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immediate and ongoing. The longer Theresa had been away as an adult, however, the nicer and better-adjusted Ricky seemed to get.
    She had expected the worst when he decided to move in with their father after their mother’s death and Ricky’s divorce. She had expected the two men, who were so alike already, to simply merge into one horrific masculine amalgam. And end up one of those bachelor pairs of fathers and sons that she knew so well from back home, finishing each other’s sentences, eating the same thing every day — cereal, cheddar, toast, bologna with ketchup — pissing in the kitchen sink because the bathroom was too far away, wiping their hands on the arms of their chairs after finishing up a meal of cereal and cheese. Served on a TV tray. A TV tray never folded and put away, never scrubbed free of solidified ketchup puddles, never not stationed in front of the chair.
    But Ricky got better instead of worse — he’d refused to merge into the two-headed, tea-slurping father-thing that haunted Theresa. Maybe it had haunted Ricky too, that bogeyman — perhaps he’d steeled himself against it. He had taken to wearing ironed, button-front shirts, for example, clean ones, even around the house, instead of T-shirts and sweats. He didn’t wear a ball cap anymore, which was astounding because Theresa had never seen him out of one since seventh grade — he’d spent adolescent eternities in front of the hallway mirror attempting to get the curve of the brim just right.
    Theresa arrived in their childhood home to find things neat, dust-free and zero TV trays in sight. Their father was expected to come to the table when his tea was ready — he didn’t get it brought to him, like their mother would have done. “I’m not here to wait on ya, buddy,” Ricky would call into the living room. “Get your arse to the table.” He somehow had made it a new ritual from what it was when their mother was alive — something tougher, less domestic. Just a couple of dudes drinking tea. As if coming to the table was now a minor challenge thrown down from son to father, like their dad would be sort of a pussy if he didn’t rise to the occasion. She wanted to applaud at that first sight of the old man heaving himself to his feet without so much as an irritated grunt. She wanted to take her brother aside and congratulate him on it.
    She told a potted version of all this to her girlfriends as they sat around drinking vodka gimlets — they were on a gimlet kick — in Dana’s living room. To set them up for the climax of the story, the big outrage: Put on a few pounds, didn’t ya? She used the pissing in the sink line to make them smile, but also to ensure they had a solid sense of where Theresa and her father stood. Ruth’s father, by way of contrast, was a provincial supreme court justice, long divorced, and he and Ruth went on cruises together to a different part of the world every year, where they had pictures taken of themselves holding hands.
    Theresa had packed off her girls to their dad’s house and flown home for the Thanksgiving long weekend. It was a long way to come for three days, but Ricky called her and asked her.
    â€œJeez, Ricky,” she’d said on the phone, “I’d love to, but we’re into mid-terms now. I’d planned on spending the whole time marking.”
    â€œWith Mom gone,” Ricky interrupted — it didn’t feel like an interruption so much as an ambush, a bludgeoning. He silenced her by breaking the rules of their brother–sister interactions as she’d understood them up to this point. Theresa had been busy making her breezy, half-assed excuse and out of nowhere Ricky hits her with the grotesque reality of with Mom gone.
    â€œWith Mom gone,” said Ricky, “I feel like we all have to make an extra effort here.”
    For years, she and Ricky were not in touch. They