Two Good Dogs Page 14

  “Not even if Grandma is planning a surprise party for you?”

  Skye had laughed and said, “Well, maybe there are some secrets.”

  Some secrets. Cody knows that Skye was fretting about child sexual abuse, not death threats. Her blanket rule that no one could hurt her even if they said they would simply wasn’t true. The shooter’s threat is the exception that proves the rule.

  Cody touches the lightning bolt; it’s painful and not very pretty.

  CHAPTER 16

  “What’s that?” I point to the black line marring the inside of Cody’s forearm.

  “Nothing.”

  “Really. Nothing?” I make a grab for Cody’s arm, but I’m not quick enough.

  “It’s no big deal. Just a symbol.”

  “You’re not of age to get a tattoo. Who did this? What shop?”

  “No one.”

  “You didn’t do that yourself.”

  “Maybe I did.” Cody grins.

  “You’re left-handed. It’s on your left arm.” I’m rather pleased with my deductive reasoning.

  “That’s why it’s not so good.”

  “I wish that you hadn’t done that.”

  “It’s my body.”

  “I’d have preferred a tongue piercing. Or an eyebrow piercing, or any other piercing. Those can heal.”

  “It’s who I am.”

  “What, exactly, is it anyway?”

  “A lightning bolt.”

  “Looks more like the letter Z. And it looks infected. You could have given yourself blood poisoning.” Even I hear the hyperventilation.

  A trip to the walk-in clinic and I am given the cold comfort that, as the artist was squeamish about penetrating deep enough and only used food coloring, the tat will fade fairly quickly. That, and a course of antibiotics just in case.

  * * *

  “All kids try to shock their parents. It’s the natural order of things.” My mother can barely hide her glee at my arrival on the shores of parental frustration.

  “Look, Mom, I’ve read all the parenting books, blogs, and bull crap and I still can’t reconcile Cody’s self-destructive art project with becoming a mature human being. It’s such a childish thing to do. It’s one thing to rebel, another entirely to take a chance on blood poisoning.”

  “You did it.”

  “Yes, I’ve got a tattoo, but at least I had the common sense to go to a professional, and it meant something, something specific.” And, perched on my shoulder blade as it is, it’s out of sight, so I barely ever think about it. I unbutton the front of my white blouse, slide it off my shoulder, and twist to look at myself in the mirror. There it is, a five-inch artist’s rendition of the old-school Triumph badge. The word itself indicative of how I felt that summer, triumphant as I stole Randy from his then girlfriend. Triumphant as we arrived every evening at the Three Corners Bar and Grill like some kind of visiting royalty; Randy in that slick black leather jacket, me dismounting from the bike with grace, shaking out my bleached-blond hair. Full of power.

  Triumphant as I rebelled against my staid and middle-class upbringing. My reflection gives me a raised eyebrow. Maybe Cody isn’t so childish. Maybe it does run in the family.

  I straighten my blouse, button it all the way up. “I’ve got to get ready for work.”

  I’m going with the pet-friendly idea. I’ve not been talked into it, but I’ve done my research and really believe that being welcoming to that community Adam spoke of, his community, I’ll attract a lot more travelers. Unfortunately, I also needed to ask my mother for another month’s orthodontist payment. While I was at it, I mentioned the art lesson idea. This she approved of. A little culture for Cody. She’ll send me a little extra.

  * * *

  Adam considers the number showing up on his phone. He hasn’t saved it to his contacts, but it appears with such regularity that he knows who it is, Next Door Beth. Again. He’s just put dinner on the table, a frozen chicken potpie he’s had in the oven for half an hour. He knows that she knows that he’s home; she waved to him as he got out of the car, the two dogs bursting out to make sure the front yard was safe and no trespassers were hiding behind the foundation plantings. He’d ducked into the house as quickly as he could to avoid standing in the cold, chitchatting about nothing. He knows that letting the phone go to voice mail one more time will mean she’ll be over here “checking” on him. Making sure he’s okay, that he’s eating. That he doesn’t maybe need some company. Or a pie. Beth is one of those well-meaning, generous, pie-making, lonely middle-aged women who have become habitual comforters. At least Next Door Beth hasn’t propositioned him. Kimberly did that. His own fault for getting sucked into the offer of an after-work drink. He works at home.

  It was pretty embarrassing for both of them. Kimberly’s an attractive woman, older than Gina—than Gina was. Gina’s neighborhood pal. The common thread of their friendship was the daily walk to the park. Two women in spandex, looking fine, dogs on leashes. Yakking it up all the way there and back. Kimberly is a Realtor and has that forwardness of a professional who depends on talking people into and out of things. She was very present at the beginning, when Gina was still taking walks, still thinking that this was just a difficult life stage. Less present as things got hard, reappearing only at the end, when she was helpful. She wasn’t one of the friends, neighbors, and relatives who brought food, so much food that he crept out at night to dump it in the cans, collected Tupperware and GladWare and all the other wares that were left behind, raising a tower in the corner of the kitchen, a cenotaph built out of unrequited kindness. Kimberly didn’t bring food; she brought booze. Poured him a drink, then left her business card on his kitchen table, two words written on the back: Call me.

  He didn’t. Chucked the card. Two weeks later and she called to “check” on him. Four months later and she came to plant her flag in his territory. He should have been clear with her. He’s not ready; he’s not interested. Eventually, at the worst-possible moment, he was clear as a bell. He hasn’t seen or heard from her since.

  “Hi, Beth.” He sets the phone on the kitchen table so that he can eat as she talks. As she chatters on, being a woman who believes strongly that every quotidian task, if outlined in detail, is of interest to the listener, he takes a bite of the potpie. He’s been impatient; it’s only lukewarm. He throws his plate into the microwave, mumbles, “Uh-huh, yeah, right,” and, at the ding, pulls it out. Now it’s too hot. The dogs sit in quiet contemplation of his movements. Long velvet tongues slide along dewlaps in anticipation of leftovers.

  * * *

  Oh please, please. Gimme some. Whatever it is, and it smells terrific, I want some. Lucky does too. There’s plenty for all of us, right? But I want more. I get more, right? Adam, come on, stop and share with us. Me. Us. Finally, the plate is set on the floor between us. Another dog might volley for the bigger portion, but I’m a good dog. I let Lucky, as we call him now, have one half of the plate—the half, albeit, that has less gooey goodness on it, but half nonetheless. Adam keeps mumbling into the air, no words, or at least no words that have any meaning for me, but noises. Comfortable sounds, but not engaged. Kind of like when he’s asleep and snores. No content, just noise. Finally a couple of words that I do know, Okay, then. He says that and then gets up from the table. There’s a pan on the counter and he sets that down for us. I don’t like the metal surface—it gives me a shruggy feeling—but I can keep my tongue from contact with it well enough to get the gooey stuff up. Lucky doesn’t seem to care about the metal, and when all that I can reach is gone, he takes the pan and walks off with it. I let him, going back to the plate on the floor for one final pass.

  PART II

  CHAPTER 17

  Her mother drops Cody off outside the orthodontist’s office. Skye will be at the Big Y grocery shopping, and she reminds Cody to text her when she gets done with the orthodontist.

  “Can I go get a soda or something after?”

  “Yes. But stay in touch. I’m not g
oing to be that long.”

  “I’ll walk to the Big Y; it’s only a couple of blocks.”

  “Just text me.…”

  Cody walks away from the micromanaging. She yanks open the heavy glass door of the office building, runs up the stairs to Frank Odell, Orthodontics. This should just be a brace tightening, and, with luck, she’ll be out in fifteen minutes and can wander the downtown area, poke into some stores. Skye always gets lost in the grocery store, especially now that she has to get creative with vegetarian meals.

  It’s her lucky day and Dr. Odell makes quick work of her exam and tightening, and Cody is back on the street within minutes with a slightly achy mouth and a new supply of wax. She’s forgotten to give the lady behind the reception desk the check from her mother, but she’s not going back. She’ll “find” it later and Mom can mail it in.

  Cody has ten bucks worth of tip money from cleaning rooms in her pocket and at least an hour to herself, so she makes her way across the street to a pizza place to get herself a slice and a root beer. The late March day has all the promise of spring, even though the remnants of crusty, dirt-garnished snow piles are everywhere; thin fans of meltwater trickle out from beneath the piles, making every step sloppy. Still, the air is mild, and that one empty park bench is a perfect place to people-watch and eat the double-cheese slice oozing luxurious grease into her hand.

  Cody licks the grease from her fingers, balls up the waxed paper, and makes a fair shot at the nearby trash barrel. She misses and has to get up to retrieve her misfire. A young man comes in her direction, and she quickly goes back to her bench, claiming it as her territory. He’s Hispanic, she thinks. Below his canted trucker cap, his dark hair is beautifully clipped close to his head, leaving graceful neck tattoos exposed; his slender body is dressed in sagging homeboy jeans, Joe Boxers revealed; a chain slung from wallet to belt loop slaps against his skinny shank. As he gets closer, she has a sense that she knows him, but there are no Hispanic kids in her school. He looks like a lot of the boys in her old school, but that’s not what she associates him with. The sense is fleeting, a shadow of recognition quickly passing. Then it hits her.

  “Hey!”

  The boy doesn’t respond, just keeps trudging forward, and Cody wonders if she has actually said it out loud. “Hey, you! Yo!”

  He stops, considers her, and keeps moving. His eyes are hooded, sleepy-eyed, like he’s just awakened.

  “No. Wait.”

  The boy stops at the curb but doesn’t turn around, and she can see in his posture that he thinks she’s teasing him, taunting him.

  “I know where he is. Your dog.”

  “What you say, girl?”

  “You’re that kid, the one who overdosed.”

  He does turn now, gives her a glare that should be intimidating. She should run, but Cody holds her ground. “I know where your dog is. I know who has him.”

  “He fighting him?”

  “No. He’s been, um, rescued.”

  The boy steps toward Cody, the hooded, sleepy eyes now wide and sparking, not with curiosity or pleasure, but with anger, like he thinks she’s lying. “Who are you?”

  “Cody. I was there. When you … In the house. You almost died.” She knows she’s allowing him to intimidate her, but he is intimidating. He’s tall, for one thing, and bears a gangsta swagger that isn’t put on. He’s the real deal. She takes one step backward, assesses the few people on the street, mostly Mass College of Liberal Arts students, wrapped up in their conversations and phones. She’s hoping that they are witness and deterrent enough if this kid gets physical.

  “But I didn’t. Where my dog at?”

  “In Boston. He’s great. He’s in good care.”

  “I want him back.”

  “I know you do. I would, too.”

  “You got a phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Call him. Call this guy and tell him get his ass back here and give me my dog. He has no right to him.”

  “He won’t give him back. He thinks that you fought him.”

  The boy scowls, mutters, “Ain’t true. I didn’t.”

  “What’s your name? I can’t keep thinking of you as the guy in the house.”

  The boy folds his arms across his hollow chest, sticks out his chin. “Mingo.”

  “I’m Cody. And what’s his name? The dog.”

  “He named Dawg.”

  “Like ‘Hey, Dawg’?” A giggle bubbles in her throat, but she swallows it; this kid does not look amused.

  “He’s my dog. I want him back.” He turns his face away from her. “He like my family. He’s all I got.” Mingo rubs a hand over the tattoo on his neck, lifts and resets his trucker hat at a cocky angle, regains his ’tude. “You gonna help me?”

  “Yeah. I’ll help.” For the first time in a long time, something feels right.

  They exchange phones, key in their respective phone numbers, and Mingo leaves her standing alone on the sidewalk. Her phone dings with a text message: Where are you? Mom. Probably frantic. Cody texts back: Meet u @ BY. Skye can cool her jets in the parking lot of the grocery store.

  Back in the car, Cody’s text-message alert dings again. It’s a rare-enough occasion that she knows her mother is dying to know who’s texting her. Cody isn’t oblivious to the fact that her mother peeks at her phone. If she was the diary-keeping sort of teenager, she’d have to be totally devious about where to stash the diary; her mother’s sense of personal space is, like, nonexistent. Cody knows that if her mother ever broke her laptop password, she’d freak. Beyond Internet searches for various school projects, there’s a history of searches for a shooting that has become a cold case. Cody knows enough to delete her history cache, but sometimes she forgets.

  Yo kid

  Yo

  Tx 4 telling me abt Dawg

  Shd let guy no?

  No. Lt me thnk

  K

  Cody slips her phone into her jacket pocket. Keeps the small smile on her face turned well away from her mother’s sideways glance.

  * * *

  Chance playfully grabs his buddy’s foot, then rolls onto his back. Play with me! The move is so like the crippling move of a fighter, yet so gentle and the submission so trusting. The other pit bull jumps to his feet and, in moments, the two dogs are play wrestling. Perfectly suited to each other.

  It is one of his hard days, and the rambunctious behavior of two dogs who ought to know better does nothing to alleviate Adam’s gloom. He is fetching up on their April sixth wedding anniversary—what would have been their fifth—and though he’d known that this would be hard, he hadn’t known exactly how hard. Looming on the calendar like some kind of perverted red-letter day, the date pulsed its significance into his eye every time he glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall beside the phone. He took the calendar down, but the date struck him every time he opened his appointment book to jot in a new client, a dental appointment, a reminder to get the car serviced. It struck him when he looked at his phone, the calendar app’s bright blue square proclaiming the passage of time in its relentless pull. A pull that minute by minute took Adam from Gina, thrusting her deeper and deeper into his past.

  “Hey, guys. Knock it off.” Adam straightens the coffee table, catches a lamp before it crashes. “Enough!”

  The two dogs stop. Sit. Look at him as if he’s maligning their good natures. Chance immediately shakes off the puppy behavior and comes to bop Adam in the chin with his head. He then presses himself into Adam’s body, crouched as he is on the floor. Chance licks his man’s face, tastes the upset, mutters some comfort into Adam’s ear, and is rewarded with a hug.

  “We need to get out of Dodge.” Adam has three days clear on that calendar of his. One on either side of the one he’d like to avoid. There is no place he needs to be, and one where he’d like to be. LakeView Hotel. Not as a door-to-door salesman of fund-raising techniques, but as a vacationer. A guest with no obligation other than to admire the Berkshires and sleep in a bed that he’s
never shared, the dogs notwithstanding.

  Kimberly called him again last night, all sweet concern and an invitation to some charity event for a cause he’s not particularly interested in. Apparently, he’s been forgiven, or else she’s adopted a new strategy. He said yes, only because saying no would take more work.

  “LakeView Hotel, Skye Mitchell.”

  “Skye, it’s Adam.” He realizes that it’s the first time he’s just called himself Adam when calling the LakeView, confident that he’s unique enough to Skye to need no last name. “I’m hoping I can have a room for the next couple of nights. I’d love to come up today.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Maybe this time I’ll get to the top of Mount Greylock.”

  “You’re out of luck there. They don’t open the gate till May.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Any further suggestion of what activities he might enjoy in the area seems silly right now. Especially because Adam mostly intends to lie in bed and watch old movies. Skye doesn’t need to know that. She can suppose that he’ll be doing the early spring tourist thing, not feeling sorry for himself with Humphrey Bogart.

  “We’ll find something for you to do. Still with two dogs?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Then I guess room nine is all yours.”

  “See you in a few.”

  “Super.”

  They sign off and Adam looks at the two dogs, Chance and the dog he’s ended up calling Lucky. “Want to go see Skye?”

  Chance nods, shakes, and does his little two-step dance. Adam doesn’t fool himself into believing the dog understands the sentence, just the word go.

  For what he’s planning, Adam doesn’t need much, and he is packed and ready to leave in half an hour. He calls Next Door Beth to ask her to pick up the paper off the stoop in the morning, relieved that he gets her answering machine so he doesn’t have to explain himself, sets the thermostat to fifty-five, makes sure he’s got the power cords for phone and tablet, grabs a bag of dog food out of the pantry, and off they go, the two pit bulls beside themselves with the idea of a car ride.