The ICU Where They Split His Estate
I had spent my childhood being the grease that kept Gary from grinding against the world. He was three years older and he was the kind of boy who broke things and then arranged his face so that somebody else got the blame, and usually the somebody was me, and usually I let it be, because our mother could not stand conflict and I could not stand watching her twist her apron in her hands. Marlene kept the peace in that house by making sure the peace was always my job. Be the bigger person, Ruthann. Let it go, Ruthann. He’s your brother. So I learned to swallow things whole, and I got so good at it that by the time I was grown I did not even taste them going down. That is the training that had me sitting in a chair in the ICU holding my father’s hand while my brother searched land values over the footboard. Fifty-six years old and still being the bigger person out of pure muscle memory.
They were here for two days. And in those two days I learned who my brother and his wife really were, not from a document, not from a will, but from their own mouths in a room where they thought the only person who could hear them was me, and I did not count.
It started small. Pam wandering the room while I held Dad’s hand, running one manicured finger along the window ledge like she was checking for dust in a house she was thinking about buying. Gary standing at the foot of the bed with his phone out, and I thought he was texting his kids, and then I saw over his shoulder that he had a real estate site open and he was typing our township into the search bar.
“The Hendricks place sold last fall,” he said, not really to me. “Hundred and sixty acres. You would not believe what they got. There’s people buying up ground all over this county for the solar. Developers.” He said the word developers the way another man might say angels.
“Gary,” I said. “Dad’s right here.”
He glanced at the bed like he had forgotten it was occupied. “He can’t hear us, Ruthie. Doc said.” Then he went back to his phone.