“Go on so,” she said. “I’ll watch.”
He looked back when he reached the doorway and she nodded encouragingly. “Go on. Good luck.” He thanked her again, realizing she thought he was on the verge. His throat thickened. She’d seen him. She cared.
*
Sheila Russell stood behind her glass desk, all curves and generous breasts. She invited Billy to sit down, indicating the chair opposite. To his relief, this chair had no arms. He sat down and Sheila waited, her lips thin inside her round, pale face, her hair limp and copper. He was so nervous his own lips were tingling and the tops of his fingers had numbed. He launched his prepared speech, telling her about Michael, his sponsored diet, and his phone conversation with the Samaritan volunteer from his local branch. “Everything was going fine until I told her how I was raising the money.”
“I’m not sure I understand her concerns, either. I think what you’re doing is wonderful.”
He had thought he was going to have a fight on his hands and felt almost disappointed.
“I presume you’re doing this under the care of a doctor?” she asked.
“Yes I am.” He felt himself blush at the lie.
“Excellent.”
His hand moved to the soldier in his trousers pocket. “One more thing. I’d like the money I raise to go directly to help young men in trouble, in Michael’s name.”
She hooked her hair behind her ear, its underside more brown than copper. “We don’t normally allot donations by age or gender—”
“But you can?”
“Well, yes, I suppose we could set aside your monies to specifically target—”
“Wonderful, thank you.” He sat trembling with satisfaction, and a growing sense of power. Even his headache had eased.
He told her about the march and asked if she would walk, and give a talk afterward in the hall.
“I could certainly arrange for a local volunteer—”
He shook his head. “It would mean a lot if you could attend. I hope to get a great turnout to this march and really call attention to suicide awareness and prevention. For that, I need to go as big as I can, and you’re going to attract a lot more people than any volunteer.” Sheila opened her mouth to respond, but he pressed on, quivering with adrenaline. “Which brings me to another project I’d love you to participate in, too. I plan to make a film, a documentary that will put a spotlight on the national epidemic suicide has become and call for more preventative action to be taken. It’d be key to get you on board for that, too.”
She laughed. “You don’t do things by halves, do you?”
“Except myself,” he said. She looked confused, and he clapped his stomach with both hands. “Two hundred pounds.”
Her face turned bright red. “Oh, yes, I see.”
At the meeting’s close, she came out from around her desk and shook his hand. He thanked her repeatedly.
“No,” she said. “Thank you.”
He strode out of her office, feeling tall and broad, solid and strong.
*
In the garage, Billy settled at his workbench. Hardly a workbench, really. More a scarred oak table he’d brought down from his father’s shed how many years back, to do he didn’t know what with. He had taken the table rather than asked, and his father hadn’t seemed to notice its absence. Billy couldn’t remember his reasoning at the time. Maybe it was simply the satisfaction of taking from his father, without getting caught, without blistering blame.
Billy had never used the table, but had always liked how it gave a certain shape to the garage, making it feel more like a work space than dead storage space. He could never see himself actually sitting at the table and working at much of anything. Until now. Now he planned to make a magnificent shrine to Michael. One that would well surpass the bronze sculpture of Michael’s Wellingtons in his father’s shed. He would make a miniature village for the seconds dolls and soldiers—an alternate universe where the tiny version of Michael, and the entire tiny Brennan family, would live and thrive.