Free Men and Dogs by Katie Crouch Page B

talking, and Hannah understands every word in a way possible only between siblings:
    I’m tired. Tom is funny, isn’t he? I’m worried about you. Should we let you drink? You look older. Are you going to bring up that same old shit about Dad tonight?
    But perhaps she doesn’t know what her brother is thinking at all. Who is she to presume she still knows what’s in his head?
    “So,” he says, “are you going to bring up that same old shit about Dad tonight?”
    “If you’re lucky.”
    “Still the prodigal daughter. All it took was a nail in the head to get you home.”
    “Whatever.”
    “What was the story again?” He braces himself against the counter. “You got wasted and fell off your own house?”
    “Oh, Palmer!” Tom says, handing Hannah a golden concoction in a martini glass. “Like you haven’t had your own wild nights.
Should I tell her what you did at Boys’ Week in Kiawah?”
    Hannah never caught on in high school that Palmer wasn’t straight.
Though in hindsight she realizes she simply wasn’t paying attention. Palmer had girlfriends, lots of them, but no one he kept for longer than a week. Hannah remembers them lurking around the house, limbs magnificent in their short cutoff jeans. The specifics of his doings were never made clear to Hannah—Palmer didn’t interact socially with his sister—but according to the gossip, he was having sex, plenty of it. There was a story in the Charleston Prep halls about two couples going at it at once in her father’s old Volvo—the seats tipped back and the girls rising above, glorious as fooled angels.
    When Palmer announced, at perhaps the most awkward DeWitt-Legare dinner to date, that he was a homosexual, it made her brother more human somehow. For no matter how loudly Daisy and DeWitt might voice their support of Palmer, proclaiming over and over and over—to Palmer, to the other DeWitts, to friends at the Boat Club and at dinner parties—that there is nothing wrong with it, Palmer’s being gay finally brought him down to Hannah’s own flawed level.
    “How’s work?” Hannah asks. “How’s Jenny Meyers? I still can’t believe you hired my ex’s wife.”
    “Get over it. She’s an excellent technician.”
    “She cries all the time,” Tom says. “Palmer can’t ask her to do anything without her starting to sob.”
    “What’s the problem?”
    “I think it’s her hormones,” Tom says. “The pill or something. She wants to double-date, but no way I’m going to dinner with that estrogen faucet.”
    “Ha.” Hannah takes a sip of her cocktail. “Ginger?”
    “Ginger, lemongrass, and vodka.”
    “Should you be drinking?” Palmer says. “I thought the point of this trip was to clean up.”
    “It’s all organic,” Tom says helpfully. “Very clean. Practically no alcohol at all. Do you love it?”
    “ Love it.” This is how Hannah and her brother’s lover communicate. Easy, oft-proclaimed adoration. “Love it, love it, love it.”
    Beaming, Tom turns to the oven. Palmer may not be into women, Hannah muses, but he definitely found Charleston’s best wife.
    Dinner is low carb and succulent, served on glazed rectangular plates. (“So you can serve at an angle, Hannah!”) Tom fills her in on the latest gossip while they eat. Daisy’s still running every charity board in Charleston and plays tennis every day. DeWitt is growing even more good old boy, in an endearing way. He’s talking about getting Palmer into a fund he likes.
    “Are you going to do it?”
    “We’re considering it,” Tom says. “Twelve percent a year can’t hurt. But we’ll have to wait on the real money. It doesn’t look like he’ll be dying anytime soon.”
    “Would you please not talk about my stepfather that way?” Palmer says, carving another slice of pepper-encrusted skirt steak.
He does it the same way their father used to do it, brows furrowed with concentration, as if in lifesaving surgery.
    “It’s OK, Tom,” Hannah says. “I’m