Far-Flung by Peter Cameron Page A

facing the wall. He doesn’t say anything. From this angle he reminds me of Patrick. Patrick always slept on his side, his bony hip tenting the sheet, forming a little alpine mountainscape. Ellery usually sleeps on his back, the blankets rising smoothly over him, like water.
    The record finishes. The needle rises, and clicks itself off. The only sound is Carly’s labored breathing. “I’m still here,” I say.
    Ellery doesn’t answer.
    “Do you want me to turn the record over?”
    He still doesn’t answer. And then I notice his back moving: shaking, ever so slightly, the way it shakes when he’s crying, but trying to hold himself still.
    I should call Carly and go for a walk, but instead I go into my bedroom and look through Patrick’s things. If I had known he was going to die like that, I would have saved everything: his splayed toothbrushes, his outgrown sneakers, every hair that was ever cut from his head. All I have are report cards, pictures, and some Mother’s Day cards he made me in Sunday school. When he died, my sister, in a well-intentioned but misguided effort to comfort me, said maybe it was good that Ellery and he were twins, so much alike—that having Ellery was a little like still having Patrick. You have to be their mother to know how absurd that is. There was nothing alike about them. Their elbows were different. Their walks. They had their own auras. For instance, the afternoon I found the bathroom door locked, that awful quiet, I knew it would be Patrick I found inside, once the door was knocked down. I was right. Or: If one of them touched me lightly, with one finger, on my back, I could tell, without turning, without looking, whose finger it was.
    I start to make (canned) chili for dinner before I remember I sold all my pots. I keep missing things this way. The other night I went to vacuum and the vacuum was gone. I spoon the opened can of chili into Carly’s bowl and call her. She lumbers into the kitchen, smells the food, then sits down, confused, looking at, but not really seeing, me.
    “You don’t like it?” I say. “It’s chili.”
    Carly just stares. She looks sad. But then dogs always look sad, don’t they? That’s not true. Carly used to look happy. Sometimes she still grins.
    Ellery comes into the kitchen. The hair on one side of his head is bouffanted from sleep. “Is Daddy coming home for dinner?” he asks, although he knows his father is on the other side of our planet.
    “He should be home any minute,” I say.
    “Oh, good,” says Ellery. “It will be nice to see him. Are you cooking us a great dinner?”
    “You bet,” I say, grabbing his shoulders and kissing his neck, before he stops playing whatever game it is we’re playing.
    Ellery drives us down to Pronto! Pizza!. I’m a little worried about letting him drive with his sunglasses at night, but he appears to see fine, although he’s neurotic about signaling: He even puts his blinker on when he turns into the parking space.
    Ellery says he doesn’t care what kind of pizza we get, and to punish him for his apathy, I order pizza with green peppers, which I know he dislikes. He good-naturedly picks the peppers off his slices, making me feel terrible. I had expected he would complain. Children are always magnanimous when you’d rather they weren’t.
    “Daddy should call tonight,” I say.
    “Oh,” says Ellery.
    If I hadn’t ordered the green peppers I would remove them from my slices, too. They taste rubbery and inorganic.
    “Will you stay up and talk to him?”
    “Maybe,” says Ellery. “I’m kind of tired.”
    “You slept all afternoon.”
    Ellery shrugs. We eat for a while in silence. Ellery, the fastest eater I’ve ever known, finishes first and watches me. Or at least I think he’s watching (the sunglasses).
    “Do you want one of my slices?” I ask. “I can’t eat all of this.”
    “I’ve made up my mind,” Ellery says, ignoring my offer.
    “About what?”
    “The Philippines,” Ellery