I put my bag down.
The sound from the guest room was the television.
I stood in the hallway.
I heard football.
I heard Gabriel’s voice and Danny’s voice in the easy way of two men who have been in a comfortable place for a while.
I opened the door to the guest room.
The guest room.
The room with the window that looked onto the backyard.
The room across from the bathroom.
The room I had told my mother was her room.
Gabriel was on the bed.
Danny was on the chair that I had moved in so my mother could sit by the window.
They had the television.
They had beer.
They had the chips.
The room looked like a college dorm room if you set aside the fact that it was a sixty-five-year-old man and his fifty-nine-year-old brother watching football in a sick woman’s room.
