For Everyone Concerned by Damien Wilkins Page A

just words?
    I listened to him on four or five occasions, then my father started taking the calls.
    Are you trying to threaten my son? said my father.
    I’m not trying to kill him, said the boyfriend’s father.
    My son’s upset enough.
    I’ve been pointing out his ways to him. Are you, by any chance, religious?
    No, said my father, we’re Catholics.
    *
    I was once in a creative writing workshop when the teacher, Charlie Vincent, suddenly told the student whose story we were discussing to get the characters out of the car. Get these people out of the fucking car! he said. The characters were a young couple, as best I can recall, driving down to Florida on vacation. It was going to be a long drive. They’d been in their car for about seven pages already and they hadn’t made it out of their own neighbourhood. Charlie Vincent was actually a subtle teacher, a funny man with many miles of sentences under his belt, though occasionally he became exasperated enough to say things. This car is driving me fucking nuts, he said.
           
    I had my car crash after drinking perhaps an inch, no, less than that—maybe half an inch, a splash. We’d taken Michael’s mother’s car out on Saturday night against her express orders. Michael said he felt nauseous from his new prescription glasses and couldn’t drive. Ian didn’t drive and neither of the girls had licences. I remember everyone wandered around for a while after the crash. We talked to each other with our heads close together. Claire. Bridget. The police arrived and were startlingly kind. The lovely smell of the police uniforms as murky rain began to fall on us. It was very intimate in those moments, although at first we just sat there—we’d side-swiped another car which had come out of a tunnel after I’d misjudged a Give Way sign—and wondered if we were alive. I looked down at my knee which had hit something, but it was fine, a little sore. Everyone was fine but we were dreaming of the beds in our parents’ houses. We’d suddenly become a lot younger. Babies. Michael’s mother had gone away for the weekend. Don’t use Rosemary, she told him. Rosemary was their nicely maintained old Wolseley. You mean there’s a car and keys sitting in your garage and your mother is away for forty-eight hours, Ian said. How will she ever ever know? I said. Next this big guy from the other car was coming around towards us, walking in the middle of the road, shouting, pointing at me and, for a moment, I thought I would have to run him over. They say I actually tried to start the engine again. You, he was saying. You.
    Oh, no, said one of the girls in the backseat. Oh, go away.
    You. With his finger. Then the guy must have heard something from his own car—his girlfriend moaning—because suddenly he hit his forehead with his hand and said: Oh, my God. He was running back to his car. I thought I’d killed his girlfriend with Michael’s mother’s car because of a pair of glasses and an inch or less. Michael has never got on with his mother. His mother’s sister, Aunt Betty, once said, on meeting me for the first time, Well, they both have nice faces.
    *
    My son has admitted fault, my father said. (I was listening in on the extension.) What’s the point in making him feel worse with these calls?
    What’s the point? What’s the point of any pain?
    The boyfriend’s father was beginning almost to enjoy these discussions with my father. Now, when I happened to answer the phone, he asked for my father.
    Pain teaches you, he said. Pain instructs.
    I agree with you, said my father.
    It tests you. It’s put there for a reason.
    Yes.
    You find out about people when real pain happens.
    What they’re made of.
    What’s behind them, said the boyfriend’s father.
    Right.
    I’m talking about faith. The strength of faith.
    How’s the girl? said my father.
    Who?
    The girl in the accident.
    Oh, said the boyfriend’s father. Devastated.
    She’s being tested, said my father.