Sewanee Review

It was late and Aaron was drinking too much wine, and he was trying to remember what it was Keith had said about goodness that hot day decades ago when they were kids, the same day their father threatened to smack them both. It was something simple, teetering on cliché. In the moment, Aaron probably spit into his brother's face. But silently, the way kids do, he vowed to remember what Keith said forever. The yard was slick with mud from the sprinkler they'd left running—they'd drowned the lawn that summer, and that day wasn't the first their father emerged red-faced onto the back porch, glass brimming with gin and melted ice. After their father finished flexing and went inside, Aaron joked, We'd better be good, and it was then that Keith said, Being good's not good enough for Dad. There it was—over the years, "for Dad" had fallen away, so the line became, Being good's not good enough, which meant that in the garden of Aaron's memory, his brother's words had taken root and grown twisted into something else, something like an excuse.

Here's something else Aaron remembered: the next summer, [End Page 384] the hard, grassless yard cracking under the August sun, a game of baseball with neighbor kids. Keith was pitching, their sister Tara was catcher, and Aaron struck out. Keith grinned. That's all—a mocking grin. Eager, Aaron figured, to make his older brother feel small. Aaron had meant only to intimidate with a near-miss swing of the bat, but instead Keith wound up in the hospital for two days—serious bone and nerve damage, the doctor told them in the waiting room. And how the doctor shot her eyes at Aaron when she said the word damage.

But now wasn't the time for those thoughts because Aaron and Keith and Keith's wife, Jeanie, were sitting around the dinner table. Keith was thirty-two now, with dark eyes and a patchy brown mustache, recently returned from the Peace Corps—a new adventure he'd called it, after his manuscript was never picked up and the college terminated his contract. They ate their salmon, and the orange sunset slipped through the blinds. As memories of childhood summers ran through Aaron on loop, he watched these two people he knew so well. No one made eye contact.

"In the village," Keith said, squeezing a lemon wedge over his salmon and then, with his other hand, wafting the smell of the food into his nose, "we had no access to fish. I don't think I saw a single fish, dead or alive, in two years."

"Aaron," Jeanie said. She glanced at the carrot-ginger soup at the end of the table, and Aaron passed her the bowl.

"We ate what's called paloo," Keith continued. "Do you know what that is? Paloo?"

"I don't know," Aaron said.

"Raisins, garlic, hot peppers, rice. Throw it in a pot. Simmer for a few hours over a fire." Keith smiled dramatically, closed his eyes, nodded in approval at the imaginary flavors in his mouth, then sipped his chardonnay. "Really stellar. The Kyrgyz can cook." [End Page 385]

"But do you like your fish?" Jeanie asked.

"Of course," he said. "I'll be honest, I feel odd eating it. Like an asshole, you know? But I'm adjusting. It's like Christmas at our parents', when I came back last year. I told you about this feeling, Aar." The way he'd always abbreviated Aaron's name sounded like Air. "I forget why you couldn't make it up."

"Holiday party in Los Angeles," Aaron said. "Some old musician friends."

"I do, I feel like an asshole, stuffing my face with this—how much was this?" He pointed to the slab of fish decorated with spices, citrus wheels, and cilantro in the center of the table. "Fifty, sixty dollars?"

Aaron pretended to cough. "We can't all live in poverty."

"There's the cocky kid I know," Keith said. He raised his glass and smiled, mock-cheerful, and Aaron thought...