“The nurse had wrapped my brother in a blue flannel blanket and was just about to hand him to his mother when she whispered, ‘Oh, God, there’s another one,’ and out I slid, half dead.” A short story by Louise Erdrich, from 2011.
Betty had told me all she knew of the circumstances of my birth. She was never one to keep things from people for their own good. She always let you have the truth square. But as I’d never thought to ask her about my brother she hadn’t talked about him. Nor had any of my siblings—mainly because I don’t think they really cared. Perhaps they didn’t even associate me with the Lashers. I searched my memory and could not pull out much, except that my twin had been a boy, born first.
When I finally hung up the phone, I stared for a long time at the little log fire in my fireplace. I’d laid the fire before the call and had been looking forward to popping some corn. Whenever I did, I threw kernels high in the air for the dog to catch. Now I was gripped by something new—a dreadful array of feelings. Which should I choose to succumb to first? I couldn’t decide.
I’d thought about this in advance and concluded that, if she wanted to assuage her guilt in some way, taking me out to dinner was far too cheap. So we ordered and ate and drank our glasses of sour white wine. As we did so, she talked. She asked me about myself. She drew me out, as they might say in a novel. She made sounds of interest and surprise and sympathy. She said that she admired me. We got through the dinner of walleye and pilaf.
After she hung up, I called the numbers on the card my mother had given me and made appointments for the tests. “I’ll tell you what,” the doctor, a woman, who gave me the results of the tests and conducted the interview said. “You are a match, but I know your story. And I think it only fair that you know that Linden Lasher’s kidney failure is his own fault. He has issues. He tried to commit suicide with a massive dose of acetaminophen, aspirin, and alcohol. That’s why he is on dialysis. I think you should take that into account when making your decision.
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