The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner by Jennifer Quist

Author:Jennifer Quist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Linda Leith Publishing
Published: 2018-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

10

Father’s Day—the celebration of the celebrated, the noising of the noisy, the fourth of July of the family holidays—is a picnic for Marc Turner. He doesn’t always see his children on Father’s Day. It’s more of a biennial event for the Turners, and this is their year. He will visit with his children but not at his home—an extremely rustic cottage in the woods west of the city, on a lake, with a woman who is nothing like a mother to either of Marc’s kids. Since his divorce from Sheila, Marc has wanted his children’s attention but not their scrutiny, esteem without intimacy—to be more like their father-in-law than like their father.

In another unnamed city park—an empty green space with one wooden picnic table defaced with love letters and slander in the middle of the suburbs, within sight of Sheila’s house—he gathers his living children. Marc’s girlfriend, Julie, brings most of the food for the Father’s Day picnic. This year’s entrée is imported American corn on the cob, too cold by the time it’s served for butter to melt on it. Morgan is rummaging through shopping bags, looking for paper plates while Julie apologizes and Marc shouts her down with jolly bawling. “It’s a picnic, Jules. Everyone’s free from the tyranny of dinnerware at a picnic.”

Al fresco is the order of the day simply because Sheila doesn’t like Marc, not because she’s trying to encourage their kids to remain distant from him. In fact, she has been telling them to spend more time with him ever since he called her, threatening to “reopen the divorce” and get a court to force her to let them see him.

“They’re grown adults, Marc. Leave the court, leave me, leave everyone but the kids’ own guilty consciences out of it.”

Marc sits on the picnic table’s bench, beside Tod, who is pulling stray strands of corn silk out of the cob he is about to eat. The hands that shucked them were not as thorough as the scalder. He is flicking a yellow-green thread from the ends of his fingers, into the grass as Marc slaps his back, laughing. “Eat up, son, before you waste away.”

Tod doesn’t even sigh.

Julie sits down on the bench. “Stop it, Marc.”

“Remember, Morgie, when your brother was little—a little angel-faced, dark-haired boy?”

She doesn’t remember. Tricia, Tod’s older sister, might have some memory of him as a small child. Morgan is younger and in her mind, Tod has never been smaller than the size and close to the weight of a torpedo. This is how she knows him, this is how she likes him. Anyway, Tod doesn’t like angels, says they’re as fake and stupid as unicorns and fairies—though why unicorns and fairies should bother anyone is beyond Morgan.

“My boy has a man’s face now,” Marc says. He rubs his own jaw with his hand, like an actor on a stage, playing at thoughtfulness. “Hey, you know who you’ve grown up to remind me of, Tod?”

Tod raises a cold, hairy cob of corn to his mouth, shielding his face.

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