Barbara and I - a short story based on true facts

My brother used to pretend he was Barbara Streisand. He was very good at it too, nailed her body language, accent, everything. He also had a girlfriend, liked contact sports and had a hidden stash of Playboy’s tucked between the wall and his bed. It was all very confusing growing up and trying to place him in a category. People would ask me how he was doing and I could never figure out if I had the right to say that his rendition of “Woman in Love” was coming along nicely. So, I would tell them that he had a girlfriend, liked contact sports and secretly enjoyed graphic novels. He used to ask me to call him Barbara when we were home. So I did. Barbara and I never really had all that much in common besides that we both liked Funny Girl and chocolate doughnuts. My mother thought he was just being funny when he would parade around using Barbara’s voice. My father never had the occasion of witnessing his son’s talent as he was never around. At school Barbara was MIKE! His name was never just said, but always shouted. Everyone was always so excited when they were around him. I never really understood why. Sure he could imitate Barbara Streisand better that she even could, but they didn’t know that. He wasn’t all that exceptional. He was an OK student, mediocre athlete, corny, and looked like anyone who stood next to him. And still, MIKE! was everyone’s favourite guy. MIKE! Was never date-less and always had places to be and people to hang out with. And still, he occasionally elected to stay home and put on sold-out concerts just for me and Grant (the dog). He’d go find one of Mum’s sequenced jumpers from the 80’s and grab a large spoon from the kitchen cabinet and turn up the stereo all the way till the sliding glass doors would vibrate from the noise. And then he would sing. He was captivating. I don’t know if ‘amazingly good’ is the best way to describe his talent. He sounded exactly like Barbara Streisand which is great if you’re a middle-aged woman, but not so attractive if you’re a teenage boy. ‘Odd and slightly disturbing’ might be a better choice. Nonetheless I would applaud like my life depended on it each and every time. He would thank me, undress (in his room), and then make me a grilled cheese. It was a good routine which lasted until my sophomore year of high school. Then he went off to New York for school. Accounting. Minor in business economics. I never understood that.
Well, I never understood why he chose to secretly imitate Barbara Streisand either. But numbers just seemed like a queer choice. My mother would phone him every week and I’d listen to her side of the conversation from the bar in the kitchen.
“When are you going to get married and give me some grandchildren? Huh?”
I was 18 by then and I’d considered that Barbara might be a closeted homosexual. I wanted to introduce this possibility to Mother and see what she thought about it, but couldn’t really figure out a stealth way to go about doing this.
“That George Michael, aye? MIKE! Really seems to like numbers”, seemed like the best way to incorporate my brother’s semi-ambiguous sexuality into our normal after school conversation.
“What’s that dear? George Michael? That poor chap. Always getting himself caught and embarrassed”.
“Yeah. MIKE! Really likes numbers and stuff right? With the whole accounting business. You think George Michael likes numbers?”
“I’d say George Michael likes trouble”.
“So, George Michael is a homosexual right?”
“Yes, that’s right dear. The poor chap”.
“And MIKE! Really likes numbers because he’s using that as an excuse to cover for the fact that he likes trouble just as much as George Michael does?”
She cried for four hours before the 10’o clock news came on. Then she cried for two more after. Barbara would have probably sung Don’t Rain on My Parade, but MIKE!, now keen on numbers, would have remarked that 6 hours of crying was all he was wroth to her?
During the first and last hours, in between her sobs, I tried to convince Mother that having a gay son wouldn’t be all that bad. He’d be great for asking about decorating advice, and he’d know all the gossip, and probably use his amazing impersonating skills to get famous and buy us a bigger house and all kinds of material crap with all the money he’d surely make. She cheered up then but lost it when I admitted that he’d always looked strangely good in her 80’s party frocks.
Their relationship from then on was strained. Though she never confronted him directly, she just assumed from what I had revealed to her that he was a flaming, sex-crazed, cross-dressing, man lover. When he came home for Thanksgiving she smiled nervously at him and excused herself to go cry in the loo when he mentioned that the landscaping was looking good. I pitied him with my eyes. Grant licked his leg. My brother always managed to look put-together. However, his black turtleneck, violet scarf and linen trousers hadn’t exactly comforted my mother. She would have been more pleased if he’d come home wearing a T-shirt that read I LOVE PUSSY. He’d always been an unusually clean boy. He liked tucking in his shirt and ironing his khakis. That should have told us something then.
“What’s up with Saggy Knickers?” he asked me, concerned.
“She’s just mourning the loss of her perfectly wasted child-bearing son” I replied.
“What? Why? What’s in this tea? You lot haven’t sterilised me by way of poison chamomile have you?”
“No”.
“Well then, I don’t understand. Doesn’t she know that people find men in the business world the most attractive? I’m not wasting anything”.
“Fine”.
MIKE! Went back to school and I continued my senior year in his shadow. Mrs. Bancroft and Mr. Wilkins and Miss Duffy all wanted to know what MIKE! was up to. I said he still liked contact sports, but had grown fond of numbers and trouble. They told me that’s what University was all about.
By Christmas my father had left us and MIKE! was back home for winter break.
He said he had something important to tell us. My mother and I looked at each other with knowing eyes and tried to insist that he needn’t bother. He said it was life changing.
He sat us down in the living room and stood in front of us, just like the old days during one of his concerts.
“I’ve met someone” he said.
Mother whimpered next to me.
“The One, I think. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. I’ve never met anyone else who appreciates the simpler things in life and doesn’t take it all too seriously”. He smiled and waited for our reactions.
“And what does this person do exactly? Where did you met?”
“Hair stylist. We met at the salon. I had an appointment and we just clicked. We talked about music and Wall Street and bad reality television”.
“That’s all a tad cliché’ isn’t it? Apart from the Wall Street bit” I added.
“I’d say it’s quite unconventional” (mother burst into tears) “it’s not every day you fall in love with your hair stylist”. MIKE! got down on his knees and tilted up our Mother’s face with his hand.
“Oh mother, no need to worry. You’ll get your wedding and grandkids soon enough”. He kissed her forehead and pinched my cheek.
“And!” he added before returning to his bedroom, “You’ll both have great hair from now on!”
Needless to say, it was quite a shock when MIKE! brought home Sheila, a tall blue-eyed blond with tiny hands. The first chance she got, Mother whispered in my ear that maybe Sheila was one of those tranny-types. He’s really gone all the way with this one, hasn’t he? Look at her breasts! They look more real than mine. Sheila was talkative. MIKE! was enamoured. Grant was gassy.
We never confronted MIKE! about his transvestite fiancé and Mother didn’t bother to brag about their engagement to any of her gossip-happy friends. We lived life as normally as we could. I got into school nearby and Dad got into weather forecasting over in Arizona, he’d sent a post-card saying so. Mother sent one back saying everything was going so well. Then the wedding date was announced and MIKE! asked if we’d be willing to fly up to New York to meet Sheila’s folks.

“THE ENGLISH ARE COMING!” came cascading down the stairs of the very posh townhouse.
Mother and I looked at each other with dread before the door flew open and a miniaturised version of Theodore Roosevelt accompanied by an Amazonian woman with legs that went up to my shoulders greeted us.
“Hello my pets” said Legs.
“Em, er, good afternoon” said my mother.
At dinner, I sat next to someone named Hendrick, who wasn’t quite related to the family but somehow lived with them. MIKE! and Sheila sat across from us and Legs had squeezed in a chair next to her side of the table so my mother could join her there.
“This is just lovely” Legs began, “We knew Sheila would pick a winner”.
Mother nodded and avoided eye contact.
Well, it turned out that Sheila was a real girl, had always liked styling her dolls and had a thing for us English. They were married in March and had two little girls within their first two years of being together, Fanny and Barbie.
God just works in mysterious ways sometimes and likes to joke around. Why he endowed my apparently completely heterosexual brother with the ability to imitate Barbara Streisand, I do not know. How my brother discovered he could do this, I do not know. But, on occasion I will get a late night phone call from Barbara and we’ll chat like we did in the old days about upcoming gigs and signings. Then Fanny or Barbie will often times be heard screaming in the background and MIKE! will resume order and say,
“Oh, right, well I have to go now”.
I suppose if they ever find themselves fallen on hard times, MIKE! could start a night gig being a Barbara Streisand impersonator and keep the family afloat so that Sheila doesn’t have to degrade herself into prostitution. God not only has a sense of humour, but he’s also quite practical.