Free This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

the four of us and Mom, sitting on low chairs, feeling sheepish and uncomfortable.
    “So,” Phillip says. “What happens now?”
    “People will come,” Mom says.
    “How do they know when to come?”
    “We are not the first people to ever sit shiva,” Paul grumbles.
    “People will come,” Mom says.
    “Oh, people will come, Ray,” Phillip intones, doing his best James Earl Jones. “People will most definitely come.” Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored. When triggered, he will quote thoughtlessly, like some kind of savant.
    Paul looks up to catch me staring at the scar on his right hand. It’s a thick, pink line that runs up the meaty edge of his palm, crossing his wrist and ending in a splotchy cluster on the inside of his forearm. There’s another, nastier one on his shoulder that radiates up toward his neck in raised tendrils the color of dead flesh, where the rottweiler missed his jugular by a few inches. Whenever I see him, I can’t help but stare at the scars, looking for the teeth marks I know are there.
    He twists his arm around self-consciously, hiding the scar, and flashes me a hard look. Paul has not addressed me directly since I arrived. He rarely addresses me if he doesn’t have to. This is due to a combination of factors, most notably the rottweiler attack that ended his college baseball career before it started and for which he blames me. He’s never come out and said that, of course. Other than Phillip, the men in my family never come out and say anything. So I don’t know for sure if that’s when Paul started hating me, or if that’s just when Paul started hating everybody.
    Another possible factor is that I lost my virginity to Alice back in high school, and she to me, which isn’t as creepy as it sounds. Alice was my year in high school, not even on Paul’s radar until many years later, when she cleaned his teeth and he picked her up with the always reliable “Didn’t you used to go out with my kid brother?” By then I was long gone from Elmsbrook, already engaged to Jen, so if anyone is to blame for that one, it’s Paul and not me. He knew going in that I’d been there first. For all I know, he may have even started sleeping with her to somehow get back at me for the dog attack, which would have been twisted and stupid and so very Paul. So now, every time Paul sees me, it’s there in the back of his mind, that I deflowered his wife, that I’ve seen Alice naked, that I’ve kissed the wine-colored birthmark in the shape of a question mark that starts below her navel and ends at the junction of her legs. It was seventeen years ago, but men don’t let go of things like that. And every time Alice and I see each other, we can’t help but flash back to those four months we spent having sex in cars, basements, shrubs, and once, late at night, in the plastic tunnel above the slide in the elementary school playground. You never forget your first time, no matter how much you’d like to.
    “How are things at the store?” I ask him.
    He looks at me, considering the question. “Same old same old.”
    “Any plans to expand to any more locations?”
    “Nope. No plans to expand. We’re in a recession, or don’t you read the paper?”
    “I was just asking.”
    “Although I guess a recession is the least of your problems, huh, Judd?”
    “What do you mean by that, Paul?” We are ending our sentences with names, which is the equivalent of fighters circling, looking to throw the first punch.
    “Paul,” Mom says.
    “It’s okay, Mom,” I say. “We’re just catching up.”
    “Forget it,” Paul says.
    “No. It’s fine,” I say. “What you meant was, between being unemployed and my wife screwing around, I have bigger things to worry about than the economic state of the country. Right?”
    “That’s