All’s Fair and Other California Stories by Linda Feyder

Author:Linda Feyder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Robbie finished the soup and tossed the empty can onto the counter. Isabel eyed the enormous dog, which flattened onto the cool linoleum floor, panting heavily. She felt its black-eyed stare. “Where’d you get the dog?” she asked, searching for harmless conversation.

“Roxy. She was next to a Winnebago in New Mexico,” Robbie said. “I took her as a good omen.”

Leave it to Robbie, she thought, to steal a huge white dog his first days out of prison. Her brother had never been particularly smart. She could always tell when he lied to their father. Once, he had stolen one of Daddy’s checks, thinking that if he took one with a high number from the bottom of the stack, it would be a long time before Daddy discovered it.

Robbie could always convince Daddy that a little more attention was all he needed. Their mother died when they were young. Their father, who was a truck driver, spent what little free time he had trying to “straighten out” Robbie.

When Robbie finally got expelled from school, Daddy took him along on truck trips while Isabel remained at home with holy Aunt Helen, who scribbled Christian proverbs on scraps of paper she slipped into Isabel’s knapsack.

Robbie wore the same smirk on his face whenever he returned from a long trip with glass jars that he lined his windowsills with, like colorful postcards. Gray-green pollywogs in murky water, Oregon frogs whose breath steamed the glass, wilted lilacs from the Midwest, and, once, a tiny turtle from Washington that had fascinated Isabel the most. She had peered into the jars as if they were small windows to the outside world. Green, lush, and alive.

On the morning of her tenth birthday, Robbie gave her one of the magical jars, and Isabel looked in with delight to find a little speckled turtle.

“You can have it,” Robbie said, brushing past her. “It was already dead when I found it.”

Now, here was Robbie in her kitchen, still going about his business as if she weren’t there. He slid the duffel bag off his shoulder so he could fill it with soup cans, her diet sodas, and a box of gingersnaps. When he had finished, his fixed gaze gave her a start.

“Give me the brooch,” he said. He stretched his palm out toward her.

“The brooch?” she repeated, stalling for time. It was a bar of pure gold with a large diamond and two pearls that had once been their mother’s. Daddy had given it to Isabel in a worn blue velvet box. It was the sole memento Isabel had from her mother. The one thing she’d been given that Robbie had not.

“Don’t take me for a jackass,” Robbie hissed. “I think we both know why you owe me that pin.”

Isabel blinked hard, as if she were seeing the two-headed chicken at the county fair. She knew he would pawn the brooch for cash. She’d never had her mother’s brooch appraised, but she was sure Robbie had done his calculations. She’d never even thought to wear it, sitting in its plush box like a totem in her bedroom.

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