Driver's Education Read Online Free PDF Page A

drops, I’ve heard. Or vitamins. Also cucumbers. And as his chin dissolves into my chest, as his arms hang limply to the middle of his thighs, I wish that was the case. That he smelled like an accumulation of all those things, instead of like me. Just like me.
    â€œOkay,” I say. “Now—set your hands on my waist.”
    He presses his lips together and then curls them inward toward his teeth; they vanish into each other, lineless pockets of skin. He mumbles, but without making any sounds.
    â€œDad, please—just put your hands on my waist so you can steady yourself.”
    â€œWe’re missing the start of it,” he says.
    â€œWe won’t miss anything.”
    His hands don’t move. They continue to hang, but now with added weight and defiant girth. He won’t look at me.
    â€œFine,” I tell him. “Try not to fall.”
    I pull the shirt down first, releasing it from his neck, adjusting its collar so it sits squarely on his breastbone, buttoning the flaps over his exposed flesh. Then, the belt: I twist the canvas as I lower it to his waist. He yelps as it pulls against his skin; I go tense.
    â€œShit. Shit, I’m sorry, Dad. Just one more pull.”
    When I’ve lowered him back to the sofa, and when I’ve taken my place next to him, he says, “We’ve missed it.”
    â€œWe haven’t missed anything. It’s twelve thirty-one.”
    â€œThen.” He lifts a chin toward the television, where there’s an infomercial for a pillow that changes temperature as you sleep. “Then the television is broken.”
    â€œIt’s not broken. It’s just on the wrong station. Let me change it.”
    I find the remote control wedged between two cushions. I scan upward, pass network television, basic cable, basic premium, the various stations I can’t afford but have bought since his arrival, for his entertainment;I climb to channels that are higher than I believed channels existed. I stop when I see the girls: padded knees and stickered helmets. Painted roller skates.
    Watching Derby Death Match 2000: I’d say that it’s one of the more beguiling rituals we’ve accidentally adopted over the past fifteen months. I can’t remember how it started. Did I, during one of my panicked fits to entertain him, think that girls in skates, bludgeoning one another into a pulp of tits and ass, might serve as some sort of balm? Or was it him? When he could still operate the controller, before the damned thing became some tormented maze, was it then that he stumbled upon channel 378? When he called me down anxiously and said, Colin, look. Look at this.
    The two teams competing today are the ShEvil Dead and the Wrecking Belles. On the screen, the rosters: names like Angel Maker and Astronaughty; Edith Shred and Sugar Pusher. The pivots and the blockers align themselves in packs—slender, beautiful, wicked—while the two jammers square off behind them. Then, once the referee has blown his whistle, and once the first pivot has been slammed to the track, we begin our separate game.
    â€œThat one,” he says. “The lady who just fell—she has the cheekbones.”
    â€œWindigo Jones? Her nose sits too high on her forehead.” I lean forward. “The Wrecking Belles jammer, though. She’s about her height.”
    â€œShe wasn’t that tall.”
    â€œThe helmet adds a few inches.”
    As the girls fall down, we speed up:
    â€œThat one.”
    â€œOr that one.”
    â€œOr that one.”
    But the fact is none of them look like Mom.
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    He entered Phelps Memorial’s stroke recovery clinic forty-eight hours after Finn found him. He stayed there for two weeks before it was suggested, or encouraged—by doctors, nurses, therapists, administrative assistants, men in plain clothes on the streets—that he either move into a home or, alternatively, to San