’t hurt. Doom’s heart wasn’t in it – it was more of a symbolic gesture. And I laughed and gleefully hopped away and turned back to watch Page. Because Doom realized he had gone a bit light on me – for a long time, the baby in the family – Page got it a bit harder. But he just kept looking at me as if to say, “No big deal.”

When I say my dad was in the belt stage, it’s a bit of an exaggeration. My dad would move as if he were reaching for his belt. But I don’t really remember him ever using it other than this time.

This picture says a lot about Page’s and my relationship. Altamont, N.Y. 1954

The next act of rebellion came when we were moving the next year. The moving van was in the front yard and Page dared me to run under it. We had been told to stay out of the movers’ way and stay away from the truck. Page ran under it and looked back at me and called me chicken. So naturally, I ran under it. Several times. It was quite a thrill. Again, it wasn’t my idea. It was Page, my influential big brother, who got me to do it. And to this day, whenever I see a semi, I think about running under it.

In our new home in Connecticut, Page and I were each assigned a bedroom on the 3rdfloor. In those days, the reasoning was to put the boys farther away and keep the girls close. The girls needed more protection, I guess. That … and they were neater. I was thrilled. I loved that room and returned to it for solace until the day we sold the house 50 years later.

Page and I got along for the most part, even when he was squeezing the life out of me on the 3rdfloor. We were just different characters. He had more of a scientific mind than I did and needed to be constantly stimulated while I was more of a reader and didn’t mind being alone for long stretches at a time.

I admired the way he could take things apart and put them back together … although Doom didn’t much like coming home to find parts of his favorite radio spread all over the kitchen table. Page thought I was pretty funny and I worked that humor to keep him in a good mood. My comments, though, would often spill out before I had a chance to think. Or to be more truthful, they would spill out because I was more interested in getting a laugh or a result rather than worrying about that inevitable punch in the nose. If I had a good line, I just couldn’t resist letting it out.

Page got into fights with his fists, I got into them with my mouth.

One of our last minor, unpunished adventures happened when I was in 5thgrade. Page said we needed to ride our bikes up to the school. That seemed odd, as it was on a Sunday and deep in the New England fall, November, almost winter and well past bike riding season. Still, I went along even though I had no idea why. Page could be persistent when he wanted company.

Then Page wanted to know what I thought if he found a hand warmer or a lighter. Did I think it would be a good idea if we lit it? Of course. It was cold. But what were the odds of finding a random hand warmer and matches?

We rode up behind the old greenhouses next to the school – the greenhouses where everyone met after school to fight it out – and the next thing I know, Page has found some matches and some cigarettes. Well, he says, these aren’t a hand warmer, but maybe they’ll keep us warm. So we sat behind the greenhouses and smoked.

It didn’t take me long, just about a year or so, to figure out that he stashed the cigs there in the first place and the whole trip to the old greenhouses to mess around was his ruse to go up there and smoke. They didn’t make much of an impression on me because I didn’t pick up the habit for real for another 6 years. But it was just another instance where hanging out with Page put me closer to trouble than I wanted to be.

It would not be the last.