of his gifts, because he’s a threat to Satan. That’s why he has problems.
Because of his righteousness.”
She sat up. I could see the outline of her long ponytail in the dark.
“He said he’ll hurt me,” she said. “I know it’s because of Satan. But
sometimes I’m scared of him, I’m scared of what he’ll do.”
I told her she shouldn’t marry someone who scares her, that no one
should, but the words left my lips stillborn. I believed them, but I
didn’t understand them well enough to make them live.
I stared into the darkness, searching it for her face, trying to
understand what power my brother had over her. He’d had that power
over me, I knew. He had some of it still. I was neither under his spell,
nor free of it.
“He’s a spiritual man,” she said again. Then she slipped into her
sleeping bag, and I knew the conversation was over.
—I RETURNED TO BYU a few days before the fall semester. I drove directly
to Nick’s apartment. We’d hardly spoken. Whenever he called, I always
seemed to be needed somewhere to change a bandage or make salve.
Nick knew my father had been burned, but he didn’t know the severity
of it. I’d withheld more information than I’d given, never saying that
there had been an explosion, or that when I “visited” my father it
wasn’t in a hospital but in our living room. I hadn’t told Nick about his
heart stopping. I hadn’t described the gnarled hands, or the enemas, or
the pounds of liquefied tissue we’d scraped off his body.
I knocked and Nick opened the door. He seemed surprised to see
me. “How’s your dad?” he asked after I’d joined him on the sofa.
In retrospect, this was probably the most important moment of our
friendship, the moment I could have done one thing, the better thing,
and I did something else. It was the first time I’d seen Nick since the
explosion. I might have told him everything right then: that my family
didn’t believe in modern medicine; that we were treating the burn at
home with salves and homeopathy; that it had been terrifying, worse
than terrifying; that for as long as I lived I would never forget the smell
of charred flesh. I could have told him all that, could have surrendered
the weight, let the relationship carry it and grow stronger. Instead I
kept the burden for myself, and my friendship with Nick, already