Thirty-one years ago, before he left, my older brother took me to Fenway Park for a Friday night game. I was still in Little League. He was home on leave from the Marine Corps, having graduated from boot camp at Parris Island as the honor man of his unit. A top student in high school and a baseball star (a catcher, like me), he had chosen the Marines over college, but would later graduate from the Citadel and run his own venture capital company.

I remember we drove in from the western suburbs in my family's burgundy Plymouth Belvedere station wagon. I had combed my hair and my mother had made sure I was wearing a clean shirt before I left the house. We parked on a side street near Boston University and walked a few blocks down Commonwealth Avenue toward the park. My brother's white-sidewalls crew cut and imposing physique made him stand out among the long-haired college students.

As we approached Kenmore Square and the high walls of Fenway, the Citgo sign seemed to rise up from behind the apartment buildings along the avenue, and suddenly we were at the foot of that giant icon. The enormous red triangle with the white lights rolling over it, and the Green Monster's towering floodlights sparkling in the blue slate dusk, were so impressive to me.

The peanut vendors along the sidewalk shouted as we walked off the street into the ticket line. I was surprised at how easily we bought tickets from the man behind the bars in the booth. Underneath the stands, we could smell spilled beer and we heard the murmur of the crowd above. Peanut shells crackled under my sneakers in the concession queue, where I stood bursting with pride next to my brother. He bought two hot dogs and two ginger ales. The tonic came in cans and the man at the cash register tucked them into opposite corners of a cardboard carrying tray with the hot dogs in the middle.

We ascended the concrete steps to the right field grandstand into bright lights. The first glimpse of the green outfield grass thrilled me. I could see the numbers on the uniforms of the visiting team's pitchers in the bullpen. We looked up to rows and rows of empty seats.

When we chose two hard-back chairs in the middle of an aisle, it was as though my brother had rented an entire section for us. I ate the hot dog he handed me plain, though I usually liked mustard and relish on it. Even without condiments, it was as fine a hot dog as I had ever eaten. The bun was soft, and I raised it to my nose to draw in the warm, yeasty smell.

My brother returned to Parris Island after the game and I did not see him again until January 1972. He came home then to visit with his twin, who had just finished a tour in Vietnam in a bad way and was at the start of what would become a 20-year odyssey of recovery. I do not know what happened when the two met, but I remember my parents were very angry that my brother, who had been his twin's closest friend since boyhood, had not done more to help.

On Sunday at noon, the time of the last Mass, he was reading the Globe at the kitchen table. My parents asked if he was going to church. He replied that he no longer attended Mass. An ugly fight ensued, despair over the drug-addicted twin and the lost dreams spilling out. My brother was only 20 years old. The pressure on him, and the pain my parents felt, must have been enormous. An already tenuous relationship snapped. My brother boarded a plane at Logan that afternoon, returned to base, and withdrew from us.

The estrangement was so pronounced that he rebuffed even my attempts to reconnect. I grew up, graduated from Boston College, and embarked on a career in Washington, yet he would not talk to me, collateral damage in someone else's war. I eventually stopped trying.

A few years ago I made a cross-country drive. Before I left Washington, I contacted my brother to see if we could meet. (His wife had established a relationship with my parents.) To my surprise he agreed, and I stopped in Kansas City at the gated community where he lived. We lifted weights at his health club and ate pizza in front of the television with his daughter, who visited my parents each August. He seemed to enjoy our time together, even laughing once or twice. I didn't bring up past events, sensing it was too soon and because I was certain there would be other opportunities to talk.

On Friday afternoon, after I had been there two days, his wife asked me while we were alone what time I would be leaving that evening. Her unspoken message was clear. I had disturbed their equilibrium. Exchanging Christmas cards was one thing, a visit another. My brother met me as I carried my case downstairs, surprise evident on his face. He protested that it did not make sense to leave so late in the day. Before he finished the sentence his wife said she would make sandwiches for me and buried her head in the refrigerator. I could swear I saw disappointment in his eyes, or perhaps it was only my own feelings reflected. I remember noticing the gray at his temples as he and his wife watched me back out of their driveway.

I tried calling later but each time he was too busy to come to the phone. It was as if after my visit a reset button had been pressed, restoring the familiar rejection. We haven't spoken since.

I do not expect an ending where, like the prodigal, he shows up to test my love and forgiveness before we reunite. These have already been tested in absentia in the three decades since we ate hot dogs at the Red Sox game. Were he to appear at my doorstep, I would suggest we head for Kenmore Square, to see if we can get tickets and pick up where we left off.

Michael Herlihy

Michael Herlihy '79 directs an AmeriCorps program in the Washington, D.C., area.

Photo: Fenway Park, by Lee Pellegrini


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