The Coward

by Jarred McGinnis

  ‘Patrick said he might come visit once things quiet down at his work,’ Jack said.

  ‘Oh good,’ I said. Jack ignored my sarcasm.

  ‘After breakfast, I’ll go to the hardware store and get the wood for the ramp. I was also thinking I might switch out the hinges on the bathroom door so you can do your business in peace. I’ll make it so the door swings out rather than in. What do you think about that? If any of the doors are too narrow, you tell me. We can widen them. If it’s on a loadbearing wall it’ll be a bigger job but Patrick knows people. How wide is your chair? Twenty-five, maybe twenty-six inches, that’s my guess. The wheels look like they slant a bit. Do they do that for stability? Let me get my measuring tape.’ Jack stood. His chair legs squealed across the terrazzo floor like bad brakes.

  ‘Stop with all the handyman shit!’

  Jack looked as if he had been slapped.

  ‘I know you got some grand plan for a father–son reunion, but you can shove it up your ass. You had your chance, you fucked it up. The past’s the past. My getting hit by a car isn’t your ticket to family therapy time. Melissa is dead because of me!’

  He stepped back, his palms facing me. ‘You need to calm down. That’s not what I was trying to do. Who is Melissa?’

  ‘Can you please, just please, leave me alone? Don’t pull your holy AA bullshit on me. Don’t tell me Patrick’s okay once you get to know him. Don’t say anything about the fucked-up childhood you gave me.’

  Jack opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.

  ‘And don’t you dare mention Mom.’

  He turned and left. The back door slammed. I knew I had gone too far but I didn’t care. The adrenaline felt better than the constant lurking fear and sadness.

  From the kitchen window, I saw him standing motionless in his greenhouse. At the time, I felt it a triumph but now the memory comes with regret and embarrassment. I was twenty-six and yet still acting like a teenager. I found the large bottle of Vicodin perched at the top of the fridge. The only parting gift from the hospital that I needed. They could shove their blue egg-crate padding, their plastic urinal and their pamphlets covering the range of bodily functions from bowel programmes to disabled sexuality. I didn’t want any of it. I grabbed a long wooden spoon. I knocked the bottle into my lap. I popped the lid. I poured the pills out. A palmful of teeth.

  Late that night, Jack came into my room but I feigned sleep. He replaced the open pill bottle on my bedside table with an orchid, a blossom with small red-lipped petals surrounded by five large white ones. He went to the top drawer of the desk and removed a small sandalwood box. The stashed pills clattered back into the bottle. The lid snapped closed. Of course, he remembered my old hiding spots.

  5

  Jerry, I’m going to put this tube between your ribs to inflate your lung. Your ribs are broken. It’s going to hurt. Ready? One . . . two . . . three.

  The pain threw me awake and back into Jack’s house and the present. I peeled away the sheets, sticky with sweat. I sat up, drank water and threw my legs over the bed to go to the bathroom. All the things the nurses told me to do. The nightmare’s panic ebbed and my breathing slowed to normal. Running my hand over the scar on my side where the paramedic stuck the tube, the skin thin and soft, as if by pressing hard enough I could push my fingers through.

  For years it hits you anew that you must do it all over again. All the inconveniences and outrages are waiting for you. You’ll figure out strategies and tactics to simplify the simple things. Like getting dressed in the morning. You’ll set out your clothes for the next day on your nightstand so that you don’t have to get up to get the clothes, only to lie back down to put them on. I hadn’t figured out that trick yet.

  Jack knocked on my bedroom door and opened it. Following his eyes, I became aware of the stacks of coffee mugs and bowls with their thickened glue of milk and cereal. My few items of clothes were thrown everywhere. The sheets were balled into a pillow at the foot of the bed. I needed a shower.

  He surveyed the room’s windows, which I had blacked out with the legal letters, hospital bills and collection notices that gathered on the kitchen counter every morning. ‘Well, this isn’t creepy at all,’ Jack said. He picked up his Garden Gripper that I had borrowed. The rubber-tipped claw obediently opened and closed as he gave the trigger a couple of squeezes. ‘Yes, perfectly normal behaviour.’

  In those first weeks back at Jack’s house, I was too haunted by the guilt of Melissa’s death to mourn the loss of my legs. I had deserved the punishment received. My depression was the relieved sleep of the condemned. Paraplegia gave me an out too. The hospital left me with enough prescription refills to make sure I never had to try and fail again. My problems would no longer be my fault. It was the wheelchair. The loss. The losses, plural. They were to blame, not me. Jack must have seen that transformation beginning. It had happened to him when Mom died. I see now that Jack’s annoying, insistent nudging was to make sure I didn’t lose what he had lost.

  ‘You haven’t been outside in a while. Let’s go for a walk.’ Jack said.

  Above the midweek stillness that the suburbs do so well, a patchy grey sky dared the sun to burn it away. The interstate was a soft hiss in the distance. We walked in the street, hanging close to the rain gutter, skirting around the slanting concrete at the storm drains. The streets were wide enough for two lanes of traffic in each direction. Mostly, they were empty. The occasional car that crawled by moved far onto the other side as if the elderly man and wheelchair boy might throw themselves at their windscreen. Jack waved to everyone who passed. It felt good to be outside after so long in the hospital. My head swivelled back and forth to catalogue how the neighbourhood had changed/stayed the same. Each corner was marked with a cross of bright green street signs. Bold white letters announced roads with names of the native fauna this suburb replaced: Water Oak Lane, Red Cedar Road, Bald Cypress Street.

  ‘Why aren’t there sidewalks? Did there used to be?’ I asked.

  Jack rubbed at his temple as if he had a headache. ‘God, no. When they built the neighbourhood, it was to show off. Look at us. We can all afford cars. Now stuck-up yuppies have moved in and they think only communists take walks.’ Jack stopped in front of a small brick house trimmed in hibiscus bushes. A ten-foot inflatable Easter bunny stood smiling near the front door. In one air-filled hand was a paintbrush and in the other was an Easter egg. ‘That’s one for the nightmares,’ he said. ‘This is not how I thought I’d be spending my sixty-ninth birthday.’

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I said, pushing forward.

  ‘I guess a present is a long shot,’ he said. Before I could quip back, he continued, ‘If you don’t want to tell me what’s happened for the last ten years or how you came to show up on my doorstep in a wheelchair, fine. I’ll pretend I don’t want to know.’ He looked up and down the road and rubbed at his temple again. I turned away from his gaze. ‘You don’t want to be friends.’ He grimaced. ‘Fine. That’s understandable. We’re roommates and that’s it until you are strong enough to be on your own again. We’ll bullshit about football and the weather. After that, you go back to your life and I go back to mine.’ He said all this in that rye-bread rumble of his until the sound of a leaf blower roared nearby. The man in the safety glasses and vest nodded to us. After we passed a few more houses, I held the wheel rims, vainly willing myself to keep going.

  ‘How am I going to do anything? I’m exhausted just by going—’ Behind us came a yelp of brakes and the crunch of a tail-light. A black Mercedes had backed out of a driveway and had hit a car parked in the street. A businesswoman in a pencil skirt and heels got out to stare at the damage. I bent over, my chin to my knees, with my hands covering my head. I heard the screech of the car the night Melissa died. I felt the impact. The noise. The screams. The panic and pain.

  ‘Jesus!’ Jack said.

  ‘She’s dead. I hate this. I hate it. I’m going to be sick,’ I said, and retched.

  Jack, fe
ar in his eyes, got behind me and pushed us home. We moved quickly. I couldn’t stop sobbing.

  ‘The lady was fine. She just bumper-bumped a parked car. Jarred, talk to me. You’re gone for ten years. You come home like this. I don’t know what to do.’ Jack struggled with each short sentence, trying to catch his breath.

  I rushed to my room with Jack close behind.

  I turned on him. ‘Here’s the deal. I can’t walk. Melissa is dead. Jack, that’s my fault. She was doing fine until I came around. I did it. Her husband has got his lawyers after me. The driver is changing his story. God knows what happens if the cops charge me. A cripple in jail. Can you imagine? The hospital bills are all on me.’

  ‘We’ll figure it out. But you got to talk to me. Who’s this Melissa?’

  ‘No!’ I shoved the door closed.

  6

  Boxes laced with cobwebs and the earthy whiff of attic had appeared in my room while I slept. Neither of us acknowledged this gesture or the continued weeks of me sleeping all day. I struggled to shift the box. Without muscles in your legs, your back and stomach must do the work. Your centre of balance is thrown off for months until the new muscles are strong enough to take up the slack. The box was heavy with old sketchpads, neatly packed by Jack, that I had filled when I was fifteen. On an empty page, I sketched the orchid that Jack had left on my nightstand. My pencil tried to mimic the curves of the petals, but it had been a long time since I had drawn. For the shading, I dipped my forefinger in the remains of a coffee and dabbed at the paper.

  Jack was in the living room, leaning back in his recliner with the leg rest popped out. I formulated the question in my head. A simple sentence: ‘Jack, what’s up with the flower in my room?’ But, no. I wasted so many chances to talk to Jack.

  His hands in his lap held a pamphlet, ‘Spinal Cord Injury: Guide to Functional Recovery’. His eyes were closed. I moved closer to Jack and picked at the cracked leather armrest with clouds of stuffing bursting out. I remembered when I had stood over him as he slept in this chair in this house with a brick in my hand and my arms trembling with hate. As I watched him sleep now, it was sadness I felt: thick, cloying and constant.

  The coffee table, nicked and gouged, was the same one from my childhood. The couch, the tv, the same. So much of the house hadn’t changed. Like Jack, it had only aged.

  ‘Jesus!’ Jack started. ‘What the hell are you doing creeping up on me?’ He slid the pamphlet in his back pocket.

  ‘This house hasn’t changed in years.’

  ‘Because it didn’t need to.’ His eyes closed again.

  ‘Don’t you ever get bored of looking at the same four walls?’

  ‘What kind of moron pays attention to walls?’ he said, his eyes still closed.

  I wheeled over to the few hung photos and drew smiley faces in the dust on the people in the pictures: Jack and Mom on their wedding day, my older brother graduating from high school, my older brother graduating from college, a picture of me on one knee in a Little League uniform but no picture of all four of us together. That would have been an impossibility.

  ‘It’s boring around here.’

  ‘Only stupid people—’ Eyes still closed.

  ‘Get bored,’ I finished his sentence.

  ‘All right.’ His eyes popped open. His hand dropped to the recliner’s lever and the footrest folded back in with a sproing and a clunk. ‘Since I’m not getting my nap, you’re going for a walk with me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘C’mon. You’ve been hiding out in your room too long. Sleeping all the time is not good for you. You should be cutting down on the goofy pills and starting to build up your strength.’

  ‘My back hurts.’

  ‘I’m awake. You got no one to blame but yourself.’ Jack said. ‘We’ll aim for the donut shop and make it as far as we can.’

  Two streets down from our house, Jack hesitated.

  ‘Too late. Brace yourself. She must have been waiting behind her curtains for us.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘It’s the neighbourhood busybody. She thinks that goddamn dog is the messiah.’

  Coming down her driveway was an old woman with a blue-rinse puff of perm perched upon a bag of leathered skin. A small yellow dog looked at us with disappointment from the cradle of her arms.

  ‘Hello, Jack. Is this your son?’ she asked in her smoker’s grumble.

  ‘This is my youngest, Jarred.’

  ‘Jarred, would you like to meet Lulu?’ The dog was in my lap before I could respond.

  ‘Lulu is a cocker spaniel mix and a certified therapy dog.’

  The dog stared gormlessly between the woman and me.

  ‘Lulu is the world’s bestest, most devoted therapy dog,’ she said to the dog.

  Its stillness, its warm weight was pleasant. Its black marble eyes shone. The dog gave a few timid licks to the air between us. Softening my look, I patted it on the head. The golden fur was soft. The tail picked up speed, swishing across my jeans.

  ‘Hello, Lulu,’ I said.

  Lulu’s owner beamed at Jack, who looked down the road.

  ‘Lulu, you’re a little fur baby. Aren’t you?’ I said. Jack furrowed his brow, confused. I petted the dog. The tail was a lie-detector needle going nuts.

  ‘Lulu, should we show the nice lady where the bad man touched us? Yes, I think we should.’ I lifted the animal. He covered my face in doggy kisses. I cradled him in my arm, his belly up. The dog licked my neck. ‘Let’s see. First he took me out for ice cream and then he took me to his naked puzzle basement.’ I scratched and rubbed the dog’s belly.

  ‘He told me to take my shirt off, and he touched me here and here.’ I pointed to the dog’s nipples. ‘I don’t remember there being so many. It was definitely these two,’ I continued. ‘Then the bad man touched me here.’ I twanged the carrot-top tuft of hair on the dog’s penis. Lulu’s tail and tongue were full tilt. The owner squealed in horror and rushed forward. Jack stifled a laugh. The owner and I tussled for the animal, who was loving the attention.

  ‘Wait! Wait! That’s not everywhere,’ I shouted as the lady retreated back up her driveway. ‘Lulu! Lulu, call me!’

  ‘Can’t wait to see her community newsletter item about that one,’ Jack said. We continued for a few more streets before the pain became too much and Jack pushed me. When we got home, I don’t remember if we bullshitted about football and the weather. I hope we did.

  7

  When I was ten, my mom had an aneurysm and it was my fault. I was sitting in the nurse’s office staring at the jar of goat eyes on her desk.

  Earlier in the week, the nurse had brought the jar to our fifth-grade class to explain the anatomy of eyes. She talked about the function of each part and handed dissections to my classmates. The lens peeled off like a sticker. The clear jelly disc sat in my palm and enraptured me. At the end of class, she held out a plastic bedpan for us to deposit the remains. I hesitated, not quite finished with this small wonder, and all that day I had sniffed at the sour chemical smell on my hand.

  The nurse painted my scraped knees with iodine.

  ‘No more fighting,’ she said and sat at her desk to write her notes. A boy, pale and green, came in, holding his stomach. His cheeks puffed and the nurse rushed him to the adjoining bathroom. Violent splashes hit the toilet’s water while the nurse encouraged him to get it all out. I unscrewed the jar’s lid to fish out an eye.

  The principal, Dr. King, rarely spoke. Someone said it was because of the Korean War. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it felt like an explanation. He stood at the door and motioned for me to follow. I covered the wet spot on my shorts, but he had already noticed. He frowned and pointed at the pocket.

  I dug the eye out and placed it in his palm. He furrowed his brow at the glistening white stone. He jerked his hand away and it plopped onto the ground. The corners of his moustache fell. His disgust moved from it to me. He pointed at the eye then pointed at the jar. I obeyed.<
br />
  We walked through the school with his hand on my shoulder. I stepped carefully amongst the sidewalk cracks, pretending they bubbled and oozed fiery lava.

  In his office, Dr. King opened a folder on his desk and dialled the phone. He handed me the receiver.

  ‘Hello, Mom.’

  ‘What have you done? I don’t have time for this. Why can’t you behave? Your dad is going to kill you.’

  ‘I got into a fight.’

  Dr. King raised his eyebrow. I covered the wet spot on my shorts.

  ‘And, I stole an eyeball from the nurse, but I gave it back.’

  ‘What do you mean an eyeball? A real eyeball?’

  ‘A real eyeball.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Jarred, I have such a headache right now. Let me talk to Dr. King.’

  They spoke. He explained why there was a real eyeball in the nurse’s office. Mom agreed that my punishment should be spending the rest of the week helping the janitor during recesses. He thanked her and hung up. I went back to my class. All the other kids watched me as I took my seat.

  Near the end of the day, the PA speaker above the teacher’s desk crackled awake and announced, ‘Jarred McGinnis, please come to the principal’s office.’ I looked at my teacher nervously. She nodded and I retraced my steps through the empty halls toward Dr. King’s office.

  When I arrived, the secretary came from behind the desk and approached me. Her eyes went wet and she hugged me. I flinched against the fleshy press of her body. Her sweater was soaked with the smell of menthol cigarettes.

  ‘There’s been an accident with your mom. Your father called and will meet you at the hospital. It’s last bell in a few minutes. Dr. King is going to drive you, okay? Do you want some water? Have a seat in the hall. Just a few more minutes and Dr. King will take you to your mom and dad, okay?’

  I blankly did as I was told. As I sat in the hallway outside the principal’s office, my thoughts circled. My mom was dead, because I had misbehaved. It was my fault. My mom was dead, because I had misbehaved. It was my fault. My dad and my brother would hate me.