The Coward

by Jarred McGinnis

  Except he didn’t stop drinking that day. I knew the real story of the night that he stopped drinking. Maybe he didn’t remember telling me the story. Maybe he didn’t remember the real story. Over the years the stories we tell ourselves change. They have to. Who wants to live as a foil or a minor character to their own life’s story? We choose the scenes and chapters to tell a story where we are the hero. It’s the only way to survive the gashes, nicks and scratches life carves out of us. And yet, here we are still with knife in hand.

  We went home carrying to-go coffees. I held mine between my legs. I’d figured out how take a sip and put it back without having to stop. As we turned onto our street, I saw a car parked across from the house. The driver leaned against it with his arms folded and watched our progress. As we got closer, I recognised the cop moustache and comfort-fit khakis.

  ‘It’s that collection agent,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t take it personally. He’s just doing his job. I’ll take his paperwork, thank him and we can all go on our way.’

  As we approached, Moustache pointed at my coffee and said, ‘No drinking and driving.’ A splash of coffee brown painted his windshield and I hurried into the house, leaving Jack there alone.

  28

  A few weeks after I had set fire to the tree in Melissa’s backyard and my arrest for driving without a licence, one day, just like that, Mickey Mouse’s smiling face, unstained by whiskey, stared up from the trash. Jack’s skin had turned sallow. There was more grey hair than I remembered and the stubble at his chin had skunk stripes. He was always on the verge of tears, which was the hardest comparison to the invincible father I remembered. It was the first time I thought of him as old.

  ‘Jarred,’ he said, ‘I’m going to another meeting tonight. Can you be home?’

  I stared at his bruised forehead. ‘When are you going to win a fight for a change?’

  He felt the tenderness on the bridge of his nose. ‘Don’t try to be smarter than you are. I asked you to be home tonight.’

  ‘I’m spending the night at a friend’s.’

  I didn’t ask what ‘meetings’ meant and now when I said ‘friend’, it no longer meant camping alone in the forest near our house. I had found other misfits my age and older roaming feral around our town. I had quickly become adept at finding girls just as ready as Melissa to exhaust themselves against my endless need. That night a friend and I were planning to steal a wheelbarrow full of flowers from the cemetery for the doorstep of a twenty-year-old I had made out with at a party.

  ‘I’d like you to be home tonight.’

  I didn’t come home until after school the next day. A man was sitting in the living room with Jack. A pale creature birthed from a cubicle somewhere on the tenth floor of a tall glass building under strips of fluorescent lighting and textured ceiling tiles. He looked barely out of college. His wispy cowlick of sand-coloured hair twitched like antenna as he stood to offer his hand. The creature had a name.

  ‘Hello. I’m Thomas.’

  ‘I wanted you two to meet last night,’ Dad said. ‘I asked you to be home.’

  ‘I told you I was spending the night at a friend’s.’

  ‘Next time I ask you to do something, I expect you to do it,’ he said.

  Thomas looked away, pushing up his glasses.

  I held my response, unsure what this visitor meant. Was Thomas from school? Was he a social worker? A cop?

  ‘I wanted you to meet Thomas.’

  I turned to walk away.

  ‘Sit down!’ Jack yelled.

  I sat.

  Thomas pushed up his glasses.

  ‘Stop being a shitty teenager and give people respect. You and I both know that things, that things . . . fell apart when your mom died. I know I hurt you in a lot of ways and I’m going to make amends. Thomas has been helping me to work the programme and not take another drink. I’m asking you for a favour. I need you two to get along. Okay?’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Jarred. You should be proud of your dad. A lot of people never make it to day one, never mind week one.’

  I stared at Thomas, eyes bugged. He looked to Jack and still I stared.

  ‘Jesus Christ! Never mind,’ Jack shouted. I felt betrayed that Jack invited Thomas to our house. I was used to being angry all the time, but with someone from the outside I had to feel shame. Of the two, anger was easier.

  Months went by with Jack gone every night. Thomas picked him up and took him to AA meetings. I attacked and ambushed him with petty teenage defiance that had previously meant weathering a few slaps and kicks before he’d retreat to the garage or bedroom. Lately, it had been me retreating behind slammed doors unable to cope with this new calm, patient and sober Jack.

  ‘Jarred, I would like you to be home after school tomorrow.’

  ‘Are we getting a puppy?’

  ‘Jarred, I’m serious.’

  ‘Serious as piles?’ We both knew I was going to defy him.

  ‘Jarred.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you to go fuck yourself, Jack?’

  He smiled. I tensed. There was danger in that smile. He rubbed his chin then stretched, his balled fists spreading out. I flinched and took a step back. He frowned and turned, saying as he walked away, ‘You’re coming to a meeting with me tonight. It’s important.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘We will.’

  After school, I was sitting on the kerb outside a 7-Eleven with my friends. Jack pulled up and stepped out of the car.

  ‘Hello, son! Ready to go?’

  I submitted meekly, cowed by embarrassment. We drove home, and Thomas was already there sitting in our living room. I hid out in my room, petulant and obnoxious, until there was a knock on the door and Jack saying, ‘Ready to go?’

  I followed the two men around a church – old and ignored, its stone shoulders rigid, trying so hard to impress. I felt sorry for it. We followed the sidewalk to a box of a building behind the church. As we approached, the lights from the windows halved in shadow the faces of the smokers gathered by its doors. They weren’t all black or white, rich or poor, blue or white collar. One more of the Lord’s little jokes: only in addiction is the brotherhood of mankind realised. Where else would Jack be hanging out with a guy like Thomas?

  They shook hands and hugged their way through the group. Jack introduced me and their names flew past. The friendliness of these people was unrelenting. Puffy-faced and weary, they laughed and gossiped. Veterans of a war no longer celebrated.

  Jack and Thomas went to sit in the front. I sat at the back near the exit. Every person who passed me made eye contact and smiled. I felt embarrassed for them.

  At the front sat a well-dressed man flanked by two tatter-edged posters of AA’s twelve steps and traditions. He sat up straight. His hands were folded with affected patience. On the table, a blue trilby was set to his left and a blue book to the right. When the crowd settled, he read from the book with a polished tone that made each slogan seem true and meaningful. Everyone except me knew how to respond to his prompts as he led the service or meeting or whatever they called it.

  The well-dressed man invited people to share.

  One by one, people stood and spoke. Every story scratched and scraped until I felt a rawness inside me. Each person standing to introduce themselves as an alcoholic was a family destroyed and a life broken. A goth-looking girl with a septum piercing said she was grateful to be an alcoholic. I didn’t know what that meant, but I hated them all for the doomed hope their excuses bore. I absorbed the sadness of each speaker until my hands shook. Did their families agree to have their humiliations brought to this misery show-and-tell? Everyone talked about their selfishness when they were drinking, but none of them talked about the selfishness of recovery. Everyone in their lives had no choice but to support them. It was a room full of emotional extortionists.

  I didn’t dare look at Jack as he stood.

  ‘My name is Jack and I am an alcoholic.’

  Pani
c seized my guts when the room responded with ‘Hello, Jack’. I wanted out of this room. What he was about to say would break something within me. I knew this.

  ‘We never went to bars. My wife and I were quite happy to do our drinking at home. But we weren’t alcoholics, no sir. Alcoholics didn’t hold down jobs, pay their mortgage or raise two kids. My youngest is here tonight.’

  I felt his glance, but I kept my eyes deep into the muddy pool at the bottom of my coffee mug.

  ‘I don’t mind telling you this scares the hell out of me. This is the second toughest thing I’ve ever had to do. The first was to stop drinking.’

  The crowd made appreciative noises.

  I hated them. I hated them. I hated them.

  ‘I’m ninety days sober, and I’d like to tell you my story. I know now that my wife and I were drunks. Every day, we raced home from work to drink. We were high-school sweethearts and alcohol was always a part of our lives. We had a lot of great times together.

  ‘She was an incredible woman. Even in the depths of our shared disease, she made sure everything was okay. She made dinner. Made sure our kids were doing their homework, had clean clothes, a kiss goodnight and all that stuff. She did all this for one simple reason: so she and I could get very, very drunk. The night wasn’t over until we blacked out.

  ‘We were going to drink ourselves to death. That was the unspoken plan. But she died, an aneurysm, and left me alone with a ten-year-old kid at home and a drinking problem. It is hard to describe the anger I felt at everybody and everything.’

  Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

  ‘But I wasn’t going to let a little thing like the death of my wife stop me from drinking. I took all that anger and pain to justify why I needed to drink more, forgetting about that little kid, my youngest, who needed his mom and, even more, needed his dad. Most of the last five years from the day I buried my wife to the moment, ninety days ago, when I stopped drinking are gone. Nothing but empty bottles and a list of wrongs. I hardly remember anything but pain and getting up shaking and sick and needing a drink.’

  I sat on the edge of my seat. My legs coiled, ready to spring up and away.

  ‘There’s a lot of talk about a moment of clarity. I’m here to tell you about my moment of clarity. When I finally knew, I mean really knew, that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.’

  Someone clapped and said, ‘Tell it.’

  ‘I hadn’t worked since my wife died. I didn’t need much, just a house to hide in and a liquor store in walking distance. Now, I had been drinking all day, nothing new there, but that day I got it into my mind that I missed my wife so much that I was going to join her up in heaven. The kid, he’d be better off without me.’

  I knew all the smiling smokers that we had met at the door were thinking of me with pity. If one of them turned around to look at me, I was determined to throw my coffee in their condoling face. They could shove their fucking donation box and every one of the twelve steps.

  ‘I had an old pistol hidden away somewhere in our closet.’

  My mind stopped ranting and tears betrayed me.

  ‘I was digging around looking for the gun, holding on to the clothes rail to keep my balance. Snap! I crashed into the closet, banging my forehead on the wall and dumping all her clothes on top of me.’

  I remembered seeing the bruised forehead and busted nose, and I had accused him of getting into another bar fight.

  ‘I tore at her dresses, threw them around and kicked. Having a good old pity party. That was God having one more laugh at my expense. I was sure of that and, well, I found that gun, unwrapped it’ – Jack mimed the action of holding the gun in one hand and pulling away the oilcloth with the other – ‘and put it to my head without hesitation. I felt the resistance of the trigger. I felt it give way. I heard the snap and felt the click at my temple.

  ‘But nothing happened. Nothing happened by the grace of God. I dropped the pistol, curled up into a ball and fell asleep. When I woke up, I dug through the Yellow Pages and found my first AA meeting.

  ‘I realised a hard truth. My moment of clarity. I realised I hadn’t mourned my wife. My disease was such that she meant less to me than drinking. I had been telling myself I drank because of what God did to me. He took my wife and left me alone. But my moment of clarity taught me otherwise. I was a selfish bastard. I wasn’t drinking because of my wife or to spite God. I drank because I wanted to be drunk. It was all about me. When I realised that I cared more about drinking than being true to her and raising our boy right, I knew I had gone too far. I came to that first meeting shattered like most do, and as soon as I said it out loud, admitted that I was an alcoholic, I was revealed.’

  Hearing my dad’s voice break, I didn’t dare look up.

  ‘The dirty trick drinking plays on you is that it lets you feel the pain, but it doesn’t let it settle into your system. The booze flushes out those feelings so you have to feel them again and again, which makes you want to drink more. So those first weeks, besides making sure that I didn’t take a drink, I had to mourn that perfect woman until I cried blood. And the only reason I survived was by having a candy bar in one pocket and a list of meetings in the other. This is my ninetieth meeting in ninety days.’

  The room clapped.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, all, and thank you, Thomas, my sponsor, for getting me this far.’

  They were still clapping as I bumped into a fat man outside blowing his cigarette smoke at the moon. Wheeling around to scream fuck you at his stunned face, I ran into the night wiping away the tears and snot.

  29

  At a job interview to do filing and data entry for a machining company, the interviewer’s high-pitched and nasal voice annoyed me. My back had been constant agony for weeks, and I no longer had the patience to pretend they might consider hiring me. In response to her question about ‘employment gaps’, I let out a long slow groan, my eyes rolling back, my mouth hanging open.

  The interviewer pushed my wheelchair into the lobby as I disguised giggles as moans. She scuttled behind the door unlocked by the swipe of the ID card at her neck.

  ‘The ambulance will be here shortly,’ the security guard said.

  I straightened up to make my getaway, the joke gone too far, but a sharp and genuine pain cut me in half.

  By the time a tweedledee and dumb of paramedics pulled a gurney through the automatic doors, I was twisted into myself and holding my abdomen against white hot tentacles squeezing agony out of organs I didn’t know the names of.

  ‘I’m going to faint,’ I said. The trip to the hospital and admission was a skipping stone, brief touches of consciousness before bouncing into blackness: the jerking bounce of being loaded into the back of the ambulance, siren ringing above while one of the tweedles filled in a form, the sliding force of a corner taken quickly, the blast of AC as we rushed through hospital corridors, a beautiful woman in a doctor’s coat asking where it hurt, needles, a white one-eyed machine whirring above, stillness, quiet and then lots of black.

  ‘Sir, can you get your pants off by yourself? We need to have a look at your pecker and the plumbing,’ said an older man with a stethoscope and a thick Texan drawl.

  ‘Doctor, I prefer Latin-based words when a stranger’s looking at my genitals.’

  ‘Suit yourself. Need help with your drawers?’

  Jack entered my room with a nurse who was explaining, ‘Your son had bladder stones and has been experiencing associated pain but he attributed it to his spinal-cord injury and stress. The surgery was simple and performed without complications.’

  ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ I said.

  ‘Mr. McGinnis,’ the nurse addressed me. ‘You can leave as soon as you feel up to it. You’ll be in a fair amount of pain. You can take two every four hours.’ She shook a bottle of pills.

  ‘Four every two hours, got it,’ I said, and gave Jack a wink.

  ‘No, two pills, four hours. No more than eight in a twenty-four-hour period. That’s impo
rtant. You should be drinking ten to fifteen eight-ounce glasses of water every day. Your urine will be pink. This is okay, but if it persists for more than three days you need to contact us. The phone number is on your discharge sheet. Do you have any questions?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Will I . . . give it to me straight, will I ever walk again?’

  ‘Um. Um. I think you know the answer to that.’ The nurse fled.

  I giggled.

  ‘Feeling better, I see,’ Jack said. ‘Ready to go home? Let me find your wheelchair.’

  I smoked while Jack pushed me.

  ‘I tried to get a job. Do something right for a change. Let me do it,’ I said as we came to the kerb, popping up my front wheels to edge myself off the sidewalk.

  A woman walking past said, ‘You need to be careful.’

  Jack said, ‘If he had any sense, do you think he’d be in that wheelchair?’

  ‘I was just saying,’ the woman retorted.

  ‘Now you have,’ Jack said and the woman gave us both a dirty look as she left.

  ‘I can defend myself,’ I said.

  ‘That had nothing to do with you. That was all about her. I need my fun too. Anyway, I was about to say you got a phone call today. Sounds like you have a job.’

  When we got home, Jack said he needed to do some work in his greenhouse. I was sore but didn’t want to be alone and offered to help. He seemed genuinely excited and set me up at the table he had made for me. Above the glass roof, the rich blue. The few rags of cloud in the sky had begun to pick up the pinks of a sunset. The greenhouse air was warm and full of earthy smells mixed with the perfumes of flowers.

  ‘This is my special potting-mix recipe for small roots. Some of the babies like that Oncidium there need to keep their toes wet. You’ll need this bag of fir bark, some coconut husk and perlite. Two, two, to one ratio.’ Mister Shakey slid in and wound himself through Jack’s legs as he explained. He leaned down to give the cat a few scratches on his head. ‘This is fine hardwood charcoal. You don’t need much. I just salt the mix with it, but it’s the secret sauce.’ He pulled a pinch of shiny black dirt from a large plastic grocery-store bag. He showed the charcoal to me then Mister Shakey, who gave it a few disinterested sniffs before hopping into my lap and settling down.