Christmas Trees & Monkeys by Dan Keohane, Kellianne Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

alighted, lost from sight among the leaves. They sing songs and wait. It is not yet time.
    The kitchen is large. Dark wood beams soar over contrasting white walls. As Regina walks across the room her eyes scan the counter, toaster, microwave, never resting long on any object. She is distracted and tired. Her briefcase stands on the breakfast table. The coffeemaker hisses and coughs. Half decaf, half regular, the timer set that morning to be ready for them when they arrived. Black steam welcomes senses which are crinkling at the edges, chipping like old paint. Regina inhales deeply, knowing she cannot drink even when it is done.
    Minutes later, husband and wife hold coffee mugs with both hands as if warming fingers on a cold day. John lifts the cup to his face. Steam fills his nostrils. He wants to drink its hot, cleansing pain. Not yet. The birds need to be fed, and he isn’t yet hungry. The coffee mug is lowered. John stares across the kitchen and sees the past week’s faces - crying, screaming, laughing, silent. They parade by, revolving on an invisible spindle.
    Eight Years Old, remembers Doctor John. What had the boy seen? Parents whispering, muffled crying, when Eight Year Old pushed open their door, "but my head was being pulled back, down the hall, like a rope coming out of my neck." The boy was describing his instincts taking over as he opened the door, knowing at a base level what he’d see in his parents’ room. Something monstrous laid out before him. "Wet and splashy," Eight Year Old says. The boy occasionally devises alternative words to describe the contents of that room. When this happens, John usually finds himself wishing for "wet and splashy".
    Each session John takes upon himself these images, holds them close until they no longer threaten the child. Eight Year Old always feels better, while John’s stomach burns with their pain. The heat soon fades, only to flare again on Friday afternoons.
    Husband and wife, now lost in their memories, sit at the table. The kitchen is silent save an occasional sigh of a shoe against tile.
    In memory, feeling her empathy of the week solidify inside her, Regina hears the whispered confessions of Brad Renelle, 10:15 appointment Tuesday. Renelle’s hands droop between thighs, fingers interlocked then loosened, chasing each other across the chasm of his legs. His eyes downcast, staring at his shoe, one foot half-out of its loafer, lips wet. Brad Renelle, large imposing man, whispers an obscene confession of his latest fantasy, occasionally glancing up to see if Regina acknowledges his insanity. Is this simple clarity of thought, she would wonder, something good rather than depraved? Always careful is Regina, never flinching her expression. Never knowing what might set him off. Set any of them off.
    "We need to fill the bird feeders," Regina now whispers to her husband. Her voice is paper. She licks her lips, tries to swallow. "Before it gets dark."
    John lifts his head. Outside the day is still bright with the sideways slant of early summer evening. A dinner appointment tonight with Merrimack Hospital’s director of psychology, written on the refrigerator calendar. An Important Man wanting to pull an Important Couple from the warm shadows of their practices. Imprison them in a menagerie of brick and pensions. Plug them in, harness the talent they possess: Doctor John’s success rate with children deemed lost, his ability to pull them out of the pit - if only a little higher than anyone one else has been able. Doctor Regina for her papers on adult sexual discord, her radical approaches to violent patients. Men and women excessive in their debauchery, serving extended jail sentences, held far from the community’s reaching hands. Her ability to understand the darkness inside them, then extract it. Change them. Sometimes forever. Sometimes for only a week.
    The successful couple trudge outside, slowly, like penitent monks with gazes lowered, heading for the feeders in the