Fitting Ends Read Online Free PDF Page A

does everything methodically these days, as if he’s gone blind and knows the room only as a diagram of its positions.
    As Scott is leaning against the counter, he notices that the Bible his father has lying there is opened to a different place—Matthew, now, instead of Luke. It makes Scott nervous. Though he’s never seen his father read it, Scott knows he must, in private. He tries to imagine his father praying, and it makes him shudder. Just seeing the Bible there, the first time, sent a chill through him, the idea that his father had changed so much. Scott dreaded the moment his father would bring it up, sitting him down at the kitchen table to discuss Jesus and being born again, and he would feel obliged to listen politely, like he did the time he accidentally invited the Jehovah’s Witness girls into his fraternity’s living room. But Scott’s father has never said a word about religion. He doesn’t seem to know what to say most of the time, and Scott often feels as if they’re strangers trapped in an elevator together, slowly shifting their weight and staring at the unopening door, the small talk drained out of them.
    â€œSo.” His father sighs at last. “Pretty good meeting tonight. I like that Taylor. He’s a bright guy.”
    â€œMm-hmm. He’s good.”
    â€œI don’t suppose you’ll want to take any psychology when you get back to college. You’ll have had enough of that.” His father smiles, pouring hot water into their mugs. He stirs the coffee with a fork and his expression doesn’t change, as if he’s forgotten that he’s still smiling.
    â€œProbably,” says Scott. This is one of the games they have going between them—at least that’s how Scott thinks of it. They are pretending that Scott is going back to school in the fall. Maybe Scott’s father half believes it. But all Scott himself can think of is how it will feel to be at a party, standing there with a soda while people are laughing and dancing and drunk, watching them passing out cups of beer at the bar. He imagines his friends saying guarded things: “How are you doing?” trying not to let their eyes drift down to the drinks in their hands. Scott wouldn’t be able to stand it for a minute, he knows for a fact, though he can’t bring himself to admit it to his father. September is still months away.
    â€œI don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting your scholarship back, do you?” his father says. He keeps at this point, meticulously as at everything else.
    â€œProbably not,” Scott says. He sighs, sips coffee. They blink at one another in the sharp fluorescent light.
    Even now, after all that has happened, Scott still finds himself longing for a drink. One of the first things he learned in detox was that, for him, sleep and alcohol are intertwined. After the coffee and cigarettes it takes to get through a day, he’ll lie down and the soft hush hush of his heart will start to pump in his ears. It seems like only a drink can muffle the sound.
    There are times, during the day, when Scott is sure there’s nothing wrong with him. Everybody overindulges when they’re young, he tells himself, and maybe everyone was overreacting to the thing with the ouzo. Maybe all that people wanted, really, was to give him a good scare, teach him a lesson. But then, as the day wears on, his hands will start to shake, or his head will hum, and he’ll wonder whether he belongs back in the psych ward. He’ll start to feel like he’s become as tired and used up as his father.
    It doesn’t help to be here, at his father’s place in rural Nebraska. To see the fields and untraveled dirt roads stretching out in every direction. To hear the soft static buzz of cicadas and the cows lowing in the pasture across the road and the slow thud of a distant irrigation pump hovering in the air as he tries to close his