The Therapist and the Woodcarver

   There is always a lull in the afternoon, and when a patient cancels you have no choice but to face the paperwork. Sally stared at the pile on her desk. Having a patient meant work; not having a patient meant menial work. She leant back and was drawn to the small dark wooden frog that sat on the window sill. It had been carved by familiar hands

***

   It was six months ago that Jose walked into Sally's office. She remembers it was a Friday because they were supposed to visit her sister in Maine for the long weekend but their dog Buck was hit by a car. Sally and her husband Mark spent the Thursday night consoling their two little girls and debating whether they could travel. She was flustered when she got into the office. He walked in sheepishly. When she asked him if his name was Jose, he smiled and nodded and took off his coat.

   He was around fifty years old and everything about him was stocky; he had the shoulders and back of a retired boxer, and his waist, though broad, was not marred by a paunch. His face was open and often-graced by an irrepressible smile, and a shock of long grey hair that ran to his shoulders was ponytailed at the neck by a thin black band. He was handsome, with small lively, intelligent eyes and a high forehead.

   What were most remarkable about him, though, were his hands. They were thick and flat and looked heavy, like battered leather mitts, and when he rubbed them together by habit they scraped. The fingers were squat too, the nails like square tabs of flint, split here and there on the tips. Sally knew those hands. Her grandfather had the same hands.

   She asked him how long he had been a carpenter. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. Thirty-two years, he said. She told him her grandfather had been a carpenter.

   Jose told her that he was also a sculptor. He lived until he was twenty in Puerto Rico. His father taught him when he was a boy how to carve wood. Jose told her that he could sculpt full time when the demand for his work was high enough. He made only custom pieces, and he worked only with mahogany. When demand was low he would work contracts, but that was dirty work, he said. The same thing, again and again. It is not good for the spirit. He pointed to his heart.

    When she asked him what the problem was, though she had already seen his chart, he turned over his right hand, palm facing up to show her. A stark pinkwhite line ran from the base of his thumb up to the tip near the nail and down again on the other side to the base of his index finger. It snaked as it went and curved on the thumb where the flesh must have lifted from the bone.

    Normally, he said, I never wear a glove. A glove is not a necessary thing for me. But this one time. He shrugged. One in a million, no? I wear a glove when I am cutting a board at the college. And the glove it catches at the end, and fizz. He made a motion with his right hand, jolting it forward and pulling it back into his left which cradled it. He smiled. My wife she drive me to the emergency room. Three hours we sit there. And when the doctor see me he tell me they'll stitch me and to come back early tomorrow. My wife she told him no, and when the surgeon see us he tell us the tendon is, how do you say, severed? And that surgery is required and the other doctor did not know what he was talking about. And a few months later when I am at work, again it goes. He opened his left hand sharply to imitate the popping of the tendon. It just goes. So I have another surgery and now...now I do not know. He shrugged again.

   Throughout the telling he spoke sadly, though he smiled at the worst parts. Sally was used to wry smiles and sardonic accounts of injuries, but the way Jose told his story, so simply and without bitterness, and the familiar hands, endeared him to her. He smiled out of humility, or with the conviction that he’d be fine soon enough. She said how angry he must be. He shook his head and told her that so long as there were good people to help and he had insurance he could not complain. There was something fatalistic in the way he spoke and shrugged.

   Sally had him on heat and started to passively move the thumb. It was swollen slightly and his range of motion was poor; the thumb would barely budge even when she forced it. She was often sworn at by her patients as she did this, but Jose sat there quietly, and occasionally screwed up his eyes and grimaced to cope with the pain.

   Over the next six weeks Jose made slight but significant progress. Sally had him almost able to grip a can, and the swelling was close to gone. She heard more of his story; how he and his wife Maria had moved from San Juan in the eighties to settle in Vermont, and how she had had to retake classes to be ‘qualified’ to be a teacher’s assistant. He had carved and sculpted to put her through college. She helped teach Kindergarten at a nearby state school, where their youngest son went. They had two sons and the oldest was in high school.

    It is important for him to have more education than his father got, he said to her. She smiled at him politely. He was quiet serious.

   On the day of his seventh session he came early and apologized. Maria has been let go by the school, he told her. He stood in the doorway with his coat still on.

   How awful, Sally said. Oh Jose I’m so sorry. She sat quietly, looking up at him sympathetically, waiting for him to sit.

   I just come to tell you in person, he said.

   You’re not going to continue therapy, she asked?

   I was on her insurance, he said.

   We have a sliding scale here, you know. I think you only need ten sessions or so.

   Yes, he said. He shrugged and smiled. I got an offer with a contractor. I can almost hold a screwdriver now. He raised his right hand and waved it like a baseball mitt in front of his grinning face.

   He shrugged again, his smile fading. We need the money. If anything happens.

   Sally smiled and stood. She put out her left hand to shake his. He instead put out his right hand with the bright scar and took hers in his. He smiled and turned and left.

***

   Sally told her husband Mark about it that night, and the night after. She felt terrible about the whole thing, about how such a kind man who creates for a living cannot afford the treatment to restore him his gift. How he has to take base work that is soulless. Mark did not argue with her; he knew far better than that.

   Jose and Maria were not difficult to track down. Sally remembered the name of the school Maria had worked for. The school, in an effort to avoid controversy, had preserved on their website Maria’s name and the names of the other assistants who had been let go to stave the budget cuts. She was surprised to find that they too stayed in Woodberry.

   Once a week on her way home from the hospital Sally would drive to their house. She used equipment she took home from her office, and improvised when necessary; she used her daughter’s play-dough for motor skills and a fistful of rice in one of Mark’s old socks as a makeshift ball. The smell of burnt rice was well masked though by the sweet smell of the alto grande that Maria brewed for them. They were both so kind, Sally remembered. Pro Bono was not a term that Jose understood too well, but the relationship between two artisans well trained and skilled in their trades was. It took them more than ten sessions, but when his thumb was mended and he could work, he and his wife thanked her to no end. He would make it up to her, he said. He would make her something to thank her.

***

   Sally opened her eyes. The polished frog sat staring at her. No matter what mood she was in, it never seemed mocking; it always calmed her. Another like it sat in their daughters’ bedroom; a small carved retriever with ‘Buck’ etched into the base. They were beautiful pieces, carved by familiar hands. Hands which use only mahogany.

The Money Jar

   Rain whipped the decking as the wind picked up and the birch swayed like a soldier on shore leave. Milton struggled to the house and shouldered the back door open. Stepping into the kitchen, he heaved the burlap bag full of rusty tools onto the kick stool and pulled with a wet suck the sodden cap from his bald head.

   He slammed the door; no simple feat in a gale. The burlap bag, with hammer-head and rusty saw-tip poking through the holes in its side, slid off the stool and cracked a kitchen tile. He growled and kicked the stool with his good leg forgetting his bad one. He was flat on his back as the squat grey turret careered across the floor and crashed into the glass paneled door of a cabinet. Dusty jolted in his chair. Jesus Christ, he said. Glass lay scattered on the faded rug. Milton struggled to his feet and turned his head to look at the broken cabinet and the toppled framed photograph. Him and Rose. Him short and powerfully built. Her fair-skinned and choppy-haired. Both smiling; him so broadly you could tell it despite the fact he was wearing a snorkel. Milton limped to the settee and sat down. The kick-stool stood triumphant amidst the shattered glass. He rubbed his bad leg at the thigh.

   When he had his breath back he stood and limped to the fallen photograph. He placed it on the windowsill, careful to avoid the glass which covered the rug. Dusty’s eyes followed him from the corner of the room. Don't you bother with that cuss jar on my behalf you son bitch, he said. Milton thought for a second about the jar. He held off putting anything in it. Nothing ever happened when he did, of course; but always after a few seconds the familiar feeling came. He stuffed three dollar bills into the half-filled jar, two for Dusty, and apologized to Rose. The jar was her idea and it meant more to him since her death than it did when she was alive. She used to tease him about it, and trick him into cursing when she wanted him to put some money aside for home improvements. He limped to the counter and flicked the kettle on. Three mugs sat on the granite work-top with teabags inside. He poured water into the first two and watched the steam rise from them. He lifted the dry tea-bag from the third and put it back into the plastic tub, and placed the mug back on the rack beside the others.

   He still made an extra cup. It was an old habit.

   Dusty was watching him still. This had to stop soon, he knew. He was amazed it had gone this far. A few months back it was the doors; the son bitch spent all mornin unhinging and dumping them in the garden then the next two fitting the lacquered ones from the home store. Persuaded three of them up the stairs cussin all the way.

   Then the goddam yard; prying up the slabs with that pitchfork and edging them like an old timer teaching his young'n to walk. Left swing right swing left swing right.

   And now the shed. The materials weren't cheap, and no matter how much Dusty cussed the money in the jar was growing sparse.       

***

   The three of them met in the war. Milton and Dusty served together in the same regiment in Sicily. Dusty was eighteen at the time, a straight-laced boy from Maine. His naivety endeared him to bigger personalities in the regiment, like Milton; it was Milton who first called him 'Dusty'. Milton was Canadian; he lived in Massachusetts where his father settled. He was twenty-two when they met, clean-faced, energetic and handsome. He was broad in the shoulder, ham-handed, and smiled effortlessly and often.

   The regiment arrived in Messina after the Landings. The two friends were on watch duty, a consequence given after their lieutenant found Milton drunk and naked urinating into the canteen tent, and Dusty unconscious beneath the flagpole where his boots had been erected. Watch duty was dull punitive work; but it often provided the opportunity to escape for an hour or so without detection. Milton dragged Dusty to the nearby town Saint Elia regularly during these stints.

   It was there that Milton met Rose. They stopped for a beer one afternoon, as all good soldiers in their regiment did when the war was slow. Three drinks in, Milton slammed his glass down on the wooden table and rose, his attention grabbed by something outside window of the cafe.

   Her hair was short, her skin olive, her eyes lively and keen as the eyes of the lovely so often are. She wore a white dress.  Milton followed her as she wandered from house to house; she hummed quietly and turned occasionally to smile at the pair of young soldiers. Dusty followed Milton, not daring to interrupt him. He looked for landmarks in case they got lost, but the white-painted walls of the short, narrow houses which sloped down to the sparkling sea were all identical to him. The waves were crashing gently.

   Milton’s Italian was passable; his father, a trader, taught him to read and to speak it when he was a boy. Within an hour he had convinced Rose, and more importantly himself, that he loved her. American soldiers always show up here with that story, she said. I’m not American, he said, quite seriously. When she told him he was Canadian, she feigned disinterest. She was like that.

   They kept up their clandestine meetings with Dusty as their unwilling lookout for four months, when the news broke out that the regiment would be deployed in Sangro, four hundred miles North of Messina. Milton proposed to Rose and she said yes, God yes. Neither truly believed they would see the other again.

   Milton distinguished himself in Sangro, but Dusty never had the chance to see it. He was discharged after suffering burns when a stray hit the fuel tank of the Daimler he was repairing. Milton wrote him a letter, which he received in the hospital, six months later. He was on home soil too; he’d taken enough shrapnel in the leg to render it useless in the eyes of the military.

   It was a year after the armistice that Rose arrived in the US, and they married quickly. They moved up to Maine, where Milton drank with Dusty at least twice a week. They bought a place by the water. She sometimes nagged him to curse less, to drink less, to finish his little projects around the house. She was wicked like that; she could make him feel bad and she sometimes did it to tease him. She had the finest sense of humor of any woman he’d known.

   With time Dusty’s straight back was bending; with time Milton’s good leg carried the lame one with trouble. And with time, both agreed, Rose did alright.

***

   Milton watched the steam rise from the mugs. He poured milk into them and almost poured some on the counter, anticipating a third. The shed was finished. He felt let down by it. There would always be something else.

   He was torturing himself, he knew. He was atoning for sins that he knew would never have meant a thing to Rose. She used to tease him about how serious he took things.  
   To hell with it, he thought. He poured the hot tea into the sink and turned to the living room where Dusty was slouched in the chair.

   Fancy a pint Dusty? He said.

   Dusty turned his head. I’ve no money you son bitch, you know that.

   Milton reached over the counter and clutched the jar. Drinks are on me, he said.

Bored

   The courtroom was stifling. The prosecutor looked relaxed. Sitting next to him was Rick, his lower jaw wrapped in bandages. Colin was pallid, though his wife looked hale. He was not a confident man.

   Colin was a dentist. He had left work early one day for an insurance conference across town. He got there early, figuring he might as well since he was being paid for it. He parked round the back and walked into the coffee shop on the corner.

   He ordered steamed milk - coffee stains the teeth - and sat outside in the terrace at a cast iron table facing the sun. He liked to face the street so he could watch the women clipping by in their tall heels, their narrow shadows leaping and loping beneath their feet. He liked to try to catch their eye. He was not a confident man, and the game required a certain amount of self-deception in order to keep it in motion.

   He finished his milk quickly, drinking it with a straw - he had sensitive teeth. The street was quiet and birches lined the sidewalk, and the sidewalk was uneven where the birch-roots pushed through. Across the street was a bar decorated with crossbeams and an open front, in which were scattered trendy slender tables. By one of them a tall man in a grey suit was sipping lager. He wore a form-fitting white shirt, tight around his chest and arms, his sleeves rolled up carefully. He had hair; the type that stood up and back a little and looked careless while being entirely intentional. Even from across the street Colin could tell that the man’s watch was expensive; its faceted face caught the light so finely.

   The bar was quiet with a few customers lunching in the back. Like Colin, the man was watching the women go by, until, as though hailed, he turned to someone in the bar and stood up. A tall, slender woman in a black skirt and a white blouse approached him. He pulled a stool for her and they sat down and shared a passionate kiss. He watched them for a moment, envious of the man. He was quick to notice the familiarity of the gestures the woman used, but slow to realize the woman was his wife. He sat, astounded. She was laughing and leaning into the man at everything he said, and the man was quick to smile; but only after she smiled, as those who are aware of their own charm are apt to do.

   She excused herself to go the bathroom. The man watched her walk away, and when she was out of sight he raised a silver butter knife to his mouth and angled it as he smiled to check his teeth. When she came back, the man frowned at her and tapped the face of his watch with two fingers, indicating in jest that she had taken too long. She went straight to him and kissed him.

   Colin barely made it through the conference. He drove home in a stupor. It was her, yet it was not her; she carried herself too well. She was as he had never seen her before; vital and incandescent like a balefire.

***

   That night he confronted her. He told her he suspected she was sleeping with somebody else. She laughed at him, perhaps cruelly to hide her surprise. She told him there was nobody else, but that there might as well be, seeing as how things were between them. Hesitantly, he told her what he had seen at the café.

   And that night Colin slept on the couch. How the hell could you accuse me of such a thing? Maybe if you paid a little more attention to me. Maybe if you loved me. He felt guilty and confused. He knew in his heart what he had seen, and in his heart he was relieved that she had lied to him, for he was not a confident man. He believed that she couldn’t help herself.

***

    Six months later Colin walked into the waiting room and called out the name. Ferguson. A tall man in a grey suit grabbed his briefcase and stood up. He was talking on his cellphone, but he smiled at Colin. I have to go. Yep. You too. Ok, bye. He grabbed Colin’s hand eagerly and smiled with his eyes. Call me Rick.

   He had the man sit in his chair. He checked the teeth. They were bright, but from the gums he could see that they were not healthy. They were fine in appearance only.

   Colin gave him the local anesthetic. He went about preparing the tooth and the drill.

   Ten minutes in, Colin asked him if he was doing okay. He was trying to be stoic, but he winced. Don’t worry, we’ll be done soon.

   Rick rolled his eyes and raised his right arm and with two fingers he tapped the face of his watch on his left wrist, imitating in jest that he was keeping count.

   It was a familiar gesture and Colin placed it at once. He froze with the drill still in Rick’s mouth. Rick looked up at him. Colin’s eyes were wide and his face was pallid. He seemed to stare through Rick.

   They were locked in this stare for what must have been a minute. Colin looked drained and he swayed slightly. Rick, sensing that his dentist was about to passout, put his arms up and grabbed hold of the drill in the hope of getting it as far from his face as possible. Colin could smell Rick’s cologne and he felt the hands soft like a caress on his wrists as though from within an etherized sleep. And waking as one who kicks out in his sleep he jolted and pressed his weight on the butt of the drill. There was a wild fizz and a sickening crunch. Then silence. Rick was unconscious. Colin, wide-eyed and panting, slid down on the floor and dropped the drill, still fizzing. It had only taken a moment.

***

   The trial was almost over and they all looked worn out. Before the judge pronounced the verdict, he reminded them all of the violence of the crime, and the unusual circumstances under which it had been committed. That it was reactionary. That it was instant. That there was no excuse. That the victim had almost been bored to death. The courtroom is no place for irony. In the back of the room the bitch smiled wryly. She couldn’t help herself.