Jean, with her soft colors and discreet posture, and hard practical mind, set me screaming today, pounding tables. The water slopped over the lip of the jug. She went away with a tight mouth and a hateful glint in her eye. I may have lost another visitor. My brother’s arthritis, it seems, has gone beyond pills and potions. A faith healer camped outside of town has done wonders for others, she said. “Maybe if we could convince Spike that it could work, it would work, if he believed.” She said this with her hands tight on the steaming mug. The seam between her brows was deep, and I know she avoids frowning because of the wrinkles. She was serious, this told me. Why did it shock me? Because she usually drives a hard bargain? Because I’ve heard her express scorn for weak women who make scenes? Because she does what needs doing and doesn’t moan about it until later, when it’s convenient? And yet, in the rabid atheism of my youth, she poured a cup of coffee over my head because I said there was no God, at her table, in front of her children. At that time I knew she was right to do it. Yet today, twenty years later, at my own red table, she asked me to convince my brother that he can be healed by prayer and I bridled in shock.

“But if there was a chance that it would relieve his pain, it would be worth it,” she said. And I saw … what? My brother shaking, seated beneath the hands of a preacher, moans and shouts, and the pain of trying to believe on his face. My brother’s face, my face—we’re too alike. His jaws and brows, the boxer’s nose, the lines and furrows of his frowns are only slightly larger, firmer reflections of my own. I do not doubt, I know, such things can heal. Nobody can know more thoroughly than I do the power of the mind to desire, to want, to create and destroy in the face of physical inclination or probability. It was that possibility, that it might work, that set me off. Because I know that if my brother could be cured in that way I could never look at him again. Never love him anymore. Never see his face in my own in the mirror without retching.