The gift’s not mine; my sister has it confused with someone else’s. I picked out the luggage set just yesterday and was waiting for my card to be reactivated before I placed the order. And there’s no way for her to know about the stock. Then again, this may be Kara’s work. Her standing assumption is that I’m irresponsible when it comes to my sentimental duties; she probably sent something practical in my name, a microwave or upright vacuum cleaner, and forgot to inform me. She covers for me this way, forging my signature on thoughtful gestures.
I probe. “You needed one?”
“Well, no one
“What told you it was from me?”
She lifts her head and eyes me at a slant. “Are you okay?”
“A little frazzled. Why?”
“That was such an odd question. Who else would it have been from? Are you still on that medication?”
“That was years ago.”
“So no more seizures?”
“I’ve never had a seizure. That’s like calling every lump a tumor.”
“Fine, then. ‘Fits.’ ”
“That’s even worse,” I say.
Julie is misinformed, as usual. She’s referring to the beta-blockers prescribed for a funny heartbeat that turned up during an annual corporate physical a few months after our father’s funeral. I was tired at the time, surviving on diet cola while shuttling between Denver, LA, and Houston as part of an effort to smooth the troubled merger of two mid-size regional advertising agencies. Worn down by my grief and the gloom of the assignment, which consisted of identifying redundancies and recommending layoffs, I suffered a kind of segmented collapse marked by bouts of irresistible sleepiness during several key meetings and lunch appointments. Because of the politeness of my associates, who declined to mention my little naps after I came to, and because no single individual witnessed more than one of the attacks, weeks passed before I caught on to what was happening. I imagined I’d dozed off for a few seconds, when in fact I’d been falling asleep for a few minutes. I finally learned what was wrong at LAX, where I nodded off at a pay phone in the Compass Club and missed a flight. I was granted a paid leave. I grounded myself for seven weeks (a record), took a few classes to refresh my spirits, and made an adequate recovery. Other than the minor arrhythmia, there was just one lingering complication. It happened that during one of my brief blackouts—at a downtown Denver oyster bar—sneaky Craig Gregory had played a trick on me, slipping my wallet out of my back pocket and inserting a scribbled-on business card for one Melissa Hall at Great West Airlines. “Fantastic meeting you. Call!” the message read. There was also a row of X’s and a heart. I found the card while reorganizing my Rolodex, puzzled over it for a day or two, then thought what the hell and gave a ring. Assuming the woman was a flight attendant, I left a sweet, if tentative, voice mail, and received a call back from a mannerly Melissa—Soren Morse’s executive assistant and, I found out later, his sometime mistress. Here’s what was strange, though: after much embarrassment, and after we’d identified the trickster— Craig Gregory knew Melissa through a cousin—she told me that she’d seen my name while making up invitations to a Christmas party Morse was throwing for Great West’s heaviest flyers. We agreed to say hi to each other at the party, which was just a month away, but my invitation never arrived. I called to inquire, but Melissa wouldn’t speak to me, and I could only conclude that Morse himself had struck me from the guest list. Jealousy? I tried my theory on Craig Gregory, who laughed it off but no doubt wrote it down for the “This is your life” file he keeps on everyone.
All in all, a murky time for me. But I repeat: there were never any seizures. My sisters spend too much time on the phone together erroneously filling in the blanks of their brother’s life.
This matter of having sisters. I’ve done my best. When Kara was born after years and years of trying—in Minnesota you weren’t supposed to have to try; babies were supposed to come like crops—my parents already considered themselves old. My arrival surprised them. My father was as pleased as any man to have a son, but he was busy by then, with a growing gas route to attend to. In helping him I saw my opening. By five I was riding shotgun in the propane truck, learning a business that, if it had survived, I’d still be in today, with no regrets. The secret was providing added value with every refilled tank—carrying the news from farm to farm, adjusting and reigniting pilot lights, delivering packages for snowbound widows. My apprenticeship secured a spot for me in my father’s everyday routine and in the larger life of the community.
Everything changed when Julie came along, a month premature but radiant and perfect, with none of that simian newborn homeliness. If I’d been a surprise, she was a shock. Her beauty felt like a judgment on our averageness, and we fell into competition for her favor. My father, who’d grown comfortable by then, cut back on his hours to spend more time at home, while Kara and my mother scrimmaged constantly over who would change the baby’s diapers and push her in the new stroller through the aisles of the downtown J. C. Penney. I was odd man out again. Whenever I managed to get alone with Julie, I spoiled her with treats and toys and labored to impress her with my manliness. When I was fourteen and she was ten, I knocked down an older boy in front of her. I took her homework when she got home from school and returned it to her in the morning, finished. I was her first crush when she turned twelve, and when I went off to college I sent her letters playing up my successes and achievements and dismissing the girls who supposedly had eyes for me. Our romance crested during a summer vacation when I smuggled her into an R-rated movie and she rested her head on my shoulder during a love scene. A neighbor sitting a couple of rows behind us had a word with my mother. We were finished.
“The wedding present wasn’t from me,” I say. “Kara must have sent something in my name. What was it anyway?”
“A lawn mower. It follows these wires you bury in the ground and runs by remote control.”
My mouth goes dry. I can’t swallow my cookie.
“Where was it sent from?”
“Salt Lake City. Here. A store called Vann’s Electronics. You signed the card. You’re saying you don’t remember buying it?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m going to bed.”
I lie in the dark guest room beside a window that frames the spire of the Mormon Temple, as white as aspirin and topped with a gold angel. I’ve set my sleep machine on blowing leaves and swallowed a sedative. My left hand is tucked under the waistband of my boxers and in my other hand I hold my phone.
