The Great American Novel

Hellie

"It's not...bad."

"Oh, great. What a relief."

"Don't– don't do that, Hel. You know these things take time," Brent says, quietly reviewing all that he’s observed about empathy and attempting to offer it in his glance.

"Ah, got it. I was thinking six years was enough, but there I go again, prancing around through fairy land..."

"Done with the dramatics?" Brent looks at me again, this time like he's done since we were kids. Well, actually, he was a kid, I was sixteen, faux-mothering a five-year-old who had somehow managed a crash course in street smarts between leaving the womb and entering kindergarten. I, on the other hand, have never had much need for mothering, which is a good thing since I had to practically raise Daisy, too.

Daisy. Something leaps in my heart like I’ve left the kettle burning on the stove or forgot to feed the dog (neither of which I actually own. Tea is disgusting, and I like dogs...but I would probably forget to feed one). But then my system settles down when I realize Daisy died months ago, and I don’t have to rap on her front door until she finally wakes up or listen to her talk to me like we’re two strangers waiting for a bus. I find a calm, a peace in that. But I also find something beneath those things that begins to boil.

“I imagine Fogerty would act a lot like you, you know...if he were humanoid.” Brent takes a sip of his doctored “coffee” – a poor excuse for the beans that died for this concoction of cold cream and enough Splenda to make a grown man weep. Fortunately, Brent is far from one of those, so he can’t even taste the irony.

“Somehow, I take that as an honor and privilege, good sir,” I say. Fogerty is Brent’s dog, one of those animals that you forget isn’t somehow biologically related to you and fully capable of giving you advice on your 401k. He’s more cat than canine, slowly moving about Brent’s studio apartment in a way that suggests he’s the one who pays the rent, and it’s only out of the goodness of his heart that my brother has shelter from the elements.

Brent would definitely never forget to feed Fogerty because he values his existence.

“And Fogerty would act nothing like me,” I add. “He has more sense than to write a ‘not entirely palatable’ novel for nearly a decade of his life."

“I didn’t call it ‘not entirely palatable.’ And no, no, he wouldn’t.” Brent is gazing off over my right shoulder, staring at what I assume is an unsuspecting person in one of the booths behind me. It’s something I had to get on to him growing up. He’s on the spectrum or ADHD (or both, maybe), but it wasn’t exactly something that was overly diagnosed back in the day, and even if it were, we were never in the financial situation to come close to broaching the subject. Not to mention mentally capable of handling the logistics with Daisy pretending to steer our ship.

My heart leaps again and rattles against my ribs. I settle it down with slow sips of breath from some meditation video I found on YouTube. It typically works...until it doesn’t.

"Shouldn't we be celebrating 'small wins' or something just as nonsensical nowadays?" Brent says. He gives me his version of a warm smile–one part maniacal, two parts strained and then goes back to studying whatever it is that's captured his attention behind my left shoulder.

You did good, Hellie, I imagine him saying to me. But it's stupid, I know, to expect anyone to change.