Brother Odd

stormscape.
        Except for the SUVs, nothing moved other than what the wind harried. Even a few big trees along the route, pines and firs, were so heavily weighed down by the snow already plastered on them that their boughs barely shivered in deference to the gale.
        In the passenger seat, Elvis, having gone blond, had also phased into the work boots, peg-legged jeans, and plaid shirt he had worn in Kissin' Cousins. He played two roles in that one: a dark-haired air-force officer and a yellow-haired hillbilly.
        "You don't see many blond hillbillies in real life," I said, "especially not with perfect teeth, black eyebrows, and teased hair."
        He pretended to have a buck-toothed overbite and crossed his eyes to try to give the role more of a Deliverance edge.
        I laughed. "Son, you've been going through some changes lately You were never able to laugh this easily about your bad choices."
        For a moment he seemed to consider what I had said, and then he pointed at me.
        "What?"
        He grinned and nodded.
        "You think I'm funny?"
        He nodded again, then shook his head no, as if to say he thought I was funny but that wasn't what he had meant. He pulled on a serious expression and pointed at me again, then at himself.
        If he meant what I thought he did, I was flattered. "The one who taught me how to laugh at my foolishness was Stormy."
        He looked at his blond hair in the rearview mirror, shook his head, laughed silently again.
        "When you laugh at yourself, you gain perspective. Then you realize that the mistakes you made, as long as they didn't hurt anyone but yourself-well, you can forgive yourself for those."
        After thinking about that for a moment, he gave me one thumb up as a sign of agreement.
        "You know what? Everyone who crosses over to the Other Side, if he didn't know it before he went, suddenly understands the thousand ways he was a fool in this world. So everyone over there understands everyone over here better than we understand ourselves-and forgives us our foolishness."
        He knew that I meant his beloved mother would greet him with delighted laughter, not with disappointment and certainly not with shame. Tears welled in his eyes.
        "Just think about it," I said.
        He bit his lower lip and nodded.
        Peripherally, I glimpsed a swift presence in the storm. My heart jumped, and I turned toward the movement, but it was only Boo.
        With canine exuberance, he appeared almost to skate up the hill, glorying in the winter spectacle, neither troubled by nor troubling the hostile landscape, a white dog racing through a white world.
        After rounding the back of the church, we drove toward the entrance to the guesthouse, where the brothers would meet us.
        Elvis had phased from carefully coiffed hillbilly to physician. He wore a white lab coat, and a stethoscope hung around his neck.
        "Hey, that's right. You were in a movie with nuns. You played a doctor. Change of Habit. Mary Tyler Moore was a nun. Not immortal cinema, maybe not up there with the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez oeuvre, but not egregiously silly."
        He put his right hand over his heart and made a patting motion to suggest a rapid beat.
        "You loved Mary Tyler Moore?" When he nodded, I said, "Everybody loved Mary Tyler Moore. But you were just friends with her in real life, right?"
        He nodded. Just friends. He made the patting motion again. Just friends, but he loved her.
        Rodion Romanovich braked to a stop in front of the guesthouse entrance.
        As I pulled up slowly behind the Russian, Elvis put the ear tips of the stethoscope in his ears and pressed the diaphragm to my chest, as though listening to my heart. His stare was meaningful and colored with sorrow.
        I shifted into park, tramped the emergency brake, and said, "Son, don't you worry about me. You hear? No matter what happens, I'll be all right. When my day comes, I'll be even better, but in the meantime, I'll be all right. You do what you need to do, and don't you worry about me."
        He kept the stethoscope to my chest.
        "You've been a blessing to me in a hard time," I told him, "and nothing would please me more than if I proved to be a blessing to you."
        He put one hand on the back of my neck and squeezed, the way a brother might express himself when he has no adequate