by Kat Spears
My open challenge doesn’t cause even a ripple.
“Your mom is human, Dane.” If this is his defense against his complete disregard for the bro code, it makes me want to vomit. Vomit on his starched white golf clothes and the polished granite countertops.
“Please stop talking,” I say. “I’ll be out of your life soon enough.”
Chuck’s eyes drop to the countertop, right where I had just imagined the splash of my stomach contents, and sighs dejectedly.
I go outside to escape Chuck and the screaming in my ears and take out my phone to text Dad. He’s the only one who ever understood where I was coming from.
I don’t know what to say to people to make them understand how I feel—what I feel.
I keep my phone in my hand, waiting, needing the lifeline of a text from Dad. I’m not disappointed.
I’m sure that’s a lonely way to be, he says.
He’s right. That is the feeling. Loneliness. More than sad. Sad and misunderstood at the same time.
I say stupid things all the time because I just want everyone to know what it feels like to feel horrible. How it feels when people don’t listen. Don’t understand.
I understand.
* * *
“So, Dane,” Dr. Lineberger says, “I’ve spoken to both you and your mom about what you went through individually, about your father and what he went through, but I’d like for us to discuss it together.”
She pauses, waiting for me to respond. The silence roars in my ears as they both wait, Mom watching me, and Dr. Lineberger politely looking at her notes instead of staring at me.
“Okay,” I say finally.
“Why don’t you tell me your perspective on things. I mean, tell me from your point of view.”
I know what “perspective” means.
“I came home from school at the end of my junior year, expecting to find things normal, I guess. But my dad was … pretty sick by then. It was obvious as soon as I saw him. He was skinny, for one thing, and he was wearing a hat in June, to cover the fact that he had lost most of his hair.”
“And you hadn’t seen your dad since … when?” Dr. Lineberger asks, though her pen never stops scratching in her notebook.
“Uh … January, I guess. Right before I went back to school. My mom got me into some exchange-student thing. I went to France for spring break and stayed with a family there. She wants me to learn how to speak French.”
“It’s an international language,” Mom says, cutting in.
“So is English,” I say with a side-eye at Mom. “Besides, I took four semesters of French at Brandywine and, to be honest, you’re not really getting your money’s worth.”
“Okay,” Dr. Lineberger says. “Let’s stay focused on when you arrived home at the end of the school year.”
“I still can’t speak French,” I say, wanting it to go on the record in her notebook.
But Dr. Lineberger just smiles and doesn’t make any notes about it.
“Uh, so…” I pause as I try to think back and remember last summer. “I guess Dad had given up. You know, when people talk about cancer they talk about people going into battle against it. But it’s more like a siege. The cancer attacks and has better weapons and more soldiers. That’s not really a battle.”
Mom practically dives for the box of tissues that sits on the coffee table. “We tried everything,” Mom says into her tissue. “Radiation and chemo and medical marijuana and special green tea I ordered online from Japan. We really tried.” Mom takes a deep breath and dabs carefully under her eyes to keep her mascara from running.
“It’s okay, Trudi,” Dr. Lineberger says. “We talked about this and it’s okay for you to cry. Dane probably needs to see it.”
My own eyes fill with tears and there is a hard lump in my throat as I tell the rest of the story. I didn’t remember a whole lot about Dad or the things he said or the time we spent together that summer. The process of dying was like a full-time job for all of us.
While Dad lay dying, my parents’ bedroom became a public space, with a rotation of hospice nurses who came to give Dad his medications and try to keep him comfortable. Mom and I were still living, but we did everything on autopilot. We became cold, our bodily functions slowing down, as if we were dying, too. The hospice nurses brought their own warmth with them and did not bleed it into our spaces. Everything in our house was cold.
The nurses had witnessed the death of so many people they were able to predict, almost down to the minute, when Dad would die. In the days leading up to his death, they would say things like, “It won’t be long now.” And then, finally, on Dad’s last night, after listening to his breathing, the oldest of the nurses said, “I think he’ll be gone late tonight or in the early morning.” Then she left us, with the pall of her omen and the smell of her lavender-scented lotion hanging in the room.
And she had been right. Dad died the next morning.
We watched him most of the night, waiting for each breath to be his last. There was nothing violent about Dad’s death. Just a shuddering breath, and then nothing. Here one minute, gone the next. And there was nothing profound about the last moments of his life. His final intelligible words were, “It smells in here. Let the dog out.”
He was right. The room where he died did smell something awful. But, he was wrong about the dog. We didn’t have one. I had always wanted a dog, but Mom thinks dogs are dirty and a nuisance, which is pretty much Mom’s attitude toward having a kid, too.
Dad died lying on his side, curled up like a child. The nurse waited only a few minutes out of respect for Mom and me, then confirmed he was actually gone. She turned him onto his back, stretching his legs to their full length, and crossed his hands over his chest under the sheet. His legs were impossibly thin. The cancer had eaten everything between his skin and bones but for the corded muscle and ligaments. He lay on his back, peaceful and serene, and, as far as we know, he’s been in that position ever since.
When I finish speaking everyone is quiet for a few minutes. Mom sniffles and dabs with her tissues and I sit in the armchair, like a witness on the stand.
“Now, Trudi,” Dr. Lineberger says after she has given us a chance to get our shit together. “Talk to us about your decision to keep Craig’s illness a secret from Dane.”
“It wasn’t my decision,” Mom says quickly. “Craig wanted to keep it a secret. He thought, if he got better, then we would have worried Dane for no reason. And, if he didn’t … well, I guess he just didn’t want Dane to worry. He thought it would be too much with … everything else Dane had been through.”
“How does that make you feel, Dane?” Dr. Lineberger says, a line straight out of every movie with a psychiatrist.
“How does it make me feel?” I ask, but rhetorically. “It makes me feel like shit.”
“In what way?” Dr. Lineberger presses.
“In every way,” I say, my voice rising to a whine because I’m too impotent to be a shouter.
“Uh-huh,” Dr. Lineberger says as she continues to scrawl merrily along the page of her notebook. The scratching—the constant scratching—of the pen against the page grates on my nerves.
“Can you stop that?” I ask. “Please. I mean, if you have something to say about how I feel, how about you just say it, instead of writing about it in your little book there?”
Dr. Lineberger stops and carefully places her pen on the open notebook. “I’m sorry. It helps me, later, when I review notes of our sessions, so I can think about our conversations when I am not actively listening.”
“Yeah, well, it makes me uncomfortable.”
“Okay,” Dr. Lineberger says, flashing me a sunny smile. “Go on.”
“I wanted to tell you,” Mom says, as if she wants special points recorded in Dr. Lineberger’s book.
“You should have,” I say.
“I know. But your dad insisted and, you know,” she says with a shrug, “he was the one who was dying.”
I hate her for
that little shrug. It’s as if she is shrugging off all responsibility for the way I feel.
“You know,” Mom says, “your dad could be very difficult to live with. I mean, he was funny, what most people would call charming. And he was so direct. He liked to shock people by being so direct.” She stops and smiles at some memory that Dr. Lineberger and I can’t see. “But he was a difficult man to live with.… I don’t know.” Mom looks out the window, working up the courage to say more. “I sometimes think that if he hadn’t died, maybe we wouldn’t have stayed married. Maybe we’d be sitting here talking about our divorce instead.”
I lean forward and put my head in my hands. “Just stop.”
“Why?” Mom asks. I can sense her turning her gaze back to me, away from the window.
“It’s none of my business. The way things were between you and Dad.”
“But it’s your business if I date Chuck? It’s your business if I don’t seem sad enough about Dad being gone?”
“Stop,” I say.
“Yes,” Dr. Lineberger says. “I think we’ve covered enough ground for today.”
And, just like that, the timer on our feelings runs out. It’s time to stop feeling again for this week.
* * *
When we arrive home Mom is halfway across the porch before she realizes I am not right behind her. I am hanging back, near the car. I’m mad at her for the things she said at our appointment with Dr. Lineberger, but I don’t know what to say. It feels like being trapped in the closed loop of eternity. Every way I turn I end up at the same dead end. Anger and disappointment. I’m tired of being trapped in it, a rat in a maze.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks.
“Nothing. I just don’t feel like going inside right now.” The house is her turf. I want the option to leave.
“You’re not going anywhere, Dane. You have a concussion.”
“I know,” I say, irritated by my own impotence. “I’m not going anywhere. I just want a few minutes outside. By myself,” I add firmly.
“Fine,” she says, and turns to go inside without me.
The street is quiet. All normal people are at school or work.
I walk to the end of the driveway and down the street, just far enough to be out of Mom’s sight from the house, when I see the golden heap in the shallow ditch beside the road. At a glance, the mottled pile looks like dried leaves, but once my brain adjusts to what it is seeing, I know it is the coyote.
His fur, which had been lustrous and beautiful in life, is matted and dull. The heavy morning dew of spring has clumped his hair into wet peaks.
The coyote is lying with its front paws crossed, his chin resting on its forelegs, with a streak of rusty dried blood across its haunches. Because of the thick fur I can’t see where the coyote’s flesh is torn, and I don’t want to.
From his position I can reconstruct the final minutes of his life. He must have been struck by a car, then dragged himself into the sanctuary of the ditch. Just seeing the coyote lying there dead, or knowing that he had faced a violent death, isn’t what bothers me. It is the knowledge of his lonely, painful struggle to the side of the road, the world black and uncaring around him. He worked impossibly hard, first to get himself out of the road and out of danger, then trying to make himself comfortable, and dying in the process. Those last moments or, God forbid, hours of his life must have been torture. To be sad, lonely, or scared, to suffer cruelty and neglect, without a living soul to care about you.
Left here at the side of the road so close to the house, I know who is responsible for the coyote’s death. It had to be Chuck. He always takes the curve just before the driveway too fast, as if to prove that he is some kind of expert driver just because he drives a Mercedes SL-class.
Chuck probably got back late from the club, after a few too many bourbons, and caught the coyote crossing the otherwise quiet street. Chuck wouldn’t have stopped, wouldn’t have gone to check if the coyote was dead or alive, wouldn’t have cared enough to put the coyote out of its misery.
Though I had seen the coyote a half dozen times and heard its cries at night, I had never gotten closer than twenty yards from it. Now that the coyote is dead, I still feel nervous about getting too close, but I want to know the feel of its fur.
I crouch and scoot forward in crab fashion, watching intently for any signs of movement. Maybe the coyote is just injured and sleeping. When I am only two feet away, I make myself still, even hold my breath, as I watch the heap of golden hair for the subtle rise and fall of respiration.
Nothing.
I reach out my hand and hold it over the coyote and hesitate, my fingers moving as if over an imaginary piano keyboard. The fur is not perfectly soft like a coat or rug. It is damp, and gritty with dirt, the shaggy outer coat knotted like rope in some places.
The flesh underneath the fur is cold and hard. Colder and harder than marble, or concrete. The coldest thing I have ever touched.
“What the hell are you doing? Checking for a pulse?”
I’m so startled by the voice that I topple back from my crouch, away from the coyote, as if he has moved suddenly.
Above me stands Colonel Marcus. He’s out of uniform, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt and spotless running shoes. Even in casual clothes his appearance is neat and tidy as always, as if he’s prepared for an inspection by the Joint Chiefs. His hair is no more than a few millimeters long and his hairline is neatly shaved.
“N—no,” I stammer. “I mean … I guess. I thought he might just be injured.”
“Hmph.” Colonel Marcus bends at the waist and puts his hands on his knees as he peers at the coyote. “What are you doing home?” he asks, his eyes narrowing to accusatory slits.
“Skating accident,” I say, and tap my head. “I hit my head.”
“Oh. Well, you seem all right.”
“I have a concussion,” I say, wondering, as I do, if I sound too defensive. “The doctor said I should stay home and rest.”
“Well, get a shovel and a trash bag,” he says, issuing a direct order. “I’ll help you get it into a bag. It’ll stink up the neighborhood if we don’t move it.”
I hurry to comply and return with a metal spade and a leaf bag from the garage. Colonel Marcus holds the bag, the top rolled down so he can hold it open wide at the mouth. As he supervises, I gently nose the spade under the side of the coyote. The body seems to cling to the wet leaves and muck beneath it, and I can’t get the spade more than an inch or so beneath the body. I can feel Colonel Marcus’s impatience as he watches me prod the coyote tentatively.
“You can’t hurt it,” he says. “It’s already dead.”
“I know, I just—” I break off what I am saying to catch my breath. It’s exhausting to maneuver the shovel, the dead weight of the coyote much heavier than I imagined it would be. As I try to slide the shovel under more of the coyote’s weight, I worry I will put the point of the spade through the skin, cause further injury or damage.
“Here,” Colonel Marcus says, losing patience and holding out the bag for me to take. He takes the shovel roughly from my hands and, with brute force, slides the blade under the coyote with one thrust. The shovel head scrapes against the ground, but my brain hears the crunch of bones and the tear of flesh.
Colonel Marcus’s indifference to the grim horror reminds me of a movie I have seen. The movie was two hours of unrelenting bloody battle in the streets of some foreign city. In the movie, Army Rangers collected the disembodied limbs and mangled torsos of their fellow soldiers with a sense of duty and responsibility to leave no man or, apparently, no part of a man, behind. I wonder if Colonel Marcus has been hardened to the realities of death as a soldier. I think about asking him, and then think better of it.
I hold out the bag, my arms extended to keep the horror as far from me as possible. Colonel Marcus curses as he tries to angle the stiff body of the coyote into a straight—or at least manageable—line. The coyote fur laps over the edge of the bag and the lifeless body seems t
o fight the confines of the plastic.
“Pull the bag around it,” Colonel Marcus says, his voice tight with exertion.
We struggle for another minute before the coyote is finally covered in its burial shroud. Then he takes the bag from me and spins it to twist it closed.
“I suppose if the bag is closed it’s okay to put it in the trash,” he says. “Pickup is tomorrow.”
“The trash?” I ask, my voice cracking with alarm. “I—I don’t think we should just throw him away.”
He stops, one eyebrow raised with a question. “What do you think we should do? Have it stuffed and put it on the mantle?”
Ophelia definitely gets her sense of humor from her dad. But Ophelia’s wit is like a paring knife. Her dad’s, like a machete.
While I am thinking this, Colonel Marcus is standing there, holding the dead coyote in the black leaf bag, wondering why the fuck I am such a weirdo that I don’t want him to throw away a piece of roadkill.
“I think I’m going to bury him,” I say.
“Come again?” he says.
“The coyote,” I say. “I think I’m going to bury him. I don’t … I don’t want him to just get thrown out with the trash.”
“Son, are you on something?” he asks.
“No,” I say with a shake of my head. “No, sir. I just—I guess I kind of think of him like a pet.”
“A pet?”
“He’s been living in our yard,” I say. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Yeah,” Colonel Marcus says with a nod. “I guess it is.”
“Anyway, I’ll … uh … I’ll take him.” I step in and gingerly put my hand around the twisted part of the bag. Colonel Marcus has been holding the bag with only one hand, but when he releases it I’m not prepared to take the weight. The bag falls to the ground between us and I have to use both hands to lift it. I don’t want the coyote’s body to touch me, even through the bag, so when I lift it, I am holding it out away from my legs, the bag swinging like a pendulum. My shoulders ache from the strain within seconds and I am unsure how to end the conversation gracefully with the dead coyote between us.
