Read Online Freewill by Chris Lynch - Free Book Online Page B

after a World Series victory.
    Cleansing. Now don’t you feel foolish? How could you not have wanted this? Foolish, foolish. Clean is good. Clean is very very good. You love that feeling. Make a note, William, to remember that you love that feeling of clean even when getting into the shower seems like too much work.
    Toweling off. How many joys had you forgotten in three days? Even toweling off, the shedding of that new soapy skin, like a snake, shedding the old one only to emerge with more vibrant colors that were hidden underneath. Madly, you buff up the head, getting the hair to stand at attention to let the air coolly slide through, bracing the scalp, skull, possibly the brain. The stuff. That is the stuff. The stuff you forget, but that you must not, must not, must not forget, if you are going to make it. Promise not to forget, Will.
    So much of the nonsense of you has run down the drain by the time you have left the bathroom you are fairly bouncing as you push open your bedroom door. You are in the early stages of a laugh, aren’t you? Of a laugh at yourself, or at least that rancid self that would not groom himself. You are ready, to talk to Angela, to blow it all away, the foolishness that wasso inconsequential that all it took was for Angela to walk in and tell you you stink for the world to spin right once again.
    Only she is not there to tell. Why is she not there to tell? What are you thinking, Will? Are you thinking you scared her off? Are you thinking that she just got you into the shower in order to make her escape once she saw what a lost cause you actually were?
    Maybe you disappointed her by surviving.
    Are you thinking that she was right to go? Are you thinking that she was wrong to go? Are you thinking this just proves everything? That it is all preordained? That it is a matter of time? That you are beyond reach, and that even if you were not nobody really can be bothered to do the reaching? You are nobody’s responsibility in the end after all, isn’t that right? As nobody is really anybody’s responsibility.
    You are calm on the outside. You are standing there in your clean khakis and T-shirt, staring down at your jumbled N.Y. Yankees pajamas on the bed. You pick up the top, put it on, button it all the way up.
    Downstairs, you hear voices, and you follow.
    At the kitchen table are Angela, Gran, and Pops. The women are sipping tea. The man is breathing into the knuckles of his folded hands. All conversation stops as you walk in. Gran’s face is laminated as she lowers her cup, with smeary tears and runny nose. Pops’s face is a granite sculpture, dignifiedlifeless rendering of one of those great Greek philosophers who knew everything but never really existed.
    â€œHi,” Angela finally says.
    â€œHi,” you say. “Listen, I’m going to pass for today. I’m feeling really tired again. I figure by probably tomorrow I’ll be feeling more up to it. So, thanks anyway. Thanks for coming. Sorry to disappoint.” You turn and start walking out of the kitchen, walking back to sanctuary or its opposite up there in your room.
    Until you feel the small tug at the tail of your N.Y. Yankees pajama top. You turn around to face her.
    â€œNice getup,” she says. “You look like a total tourist.”
    You put up no resistance. That can be a good thing, if you are not-fighting for the right reason. But you don’t need to be told that. You know. You know all about this stuff. Possibly, you know too much about it.
    The two of you are headed out the door, with the hopeful silence of your grandparents at your back.
    What’s it like? It’s like this. It is like you are not walking but swimming, out the front door of the house. Like you are being taught to scuba dive, this is your first trip down with the instructor, Angela is the instructor, and Gran and Pops are big silent fish floating behind. They are obviously afraid of making the wrong move, the