Jonathan Goldstein

On the road to Sheldon's, my father will experience a spectrum of feelings. As we first set out, there's excitement.

A half an hour in, and there's bitterness.

That's correct.

An hour in, and how is Buzz feeling?

A half an hour to Sheldon's.

Yeah. Ten minutes to Sheldon's, and Buzz is feeling... All right. Yeah. He's feeling a little... It's going to be strange.

Well, everybody loves giblets.

Yeah.

You all set?

Ooh, it's hot. It's really hot, yeah. Sheldon lives in the corner house on a quiet suburban street. Ring the bell. I guess.

Hi.

Nice to meet you. Come in. Thank you.

Do you know what my new podcast is about?

After all the years and the worry and the dread, things seem to be going swimmingly. We sit down at Sheldon's kitchen table, and my father gets right into it.

The dead are a good place to begin. As a subject, they're easily agreed upon and not likely to spark a fight.

Each week, I travel into people's pasts to help them repair something that's been troubling them.

Even though they're in their 80s, Sheldon and Buzz still possess voices and temperaments suited to shouting out Brooklyn tenement windows, while my voice... Yeah, sure. I'll have a beer. ...is best suited to asking a waitress if there will be a sharing charge. I defied... Forgot about that. Sorry. Sorry.

Case in point, this is Sheldon accidentally swiping a portable microphone receiver off the kitchen table and me trying to smooth things over.

No, here, just put it in your pocket there.

I'm sort of like a therapist.

Over the next couple of days, my testes will flee like frightened cockroaches, upward, ascending to heights not seen since the bar mitzvah that Sheldon was not attending. And while we're on the subject of testes, here's Sheldon reminiscing about the time he was examined for a rupture by their family doctor.

Over the years, I've seen my father in the role of husband, uncle, and grandfather, but I've never really seen him in the role of younger brother. How odd to see it now at 80. He sits beside Sheldon with this expression I've never seen on his face. It's wide-eyed, sweet, and deferential.

Do you find that funny?

But as the day wears on, Sheldon and Buzz begin to squabble over their memories, fighting over every little detail.

They even argue over the death of their grandmother.

Sure. So wait, so you found her or you found her?

The whole afternoon is like this. Every subject, even their dead grandmother, somehow becomes fodder for another pissing match. They're burning up all this time with small talk when what they need is some big talk. In particular, they need to address a story that I know holds a great deal of meaning for my father. It took place in 1939, on the day their mother left them.

That's the laughter of support?

I've only ever heard the story from my father, never from Sheldon. I wanted to ask what you remember, what your perspective.

What happened after this, in my father's telling, is that his mother returned soon after she left with a policeman in tow.

Do you have any questions for me about what my show is and what it's going to be like?

This is the point of the story for my father. It proves, once and for all, how his mother loved Sheldon more than she loved him.

Sheldon didn't move out with her, and after a year, their mother returned, and together, Buzz and Sheldon grew up under the same roof, in the same bedroom, often sleeping under the same blankets, each knowing who the mother had chosen, and each having to do their best to carry on and live life with the burden of that knowledge.

A couple times during the day, I ask them why they haven't spoken in so long, and they both insist, maybe out of embarrassment, that they do talk, just not often. But it isn't true. In fact, my father learned of Sheldon's wife's death many years after the fact, and then only from me.

Sheldon's daughter got in touch through Facebook, and we made a phone date where she caught me up on her life and Sheldon's. And a few nights later, while over at my parents' for dinner, I told my father of his sister-in-law's death. There was a terrible look that fell across his face, one of sadness, but something else too, maybe shock over just how far he and Sheldon had drifted.

I found out about Judy, about her death. Who? Your wife.

No, no, wait.

Yes, hang up the phone on each other. Okay, ready?

For dinner, Sheldon takes us to a local Outback Steakhouse. As people walk by, he provides a running commentary. Of an elderly couple.

Of an overweight couple. It's as though he's sharpening his wit, readying it for the main event, teasing my dad about Canada.

The name of the show is Heavyweight.

For my father, I know this is a touchy subject, believing, as he always has, that Sheldon looks down on him for the dinkiness of his Canadian life and home. It's like a constant reminder of just who is second best. Later, my father will repeat Sheldon's words. You're still living in that same place, he'll say, for how many years?

You get it?

But just then, I watch my father clench and unclench his jaw, as he does when he is brooding. I know he's trying to take the high road, trying not to ruin the evening.

Sheldon invites us back to his place for cookies, but my father says he isn't up for it.

Hello? From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Buzz. Hello? Hey, Dad. Hi, Johnny. Hey, how you doing? Good, you? Good, good. Good yumtiv. Shana tova. Aksameyach. Aksameyach. What's that mean? I'm not sure. Oh, oh. This is my father, Buzz. I'm calling him at his home in Montreal.

As we walk through the restaurant parking lot to the car, my father is silent. I find myself feeling protective of him. After midnight, lying awake in our hotel, my father insisted we stay at one. I lay in bed thinking about that day in 1939, when my grandmother came back for Sheldon, not my father.

For my father, not only did it push him away from Sheldon, making him feel jealous and resentful, but it also cast a shadow over the rest of his life, causing him to always feel passed over. He's mellowed with age, but as a kid, I saw it come out in all kinds of ways. Always sensitive to slights, ready for a fight at the smallest perceived offense.

I wonder if there's a different way for my father to see things. If there is, the only living person in this world who can help is Sheldon. When their mom left, Sheldon was nine, my father five. Sheldon would have understood a lot more than my father. Yesterday, Buzz and Sheldon talked like a couple of kids who used to play stickball in the old neighborhood.

Today, if me and my big fat meddling yap have any sway, they'll have a chance to talk as men, as brothers even. Because if not now, when? Day two. This is a damn good cigar.

Despite the difficulties of last night, the coin is flipped back to the good side. Sheldon offers my father a cigar. And with the cigar, some cigar talk. Some pretty foul cigar talk.

Have you guys missed each other? What? Do you miss each other?

No, I mean, I don't know. That's, you know. Eager to prove to my Uncle Sheldon that in spite of the fact I'm wearing my wife's travel deodorant, I am indeed not abroad, I allow them to return to more pressing matters. Their prostates.

So if I could steer this away from the prostate. So my father said that it's significant to him to have come. What do you say?

It feels like I'm getting a taste of what growing up with Sheldon might have been like. So again, I make my move. So I have some questions just about... Because there's stories that I know from my father, but I'm curious what your take is because you were older. Do you remember... what was going on when your mom, when your mother left originally? Like, why and what was going on?

But from my father's perspective, the way I understood it was always you were the favorite. Did you feel that way? At this point, Sheldon's face suddenly softens.

Was he easier on you, do you think?

Are you surprised by it?

But you didn't know that Sheldon was getting it so bad? No. In Buzz's telling, their father was always a more or less benign, childish figure, incapable of expressing his feelings, and so given to temper tantrums. For Buzz, it was their mother who was the manipulator, the woman who played the brothers off each other.

But hearing Sheldon's take, it sounds like maybe their mother didn't come to take Sheldon because she loved him best, but simply because he needed more protecting from their father. For the first time during our trip, I can see my father considering Sheldon's point of view, actually taking it in. I know it's intense for him, because he can't even meet Sheldon's eyes.

And the reason we're talking crazy talk is because it's Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which seems as good a day as any to talk with him about forgiveness. So I wanted to ask you something, and I just wanted to gauge your interest. Yeah. How would you feel about paying your brother Sheldon a visit?

Instead, he looks at me, addresses his comments to me.

The last time my father saw my grandfather in full health, my dad was visiting from Canada. My grandfather asked my father to drive him to the cemetery to visit his parents' grave. And once there, my grandfather wept inconsolably. Later that day, he would succumb to a stroke and shortly after be moved to a nursing home.

With Sheldon being more local, the burden of my grandfather's care fell mainly to Sheldon. It seems like a lot of the family's burdens fell to Sheldon.

So if you feel like you were compelled to see each other now because you knew that, you know, it's now or never kind of thing, then it means that it was important to you both, right? To see each other.

As my father speaks, as per his brother's example, dropping F-bombs like he's in a Guy Ritchie film, Sheldon keeps his arms crossed and his eyes shut tight. He's quiet for several seconds and then he reaches out to pet his cat.

When it's time to leave, Sheldon walks us outside. But before we get into the rental, he points across the lawn to his neighbor's house. He tells my father that it's for sale, and then he tells him the asking price. And my father says, that doesn't sound bad at all. And Sheldon says that, what with Canada being so bloody cold, my father should consider moving to Florida.

And my father says, maybe he will. They don't get too emotional. They don't even hug goodbye. They just shake hands. And with that, it feels like Buzz has forgiven Sheldon, and Sheldon has forgiven Buzz.

You know? As we ride to the airport, my father says that the thought of Sheldon all alone in that house with just a cat makes him sad. "'Do you really think he isn't lonely?' my father asks. I assure him that Sheldon seems okay with being alone, but my father doesn't seem so sure."

You're not? No. My father, Buzz, is 80, and his brother, Sheldon, his only sibling, is 85. And for the past 40 years, they've pretty much been on the outs. My father lives in Montreal, and Sheldon lives in Florida. And the last time they saw each other, over 20 years ago, was at their mother's funeral, when they had a fight over the details of the arrangements. Since then, they've hardly spoken.

After all these years, the burden of having lost his brother has been replaced by a new burden, one that might be heavier to bear.

Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me, Jonathan Goldstein. This episode was also produced by Wendy Dorr, Chris Neary, and Kalila Holt. Editing by Alex Bloomberg and Peter Clowney. Special thanks to Caitlin Kenney, Starley Kine, and Rachel Ward. The show is mixed by Haley Shaw. Music in this episode by Christine Fellows, with additional music and ad music by Haley Shaw.

Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. A version of this story appeared on This American Life, and we had a lot of help from the folks there. Ira Glass, Julie Snyder, Jonathan Menjivar, Sean Coole, and Robin Semien. A very special thanks to Emily Condon. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight. We'll have a new episode next week.

It worries me, because there's not a lot of time left. And I don't want my father to have regrets. When the subject of his brother comes up, as it often has over the years, my father feels competing things. He grows angry or defensive, but other times he'll become sad and remorseful.

And it's the sorrow and the remorse that I like best, because it's these feelings that I believe speak to his better self, the self I want to encourage. I'm not surprised that you're not jumping at the idea, but I'm a little surprised that you're as against the idea. Yeah.

What he did do was he called you on your 80th birthday not so long ago and you felt good about that.

This kind of tit-for-tat accounting is what always gets in the way. There's been a competition between the brothers since I was a kid. I remember how in my grandmother's small New York kitchen, Sheldon and Buzz got into an argument about who could do the most push-ups. And the next thing I knew, my father was pulling off his shirt and dropping to the kitchen floor in his undershirt.

My mother, not used to seeing this side of him, stood over my father, flapping a dish towel hysterically while begging him to the point of tears to please stop. You know what it is at this point with him? I'll tell you what it is. I don't think it's even anger. He's past anger, and he's past any feelings of animosity. He's past that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm listening.

Don't you see, Buzz? It's Father Time who is binging you here. And Buzz loses track of time. Air conditioners remain boxed all through July, and expired coupons from the mid-90s make plump his wallet. So I worry he'll put off reaching out to Sheldon until it's too late. The most complicated question, the one I keep coming back to, is how did the bad blood begin? And there are many versions.

An ill-fated trip to Montreal where Sheldon felt slighted about having to stay in my father's basement. An ill-fated trip to New York where my father felt slighted about having to stay in Sheldon's attic. Rude words spoken to each other's wives. In one version of the story, Sheldon's refusal to bring a table to my bris almost resulted in my being circumcised on an ironing board.

But in the version being told today, my father was asked by Sheldon to pay more than his fair share for their mother's funeral.

If you got a stronger sense that he was interested in seeing you, then would you... Yes, yes.

Okay, quick sidebar. Any time I've ever raised the prospect of visiting Sheldon, no matter how hypothetical the scenario, my father always makes a point of insisting how no matter what, he would not stay in Sheldon's house, even if he was invited to, which I should point out, he never is. I wouldn't stay at his house. How come you...

How come you always bring that up? I mean, normally when someone goes to visit someone that they haven't seen in decades, they'll stay at a hotel, you know?

Yeah, no, we'd get a place, you know, with an ice machine and, you know.

I mean, I'm interested—do you think that there's anything to be gained in seeing him?

Yeah, I mean I would. I would be happy to do that. I like your initial suggestion that you call him, feel him out, and see what he's like. Okay, I didn't suggest that, but you suggested that. Yeah, I like that. Of course, you'll give me an honest reaction. I'm happy to do it, but what are you looking for? What do you want to hear from him? I miss my brother.

That's all.

Sheldon.

Hi.

Sheldon now lives outside of Fort Lauderdale, but my few memories of him are from when he lived in upstate New York. I remember he lived in a trailer. I remember that he worked at a local prison, that he smoked cigars, that he looked a little like my father, but was hunched, like the world was weighing down on him.

And he always wore this expression on his face that seemed to say, you gotta be kidding me. You're keeping okay? You're keeping occupied?

And so you still go, how often do you go to the gym?

Wow, and what kind of stuff do you do there?

Oh, yeah. My father also goes to the gym. That's a part of his routine also. He was happy to hear from you on his 80th birthday.

Tit meet tat. Yeah, like, so, you know, maybe we could go out for dinner. I don't know. That kind of thing.

I guess you have your past in common.

Do you think that makes things easier?

Yeah. Do other people around you sometimes, does it make it harder for other people around you? Ever?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. It's fine. Sheldon, I appreciate your talking to me. And you would be amenable to spending some time?

Yeah. Is that anything that you think about?

And so I call my father back and let him know that Sheldon is amenable. And because I know that for my father, the days tend to pile up like unboxed air conditioners, I have my mother get on the phone to help nail down a firm travel date.

If dad wants to go, if he wants to go.

We don't have to go on the weekend. We can go during the week.

Today's Monday. Or yeah, or even if you feel like calling tomorrow, you can call me. Yeah.

Did you get the Thursday?

That's three days from today.

From Gimlet Media, this is Jonathan Goldstein, your old pal.

Okay. All right, you do what you want to do. You call me, but... I'll call you Thursday. Coming up after the break, Thursday. And so on Thursday, possibly with a little nudging from my mother, Buzz agrees. And then my father and I are off to Florida to visit my uncle Sheldon.

My dad and I meet up at the Fort Lauderdale airport. I flew from New York and my dad from Montreal. My father's all dressed up, wearing a faux suede sports jacket that I've never seen him in. We grab our airport rental and prepare for the two-hour drive to Sheldon. In the 90-degree heat, it's immediately made clear that faux suede might not have been the best fashion choice.

She missed normal men. Lois wanted someone normal. I'm not going to say I won over a class act like Lois Lane through anything other than the fact that I was a normal mortal. She had had her fill of the night rides over Metropolis on Superman's back. She had done the demystifying, I'm letting you get to know the real me trips to the Fortress of Solitude.

He had even taken her to Niagara Falls to see the statues made of wax that honored him there. And because she insisted, they took the train. It drove him crazy. He would turn to her and say, do you have any idea how ridiculous this is for me? And then he would laugh. He would laugh because he loved her. And despite all of this, she had decided to leave him.

I first met Lois at a charity penny arcade event. At one point in the evening, as I stood hunched over a pinball machine, I looked over to my side, and there was Lois Lane, just standing there, watching me. The left flipper wasn't working, so I tried to keep the ball on the right, but when it came down on the left, together we would yell like a couple of kids rolling down the side of a mountain.

"'I've always wanted to reach in there and hold the silver ball in my hand,' I said." I never thought of it that way, said Lois. And five minutes later, she was ripping open an empty pack of clorets and writing her number down on the white inside. Lois was the kind of woman I had always dreamed of. Lois was the kind of woman who made you feel like, I am a man who dates Lois Lane.

And as simple as all that sounds, it's the best way I can describe it. When I was a child, she was the girl who brought Oreos for lunch and during recess held me cruelly aloft on the high end of the seesaw as I squirmed and begged.

In high school, she was the teeny bopper who wanted nothing to do with me, who saw me as nothing more than a bad aftertaste, like the kind you get when you almost vomit and can taste the vomit, but you don't actually vomit. That's what I was to her.

In college, Lois was the bored coquette, who in a show of university-learned largesse languidly offered me her leg in the cafeteria and said, feel how strong my calf muscles are. She was all of these. But then, the moment Lois handed me her phone number, she became something else entirely. She became a woman who had chosen me. At first, I was a novelty.

In the beginning, Lois would kiss my forehead and tell me she loved how squishy my arms were. In a good way, she'd say. They're so easy to fall asleep on. I wasn't embarrassed by my softness. In fact, all the things my old girlfriends found unattractive and gross about me, Lois found charming. Once I drew eyelashes above my nipples and smeared lipstick around my belly button.

Lois swooned as I made my fat gut sing her sweet songs of love. I liked making Lois laugh. One evening, I purchased a jar of olives simply because one of them, pressed up against the glass, looked like an old man with a little stroke mouth full of pimento. I gave him a voice. I made him say things like, Get me out of here. And, My ass is asleep. Lois appeared to find this delightful.

Although they were broken up, Lois and Superman decided to remain friends. And since they traveled in the same circles, I knew it was only a matter of time before Superman and I would meet. And I knew that when we did, by any possible system of measurement, he would destroy me. Lois told me that I should expect a call from Superman one of these days, because he was really anxious to meet me.

And several weeks into our relationship, I got the call. When I answered the phone, I felt my chest tighten. Look, I'd like to keep Lois in my life, he said, and I guess that means we should get to know each other. I don't want to make this into a big deal, but Lois tells me you're between jobs right now, and I could use a sidekick. I'm trying to change my image.

I don't want to come off as such a lone wolf anymore. It would be part-time, and I could teach you a thing or two. Look, don't get me wrong, I said. You do great things, wonderful things. And what do I do? If I make it to the post office to buy stamps before noon, it's a miracle. Silence, he said, cutting me off. But he didn't say it in the way you'd think, all capital letters.

He said it quietly, sadly almost. Silence, just think about it. When I saw Lois that night for dinner, she had already spoken to Superman, and she was going on about my sidekick ship like it was already a done deal. It's just what you need to get back on the workforce, she said.

And she looked so pleased that before I knew it, I was drinking glass after glass of red wine, promising her that it really was no big thing. Lois is just so beautiful when she's pleased. The next morning, I met Superman for lunch. And before I could sit down in the booth, he handed me a rumpled paper bag. What's this, I asked. Your new outfit, he said.

He shooed me off to the bathroom, and in the toilet stall, I changed into what was essentially a skin-tight black unitard. There was no cape. The whole thing succeeded in making me look skinny-legged and rotund. Across the chest, in small, new courier font, was the word Stuart. I pointed to the name as I walked back to the table. "'It's your sidekick name,' Superman said.

"'And you're not supposed to wear underwear with your uniform.'" I spent most of my time wearing my steward outfit in his apartment, ironing his costume, fielding calls from the press, and popping boils on his back with a nail and an almanac. And in between, Superman had me doing nonstop sit-ups. He called my gut to crime against humanity.

His favorite joke was to put his hand on my stomach and ask, how many months? But he wasn't perfect either. From up close, Superman stank of brill cream. And he had this way of getting when he was being all solemn, where he would use words like shall and vex. Also, he's really full of himself. But through all of his talk, I would try to maintain eye contact with him.

And as I did, I would think to myself, I have seen Lois in her underwear. And tonight, when I go home, I might see her in her underwear some more. I wouldn't put it past the bastard to read minds. As horrible as it all got, in the evening there was Lois, and she seemed so proud of me. But still, Superman was always an unspoken presence between us.

I always knew he was out there, feeling better than me. And when I looked at Lois sometimes, I knew she knew I was thinking it. And I guess it sort of made her want to think about it a little herself. It all came to a head one Thursday night. There was this Thursday night tradition where all the superheroes got together for beer and chicken wings.

And on this particular Thursday night, Lois was going to join us. The superheroes would sit together at one table, capes all undone, laughing and slapping each other on the back, while the sidekicks sat over at another table, commiserating and trash-talking. I looked around my table.

There was an angry-looking hunchback the Green Lantern worked with, and Wonder Woman had brought along a sad-eyed, mousy college-aged girl who sat sketching on napkins all night. The Flash had taken on this grizzled old sack of bones who smelled of cabbage and urine that he called Benjamin. Superman told me that Benjamin was the Flash's dad, who the mother had recently thrown out.

The Flash was afraid that if he left him alone, he would commit suicide, so he put him in a leotard and took him around with him, mostly leaving him in the car. And then, of course, there was Batman's sidekick, Robin. I looked over at them, Superman and Batman, the best of buddies, and I imagined what their conversation was on the night they learned of me and Lois.

It was as I sat there, imagining the two of them laughing at me, their massive upper torsos jerking in a manner that is impossibly manly, that I saw Lois walk through the door. Superman caught her eye, and she made a beeline right over to him. Instinctively, I rose from my seat. Superman turned to me, and our eyes locked.

Much has been written about Superman, but there is an aspect to him that is very difficult to describe. There's a certain feeling one gets when looking into his eyes, and of all the articles I've read, there's nothing that touches on it. It's inhuman and hypnotic. But it's not just that. Being looked at by Superman makes you feel more there than anything, even a dozen TV cameras.

And it's not simply that you're there, but that you're there swaddled in layers of reassuringly moistened towelettes. It's comfy and cozy, and I cannot explain it well enough. As she kissed Superman's cheek hello, I turned around and walked out of the bar. Because I was in my steward outfit, I didn't even have pockets to dig my fists into.

Sometime after 1 in the morning, Lois showed up at my place full of apologies. She had gone over to sit with me, but I had already left. She spent the whole night talking with Superman. She said that he's been really depressed. I've never seen him like this, she said. I'm actually a bit worried. He's obsessed with the emptiness of the universe.

He said that after we broke up, he went looking for God, literally looking for God, zipping across the universe, and he came back with nothing. I wasn't in the mood for a big Superman is a man of constant sorrow routine, but she was clearly on a roll, and I didn't have the heart to stop her. I never realized how obsessive he can be, she said.

He told me there was once a certain way I flipped my hair that so beguiled him he spun around the earth reversing the moment 75,000 times. I never knew that. I felt myself almost throw up. He's just so intense, she continued, and this planet can be so cold. Did you know that on Krypton, when two people fell in love, they became inseparable, and they learned to move together in unison?

They even had special clothes they wore. He said that on Earth, these kinds of garments had names like fundies and were only sold in the pages of pornographic magazines. Superman says the Earth is a sick, sick place.

My fear wasn't that Lois would get back together with Superman, because by this point I knew it was only a matter of time before she would, but that she would describe the summer we spent together as the most miserable, depressing, and disgusting time of her life. I already knew how it would infuriate him. I could hear him making stupid jock jokes with her.

You don't need supervision to see through that sap, he would say. After she went home, I decided to take a walk and clear my head. I did so while cursing Superman until there were tears in my eyes. I had only walked a couple of blocks when I ran into Clark Kent. I had been introduced to Clark at a couple of Lois' soirees, and although I hardly knew him, he was someone I really liked.

He possessed what I felt, from my citified point of view, was genuine small-town warmth, and I just enjoyed being around him. He told me I looked terribly sad. Terribly sad. People didn't say stuff like that anymore. Having him call me terribly sad instead of depressed or bummed made me already start to feel a little bit better. He asked me if I wanted to grab a beer, and I said sure.

I told Clark all about the evening, and he listened to me. That was all I really needed just then, to be listened to. How do you know she'll go running back to Superman? asked Clark. You should hear the way she talks, I said. Do you have any idea how much Superman can bench press? Superman once went back in time and beat up Hitler. I mean, who can compete with that?

Clark started laughing so hard, people at the other tables turned around to look at us. I was on a roll. With his laughter egging me on, I told him all the things that over the last few weeks I wished I had said to Superman. You're such a phony, I said. You have this idea of what it means to be human, but it's a parody." Humans feel pain, and you don't understand what pain is.

You're not supposed to wear underwear with your uniform. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.