The Coward

by Jarred McGinnis

  The bell rang, ending the school day and setting off an explosion of noise. The children’s laughter, yells and chatter built to a roar as they followed the hall past where I sat. Their staring shamed me. The need to cry churned inside me, but I fought it down. At the exit, a line of yellow buses greeted the students with the ignition of their fat diesel engines. When the last bus had pulled away, Dr. King came out of his office. He knelt in front of me and put his hand on my knee.

  ‘It’s not your fault. I’m sure she’s okay.’

  Startled by my thoughts being read, I began to cry.

  ‘I’m going to take you to your dad,’ he said.

  Dad was sitting in the hallway of the hospital, just as I had been sitting outside the principal’s office. Both places reserved for those to be punished.

  ‘Mom?’

  ‘No, she’s not okay. Not at all.’

  I bawled and bawled. My body convulsed, but he held me firm. He stared into my eyes, and his tears came silent and single file. That is still the only time I have seen him cry.

  Everything in her hospital room was temporary. All the furniture had wheels: the bed, the chair for visitors to come and go and the machines leased to bear witness.

  ‘She’s in a coma,’ Dad said. She looked happy under her cap of bandages, as if she was playing a trick on us, amused by our gullibility. He explained aneurysms to me while we watched her. They had put a clip in her head to stop the bleeding, and it was now a wait-and-see. She could die. She could stay like that; he pointed at her. Or, she could improve. Improve meant anything from permanent brain damage to same as before. Wait-and-see.

  Our wait-and-see lasted a month. Each day after school, I took the bus that dropped me off near the hospital. The other kids acted as if I was a trespasser. I looked out of the window, counting the stops, and watched their stares and pointing in the reflection. While I waited for Dad to finish work, I climbed into her bed, bracing myself against the railing.

  ‘Mom, I’m sorry,’ I whispered. I followed the fine lines at the corners of her eyes and lips and thought they made her beautiful. She had a chocolate-chip freckle on her jaw.

  ‘I haven’t done anything bad this whole time.’ I made deals with her and excuses for why I got into the fight. I offered impossible promises in exchange for her forgiveness. I listened to her breath for whispers, and every muscle twitch was a message to decode.

  While we lay wrapped together in thin white sheets and the smell of the baby shampoo the nurses used to wash her hair and between my deals and promises, I told her about the kids at school who bugged me, the teachers who were unfair and my current fixation, drawing comics. Wait-and-see was the first time that I didn’t have to snatch her attention from Dad or the phone calls to my brother Patrick at college. Mostly I felt guilty and fearful but in that bed with us was the thought, carefully ignored, that I liked wait-and-see.

  When the clock had sped toward Dad’s arrival, I disappeared to look at the others who had been prescribed wait-and-see: newborn babies in clear plastic cribs (huge tubes and tiny bodies), old people in hospice rooms decorated like fancy hotels, the bandaged, the braced, the dying and the ones who would recover. I stole syringes and used them as squirt guns to terrorise my reflection in bathroom mirrors. In the tv room, I got giddy and ill from the cigarette haze.

  The nurses and doctors suggested that we talk to her, but when Dad and I were there together, we couldn’t. Instead, we held her hands. I mimicked Dad and brushed my thumb against the mother-soft flesh. Sometimes we sat for hours. Sometimes for five minutes. The time to leave was marked by Dad standing and saying, ‘C’mon.’ Before going home, we ate in the hospital cafeteria, which I liked. Every night I had my favourites: pizza, tater tots and chemical-green Jell-O.

  The day Mom awoke I was telling her how I had a new voice in my head. I told her how at first I would hear the voice say ‘stop’, but I would already be doing something bad. Now the voice warned me beforehand, and it was working.

  ‘Aren’t you proud of me?’ I touched the tip of her nose and felt the bounce of its cartilage. ‘Since the voice has been helping me, I’ve only gone to time-out a few times.’

  Her eyes fluttered. Her mouth opened and closed. She turned her head, and I watched comprehension cutting through the grogginess. Blinking out tears, she slurred, ‘My baby, I’m so sorry.’

  Her eyes rolled back. The exposed whites beneath the fluttering lids scared me, and I flung myself out of the bed.

  I shook her, but I didn’t like the way her head lolled. I ran to the nurses’ station, yelling that she was awake. When they came to Mom’s bedside, she was flailing her limbs as if acting out her dreams, and by the time Dad arrived, they had strapped her wrists to the bed, and she was back to her smirking stillness.

  ‘Then what did she do?’ he snapped.

  ‘I went . . . I went and got the nurse.’

  ‘Was she still awake when you left?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You have to stay by her at all times. What did you say to her? It’s up to us. Everything is for her now.’ His voice was rising, angrier and angrier. ‘Don’t ever leave her side. Do you hear me?’

  I stayed motionless, afraid to speak.

  He swallowed his next sentence and left the room shaking his head.

  It wasn’t long before Mom woke again and stayed awake. The joke over, her coma grin gone. She slurred like a drunk. She couldn’t walk. The shaved two-inch strip on the side of her head made her look stupid. She still slept a lot. She said everything was blurry and her head hurt.

  *

  Mom was finally meant to be coming home the next day. I found myself on the couch when a clatter in the kitchen woke me up.

  Dad stood in his undershirt, which was dotted with ancient stains and new dribbles.

  That was all he wore.

  Framed by a fluorescent square of untanned flesh, his penis and balls hung from a dark clot of hair. He was taking a long drink from his favourite glass, a plastic tumbler with Mickey Mouse on the side. I watched as he emptied it and gave a satisfied ‘ahhh’. In his other hand, he held the silverware drawer like a briefcase. Spoons, forks and knives pooled at his feet. He looked at me, frowned and kicked at the pile of silverware.

  ‘What now?’ he asked.

  He pulled the junk drawer from its slot. Batteries, playing cards, pens and pencils spilled from it. He tossed the drawer over his shoulder, and it knocked down the pots and pans hanging on the wall. I fled and hid inside my bedroom closet. The fury of breaking glass, slamming doors and thumps against walls only stopped when he howled, a long and anguished ‘what now?’

  I fell asleep crumpled inside the closet. In the morning, the back door was open. Dad gone. Drops of blood marked the counter tops, the refrigerator, the broken plates and glasses. Every drawer had been pulled out and emptied. The cabinets hung wide-mouthed and cleared of their china teeth. Broken against the stove’s backsplash, bags of flour and sugar spilled their contents and covered everything. I picked up a box of Cheerios that had been stepped on, ate a few handfuls, and left to catch the school bus.

  When I got home, an ambulance was in the driveway. The kitchen was tidied, but hints remained. Drawers sat crooked in their place. A dusting of flour clung to the corners and here and there slivers of broken glass sparkled.

  In my parents’ bedroom, the EMTs talked to Mom like she was an idiot as they moved her to the bed. She didn’t or couldn’t acknowledge them. Dad stood in the corner nodding at their instructions. I stared at him with disgust. Like the kitchen, he had put himself in order. An Ace bandage bound his right hand and a dark seam of blood had seeped through.

  ‘Go to your room,’ he barked, noticing my gaze.

  The EMTs left, saying good-bye to the senseless Mrs. McGinnis. There was a knock on my bedroom door, the creak of it opening and Dad calling my name. His voice haunted the house as he looked for me. He went outside. He came back in, calling for me with growing worry. My closet d
oor slid open.

  ‘What are you doing? Get out of there. We got some things to figure out.’ He took me to their bedroom, which was usually off-limits. Mom lay sleeping in the centre of their bed. ‘She’s had a long day.’

  I held her hand like when we were in the hospital.

  ‘Your mom still isn’t all the way better. There’s a lot of helping out to do. That’s our job now. She’s always taken care of us. Now we’re going to take care of her. Do you understand? Good.’

  I stared into his eyes and tried not to cry.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘That’s probably the nurse,’ he said.

  The starched white uniform fought to put straight lines into the nurse’s jumble of ellipses. Clipped to her right breast was a nametag, ‘Daisy’. Her sunny hellos irked me. Her questions, read from a form that Dad had to sign, were delivered irritatingly singsong.

  ‘We’re ready to get started,’ Daisy said. She put her clipboard away and, without asking if it was okay, walked into my parents’ bathroom to wash her hands. She was near my mom’s age and, even then, I wanted to know why Daisy wasn’t the one with the aneurysm and my mom, who was also a nurse, wasn’t at Daisy’s house, asking questions about food allergies and washing her hands in Daisy’s sink.

  ‘Mrs. McGinnis. Mrs. McGinnis. We’re going to give you a little stretch now. There we go. She’s waking up. Hello, Sleepyhead. How are you feeling, Mrs. McGinnis?’

  Mom nodded. She looked at Dad and smiled.

  ‘Now, because your mom doesn’t move around so much, you need to help her stretch her muscles. You want to help her, don’t you?’ Nurse Daisy said to me.

  My hate complete, I looked at Dad to see if he felt the same, but I couldn’t read his expression.

  ‘Watch how I give your momma a good stretch.’ The neon cords that hung from her glasses quivered as she manoeuvred to cradle Mom’s calf in one hand and press Mom’s foot against her bicep.

  ‘Come around to the other side and put her foot in your arm like I’m doing. That’s right. Like that. Hold it for the count of ten. Then relax and do it again.’ Mom’s feet were cold and clammy; touching them felt inappropriate, an intimacy we were forcing upon her. Dad nodded to reassure me. Mom remained impassive as Nurse Daisy and I stretched her motionless limbs.

  One day I came home from school and Dad and Nurse Daisy were yelling at each other in the living room. Dad was calm, but his voice was raised. Nurse Daisy was flushed and, in her white uniform, she looked like a grub with CPR training.

  ‘I’m not paying you to take care of Pat fucking Sajak,’ Dad said.

  ‘She was taking a nap.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you get one too.’

  ‘What would you like me to be doing?’ she asked in a tone that illustrated one of the ways people can say ‘go fuck yourself’.

  Dad, preferring simple and direct, said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  ‘Sir, I don’t have to stand here and—’

  ‘No, you certainly don’t. Jarred, get out of the way.’

  ‘You will—’

  ‘Lady, less talking and more leaving.’

  She left.

  He walked into their bedroom, and their laughter was interrupted by Mom coughing.

  ‘Jarred, get your butt in here,’ Dad called. ‘The good news is Nurse Ratched isn’t coming back. The bad news is that we got to take up the slack. I’m going to take some time off work and be the mom for a while.’

  He patted her arm and smiled.

  Even at ten years old I understood the look of worry she gave him.

  Dad was the perfect nurse to Mom despite the Mickey Mouse tumbler following him as he did his chores. It sat in the garage as he separated the laundry. It sat near Mom’s head as he cared for her.

  We measured progress daily by a word pronounced that hadn’t been yesterday, or by the extra minutes that she wasn’t tired. The freezer was stuffed with my hospital favourites of pizza and tater tots. Most nights, Dad and I made Jell-O together. I stood on a chair to stir in the mix, pale gelatine dust turning vibrant as it poured into the water. Mom’s steriliser with its cartoon rubber ducky trimming hissed beside us.

  Now when I came home, I lay in their bed and Dad would be there already or come in shortly after with Mickey Mouse refilled and a watered-down whiskey for her.

  ‘Do you want to see what I made?’

  Mom nodded. Dad stopped reading the paper and looked over. He was wearing her apron decorated in shamrocks and hearts.

  ‘It’s a gun.’

  My gun was a twelve-inch wooden ruler with a clothes pin glued to one end. I stretched the rubber band from the end of the ruler, but as soon as I clamped the rubber band, the clothes pin launched across the room in a sloppy arc.

  ‘Glue won’t hold, huh? C’mon,’ Dad said.

  The garage air was pleasant, cooler than outside with the sweetness of motor oil and sawdust. At Dad’s workbench, tools hung on the wall, outlined like murder victims. In front of us, coffee cans of to-be sorted nuts, nails, screws and bolts sat.

  ‘We need some epoxy. But, what you got here . . .’ He held up my ruler. ‘This here is bush league. Go get me a refill. My glass is on your mom’s nightstand.’

  When I returned, he took a drink and set it amongst its nest of ring stains. I sat beside Dad, snapping a rubber band against my cheek, increasing the tension each time. He jigsawed two scraps of lumber into the silhouettes of rifles. The scream of the saw drove excitement into my boy’s heart. He helped me glue the clothes pins on with an epoxy syringe and spin the handle of the vice.

  ‘While this sets, let’s get some elephant-gun ammo and set up a target.’ He looked under the workbench and dug around until he pulled out a bouquet of long red rubber bands. He drew a target on a piece of newspaper and taped it against the garage door.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Want a sip?’

  I considered the shining coal of his eyes.

  ‘It’s going to be okay now. Your mom’s the strongest person I know. Ten times stronger than me. A hundred times stronger than anyone out there.’

  Long seconds passed.

  ‘Hey, look at me. You okay?’

  Dad held me as I cried. He kissed my head and breathed promises into my hair. ‘I promise you. I promise she’s going to be better. It’s up to us. I love you, son.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘Here, blow your nose on this,’ he said and handed me an oil rag. ‘Time to check our handiwork.’

  We stretched rubber bands along the length of the wood and set them into the grip of the clothes pins. When we hit the target, the paper would snap and leave a rectangular hole. We’d cheer and reload.

  ‘Does Mom want to have a turn?’

  ‘Good question.’

  We lay in bed with her and took turns shooting a stuffed dragon that used to be my favourite toy. When it was her turn to shoot, I held the gun while she unsteadily pinched the clothes pin to release the rubber band. Dad took a few turns too, but soon was answering the buzz of the washing machine, refreshing their glasses, or phoning the insurance company to argue about a bill.

  For several weeks, we three floated on the raft of their bed past this hostile territory. Mom improved every day.

  The tv was pulled into the bedroom and set up on their dresser. We ate our dinners from our laps watching game shows and sitcoms. We played board games spread across the sheets. Alone together and separated from the world, we were happy. Until finally our wait-and-see ended.

  Mom died.

  A second aneurysm while I was at school. A second wait outside the principal’s office until he could drive me to the hospital, and the first time I ran away.

  8

  ‘Today’s the day,’ Jack announced as he helped me over the rain gutter. Our goal was still the donut shop at the edge of the neighbourhood. It had taken weeks but with every walk I had gone a little further.

  Jack took a letter out of his back pocket, shoved it in the mailbox and
raised the metal red flag. He tried to be quick, but I saw the letterhead of the hospital. He had been making the minimum payments to staunch the flow of creditors. I didn’t have the courage to tell him to stop, and he wouldn’t have listened.

  Our walks were mostly silent, but occasionally Jack talked about his ‘kids’, the orchids.

  ‘The thing to do is leave them alone the best you can. Other than that, it’s about knowing where they come from. The one in your room comes from the Philippines.’ His hand jabbed at a point on an imaginary map. Jack brightened. ‘How much rainfall and how much light they’re used to. Yours doesn’t need much light and just keep its roots moist, not wet.’

  I leaned forward for the last few pushes, my arms quivering and my legs crying wolf.

  ‘How’re you doing? Not too sore? Think you’re going to make it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  We crossed the parking lot and passed the empty units with their glass fronts suggesting ‘For Leasing Information Contact Ed’. The strip mall was a copy and paste of every other strip mall from every other town in every other state I’d been to: surrounded by a near-empty sea of parking spaces, a border of squared hedges at the edge of the road, a covered sidewalk in front of shops with their neutral-coloured paint jobs and each with a name written in backlit letters. ‘Mr. Do-nut’s’ is after ‘Goode’s Chiropractic’ and ‘Tae Kwon Do Grandmaster D.D. Jones’. My muscles quaked, but it felt good. A few steps ahead, Jack was fighting the urge to look back and check on me.

  I reached the shop and exhaled triumphantly. ‘Made it.’

  Jack opened the door. ‘Not there yet. Donuts are inside.’

  The small shop’s glass counter stuffed with trays of donuts separated the few tables from the back of the shop, where Mr. Do-nut and an elderly Laotian woman stacked trays onto racks. A self-serve coffee urn sat beside the soda machine. Behind the counter there was a daily trivia question. The correct answer earned you a free donut. An asterisk was added in a different pen, ‘No Using Inter-net’.