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ridiculous—feel as if Brian has won. All I can do is wound him and push him away. I stagger against the mantel, my forehead pressed to the great splintered slab of wood that's anchored in the stone.
    "Dad went to Mass every Sunday too," I declare with a wither of irony. "And you know what? He was still a scumbag drunk who hit me for nothing at all. He used to hit me for reading. And when I finally told him I was gay, he told me I made him want to puke." Then a very small pause. "Isn't that where you learned it?" Nothing, no answer. He's still as a rock. "So you'll forgive me if I keep my distance from all you good Catholics."
    Brian stands and reaches for his jacket, thrown over the back of the sofa. "I thought we could heal it up between us. I was wrong. I don't want to upset you like this. You've got enough to deal with." He shrugs into the jacket and turns to me. There is oddly no shyness between us, and nobody looks away. Perhaps this is the proof we are brothers. "Look, if there's anything..."
    He lets it hang, and I shake my head. "You can't help me."
    He nods, and we move together. Through the dining room and kitchen, then out to the yard, shoulder to shoulder across the grass. The silence between us doesn't feel strained, and is even rather soothing. We are ending it before it comes to blows. This is so sensible, we are practically acting like WASPs. The faint spoor of a skunk feathers the night air, and the moon is still bright, casting ice shadows across the gravel drive. We reach the boatlike rental car, nosed in between two Monterey cypresses. I wish my brother no harm and hope he knows it, but I say nothing.
    Brian opens the door and half turns again. His mouth works to speak, another set speech perhaps, but all that comes out is "Take care."
    I stand with my hands in my pockets as he fishes for the keys. We will never see each other again. No drunken promises to visit, no embrace to pass on to my nephew, no jokes. This is a surgical procedure, the final separation. And then the key turns in the ignition, and there's a clunk. Brian tries it again, this time pumping the gas. Nothing.
    It is so ludicrously a symbol of the deadness between us, I want to laugh out loud. But it's so clearly not funny, the useless click of the key as he tries it over and over, because now my brother is stuck here. I know this a second before he does. In fact I can see the bloom of shock in his face as he remembers there's no phone. It's nine o'clock on a Saturday night, and the nearest pay phone is two miles south at the Chevron station. I have no car and no jumper cables. Our mogul neighbors with Uzi guard dogs are not the sort you bother for a cup of sugar.
    Brian looks at me, dazed and slightly foolish, like a man who can't get it up. He seems to understand instinctively that he's trapped in a movie twist. "Fuckin' piece o' junk," he grumbles, so raw you can almost hear the brogue of Gramp Shaheen.
    "You'll have to walk down to the Chevron in the morning. When's your flight?"
    "Noon."
    "Oh, you'll be fine. Don't worry, there's lots of room."
    My own voice amazes me, so solicitous and chummy. I open the door like a bloody valet. You'd think the bile and snarling never happened. But this is different, a matter of hospitality, like laying down the guns on Christmas Eve. Brian grabs his briefcase from the backseat, and we head back to the house. The skunk is nearer, or at least sending out a stronger warning. The silence between us is comfortable. We both appear to agree that this part can be handled in purely practical terms, no frills and no demands.
    In the house I douse the downstairs lights, and Brian follows me up the spiral stair. "This is where I sleep," I say, pointing into Foo's room. Then we cross behind the stairwell, and I throw open the door opposite. "Cora's room," I inform him as we enter, by way of historical orientation.
    In fact, this is where Gray stays when he spends the night, though he's never stayed over during