FRED AND ME

Goldstein discusses caring for his mentally disabled younger brother in this memoir.

Staten Island’s Willowbrook State School forms the ominous backdrop of this memoir. For decades, the “school” was a dumping ground for mentally disabled people, all of whom were housed in overcrowded, filthy conditions and many of whom were physically and sexually abused. The institution was the subject of a Geraldo Rivera expose in 1972 and shuttered in 1987. The author recounts the admission of his 4-year-old younger brother, Fred, to Willowbrook, where he would stay until he was 20. When the Goldstein parents died, the author took over guardianship of his developmentally disabled brother, getting to know Fred for the first time at age 45 (“The responsibility I felt for Fred created a job of devotion—to see him, look out for him, be present for him,” Goldstein writes. “It was the job I was protected from when our parents were alive”). His narrative fleshes out his own personal history as he got away from his family, first in Denver and then Denmark, and pursued his own relationships and career; but the bulk of the book deals with Goldstein’s initially tenuous and then steadily strengthening relationship with his long-lost brother. His account is heavy-handed but often very touching; the author’s growing dedication to his brother is heartwarming. “When Fred looked terrific, I felt better,” he writes. “When he showed development, I felt better.” Fred himself is largely absent as a character, and thus the horrors he might have experienced at Willowbrook (“days spent doing nothing but crawling through feces,” as Goldstein writes, “or serving as subjects for medical experiments”) remain largely theoretical. Still, the thread of brotherly love running through the narrative will win over all but the most callous readers.

An involving story of connection.