Max James's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Max stood at the end of the driveway with the car keys in his hand and no reason to be holding them. Inside the house, his wife Bizzy Dee was asleep in her room with the door cracked so she could call out. He had heard her cough twice and walked out of the kitchen before he knew his feet were moving. This was the fourth time this week. He pushed the keys into his pocket. The red jersey stuck to his back. He had promised himself, the last time she got sick, that he would sit down and stay in the room. He was not sitting. He was standing in the yard again, listening for a cough through a closed window, like a coward who could not face the truth. Bosco Kitty came around the corner of the porch. The black cat sat on the flagstone and looked up with his yellow eyes close together. He did not meow. He waited. "I can't go back in yet," Max said. Bosco fixed his golden eyes on him and he could read the judgement hanging over him. "I know," Bosco said. "You never can." Max rubbed his goatee. "I need a minute. That's all." "A minute is in the house. You take an hour. You take the whole afternoon." Bosco stood and walked toward the side yard. "Come." Max followed him past the garden to the small cottage Bizzy Dee had built for the cat years ago. Beyond it, through the vines, was the gazebo where she used to take her pills. Sunlight came through the trellis and lit the flowers on the posts. Max had not been inside it in months. "Sit," Bosco said. Max sat on the wooden bench. He could still see the bedroom window from here. He could see the curtain move when she breathed near it. He was maybe forty steps from her door. "This is close enough," Bosco said. "When you need to leave, leave to here. Not the car." Max did not answer. On the bench beside him lay a photo album Bizzy Dee kept in the cottage. He opened it. Bosco's adoption day. A framed picture of the wedding, edges creased, ink faded. Max in a suit he no longer owned. Bizzy Dee laughing. His chest went tight. He did not stand up. "Forty steps," Bosco said. "You can hear her from here. I checked." Max closed the album. He set the car keys on top of it and left them there. "I'll try this," he said. "Try longer than a minute." Max nodded. Then he stood and walked back toward the house, not the driveway. The gazebo would be there when he needed it. The keys would stay on the album. He reached the porch, put his hand on the door, and this time he opened it. Inside, Bizzy Dee coughed again. Max did not turn around.