I woke up to the smell of dog shit and bleach, and the sound of my mother’s voice muttering to herself - again.  It always sounded like a lecture, I guess when you’re a teacher that part of your voice never goes away.   I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and made my way to the kitchen, where she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor.   I looked over at my brother, looking like he’d been punched in the face.  

“What happened?”  I vaguely remembered asking.   My mother glanced over her shoulder at me.  “We’re getting rid of the dog,” she said.  “I already raised two infants, I won’t raise another. So that means you two better not get anyone pregnant and bring them home for me to take care of! I work forty hours a week, you begged me for a dog and we got a dog, the least you can do is take care of it, and get it trained.  It shat in my kitchen, Michael, that animal shat in my kitchen!  It has to go.” 

I barely kept the wince off my face and glanced at my brother, Evan, who was holding the leash of the puppy hiding behind his legs.  “Please, Mom, why can’t we keep him? I’ll do better at training him, I promise! I promise!” he wailed in his sob-soaked voice.  

“No! That thing is an animal!  I want it gone. Michael, start the car will you,  we are taking that thing to the pound and maybe we can try a goldfish or something,  that may be easier to manage.  You don’t have to train fish.”

“Mom…”

“I said start the car, Michael!” she screeched. 

“I’m not Michael, Mom,  I’m Morris.  Michael died two years ago, remember?”

She stopped scrubbing then.  The room got so full of emotion that I thought it was going to explode like a balloon and we would all just be confetti latex on the floor and the wind would blow us away and we’d no longer be some grieving woman’s problem. We wouldn’t be anything at all.  It wouldn’t matter that we weren’t the perfect paragon of manhood like our brother, Michael.  It wouldn’t matter at all…