Cain's Legacy by Jeanne Safer

Author:Jeanne Safer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

III. The Favored Sibling

“HE HAD IT; I DIDN’T HAVE IT”

“I see Allen as perfect,” says forty-three-year-old guidance counselor Heidi Forman of her brother, a “high-level businessman” who is two years older and a dazzling success at everything he touches. She speaks with conviction, without the slightest doubt that her assessment is the objective truth. “He’s also personable, engaging, and genuinely nice—not a jerk,” she explains, at once appreciative and envious. Allen was a tough act to follow. “And he’s always been the favorite. From the time I was a baby, I could tell my mother adored him. He was her love, the shining star. The response I elicit is different: He had it; I didn’t have it. I’ve always wondered, ‘How does he do it?’”

Even now, as a professional and a woman about to give birth to her second child (“Sibling issues are really salient for me now,” she said), she inevitably comes up lacking in comparison. Despite her recognition of family dynamics, Allen’s superiority seems both intrinsic and immutable, rather than created and maintained by their mother’s undisguised preference. The contrast between them is excruciating. “It ’s an incredibly painful situation,” Heidi candidly admits. “At the core I feel there’s something wrong with me. I’m so vulnerable—I don’t want to advertise this.”

Heidi told me that she has taken the rare step of actually speaking to Allen about their relative ranks in their mother’s affections. “I said, ‘I think you were favored,’ and he agreed. When I asked him how it affected his life, he said, ‘I feel completely confident that all will go well, that I’ll get a positive response.’” I noticed that Allen did not pursue the conversation his sister initiated, never asking how their mother’s flagrant preference for him affected her. This is almost always an uncomfortable topic for those on top; guilt and unconscious awareness that one’s position is unfair cause the preferred child not to inquire too closely into this happy arrangement.

A surprising and troubling wrinkle emerged as we explored Heidi’s relationship with her brother: Despite protestations of inferiority and struggles with insecurity, she has actually spent much of her life concealing superior abilities, talents that most people (and most parents) would be proud of. “I always did better than my older brother in school,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “I skipped a grade, and he was held back. We went to the same school, and nobody knew we were siblings.” Competition was far more mutual, and Allen’s rise to the top was actually slower and more problematic than it appeared to her. “I learned that his son was held back too. Allen didn’t tell me this, and he never told his son that the same thing had happened to him,” Heidi revealed. “I was also a more talented musician than Allen; when he took piano lessons, I taught myself how to read music on my own and learned what he played. I wanted to study piano myself, but my mother said no because she was afraid I would overshadow him.

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