ONE
GAME OF PHONES
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EMILY
February 12
“Brother,” I said.
“Daughter,” he answered, which is probably confusing to anyone who doesn't know that everyone calls my father by the name Brother, despite (a) it not being his actual name, (b) him not being a member of a religious organization, and (c) it not being his actual name.Which I realize I said twice, but I didn't want only two pertinent points in my reference to my father.He's a three-points sort of guy.
Where was I?Oh, the call.
“Brother,” I said again, and gave the side paddock a meaningful look, just as if Brother could see it.Which he couldn't, because he refuses to video chat, claiming that every time he does, his phone is screwed up for weeks after.It's not—he's just old.But I digress.
“The time has finally come,” I told him, and rapped firmly on the window overlooking the aforementioned paddock.The landlady’s two rescue donkeys, Elton and Elton, who lived in our paddock, were busily chomping on the new snap lock I'd put on the gate.Elton I looked ashamed, and busied himself with the empty grain bucket in apparent nonchalance, but Elton II maintained a steady, and highly discomforting, eye contact with me while he tried to consume first the metal lock, then the wooden fence itself.
“For what?Death?It comes to all of us in the end, Emily,” Brother answered,oofing a little as he obviously sank down into his favorite oversized leather chair.His voice had that rich timbre that it gets when he goes into one of his history lectures.“I, myself, am now well into my sixties, and I can honestly say that I stare death straight in the eye every morning when I stagger into the bathroom.There’s nothing we can do to stop the relentless push, push, push of the clock as time streams past us.Take you, for instance.”
“Take me where?Hey!Knock it off or I’m calling your mom, and you know how testy she gets when she has to climb the fence just to yell at you guys.”I covered the mouthpiece of the phone when I bellowed the last bit, stomping as I marched out of the door, and pinned back the errant donkey with what Fang has come to call the Emily Look.Elton I scampered off after a swift glance at my face.Elton II paused, considered what he knew about me, and wisely stopped chewing on the fence in order to casually move off.No doubt to inflict his naughtiness elsewhere, but so long as he left the fences alone, I was willing to look away for a little bit.“I swear, if Mrs.Fliss wasn’t knocking a hundred quid off the monthly rent for us watching those two, I’d send them back to her farm.What?No, I have not had a hit at a crack pipe.Really, Brother!Not only do you know me better than that, but that sort of comment is seriously 1990s and not at all fitting for someone who refutes his boomerhood.”
“I know that you can talk the hind leg off of one of your foster donkeys,” he corrected.“And I’m not a boomer.Now, if you wouldn’t mind coming to the point—not that I’m unhappy talking with you, since you only see fit to call once every few months—”
“The phone works both ways,” I pointed out, giving Elton II one last gimlet glance before I checked their water and returned to the house.“It’s so sad now that Sparkle and Leonardo are gone.”
“I believe your mother sent a bereavement card from us both on the loss of the pony and cat.I take it you haven’t gotten another?Cat, that is, since I assume you aren’t looking for another rescue pony.”
“No.Fang believes animals come to you when they need you, so he likes to leave us open for receiving, rather than letting me look for a couple of indoor cats.”
“Ah.How is Francis?”Brother is an odd dichotomy of a man—he refuses to call Fang by anything but his given name, and yet gets highly offended when anyone calls him Henry.As he once explained to my friend Holly, he had been known as Brother since my aunt Kathie first saw him as a baby, and it just made sense to stick with the name.
As I said, Brother is a three-point sort of person, but he’s still my father, and I figured he’d want to be here.
“He’s delicious as ever,” I said, moving back into the small cottage we rented from a neighboring farm.“Handsome as the day is long, a wonderful, caring vet, and a highly talented and inventive lover.”
Brother knew better than to call me out.“Good, good.All is well here, although your mother is searching for a new focus.”His voice dropped even though I knew he was in his study with the door closed.“You know how she gets.”
“She does love to hyperfixate on a good project,” I agreed.“That actually brings me to the reason I’m calling—Fang and I have decided to get married.”
“You what?One moment.CHRIS!CHRIS!COME IN HERE AND LISTEN TO YOUR DAUGHTER.SHE’S GONE INSANE.NO, THE OTHER ONE.EMILY.”
I held the phone away from my ear for a few seconds until he stopped yelling.Brother put me on speakerphone just as Mom entered the room, asking, “What’s all this about?I was watching a seminar on the latest Egyptian mummies discovered.Emily?Is something wrong?”
“Not a damned thing.What mummy seminar?Is it good?”
“She said she’s getting married,” Brother told Mom.
“Oh?That’s nice.I’ll email you the URL, Emily.It’s put on by one of the universities.When are you and Fang having the ceremony?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you guys about.As you know, neither of us is particularly hot and bothered about getting married—”
“If you call living in sin for fourteen years not being hot and bothered, then yes, I agree,” Brother said with anotheroomphand a resulting rude noise from the leather chair as he plopped into it again.“Your sister was married at twenty.”
“I am not Bess.Fang is not Monk.We are stable people with jobs and responsibilities,” I pointed out, not wanting to dis my sister.She had always been one to follow her own path, and if she spent the last fifteen years deep into animal rights, that was her business.“Fang and I looked at the calendar, and there are three dates that work with our schedules.”I gave them the date options for the next six months.
“August?”Brother’s voice rose half an octave.“You did say August, didn’t you?”
