Archive of Our Own

Joe is watching his mother's pale fingers wind around and around the cord of the phone, tangling it up between her knuckles, twisting the knots so tightly that her fingers start to go a little purple. The cradle jerks away from the wall when she pulls too hard. It balances precariously on the edge of the countertop, and she doesn't seem to notice.

"Um... sorry. What?"

Her voice has always been this thin, warbling thing, and she has this habit of halting between syllables, as if she's never really sure if anyone actually wants to hear the rest of what she has to say. He has tried to instill more confidence in her, telling her to speak more clearly and bluntly, telling her that letting other people walk all over her, even in conversation, is intolerable. But she has never been able to adjust her manner of speaking— he had come into her life too late to change that small detail about her. It's just one thing on a long list of things that were deeply carved into her damaged self by the time Joe found her again.

"He—" There's that familiar full stop, like the sentence has ended there. A moment later: "Is?"

At the second word, her voice lifts in a way that Joe can't identify. It's not surprise, but it's not confusion, either. He crosses his arms and leans back into the countertop. He can faintly hear his sister's voice coming thick through the phone, but he can't hear enough to tell what she's saying— it's just a bland, wordless drone that occasionally lifts in volume but doesn't become any more comprehensible.

"I'm sorry." His mother brings her free hand up to her cheek and rubs it, wincing. "Like, I didn't know it was that bad. I didn't know."

Joe gets impatient. He reaches over and nudges her, wanting to know what his sister is saying. Her eyes tear up to him for just a moment, but she doesn't really look at him, which only increases his agitation. He hates a lot of things — it'd take forever to list them all out — and being stared through is one of them. Coming from his mother, though, it feels like more than just a minor irritation. It feels like a personal offense.

"Okay." Her eyes have gone all cloudy and unfocused. "Yeah. You can, like, you can talk to him, right? With all the details. And, and junk. I gotta... I need to think about this."

Then she's turning to Joe and pressing the phone into his hand.

"What's—" he begins, almost dropping it, but then his mother's shouldering past him, the hand at her cheek now moving to cover her mouth. He hears her walk through the hallway and, a few moments later, a door shut. Then nothing.

His expression sours as he lifts the phone to his ear, instantly in a bad mood.

"What d'you want?" he demands of his sister.

"Joe, he's dead," she says simply. "He passed away this morning."

The panic attack, which feels like it lasts hours, makes him black out. That's the only good thing about it. When it finally fades away he realizes he's bleeding from the nose; he'd hit his face on the countertop on the way down.

He realizes that only ten minutes have passed. He is already ten minutes into a world without his father in it.

Joe can't remember his father as being anything but old.

His earliest memory goes like this: he's about four or five years old, and he's at a park with his sister and father. His father's curled over his cane, walking with difficulty, and his sister is helping him along. Joe is making leaps and bounds ahead of them both, wanting to reach the bright red train that curves a track within the park before it leaves for the last time that day. He's calling over his shoulder, demanding them both to hurry. Dad can't run like you, his sister says, walking slowly next to him. You'll need to wait. And then right after she says that, the whistle goes off, and Joe stands there and watches the train roll away. He bites his father on the leg so hard that his sister has to take him to get stitches, and he can distinctly remember the exact color of the paint on the waiting room walls as he lay on the floor screaming and sobbing.

Every memory plays out in a similar way, except for one thing: Joe's anger thickens more in each one. Sometimes it's white-hot and furious and sometimes it's insidious and barbed but it's always there, and it had always been growing, and Joe never, ever tries to think about it, especially not when he has to remember all the times other children had asked him why he had no mother.

The last time Joe had seen his father was two months ago.

"I don't think you want to visit him," Posie had said. He had been in hospice care for a month already.

"You're right. I don't."

She did not contend his point. "It's a very different setting than what you're used to, Joe," she warned, and that was all she had to say before she started the car.

He barely recognized his father. The year Joe had neglected to see him may well have been thirty. He looked like a corpse, lying in bed hooked up to machines that hummed and beeped and were the only real indication that the person they were connected to was even breathing.

"Oh my fucking God," he said, and the young trainee nurse in the room gave him a scandalized look, but he hardly noticed her. He stepped close enough to be able to hook his hands around the side rail of the bed and stared down at his father. All of his hair had gone, and his skin was stretched so loose and thin that he thought he could see the outline of his skull through it. His eyes were open, but they were not focused.

Posie stood in the doorway, and she did not move even when Joe gave her a wild look over his shoulder, searching her for answers. She had nothing to say, and she offered no explanation. This was the end of his father's life playing out in real-time slow-motion right in front of him. It all seemed so impossible and surreal.

He tried to think of something to ask of her, but he lacked the vocabulary to even begin to understand what he felt. Instead he tried this: "Is he awake?"

There was some silence as Posie moved aside for the trainee nurse, who was leaving the room, before she spoke, coming up beside Joe. "Let's see," she said, and in that moment Joe hated her crushed-gravel voice more than ever, because it cut so brutally and so inappropriately through the silence that it felt violating, somehow.

Posie did not seem to notice. She leaned forward and gently touched his— no, their father's cheek. His gaze focused somewhat. It slid slowly from Posie to Joe, then back again.

"Hello, Dad," said Posie, and Joe told himself not to tell her to shut up.

"Dad," he said.

There was no reply, but the empty gaze moved back again to Joe's face. And then his jaw moved. It was a morbid sight, and Joe could not tear his eyes away from it. No sound emerged. The silence stretched on for several more seconds, pulling into minutes, until it felt like they had been standing there for almost half an hour, staring at someone who wasn't even looking back.

Joe seized up, unable to withstand any more of it. "Say something," he said suddenly, spitting the words down into his father's face. "Say something alrea—"

Posie placed a hand against his arm, and he gave a full-body twitch. "Joe, he's in a lot of pain. He doesn't know where he is."

He stared at her, head moving jerkily, not wanting to understand, but instinctively bracing himself for what was coming.

"He doesn't remember," she said with finality. "He doesn't remember either one of us."

As soon as he got home from the hospital that night, Joe drank a lot of alcohol and then promptly proceeded to wreck his car and break five ribs. He decided later, upon thinking of the accident, that it hadn't entirely been intentional, but he could not accurately rely on reasoning that he could not fully remember. He had been rushed to the emergency room. His mother was there, off-shift but present and elated when he woke up fourteen hours later, bound to a hospital bed. Posie was there, too, and the first sound he heard when he opened his eyes was her sobbing. That had been the first time he'd ever seen her cry.

His head hurt. "You just turned forty," he'd said to her. "Grow up."

Joe listens, blank-faced, as Posie talks about the burial. He doesn't know the first fucking thing about Protestant funerals, and he doubts she knows, either. But she talks like she knows what she's saying, even though Joe can't remember a single instance when she'd ever asked him to attend church at her side. Maybe he'd just always seemed like an unfixable, godless little asshole to her. Or maybe it was because she wasn't his mother, and she never had been, and so she'd never been obligated to inform his moral backbone.

It doesn't matter now, not when Joe is facing down his twentieth birthday and the father they share is dead, and Joe tells himself that he couldn't care less anyway.

Posie is talking about what their father had wanted for his funeral. "He was a doctor," she says. "He was a well-loved doctor, and there's going to be a lot of people who are going to want to come."

His jaw sets, and he cracks his molars together, and he looks at his sister and says, very slowly and patiently, thinking that she does not understand, "Dad had no friends here."

"He did," she says, and to her credit, she does not bristle at Joe's condescending tone. "He knew a lot of people, Joe. Alzheimer's took that away from him, but he knew a lot of people. He was a renowned doctor before you were born— before he had to retire."

At that, he laughs, sharp and loud and desperate. "No matter how many times you say that," he says, forcing the laughter onward, letting it twist out of his gut hot and painful, "It never seems any more true."

She bows her head and rubs a hand against her cheek, which then slides upwards, over her temple, and into her dark hair. She gives a low, throaty sound that Joe interprets as displeasure, and, riled further, he continues: "And even if he was everyone's favorite fucking doctor or whatever— he forgot everyone who might want to come. All of them, if they're not dead too. So how can you even be sure that's what he'd have wanted? A bunch of people he couldn't even remember standing over his casket talking about all the things he'd forgotten ten years ago?"

"That isn't fair, Joe," says Posie, and for once her monotone voice swells with something different. "After all of this time, you've never once tried to understand—"

What? The words rip through him before he even has a chance to fully comprehend just what they mean— he only understands that they make him angry. He stands. The table rattles, shoved out by his hips, and just like that, his voice lifts to a shout. He has never had any grasp on his anger. "Because no one's ever fucking tried to explain it to me!"

That's the thing, though. She's right. He doesn't understand. He's never understood. Joe's life is fractured up in shards and it always has been and it feels like it always will be. He has never had a place even within his own family and the bit of family he does have now is only because he had to go looking for her himself.

Posie looks tired. She cradles her head in her hands. "Are you going to come to the funeral," she says, and there is no inflection at the end to prove that it's a question. It sounds like she's already made up her mind.

Joe changes his plans on the spot just to spite her. "Yes," he says, even though it's the last thing in the world he wants to do.

The second panic attack doesn't happen until later that night, when his thoughts begin to wander and he contemplates the finality of it all. He thinks about how his father is gone, permanently gone, never again to walk the Earth or speak and breathe and be, and how one day it will happen to every single other person he knows, too. That includes him, but it's no more comforting; it's an even scarier thought.

There is nothing stopping the march of time and death is the one experience all people will eventually have in common. This is a notion that is reiterated everywhere Joe looks when he broaches the topic of death. His father was old— it had been his time. It'll be everyone's time eventually, and eternity is staring him down.

His cell phone goes off in the middle of the attack, when Joe is rocking on his heels, trying to regulate his hysterical breathing. The gasps are hurting his still-healing ribs pretty badly. He picks up his phone, grateful for the distraction; the name displayed is that of Orel Puppington.

He puts his phone back down and lets it ring.

He finds his mother curled up beside the dollhouse she hasn't been able to throw away, despite Joe's best efforts. She has not been to work for the past three days, and she has been in this state the entire time. He kneels beside her.

It had not taken long for Joe to realize, after finding her again at the age of twelve, that his mother's emotions were often infantile in the worst possible ways. She felt everything so strongly and so acutely that just being near her when she was depressed caused Joe to feel upset, too. She would always be his mother, but his relationship with her came to embody a complexity that he would never be able to relate with anyone else. He is her caretaker, in a way, because she is fragile— because something broke her a long time ago, and he can only fix the parts of her that were left over and not completely destroyed.

Her hand rests inside of one of the rooms. It's one of those side cut-out dollhouses with a dissected view of everything inside. All is where it should be; there is a cozy little kitchen, rooms for a boy and a girl, a living room with a scaled-down television set, and a master bedroom where the dolls are usually slumbering. Right now his mother's hand lays inside the kitchen. All of the small plastic furniture is in disarray. She's opening the tiny refrigerator door with one fingertip, then closing it again, over and over. Her bleach-blonde hair is plastered to her forehead. She doesn't move when Joe reaches over and pushes it out of her eyes for her.

"The funeral date was decided," is what he eventually says. He squirms a hand inside the little kitchen next to her and puts the chairs upright. "It's on Saturday. This Saturday."

When she doesn't say anything, Joe looks down at her face. Her dark eyes are shiny with tears. She's blinking fast.

Joe doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know how to understand how she feels any more than he understands how he feels. But he'd much rather try to figure her out than deal with his own shit. He carefully lays down on the floor next to her, face-to-face. She looks at him; he offers her a smile.

"Oh, Joe," she says, and chokes.

His smile fades. "I'm going to go," he says. "But I don't know if I can without you." And he tells himself that if she comes — if he's got her there — maybe he can get through it.

She snaps the refrigerator door shut again, then closes her eyes, as if she's fatigued already by the conversation. Joe decides that maybe he should give her more time, even though he's already given her three days. But then she speaks.

"I never got to find out why," she says.

Joe tries to pick this sentence apart and find the meaning before she has to go to task and explain it for him. His mother rarely ever discusses his father, and he never asks her to. There's never any reason to do it. They'd never had anything resembling a real relationship— at least not from what Joe knows. On the few times that Joe had gone to visit the old man over the past few years, she never accompanied him. She had never expressed any desire to do so. She had only asked for custody, and when she got it, there was no more communication between the two— and what communication did occur was almost entirely negotiated by Posie.

He can't figure out what she means, and he regrets having to ask her to explain. "What d'you mean, Mom," he says in a low, soft voice that is reserved only for her.

Her eyes are still closed. "Why he made me throw you away." Then: "Why he threw me away." And her voice cracks, and then she's sobbing softly, burying her face in the carpet.

Oh, he thinks, and he is reminded again of just how deeply her damage runs and the accompanying pain that is knowing that he will never, ever be able to make it right. He hurts for her. He hurts for himself. He hurts for the decade that they never had together, and he hates that the one thing that kept them apart for so long is also still hurting her even after he's dead.

He realizes it suddenly then. It's a numb thought: I am never going to forgive my father. Just like that, everything he's ever felt about the man is all at once condensed into such a simple, short sentence. Even thinking that way is probably a sin, a part of him thinks, and it probably adds another check mark to the many things that are going to eventually land him in Hell, if there is one.

But it's the truth.

Joe's reaction is instinctive. He puts his arms around his mother and he holds her to his chest until all of the tears have drained out. Later, he carries her to her room and makes her comfortable, and then he falls asleep on the floor beside her bed.

Moralton is a cage.

Joe hates that he knows everyone who shows up for the memorial service by name. He hates that he is familiar with each and every one of them, and he hates that he knows most everyone's secrets. At nineteen, he could have been out of here by now— like Tommy, who had fled pretty much the day after graduation. He's way over on the east coast now, studying at some secular university on a full ride scholarship; his parents never talk about him, and neither do most of the townspeople. Joe's envy would have consumed him if he didn't have a very valid reason — his mother — for staying.

They filter into the church in groups. There is no one that Joe does not recognize, and he finds it hard to believe that his father was close to any one of these people or that he even mattered to them. He mildly resents the people of Moralton even on good days, but now he just wishes the whole building would burn down with them all in it.

No one is talking to him. That might be because he's got his fists clenched and a ready-to-go look on his face, or it might be because everyone still thinks of him as Dr. Secondopinionson's illegitimate son and no one wants to acknowledge him, even now.

"Joe."

There's no mistaking the velvet-soft voice of his uncle. Joe jerks his head up. He's standing there in his mustard-yellow suit, standing out horribly among the rest of the people crowded inside of the church. If Joe were in a better mood, he might high-five him for his tasteless choice in outfits.

Daniel slides into the pew next to him. Joe's always called him an uncle, but they're not really related. He and Posie share the same mother, and it's only through her that Joe can call the guy his family, but he's always been his uncle regardless. Joe always had to take what he could get when it came to family.

"Hey," he mutters, staring down at his lap so he doesn't have to stare at the gold necklace gleaming over his uncle's hairy chest, as hilariously ill-chosen the accessory is for the event.

"Tough stuff, kid," Daniel sighs. He leans back where he's seated, arms slung casually over the back of the pew. "He was really old. I'm surprised he lasted so long, really."

"Are you." Joe watches as Reverend Putty takes the microphone to begin the service and people begin to settle into their seats. Posie is seated several rows ahead, right at the front. As if she can feel Joe staring, she turns. Her eyes flick from Joe to Daniel; her expression shifts in a way Joe doesn't quite understand, and then she's turning back towards the reverend.

"Your mother?" Daniel prompts him, voice lowering a bit as Putty begins his spiel. "Nursula. Where is she?"

"She's not coming," says Joe, and he hopes that he isn't asked why.

Daniel, thankfully, doesn't ask. "I talked to Posie. She says you've been all over the place. She was worried you'd do something crazy again." He lifts a hand; over his hairy knuckles are a number of gold rings that perfectly match his necklace. "I said you still got some ribs that could take a breaking. You'll be fine."

He says it so casually that Joe really believes it for a second, before the feeling is gone. His thick eyebrows lower, and his expression sours. "Well, she doesn't know shit. It's not like I got in that accident on purpose to begin with. Who the fuck would want to wreck their car on purpose." It feels like an absurd thing to be talking about as Reverend Putty is trying to memorialize his father, but Joe is extremely grateful for the diversion. He's trying to block out the nasally drone of the reverend's voice anyway.

"Yeah," Daniel says, and he's smiling in that sleepy-satisfied manner of his, before he repeats: "You'll be fine."

Joe doesn't really hear it. "I can't believe he's gone," he says numbly.

Daniel doesn't bat an eye. He turns his head a little, gives Joe a look, and speaks bluntly. "Well, get with the program, kid. You've had a whole lifetime to figure it out."

It cuts through the fat and right to the heart of it, and Joe twitches. Part of him wants to stand up, cause a hideous commotion in this (apparently) sacred place, and scream What the fuck did you say to me and throw a punch even though he knows that his uncle is one of the only people in town who could easily physically overpower him. The other part of him wants to get up and run the fuck out of the building.

He does neither. He does go red in the face, though, and Daniel only looks at him unsympathetically, and they spend the rest of the service in total silence. Joe doesn't hear a word the reverend says.

Later, the service comes to a close, and there is some time allotted for guests to convene, although Joe isn't completely sure that that's what's really happening; it's not like he planned this whole thing, and he has no other experiences to compare it to. People are just sort of standing around. No one's really talking much. Everything about the atmosphere in the building makes him uncomfortable. Why devote so much time to someone who isn't even around to appreciate it?

Posie seems like she wants to talk to him, because she keeps looking at him over the shoulders of other people, but Joe keeps his hands shoved in his suit jacket pockets and his head down, and she doesn't approach him. Neither does anyone else.

Someone's shadow eventually falls in front of him.

He looks up. It's Orel. He's standing there by himself. Joe can't recall seeing the Mayor or his wife, but they have to be milling around somewhere. Orel's smiling, which just makes Joe withdraw further.

"You called me about fifteen times," he says in dull greeting.

"I wanted to check on you," Orel says unnecessarily, which makes Joe grimace. He has, in his opinion, never done anything to deserve the penalty of Orel's aggressive friendship, and yet it has followed him around since he was twelve years old. Orel is the kind of person who is constantly texting 'just to say hi'. He's the only person who consistently posts to Joe's Facebook wall (and it's almost always a picture of a cute animal, and one hundred percent of the time Joe hides the post). He's the only friend Joe has who actually continued to give a shit about him after high school, but that might just be because Orel's stuck here in Moralton too and solidarity never hurt anyone, or maybe it's because he's a gullible do-gooder who's dumb enough to care.

"I'm fine," says Joe, and he puts a sneer on his face, but his heart's not in it.

"I'm sorry," Orel says kindly.

"I'm not," says Joe, and then he thinks to himself for what has to be the thousandth time that Orel Puppington is a good person, a really, truly good person, because he doesn't even blink at his cliché, embittered, predictable answer.

Orel places a hand on Joe's arm. "I know," he says. His voice is flat, but there is conviction in it. "It's okay to not be sorry."

No— never mind. For a single, absurd, misguided second, he thought he'd understood Orel Puppington, but he doesn't understand him at all. Orel has never been nearly as translucent as Joe chalks him up to be in his head. He's always been one of the only people who'd known the truth about Joe's situation at home. Maybe he shouldn't be surprised by his insight, but he is.

The knot that's been lodged in his throat all day tightens. It's painful; he can feel it right up in his nose, making his breaths faint and weak. "You're not going to tell me to forgive him." He doesn't hide his confusion. It's out there, flayed and vulnerable.

"No." Orel lets go. His face is hard. "Listen, Joe. Forgiveness is a personal thing. It's like... a little thing between just you and God. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. A lot. And in the end, I think you don't even have to forgive another person to their face if you don't want to. You choose to forgive someone for you. Not for their sake. For you. And just like you can choose to forgive them, you can choose not to, too. And, you know, I think God understands that perfectly."

There's a weird thing about the way Orel talks about God. It's always made Joe uncomfortable. Orel takes the name of the Lord so often and so casually that when he does, it always seems like he's relating an anecdote about a childhood friend. Like he really, truly believes that he's held actual dialogues with an invisible old man in the sky and that relating these experiences is completely normal. It unnerves Joe.

Or there's another, easier answer: Orel Puppington is just another pretentious, self-righteous Moralton hypocrite who uses faith to bolster all of his opinions, even when they're wrong, just like the rest of them.

Joe looks at him. He's silent, but despite the repulsed feeling throbbing in his chest, he hopes Orel continues. And he does.

"And I think... You made your decision a long time ago, didn't you?" Orel is still staring right at him, trying to meet the gaze Joe refuses to relinquish. "About your father. About forgiving him. You made up your mind a long, long time ago."

Somehow, that isn't even remotely close to what Joe expected to hear. He feels like his insides have been carved out. You made up your mind a long, long time ago. He has never thought of it that way, but now it seems so obvious that it's humiliating, and his legs go weak beneath him. Not just humiliating, but devastating, somehow.

Orel has done nothing innovative by pointing out the obvious, but resentment strangles Joe's throat anyway, and his mouth moves soundlessly, his cheeks flaring. He wishes he could punch Orel right in the jaw, and he begins to weigh the pros and cons of doing such a thing in a church.

He can't. Or he shouldn't. Either way, he won't. He settles instead for folding his arms across his chest, speaking in a thick, shaken way. "Go away, Orel."

Orel stands there for a lingering moment. His pale eyes are peering intently into Joe's face. "Okay," he says placidly. "Okay, Joe. I'll go away for now. But I'm not leaving." And he turns, broad-shouldered, straight-backed, comfortable even in the face of Joe's anger.

Joe begrudges him his entire existence, but because he has never had good timing, or tact, or any sense of propriety, he calls after him, even though he's halfway out the door. "Thanks."

Orel's arm lifts. His fingers spread in acknowledgement, before he's limping out of the room.

He decides, at the last minute, that he doesn't want to see his father put in the ground.

Posie isn't happy. Well, actually, she never looks happy, but now more than ever her face has contorted into an expression of such profound displeasure that it instills a deep sense of schadenfreude in Joe. He thinks — actually hopes — for a moment that she'll try to convince him otherwise and give him a good reason to get loud with her, but she doesn't.

"You don't have to," she says in her sandpaper voice. "But if you're going to change your mind, it has to be within the next five minutes."

"I won't." They're already at the gates of the cemetery. The burial is due to start soon. If he looks across the lawn past all the gravestones — and he's trying not to — he'd be able to see where people are congregating like one big black storm cloud. Joe holds his hand out for the car keys. She withdraws her arm.

"No," she says plainly, and he can't blame her for denying him.

"I'll come back and pick you up," he says, attempting to reason with her. It doesn't work; he hadn't really expected it to.

Posie's gaze lowers. "You can't spend the rest of your life avoiding everything that bothers you, Joe," she says, and although she isn't pinching her nose, her voice has softened slightly. "You're not a child any more."

After Daniel's comment earlier, this hardly stings, although ordinarily such a comment might send him into a rage. It pisses him off in a way he can tolerate and control. Right now, that's the best thing he can get, and he grasps onto it. "And you're not my Mom," is all he says in response.

"No," she agrees. "And if you aren't coming, then you should go home to her."

He does. He walks home and tries not to think about anything at all. The streets are quiet; the people who aren't attending the burial are spending their Saturday doing better things. He shrugs off his suit jacket and makes it to the modest condominium he shares with his mother about half an hour later. When he steps inside, he calls out for her, but there's no reply.

"Mom?"

There's no answer even when he calls a second time. He throws his jacket over the back of a chair and walks through empty pastel-colored rooms. He finds a note addressed to him folded up on the kitchen counter.

I decided to go back to work today

Pls come visit, I'm sure I'll be bored :(

Love n' stuff, Mom

The sad face is drawn big and pink, in fluorescent marker.

That's how Joe winds up in the hospital on the day of his father's funeral. His mother is attending the nurses' station, like usual. She's pale, but her makeup's all in place and so is her hair, and she's smiling when he approaches her. There are a lot of people who underestimate his mother and write her off. They don't realize just how smart she is, or how much effort it takes her just to be.

He sits down behind the counter right next to her, even though he knows he's not supposed to be there. She leans in and straightens his tie. "You didn't go," she says, and her voice is stronger than it has been for the last week.

"No," he says. "I was going to, but I..." He trails off. He doesn't know what to say.

"That's okay," she says warmly. "I was, you know, thinking in my headbrain and stuff. I can't just lay around being all sad about that junk. What I have now is... awesome." She's glowing, and Joe feels like he could glow right along with her. "I've got you, and a job I actually kinda like now, and whatever happened in the past is all, um... You know, pastlike and beforeish."

His lips twitch; he cannot resist a smile. His mother's mercurial emotions are a blessing as much as they are a curse. It takes only the slightest positive motivation to set her back on the right track. He doesn't know what's caused it for her, but he is happy about it. Looking at her, he is able to forget that at this very moment, someone is pouring dirt over his father's casket.

His mother reaches out to grasp his hands. "We're gonna be okay, Joe," she says, and he believes her.

Two days later, the doorbell rings. Orel is standing there when Joe opens it. His hands are folded in front of him like he's a missionary or something, and Joe doesn't wait for him to speak. "Let's go," he says, because he's not about to invite him inside. Orel smiles bright; apparently this is what he wanted, anyway. They walk out together, and Joe has to keep slowing down to let him catch up. Every now and then Orel drags his leg. It's something that took all of their classmates years to stop teasing him for.

Soon they're at the pub. Orel orders apple juice with a completely straight face. Joe presses his fake ID onto the counter and is reminded again of just how much no one really gives a shit about anything or anyone around Moralton when the bartender, who definitely knows exactly who he is and that he is definitely under the legal drinking age, accepts it without hesitation, like he always has. He lines up shots of whiskey and knocks them down between sips of water.

"You still don't drink," he says finally, looking sideways at Orel after his fourth or fifth one. The pile of change, and empty shot glasses, is slowly growing on the countertop.

"Nope," says Orel. "Don't plan on it, either." He sits on the bar stool the same way he sits in church: perfect posture, hands clasped on his lap.

Joe studies him closely. The years have taken almost all of the baby fat off of his face. Orel's more or less the spitting image of his father, but he's a photo negative if Joe had to categorize it. He has none of the hard lines that mark Clay Puppington as the embittered, directionless drunk he'd been for years. Joe would say that he'd driven Moralton into the ground, but the town had always been at proverbial rock bottom anyway.

Once Joe had thought that he would have taken any other father but his own. Not Orel's, though. Never Orel's.

"Shit," he mutters. "Why did you bring me here? Ugh. This is dumb. You don't drink. And you know the last time I got drunk I nearly killed myself?"

It's a rhetorical question; everyone in town knows. There are few secrets in their little town.

Orel pokes his straw at the ice floating at the bottom of his glass. "Well, I'm here, so that's not going to happen this time."

"And I guess I don't have a car to crash," says Joe, and he laughs a little. How absurd it is that the lack of a car to crash is his smallest problem right now.

Orel laughs, too, but he straightens his face up right away. "That's not something to joke about, Joe," he says sternly.

"You're laughing, dummy."

"I guess I am. Sorry," says Orel, and he sounds so sincere that Joe has to fight the urge to roll his eyes up to the ceiling.

"Whatever," says Joe. He's a little dizzy from the drink already, and he's thinking about the accident again. He presses a hand against his left side, where all five of his broken ribs are. They'll probably always be a little out of alignment, according to his mother. "Did you know that there's nothing you can do about broken ribs?"

"Nothing?" asks Orel. He lifts an eyebrow, staring at Joe over the rim of his glass.

"Nothing," repeats Joe. "You can't stitch them up or nail them back together or put them in bandages or a cast. You just deal with it. You lay in bed and you deal with it and you hope it fixes itself."

"Gosh, Joe," says Orel. "Does it still hurt?" He's watching Joe's face, like he's searching for something. It makes Joe a little uncomfortable.

"Yeah," he says, looking away. "Yeah. I still have to do breathing exercises sometimes." He takes another shot and feels the liquor flare in his chest.

Orel's hand presses against his bad leg, atop his thigh, right over the spot where — years ago, while changing for gym class — Joe had once noticed a hideous, twisted scar. "It's something you can learn to live with," he says.

Joe claws a hand into his hair, trying to stave off the dizziness. "Maybe."

"And you can always count your blessings every day. You have a lot of blessings, you know."

Joe orders another round of shots.

An hour later, Orel is guiding him out of the bar, an arm around his shoulders. It's a surreal sight: Orel with his limp and Joe staggering on both feet, both of them squinting into the streetlights. Joe sways against his companion, trying to string his thoughts together coherently.

"I better get you home," Orel says worriedly.

"Don't," says Joe abruptly. "I'm fine." And he rocks violently on his feet, nearly buckling over. "Look," he groans then, feeling a cold sweat start, "Just take me to your place. I'll sleep it off. My Mom'll get all weird and upset if she sees me like this."

It's got to be the most pathetic thing he's ever said to Orel, and certainly the most information he's ever willingly volunteered about himself, but Orel doesn't even pause. "Okay," he agrees immediately, but Joe gets the impression that Orel might agree to just about anything right now. He recalls that he isn't even sure why Orel showed up to spend time with him in the first place today. He's just a weird guy. He's probably trying to earn further cred with Jesus or something, even though Joe's demonstrably showed over a period of years that he is probably beyond saving.

The amusing thought of that is what holds him together until they get to Orel's house. Only Bloberta is home, and she gives them only one numb look before her lips tighten and she's turning away from the both of them. "Why don't you sit in the backyard," she says in a detached manner that extends no offer of debate. "It's a nice night for watching the stars."

Orel apologizes to her, and then he's ushering Joe out through the back door. "She's worried you might throw up on her floor," Orel informs him once they're settled in the backyard and he's pressed Joe down into one of the Adirondack chairs.

But she's not wrong. The sky is clear tonight, and the stars are bright pinpricks against the expansive black. They all swirl together in Joe's vision.

There's a lot of silence then. For once, nothing is happening. Joe is grateful for it.

Eventually, Orel breaks the quiet. What comes out of his mouth is so unwanted that Joe can hardly believe he's saying it. "Have you thought about what I said about forgiveness?"

Joe recoils, jerking up out of his chair. "We're still on that?" he manages.

"I've been thinking about it," says Orel gently. "I just noticed that you didn't attend the burial."

"So?"

Orel's hands go up. Not defensively, but in a beckoning manner, as if he's okay with Joe's anger. "And there's nothing wrong with that. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

He doesn't get it. He doesn't get Orel Puppington. He doesn't get why they're still friends, or why they're sitting together like this talking about the things Joe's trying so hard to forget. "Then why the Hell are you bringing it up again?"

"I just think that maybe if there's some feelings you haven't worked out yet, you could just—"

"Just do what, Orel?" Joe stands up from the chair. It's a mistake; he nearly collapses backwards into it, but he stumbles and regains his balance, awkwardly. Once he starts talking, it all starts to flow out of him, tumbling hot and sharp out of his mouth. His whole body feels like it's gone taut, like he's been rooted in place by anger. "Do what? Talk to God? Get Jesus's fucking advice about the whole thing? Tell me, Orel. Tell me just what you think I should do, so I can do it and then fuck it up with my best intentions, just like you fuck up half the things you do! Tell me, Orel, because you're so fucking enlightened!"

It's dark out, but he can see Orel's face perfectly. It's a dull mask devoid of any emotion. This both unsettles and infuriates Joe; he'd been expecting hurt, or surprise. Even anger. Not this. His voice only gets louder.

"What are you even trying to do?" he screams. "Make me your Bible Buddy again? It's always some kind of religion thing for you, isn't it? And when I call your dumb ass out on it, you'll say, oh, Joe, it wasn't for me, this isn't about my self-righteousness or my big fat ego, it was for you—"

Orel stands. He's nearly as tall as Joe, might be just as wide, and he's a lot smarter. He looks at him, totally silent, as if waiting for him to finish, and Joe hates it, he hates that Orel's not surrendering any emotion, hates that he's being so patient about the whole fucking thing. He hates that despite everything working against him and having the worst luck in the world, Orel still carries himself like a martyr. It's unbearable, it always has been, and this is the tipping point. Joe cuts his own sentence off by throwing a punch right at his face.

It sends Orel reeling back, nearly knocking him right into the chair. This at least elicits a proper response from him— shock. He lifts a hand to his cheek where the punch connected.

Joe doesn't wait for retaliation, and he knows that's unfair, because he doesn't even expect it. It's dirty to hurt someone who won't fight back. But there's whiskey singing through him and a lifetime of regrets crawling up and down his spine and he doesn't give a shit any more. He leaps forward and tackles Orel to the ground, aiming his fist again at his face.

But he's called it wrong. Orel's not just taking it. His fist cuts through the air and slams right into Joe's nose. He hears something crack, and he thrashes, rolling off of his friend and howling in rage. The blood flow starts almost immediately, running down into his mouth and making him gag. It's his second nosebleed of the week. Orel's on him again in a second, grabbing him by the shirt.

"Joe!" he says, and there is dismay in his voice. "Joe, please! I'm not trying to hurt you or make you feel bad. I promise. I—"

He barely hears it. His head's reeling. He cannot believe that Orel Puppington just punched him in the face. Instead of waiting for whatever it is Orel's trying to say, he goes for him again with a snarl, aiming a knee up at his gut and trying to get on top of him so he can pin him in place.

Orel rolls out from underneath him. Joe isn't sure if it's because Orel's more adept than he ever knew, or if it's because he's drunk off of his ass and can't coordinate anything he's doing worth a shit. It's probably a bit of both. He manages to land another punch to the side of Orel's head anyway, although the responding clip against his jaw makes him regret it.

"Fuck you!" Blood's pouring all down the front of his shirt. He reaches for Orel again, but Orel's hands lock strong around his wrists. Joe writhes, yanking back, infuriated.

Orel's face is right in his. He speaks clearly, but there is a tremble in his voice. He is more unnerved than his expression has allowed. "Listen to me." He's breathing hard. "You're my friend. And that's the only reason, Joe. That's it. It's because you're my friend, and I'm worried about you."

Joe's eyes are stinging. Orel's face becomes a blur.

"I am," he says, shuddering, "so fucking tired of your shit. I have been since the very first day we ever met."

"I'm sorry," says Orel. Joe sees that his lip has been split open, and it's started to bleed, creating a bright red stripe down his chin.

He slumps forward. Orel lets go of his wrists and wraps his arms around his back to hug him tight. Joe lets him.

He starts to sob, getting tears and blood all over the shoulder of Orel's shirt.

"I wasn't ready," he says, and Orel only murmurs shhh in response, relieving him of the burden of saying more.

It's not raining, the way it would be in a movie. It's a mild afternoon with a weak, filmy heat. Joe feels sodden anyway.

Posie had mentioned to him offhandedly that there was no family plot, but he finds himself surprised anyway to find the grave crowded on every side by the names of strangers. His father is going to turn to dust surrounded by the remains of people he never knew. A bitter feeling of loneliness wells hotly in Joe's chest. He thinks of the same thing happening one day to him, and the worn-down old panic grips him again.

He feels nauseous, swaying on his feet; he closes his eyes, straightens both legs, and steadies himself.

To ground himself, he focuses on the grave marker. It's gleaming with newness, standing out starkly among the ones surrounding it. That, too, makes Joe feel uncomfortable. He scans his father's name. His date of birth. His date of death. The inscription beneath it: Absent from the body, Present with the Lord.

"Doubt it," he mumbles.

But the marker's only been there for a week. Time will wear it down, just like the others. His father will become just another name to look at for everyone who will tread this ground in the future.

Step by step. Joe moves his gaze further down still until he's looking at the earth itself. It's innocuous. It's just grass. Still, he sidesteps the area, walking between the graves so he can kneel down by the marker. There are flowers gathered there right beneath the inscription. He wonders which ones are Posie's.

He carefully sets the bundle of purple hyacinths down with the others. They're a bright spot against the whites and soft yellows there. He stays crouched. After another moment, he gathers the resolve to rest a hand against the gravestone.

It's just stone, in the end, and it's nothing to be afraid of. He runs a hand over the smooth surface, and then he finds himself talking to it.

"You were always old," he says to it, and then he stops, as if expecting a response in the familiar scratchy voice. There's nothing, of course, but he lets the silence carry. Eventually he steels himself enough to be able to run a hand carefully over the grass spread out in front of the gravestone. His father is right beneath him.

Or maybe he's not. He's not here any more, after all. Absent from the body, he reads again. And it won't make a goddamn bit of difference what he does now. That won't change.

He tells himself to wait out the full ten minutes. Ten minutes is the time he and Orel had agreed upon. It had seemed like a round, healthy number. Healthy, he thinks with some eye-rolling amusement. Orel's a terrible influence.

But it's a quiet ten minutes. There is no racing heart or irregular breathing. There are no thoughts of a deep black nothing gnawing at him. Joe just sits and looks and listens and doesn't think about anything at all. His father's ghost will come calling eventually, and one day, he will have to answer. But not today. Ten minutes later, he pats the stone as he stands.

"Goodbye, Dad," he says.

Orel is waiting at the gates. Joe steps up beside him, and with a tilt of his head, indicates that he's ready to go. Orel's hand slides into his; their fingers bind together like latticework. Joe gives the cemetery one more glance, and then he lets Orel help him turn his back on eternity.