May We Be Forgiven

puddle forms.
    “George,” Jane implores when she hears what sounds like water dripping, “you’re having an accident.”
    Tessie, the old dog, gets up from her bed, comes over, and sniffs it.
    Jane hurries into the kitchen and comes back with a wad of paper towels. “It will eat the finish right off the floor,” she says.
    Through it all George looks blank, like the empty husk left by a reptile who has shed his skin. Jane takes the coffee cup from George and hands it to me. She takes the wet kitchen towel from his lap, helps him to stand, and then wipes the back of his legs and his ass with paper towels. “Let me help you upstairs.”

    I watch as they climb the steps. I see my brother’s body, slack, his stomach sagging slightly, the bones of his hips, his pelvis, his flat ass—all so white they appear to glow in the dark. As they climb I see below his ass and tucked between his legs his low, pinkish-purple nut sack swaying like an old lion.
    I sit on their couch. Where is my wife? Isn’t Claire curious to know what happened? Doesn’t she wonder why I am not home?
    The room smells like urine. The wet paper towels are on the floor. Jane doesn’t come back to clean up the pee. I do it and then sit back down on the sofa.
    I am staring through the dark at an old wooden tribal mask made with hemp hair and a feather and laced with tribal beads. I’m staring at this unfamiliar face that Nate brought back from a school trip to South Africa, and the mask seems to be staring back as though inhabited, wanting to say something—taunting me with its silence.
    I hate this living room. I hate this house. I want to go home.
    I text Claire and explain what’s happened. She writes back, “I took advantage of your being gone and am still at the office; it sounds like you should stay the night in case things deteriorate further.”
    I dutifully sleep on the sofa with a small, smelly nap blanket covering my shoulders. Tessie, the dog, joins me, warming my feet.

    I n the morning there are hurried phone calls and hushed conversations; a copy of the accident report crawls out of the fax machine. We will take George to the hospital and they will look for something, some invisible explanation that will relieve him of responsibility.
    “Am I going deaf or what the fuck is going on around here?” George wants to know.
    “George,” Jane says clearly. “We have to go to the hospital. Pack your bag.”
    And he does.
    I drive them. He sits next to me, wearing well-worn corduroy pants, a flannel shirt he’s had for fifteen years. He’s unevenly shaved.
    I drive self-consciously, worried that his complacent mood might shift, that he might flash back, erupt, and try to grab the wheel. The seat belts are good, they discourage sudden movements.
    “Simple Simon met a pieman, going to the fair. Said Simple Simon to the pieman, ‘Let me taste your ware,’” George intones. “Simple Simon went a-fishing for to catch a whale; all the water he had got was in his mother’s pail. Watch out,” he says to me, “or you’ll get what you asked for.”

    I n the Emergency Room, Jane goes to the counter with their insurance information and the police report and explains that her husband was involved in a fatal car accident the evening before and appeared disoriented at the scene.
    “That’s not what happened,” George bellows. “The fucking SUV was like a big white cloud in front of me, I couldn’t see over it, couldn’t see around it, I couldn’t help but punch through it like a cheap piece of aluminum, like a fat fucking pillow. The airbag punched me back, slammed me, knocked the wind right outta me, and when I finally got out I saw people in the other car, pushed together like lasagna. The boy in the back didn’t stop crying. I wanted to punch him, but his mother was looking at me, her eyes popping out of her head.”
    As George is talking, two large men make their way towards him from the rear. He doesn’t see it coming. They grab him. He’s strong. He fights back.
    The next time we see George he’s in a cubicle in the back of the Emergency Room, arms and legs tied to a gurney.
    “Do you know why you’re here?” a doctor asks him.
    “I’ve got bad aim,” George says.
    “Can you remember what happened?”
    “It’s more like I’ll never forget. I left work at about six-thirty, drove towards home, decided to stop for a bite, which is not something I normally do, but I was tired, I can admit that. I didn’t see