I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson Page B

therapeutic. On Paul’s final visit, his father had been conscious and awake, his eyes open and able to follow people around the room, but he was otherwise unresponsive. Paul had sat by his father’s bedside and held Harrold’s hand (he hadn’t done that since he was four) and felt it twitch slightly.
    â€œI think he was glad we were there,” Paul had explained to Stella, “but it was hard to tell. It’s very strange when you can’t look at someone’s face and guess what they’re thinking. You don’t realize how much that matters until it’s absent.”
    â€œHow’s your mom dealing with it?”
    â€œShe’s upbeat, actually,” Paul said. “Everybody’s rolling up their sleeves and saying, ‘Let’s get to work.’ ”
    â€œWhy do you need to roll up your sleeves?”
    â€œIt’s just an expression.”
    Stella silently considered Paul’s report, then said she thought something was still bothering him. That’s when he told her he’d had a fight with his brother, adding the story about the fortune cookie because he thought it was funny.
    â€œI don’t think it would have killed you to eat the cookie,” Stella said dryly. “Just to keep the peace. That’s all I’m saying.”
    â€œIt’s the principle,” Paul said. “That’s what you would have done?”
    â€œAnd the fortune too,” she said. “That would have solved both your problems. Besides, if you eat something you don’t want to eat, you can always swallow grass and throw it all up later.”
    â€œEasy for you to say,” Paul said, but she was right, again. Blessed was the peacemaker. “In humans, they call that bulimia. Plus there wasn’t any grass. There was snow on the ground. What do dogs do in the winter when they need to throw up?”
    â€œChange the subject if you want to,” Stella said. “I just think you have a really strange relationship with your brother. It sounds so petty. And I mean that in the pejorative sense. Don’t you love your brother?”
    â€œOf course I love my brother,” Paul said. “I just wish he lived in New Zealand.”
    â€œIs that a nice place?” Stella asked.
    â€œIt’s a very nice place,” Paul said. “Good location too.”
    As Paul drove, he thought of all the times, growing up, when he’d wished far worse for his brother. The time Carl had walked away from the chessboard, refusing to either finish the game or officially resign, with Paul two moves from checkmate and about to beat his brother for the first time in his life at anything. Then there was the time Carl stole the shoelaces out of Paul’s sneakers when his own broke, or finished the milk when Paul still had cereal left, or licked the centers out of the Oreos and then put them back in the bag, or the times he’d made Paul burn his marshmallows making s’mores by outfencing him over the campfire with his roasting stick (for years, Paul pretended he liked burnt marshmallows). Yet despite the basic sibling rivalry stuff of early childhood, for the first ten years of his life, Paul had wanted to do everything Carl did, wear the same clothes, get his hair cut the same way. When Paul entered junior high and the war between them intensified, Paul couldn’t help thinking, “This is how you repay me for a lifetime of adoration?”
    He looked at Stella, who was staring at him, her head cocked.
    â€œIt’s hard to explain,” he told Stella. “Do you remember when you were just a puppy and you lived on a farm with your brothers and sisters, and you were” — he had told Stella once that she was the runt of her litter, and that had hurt her feelings — “the
nicest
dog in your family, but your older brothers were bigger than you, so if there was a bowl of food on the floor or a table scrap, they ate it first