Pallbearing

by Michael Melgaard

  Colleen opened the back door and let Kevin fall into the seat. She got his legs in, then slammed the door before he could fall out. Greg walked around to the driver’s door. Colleen said, “You’d better let me drive, I haven’t had anything to drink.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Come on.”

  “I’m fine. Get in.”

  “Janet?”

  Janet looked drunk herself. But she said, “Colleen’s right, maybe you —”

  Greg cut her off. “Get in.” He slid into the driver’s side and started the car.

  Colleen shook her head at Janet over the roof. Greg started to back out and they both stepped out of the way. The car stopped and Greg rolled down the passenger window. “Come on, Janet, let’s go.”

  “I don’t want to walk . . . ,” Janet said to Colleen.

  “He’s wasted.”

  Greg tapped the horn.

  Janet got in the passenger side, waving at her sister to follow. Colleen stood and crossed her arms. The car finished backing out and rolled toward the road, where it stopped and idled. Greg stuck his head out the window. “Look, I’m fine. I promise.”

  Janet leaned over Greg’s lap to say, “Come on, Colleen. You’re not going to walk all the way home.”

  Colleen shook her head. Greg shrugged and drove forward a few feet. The car stopped again. Janet got out and said, “Get in. If you don’t think Greg is driving good after a mile, we’ll pull over and you can drive. Right, Greg?”

  Greg held up his hands and smiled out the window.

  Colleen hesitated.

  Janet said, “Please.”

  Colleen got in behind Janet. Kevin was passed out on the other side, snoring.

  Greg pulled up to the road slowly, then spiked the breaks. Colleen lurched forward.

  Janet said, “Grow up,” while Colleen said, “Come on.”

  The wheels of the car started spinning in place and the engine revved. Colleen grabbed the headrest behind Janet while the back end of the car drifted to the left. Then they were going forward, fast.

  “Pull over,” Colleen said.

  Greg stared out the front window at the pool of light in front of the car. The yellow line shuddered by. The car picked up more speed.

  “Cut it out, Greg,” Janet shouted. A set of headlights appeared ahead of them and flew by.

  Colleen knew they were coming up to a tight corner. She said, “You have to slow down, please.”

  The engine revved into the next gear. Trees appeared at the front edge of the headlights and then Greg slammed the breaks and cranked the wheel. The back end of the car swung out and around. Gravel crunched under them and Kevin flopped across Colleen, pinning her. The car wobbled into a straight line. Colleen pushed Kevin off. “Wake up, make him stop.” She hit Kevin’s shoulder. He flopped back into the window.

  Colleen felt a moment of weightlessness, then slammed into her seat. The bottom of the car scraped the road under her.

  Janet grabbed at Greg’s arm, telling him to cut it out. Colleen shouted “Asshole,” and then they were all bouncing from side to side while the back end fishtailed. Greg wrenched the wheel back and forth, exaggerating each turn. He blew through the stop sign, breaking and sliding them sideways into the intersection. Janet screamed.

  “Pull over and let me out,” Colleen said. “Now.”

  They were on a long straight stretch. Greg let the car drift into the oncoming lane. Headlights appeared ahead. Colleen knew Greg saw them. She didn’t say anything. She leaned back and closed her eyes. Janet screamed and then the car lurched to the side. The sound of a car horn drew out behind them. Colleen kept her eyes closed and held on to Janet’s headrest. She spent a few minutes being jerked from side to side while Janet screamed and swore, but she refused to open her eyes. Then she slammed into the back of Janet’s seat.

  They were in front of Colleen and Kevin’s place.

  Colleen opened the door and got out.

  Colleen said, “You asshole.”

  Janet and Greg got out. He said, “Relax, I was just playing.”

  Colleen walked around to Greg and slapped him. She went for a second slap but he caught it and grabbed her other arm before she could wind up. He said, “I told you, I was just playing. Relax.”

  “You fucking asshole.”

  “Come on. I’ll give you a hand getting Kevin in.”

  “Fuck. Off.”

  Greg pushed her arms and she stumbled back. He opened the side door and Kevin rolled out. Greg gripped him under the arms and started dragging him toward the house. He said, “Get the door.”

  Colleen didn’t move. Janet ran ahead and used her key to open the door. Colleen breathed steadily, collecting her anger.

  When Janet and Greg came out, Colleen said, “Let’s get in the house.”

  Greg’s face went dark again. He said, “You’re coming with me, Janet.”

  Janet looked at Colleen and then back at Greg. She said, “Come on, it’s not a big deal. He said he was just playing.”

  “He’s an ass.”

  Greg ignored that. He walked over to the car and said, “Let’s go.”

  Janet hesitated.

  Colleen said, “Get in the house, Janet.”

  Janet’s sympathy disappeared. She glared at her sister. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  Greg winked at Colleen over the roof and got in with Janet. She watched them drive away.

  The Money

  The bathroom door opened into John’s foot. He looked up from his phone. Melissa came out in a T-shirt and jeans, and, he noticed, no bra. When she stepped over the futon, John tried to pull her down to the bed. She twisted free and pushed his hand away. “I’ve got homework,” she said.

  She grabbed the bra draped over the side of the reading chair and wiggled it on under her shirt. He went back to his phone while she banged around the plastic bins they used for storage. She unwound the hairdryer, stepped over John, and plugged it in.

  John read an article on five big hockey trades that might happen. It took him a minute to notice the dryer was off and Melissa was staring at him.

  “What?”

  “I thought you were going to put up the bed?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “The point is, it takes up half the room when it’s down and I feel like we’re breathing on each other all the time.”

  Melissa pulled the pillow out from under his head. John sat up and they wrestled the bed into a couch. There wasn’t much more room — just enough to clear a path into the tiled area that served as their kitchen.

  “Fuck,” she said. “Are you heading out today? I’ve got homework.”

  “I could clear out.” John got up and pulled on his pants and went into the kitchen. He found a filter, dumped some coffee grounds into it, and then opened the fridge. There was a bottle of ketchup and a balled-up bag of bread. He opened a few drawers and realized Melissa was staring at him again. He said, “Now what?”

  “I thought you said you were heading out.”

  “Now?”

  “I need to finish this homework before class.”

  “Well, I’ve got to eat.”

  “Get something from the place around the corner.”

  “I don’t have any money. Lend me a twin?”

  “What happened to the twenty I gave you yesterday?”

  “I spent it.”

  “Fuck. I told you my student loan is almost gone. When are you going to hear from your lawyer?”

  “End of the month.”

  “I thought you said it was this week.”

  “No, I’m seeing the doctor this week.”

  “Again? God.”

  Melissa sat down at the table and opened her laptop. She clicked a few times, then looked up at John. “Well?”


  “What? I told you, I don’t have any money.”

  “Neither do I, and I’m sick of lending you ‘just another twin’ so you can give me space in my own house.”

  “Your house?”

  “I pay the rent.”

  “You know I’m going to pay you back when the money comes in.”

  “We’ve been waiting for ‘the money to come in’ for over three years.”

  “You know I hate it when you do that voice.”

  “‘You know I hate it when you do that voice.’”

  John tried not to take her bait; if he just focused on the fact that their problems were temporary, soon to be resolved by his settlement, things would be fine. But then she brought up all the other things too. She told him he was lazy, even though she knew he couldn’t work because of his back. Then she moved on to how he was unappreciative, which, he told her, wasn’t true and she knew it. Then she said he needed to contribute money, which she knew he couldn’t because he couldn’t work and his dad refused to lend him money unless he moved back to their shitty hometown and worked with his old man and that fucking insane asshole uncle of his for the rest of his goddamned life, and that was the one thing she knew he couldn’t do because if he worked he would lose the settlement and then he’d be totally fucked, and is that what she wanted? They’d left together to start the new, better life they’d always talked about since they’d first made out in grade six. Did she not believe in that anymore? Did she not love him anymore? He was shouting by the end.

  “I do, of course I do,” she said and rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. “It’s just hard to be so broke and have to do all this studying, and it’s hard just seeing you lie around all day and I know it’s your back but . . .” She looked at the laptop screen. “Oh shit. I have to get to school. Fuck, fuck.” She slammed the laptop shut and shoved it in her bag, gave her face a wipe and said, “Fuck. This sucks. See you tonight.” She ran out of the house.

  John lay back down and stretched his back.

  * * *

  “Your dad said to say hello. And also that there’s a job waiting for you if you ever decide to, and I’m quoting him here, ‘Get off your lazy good-for-­nothing ass and get a job like a real man.’” Chad tapped his full pint glass to the top of John’s. “He said some other stuff too, but you can probably guess what it was. You know how your dad gets.”

  John took a long sip of his beer and stared at his coaster.

  “I got to tell you, man” — Chad topped off his glass from the pitcher and did the same to John’s — “it’s good to get out of that shithole of a town every now and then.” He tapped John’s glass again. “You must be living the life up here in the city.”

  “It’s not that great.”

  “No? Laying around the house, fucking Melissa all day, while I’m stuck on some jobsite with your goddamn dad. I got to say, though, he starts to look pretty some days.”

  “Melissa’s not so happy with me.”

  “Can’t get it up?” Chad tapped John’s glass with his again.

  “We’re just pretty broke . . .”

  “Why don’t you come home with me? We can tag team your old man together. Solves both your problems: you can get laid and make some cash.”

  “Fuck. Would you cut that out?”

  “Haven’t you got that sweet settlement money yet?”

  “No . . .”

  “Oh man, what’s it been, like four years?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “I can’t even believe you’re fighting that, man. That was one hundred percent your fault.” John looked up and glared, but Chad wasn’t looking. He was already laughing. “What the fuck were you thinking? Trying to slam-dunk a fucking basketball at prom? You never even played basketball before. What made you think you could do that? And you made such a big deal, lining it up, getting everyone to watch.” Chad laughed. John thought of getting up and heading out, but he knew he needed to take it. Chad kept on: “And then you fucking ran up, jumped up on that chair and bam.” Chad slapped the top of the table. “You didn’t even get near the hoop man. You just fell flat on your fucking back.”

  “You know I broke my back, right?”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck. And then the basketball, like, a minute later finally came down and bounced off your face. Oh man, I thought Charlie was going to bust his nut laughing.”

  “How is Charlie?” Asking about old friends was always a good way to change the subject with Chad. It worked. John got the same update he’d gotten a couple of weeks before, when Chad had come up to the city to blow his paycheque on a night on the town.

  John drank his beer and stretched his back. It wasn’t the fall he was suing about anyways. He’d told Chad a million times, it was what happened after. The shop teacher who was chaperoning prom had figured John was more drunk than hurt and had given him a lift home. John’s dad found him the next morning, still passed out, puking up pink foam. When John came to in the hospital, he was told he had a broken rib, a punctured lung, a concussion, and one cracked vertebra in his back. If his dad hadn’t checked on him, there was a good chance he would have died.

  Though the fall was his fault, the gross negligence of the school and the prom’s chaperones, explained the lawyer who had shown up at the hospital, was not. And since the injuries were bound to linger and affect the rest of John’s life, the incident could be worth a lot of money.

  John’s father had been against hiring a lawyer — “If being a drunk moron was a reason to sue, your uncle Rob would be a very rich man,” he’d told John. But John’s grades weren’t going to get him out of town, and the only work experience he had was a summer as a general labourer at his dad’s construction company. That was not a career path John was interested in. A big money settlement sounded much better. He hired the lawyer. When his dad found out, he kicked John out of the house. The only choice John had left was to move up to the city with Melissa, who was starting college.

  Chad finished the story about Charlie pissing his pants in second grade and waved the waitress over for another pitcher.

  “So anyways . . .” John spun the base of his empty pint around the shredded coaster and looked at the table. “I was wondering if you could spot me a bit of cash.”

  “Again, man?” Chad laughed. “I drive three hours to visit you on my one day off — the one day of my miserable life I’m not humping hundred-pound blocks across a construction site — and you want to hit me up for my hard-earned money?” He was half smiling, a good sign. He’d just give John a hard time first. “I work, all my life, with your gimp of an uncle and slave-driving father, and all I want to do when I get out is have a beer with my best bud. But then, he hits me up for another fucking loan.”

  John said, “Ha-ha.”

  “I wake up this morning alone in a cold apartment. Work all goddamn day in the rain, drive three hours to see my fancy city-boy, who should be living it up, but instead, like a common beggar, he asks me for change.”

  John said to the coaster, “Look, you know I’m good for it. I’ll get you back when I get the money.”

  “Yeah, I know. You and your fucking money.”

  * * *

  John said, “I need five bucks for the bus.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Melissa slammed her laptop shut.

  “I’ve got to get to the doctor, remember?”

  “Walk.”

  “My back . . .”

  Melissa stepped over John and went into the bathroom. Eventually, John said to the door, “I need to get going.”

  There was more silence, and then the door opened into the side of the futon. Melissa stepped by John to her purse and dug around in it. She said, “I don’t have any cash.”

  “Fuck. Lend me your debit.”

  “Fine, but pick up dinner.”

  “What
do you want?”

  “Whatever, I don’t care.”

  “Well, I don’t care either.”

  They argued about what they didn’t want for a while before settling on sushi.

  John went to the corner store across the street and took forty out of the ATM. The receipt showed Melissa had minus eighty-seven dollars. He bought a pack of smokes and decided to walk to the appointment.

  The office of the doctor his lawyer sent him to was in a strip mall in a not-so-great part of town. Five store fronts were lit up with neon signs advertising various services in different languages, and above them were massage places that John was pretty sure were rub-and-tugs. The doctor’s office was on the end. Blacked-out windows faced the street, but inside it was all clean and modern. John said hello to the receptionist and took a seat on one of the see-through plastic chairs across from a large, colourful painting of fish. He stared at that for a few minutes, then flipped his way through a golf magazine.

  An hour later he was led to an examination room. The doctor came in and asked how he was doing.

  John said, “Great.”

  “I mean your back.”

  “Oh yeah. Sore.”

  “Sure, sure.” He had John do a couple of stretches, then ran down the same list of questions he asked every time.

  “Pain’s pretty bad, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Still can’t do housework?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Looking for a job?”

  “No.”

  “You’re feeling down. Can’t do anything. Depressed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great! That’s all I need.”

  The doctor filled out a prescription form and handed it to John. It was for painkillers and antidepressants. John got it filled at the pharmacy on the corner.

  He dropped both bottles into the trash on his way home. He didn’t need the painkillers — hadn’t really since a few months after the accident. When he had started to feel better after moving up to the city, the lawyer had explained that recovery would hurt the settlement. It was important that John still seem to be in constant pain, so the prescriptions needed to be filled. The antidepressants had been the lawyer’s idea too; after all, if John was in constant pain as a result of his accident, he was sure to start feeling a bit down.