Exerpt from “Dissonance”

“You know he’s not getting any better, right?” Amy leaned forward onto the table with crossed arms. Her brother, Wallace, sat blank faced across from her. Their coffees were still warm, steam rising from the cups next to them.

“What kind of a question is that?” He said, his hands under the table. His thumb nail was slowly eviscerating the cuticle on his index finger. “I’m not a child. I know what stage 4 means.”

“Wally. Come on,” she said, her tone softening. “I know you know what’s going on.” A deep sigh, a glance at her hands. “I- I just want you to take this seriously. Because, you know, we may not have that much time left to-”

Wallace pulled his hand up and rested it on hers as her voice wavered. She closed her eyes and took another deep breath. A few tears that had welled up in her eyes dropped onto her sweater, forming little dark circles. “He doesn’t deserve much more from us, but he is still our grandfather,” she said quietly to the table.

            They both fell silent for a moment. The waitress, who had just approached and then quickly turned away when she saw Amy’s head hung low, craned her neck around the counter to evaluate the situation. The bell hung by the door clangs and a loud group walked into the coffee shop.

            “You’re right,” he said after a while, pulling his hand back and picking up his coffee. “He doesn’t deserve much more from us.”

            There was hatred in his voice: true, unrelenting anger. While he sipped his coffee, Amy stared at him silently, not bothering to wipe her face off.

            “Are we ready to order?” the waitress appeared with a tense smile. Amy and Wallace didn’t respond for a moment, just staring at each other. The waitress flipped the page of her notebook and tucked a strand of hair behind her ears, turning slightly red from the discomfort.

            “We’ll just need another minute,” Amy said, not looking away from Wallace.

            “Ok, great! I’ll be back in a bit!” the waitress said and jogged away. He sipped his coffee, thumb and forefinger rubbing together in anxious circles.

            “Still not taking care of that anxiety?” she said pointedly. When she felt like this, her face went placid and unreadable. Wallace, like his father, knitted his brow together and chewed his lip and tapped his foot in a nervous rhythm. He tried to compose himself by leaning back in his chair. He might be nervous, but she was changing the subject. She always beat around the bush when she wasn’t telling him something important.

            “What else?” He asked her, trying to steel his expression. The light shifted outside the window as a cloud drifted across the sun, and the front door opened, jingling a bell. Amy studied his face, the thick blond hair that curled around his shoulders and dark eyes that gave everything away. The dark circles under his eyes that had been there since childhood had deepened in the past year, presumably because of work. He had told her almost nothing about his personal life in past months, a stark contrast between the days when he would barge into her room without knocking and tell her everything, legs up against the wall and arms gesturing wildly in the air.

            “There’s nothing else, Wally,” she said, wiping her face with her sweater sleeve. “If you need something else besides responsibility, I think that’s on you.”

He scoffed and shook his head.

            “Responsibility? Family responsibility? Unbelievable.”

Scooting his chair back, he stood and put his hands in his pockets. “I’m not doing this with him, or frankly, with you.”

            “Wally-” She started but he was already pushing the chair back in and starting to walk away. “That’s fucking unbelievable,” she mumbled under her breath as she pulled out her wallet to find some cash. The waitress peeked around the corner as Amy threw her scarf around her neck and left $10 on the table. The bell clanged as she slammed the door behind her.