THE FREAKY TIKI

“When I saw the small green figure with its red eyes shining up at me, I burst out laughing. Marcus had to have put it there.”

I found it in a box of laundry detergent in 2009, a month or so after my brother, Marcus, visited me. As I dipped the plastic scoop into the soap crystals, it hit something hard, and when I saw the small green figure with its red eyes shining up at me, I burst out laughing. Marcus had to have put it there. So began a years-long joke between us. But more than a joke. An indication of how far our relationship had come.

Growing up, we were as different as night and day. Marcus was four years older and always seemed too cool for me. There’s a picture of us from back then: he in a jean jacket leaning against a fence, looking away from the camera à la James Dean; I standing straight in a matching navy sweatsuit, hood up, sweatshirt zipped to my neck, dutifully staring right at the lens. Marcus was the rebel, I was the angel. He had the street smarts, I had the book smarts. He pushed boundaries, I tried to please. Our differences seemed insurmountable.

He was bold and brash and outspoken. In high school he was a regular in the principal’s office. He had a mohawk that inspired the nickname Mohawkus. Way before it was popular, he dyed his hair numerous different colors—blue, orange, one time pink to match his prom date’s dress. As soon as possible after high-school graduation, he moved to Florida—as far from home as he could get. But he flew back to be my date to prom when no one invited me. Though I tried to pass him off as a family friend, of course the principal knew him instantly.

Once I went to college and we were both out of the house and the roles we fell into there, we were able to work on our relationship. As the years went by, we figured out how to spend time together. Marcus started visiting me in Monterey after I moved there at 30 to fundraise for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He’d moved back to Portland by then and would drive down on his Harley, 12 hours each way. I’d show him around town and introduce him to my friends. We’d talk about life for a couple days and then he’d be off.

Those visits went a long way to helping us understand each other. The biggest thing was coming to see how different our childhoods were. I’d thought we had the same upbringing, and I’d thought it was idyllic, but he saw and experienced things I didn’t.

It was on one of his Monterey visits that he encountered the tiki at my place. I’d had a Hawaiian-themed party just before he arrived; the tiki had come with a deck of hula-dancer playing cards. After finding it in the soap box, I took it on my next trip to Portland and hid it in Marcus’s house. A year or so later, I was surprised to discover it on my mantle. What? How? Had Marcus been in my house? It would be totally like him to ride 24 hours roundtrip just to prank me—but then it struck me that my parents, who’d recently visited, could have brought it on his behalf. After much pestering, he admitted they were his accomplices.

Eventually I, too, moved back to Portland. A month after my return, Marcus died unexpectedly of a heart attack. He was 46. He was estranged from our parents at the time, but thankfully our brother-sister relationship was intact. I keep the freaky tiki on a shelf in my bedroom next to pictures of Marcus and me at all stages of our lives, a reminder of the good times and fun we managed to find a way—our way—to have together.

—Deborah Goldstein

Marcus and his beloved Harley.

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Deborah Goldstein, a philanthropy advisor based outside Portland, Oregon, is working on a memoir.

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