In the kitchen, I ponder what to prepare, my culinary skills being limited to scrambled eggs and tuna fish sandwiches. In the refrigerator, “normal” fare takes a back seat to the paterfamilias’s “health” food: A jar of “natural” peanut butter containing a layer of yellowish oil over a foundation of brown paste with the consistency of nearly set concrete. Wheat germ, “beef juice,” carrot juice, bottles of vitamins, and Protein from the Sea (the label proclaims that it “Builds strength and muscle fast!”). Musclini — Arno gave the paterfamilias that nickname, after Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy who sided with Hitler during World War II — consumes this mishmash in conjunction with his tennis games and three-times-a-week weight-lifting routines in his attic gym.

In the freezer is a box of mini-pizzas. Each one is the size of a dessert plate. Left to his own devices, Alan would eat them frozen. I turn on the oven and slide four of them in on a cookie sheet.

By the time Alan was four, my parents knew something was wrong. He wouldn’t listen. He went outside without any clothes on. He ran across the street without looking. You couldn’t let him out of your sight for a second. Other kids teased him. This killed me. Not only because I was still young enough to think it implied that our whole family was somehow defective, but also because I could see that the teasing left my brother hurt and bewildered. Alan was aware of what they were doing, but he couldn’t understand why. None of the specialists and doctors who’ve tested him have come up with a precise diagnosis. He’s “slow”— to learn, to think, to comprehend — and stubborn. Can’t catch a ball. Not even one tossed gently from close by. Has a speech defect that makes his th’s sound like f’s. Kids used to tease him mercilessly for that; now he hardly speaks.

The thing is, it’s not just me who’s going to be affected now that Goddard (and the other colleges Mom applied me to) has turned its collegiate back on me. It’s Alan, too. In this country, if you are a physically and mentally fit antiwar male of draft age who’s not going to college, you have two choices: move to Canada or go to prison for draft evasion. Either option would mean leaving home and Alan for a long time (in the case of Canada, forever) without a chance of visiting. I know he’s not going to starve (not as long as there’s raw spaghetti and frozen pizzas in the house), and except for going to an amusement park now and then, it’s not like I do that much with him. But I also know that having me around is a comfort. Together, we’re soldiers on the home front. Not all war zones are on the other side of the globe.