Authors: Christopher Coake
Here, she says. Take this.
Not yet, he says. I'll take them all at the same time. I can bear it. Honey? Could I trouble you for milk?
She sucks in a breath. Albert has always loved milkâwhen he sets down an empty glass at the table his eyes are as satisfied as a sleepy cat's. She walks down the hallway to the kitchen and pours him a tall glass. She'll never see his eyes look like that again. Her father's were glassyâturned up, slightly, to show the whites. In a few minutes Albert's will look that way, too.
She returns to the bedroom. He takes a sip, and sighs, and says, May I have the pills, love?
The bottle is in the pocket of her robe. She takes it out and holds it.
Albert, please, she says. Another day. Give me one more day.
He stares at her, his mouth tight.
Elise, I can't. No.
Please.
We both know this is better.
I can'tâI can't watch you do this.
You'd prefer the alternative?
She shakes her head. She knows there's nothing she can argue. Of course she doesn't want to see him lessened, suffering. But this? This? She holds in her hands the instrument of his death. She can't be expected to . . . to just hand it to him, can she?
She kneels in front of the bed. Albert, she says.
He puts the glass of milk on the bedside table. He takes
her hands, with the bottle of morphine enclosed between them.
He says, You can keep the lights off until . . . until it's over. It won't take long. Just hold on to me, and when it's done, call Mark and tell him something's wrong. He'll be here in fifteen minutes. I have written a letter. It's on the desk in the hallway, right now, with your name on it. Pretend you don't know about it. No one will ever know you helped me.
Al, I can't.
He tries to pry the bottle of pills from her hands, his broad fingers jimmying open her thin, cold ones. He tries to do this slowly, persuasively, while he talks. When she realizes what he's doing, she doesn't even thinkâshe pulls quickly away. Her hands slip from his, and his elbow strikes the bedside table. The glass of milk wobbles and then falls. They both watch it fall. It strikes the dark hardwood floor and shatters. Glass and milk and froth slide coldly past Elise's knees.
Damn it all! Albert says, sharply.
I'll clean it, she says, rising.
Eliseâthe glassâ
She steps away from the bed, still holding the bottle of pills, stepping over the milk. She puts on a pair of flat shoes from the closet. In the bathroom she takes a towel from the rack, and picks up the wastebasket. Then she returns and begins to clean up the mess, kneeling carefully again.
I'm sorry, she says thickly.
This is what I didn't want, he tells her. His voice creaks a little. This is what I mean. See what it does to us?
And as she kneels, swabbing at milk and shards of glass, her knees aching, her throat aching, she thinks, It?
It?
All he's done is ask her to help him . . . to help him kill himself. And
when she can't, when all she can do is tell him she cannot bear it, when all she can do is ask for one more day, one span of hours, for mercy, for another hour in the dark without having to worry about his next breath, or the one after itâthis is what
it
does to
us
? Not once did he ask her what she thought of this. Not once did he give her a say in how things between them are to end. And thisâthis is all he can think to say?
She scrubs harder at the floor.
Albert's stomach hurts. He leans back against the headboard and kneads his belly. He's sorry he shouted. His poor wife sops up the spilled milk. He sees a shard of glass near her hand, and points to it, and he is ready to tell her about it when she sees it herself, and plucks it from the milk. The tenderness of the gesture, the delicacy of her hands, makes him want to pick her up. If only he could! To clutch her to him and explain. Can't she understand? He knows his love for her. Thisâthis endâis the only gift he has left to give her. He wants to tell her the sentences he's prepared. He wants to tell her the last things he'll ever say, for her, only for her. If she'd just look up at him.
He puts a hand on her shoulder.
How dare you, she thinks, biting her lip, scrubbing.
He repeats the words, carefully, in his head, waiting for her to raise her eyes:
Elise, I am a lucky man. I have never loved you more. You are my life.
T
HIS IS THE EVIDENCE:
I was nine, traveling cross-country with my father from Colorado back to Illinois. My family had lived in Colorado for all of my childhood, and our move to the Midwest was fraught and unhappyâwhat would turn out to be my father's last concession to my mother, a return to her home in Chicago. A love of the mountains was one of the only things my father and I had in common; when he learned he'd have to stay a week longer in Colorado to complete the sale of our cabin, he allowed me to stay with him. My father was a distant and silent man, but during that last week we hiked and fished companionably, never mentioning the city. Then, reluctantly, we headed east.
My father didn't like to stop at hotels, so we were on the interstate late at night, late in the way that it can be only on the road, far away from any homeâas though
we were separate from real things and real time. And it was then, while we ate at a truck stop in Kansas, that I saw them: a boy and a man.
The boy was my age, or a little younger. We looked at each other from booths across the diner while my father napped, head on his arms. The boy seemed odd, somehow: pale, upset. The man with himâlarge and unshavenâsat with his arm stretched out across the seat behind the boy's shoulders. He smoked cigarettes and watched the boy eat. They left before us.
As my father drove us out of the truck stop, our headlights flashed on a pickup truck in the parking lot. Inside, his face glowing in the bright light, was the boy. He looked, to me, as if he had just finished crying, or was just beginning. He looked frightened. The man was in shadow next to him, with his hand on the boy's neck. I thoughtâand I thought it more, the more I thoughtâthat I saw the man's head pulling back from the boy's. Then they slipped into darkness. Their truck pulled onto the road behind us, and vanished down the westbound ramp, while we headed east. My father seemed to have seen nothing out of the ordinary, yet I didn't tell him what I saw. What could I have said? I wasn't sure of what I'd seen, and my father did not have the patience for my imaginative leaps.
But as we drove on to Chicago and home, I tried to imagine where the little boy could be going, and what was between him and the man. I knew it could have been nothing. I'd been yelled at by my father plenty of times, with tears as a result; all boys have. But I couldn't
shake my dread. I was nine, given to nervous flights of fancy, nightmares. I began to imagine I'd witnessed something awful. What if the man wasn't the boy's father? Throughout the rest of the trip, my mind returned to that truck, to the man and the boy driving away from us. With every mile I was sure the boy traveled into danger. Or did he? It seemed to me a puzzle I ought to be able to solve, and yet the more I turned it over in my head, the less certain I was of what I'd seen.
My parents divorced a year later, and my father moved away. As I'd fearedâas I'd knownâhe receded from us, until he became a stranger, nothing more than terse notes at holidays. I spent the rest of my boyhood self-absorbed, dreamy, lost. But the boy's face, shocked, frightened in the headlightsâthat bit of the real world had reached me. That meant something. I looked at milk cartons and wondered if the boys' faces were that boy's face. But I couldn't remember his features with any certainty. He could have been any boy. The man could have been any man. They could have been going anywhere, doing anything. I saw the boy's body at the side of a mountain stream, white as a snowbank, facedown. Then he sat next to me, doodling, in algebra.
Maybe, I thought, I could help him. Maybe I could take him someplace. Maybe I could get him out of my head. But I've been hesitant. Would it be better to know? Or better not to?
I keep thinking and thinking: My boy. What's happening to my boy?
The boy is excited at first, leaving Chicago; he chatters for a solid hour. The man smokes cigarettes and drives the pickup one-handed, smiling, listening to the boy's voice. The boy lives in a suburb to the north, and doesn't get to see the buildings downtown much; he cranes his head out the window to see the Sears Tower as they pass it.
It's one thousand four hundred feet, the boy says. He has pale circles around his eyes; his cheeks are burned a bright red. Last weekend he and his mother went to the beach. The boy is towheaded and pale, and on the lakeshore his skin burned badly enough to blister. The man can almost see him at the beach: Looking at the lake for a while, though it's not rare enough to hold his interest. Staring at people while he staggers across the sandâthe boy's inexhaustibly curious, and less tactful than most kids. Tripping, probably, once or twice, and sprawling onto his chest. (He's grown a lot in the last year, and his coordination's left him; the man guesses it won't come back until the poor kid's in his teens. That's the way it was for him, anyway.) He can picture the boy swimming: dog-paddling a bit, holding his chin high out of the water, pleased and terrified all at once.
The kid doesn't quite fit, wherever he goes. The man loves him for that, for the ease with which these little pictures suggest themselves. The boy stays in the man's mind.
The man puts his hand on the boy's shoulder, then quickly removes it: almost a tap. The boy turns, looks at him, says, What? When the man just smiles and shrugs, the boy goes back to his sightseeing.
The man keeps smiling at the back of the boy's head, the
way the wind lifts his hair, light and inconsequential as a bird's down. About as irresistible, too. The man wants to twine his fingers into it. He puts his hands on the wheel and tells himself to be calm, to keep his eyes on his driving. They have a long way to go. They have time.
A
RE YOU SURE
it's okay? the boy asks.
They're out of town now, moving southwest past late-summer corn. The city vanishes quickly here; everything recedes. A Midwestern haze rubs out every sign of the world beyond two miles' distance; the sunlight comes from nowhere. A few cars float along ahead of them. No police, eitherâthe interstate rushes along at eighty.
The man turns down the radio and pretends not to have heard the boy's question. This worked a half hour earlier; the boy lost interest. The boy's mother thinks the little guy has attention-deficit disorder, but the man disputes itâthe boy's smart and wide-eyed, and his mind always looks to the next thing, but to say that's a disorder seems to do the boy no favors. Still, the man is never sure what questions to anticipate from him. He's a little afraid of what the boy might doâbut he looks forward, in a way, to whatever it is the kid will throw at him.
He thinks, not for the first time, how the boy is wasted on his mother.
Is it? the boy insists.
Is what?
This trip, the boy says. I'm sort of thirsty.
A little while more. We'll need gas, then we can stop. There's pop under the seat, I told youâ
It's kind of warm. I mean the last one was.
No problem, cold pop at the next stop. The man thinks about playing further with the rhyme, but that's not the boy's sense of humor.
What are those? the boy asks.
They're passing a small pasture fenced by split-wood rails. Behind the fence two llamas graze. A third watches the traffic, dewy-eyed and bemused.
Can you tell me? the man says. I bet you know.
They look familiar. The boy pronounces it
fer-mill-yer.
Here's a hint. They don't usually live in this country.
I remember the word. It's got two L's.
Yeah.
Llavas?
Close. Llamas.
The boy turns his head for a last look.
They're pretty, don't you think? the man asks.
Yeah, the boy says. I wish I brought my dictionary.
I bet we can find you one.
Mine's got my notes in it.
The boy annotates things he reads with a weird mix of symbols and codes: stars and wavy lines and exclamation points. The man has asked what they mean, but the boy won't tell him.
At the next exit the man pulls the truck into a busy tangle of off-ramp fast-food restaurants and truck stops. The largest truck stop advertises itself as a “stopping center,” and at least a hundred cars are parked in a lot which can hold many more. He asks the boy if he needs to go to the bathroom; the boy says no. The man asks if he wants to go inside, and the boy says no again. He seems sleepy. The man tells him to keep the truck locked.
The man walks across the baking blacktop, pulling his shirt away from his chest, and into the little convenience store attached to the gas station and diner. No one looks at him. He knows he's not much to look at, and here on the side of the road the men who come and go around him seem, to his eyes, rougher than him, more worthy of notice. Heavy-bellied truckers, dead-eyed cross-country travelers. A couple of college-aged kids with unwashed hair and tie-dyed shirts play video games, swaying and ducking. The man takes two bottles of cold pop from a cooler, and then sees a rack displaying magazines and a few books. There he finds a small paperback dictionary, next to stacked collections of crossword puzzles. He picks up the dictionary and several of the crossword booksâthey seem like something the boy might like. He takes a package of pens and a blank pad, too. The clerk is a teenaged girl, stationed on her own, away from the staff at the diner; she seems bored and disinterested, and sure enough, when he checks through she doesn't glance up. He pays cash.
In the parking lot, just outside the shop, two state police cars have pulled next to each other, facing opposite directions. The cops inside seem like mirror images of each other: young mustachioed men starting to thicken in the neck. Their haircuts are short, and they wear sunglasses. They're laughing, and as the man passes by they reach out and slap palms between their windows. The man keeps his head down and goes to his pickup, parked at the edge of the lot, getting his key out and at the ready.
The boy isn't in the truck. The man can see this from several feet away, but keeps his pace steadyâthe kid might be asleep, that's got to be it. But when he draws near the window he sees that the seat is empty. The boy's door is unlocked.
The man sets his purchases inside and, calmly, looks around the lot. He sees only parked cars, and people getting in and out of them. The policemen still laugh with each other in their cruisers. He circles the truck, looks into the bed. Nothing. The parking lot ends at a strip of grassy land which rises up to the edge of the interstate; there's been a drought so far this summer, and the grass is gray-green, tinder dry, as far as the man can see. He takes a breath. Beyond the diner and the shop are long rows of self-storage sheds. Across the street there's an ice-cream place. They all seem, at the moment, places a boy might want to go.
He calls the boy's nameânot a shout, but loud enough for him to hear if he's wandering nearby, down between the cars. There's no answer.
He walks two rows over and calls again, hearing nothing.
The man locks the truck and walks slowly back to the convenience store. One of the cops glances up. The man gives him a thin law-abiding smile and pushes through the doors, into the air-conditioning.
He looks in the adjoining diner and sees nothing. The college kids are still playing video games. He scans the rows of groceries. He walks into the men's room and calls the boy's name. So far he hasn't panicked, but he starts to when he goes back into the shop. He swallows and asks the clerk if she's seen a little boy come in. She says, Yeah, little blond guy? I gave him quarters.
The man sees him this time. Behind the college kids. The boy is sitting in a race-car game, one of the machines with a closed cockpit and a steering wheel. The man stands next to the machine and watches the boy race to thumping drums and guitars. The kid swervesâhis head and shoulders moveâand his little
video car hits a cow on the roadside, which explodes into chunks of red meat; the car keeps going, and the whole machine bucks and shudders.
Watch out!
the machine booms.
You scared me, the man says softly, and the boy jumps.
Just a second, the kid says.
All right, finish your game, then we have to go.
Yeah, the boy says, halfheartedly.
The man and the boy walk back to the truck. The police look at them and the man smiles again, sheepishly. He tries not to glance back at them, but the boy does, giving them a good look at his face. He even waves.
When they're on the interstate, the man says, You can't do that. I need to know where you are when you leave the truck. I told your mother I'd keep you out of trouble. Would you do that to her?
I waved at you. I thought you saw.
This is a lie, but the man ignores it. He puts his hand on the boy's shoulder and squeezes until the kid's looking up at him.
The next time you do that, I'll have to do something about it. Do you want me to have to do that? Punish you? We're supposed to be having fun.
The boy looks at him for a moment, then down at his hands.
No.
All right. The man glances into the rearview mirror. Well. I got you a dictionary and some games. They're in the bag there.
The boy doesn't move for the bag, but the man expects this. The boy is an expert sulker.
They're quiet for a while, driving.
I want to be a policeman, the boy says abruptly, looking out the window at the passing fields.
T
OWARD EVENING
they cross a river. They've turned to the west now, driving into slanting, dazzling light that comes from just above the horizon and gives the man a headache. The man thought maybe he'd drive the night through, but wonders now if that was too ambitious a plan.
He pulls the pickup into a fast-food place on the other side of the river, at the foot of the off-ramp. They order dinner inside. The man keeps watch outside the restroom door, waiting for the boy to finish his business. The restaurant has an outdoor play area, currently empty of children; he offers the boy a chance to stretch in it. The boy refuses. His face is slack and shiny.
They eat in the truck. Through the windshield they can see the bridge they've just crossed, and the tops of cars and trucks passing over. The river beneath is brown and thick. Westbound windshields glint orange as the sun lowers. The man massages his temples.
Can I call Mom? the boy asks.
No, not tonight. She knows where we are.
I want to talk to her.
The boy's voice is tight. The man looks up. He starts the truck, and says, Do you want anything else before we get moving?
There's a phone. Over by the door.
There's phones everywhere. Do you
need
to talk to her?
The boy shrugs.
Aren't you having a good time? the man asks.
It's boring.
Trips are like that sometimes. It's more fun at night. The wind gets cool and better songs play on the radio. And before too long we'll be in the mountains.
I don't want to go.
Now, you told me it sounded fun. The man puts the truck in gear and begins to pull out of the parking space. The boy's watching him. Maybe that's it: he's tired enough to stay on one topic. The man says, You want to put a tape in? You can pick.
I don't like any of that stuff you listen to.
A radio station?
She doesn't know we're doing this, does she?
The boy's still staring at him with his dull, sleepy eyes.
The man says, carefully, watching the road, Well, I didn't want to have to tell you this right away, but you won't let me get away with it, will you? Keeping a secret?
The man noses the truck onto the ramp and picks up speed.
Well, the man says, Your mother's . . . your mother's been having some problems lately. You know she's been tired, right? Not feeling so hot at night?
The boy nods, and there's something different in his eyes now.
She's going to the doctor. It's not a big thing, but she's been worried, and they're going to keep her for a few nights, and even though it's, you know, a little different for us, she wanted me to take you on a trip. You've been talking about the mountains, and so she wanted me to take you out there while she does the tests. She told me not to tell you for a while so you wouldn't worry. She wants you to have a good time.
I want to call her.
Well, that's the problem. She's not home right now.
The boy swallows.
The . . . the hospital?
The man nods.
We could call her there, the boy says.
The boy's voice is shakingâbut just a little bit; he's hiding his worry. The man wants to hug him. He's a brave kid; his mother never sees it. Just says how much of a handful he is, how much he fights her. But he's a kid, and in trouble, and look at how he takes it. How he digs in. The man knows it's no big thing to beat up, or be beaten up by, another kid on the playground. Or to trip over your own feet. The man knows that, for boys and adults both, it's really about taking it, seeing the world as it reveals itself and then being able to stand up to it all. Some people can'tâthe boy's mother, for instance, always complaining. But, somehow, not the kid. The boy pushes his hair back away from his eyes, a false gesture; he's acting. The man knows: the boy's going to fight him, too, more and more before the trip is over.
Today she needs to rest, the man says, quietly. Can I give you a message? What she told me to say?
The boy nods and looks away from the man, out the windshield. They both watch the road as the man says the boy's name, and then:
Don't worry, honey, she said. Be brave and we'll talk soon. I want you to have a good time. I want you to be good. Try and relax and I'll give you a call in Colorado. Just think of this as a vacation. I love you, honey, very much.