The Coward

by Jarred McGinnis

‘This morning.’

  ‘Wow! Good stuff. Do it again.’

  I concentrated. The toe took another bow. We watched the motionless digit for a moment before I said, ‘Pretty useless muscle though.’

  ‘We should probably keep making payments on the wheelchair.’

  ‘That’d be best,’ I agreed.

  Jack sat on the bed and he put my feet into his lap. We watched the toe. He wiggled it. I forced it to make another almost imperceptible nod.

  ‘Your feet feel cold. You cold?’ he asked. Jack got a look on his face and it made me afraid.

  I asked, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Where have you been for the last ten years?’ Jack asked softly.

  ‘Not here,’ I said.

  ‘I had no idea you were so close.’

  ‘Only for the past year or so until . . .’ It was absurd that I couldn’t say ‘the accident’, but I didn’t. I wasn’t ready to admit what happened had happened. It took a long time to untangle the shame I felt about the night of the accident with the shame I felt about being disabled. ‘I’ve been all over. San Fran. Chicago. Toronto. Down in Chiapas for a winter when I was eighteen. Patrick was always closer. How often did he visit?’

  ‘You could’ve visited once. Or gone and seen Patrick. It would have been nice to know you were okay.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  Jack took a deep breath. ‘Even if you were still angry with me. The first time I hear from you is from a hospital. You still haven’t told me what happened. The only things I know come from some rich guy’s lawyer and police reports. Who was Melissa? Were you fooling around with this guy’s wife? Is that why he’s trying to pin this on you?’

  ‘Show’s over.’ I pulled my legs out of his lap. My feet howled with false pain as I put on my socks.

  ‘Shoes?’ I snapped.

  Jack leaned over with a groan.

  He had to help me put on my shoes. My attempt to storm out and end the conversation became that much more ridiculous, which made me angrier.

  ‘My chair.’

  Jack moved the wheelchair closer.

  As I left the room, I fingered the fist-sized hole in my bedroom door. ‘Are you going to fix me? Ten years and you couldn’t fix the door you broke.’

  I wandered off and headed toward the convenience store. I didn’t even try to be subtle. I had figured out that a wheelchair makes you invisible. People walk into you, talk about you as if you weren’t there. I put the six-pack of Corona in my lap, pushed past the cashier and out the door.

  I went and sat in Jack’s greenhouse. The door opened and closed behind me.

  ‘Ice cold, refreshing cerveza.’ I took a long drink then went back to dividing up an overgrown Cattleya like he had shown me. ‘Remember the good ol’ days after Mom died? Good times. You want one?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I handed him a beer, pretending to examine the rootstalks.

  ‘You got an opener?’ he asked.

  I moved the bottle opener to the edge of the table.

  The beer hissed. Jack snapped his fingers and the cap skittered and bounced around the greenhouse. Old nerves from long ago awoke and sensed danger. I looked to see if he would take a drink.

  He poured his beer into a compost barrel and returned the bottle to the case, which he grabbed from the table and threw over the fence outside.

  Pausing at the greenhouse door, he said, ‘I left the hole there as a reminder to never let myself get like that again. You think you’re the only one with shame and guilt? How long you going to pretend you don’t need help, huh? Face it, you’re in a wheelchair.’ Jack held his fists at his sides. The tendons in his forearms were tight as guy ropes. His face was red. Most of the time our lives go wrong slowly, small incidents and decisions with enough space between to get used to a world a little less right. There are exceptions. A moment, a clear landmark, where you can look back and say there, that is when it went all wrong. This was one of those moments.

  ‘Jack,’ I pleaded.

  ‘How about not being such a selfish prick? Huh? How about asking me how I fared the last ten years? What did I do? Where did I go? I’ll tell you. I didn’t go far in case the phone rang and you needed me. Ask me how long was it before I learned to stop worrying about you? How many years before I figured out every phone call wasn’t going to be the cops or the hospital to tell me you were dead.’

  Tears streaming down my face, I asked, ‘Jack, did you ever find someone else?’

  ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘Too little, too late. I’m done parenting for the day. You stay in here and I get the house and the AC for a change. When I leave for work, you can come back in. I’ll unlock the back door before I go. Until then, you’re locked out – and don’t make a mess in my greenhouse!’

  20

  I came home from middle school. Jack wasn’t there. I did homework. I made dinner. I went to my room. I didn’t give his absence much thought.

  It must have been late and, if my family life was more sitcom-ready, I would have long ago been tucked into bed, kissed by both parents, and wished ‘sweet dreams’ by my tough-love older brother in a telling affectionate moment right before the commercial break. Instead, I was playing with Lego and the empty case from a twenty-four of Michelob.

  The crash came from the living room. My heart bounced hard against my lungs with the smash-smash of window followed by the crunch of someone climbing through. I listened for Jack to confront the intruder, to keep us safe, but there was silence.

  The medicine cabinet in the bathroom opened. Its contents clattered into the sink. I waited for each noise to be followed by the boom of Jack’s voice commanding ‘stop’. The intruder moved around the kitchen then into the living room. Yet, I heard no fearful explanation or pleading not to call the police. Light switches flipped on and off. My door handle didn’t turn slowly, dramatically, like it did in the movies, but Jack was not going to save us. The house settled back into silence. Other than the blood noisily pumping in my ears, nothing stirred.

  There was nothing in my room that could serve as a weapon. Maybe the thief was in the garage, rifling through Jack’s tools. I made the plan to sneak to the door and lock him in there, phone the police and save the day myself. Inching toward the living room, my eyes adjusted and the dark house made itself known.

  Jack was passed out in his chair.

  The brick he had used to break the window sat on the couch like a house cat. Both of his fists were wrapped in toilet paper. His knuckles were marked by circles of drying blood. One eye was swollen, and the dash of a cut marked his bottom lip.

  I had nothing but hate for him. He was a loser, a coward. I picked up the brick and stood before him. The need to hurt him vibrated through my body and hummed through my fingers.

  I imagined what would happen if I hit him. The blood, the broken teeth. I lifted the brick over his head and let my grip loosen a little, willing gravity to do the damage. Jack’s mouth opened. A thin white line of his bottom teeth peered just above the swelling of his bloodied lip. A low steady snore grumbled and ground from him. My arm fell and I stormed out of the house, making sure the front door slammed.

  I went across the street to sleep in my fortress. I don’t think the neighbours ever found out that I had set up camp behind their PIZZA marquee. My fortress was stocked with blankets, books, a flashlight and food sometimes pilfered by mice.

  The garage was shut. I tried the side door, the glass sliding door in the back and the windows. All of them were locked. Back at the front door, I knocked and my heart raced, imagining the neighbour opening the door in his pyjamas. Something in me wanted conflict, an uncomfortable exchange. I had no idea what I was going to say. I knocked again with more force.

  No answer.

  I kicked the door. I continued to kick and the anger ebbed out of me with each thump. I didn’t realise that I was still carrying the brick and, before I knew what I had done, it had gone through the window. I froze, wide-eyed at the damage. Then I was calm
. I reached in through the hole and unlocked the deadbolt.

  I stepped through the house. The floor plan was the same as ours. It felt like this could be my house. It should be my house. A house without a dead mother or a useless drunk for a father. I marvelled at how they had placed a chair in one corner where our house had a bookshelf. Their tv was bigger than ours. A hutch was full of china with a collection of porcelain hippos and elephants amongst the plates.

  Where my breakfast cereal should be there were bottles of liquor. I opened one and wrinkled my nose at its astringent smell. As soon as it touched my tongue, I spat in the sink. I poured out the rest of the bottle, watching the clear liquid disappear down the drain. Once it was empty, I screwed the lid back on. I poured out all their booze and returned the bottles to the pantry. I went to the garage and flipped on the light switch.

  I climbed into my fortress between the gun cabinet and the PIZZA marquee sign and fell asleep with my head on Mom’s pillow, which no longer smelled of her but of dust.

  21

  The air collapsed behind Jack. The sour smell of the beer he’d poured onto the compost filled the greenhouse. I sat, rubbing my thumb across the wrinkled and waxy flesh of the orchid’s bulb, and stared at the neighbour’s house. From my position I could see a middle-aged woman with a thick braid of brown hair draped over her shoulder. She was on a couch, motionless, entranced by the tv. The spell was broken when her husband arrived with the stacked paper containers of Chinese takeout. Her face broke into a huge grin as he showed her the contents, spooning the glistening food onto plates. When he sat down beside her, she put her head against his shoulder, then kissed his chin. They both smiled, occasionally laughed, as they watched tv and ate, plates held in their hands. They were nondescript the way people from toothpaste commercials are nondescript. Smiling easily, not attractive but not unattractive.

  The woman stood and took his plate. She was heavily pregnant. Her jeans were pushed low to accommodate the perfect roundness of her belly. He kissed the bump and put his head against it. They talked for a while in that position, she standing with the two empty plates in each hand and he with his arms around her and his ear pressed to her belly.

  Mom’s death didn’t have to be the milestone or the moment it all went wrong. It could have been worse; I could have witnessed two drunks inevitably destroying that unique love that sustained and enabled them. I rehearsed in my head what I should say to Jack as I replanted the bulbs. I pushed toward the house, feeling good.

  The back door was locked. He had locked me out. He’d said he would and he did. I had forgotten Jack was not a man of empty threats.

  Before the accident, I was skinny, but pushing myself around for those months had broadened my shoulders and filled out my chest. My arms thickened. Calluses hardened my hands. Proof that I could endure.

  I had expanded my range beyond the nearby grocery store, Mr. Do-nut, the coffee shop with the redheaded barista and the cemetery. Inevitably, I ended up at the mall because there was nowhere else. I spent my time reading in the book stores, people-watching in the food courts and wandering until the pain in my back became too much. I learned to use the escalator by holding onto the rails and letting it pull me and the chair up. It made people nervous, which was why I did it.

  In the food court, a woman greeted me with, ‘I almost ended up like you.’ I responded with ‘What? Handsome?’ and left to go to the art-supply store.

  I was shoving a sketchpad up my shirt when I spotted a man at the end of the aisle. His thin body sat unevenly as he wrestled to push his wheelchair made mostly of duct tape and scratches. His legs were curled and withered. Two dirty grey socks insulted his feet.

  ‘Hello,’ the man slurred. He twitched. He bared his teeth as rebellious nerves and muscles fought his will. His black hair, threaded with grey, needed a cut and a wash. ‘Good . . . day.’

  While the man battled his own body, I tried to fill the awkward gaps between his words with small talk. He read my discomfort and it aggravated the tremors. The clawed hammer of a hand shot up and hit him in the face. His surprise at the self-inflicted attack made me laugh. He finally mastered his eyebrows to direct a clear and unambiguous anger. He pushed himself backwards, unable to turn his back on me. Pushing by fits and starts, his furious expression remained fixed. Though we shoved ourselves around the world in the same way and dealt with the same stares and comments, he’d mistaken me for someone who understood. He couldn’t have known that accepting his vulnerability would have meant accepting my own.

  With an hour or so before Jack left for work and hopefully unlocked the house, I retreated to the coffee shop. I sat and thought about the man in the bookstore. About the damage Jack and I had inflicted on each other. With my tinnitus singing, I thought about the damage I had caused to myself.

  ‘You okay?’ the redheaded barista said.

  ‘Huh?’ I said.

  ‘You look glum, chum.’ She set down a black coffee then sat at my table. ‘On the house. Who are you?’

  ‘Jarred.’

  ‘I’m Sarah. Jarred, nice to meet you. You okay?’

  ‘Not great, to be honest.’

  ‘I don’t know if this will help you in your situation, but sometimes when I’m sad I like to think about those bro guys who have the really big arms’ – she flexed her biceps and continued – ‘and the really big chest muscles but still have teeny tiny skinny legs. That makes me giggle and then I feel a little better about my life.’

  I laughed and Sarah smiled. She sat down and I felt an eagerness to keep her there and talking to me as if I was normal.

  ‘My dad. He’s too old to be doing shift work, but we need money because I had to move in with him after my car accident.’ She looked at my wheelchair as I tapped its armrests as an explanation. It felt good to unravel the knot of me into words.

  ‘Most of the time we avoid each other, because we’re always getting into arguments. Although we used to fight a lot more when I was a teenager.’ I took a sip of the coffee. ‘Sorry, that was a lot to throw at you. I’m sure you have your own stuff.’ I felt foolish for laying out all my problems to a woman I barely knew and more foolish for blurting, ‘Thank you for the coffee.’

  ‘Don’t feel bad. We all have baggage. I don’t know if you want or need advice. What I got was things with your dad aren’t good, but they are better than they were. “Better than before” is something to hold on to. It sounds like you’re worried about your dad and your dad is worried about you. That means you guys care about each other. That’s a whole lot of something to hold on to.’

  I nodded as she spoke. She was right. It was a relief to hear it spoken, allowing me to admit that I cared about Jack.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I mean it. I needed to hear that.’

  ‘All part of our customer care pledge,’ she said, smiling. She stood up and hugged me. She said softly into my ear, ‘Hang in there, kiddo.’ I froze, unsure how to react. No one had held me since the accident. I felt the weight of her shoulder, her hand, the outline of each finger. Her perfume smelled of sugar and coconut. She drew up straight and I felt the loss.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked again.

  My eyes reddened, I said, ‘Yes, thank you.’ She went back to work. After I finished the coffee, I waved goodbye. She waved back from behind the hissing coffee machine.

  In the driveway, Jack’s car was replaced by an old Toyota Camry with a mismatched front wheel. The moustached collection agent got out and the solace I had gathered talking to Sarah was lost. He handed me a subpoena. I frisbeed it into the yard and went inside the now-unlocked house.

  I was making a snack in the kitchen when I heard the front door. It was Patrick, carrying groceries and the subpoena. We greeted each other.

  ‘This was on your doorstep,’ he said as he followed me into the kitchen.

  I took the thick envelope and threw it away.

  Patrick said, ‘Throwing it away doesn’t change anything.’

  I nodded.
/>
  He shrugged and I helped him put away the groceries. ‘If Dad asks, tell him you bought them.’

  ‘He’ll think I stole them. He won’t ask,’ I said.

  Patrick hesitated. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.’ He handed me a box of oatmeal.

  ‘Nobody was there. The accident was all my fault.’

  As he was struggling with his next words, I realised he was talking about after our mom died and Jack fell apart. He grabbed an armful of canned vegetables. He spoke to the cabinets above the countertop as he set the cans inside. ‘I was trying to get my company started and working a full-time job, eighty hours a week, week after week. I didn’t have the bandwidth and I convinced myself that it wasn’t as bad as it was.’ He paused.

  I picked up a plate from the sink, pretending to worry a chunk of stuck-on crud. I couldn’t escape without an awkward manoeuvring of groceries, cabinet doors and this stranger called my brother.

  ‘Mom and Dad were always drunks, right? That was nothing new,’ he said.

  I didn’t dare look up or answer. A light-headed feeling rushed over me.

  ‘Fran, I mean, there were lots of reasons we got divorced but, god bless her, she was the one who suggested you come live with us. That’s with McKenzie just being born. That was the plan, but you know what Jack is like, was like. I don’t know how many times he threw me out of the house, telling me to mind my own, excuse my French, goddamn business. Sorries are a dime a dozen but I needed to apologise. I’m sorry.’

  I didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything. The faucet ran. I scrubbed dishes. He put away the frozen burritos.

  ‘Do you remember when Mom came home from the hospital and we all—’

  A memory of all four of us on their bed watching cartoons and eating tv dinners flashed into my head.

  ‘Stop. Stop. Stop. Motherfucking stop right fucking now. Stop,’ I said.

  He stopped. He folded the brown paper bags and tucked them behind the garbage like Jack does, like I do, like Mom did. If ever a paper bag was needed for whatever reason, there were always five or six neatly folded between the wall and the garbage. For ten years, I did the same thing, in whatever shithole I lived. I did it here automatically when I moved back home.