Stuck in Neutral

by Terry Trueman

  “I need to tell you guys something,” Mom says. She uses her best put-on-a-happy-face voice, so all of us know instantly that something must be wrong.

  “I need to discuss something with you guys,” Mom says.

  “You said that,” Paul counters, already on the defensive.

  Both Cindy and Paul look guilty, not specific guilt, but more like “I wonder what she’s found out about?” Mom notices this and laughs. “You’re not in trouble,” she reassures them. “I just have to tell you something.”

  By this time I can feel the weight of what’s coming. I can hear it in her tone. Mom’s a naturally positive and cheerful person. When she sounds as overly positive as she’s sounding now, it has to mean something is pretty bad.

  “What’s going on?” Cindy asks anxiously, staring at Mom with the same suspicious feelings I have.

  “It’s about your dad,” Mom says.

  Paul instantly groans and asks, “Now what?”

  “I haven’t even told you what it’s about,” Mom says defensively.

  Paul snaps back, “If it has to do with Dad, you don’t have to.” He slumps down on the big blue couch in the family room. Cindy sits next to him.

  Mom takes a breath, and she turns to Paul. “You’re mad at your dad. I know that, but you need to set that aside for a moment and just listen. The Alice Ponds Show is going to do a program about your dad’s newest project—”

  Cindy interrupts. “The thing about the schools?”

  “No,” Mom says.

  “What new project?” Paul asks.

  Mom sighs, just a quick little sigh, but all three of us catch it. It’s her signature giveaway that the punch line is next.

  “Your dad’s writing a new book. It’s about Earl Detraux.”

  “Oh no!” Cindy snaps, jerking her knees up to her chest and burying her head.

  “Who?” Paul asks sarcastically. “Who’s Earl Dayglow?”

  Cindy’s voice comes out from her knees. “Has Dad gone crazy?”

  Mom says, “Your dad thinks it’s an important story. He thinks—”

  Cindy interrupts. “Bull! He’s not thinking at all. Jesus Christ!”

  Paul yells, “What’s going on?! Who’s this Earl guy?”

  Cindy looks up and hisses, “He’s that monster from eastern Washington who murdered his kid.”

  I placed the name immediately, the second Mom said it, and now the voice-overs of a dozen TV news stories flash back perfectly in my head: Earl Detraux killed his brain-damaged two-year-old son, Colin, a little over a year ago. He smothered the little boy and was convicted of second-degree murder. He received a twenty-year sentence in Walla Walla State Penitentiary.

  Mom answers Paul, telling him about Earl.

  “I don’t get it,” Paul says. “Why’s Dad into that?”

  Mom says, “I won’t speak for your father. I’m not going to stand here and lie to you and say that I understand or agree with everything he does. I think your dad believes that families like ours, families with kids like Shawn, are not very well understood. Your dad’s work, his writing and his projects, are about trying to get people to think about what happens when a child like Shawn comes along.” Mom pauses a second. Her face is sad and suddenly she looks real tired. I think about all the times that I’ve heard her on the phone talking with Dad, crying, criticizing, and arguing with him. “Your father just wants you to know that he’d appreciate your cooperation for this project.”

  Cindy snaps, “Cooperation?!” She sounds mad.

  Mom adds, “He wants you both to know that if you want to, you can join him on the program and talk about life with your brother. The people at The Alice Ponds Show—”

  Paul’s burst of angry laughter interrupts Mom. “Right! Alice Ponds. I’d rather have ground glass pounded up my nose!”

  “Paul,” Mom says, pushing down a nervous laugh.

  “Join him?” Cindy asks angrily. “Why?”

  Mom pauses a moment before she speaks. “I think your father believes that his work might help other families with kids like Shawn. I believe that your dad feels that kids like Shawn and their families need a lot more from society than volunteer stints with the Special Olympics. He knows that the problems that families like ours face are a lot more complex than they are presented on feel-good made-for-TV movies. Your father—”

  Paul interrupts again. “My father is a hopeless jerk, and I wouldn’t help him do anything, least of all go on a freak show and talk about my brother.” Paul pauses a moment; then he adds angrily, “Alice Ponds? Alice Friggin’ Ponds!”

  Paul’s been mad at Dad for years, ever since he left us. Not all the time—they’ve tried to iron things out—but the peace has never lasted longer than a few months. Paul always finds something to get upset about and then refuses any contact with Dad. These days they’re not speaking at all.

  Mom says, “It’s completely up to you guys, whether you want to go on Alice Ponds. Your dad would never make you, and, of course, neither will I. When your dad talked to me about this, he mentioned that the Alice Ponds producer wanted you guys on the show, but your dad didn’t even ask me to ask you. He just wanted me to let you know that the invitation was there. If you want to go, you can; if you’d rather not, you shouldn’t.”

  Cindy asks quietly, “You think Dad really cares about other people with kids like Shawn?”

  Mom answers right away, “I know he does, sweetie. You know that I don’t always agree with the things he does or the way he thinks. Sometimes I even get really pissed at him, but I know in my heart that your dad cares, and that he’s trying to do what he thinks is right.”

  Cindy smiles; I know it’s because Mom said “pissed,” and Mom never talks like that.

  Paul is still mad. “Sure he cares,” Paul says sarcastically, “about himself!”

  As I sit here listening, I realize that I agree with both Mom and Paul: I know Dad wants to help people, but I know that sometimes he’s totally selfish, too. If I could talk, however, I’d say one other thing to them. I’d remind them that Dad is really sharp when it comes to money and the writing business. I know it’s vulgar and crude and crass to mention filthy lucre, but Dad does pay for our house, our food—in fact, all of our expenses! Mom works part-time, but actually I’m her full-time job. Taking care of me is expensive, and Dad pays for it all. He has to think about money. With Dad’s fame from the Pulitzer and the controversial subject matter of Earl Detraux, Dad probably sees a gold mine. And he’s probably right.

  I’m sure Detraux is a hero to a lot of people. His son had a terrible seizure condition and was retarded. Earl isn’t an educated man like my dad; he worked at a gas station during the day and a pizza place at night. When he was charged with killing his son, he pled guilty. Talking from the steps of the courthouse as he was being led away, he said, “I did it. I killed him. How can I say ‘not guilty’? I loved my son too much to watch him suffer anymore.” Then he added that he’d killed his two-year-old son to “end my baby’s pain.”

  I’m pretty good at adding two plus two and coming up with four. Dad’s getting deeper and deeper into this whole “ending pain” stuff, which means that I’m in deeper and deeper trouble.

  11

  Lindy and Shawn and I are alone,

  her mother, gone,

  our friends, gone,

  and I look at Lindy

  and she looks at me

  and there is nothing left

  for either of us to see.

  On Wednesday Dad and Cindy flew to Los Angeles to tape The Alice Ponds Show. Paul, of course, refused to go. They flew back home on Thursday. The show is being broadcast this afternoon, Monday, at three P.M.

  The Alice Ponds Show is one of the most popular programs in America. Alice appeals to an uneducated, loud audience. Actually, most times I’ve ever seen it, it’s seemed pretty ridiculous.

  Mom, Cindy, and Paul are all in the family room when it’s time for the program to start. To the degree my eyes wi
ll cooperate, I’ll be able to see it too, from my spot by the window.

  Alice opens her show in her typical style, introducing the day’s program in as controversial and outrageous a manner as she can:

  “Parents who kill,” she begins, shaking her head sadly. “Parents who kill. Why?”

  Her audience instantly boos. What a courageous group, I sarcastically decide, they’re against parents who kill their kids.

  Alice presses on: “Today, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and author Sydney E. McDaniel will be joining us, along with his daughter, Cynthia McDaniel, to discuss Mr. McDaniel’s newest work in progress, his book about Earl Detraux, a man who murdered his own child.”

  The audience boos again at the mention of Detraux’s name.

  Alice, smiling inappropriately, says, “Parents who can’t love their own children? Mothers and fathers who slaughter defenseless, innocent infants? The Susan Smiths, the Diane Downses, the Earl Detrauxs of the world. What can these people show us about the nature of pure evil? In today’s hour we’ll look at one such monster and see if we can find some answers.”

  I immediately remember the old news stories and TV movies: Susan Smith is that mother who backed her car into a lake in South Carolina, killing her kids and trying to blame it on “black abductors”; Diane Downs was the woman from Oregon in that old movie Small Sacrifices who shot her three children; and, of course, Earl Detraux, homegrown here in Washington state, from the small community of Otis Orchards, near Spokane. Earl smothered his two-year-old retarded son.

  As Alice Ponds carries on, Paul hops up and walks across to the kitchen. He grabs a bag of Ruffles Mesquite Barbecue Potato Chips. Noticing that Mom’s attention is glued to the TV screen, Paul pops a tiny piece of chip into my mouth as he walks past. As he does this, he looks at me and smiles, then gives me a little wink. Mom hates for him to feed me anything without my bib on, because it’s a saliva free-flow disaster, but when he sees a chance to do it, Paul often sneaks me treats anyway. I truly love him for it.

  Unfortunately, just as Dad and Cindy come onto the screen, I begin to feel a seizure start. It’s not a real big one, more like a brain sneeze that can’t quite decide whether it’s going to happen or not. Still it’s frustrating. Somehow I manage to keep the bite of potato chip in my mouth. This seizure is not big, but it’s big enough for me not to be able to quite make out what Alice Ponds is saying on TV or how Cindy and Paul and Mom are reacting. I’m able to keep my spirit in my body, but for the first ten minutes of the program my mouth is blessed by Frito-Lay while my brain is a short-circuiting wad of useless electrical static.

  When my seizure finally passes and I’m able to focus again, I realize that Alice has asked Dad a question. In fact she’s still in the middle of that question when Dad cuts her off.

  “You’re right, Alice,” Dad interrupts in a soft but firm voice. “I do love my son Shawn. I love all three of my children. I think it’s impossible for others to judge whether one person loves another or not. We only know in our own hearts what we feel. Whether people believe I love my son makes little difference to me. I love Shawn. I know that Earl Detraux loved his child, Colin, too.”

  For an instant, the audience seems stunned. They don’t know whether to applaud or throw hand grenades. As the camera scans their faces, many of them look at Alice for some kind of hint which way they should go. At first Alice is not much help; she looks as surprised as they do.

  Quickly, though, Alice recovers, a serious and heavy shortness to her tone. “You think that Earl Detraux, who murdered little Colin Detraux, loved his child? You honestly believe that a parent can kill a baby in the name of love?”

  Now the audience knows what to do. They hoot, they howl, they bark like dogs.

  But before Alice can argue any more with him, Dad begins to speak again. “Everybody wants to love their kids,” he says, his voice soft, reassuring. “Nobody sets out to be a bad parent.” Alice’s audience begins to quiet down; they’re like dumb beasts, hypnotized by the gentle sound of Dad’s voice. “Yet thousands of children are hurt every year by their parents, parents who behave as though they hate their kids.”

  The camera pans the audience. Literally dozens of people, tiny heads on tiny bodies, nod in agreement.

  Dad has them. “I really believe that everybody in this room loves their children, and that everybody who is not yet a parent but will be someday will love their children too. But has anyone here ever spent months or years of your lives watching your child suffer the most horrifying, excruciating torture imaginable? Have you ever wondered if a definition of love might not include taking responsibility for someone who cannot take responsibility for his or her self?”

  The audience is now dead quiet, staring at Dad and listening. Dad takes a long, slow breath, the first one he’s had since he started talking. He looks out into the audience as if quietly daring anyone to contradict him.

  Dad goes on. “We all know, all of us who are parents, that sometimes we hurt our children out of love. We know that telling a child ‘no’ when that child is desperate to hear ‘yes’ causes sadness. But when that ‘yes’ could cause them harm or endanger them, a good parent takes responsibility by saying ‘no,’ regardless of how upset our child might feel—”

  Alice attempts to interrupt. “I think—”

  Dad ignores her: “The point is that we do have to make hard choices every day to be good parents, to truly take responsibility for our children. If we love them enough, we say ‘no,’ we let them feel their hurt or sadness or rage, but we stand firm and do what has to be done.”

  The audience begins to applaud in spite of itself. It’s as if they can’t stop themselves from applauding, from agreeing with something that they don’t quite understand, but that makes too much sense to ignore.

  Alice turns to a woman in the audience to let her ask a question. The woman is short and fat and kind of crazy-looking. “Don’t you think that Detraux is just a stupid killer? Don’t you think that he deserved to be the one to die?”

  Dad stares at the woman and without hesitation responds, “Have you ever said to anybody something like ‘If I’m ever brain damaged and in a coma, just put me out of my misery?’”

  “What?” the woman asks, blinking nervously.

  Dad presses on, “I mean, I think most people have said things like that. I know I have, and I know friends have said things like that to me. If you were unable to kill yourself but you wanted to be dead, don’t you think you’d want somebody to know your wishes?”

  Alice, pretending to be real concerned but actually sounding phony to me, says, “I’m not sure that’s really the point, Syd. We’re not here today to discuss voluntary euthanasia.”

  Dad sighs and shakes his head. “You’re right, Alice. Let’s keep that focus nice and tight. To answer your friend’s question—what do I think about Detraux? I think he was a man who did what he thought he had to do.”

  Alice looks at Dad and says, “I know you’ve brought some video footage of interviews you’ve been conducting with the child killer—”

  “Child killer?” Dad interrupts.

  Alice burrows in. “Mr. Detraux did kill his son, didn’t he?” she asks. “He was convicted of murder for that crime, wasn’t he? His little boy was a two-year-old, utterly incapable of defending himself in any way, wasn’t he?” Alice sounds confident.

  Suddenly a photograph of a cute little boy, a blowup of a snapshot, grainy, a kind of orange tint over the color, fills the screen.

  Alice says, “We’re showing our audience a snapshot of little Colin right now.”

  The audience oohs and ahhs for a moment, then snaps to silence as they realize this was Earl Detraux’s victim.

  Alice, certain that nothing can go wrong, asks, “Earl did kill this little angel, didn’t he?”

  Dad looks at her and quietly says, “No, he didn’t.”

  Alice looks genuinely confused, almost stunned. “That is Colin Detraux, isn’t it?”

 
Dad answers, “Yes, that was him.”

  “Was, because his father murdered him.”

  “No,” Dad answers. “Colin died from a terrible, terminal, inoperable seizure disorder, an irreversible medical condition, coupled with profound mental retardation that made his existence insufferable.”

  “His father—” Alice begins, but Dad cuts her off.

  “His father loved him enough to do whatever he had to do to end his son’s suffering. Earl loved his son enough to sacrifice his own life to end his child’s pain—”

  “Including murder,” Alice interrupts.

  “Why don’t we let Earl speak for himself?” Dad asks softly.

  “Indeed,” Alice says. “Are we ready to roll the tape?” A couple seconds later, Alice says, “We are? Good. Roll please.”

  On the screen appears an image of Earl Detraux. I have seen him before, but I am curious about his appearance now, since he’s been in prison. Luckily my eyes are focused on him. He is sitting in front of a gray wall, in an orange-colored inmate’s jumpsuit. I can’t tell how tall he is, but he looks about the same size as Dad. His face is pleasant. His hair is cut quite short and he’s mostly bald on top. His left ear sticks out a little farther than the right. Otherwise he’s regular-looking with a mild, gap-toothed smile. He sure doesn’t look like any murderer I’ve ever seen in movies or on TV crime shows. Just the opposite—he looks like a next-door neighbor, a guy you’d see out mowing his lawn or raking his leaves, Mr. Average.

  The way the prison room is set up, Dad is sitting next to Earl; their metal folding chairs almost touch, but both men face more toward the camera than toward one another. They are framed on-screen from the ankles up. They look comfortable, if not quite relaxed.

  DAD: Tell us about life here, Earl.

  EARL: Well, it’s probably not like you’d expect it to be. Most guys keep pretty much to themselves. If you want to know about bad stuff, you can find out about it; if you want to stay out of people’s way and just mind your own business, you can do that. That’s been my approach so far. It’s sort of like Scout camp, only there’s a lot more tattoos.