"Good idea," Joe said. "Now I even have the money to frame it. How are you doing these days, by the way?"
"Not bad. I'm teaching a course at a community college. Of course, the bay area is expensive. Wheeler's making the big bucks. It's a full time job just keeping him out of trouble, making sure he eats right, and so on." Brendan grinned. "I can't imagine what the house is going to be like when I get back. Wheeler hasn't put anything away since he was born. He just picks things up and carries them to different places."
"Creative chaos," Joe said.
"Great, until you need the garlic press."
"I'm with you," Joe said. "I hate looking for things. Wheeler is an excellent fellow, though." He pictured Wheeler, very tall, hawk nosed, wearing glasses, bent over an architectural drawing, the top of his head seeming to glow.
"Oh, I couldn't survive without him," Brendan said, taking another swallow of Laphroaig. "He was a hard man, our father. Maybe you didn't know, not having lived with him and all."
"I suppose so," Joe said. "Did he give you a hard time when you, umm, came out?"
"No," Brendan said, "he was fine about that. 'Whatever works,' he said. It was the art thing—that any other way of life was less worthy. Helping in the community, working with people, he couldn't see that as important. It wouldn't have been, for him, I guess." Brendan shrugged. "I can draw, you know. But I never got off on it." Joe reached out and patted him on the back, not knowing what to say.
They went into the house, and Joe packed the drawing with the oil painting. He put the box on the back seat of the rental car and stopped to pick a few strawberries from the patch of everbearing plants by the end of the barn.
"I love those strawberry plants," he said to Ann in the kitchen.
"October and they're still working."