Brian's Song, Part 4
This is the final installment in my series of recollections about my friend, Brian Langer. These will become part of a memoir I’m working on currently. You can read previous installments here:
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One day, almost six months since I last saw Brian, the HH gets an invitation to an art show. The artist is his old room mate, Leonard. He hasn’t spoken to Len since the day he moved out of their shared house, to move in with me.
I have no desire to see the former room-mate again. Whether it was outright lying, telling me the HH wasn’t home when I called (he was upstairs at the time) or casually commenting, “Gee, he never came home last night” when I showed up one morning to drive us on a weekend getaway (turned out the HH was simply at the drugstore buying shaving cream), Len made it abundantly clear that he had nothing but disdain for me. I’ve always maintained that Len had designs on the HH for himself, so he could never forgive me for “stealing” him away, though of course I’ll never know for sure.
Needless to say, it ‘s a surprise to hear from Len. The show is taking place at a hip new spot on Queen Street West. An even bigger surprise? The paintings are Len’s.
It turns out that Brian and his new girlfriend, Andrea (pronounced Ahn-DRAY-ah), the young woman who moved in next door to him, are going to be there as well. So, despite my complete lack of interest in seeing Len’s creative self-expression (which, I feel certain, will rival those childhood paint-by-number velvet kits of ingenues with impossibly large eyes), I’m intensely curious to meet Brian’s new girlfriend.
From the start, Brian told me, Andrea was completely different from the other women in his life.
“That’s because she’s young enough to be one of their daughters,” I said.
And so she is: to begin with, she’s almost 22 years his junior, just 19 years old when they met (he was 41). She was raised on a farm and, as Brian tells it, is somewhat “naive” about city life and “men.”
“She’s really not very worldly,” he told me. “I mean, it’s her first time in the city, and she hasn’t had much life experience. But she’s really nice. And she’s kind. And I really like her.”
By this point, she’s already more or less moved into Brian’s place, abandoning her room mate.
For someone with Brian’s background, this seems to me like a match made in hell. Will he share his checkered past with her? How would she react? Will he introduce her to his motley friends, say, Penny Hoare? Or will she only be exposed to the more conventional, socially acceptable crowd that he’s met since his conversion after the Tony Robbins seminar?
I have no idea, but my curiosity is so powerful that it overrides my distaste for Len, and I agree to attend the show.
The restaurant is one of those long, narrow spaces that holds perhaps 15 tables, one longer group table parallel to the far wall at the short end of the room. When we enter, a few others along with Brian and Andrea are already seated at the group table. Brian waves us over.
“Hi, nice to meet you,” I say. Andrea smiles broadly and nods.
She’s just a kid. She has short, wavy, nearly-black hair parted on the side, swept off her forehead. Her features still retain the smooth bounce of youth, like a ball of yeast dough still rising. Her dark eyes sparkle, not so much with adoration for Brian, but more with the excitement of male attention on her--something, I assume, she hasn’t much experienced before.
The guys are more or less falling over themselves to talk to her or offer her something, anything: a seat, another drink, an uneducated opinion about the quality of the artwork (which, to my chagrin, is actually rather good).
About halfway through the evening, in a flourish, Andrea stands up in her seat. There isn’t much place to go; she’s boxed in on both sides, Brian on her right and Len, the artist, on her left, with the long table in front of her.
“It’s warm in here!” she announces, then draws hands down to the hem of her tomato-red sweater, pulls it up over her head and reveals what looks like a man’s white sleeveless undershirt. She sits back down, running her fingers through her hair. If she had begun to feel the attention waning, that move gets it back on her again, as clearly as a spotlight in Vegas.
To be fair, I don’t speak to her much. To me, she seems withdrawn and unfriendly toward other women. As much as I attempt to elicit some kind of conversation, I fail, repeatedly receiving only monosyllabic responses most of the time. Maybe she’s just not used to so many people around, I think.
When i speak to Brian later, he assures me she is, indeed, friendly, but was just intimidated by some of his crowd and her sense that she’s somehow intellectually inferior simply because she hasn’t had the same education or life experiences. What she doesn’t realize is that she’s simply too young and hasn’t lived enough to actually have many life experiences.
I try to remember what my life was like when I was only 19, before I graduated from university, before my years as a PhD student or don in residence, before my first job, before my failed marriage, before buying a house.
Yes, she’s just a baby.
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It’s 1999 and I’m catching up with Brian on the phone. He and Andrea are already living together and planning their lives. To be honest, it seems more like he’s the one planning their lives, since she remains a starry-eyed, barely twenty-year-old, and madly in love. It appears she agrees with whatever he decides.
“We talked it over, and I figure there are two ways to approach it,” he tells me.
“Andrea could finish her schooling, establish a career, and then we could start a family. Or, if she has the kids now while she’s young, she’ll still be young enough to go back to school and start working when the kids are grown up and she’s 35 or 40.”
Before I can ask any questions, he informs me they’ve opted for the latter. I wonder how much of the decision was truly Andrea’s and how much was settled via her infatuation with this older man who could establish a home and financial security for them.
Whatever the truth, a baby arrives about a year later.
When the HH and I visit, proffering gifts of baby books (my standard contribution for newborns) and blanket, we’re greeted by smiling parents and a curly-haired child who, even at less than a year old, looks like a miniature Brian.
It’s clear Andrea is a proficient parent. According to Brian, the fact that she was raised on a farm means she possesses skills and abilities most women of her generation no longer learn. To wit, how to cook from scratch. How to sew her own clothes. How to maintain a home.
From what we can see, she’s settled into her new role as mother and domestic manager fairly seamlessly. The baby is chubby and gurgling, bounced on Andrea’s hip. Occasionally, Andrea offers her pinkie for the baby to suck.
We stay for a couple of hours, conversation regularly interrupted by crying or nursing, then leave the parents to their lives.
The next time we meet Andrea is almost two years later, a few months after their second daughter is born, when Brian and Andrea decide to throw a party for their friends. We’re told to bring only wine or other alcohol, that they’ll take care of all the food. Knowing Brian, I assume that means Andrea is actually in charge of food, or else we’d be eating stale bread and maybe some frozen french fries.
We walk into the house, already bustling with people, to be greeted by Brian. Andrea lags a few seconds behind, hugging the new baby in her arms. This isn’t the young woman I first met at the art show. There are no traces of the lively ingenue who preened in front of her male admirers. This Andrea sports longer hair, falling straight to her chin, brushed to the side. Her skin is pallid, without the benefit of makeup.
“Believe it or not, Zoe is sleeping through all of this!” Brian yells above the din, grinning. The new baby, Brigitte, squirms and attempts to escape her mother’s embrace, but there are too many people around to risk it; she’d likely get trampled.
This crowd is not the type to oooh and aaah over a baby. Most of them are from Brian’s work world, computer programmer types or business people who, like Cameron and me, are childless. I don’t see many people Andrea’s age. We recognize no one, which surprises me.
As the evening continues and we take part in a handful of superficial conversations, the drinks flow continuously. I glance over to see Brian in a group of three or four friends, drink in hand. He throws his head back and lets out a raucous laugh.
Andrea, on the other hand, spends most of her time in the kitchen, refilling bowls of nacho chips or crudites, or, more likely, standing at the stove stirring a massive stock pot of chili. I find chili an odd choice to serve at a party of perhaps 30 or 40 people considering the work involved, but she tends to it like it's the next NASA mission, as if critical systems would die without her attention.
At one point, Cameron and I find ourselves standing in the kitchen, not too far from Andrea as she stirs the massive pot on the stove. For a second it reminds me of the cauldron at the beginning of Macbeth, as she stirs and stirs, steam rising with each rotation. The baby is perched somewhat precariously on her hip, held there only by her right arm, the left occupied with the chili. Brian strolls in, drink in hand, broad smile on his face as he walks over to us, ready to join the conversation.
I’m struck by how, at this moment, he’s restored the “old” Brian, the Brian I knew when I was single: chatty, sociable, full of jokes and not a care in the world.
Andrea sets the chili-stained wooden spoon down on a saucer on the counter. Without a word, she walks over to us, child in her arms, and extends both arms straight out in front of her, practically shoving the infant into Brian’s side.
“Here,” she says, then waits silently until he finally reacts and takes the baby from her, a startled look on his face. Without a sound, she turns back to the stovetop and resumes stirring.
Weeks later, I don’t remember whether we actually ate any of the chili. But I can’t forget the look on Andrea’s wan face: impassive, expressionless, blank, lifeless. Months later, Cameron would remark, “She looked like a zombie. Her eyes were dead.”
All the spark and vitality we’d seen in the cafe was gone; what remained was a young mother, overworked and clearly over her head, trying her best to cope with a life that, from all appearances, had been foisted upon her without too much thought on anyone’s part.
I considered calling her up and offering to meet for coffee, just to let her know she had someone to talk to. But what did we really have to talk about? And then I remembered her large nuclear family and the fact that she and Brian were, by all accounts, close with other couples in their community. And besides, it wasn’t my place to interfere.
It feels like just a few weeks later when I receive a call from Brian telling me Andrea has, once again, had a baby. This is their third child in three years. They’ve named the baby Margot.
I’m sure my surprise is palpable. I stutter a few words of congratulations and we continue chatting for fifteen minutes or so. I remark that his family mirrors the one I grew up in, with three daughters. He laughs.
“I guess that didn’t turn out too badly,” he says. (I don’t tell him otherwise).
“How are you managing with three kids in the house?” I ask. “I imagine it’s a ton of work.”
“Well, I’ve been planning a lot so they’ll have a secure future,” he says. He already has set up RSPs for Zoe and Brigitte. And Andrea has been working hard.
“We think we might look into hiring someone to help her,” he says. I can’t believe they don’t have help already.
“Maybe a part-time nanny or something like that. It’s starting to feel like a lot for Andrea.” I can only imagine. She’s been taking care of the children pretty much all on her own.
“And business is really good,” he says. “So at least we’re set in that area.” He is as committed to his new business as ever. From what we observed at the party, he’s somehow transformed himself into a TV dad from the 1950s.
“That’s great,” I say. “Good for you.”
“You’ll have to come by soon and meet the baby,” he says.
“We’d love to.”
But of course, it never happens.
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It’s Wednesday, December 1, 2004. The HH and I are headed out of the city to Montreal, where we’ll spend the weekend at my friend’s house and celebrate my younger sister’s birthday. As usual, we forgot to bring CDs for the car, so I fiddle with the radio. The news is interrupted with an announcement. There’s been a “domestic incident” in the Lansdowne-Dupont area.
“Isn’t that Brian’s neighborhood?” I say. I don’t want to hear the gory details and change to another station. I wonder if they live near the house in question.
When we arrive in the city, six hours later, my friend ushers us into her living room and instructs us to sit. She searches my face.
“So you haven’t heard?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Heard what?”
She grimaces. Her eyes move to the window behind me. “Something happened with Brian. And Andrea.”
The radio.
She bites her lip. “He’s dead. So is she. They don’t know exactly what happened.”
My first thought is, “Oh my god. He killed her.” Almost immediately, the heat of shame slaps my cheeks. I remember the story of his abusive girlfriend and his vow that he’d never fight back again, no matter what.
Forever after, whenever I remember that thought, the shame floods back.
I feel like I’m watching a horror movie and there’s been a surprise attack in one scene. Except here, I can’t just cover my eyes and make it go away.
We all stand still. Finally, my friend says, “Ric? Are you okay?”
I realize I’ve been holding my breath this whole time. I start to pant. I have to sit down.
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.” I can’t seem to say or think anything else. How is this possible? What happened? We just spoke a couple of weeks ago. I promised to visit.
Over the next few days, some of the details emerge.
Andrea stabbed Brian in the stomach one morning as he slept in bed. Somehow, he managed to call 911. When emergency crews arrived on the scene, they found Brian still clinging to life. Andrea had killed herself and their oldest child, and had attacked their 23-month old daughter as well as their dog. The only one left untouched was the baby in her crib.
Some of the paramedics said it was the worst scene they’d witnessed in their entire careers. Both Brian and his oldest daughter died in hospital.
Because Andrea was the first woman with post-partum psychosis to kill both her husband and a child (and attempted to kill another child and their dog), their story made history.
At that point, Brian and I had known each other for more than a dozen years. Despite falling out of touch after he became a father, I still considered him one of my dearest friends.
As you can probably tell from my awkward and stilted recounting of the story, it’s difficult to put into words exactly how much this eccentric, hilarous, astute and sometimes self-absorbed friend brought to my life.
For one thing, Brian will always be the man who restored my faith in males. Without Brian, I’m certain it would have taken me even longer to trust men and begin dating again.
Something about him–so unapologetically himself, take it or leave it–allowed me to accept myself, too, and rediscover what it meant to embrace life. Brian’s fierce honestly allowed people with whom he interacted to be more honest in their other interactions, too.
More than anything, Brian is the person who brought trust back into my life, and the reason I met the HH, with whom I’ve now shared 27 years. For that, I will be forever grateful.
If nothing else, I hope these recollections allow people to have a better understanding of this unique, lovable man who touched so many people’s lives. And to ensure that somehow, somewhere, he is still remembered.
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As always, thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this article, please share it with someone else! Or support me and my writing by subscribing with a paid or free subscription. I’ll be eternally grateful either way.
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I so enjoyed this series. My heart breaks for Brian, his family and for your loss of him. Wow. It was beautiful to get this glimpse into your relationship and memories of him.
Oof... I actually didn't see that ending coming, Rick. So grievous, so deranged. I pray that the children are well.