The Torturer’s Apprentice

Posted on July 31, 2008

When my sister was five, I was able to convince her the TV remote could turn her off. I was twelve and reeking of adolescence. My sister would make a rookie mistake, a blanket endorsement of the cartoon machine my pre-pubescence was raging against. She would want to watch “Inspector Gadget.” This was troubling on any number of fronts. I was about to become a man and while I might not have known what the soundtrack of my rebellion would be, I was damned if it would be, “Go Gadget Go.” I trained my eyes on edgier fare. Programs such as “Charles in Charge” where passion, fidelity, envy and sloth were pondered in twenty-four minute increments. But then little sis would toddle in, dressed in her pink ballerina tutu, with her button nose and pixie hair and eyes blind with adoration.

“Go Gadget Go!” she’d say, and I’d somehow have to swallow the urge to stuff her headfirst into the toilet.

“I’m watching Charles in Charge,” I said.

I expected a moment of contemplation. She was after all a sentient being, a pinnacle of evolution. She wasn’t chasing cars down the interstate.

But little sis persisted undaunted. There was no forethought, no cause and effect, much the same as the ten or so times she’d leapt headfirst out of her crib, or the mass destruction of private property in the wildcat years that followed. Her reputation as a sort of sugarplum black widow had earned her the nom de guarre, Rebecca the Wrecker.

I had to be tough. It was for her own good. I raised the remote control like a laser, “You know,” I explained with a clean sense of purpose, “these TV remotes have a special button. One where I can turn you off.” The shift in her eyes was instantaneous and she stared at the chunky black remote as though it was a cold steel weapon.

“But you love me?” she said, like it was a question.

“I never said I’d keep you off. I’ll probably turn you back on eventually, but if you don’t get out of the way, I’ll zap you til the end of Charles in Charge… Here… Have a preview.”

For an instant everything went dead, as we hung in suspended animation. Sis waited for me to move, but I wouldn’t. Only the sound of “Charles in Charge” trickled disjointedly in the background. I pressed the red button. “How was it?”

Sis wiped a tear from her eye, “It was terrible.”

Time has passed. Adolescence, work, the depravity of gravity beginning to tug on our youthful bodies. Little sis is twenty-seven and I’m thirty-three. Our lives have run like Monopoly boards—we’ve circled once and returned home—me, a victim of poor health, sis one of unfortunate circumstance. I don’t seem to have warped her badly. Thanks to my work, she stopped chasing Inspector Gadget and started chasing Marines. Apparently, sis requires a man who can fire a basic infantry weapon. But otherwise she turned out normal. She hopes to be a school librarian, when there are jobs for school librarians. And so we sit in Marvin Gardens, little sis waiting, me recuperating, our bedrooms set at catty corner.

You learn new things about your sister when living together a second time. I’ve learned my sister loves television, loves it to the point of a twelve-step program. She’s a treasure trove of production deals, an encyclopedia of past credits. My room is filled with mom’s cookbooks, at least a thousand tomes—while sis has a super phat media center. When I go to sleep in the cookbook library, sis is calm in the light of her television. She’s watching “Christmas Wishes Comes True” starring Valerie Bertanelli, Santa Claus, and a well-oiled handyman. A blanket is swept over her knees and warm milk steams in a tall thick glass. The remote control always stays within reach and I think this goes back to our childhood.

She always holds it very tightly, always wants to know where it is.

I noticed this once, and then again, until one night it occurred to me, “Holy shit, I broke my sister!” A wave of guilt rolled over my body, and I felt a need for cosmic accounting. As a kid, I had abused the privilege of turning off my sister. I’d done so because it was convenient, and sometimes because it was fun. I turned sis off to watch tv, or listen to my Top Gun soundtrack. I turned her off occasionally just to watch her spin around. I turned her off for days and weeks, always wondering where she went. Sometimes we would have conversations. I poured us cups of lemonade and gave her oatmeal raisin cookies, then addressed her with a cordial, brother-sister salutation.

“How is your afternoon going?”

“Turn me on!”

And I should have. But I was lousy with acne, and girls didn’t like me, and there was an outside chance I was going to flunk math. I wore astigmatic contact lenses, the best technology of Reagan’s day, but the discs felt brittle on my eyes, like twin shavings of plastic. Little sis deserved better, but clearly I wasn’t up for the task. Today was a different story, however. Today was when I could finally show all I’d learned from “Charles in Charge.”

Because the root of our conflict was television, I realized moral justice demanded I endure some kind of tv torture. An evening where sis could compel me to watch anything on her dvr. I would be forced to endure whatever horrors her demented media mind fathomed. This would last as long as she wanted. I was, to use the prison vernacular, her softy, her bitch, no matter how many pounds of cosmetics were involved, or how many leading men were named Aidan. And if she harbored rage in her heart, she could choose to digitally waterboard me with all ten episodes of “The Bachelor.”

This was a settling of old scores. A move made ever more dangerous because little sister is a sadist. Maybe she’d call for reinforcements. Army. Navy. Air Force. Marines.

“Bring it on,” Wrecker said, when I made my peace offering.

I saw my future clearly now. The wheels in her head moved fast on their pins, and all I could do was smile like Gandhi, hope that my non-violent campaign might somehow win her better instincts. Sis was a sweetheart, she wasn’t all body armor. This was a woman who kept the Thanksgiving Day Parade permanently on her dvr. She enjoyed the giant cartoon balloons and fancy Broadway dance numbers.

But in the short term, she’d make it rough. For two weeks, she taunted me, whispered opaquely in my ear of everything she had in store. Or more accurately, stored. She was compiling a compendium of tampon commercials, flower ceremonies, and long-lost siblings unknowingly married, a testament to sugar and smut like none compiled before.

“Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you,” she said too calmly.

“You enjoy my hopeless pain.”

Sis grinned, “Isn’t that the point of this whole little exercise?”

The apocalypse began at just after eight. Sis had no fewer than four Hallmark Hall of Fame movies at her immediate disposal. There was a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, but I quickly saw through that facade; knew it would never be turned on. Sis lay calm across her floor, a bowl of ice cream near her chin, as though this was a slumber party. On her bookshelves were tiny porcelain horses and women in eighteenth century gowns. It seemed an unlikely place for a massacre.

I sat on the bed. “Do your worst,” I told her.

First choice: “Farmer Wants a Wife.” “Season finale,” sis beamed. Then, to twist the knife a bit further, “You’ve never had a reality show where a farmer’s looking for a wife.”

I agreed, it was historic. Sis explained how the episode involved a battle between the final two girls—one from Texas, the other New York. Would Farmer choose Manhattan, who wandered the drug stores of rural Missouri searching for boxes of condoms? Or would he choose Dallas, the sweet girl with the big ol’ smile who looked like Snow White with a tanning bed addiction?

“Seems more his type,” sis said.

Meanwhile, Manhattan could catch the next bus. One came through town each week, we imagined. “She’d be complaining about no shoes,” sis said. One picnic and horse-drawn carriage ride later, Farmer invited the town to his farm to reveal the lucky lady’s name… on the banner of a crop duster.

“You’re sapping my will to live,” I told her.

Sis smiled and switched to the next. This one, “Movies That Rock ” had been warming on her dvr since December. It appeared harmless enough at first, until the curtain rose on Beyonce dressed as Judy Garland. Chris Brown tried to shake it like Elvis. A Pussy Cat Doll looked embarrassed as Marilyn. Carrie Underwood sang to the Von Trapps, while Mark Anthony murdered Mrs. Robinson. Big stars, bad production numbers, costumes borrowed from Busch Gardens. If torture meant laughter, sis had a killer on her hands. Usher paid homage to “Singing in the Rain”—but splashed through the puddles like a little girl. No one ever looked more graceful romping through puddles than Gene Kelly.

“Are you having a good time?” sis asked.

For a moment I’d forgotten myself, but sis didn’t look dismayed. Her look said something else all together.

“What was your plan tonight?” I asked.

“Just to spend time with you. See where it takes us.”

“Really? Just that?”

“After a long day at the grind, we need it.”

It was then I saw the whole thing clearly. Punishment was her siren song, which was strange because we’re not Catholic. Sis had used it as a way to spend an evening together. My sister is much sweeter than I am. I’ve grown cranky near middle age, while sis maintains her earnest idealism. Maybe I deserve some credit for this: For years of mistakes I aspired she not repeat. For all of the things that I did wrong, but hoped she might get right. Maybe what older siblings give balances our baser instincts, absolves us of those unfortunate moments when we fire remote controls into our loved ones. Foundations, after all, are erected on forgiveness. Life is temporary, intimacies fleeting. In the end, we learn to love the few who learn to love us.

“One thing,” I asked sis. “If you just wanted to spend time together, why not invite me to hang out?”

Sis smiled in a satisfied way. In the dark arts of sibling sadism, she’d been trained by something close to a master. She began erasing Hallmark movies, searching for something a little less brutal. Maybe Victoria’s Secret, even. We were grown and this part of our lives was over. We would have to find new ways to get under the other’s skin.

Diary finds beauty in the everyday saga of living. It appears when it feels like it.

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