Free Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman Page A

turned off. Mom has left the room. Cindy and Paul are talking quietly, seriously. The first few words they speak, I can’t understand them. It sounds like they are talking with mouths full of sawdust. It’s not them, of course; it’s just that sometimes it takes a few moments for my senses to come back online after I’ve been outside myself.
    Finally, I understand Paul saying, “He doesn’t have the guts. He wouldn’t do it.”
    Cindy answers, “I know he wouldn’t; I don’t think it’s about courage, though.”
    â€œNo,” Paul says, “maybe not. But Detraux was willing to give up his whole life for it. Dad’s too selfish for that. Besides, if Dad were willing to do that, why would he have waited so long?”
    Cindy pauses a moment. “Maybe he needed somebody like Detraux to show him the possibility?”
    Paul thinks a moment about it. “Maybe,” he says. He pauses, then speaks again, slowly; he seems to be picking his words carefully. “I liked what you said to Alice Ponds about Shawn, about how hard it is.”
    I realize that Paul is talking about a part of The Alice Ponds Show that I missed while in my seizure.
    Cindy says, “I always feel so guilty complaining about it at all!”
    Paul nods agreement. “Yeah, I know.”
    They are both quiet for a moment.
    I’ve never heard them talk about me like this before. It doesn’t really hurt my feelings. I mean, I’ve always thought that they must feel bad about me sometimes. Still, it surprises me. I wonder how many other times they’ve had talks like this one.
    â€œAnyway,” Paul says, “you were great on the show. The things you said about how Shawn’s condition affected us all, how it changed us forever, that was such a great way to put it.”
    Cindy smiles, then speaks in a real stupid, nasal type tone, “Do you wanna kill your bruvver, too?” I can tell that Cindy is imitating one of Alice’s audience members.
    Paul bursts out laughing. “Wasn’t she amazing? You wonder if she spells it b-r-u-v-v-e-r.” He pauses, then laughs again. “And you asked, ‘Which brother?’ That was classic.”
    Cindy laughs too. “You should have seen Alice Ponds’s face then, I mean off camera. I thought she’d faint.”
    They are quiet for a few moments. Finally Cindy speaks softly, as though wanting to be sure that Mom can’t hear. “So you think Dad’s all right? You think Shawn’s safe?”
    My ears perk up at that one. They are talking about my safety. They’re thinking the same things I’ve been thinking.
    â€œYeah, Shawn’s safe,” Paul says, sure and definite. “Even if Dad’s gone nuts and wants to do something, he’d have to come through me.”
    Cindy nods. She knows what that means. Actually, we both do.
    One day last summer I was out on our front porch sitting in my wheelchair. Paul, grounded that day, had missed the chance to meet friends at the Queen Anne cinema to take in a matinee. He’d stayed out too late the night before, and his punishment had been house arrest and rock-garden weeding. He was not in a very good mood. The rock garden starts at the front of our house and goes around the side. It’s flat in front and sloping on the side, filled with small plants: pansies, hens-and-chickens, I don’t know all the names. It looks hard to weed, uncomfortable and awkward. Never having weeded myself, I can’t say for sure, but the amount of time Paul spends grunting, groaning, swearing, and stopping to stretch his back always makes the job look miserable.
    Paul worked around the side of the house when two guys, both about his age, fifteen or so at that time, walked up the sidewalk to wait for the bus just outside our fence. My head/neck/eyes were not cooperating at all that afternoon, so I managed only a slight glimpse of the two