Ethan Rutherford - The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

“I don’t think it’s love he’s after,” she said.

“Then, what?”

“It feels,” she said, “more like he’s looking for confirmation. Like he’s . . . begging us. For something. Some confirmation that his problems are bigger than we are. And that he wants us to prove it to him. To confirm it. I don’t know.”

Her therapist had put his pen down, folded his arms, and made a bad-smell face. “That,” he said, “doesn’t sound quite right to me. We’ve only been seeing each other for a few months, and it’s possible I’m not getting a handle on John. But that doesn’t sound quite right.”

This kind man, Joan thought. Letting her talk like this. Of course he wasn’t getting a handle on her son. They didn’t have a handle on him. But she hadn’t helped; she hadn’t told this man everything; she hadn’t fully confessed, if that was the right word. She hadn’t told him about the chicken Thomas found. She hadn’t told him how at thirteen, John’s eyes, which had always, she thought, appeared dilated, went hard, and seemed to demand a distance from her that she’d perhaps too easily granted. How, at fourteen, he’d cuffed her left ear and Thomas had had to wrestle him to the ground, and from the kitchen floor, under his father, John had cried until he choked. She’d made Thomas promise never to hurt John again; and then she’d asked him to apologize. He’d done both. And now, when talking to this man, her therapist, she simply described John, growing up, as too observant for his own good, too hard on himself. A boy whose loneliness transformed one day into sarcasm and then into a strange, emotional cruelty. She regretted having only one child, she said. She thought a brother, or a sister, might’ve helped. Maybe they shouldn’t have moved so far away from other people, into the country, like they had done. She was protecting her son from this man, and what he might say. It wasn’t the point of these sessions, she knew that. But just as she was secretly relieved that Thomas hadn’t called the police on John, had acted, in fact, as if he had never set foot in that chicken coop, she took a shameful pride in not giving this man the full story. Mothers protect their sons.

John, at four, giving her a red Play-Doh heart he’d sculpted at school for her birthday, which she’d hardened in the oven and, with a piece of ribbon, made into a necklace and worn on that day every year since. At seven, learning to ride one of their old horses, coming back inside on a fall day, sweaty and elated, asking her if she’d seen him do it. You don’t let go of those things, she thought. You can’t. They don’t release you.

“Joan,” her therapist had said. He wasn’t accusing her of not loving her son. He wouldn’t go that far.

“That’s because it isn’t,” she said.

Thomas’s phone rang as they were pulling into a gas station. The road had widened into a four-lane, and as they’d begun passing little convenience stores, roadhouse bars, and a McDonald’s, Thomas had put the wipers against the snow. Sarah kept her hands in her lap. She didn’t mention the scar again. The storm was picking up but didn’t appear to have the steam that had been promised. The first stoplight they’d come to was near the paper mill, and as they waited for the light to turn, a smell like old eggs came in through the heater. He parked near the pump and cut the engine before answering. “Dad?” his son said. “It’s John.” This was how all their conversations started. As if there could be anyone else who called him that.

“John,” he said. “How’s the driving?”

“I’m about two hours away, I think,” John said. “The snow’s coming down, though. Making it slow. Snow-mageddon casualties. Car crashes. Ascension. Blood on the road, and all that.”

“All right.” Blood on the road? Thomas looked at Sarah. She’d unbuckled her seat belt and was reaching behind her for her coat. Out back, he could hear the alpaca, evidently roused, kicking the side of the trailer.

John cleared his throat. “You in the car?”

Thomas nodded, then remembered he was on the phone. “Groceries,” he said. “Last minute.” He wasn’t going to tell John about Zachary. In the background, Thomas could hear someone else. Or maybe it was the radio. The connection wasn’t good. It seemed, to Thomas, that the two of them were talking through strung-together cans.

“Well, how’s this for a turn of events: Jocey’s not coming. I’ve got her car, I’m driving in it, but she’s not coming.”

“That’s not her in the car with you?”

“No.”

“Everything all right?” Thomas said. “I was looking forward to meeting her.” The alpaca was really kicking now; tin heavy thumps reverberated through the cab of the truck.

There was silence on John’s end. “Bet you were,” he said finally. “My car’s not working right now. You better tell Mom. All that dinner planning and stuff. The agonizing over who sits where. Because she’s Mom.”

“She’s just going to be happy to see you,” Thomas said.

John snorted. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “She’ll probably be happy about Jocey, and the decisions Jocey felt necessitated to make.”

“I don’t think so, John,” Thomas said. “What happened?”

More silence. Then John said, “Ruination.”

Jesus Christ, John, Thomas thought. John’s car, the one they’d given him, was two years old. “Does she know you have her car?”

“I knew you’d ask that,” John said, and snorted. “Yes, in fact, she does. She gave it to me. A parting gift.” Thomas decided not to answer. John continued: “So the three of us. Maybe you should invite God’s Gift to Medicine for dinner. We’ll see how that plays the second time around.” Sarah opened her door, stepped out, and slammed it shut. Thomas felt his face flush. He watched her make her way into the gas station’s food-mart, and wave at the kid at the register.

“Who’s with you, Dad? Is that her? That her in the car with you? I heard a door slam. Did she hear what I said? Put her on the phone.”

“John, what’s the problem?”

“No problem,” he said. “Why?”

“We’re looking forward to seeing you. Jocey or no Jocey.”

“Well, good,” he said. Then he said, “Here’s a problem. Answer me this problem, if you want. I do everything I can for everybody, and it always fucks up. I do everything I can to get people’s attention, to hold it, and I get nothing.” It sounded to Thomas like John might be crying.

“You have our attention, John.”

“No,” he said. He is crying, Thomas thought. But his voice was rising, not getting weaker. “No. All you do is listen and nod. I could do anything. And you listen and nod.”

“That’s not true, John,” Thomas said. “I’m trying to help. If I listen, I’m helping. What do you want me to do?”

John’s voice faded, as if he had taken the phone away from his face. Thomas couldn’t quite hear him. It sounded like he was giving instructions to someone else in the car, but no second voice answered. Then, suddenly, he was back. “You know what I want for Christmas this year? Old times.”

“Old times?”

“You heard me.” John was talking softly now. “I want, fucking, old times.”

Maybe John was drinking. On the road, and drinking. Thomas saw that Sarah was coming back from the food-mart, holding two cups of coffee. He got out of the truck, pointed to the phone, signaled that she should get back in.

“You still there, Pops?” John said. “Still there?”

“I heard you,” Thomas said. He was walking, now, away from the truck, and away from Zachary. The traffic on the road, suddenly busy, made a wet noise that kept him from hearing John clearly. “Old times.”