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gotta take it.”
    Esau picked up the water, stood to get some leverage, crushed the tablets with the base of the glass, and brushed the powder onto the floor. I hesitated, counting out what I owed Esau, then kept counting.
    “There’s plenty more where those came from,” my father said, “but if you do it again, it’s coming out of your allowance.” He leaned against the bar with one hand and dropped ice into his glass with the other.
    “I don’t care,” Esau said.
    “Let me explain something to you,” my father said patiently, taking a drink. “Every time you stop taking your medicine, you get sick. And every time you get sick, you wind up in the hospital. And every time you wind up in the hospital, I wind up further in debt.” He walked back into the kitchen and came out with two more pills, holding on to them this time. “Eventually I will run out of money,” he said, his voice rising. “Do you follow? And there won’t be any left for hospitals or medicine or your mother or your sister or your sorry ass, for that matter. So you’re going to goddamn take your medicine if I have to force it down your throat.”
    Unexpectedly, his voice broke. He leaned down and awkwardly touched his forehead to Esau’s hair, his drink resting on Esau’s shoulder. Esau, who was holding the dice, waited until my father straightened up and then put his hand out for the pills. He sat looking a little sick after he swallowed them.
    “Can I have some milk?” he asked.
    My father brought him a glass of milk. He drank it, then got up from the table and sat down on the couch. My father sat down next to him. From the back they looked like the same person, only different heights. Esau’s head dropped onto my father’s shoulder and I knew he’d fallen asleep.
    I stood up and went over to them. My father was looking out the window, but there wasn’t anything to see. It was too dark.
     
     
     
    Maybe it was the same night, maybe another. It didn’t matter. I woke to the sound of voices in the living room. I cracked open the door.
    My mother’s legs were crossed and she held a glass of wine. My father’s elbows were on his knees, his drink dangling between them, catching the light. He was crunching ice. In the silence it sounded like he was chewing on glass.
    “He’s not any better,” he said.
    My mother didn’t answer for a moment. “He is. He’s a little better.”
    My father shook his head. “Claire,” he said, “we’re just biding time.”
    She said nothing. My father sat back in his chair.
    “So what, then?” she said. “So we’re just biding time. Do you have a better idea of what we should do?”
    It was hard to tell sometimes whether my mother was being mean, what with the smooth southern drawl that rolled along under her words like a low tide. Her words came out soft and slow when she was telling me stories, and they came out soft and slow when she said to my father, Oh, honey. Go on to hell.
    “You think it’s my fault,” my father said.
    I wondered what my mother was looking at. She was staring steadily ahead. She sat with her back straight, her fingers playing around the stem of her glass.
    “No,” she said eventually, her voice neutral. “Not your fault, exactly.”
    My father looked at her. “What’s that supposed to mean? Exactly?”
    She sipped her wine.
    “It’s sort of my fault, then? A little bit my fault?”
    “Arnold,” she sighed. “It’s not your fault. Is that what you want to hear? It’s no one’s fault. That’s what the doctors said.”
    “But that’s not what you think.”
    “I don’t think anything.”
    “Of course you think something. You think that whatever I touch turns to shit. You think whatever’s wrong with the world is somehow the direct effect of me.”
    “Arnold, don’t be dramatic.”
    “Claire, you are a true bitch, you know that? You really are.”
    “Yes, you’ve told me.”
    My mother took a sip of wine, and my father stood up to freshen his