Good Morning!

Fiction

“Good morning, Lanie–” he says after the beep, and very suddenly he wishes he hadn’t started the voicemail at all. But it’s too late. He pauses for only half a second, but it feels like a lifetime. The dead air hangs there after his greeting like a black raincloud.

“I’m just calling again to check in,” he resumes, using the one hand not holding the corded phone to pick at the dead skin on his lower lip. “I’m not sure if you’re still ignoring me on purpose or not, but, you know, I’ve been thinking it over, and I think you made the right choice. I don’t know if we were ready. Even if I kept saying I was. You were right. Again.”

He looks out the window as he talks. The pavement of the driveway is wet, shiny with rain, and the sun is long since gone. It had only made a brief appearance this morning– forty minutes at best. But it was a good forty minutes.

He peels off a line of skin nearly an inch long from his lip. He lets it fall to the floor with the other bits of human dust.

“Even so, I miss you, and I’d like to take you out sometime, weather permitting. Your mom might still be mad at me, but I’m willing to hash it out with her if you’ve got the time. We can go to the drive-in this Friday if you’d like. They’re playing two horror pictures. It’ll be just like last year, you know? We’ll pour the Raisinets in the popcorn like you like. I don’t mind picking around them. We can take my dad’s car. He’s…”

He trails off again, tasting blood on his lips.

A truck– a big one– comes barreling past the outlet of his driveway, heading north, to where the heart of town lies. For some inexplicable reason, this makes him think of the doctor’s office that day. Perhaps it's the noise of the vehicle that sparks this memory. The drone of it. It reminds him of the sounds of the machines. He sees, not for the first time that morning, Lanie’s face in his mind. She’s crying. He blinks it away.

“... out of town,” he finishes lamely.

The noise of the eighteen-wheeler is dulling to a din. He wonders if she’ll be able to hear it later on the voicemail. If she listens to it, that is.

He sighs.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m not sure what else there is to do,” he says. “I’ve racked my brain with every possibility on how to make this right, and… gosh, I just–”

But he can't finish the sentence. She’s picked up the phone. There’s a crinkle on the other line, and then– bliss– her voice.

“Ethan?”

“Lanie! Hi! I was–”

“Stop calling my house.”

She hangs up.

Ethan stares out the window and at the edge of the driveway.

There are no cars now. It’s April, why would there be? The leaf peepers are this town’s only commerce, and they don't show up until the fall. Sure, summer sees a bit of traffic, but that’s still eons away. Ethan is stuck in the dead zone of spring, staring out the window at nothing, blood trickling from his lower lip, the phone still smushed against his ear, as if that may get him closer to Lanie again, as if that is as good as actual, physical contact.

The dial tone sings its one-note song. He listens for her voice in it.

Hears nothing.

Ethan rests the phone back into its cradle and walks into the kitchen.

It’s still morning, but he’s neglected breakfast; it’s been hard for Ethan to eat as of late, and even harder to keep the food down. Every meal he tries, he remembers the way the red Jell-O wiggled on the hospital tray when he stood up and bumped it accidentally. It plays over and over in his mind like a scene in a horror film. The Blob, perhaps.

He settles for coffee, and measures out ten spoonfuls of Folgers into a filter, then adds it to his father’s coffee maker, pours in the water, flicks the switch, and watches it brew.

Today is a Wednesday. He should be in school. Graduation is but a few months away, and here’s Ethan, watching the coffee pot gurgle and spit while he drums his fingers on the fake granite countertop.

This is life, he thinks. This is it.

The coffee is brewed. He hasn’t noticed any time pass, but he’s standing here now with a full pot of coffee. He pours a large cup, brings it into the den, and sits down in his father’s easy chair.

How long until they come home? He isn’t sure. Mom’s been working late, dad’s been on the bend. It could be well after midnight until he sees either of them again, his father especially. When he gets like this, he can be gone for a week at most. It’s already been five days.

He sips the coffee, burns his tongue.

It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which his parents love each other again; he knows they should– hell, they still live together– but he can’t imagine they do. Not after everything. They won’t even look at him anymore, let alone one another.

He sips the coffee again, burns his tongue.

There’s a spring poking out from the chair’s cushion, and as it jabs into him slightly, it makes him think about a blood pact he made at eleven with Jeremy Small, the boy who used to live next door, before his family split and he moved away in the sixth grade. It was the dog days of summer; the two boys had been out swimming by the creek. They cut their palms with a sliver of a Moxie bottle before promising… something. It’s funny, only six years ago, and Ethan can’t at all remember what they’d sworn about. It had seemed so real at eleven– hell, everything did– and now it was completely wiped from his memory, if it had ever been there at all. But he remembered the feeling of the cool, wet glass that day. The way the blood ran from his palm. The handshake. The prayer.

Ethan stares at the jagged scar on his left hand. He sips his coffee. Burns his tongue. Thinks of Lanie.

Then he rises, pours the rest of the cup down the sink, and heads to the garage, where his father keeps his hunting knives.

It may rain all morning, he thinks. But that’s fine. Just fine.