The Coward

by Jarred McGinnis

  Melissa led us on a tour of the house, pretending it was ours. She talked about her days as a housewife, shoe-shopping, sleeping with her personal trainer, drinking banana-flavoured liquor with the housekeeper. Walking through the endless bedrooms, she made up children for us. I remember there was ten-year-old Roxy who still wet the bed and BananaHead, an unfortunate, misshapen first-born and the inevitable consequence of our being brother and sister.

  As usual she awed me. She was fearless with these older teenagers who had achieved the giddy heights of being seniors and having drivers’ licences. Everyone followed her, laughing hysterically, finishing our whiskey and starting on the beer they had brought. By the time we settled back to the master bedroom and the builders’ radio, we were all drunk. I was envious of the ease with which Melissa won everyone’s affection. Every time she got up to dance or leaned over to take a cigarette from one of the girls, the guys checked out her ass or looked down her shirt.

  Those eyes of hers worked on everyone, girls included. It hurt most to understand that Melissa already knew this. I wasn’t the only one she could make fall in love with her.

  I put my arm around her, to claim her as mine, but she wriggled away. I tried to kiss her and she pecked my lips and turned her head. Her jokes became increasingly at my expense. Every retelling of how we first heard them downstairs made me more cowardly. Still we drank, the seniors catching up with us.

  She made a joke about my nipples. She teased me to show them.

  I grumbled, but still wanted to be liked by the seniors.

  She goaded. Everyone else joined in until I relented.

  Melissa pinched my nipple and said, ‘He’s got baby nipples.’ A joke shared between us was now a humiliation. I looked at the laughing faces.

  ‘Look who’s talking, Pirate’s Treasure. They don’t call you Mosquito Bites for nothing.’

  The boys shouted ‘damn’ and ‘snap’. She played it off, pushing forward her chest and frowning, but she ignored me after that. I grew sullen and quiet, drinking and watching Melissa being the centre of attention. The tall, handsome blond made a lame joke about my nipples.

  ‘That’s it. Let’s fight. You’re the tallest. Stand up.’

  Everyone was laughing, because I was shadow-boxing and clowning in front of the guys.

  ‘Me and my little nipples are going to fuck you up, Too-Tall.’ I pulled my shirt over my head and thumped my chest. I slapped him hard; everyone froze. He was much bigger than me, but he was scared.

  ‘What the fuck is your problem?’ Melissa pushed me. I stumbled and fell. The senior girls were yelling too. The guys were telling me to chill the fuck out; the one I slapped stayed quiet.

  ‘You need to leave,’ Melissa said. ‘You’re being an asshole.’

  ‘Fine. Fine.’ I picked myself up sloppily. ‘I’m sorry you got slapped and Melissa has little tits.’

  I stumbled downstairs and into my forest where all the morning-after recriminations lined up beside the trees to greet me.

  *

  For days, I called her and left pathetic, wheedling messages. I waited across the street from her house trying to ambush her. I skipped class and took two city buses to wander the halls of her school with no idea how to find her.

  I climbed the tree and dropped into her backyard. I knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked harder. The curtain fluttered. She opened the door wide enough to let me see the guy I had slapped sitting on her couch, pretending to watch tv. Of course, it had to be him.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘So?’

  Her coldness stunned me.

  ‘Are we done here? Go home.’ I knew she had never believed my homeless story, but it was a lie that suited us both. ‘I’m done babysitting you.’

  ‘What did I do?’

  She rolled her eyes and shut the door.

  ‘Wait! I wrote you this.’ I handed her a thick wad of folded loose-leaf paper.

  She stepped outside, a small smile on her lips. My heart fluttered with hope.

  ‘Can I borrow your lighter?’ she asked.

  She took the lighter and lit the square of paper. She watched me as I watched it. Once the flames caught, she dropped it and mashed it with the toe of her shoe. She threw the lighter over my shoulder. The door slammed.

  I retreated to my side of the fence. I piled dry leaves around the trunk of the tree where I first saw Melissa and the girl I had kissed playing. My lighter’s tiny flame was invisible in the sunlight, but its fire settled on the leaves and ate at the pile eagerly. It didn’t take long before the tree was burning steadily. The flames climbed the branches and ignited the dead leaves that clung to them.

  Melissa and her new boyfriend ran into the backyard. I gave her my brightest smile and a royal wave, enjoying their bewilderment. Melissa was screaming but I don’t remember what. I pointed at the blond guy, did my best crazy stare then flipped him off and walked away.

  By the time I had hiked home my heart was wretched. I sat in my room festering with ridiculous schemes to win Melissa back.

  Dad and the Mickey Mouse tumbler were hiding in his room. I took his car keys and hurried back to Melissa’s. Turning into her subdivision, I was stopped by a police officer who had blocked the road with his cruiser. Behind him was a fire truck parked in front of Melissa’s house.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  It was several hours before Jack picked me up at the police station. They made me sit at an officer’s desk until he arrived. No formal charges were pressed. I got a standard-issue cop lecture before we left. We took a cab back home. I don’t know if it was because they couldn’t release the car or he was too drunk to drive. I didn’t think about it then.

  The entire journey I stared blankly out the window. I thought about Melissa, still contriving reconciliations. There was a part of me that wanted to tell Jack everything. Sitting next to him in the cab, I could have asked him what to do. He would have told me to forget about Melissa. He would have known that she was the kind of girl who would never love me back, not the way I needed. I tried to think of how to describe the hurt and need I felt for Melissa. I could ask about him and Mom. Maybe here, it could have been okay between us. Probably not, but it’s hard not to think like that.

  Instead, I didn’t dare make eye contact, staying motionless as prey. When the taxi pulled into the driveway, I prepared myself for the explosion that was my dad. He paid the driver without his usual banter.

  Would he swing at me first or start yelling and give me some warning? I followed at a safe distance into the house.

  He turned.

  I stopped.

  ‘Close the door.’

  I closed the door.

  I waited.

  We stood there facing each other. I was cornered, but he didn’t move. I didn’t dare. He was looking at me, but past me. There was clarity in his eyes that unsettled me; I expected the worst. I didn’t know what he was going to do.

  I started to cry.

  He went to his room.

  I went to mine, not understanding what had happened.

  27

  The bus to my job interview passed Melissa’s old neighbourhood while a small man with a thick Mexican accent critiqued the passengers – ‘Fat, fat lady’, ‘Here comes smelly’. He had watched me from his seat behind the driver as I waited for the bus ramp to fold out. I positioned myself in the wheelchair space and locked my brakes with him watching. When we made eye contact, he nodded without comment and I took it as a benediction.

  The address for the interview was a three-storey office building. I went to the room number on the contact sheet the agency had given me. Except for the room number, the door had no logo or sign to distinguish it from any other in the hallway. My lower back was already killing me, but I was determined to prove I could do this.

  I sat in front of the office door debating whether to knock or just go in. The frosted glass revealed nothing.

&nbs
p; I opened the door without knocking and was confronted by a lobby of sorts. Three chairs sat against one wall. Opposite, another door had ‘ofice’ written on it. Ceiling-high stacks of battered and water-damaged boxes crowded the rest of the room. Worn thin at both doors, the carpet’s original colour, possibly cream or tan, had greyed to resemble the pelt of a disease-ridden wild creature. The air smelled of mildew and, confusingly, of dive-bar urinal cakes.

  The room was too crowded for me to park myself without being in the way. I gave a quick smile to the man and woman already occupying the chairs and manoeuvred my-self against one of the walls of boxes. A sedentary half-century on earth had left the woman a doughy androgyne. Her only distinguishing features were a wall eye and unwashed hair, calico from grocery-store hair dyes. Her bangs sloped to one side. I concluded she was the source of the urinal cake smell, maybe unfairly. The man beside her had the same figure, tits and all. He had wisely grown a goatee to mark out the chin that nature neglected. We three sat in silence. I gave up trying to avert my eyes and watched the man with disgusted fascination as he dug inside his nose as if polishing brass. The interviewer opened the ‘ofice’ door and looked us over. I didn’t blame him for the barely disguised disappointment. I was feeling despair for all of humanity at that moment.

  The nose-picker stopped his labours when the interviewer called his name. Fifteen minutes later, the door opened again and the interviewer told him to wait in the lobby to sign some paperwork after he interviewed these other two. The interviewer flicked a pointed finger at me. I followed this captain of industry in the striped golf shirt and khaki shorts with his cell phone in a pouch attached to his belt. The ‘ofice’ was like the lobby. Stacks of battered boxes coughing up envelopes flanked the man and his desk.

  The interviewer leaned on his desk and folded his arms. There was a dot-dot-dash of mustard stain down the front of his shirt. It was mesmerising. Arms still folded, he looked down at my application.

  ‘Jarred McGinnis?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What happened to you?’ he asked.

  ‘The AIDS,’ I said.

  The interviewer’s eyes widened. ‘Are you going to walk again?’

  ‘Not sure I want to. I get some pretty sweet parking spaces these days.’ I did a fist pump. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Do you have any relevant job experience?’

  ‘For stuffing envelopes?’

  ‘Mmhmm.’

  ‘Well, I don’t have any industrial experience but I consider myself a talented amateur. I’ve been putting my own correspondence into envelopes for nearly twenty years. I’m talking about being involved in the complete process. Return address in the top left. Correct postage top right. Lick, stick and send. How much does this gig pay anyway?’

  ‘The minimum allowed by law.’ The interviewer chuckled.

  I forced a laugh a little too long and a little too loud. ‘Classic,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, thanks for your time.’

  ‘Where do I pick up my cheque?’

  ‘I think we have everybody we need.’

  I went home and got undressed in my room. I fumbled my shoes and socks off. My feet were swollen and red, yet another boon from the gods of paraplegia. Without working leg muscles, blood and fluids pool into your feet. You can push your finger into the flesh as if it is risen dough. The divot lingers for a few seconds before filling in again. It’s great entertainment for kids’ parties.

  Concentrating on the puffy red loaves, I curtsied my second toe, my miraculous flinch. Maybe I could walk if I had to. With my arms I shoved my body up, thinking some secret need in my muscles would save me. Instead I awkwardly tumbled onto my bed and slid to the floor, pulling the sheets with me.

  I thought about the night before Jack picked me up from the hospital. I had told Jack that I had planned to run away from the hospital. That wasn’t true.

  I had to leave my hospital room. I didn’t want to hear the whispered coos and kisses as my roommate and his girlfriend lay together enjoying the warmth of each other. I was never going to feel intimacy again. The constantly hurting, useless body that the surgeons had left me with became overwhelming. They had saved my life but never considered whether it was worth saving. I pushed myself into the shining black lake of the parking lot. The air was rain fresh. A few cars and trucks lingered in their spaces but mostly the night was empty. A silent ambulance painted blue the archway of trees that lined the road. Should I have written a note? I thought, and rejected it as ridiculous. Would I be missed? Would I miss anything? One moment I would be here. Another, not. It felt clean and straightforward.

  Under the streetlights, my shadow pulled and stretched across the width of the road. The outline of my head and shoulders were clear and recognisable. The lower half was a block of darkness. The wheels and spokes of the chair projected onto the asphalt as a pointless contraption of loops and crossbars.

  It was hard to see through the tears, but headlights were turning onto the road. They got closer, dazzling me until a moment of stillness and clarity. The engine droned closer. The sticky sound of its tyres on the wet road neared. This was it. I was prepared. This make-do body was too painful. I squeezed my eyes shut as I pushed myself into the road.

  Barely a squeak of brakes, then nothing but the idling engine and the shuffling of leaves in the canopy above us. The man in the car looked at me expressionlessly through his windshield. He was middle-aged with a neat blond quiff and black-framed glasses atop a stately nose. He got out and shut the door. He took a few steps before returning to his truck to turn on its hazard lights. He didn’t say anything as he took hold of the handles on the wheelchair and pushed me back into the hospital. I was a stray shopping cart blown into his path by happenstance. In the empty lobby, he leaned over, locked my brakes, and left. With its hazard lights still blinking, the truck drove out of sight.

  Back in my room, the redneck’s girlfriend was gone or they were sleeping. In the silence and darkness, I pulled myself into bed and my breath became ragged and heaving. I felt the humiliation like a fever. I hated. I hated that driver. The useless failure of him. He hadn’t kept the bargain we had made. The stupidity of my failed suicide overwhelmed me. I could have ended up not dead but just more hurt, more broken, a neck injury and unable to breathe without a machine. I wanted to rush through the world, find that driver and beg his forgiveness. Then, I remembered calling Jack. Oh god. Jack. He hadn’t heard from me for ten years until that day. He would have shown up to find the wreckage of me. Did I really hate him so much to do that? I resolved to say sorry for being a terrible son and for torturing him. In the morning, when he arrived to pick me up, to save me once again, no questions asked, I broke that vow. I didn’t say anything. No I’m sorry. No thank you.

  *

  Jack grabbed my ankle and yanked hard. ‘Jarred!’

  My head banged against the bottom of the bed. ‘Ouch! Whoa, whoa! I heard you. One sec. I’m coming out.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing under the bed?’

  I pulled myself out. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Jack yelled. ‘I thought you might be dead. Took too many of your goofy pills.’ His fear stung. I felt guilty but still I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him.

  ‘Bring it down a notch. I had another bad interview. I was feeling like shit. Felt like hiding. Calm down.’

  ‘Crawling under the bed. What the hell is wrong with you?’

  ‘Who doesn’t like a little bedroom spelunking when they’re depressed?’

  ‘You idiot.’

  ‘Take a walk?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I preferred the Filling Station to flirt with Sarah the barista, but Jack preferred Mr. Do-nut. He was buying so we went there. He ordered a decaf.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened at the interview?’

  ‘I’d rather not. Let’s just say I wasn’t mindless manual labour material.’

  ‘You still wait
ing for a CEO position to open up?’

  ‘For the right bonus package, I might consider it. Jack?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘See this?’ I stretched my arms wide with fingers splayed.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Imagine my arms are four times as long as this and my fingers are ten times as long. That’s how big a fuck-up I am.’

  ‘Jesus, Jarred. Lighten up.’

  ‘I have some good news though.’ I told him my good news. On the bus ride back from my disaster at the interview for the envelope-stuffing job, I had gotten a phone call from the detective investigating the accident.

  ‘Does that mean the police aren’t coming after you?’ Jack asked.

  ‘I think so. He said they weren’t going to “pursue the case” any further. I got the feeling they never believed the driver’s new version of the story.’

  ‘That’s good news then.’

  ‘I guess. Doesn’t help Melissa much.’

  ‘No. It doesn’t.’

  ‘It doesn’t stop her husband coming after you or me either.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I get the feeling he doesn’t give a damn. He’s rich and he can afford to make others miserable. He was hurt and angry and he sicced his lawyers on anything that moved. They’ll get bored of trying to get blood from a stone. You okay?’

  ‘Not sure how I feel about it. Relieved, but . . . I don’t know.’ Then I told him about Melissa. Not about what had happened the night she died, but how I met her when we were barely teenagers. I reminded him of the time I stole his car, and I told him that it was because she had broken up with me.

  As we talked, I traced the cost of my return in the lines of his face. The bags under his eyes were half-moon shadows. His stubble was a day old, which was unusual for fastidious Jack.

  ‘I remember that day in the police station as my first wake-up call. The cops looked at me like the piece-of-shit drunk I was. Sitting there, signing papers, getting lectured by those jokers, it made me realise how bad it had gotten. That’s when I stopped drinking and started to fix – try to fix – the mess our lives had become.’