Who is Poe, Dickinson, Thoreau? I stutter these names on the outside chance that they will fit the Jeopardy clue: This poet won four Pulitzer Prizes. My brother Stu mumbles, “Frost,” and he doesn’t mean the icy stare I give him for knowing the correct answer, once again.

Watching Jeopardy ends a typical family day in Brooklyn—one in which our mother forgets her grandchild’s birthday, my brother suffers a panic attack triggered by his twenty year-old shih tzu’s chronic constipation, and my sister’s car, running on empty, breaks down on the Belt Parkway–her cell phone in the purse that she forgot. However, no matter what the day delivers, at 7 PM my siblings and I gather in my brother’s cluttered living room to watch Jeopardy. Though siblings by birth and nurture, we inhabit different planets. I, the eldest, am the only college graduate and writer in the family. I am not, however, the brightest.  That honor goes to Stu, whose house we gather in.  My brother Stu barely scrapes by. He ambles next door daily to care for an embittered quadriplegic man whom he feeds, bathes, and wheels to the bathroom during the midnight shift. And then, in the daytime, my brother does the same for my ailing mother. Without him, our lives would be enmeshed in her debilitated life, the upkeep of her house, and the purchase of her diapers. Without him, my younger sister would be homeless. Without him at the helm, the brightest, but the saddest, I would not have been able to live my nomadic lifestyle, dropping in to Brooklyn just twice a year to sleep on his couch and check in on my mother and her sagging life… the same couch that we sit on to watch Jeopardy.

Our adult lives are unlinked. I live, teach, and write poetry overseas, far from the city that my siblings never left. My two brothers get together only to watch a good baseball game on TV or to place a bet on a promising horse.  My sister resides in a world of unreality and a web of dysfunction. No one is content.  We are still waiting to grow up as our sick mother, losing her warm and giving self to Parkinson’s, unknowingly, spins a gossamer of guilt around our lives. And, I document this through poems, which my siblings do not understand.  

Growing up, we were not a competitive lot.  Our working class parents never encouraged us to excel. The neighborhood was our world and there was never any expectation of going beyond it. I met a local boy, and after college, we headed west and just kept on going until Brooklyn was a washed out memory.

As siblings we can be a staid bunch, but this game of Jeopardy animates and binds us. I am the literary one, a retired English teacher, a poet.  I, however, fail miserably in those categories– I count on my retort of Who is Sylvia Plath, to cover all poetry and literary categories.  It doesn’t.  When the daily double in the category of Writers appears with: Sinclair Lewis was the first American to win this? Stu, in a jaded whisper, says: Who was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature.

Stu, the quintessential couch potato, is a whiz at sports and movies, but ironically, this man who hardly leaves his house knows his history and geography better than most.  For most of my adult life, I have lived in Asia, but only Stu, who has rarely left the tri-state area, can come up with the question: Where did Buddhism originate?  He does not waver while responding, What is The Golden Triangle? when Alex reads,” It’s the highland border region where Thailand, Laos, and Burma meet”.

Iris possesses all the qualities of the youngest sibling on the birth order food chain. She was spared witnessing my father’s jewelry business fail, she was never stalked by his ex-wife, and she never had to wear hand -me -downs. She was born at a time when the potential to thrive was a possibility. But she didn’t thrive, instead she quit school, got an entry level job, and an entry level husband, so when she knows the answer to the clue, Before Eisenhower, he was the last president to preside over the admission of a new state, a clue so removed from her reality base, we stare in awe.

And, then there is Roy, the third born, a working class hero who was able to send his children to private colleges. He does not attempt anything beyond the 200-dollar clues. He plays it safe in both Jeopardy and life.  We are what we answer. My siblings and I watch Jeopardy to gain respite from our own lives, which are in a different type of jeopardy.

On Sundays, before she was in the nursing home, my mom would come to Stu’s house and watch the reruns of a week of Jeopardy. Her hearing was failing, and soon all she could discern from the TV screen was noise and buzzers. Then one Friday night, before Stu could tackle Final Jeopardy, the phone rang.  Our mother had fallen off a stepladder—an ambulance was coming to take her from the house she had lived in for the past 62 years. She went from hospital, to rehab, to nursing home, never to see her own home again. Stu visits my mother in the nursing home daily, he makes sure that what he did for her at her own home is now being done for her by a gentle Jamaican nurse, whose lilting English my mother cannot decipher. 

Jeopardy comes fromOld French, meaning divided game or play, uncertain chance or problem. My family is in jeopardy.  We’re good at trivia, but we cannot match answers and questions for the events of our own lives.  We are a family in jeopardy of losing our mother.  Her life is devoid of any quality, but yet we can’t let go of hope.  Hope for what outcome, we do not know.  I have already written and carry my mother’s eulogy in my pocket.  I fear that I will one day have to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice for a funeral for which I am unprepared.  My sister worries that once my mother dies, the family will disintegrate. My brother, Roy, who has unburdened himself of any remorse, worries if he has buried the guilt deep enough. And, Stu, the one most burdened with our mother’s care, worries about what to do with his freedom once she is gone. I am reminded of the line in a Yeats’ poem: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”   

My mother remembers little these days, she has no clue where I live, does not know her son’s occupation, cannot name her grandchildren.  She does, however, remember not to call us during Jeopardy.  But, the minute Alex brings the players to stage for a final farewell, the phone will ring.  My mother asks, “How are you all doing?” a final Jeopardy question for which we have no answer.

– Laurie Kuntz