May We Be Forgiven

uncomfortably empty; it’s a weekday, no one is there.
    “Why are you being so nice?” Nathaniel asks.
    I say nothing.

    “ I t sucks. It all sucks,” he says. Back in the car, Nate asks, “Can you take me for a ride?”
    “Where?”
    “I want to get out of here.”
    “Do you have a bike? Maybe when we get home you can go for a ride. It’s certainly warm enough out.”
    “I’m not asking if I can go for a ride,” he says. “I’m asking you to take me on a ride.” There’s a pause. “I took some pills.”
    “What do you mean, ‘pills’?”
    “Not too many, but enough.”
    “Enough to kill yourself?”
    “No, to calm down. I’m a wreck.”
    “Where did you get them?”
    “From the medicine cabinet at home.”
    “How did you know which ones to take?”
    Nate stares at me as if to say, I may be dumb but I’m not stupid.
    “Okay, so where do you want to go?” I ask.
    “Amusement park.”
    “You’re kidding, right?”

    A pparently not.
    At Nate’s insistence I phone the amusement park and find that due to the odd and unseasonably warm winter, they haven’t closed for the season. “The owner thought it was better to keep folks employed and have a snow day if needed—which so far hasn’t happened,” the guy says. Nate goes on ride after ride, roller coaster, Zipper, Bungee Rocket, Tower of Terror, Gravitron, which spins so fast he’s plastered to the side with an expression on his face like he’s been whipped through a wind tunnel.
    “Do you think it’s weird?” he asks as we walk to the next ride.
    “Who am I to judge?”
    “I carry a diagnosis,” he says.
    “Like what?”
    “Like supposedly there’s something wrong with me.”
    “What’s your point?”
    “Do you think it’s true?” he asks.
    “Do you?” I ask.
    He shrugs.
    “Do you want to go on a ride?” I ask Ashley, who at eleven is holding my hand and seeming more like six. She shakes her head no. “Are you sure? I’ll go with you.” She shrugs.
    “I miss the snow,” she says, shaking her head sadly. “When I was young it used to snow in the winter.”
    “It will snow again,” I say.
    “When?” she asks.
    “When you least expect it,” I say.
    We leave Nate at the roller coaster. He seems relieved by the spinning, by hurling through the air again and again. Ashley picks out something called the Wave Swinger; it seems innocent enough.
    Like the mall, the amusement park is empty. Nate and Ashley both have their own attendants, ride operators who are like mechanical tour guides. They walk with us from ride to ride, turning each one on and giving it a test spin before letting the kids board.
    “Isn’t it hard to spend your days in an empty amusement park?” I ask one of the operators.
    “Beats sitting home with my wife,” the guy says, shrugging like I’m the idiot.
    “My mother’s in the hospital,” Ashley tells the operator as he’s turning on the chair swing. “We were sent home from school. Our father hit her in the head.”
    “Rough,” the operator says, and it vaguely sounds like he’s saying “Ruff,” as in barking more than talking.
    The Wave Swinger lifts gently off the ground. I am in the chair ahead of Ashley, suspended by twenty feet of galvanized chain. It makes a couple of graceful spins in a wide circle, rising higher each time, and then it takes off, spinning faster and faster. The chair swings out wide, it tilts, now we’re flying up high and then swooping down low. I am dizzy, nauseous, trying to find one thing to fix on, one thing that is not moving. I stare at the empty chairs in front of me, the blue sky overhead. I am losing my sense of balance; I fear I will pass out and somehow slip out of the chair and fall to the ground.
    Nate is waiting for us when we land. I stumble getting off the ride and knock my head into the chains.
    We head for the Haunted House, all hopping into our own cars, and the train bangs through the double doors and into the darkness. It’s warm inside and smells like sweat socks. Overhead there are howls and ear-piercing screeches from the dead, timbers crack, and ghosts fall from the sky, stopping inches short of our faces before being snatched away again. The mechanical soundtrack is punctuated by a frightful choking sound.
    “What is that?” I ask.
    “It’s Ashley,” Nate says.
    “Are you choking?” I ask, unfastening my seat belt and trying to turn and look at her.
    “She’s crying,” Nate says. “That’s the way she