FOR MY BROTHER’S twenty-fourth birthday I bought him a little plastic horsey doll that came with a little plastic orange comb so you could little plastic orange comb its mane and tail and shiny coat, but before I could mail it to him my grandmother peeled the medicinal transdermal patch off her body and ate it.

OUTSIDE, in the gravel and weed parking lot, near a log that means Don’t go any further or you’ll drive into the bay, I said, “Donny, Donny, Donny wake up, wake up Donny, Donny wake up, Donny, Donny, Donny you’re a mailman…” and then I kicked him, gently, in the ribs.

MY BROTHER bet me five hundred dollars she wouldn’t make it past December. I accepted and won—Grandma died January 3rd.