Therapy Mammals

by Jon Methven

  “I’d like to explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain,” Phil says. “We don’t like you. The only reason you’re sitting here is because Josey believes you are of value.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  She raises her eyes momentarily. “You didn’t hurt Clint Eastwood.”

  “That’s the basis of my credentials?”

  Josey takes a sip from Phil’s ginger ale. “You’re a good person, Tom. You didn’t know what you were getting involved in. You’ve said so yourself, it’s not too late.”

  “To betray my friends? To bankrupt my family?”

  “You’re already morally bankrupt,” Linda says. She is not angry, shuffling a deck of cards with one giant hand and then spilling them in an avalanche of aces and jacks. “You’ll lose your money either way. Be on the right side of history.”

  Phil transitions into a soliloquy that is both critical of my existence and beautiful in its dispatch. My kind is the roadblock for humanity to grow into a new dimension. We are an allegory of what is broken in the world, a pathogenic microbe gaining on the charisma and vigor of our species. We spread the religion of capitalism, controlling the world through modern-day slavery of baristas and retail schleps. We spin false remnants of a glorious civilization so that when distant creatures discover us ten thousand years into the future, unearthing our indestructible microwaves, our waterproof hiking jackets, our luxury sport utility vehicles we drove a mile to the supermarket, they will assume we were happy and friendly and valued each other. We are imperialists. We are colonizing their youth and virtue, all that is good about them, and using it for our gain.

  Too often we equate the Whitmans and Joseys of the world to vapid inexperience, a digital promptitude that is impersonal and unmannered. These are my teachers, not those I have taught. When Phil finishes, my body is covered in a layer of cool sweat. My neck aches from nodding. I excuse myself to gather my courage and purchase ginger ales and something stronger. When I return, the table is empty.

  Clint Eastwood’s Latest Rampage

  The fire glows beside a bubbling pool, festive music, escaping charisma of a follow-up gala in my own backyard to which I was not invited. I am hopeful to find Iliza waiting up for me, maybe even Laura, anyone to discuss the night’s revelation, to put my mind at ease that I have not, in fact, failed at every possible attempt at worthiness. I sense something significant occurred during Laura’s weekend away, which she has been reluctant to discuss. It is Jackson instead. On the giant screen, the digitally remastered Commodores Live! DVD I purchased for his birthday last year. It ruined the celebration, Jason calling me a racist for pushing black culture on Jackson who prefers classical music. I only purchased it because Jackson once told me his father loved Lionel Richie. Beneath the glow of the Commodores crooning about love and change, somehow all of their lyrics about missing Lionel who is beside them on stage, I notice the outline of a leg in my pit. Jackson discovered my trophy.

  I sit without addressing it. Jackson is kind enough or inebriated enough not to scold me. He does not offer any of what he’s drinking, which I am happy to see is not leftover wine from the gala. “Have you done anything about the cat?”

  “I took care of it the other day,” I lie.

  “It attacked Jason tonight after the event. When he was taking out the garbage.”

  “Damn thing must still have a few more lives in it.” I am a series of bad jokes, an endless epiphany of disappointment. “Sorry to hear it, Jackson. Truly, I am.”

  “Chased him down the street to the McClutchens’ treehouse.”

  “Why would he climb into a treehouse?” Jackson does not answer. “Cats are magnificent at climbing trees.”

  “Pisser…”

  “Those treehouses aren’t regulation,” I say, changing the subject. “He could have been seriously injured if—”

  “Tom, stop talking.”

  I try for sympathy. “Clint Eastwood is pregnant. Things are complicated.”

  He shrugs, not his problem, having been sent here by his husband to address our neighborly dispute and getting caught up in a 1970s drift. A spark from the cell phone tree ignites the fire, illuminating a tear track on Jackson’s cheek. We watch the leg smolder, the crackling of Sharon Li’s mobility giving off a bluish hue. I have interrupted something meaningful by coming home too early. Five more minutes, the Commodores would be bowing and hugging and heading to their next venue.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “If it’s about Moveable Museums, you may not.” Jackson shifts in his chair, not wanting to leave but unable to stay longer now that I am here. “We have no decision,” he says, hovering over my chair. I think he’s going to hit me, but when I stand he offers his hand. “Just remember I was good to you once. Whatever you’re up to, whatever shit is going on with the other parents, leave me out of it.”

  “Jackson.”

  “Say it, Pisser. Say you’ll leave me out of it.”

  “Of course.” We shake hands. “Is Jason okay?” I call.

  He disappears into his yard. “Just take care of the fucking cat.”

  Sex Lives Of Dead People

  On my way home from work today I passed three leashed dogs, two of which clotheslined passersby to dash at my legs, not to bite me but to lick my skin. I stopped to pet a third, a large Siberian husky, which took a seat on the sidewalk and allowed me to rub its neck. In the past, dogs would nip and bark and tug their companions, teeth gnashing for flesh. They can smell my natural odor, intuit my savagery, and know that I have returned to a primordial version of myself. The owner seemed pleased to see me. “Sixty-five days. Must be some kind of record.”

  I arrive home early with plans to make dinner for Laura and the kids. Since her trip with Ray, Laura has been more aware of my existence, intrigued by my backyard occupation and evening rituals in spite of my tellurian aromas. The kids as well. We have not eaten a proper sit-down family meal in nearly a year; I remember the exact dinner—a chilly December night, departing a Broadway show, we saw the steam-harried windows of a pizzeria and ducked inside to enjoy the warmth.

  A cool May evening, I ordered several bags of charcoal from VillageShop, which as a Zenith member I had delivered this afternoon. I expect to find the loot waiting on the front stoop. Instead, the boxes and packing peanuts lay crumpled on the walking path, my favorite pastime disemboweled. I detect the smell of burning coal, the shit revelation of Toby Dalton drinking a beer, his feet in my Jacuzzi, several empties lying in the grass beside his lacrosse equipment. A new BB gun against my waist, I arch my back to feel the handle.

  “There he is.” Toby smiles, old friends. “I’m in a lacrosse league in Red Hook on Thursdays. Thought I’d swing by. You know there’s a fucking wild cat back there?”

  Had I returned to find a dead cat, I am certain the creatures in my larynx would have beaten Toby to death with a brick and burned him over the charcoal, sorting out the legal matters another time. Most judges will be lenient to fathers involved in revenge murder if their children are injured. Do the same principles apply to therapy animals? A mental note for a blog post on the Gopa website: should we all begin arming our children with therapy animals to cope with modern anxieties for when we are not present, and how will that impact morning drop-off?

  I light a cigarette, watching my problem step out of the water. Six schools. That is how many expulsions Toby has been through, and Gopa will be no different. Only that his old man has set terms: make it work this time or the Daltons wash their hands of him. Getting into the ECI program would have been a way back, but I ruined that option with my four-iron. Lacrosse season has ended early and Toby has other things on his mind besides education. He has nothing else to do but play pickup games in Red Hook and haunt me. The two of us have been brought here by divine decree—Toby for blackmail, my tribe and I to eliminate the dirty urgencies that m
ight poison my child.

  “Where’s the phone?” he asks.

  “Gone.”

  “No, it isn’t. You should have thrown it out, Pisser. Soon as they found the boat. It would have put an end to it.” He winks at our dilemma. “Now he keeps calling and calling, and you keep answering. He wants his money.”

  Someone keeps answering, but it is not me. I check the woods for Doug Whorley or others waiting in sabotage, expecting to see a gang of helmeted minions with Worthy insignia descend from my trees brandishing sticks. My tribe is ready, the fire in their lungs. The woods appear empty, the slight buzz giving Toby adrenaline he might need. From my mind’s eye the chain goes something like this: students purchase their drugs from Toby, who was supplied by Russ Haverly. Russ’s supplier is a thing named Capra, a Persian living in Canada. For some racist reason that defies logic, I am relieved to be dealing with a suit and tie criminal from the friendly border. Along with Toby, Russ was supplying the Gopa community with illicit drugs, a lucrative connection for everyone. Once Capra knew the phone was live, he investigated the chain of command, which led him to dipshit Toby.

  “Ask your father for the money.”

  “I can’t.” He tosses a can in my yard, and I sail a nicotine projectile in that direction. “Or rather, I could. But it would be my final request.” He cracks another beer, which spills over the edge of the can. He has not offered me one. “You’re going to help me, Pisser.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Bullshit.” He looks around the yard at my house, my woods, the sound of spring golfers whiffing over the bluff, a paradise lagoon, a wife with a blossoming business, two kids enrolled at Gopa Academy. He does not understand that we are mortgaged through the eyeballs, living here as impostors, that our savings is responsibly invested for the future so that tourists can enjoy how Americans kill innocent bystanders and school children in hails of gunfire.

  “I don’t have sixty-thousand dollars to give you, Toby. Even if I did, why would I help you?”

  It was closer to forty grand a month ago, so I’m ball parking. He lifts his eyes at the number, surprised that I am paying attention.

  “You owe me, Pisser. Coach was getting me into that program. Now I’m fucked.” He snarls, aggressive, slightly intoxicated as he crosses my yard to show he is not scared from his last strangling. “I can’t do anything about that. But I can make sure Capra doesn’t kill me. And I can make sure your daughter gets booted out of the play and ECI.”

  “The photos,” I say.

  “Who said anything about photos? Find my money or the video goes public.”

  We gulp, all of us at once, a collective swill that drains my being of moisture. “What’s on the video?”

  He smiles, the little fuck, leans in to have a smell. “Geezus, Pisser. You killed him, didn’t you?”

  He’s hoping I spill it. “What’s on the video, Toby?”

  “Russ came to you for help and you killed him. Over a video.” He smiles, sips the beer, laughs at our complications. “I go down, you go down. Easy.”

  The thought of my daughter in Toby’s possession, even as a digital image imprisoned in his cellular data plan, is a concept that makes this a delicate discussion for Toby. It killed Russ and summoned my tribe of savages—my streak of feral urgency to rain down justice on my fellow Gopa parents. Did I allow a predator into my daughter’s world? I have to see to know for sure.

  “Let me watch it, Toby.”

  He tries to gauge my reaction, a dangerous time. Russ Haverly could not describe what was on the video, too stoned to recall the evening. If the images are bad, it could summon the rage that ended Russ’s life.

  He takes out his phone and clicks buttons. He tosses it to me. My eyes race across the illumination, an expensive apartment that I deduce belongs to Toby’s father. I recognize a number of faces, all Gopa students, my heart and rhythms galloping as the camera winds through a smoky room, an inebriated vibe. Toby has taken the time to pan in on all the faces, teenagers performing teenage transgression, blackmail in case he needs it. There is beer, cigarettes, most likely marijuana, a physical game around a Ping-Pong table where a group of kids has congregated.

  The camera winds upstairs, different music from a new floor. My mouth is dry, my neck tightening. A door opens into a bathroom, steam and promiscuity, the sound of water and laughter, the wickedness rushing up my arm into my shoulder, a sharp pain as if whatever emerges from behind that shower door will kill or heal me. The shower is larger than my den, two spouts of water. Inside, there is a tangle of legs as a voice calls out “Coach,” and a naked and inebriated Russ Haverly turns to the camera, red-faced laughter at his cameo. He is behind the girl who is bent over at the waist, trying to manage a glass that has fallen onto the tile. I cannot see the face hidden in her sopping hair. It looks like every girl Iliza’s age, tiny and soft. She picks it up, drops it, picks it up again, no face. She drops it, laughter, Russ hollering at the camera and Toby.

  “Say something, Coach.”

  He leans, squints; the girl intoxicated. She could be Iliza who I have not seen naked in a decade. “Let’s have a great season, guys,” he slurs, the girl shrieking as he turns, partially numb, to see the blood.

  She has cut her hand on the broken glass—Toby laughing, Russ laughing, blood from her hand streaming down her breasts and legs, still no face. “Hold still,” Russ is saying. “Hold still.” The camera moves into the shower for a look at the wound, the girl slapping at the device playfully as her face emerges. Tungsten Sedlock, the bloody hand, fucking her father’s friend and investment partner in a strange shower. I stare into the trees, breathing for the first time, sweat dripping down my nape.

  “Hold on, there’s more,” Toby says.

  Back out of the shower and down the stairs, a congregation of students around a table covered with miscellany into which Toby focuses the lens: a bra, car keys, several pill bottles. In the living room I discover my failure, what no father wishes to see. Iliza is bent over the table inhaling a line of what I can only imagine is an illegal pharmaceutical, her face rising stoned and vacant, a breast nearly hanging out of a shirt I’ve previously ordered her not to wear. Pill bottles litter the table, the same brown hue, the euphoric wander of her gaze as she studies the tremendous architecture in the ceiling, children snorting a dead man’s Luderica. As Toby pans in on her features, I would be relieved to see marijuana or vodka, any sin other than a hard cock in her hand, kids these days.

  “Say something, girl,” Toby calls.

  My child awakens, her eyes rising to meet the camera, the boy holding it, of which she was, and possibly still is, enamored. She seems lost and torn, but elated and enjoying herself, a child navigating the complexities of youth. She smiles and gives a tiny wave, too delirious to understand she is surrounded by predation. Of the one hundred fifty students eligible for the ECI program, this video eliminates at least thirty if it goes public. My daughter is one of them.

  I regain my composure and toss the phone to Toby. I killed a man for the wrong reason. The task was worthy, though it belonged to another father. Someone else’s daughter, someone else’s penance. I’ll deal with the guilt another time. I’ll deal with Iliza soon. I’ll tell Harry and Allie what I know.

  “Why come to me?” I point across the yard. “The Sedlocks live just over there.”

  I already know the answer. Harry is an acquaintance of Toby’s father, their sons members of the same team and Gopa hierarchy. Blackmailing the Sedlocks comes with risk. And, as Toby has gathered, I know what really happened to Russ Haverly.

  “You’re my guy, Pisser. You could have saved us both a lot of heartache if you dumped the phone.”

  “You won’t show it. It won’t just be bad for Iliza. It’ll be bad for all your friends. It’ll be bad for you especially, Toby.”

  He shrugs. “That’s a chance you won’t tak
e.”

  He turns to leave. I am eager for his departure, but my tribe has other plans. Toby is in my yard, my domain. Like the helpless, parentless chipmunks, he has nowhere to go, a prey in my wilderness.

  I race into his path. “Why would you do this, Toby?”

  “This is no time for lectures, Pisser.”

  “Iliza is your friend. I thought you liked her.”

  It is not the shrug that does it. It is the bitchy smile. “She doesn’t put out. Tungsten, now that girl fucks. But your daughter, she’s just kind of in the way.”

  My hand is there quick, my army cocked and ready. He underestimates for a second time our rage, the muscle of my people, and we have him in the Jacuzzi in one push. We land on my feet, up to my waist in water, but Toby has tumbled over backward frantically kicking as we drown a creature for the second time. This is how Russ went. It is possibly how the nanny went as well. Only this time, I am present. This time I enjoy the bubbles and fury, the sight of his legs kicking against the wall. We grip his neck and realize, in spite of the drug use, we are oddly proud of Iliza. She will be punished, but at least she was raised properly enough not to put out for this filthy fuck.

  Behind the tree line, Clint Eastwood screeches and races for the waterfall ledge. Rhythm is naked and chasing the cat through the yard. Which means time has passed. Which means school is out. Which means I have to get the steaks on the grill and toss the salad and set the table. Which means we have loosened our grip on…

  Toby climbs out of the water, irate that he’s experienced near death a second time from Channel Fourteen’s weatherman. Out of breath and wet, he reaches for his lacrosse equipment in the yard and mops his dopey face. “A month. That’s how long Capra gave me. That’s how long you get.”