Therapy Mammals

by Jon Methven

  Josey shares these with me, non sequitur style, and we sit for long stretches staring at the fire mulling the meaning. The Christophers enrolled their son Michael in snow globe assembly because, according to some private testing they paid thousands of dollars to have done, he was slightly deficient in sequencing and urban planning. The Parkers order more granola than any one family can consume. Josey insists they are stockpiling it for end of times, a healthy Armageddon. The Ramuses and Davidsons have their orders shipped to each other’s addresses and swap nannies every few months. Josey believes they secretly switched children years earlier. She has all the anonymous handles of parents who post to the Gopa website. For a man obsessed with the site, Josey is better than pornography.

  “Did I tell you I’m proud of you?” Someone has not been proud of me in a long time. “And not just the bus. Forty-nine days of perfect weather.”

  “No one really knows about that.”

  “They ought to.” She types chaotically into the laptop that sits atop a sleeping Clint Eastwood. “If I knew you were planning the bus, I would have gone to the game.”

  “If I knew I was planning it, I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “To take pictures of appalled moms and shocked dads, wandering the picnic area dazed like survivors of an international tragedy.” There are Gopa faculty and parents, similar to Josey, who never played sports and despise the godlike engineering of our social strata. They admire my actions even if they do not post the sentiments on the website. She giggles. “All of them dressed in purple and gold, getting slightly tipsy before the big game.”

  “The players huddled together,” I add, “asking each other how this can happen after all their preparation.” I dropped Jackson off but did not stick around for the fallout, just long enough to witness the point when they discovered something was amiss. “Girlfriends weeping in the bleachers, texting friends not there to share the tragedy.”

  We enjoy the images. My pocket buzzes against the wooden bench. I shift to conceal the noise.

  “Why are you still carrying the phone?”

  “I’m not really. I’m planning to get rid of it.”

  “If that was true it would be gone.” She sets down the laptop and then Clint Eastwood, who darts for the trees. “Give it to me. I’ll destroy it tonight.”

  I cannot depart with the phone. Whoever Tug Reynolds is, wherever he lives, his existence is entwined with mine. “I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

  “You’re stealing from this person, whoever he is. Wasn’t that what your nanny was doing to you?”

  I forget what Josey knows. “I’m not stealing.”

  “Two cartons of cigarettes. Four chainsaw chains. A sledgehammer. A Crosshart air pistol with laser site. By my count, you have seven BB guns. Fifty-piece lock-pick set.” She pauses to watch the flames crash onto my shores. “What are you planning to do with a lock pick, Tom?”

  “I need it around the yard is all.”

  “To break into your own house?” I do not remember ordering the stuff, but it might come in handy if Ray begins sleeping over and Laura locks the backdoor to prevent me from bashing in his skull with the sledgehammer. “Most buildings now have digital locks, cameras, motion sensors. You can’t use tools from VillageShop.”

  She stands, gathers her bag, readies to leave. She always departs at the same time, always on schedule, the wine glass nearly full, as though calibrating her sips so she does not divulge secrets. I never know where she goes, or how she gets back to the city, if she owns a bike or she walks through Red Hook toward the Brooklyn Bridge. I do not know where home is. She knows so much about me, and I know nothing about her.

  “I deleted the order from the account.” She puts out her hand. “Give me the phone, Tom. You’ll be happy later you did.”

  Josey is wise, important to me in ways I do not understand, my therapy creature. I hand over the phone, relieved to be free of the burden.

  Little Tugger

  There is one road in Slancy, a giant loop around the perimeter that splits into two paths near the houses and narrows on the eastern side of the island when it wraps the golf course. It is a two-mile loop used mostly for bikers to exercise, with several inclines to get one’s heart racing. The McClutchens and Laura, Harry and Allie Sedlock are avid bikers, Allie working those impossible legs past our house twice a day, each morning before dawn and just prior to dusk. It is later on a Tuesday evening when I hear a bicycle that slows as it nears my house. It is Ray and Laura’s night out for dinner. I expect Allie Sedlock to arrive in my backyard when Harry appears instead.

  “Biking past and saw the fire. Thought I’d say hello.”

  “I’m glad you did. Something to drink?”

  “No, thank you.” He holds up his phone. “Trying to take a call from Europe. Can’t seem to get a signal. I was biking around, looking for a hotspot.”

  This is delightful news and I poke the fire, riling a glow that catches Harry’s eye. The cell towers look exactly like trees in the darkness, a credit to the manufacturers. I know the answer because I wander Slancy at night. “Seventh hole. The trap just above the green,” I say. “Highest elevation in Slancy.”

  “I’ll give it a shot.”

  Jason Isbell is singing about love songs or fistfights or bliss or strife. I feel like dancing. I have taken a Luderica and have a massive erection, but Harry does not take my advice. He is lying. Harry is not trying to call Europe, where it is the middle of the night. He’s come here to see me, alone.

  “Terrible thing about Saturday’s game,” I say. It is all anyone has spoken about. “I imagine Rhen is upset.”

  “Tougher for the seniors. This is their big year. Rhen’s a freshman, so he’s got time.” Harry sighs. I mimic him with a sigh and a headshake. “All the boys are discouraged. It’s been a difficult season. Lots of grownup topics for kids. Russ’s disappearance, and now this.”

  Maybe if Toby Dalton and his teammates and the parents were all-around nicer people, the universe would not be lining up to oppose their championship quest. “Too much for boys,” I agree.

  He leans conspiratorially. “Your name came up, Pisser.”

  I already know this from the Gopa message board that parents are aware school security spoke to me about Russ. We men sometimes pretend that we do not care about the gossip, that our masculinity prevents us from setting up anonymous handles to lob barbs at other parents. But I know from Josey Mateo that Harry posts under the name HungryDad, and that he has seen the same accusations I have seen. “How’s that?” I ask.

  “You were late to the game. Your name came up as a suspect.”

  I manage the fire and toss the poker, allowing the handmade stainless steel to clang off the rock footpath. I pretend to be appalled at the accusation, hands on my pudgy hips. I have prepared my indignation should anyone mention my involvement, and I have a rock solid alibi. Every minute of my Saturday was filled. I made an impression on the other parents in the therapist’s waiting room, spoke to the wrestling coach, a receipt from the Manhattan Cryobank, Sharon Li and the Indian father at the chess meet, retrieved Jackson in midtown, and dropped the pancakes at the pregame picnic. I shook a few hands and spoke briefly to Laura, then was back in the car and at the chess meet in time to see a younger opponent trounce Gus in less than ten minutes. How could I possibly have found time to steal a busload of lacrosse equipment? “I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with that.”

  He waves it off, crosses a leg over his knee. “Nah, of course not. You were late is all. Jackson was with you. I’m not accusing you.”

  “But someone is.”

  “Being part of a title team looks good for college, for the ECI program.” He waves again, just mentioning it. “Besides, you don’t want to get mixed up with the lacrosse dads. Lots of money, lots of rage over Russ. Just putting it on your radar.”

  It’s a nic
e gesture from my neighbor and investment colleague. We have a lot at stake together. “I appreciate it, Harry.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He leans in so I can smell the Clive Christian cologne, see the perfect bounce and part in his hair, no sweat on his brow even though he’s been biking. I imagine the Sedlocks get out of the shower and put on fresh clothes and jewelry, makeup and perfume, smelling sexual and presentable to one another before bedtime. “I know you’re not pleased with the direction of Moveable Museums, Pisser.”

  “I have concerns, sure.”

  “As do Allie and I. But we’ve come too far to lose our nerve now. We have to stay the course, get this thing over the finish line.”

  “Yes, but Harry—”

  “I need you, Pisser. I need you and Laura to come around. We value your position with Lustfizzle and believe it might do us good. I’m confident if you stick with it, the McClutchens will as well, and Jackson and Jason.”

  It is nice to be needed by Harry Sedlock, his wingman, a pedestal previously occupied by Russ Haverly. The Luderica has kicked in and my perception is uncanny, each of his movements bearing meaning. The pills allow my tribe to intensely focus on the topic I desire—which should be playfulness—but tonight it is Harry’s body language instead. It occurs to me he rarely talks about his missing friend, as if his disappearance is preferable.

  “And Russ,” I say. “You still think he’s a proponent of this investment?”

  The name sideswipes him, already thinking of him in the past. “Russ? Sure, of course.” The trees and cell phone towers inhale, and the metropolis that glows above our homes shivers irreverently, when it is only Harry Sedlock and me in the world, and we both look into each other’s eyes, two mammals who are certain, for the first pure moment, that we are nothing alike, enemies on this orb. “I’m going to confide something to you, Pisser. I’d like to keep it between us. Not even the wives need to know.”

  “All right, Harry.”

  He sits back, uncrosses and recrosses his legs boardroom style. “A week or so before he went missing, Russ was out of line with a matter.”

  “Allie?”

  “Nothing like that.” He watches the backdoor. “He borrowed money he had not paid back. Which is fine, old friends. But he came around for another loan. And when I told him I couldn’t help, he insinuated blackmail.”

  “Blackmail how?”

  Harry shrugs. “Go to the press with Moveable Museums.”

  “He said that?”

  “He didn’t say it. He insinuated it. Leak out about the new venture. It would have been bad publicity for sure. We would have weathered it.” He repositions himself against the fire, watching my face. “But it made an impression. Russ is using again, I’m certain of it. He wasn’t thinking straight.”

  It is this secretiveness that defines our guilt, the crouching out here on Slancy, midnight calls to Europe, cloak and dagger. “We’re stakeholders, Harry. You should have told us about Russ.”

  “I knew he was bluffing. He would never do anything to hurt me. And just like you and Laura were, we were counting on him to get Tungsten into the ECI program. I didn’t want to rock the boat.”

  Were we encouraged by the Sedlocks to elect Russ Haverly as our representative on the ECI committee? I try to reach back for how it happened, but the memory has faded. Laura and I were not counting on him in the way we were counting on years of hard work and extracurricular activities, and one hell of a kid in Iliza.

  “Did you tell this to Lieutenant Misch?”

  “Of course not. If I said he was using drugs, the administration would fire him for sure.”

  “They’ve been asking me questions.”

  “I heard. Last one to see him alive or something.”

  “You mean assuming he’s dead.” I wonder what a handmade stainless steel fire poker would do to that head of hair if smashed repeatedly into Harry’s temple. Would his head make a clanging noise or a soft rotten pumpkin ploof? I am slightly high from the Luderica and sleeplessness, my mouth dry and heavy, and I am not certain if we are arguing. “I was at the club, one of ten people to last see Russ. I don’t have a motive, like being owed money, or trying to keep Russ quiet about controversial investments.”

  “Pisser, it’s nothing like that.”

  “Harry, did you kill Russ?”

  He waves his arms savagely. “More than likely, Russ is sitting in rehab somewhere in Arizona, and he won’t resurface until things smooth over. It’s happened before.” Harry wanders the rock patio, turns his back to the house and watches the woods. “Something about Russ not a lot of people know. We grew up on the same street. He went to college with my little brother, longtime friend of the family. But he was a huge fuckup before I got him the coaching job at Gopa. Arrests, some rather serious, stints in rehab. Staked my name on it, and Russ came around.”

  Harry is straight and temperate, enjoying a glass of wine or scotch after dinner, but never overindulging. His passion, his vice, is money. Harry has no idea Russ Haverly was doubling as a drug mule for the Gopa parents and students. Russ never came around. He just learned to dress like the rest of us.

  “I’m sorry, Harry. I shouldn’t have accused you.”

  “We’re all on edge.” He rubs my shoulder and watches the fire, and mentions the name that triggers it. “Despite everything, I still love the little shit. Little Tugger.”

  My neck shoots around. I stare at Harry with incomprehension.

  “That’s what we called him,” Harry says. “Always tugging on our sleeves growing up, trying to be included. Little Tugger.”

  Cold Blood Or Just Cold?

  The nickname digs it out of my mind, a key passed on to the tribe who unlock the safe and stare at the missing documents. As soon as Harry departs I go for the phone that is gone, passed along two nights earlier to Josey, who promised to toss it in the river. It does not matter anymore. I remember everything. Russ Haverly is Tug Reynolds, his drug dealer alter ego named after his childhood moniker.

  Russ and Tug are dead. I killed them.

  The Monday before the Toby Dalton strangling, which chronologically makes sense. Or is it a Tuesday? It is early in the school week, I remember, when I tend to accept any meetings or chores that get me out of my house. Russ calls the office and says he has something to discuss. I assume it’s my prescription. A cool day in April, I suggest an early round of golf, for which he does not show. A late season squall blankets the fairway in a layer of snow that will be gone by morning. When he arrives to the clubhouse that evening, he is jerky and intoxicated, nervous. He asks to speak in private. He does not own a car due to a driving arrest years earlier, something about barbiturates and a police cruiser. His only mode of transportation is a motorboat that often doubles as his sleeping quarters. He puts it in the water in late March and keeps two slips, one in Slancy, the other in Weehawken.

  We do not know enough about Russ Haverly who has burrowed an important designation within our Gopa lifestyle. Whether an office building, a school community, or a government organization, every association has its own version of Russ Haverly—someone with a dark streak and mild underworld connections to cover the sin that keeps our world faithful and productive. Lacrosse coach is a respected role within the school, though it does not offer the salary someone entwined in our lifestyle needs to function; high school coaches cannot afford motorboats. Rehab, arrests, old friends, a passing understanding of how criminal networks operate—all have instilled Russ with the credentials to be a buffer between our society and the other side.

  A reputation of being an incredible recruiter, he lured the best players in the New York City region to Gopa Academy, athletes who have gone on to Dartmouth and Princeton and Syracuse. He also is a man who knows how to obtain pharmaceuticals for which parents cannot or will not ask a doctor. I do not know where the Luderica comes from, or how he manages to obtain pills t
hat are not yet available for doctor prescription. I am not the only Gopa parent who takes meetings with Russ Haverly. Cocaine, Valium, mescaline, marijuana, codeine, fentanyl, oxycodone, Percocet and Vicodin, poppers and uppers and downers and sex stimulants. Along with Luderica, there are other drugs awaiting FDA approval. Quisquelo, for weight loss. Rugamal, for tighter skin. Cogataline, some type of sexual stimulant that allows the user to hallucinate scenarios with imaginary creatures. Most folks can obtain one prescription, but they require Russ’s complicity to complete their sanity. In the supply chain of drugs to drug dealers to responsible parents raising well-adjusted children who go on to fine colleges and become productive adults and raise their own children thus coaxing forward evolution, Russ is an important cog.

  On the evening I permanently undid the supply chain, I leave the clubhouse with Russ and walk him down to the pier. A chilly night, windless and desolate, the moon is quartered and low over the bashful water that stubbornly accepts a yellow reflection. A security camera has been leveled, the innards hanging from a suspended pole and twisting in a heightening breeze. The upper bay is typically choppy, though it is docile, exhausted from winter’s torment. I set the golf bag down because Russ is weeping, apologizing to me for reasons I cannot understand involving money and photographs and a party. He cannot go to the Sedlocks, Russ says. He claims if Harry knew what happened, he would lose his job. He’d be asked to terminate his investment in Moveable Museums. “It’ll be huge. We’ll never work again,” he promises, lightening the burden. “Both of us, Pisser.” He owes money to something named Capra, a drug dealer I surmise. A boy named Toby Dalton, I recognize the name as one of his players, is blackmailing him.