Faulty Predictions

A Good Brother

100 A Good Brother On Friday afternoon, Carter lovingly buckled his golf clubs in the backseat of his Jetta and drove from Philadelphia to his parents ’ house in Boston. He had little time to enjoy golf now that he was a medical resident, and he looked forward to his round the next morning. As he drove, he fantasized about his club coming in satisfying contact with the ball. He turned down the volume on the radio and talked out loud, pretending he was a professional announcer. In hushedtoneshespokeofthefluidityandrhythmofhisownhypothetical backswing, the almost impossible stillness of his head as the club moved through the ball and into the follow-through. When he arrived at his parents’ house late at night, his mother informed him that his Saturday morning golf plans had to be cancelled. Instead of playing golf, he was to take his sister wedding dress shopping ; there was no one else who could do it. The next morning, as his mother waited for her coffee to brew, she said, “You’ll have to move your clubs so after you buy the dress it can be spread out in the backseat.” “The dress can go in the trunk,” Carter said. He’d already reluctantly agreed to take his sister shopping. This felt like a large enough sacrifice. He opened a carton of almond milk, which his mother had bought especially for his visit, and poured it over a bowl of All-Bran. Lacey, Carter’s sister, hobbled to the counter—she’d broken her a good brother 101 ankle tumbling off a scooter her numbskull fiancé had rented for a tour through the wineries of the Hudson River Valley—and took a glazed doughnut out of a box gaping open next to the sink. She rested her crutches against the counter, hopped to the kitchen table, and plunked down across from Carter. She took a large, sticky bite of doughnut. Carter fought the urge to tell her that she might cut back on the doughnuts if she didn’t want to look like a puffed marshmallow in her wedding dress. Carter had inherited his mother’s fast metabolism , but he was still fastidious about what he ate. Lacey was more like their father, short and round with a vicious sweet tooth. “Your clubs can go in the trunk,” Lacey said. “I’ve got a bottle of wiper fluid in the trunk,” Carter said. “Like I want that sloshing over my new Titleists.” “Oh, right, because I want my wedding dress to be dyed blue.” “Put the clubs in the garage,” said Carter’s father. “Case closed.” Although Carter and Lacey were in their twenties, he spoke to them with the commanding tone he’d used when they were children. He swept a lint brush down the sleeves of his black suit jacket. Carter’s parents were going to a funeral. Their neighbor, Elise McNamara, had died suddenly the week before from a stroke in the parking lot of her office complex. Carter’s mother shook her head. “You would think that on a day like today you’d be nicer to each other. Think about poor Duncan McNamara . He’s lost his mother.” “He’s twenty-seven. He’ll be OK,” Carter said. This was probably not true. Carter had known Duncan since elementary school. Duncan had never had friends, and he was often seen around town with his mother, pushing her shopping cart at the grocery store, carrying her monogrammed canvas tote bag filled with books out of the library, even meeting her during his senior year of high school for lunch when he was allowed to leave school for fifty minutes. Duncan had spent time with his mother when other boys his age were practicing sports or driving too fast with their girlfriends in their passenger seats. a good brother 102 “Suchasweetyoungman,”saidCarter’smother.“Andnoonecould have a better heart than his mother. She was holding a sweater drive for poor Guatemalan orphans.” “Don’t poor Guatemalan orphans make sweaters? Like those hideous things made out of alpaca wool that they sell on the street for twenty bucks?” Carter said. He didn’t want to talk about Elise’s death and Duncan’s loss. “Can’t you muster up some compassion?” said Carter’s mother. “I don’t think Carter knows the definition of compassion,” Lacey said. “I know the definition. But if you...