Therapy Mammals

by Jon Methven

  Little Petty is sweaty, blood on Bruce’s forehead. “What about the other bunnies?”

  Josey shrugs. “Leave them, I guess.”

  “Well.” It comes out of the blackout, my dry tongue, my tribe.

  “What?” she says.

  “They sense it. The death. Imagine us here, talking, and on the far side of that door a bunch of elbows and chins. We would know.”

  Josey clenches, her ink people opining. “What do you propose?”

  I’ve enjoyed the evening, the rush of hacking through bone, my golf shirt mahogany. “Take them to my place.”

  No one disputes the solution, the defective bunnies inheriting both their freedom and a golf course utopia to live out their existence, the furry bodies deposited into the backend of Bill Chuck’s sedan. Slancy is where they belong, living in the filth and confusion of artificial extravagance. I do not know how Clint Eastwood will take to them, but the approaching reality intrigues me—the adorable, laboratory refined chipmunks getting a look at these gargoyles, their swollen faces and purple noses sniffing over a shared food source.

  Storms We Cannot Forecast

  “There’s a high of entitlement in much of the tristate area through Wednesday with only a seventeen percent chance of class war. Rioting takes planning. Rioting takes money and energy,” I say, ignoring the virtual background of the metropolis. “Much of the minority base that would benefit from revolution is too busy and angry to carry it out. We moved away from running around with pitchforks centuries ago, folks. My kind—I’m not talking the white variety, nor the male variety—is being evolved out for a more multicultural whimsy so expect the weather in most of the country to sound playful. Look for accumulations of social justice in the evening hours, a trendier socialism and taxing the lower class into a middle class. Tomorrow, chance of rage and stress with a high of passive aggression, more school shootings and racial profiling and nationalism for much of the area and don’t even think about leaving the house without your umbrellas. Whoops, did I say umbrellas. Sorry about that, folks. I meant guns. Don’t leave the house without your guns.”

  The PISSER REPORT is experiencing a transition. I have not researched the weather or checked models in weeks, and yet my reports, when I bother to read them, contain a perfect description of the environment. Our ratings are constant; viewers sticking around to hear Melanie Trotter with the traffic, or listen to Channel Fourteen’s hip-hop vibe to the news. Penelope Garcia is petrified of my odors and chaos, leaving the set before we finish.

  “That was interesting but psychotic,” Whitman says. “You never mentioned the weather.”

  “The globe is crumbling, Whitman. Refugees are scurrying in remote lands. Bombs are exploding in kiosks. Whenever it happens every parent thinks—thank God it’s not my kid. How can we talk about weather?”

  “Do it again. This time mention the rain. More temperatures, less class war.”

  “What about the blood, Whitman? Should I mention the blood?”

  He tugs me toward a corner. Suits nearby watch our exchange. Whitman’s job is on the line, along with my own. “This is about tourism. You almost did it. You almost talked about it on the weather report. Does Josey know?”

  “Why are you speaking with Josey?”

  “She said something’s coming.” Whitman looks at me that way, young and irritating and wanting to matter. “Let me inside your head, Pisser. I can help.”

  “You don’t want to be in there.” I lean close, my scent reaching me as it ricochets off his organically dry-cleaned shirt, his millennial goodness. “There’s a storm coming, Whitman.”

  He digests the meaning. “Are you talking physical, as in an actual weather system, or metaphorical?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  Tonight is the emergency meeting at which administrators are expected to address the havoc that has imploded the Gopa community. Someone (not me) roofied a children’s birthday party a week ago, the culprit sprinkling nuts onto a display of Standcakes that sent two kids to the emergency room. It would have been worse if a discerning mother had not waved her Digital Nutfinder XP, which retails for $250 at VillageShop, over the snack table, locating the contraband nuts in the gluten-free frosting.

  “This is personal.” Laura was outraged upon hearing about the pancake nutting, just before I fucked her in the backyard. “They will not screw with Standcake.”

  A parents’ roundtable on the college application process was hit two nights later (this was me, in retaliation for the roofied pancakes), the seltzer water roofied with actual roofies. Myself, along with other anonymous parents, regularly post gossip, much of which is invented, onto the Gopa website accusing others of adultery and domestic violence and threatening each other’s nannies with video we claim to have of them beating the children. Worst of all is the lingering murder and mutilation of dozens of bunnies, their tender limbs strewn across the theater stage.

  Heather Pace has applied to twelve other private schools in Manhattan (also me), most of which were not hiring, the rumors reaching the nannies and eventually the parents and board of directors that the head of Gopa is jumping ship. I am a destroyer of reputations, a conqueror of marriages. Other private school parents have heard the rumors and are enjoying the schadenfreude: that the Gopa Worthy community, which everyone secretly loathes, has kinks in its armor, falling into disrepair the way mortal schools are destined.

  My restraining order has been pardoned for the meeting. Heather Pace will address the misunderstanding—she is not, in fact, leaving Gopa Academy—and will discuss the attacks and shameless rumors that have dominated the message boards for the past month. Everyone knows this is about the ECI program, the administration appealing to our sense of decorum to overcome our antagonism. I take Laura to a burrito joint, where we talk about everything other than work and kids and school and illicit videos. She wipes sour cream from my lip with a napkin, smiles, and I am sheltered by the realization that my life has inklings of perfection. Here, with Laura, my chemical makeup is not faulty, my neuro synapses unsullied, my tribe meek and curiously playful. Laura is my drug. If only I could liquidize her and insert her into capsules.

  “Behave,” she says, a prelude to the evening. “We don’t need any further drama.”

  Ray And I On Wives

  The Gopa lobby bustles. Parents sanitize and hydrate, lubing up for the night’s politics. The lacrosse parents hover near the cocktail bar, ignorant that someone else might want a glass of wine, holding the space for their contemporaries who arrive wearing Gopa windbreakers and sweaters, their bulging stomachs colliding against each other and the wives, an orgy of cholesterol and failed calisthenics. The theater crowd ignores us completely, people with whom we dined and hugged at fundraisers, moms and dads who told us too haughtily and sadly how wonderful an actress our daughter had become. The noble parents are situated toward the auditorium entrance, eager to be the first inside once the doors open, which will put them in proper seats, the armrests onto which I smeared bunny gunk. A few mothers give me eyes. I pucker my lips and air kiss them across the room.

  “Stop that, Tom.” Laura straightens my shirt. “I have to speak with the Fergusons. Stand here and do nothing.”

  I have no intention of interacting with anyone. I am eager to keep our animosity stranded on the Gopa message boards, where it belongs. I begin a blog post on my phone about the unfortunate lobby vibe, from right there in the lobby, when I am interrupted by Ray McClutchen. His terminal smile and processed gait have disappeared. He sweats, slightly tipsy.

  “What was that the other night at your place anyway?”

  It takes me a moment to understand what I like about this version of Ray: he smells like me. Ray has not showered or shaved, one shoe untied, food hardened into his jacket’s fabric. He’s referencing something I might have said at the fire which I cannot recall.

  “You were talking,” Ray says.
“What was it about?”

  It was about our failure. Not as parents or workers or citizens, but as men, as husbands, as fathers and warriors and brothers. “Listen to me, Ray. I need your help.”

  He slurs, “Just so happens I need your help.”

  “If you want to know what’s going on at my fire, you pull up a chair and stop sulking on the porch. We are talking revolution. We are talking worthiness.” I lean in close. We sniff each other like wild dogs. “I’m taking down Moveable Museums. I need information: money, meetings, the things no one talks about.”

  “No, no, no. Listen to me.” He takes a drink from an empty glass, the ice rattling against his yellow teeth. “Things are not good at home. Not good at all. This fallout between Laura and us—she won’t return text messages.” Thext mattresses. “I can’t think. I canceled two speaking engagements. And what’s this about Moveable? You and Laura need to make it better with Harry and Allie, put the team back together.”

  “Just stop it, Ray. You’re acting hysterical.”

  “She’s sleeping with someone. We have to combine forces and get to the bottom of this.”

  We glance around reflexively and both lay eyes on the Sedlocks hovering somewhere between the lacrosse and theater crowds. They watch me while pretending not to watch, knowing what I know, Allie’s smooth skin without any shaft intrusions because of my goddamned therapy cat. It pleases me to hear that Laura is giving him the cold shoulder, and that his motivational nonsense has evaporated. But I pity Ray McClutchen because he is me, the two of us trying to control the uncontrollable.

  “Listen up, Ray.” He watches with big doe eyes, his lip quivering, and I know in that instant I can tell him anything. What he needs more than redemption is truth. “It’s me, okay.”

  “What’s you?”

  “I’m fucking my wife.”

  He gulps, nods. “Okay. Just one time then? I can understand that. Olivia and I had sex a few weeks ago. Rage sex. If we don’t fuck out the hate we might harm each other.”

  “I don’t want to hear about sex with Olivia.”

  “So it was an accident.” He laughs uncomfortably, willing me to fill in his interpretation with the proper benediction. Months ago I would have nodded, kept quiet. But I have noticed the immaculate clutter returning to my home, the lack of Ray McClutchen titles taking up space on ledges, the disappearance of good luck totems and gaudy crystals. I have crossed over to savagery. I am my shadows.

  “It wasn’t one time. I’m fucking her plenty, see. Can’t get enough of her wet pussy, Ray.”

  Other parents move into hovering range. Like a child, Ray holds his hands over his ears. “I won’t hear this talk.”

  Now the tribe is involved, casting blue words on the overhead screen of my mind, hacking the busted synapses to reach my communication center. “I bite her ass, Ray,” I say, removing his hands. “Do you hear me? I slap her thighs and she likes it. The other day, I found her cooking chicken. She was home alone so she took off her pants and put on an apron. Panties and an apron. I pinned her head onto the breakfast bar where we all had scones that one time, with that shitty maple jelly Olivia canned and insisted we would love, remember? The chicken was burning and smoking and the fire alarm was going off and she was wailing and I believe I was shouting things, just fucking, Ray.”

  “You attacked Laura?”

  “It was more animal, more wilderness. Technically, it would have been an attack if she hadn’t submitted. I couldn’t stop when I saw those panties and apron, what an outfit.” I whistle at the memory, erect as I tell it to Ray. “We’re having an affair, Ray, and it’s weird and hot and I know this sucks to hear, but that’s the way it went. I don’t want to hate you, Ray. I want to know you. I want to speak to you like a man. No more cowering behind therapists and etiquette. You want to fuck my wife. I want to strangle your wife. Let it be. Let’s you and me evolve.”

  Ray is shocked, one hand holding himself against the front windows of Gopa adjacent to the security desk where two of Misch’s men notice.

  “I want in,” he says.

  “In to what?”

  “Whatever is happening in your backyard. I want in.”

  The Beatings We Deserve

  A lovely transformation between neighbors is interrupted by a phenomenon developing behind me. Loud voices, struggle, a large man holding back a ferocious Jason, the two tangling and not tangling, keeping their voices low. Security is not watching Ray and I. They are watching Jackson, a hand on Jason’s chest, trying to calm his husband. Jason has seen me and does not care for the image soiling the white lobby. I broke the silence and sent flowers from VillageShop. I typed a nice message, wishing a speedy recovery for Rhythm and asking for an audience to explain my side of the hunting accident. The Sedlocks complained to Bill Chuck, who confiscated the crossbow with a tongue click and little verbal exposition. “Shame about the kid. You probably had your reasons.” Jackson and Jason said nothing to anyone, transporting Rhythm upstate for treatment and returning as though their exhibitionist daughter was not shot in the ass by a vengeful lunatic.

  Ray is still talking about membership into an organization that seeks to ruin his financial investment. Jason and I lock eyes. There is little the larger man can do to dissolve the situation. Jackson is not an ally. I know he leaked the details of the stolen bus, downplaying his role, along with the prosthetic leg, which is what set the parents and administration over the edge, costing Iliza her spot in Our Town. I don’t blame him for using leverage. I blame him for being a coward. I approach and offer my hand which Jason punches away, and Jackson says something into his ear.

  It’s too late. I have it coming. All the rage and frustration and anxiety of the past months, all the heartbreak and emotion and failure of everyone in the room—it comes to a head when Jason spits in my face. I wipe away the fluid, as if I expected it, and in the same motion produce a cigarette that I light, ready for my sermon. I am incapable of mounting a proper defense, either verbal or physical. First, I am in the wrong. Second, there is nothing to be gained by punching a homosexual father of two adopted children, a man who has the upper hand ethically and philosophically, parents who do not even know Jason siding with him in our dispute simply because his people have been socially maligned for so long and we, the Gopa community, are better than our past. And third, this is not Toby. I do not believe, in a fair fight, I stand a chance against Jason. He is smaller but determined and works out six days a week, and he is about to unload on me the anxiety associated with parenthood and emergency rooms and the dreaded ECI program.

  What ensues is a vicious attack that lasts as long as it takes Jackson and a security guard to pull Jason away, but what seems an eternity. The slaps come windmill in consistency, Jason winding up and sending open hands at my face and neck—crack, clap, thwack—and with each contact an ooh and ahh from the lobby, parents ashamed of such violence but unable to look away. They wish to be doing the slapping themselves, eager for the feel of my red skin against their sanitized palms. He has gone crazy, arms swinging haymakers and spit falling from his purple mouth, and somehow I am able to hang on to the cigarette. He curses, but some of his slaps hit my ears, and the ringing in my head prevents me from hearing his insults. I think I put my hands up to stop his arms, though it does little good. I am bleeding from my lip and nose, a nasty scratch on my neck. My right eye is swollen. Somewhere I hear Laura plead for assistance.

  Suddenly, I am on the ground, on my back, the lit cigarette in my swollen lips as I inhale and blow a thick puff into Josey Mateo’s ratty skin. Laura cradles my neck and hollers at Jackson. Jason weeps as other Gopa moms console him. Security is requesting that I put out the cigarette, that we are a no smoking community. Ray holds both hands over his mouth. Olivia has maneuvered to the front of the crowd, standing over me with a frown that in my condition I still understand is upside down. The bitch grins as she films my heartache.
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  I have been ejected from the lobby for getting my ass kicked. Josey and a security guard help me into a cab, a crowd of Gopa parents gathering in the front windows to watch the Channel Fourteen weatherman depart. Laura directs the driver toward Slancy, and once out of site of the school, breaks down in the backseat, weeping into my shoulder. My phone buzzes in my pocket, the first from what will be a series of anonymous calls, all from Gopa parents, reminding me what transpired. “That faggot really whooped you good. Haven’t seen a beating like that since…”

  I crave solitude with my wounds. Once I get Laura inside, I retreat to the backyard, hopeful for a long soak. I have no idea what time it is. Primitive compulsions, to bleed and to shit, cloud my lucidity, substances needing to escape my anatomy quickly. In the backyard, I am greeted with the destruction. My overhead screen is destroyed, bricks through the canvas. Empty cement bags lie in the grass, which means the cement is at the bottom of my lagoon. I know the culprit before Gus tells me, The Commodores concert DVD missing. He left me Jason Isbell.

  “Mister Ferris just going nuts,” Gus explains, dressed as Millicent, which seems comforting. “I was going to record it. Then I decided to hide in the closet.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “Was this because you tried to kill Rhythm?”

  The news is out, the nannies quick these days. “I would never intentionally hurt Rhythm. Just like Mister Ferris would never hurt you. Adults sometimes have disputes.”

  Gus sighs and we look at the bubbling lagoon. “Lot of tragedy in this yard. Maybe the ghost is trying to tell us something.”

  I assume he means Tilly. “What ghost?”

  “Theodore Slancy,” my fourteen-year-old says. “You should read about the history of our property. Fascinating stuff.”