Two Good Dogs Read online

  Chance and Adam had done the work, gotten the CD for obedience and the Canine Good Citizen award; had worked with a trainer to give Chance the ability not only to recognize Adam’s bubbling anger but to defuse it. They took up therapy dog work in nursing homes and participated in school reading programs where little reluctant readers jockeyed for position next to Chance to get the opportunity to show off their newly acquired reading skills, as if the dog understood what they read to him. Anything to spread the joy of touching a happy dog.

  The darkness receded with the light of his life, Gina, and the steadfastness of his dog, Chance.

  Then Gina got sick. When they had to accept the unacceptable, Adam felt like the darkness that had once clouded his spirit was growing back as surely as the cancer that had bloomed inside of his wife. But now the darkness has a name: grief. Three months after her passing and he still feels waves of it, prompted sometimes by no more than a song on the radio, or the sight of a woman wearing those silly Birkenstock sandals Gina loved, and it’s then that the dog, Chance, proves his worth, as he is now, head-butting Adam and making that little uhhn uhhn noise.

  Adam collects himself. “I wonder if I can sweet-talk that woman at the LakeView into letting us stay there another night?” It’s just a space, a bed, a television—a room with a view. But somehow the thought of staying there again is pleasant. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but going back to the LakeView feels right.

  Chance shakes himself vigorously and sits in front of Adam. Okay.

  Well, he can’t spend any more time on this problem; he’s only got about ten minutes before his meeting at this place, the Artists Collaborative. This is the nonprofit that his neighbor Beth encouraged—her word—him to apply to for the job of fund-raising consultant. Clearly the neighbors have decided that it’s time for him to get back on track.

  Adam opens the passenger door and the dog hops in. As Adam pulls away from the curb, he thoughtfully lowers the window so Chance can push his muzzle out, take in the air. He’s not the kind of dog who sticks his head out of a window and barks, but he does like to suck in the passing scents, get a flavor of the scenery, let his floppy dewlaps flutter.

  As they sit at a red light, waiting for pedestrians to make their slow way across the street, Chance makes this little rumbling noise in his throat—not a growl, but an alert announcing the approach of one of his own kind. In this case, it really is one of Chance’s kind, a stocky pit bull on the end of a short chain leash, at the other end of which is a tough-looking customer. Except for the fact that he’s clearly a teenager, he looks like he wouldn’t be out of place at the Fort Street Center, the homeless shelter where Adam once performed community service and where he now serves on the board of directors. At nine-thirty on a weekday morning, the boy’s obviously not in school, either truant or expelled. The baggy, low-slung jeans and the hoodie, the studied saunter as the walk light blinks in its final seconds of service, the glint of fake gold around his neck—all mark the boy as one of the tribe of Badass.

  The dog wears a plastic cone around his meaty neck. Adam assumes that the cone prevents him from worrying stitches holding together wounds he probably received in a dogfight. This boy looks like one of the boys who stole Chance, stole him and dropped him in a pit with his jaw taped shut, training bait for a fighting dog. Adam’s mouth goes dry with the memory of it.

  Chance actually whimpers, a sound he’s not in the habit of making. If Adam were given to anthropomorphizing his dog, he might think that Chance was empathizing, like a compassionate human being at the sight of someone down on his luck. More likely, it’s the sight of the dreaded Elizabethan collar that has elicited the whine. It’s hard not to see that, despite the e-collar, the dog seems happy enough. His rolling sailor’s gait is cheerful and he looks up at his man, not with fear, but with anticipation. As if he’s expecting some sort of treat. Adam signals for his turn, and Chance pulls his head back into the car. “There but for the grace of God go you, don’t you know?” Adam knows he’s making assumptions, showing his prejudices. Just because the kid looks like a street person, just because the dog is a pit bull type.

  Chance reaches over and gives Adam a quick lick on the cheek. The boy and dog finally make their arrival on the opposite shore and Adam accelerates moments before the light turns red again.

  * * *

  She should hitch back down to the Artists Collaborative, get away from here. Go hang out with Mosley and Kieran and mix with cool people. Not that she knows many of the other artists in residence; most of them are only there during the day, when she’s stuck here or in school.

  Unfortunately, her mother’s watching her like a hawk, so Cody has no idea when she’ll be able to get back down to North Adams. It was bad enough when she couldn’t get out from under her mother’s thumb much before late afternoon, after the rooms had been cleaned and whatever togetherness plans her mother had hatched for the two of them had been decided. It’s going to be far worse now that she’s taken out Ryan with her knee. Her “punishment,” as handed down by Mrs. Zigler, means that Skye will be picking her up every day after school, after her day is wasted in the in-school suspension room doing homework for which she’s had no classroom instruction. Plus, she’s grounded again, which—again—is meaningless but makes it sound like her mother is taking Mrs. Zigler seriously, doing her bit. It’s the ultimate collaboration between school and home. Imprisonment by any other name. Maybe Black Molly has the right idea. Just run.

  Cody smoothes the duvet over the bed, arranges the throw pillows in the pattern that Skye prefers, some variation on shit she sees in the decorating magazines. When she’s feeling particularly disagreeable, Cody calls her mother “Martha,” as in Martha Stewart.

  Skye has glommed on to the whole New England kitsch ethic, and it turns Cody’s stomach. Chintz slipcovers and fake antique quilts. Yuck. Baskets in every bathroom, holding rolled-up facecloths, toilet tissue, the cheap toiletries in tiny plastic bottles. Worse, dried weeds hanging off of grapevine wreathes on every door. Double yuck. Fortunately, there’s been virtually no attempt to rehab their little cottage into anything more than a place where they retreat from the hotel, eat a late supper, and adjourn to their separate rooms, so Cody doesn’t have to suffer the home decor atrocities in her own home. However, even with the mildew scrubbed off the walls and fresh paint applied, the whole place still reeks of old. Farther up the Mohawk Trail, places like this have collapsed or been chopped up into firewood. Skye’s grand plan is to renovate all four of the cabins and become some kind of fake mid-century—last century—tourist attraction. She apparently has never heard of water parks or Disney World.

  Room number 9 is done, no vestige left of its human or canine occupants. A blast of Febreze and the next guest will be none the wiser as to the presence of that weird-looking dog. Actually, he was cute in an ugly sort of way; a face only a mother could love. To her complete surprise, as if her thoughts have conjured him, when she opens the guest room door, the dog is sitting outside it, his chunky back end planted neatly on the center of the cocoa-fiber doormat. He sees her and that tail starts swinging from side to side as he gets up to greet her, like he’s been waiting just for her. She pushes her housekeeping cart along the wide porch and the dog follows.

  Chance snuffles at Cody’s knees, tickling them. “Beat it.” He doesn’t; he trots along beside her, as if she’s invited him along.

  “Beat it, I said.” Cody shoves the dog away, fully annoyed with his constant sniffing at her, the sense that he’s trying to read her with his nose. “What is wrong with you?” The dog sits, lifts his front paw as if inviting her to shake it. “You’re a jerk, you know that?” But she doesn’t mean it. She’s never had a dog, never had much in the way of interaction with them. The dog looks a lot like the dogs that some of the tougher street boys owned—burly, intimidating-looking creatures with names like Blaster and Killer. They’d parade their dogs up and down the streets, thick chain collars on them, short leashes he
ld tightly, suggestive of potential violence, danger. Made the boys feel like playas. Gangstas. Most of the dogs, and not a few of the teens, were actually pussycats.

  This dog is clearly pussycat, but he’s a pest, blocking her progress down the length of the porch. He bows, rump in the air. Waggles his head. Looks pointedly toward the open lawn. Barks.

  “I don’t have anything to throw for you.” Cody hunts around in the trash bag hanging from the housekeeping cart, finds an empty water bottle. “Chase this.” She pitches it off the porch, and the dog bounds after it. Once the bottle is in his mouth, he crunches it over and over, evidently pleased with the annoying noise the plastic makes. “Don’t leave that out there. I’ll get yelled at.”

  As if he understands, the dog hops back up onto the porch and drops the crushed water bottle at her feet.

  * * *

  I kept up my best friendly dog behavior all the way from our room, which had been doused in a foul scent in a feeble attempt to disguise our presence, to the place where my Adam was talking with the girl’s mother. I was interested in what was going on, but the emanations coming from the girl overrode my desire to pay attention to Adam, and I found myself drawn to her. I kept sniffing at her exposed skin, and she kept shoving me away. I took no offense. I have been trained to recognize when Adam is about to lose his temper, to sense that vibration of discord and mollify it with action. Because Adam is my only concern, my only experience of deeply internal human anger, I was shocked to find the very same vibrations coming from this pipsqueak of a girl. Inside her was this absolute core of anger. The thing was, it was very undirected. There didn’t seem to be any particular source of her irritation. With Adam, it’s usually pretty easy to suss out where the source of the trouble is. If we are driving, it’s another driver; if we are with other humans, it’s usually someone’s intransigence or obtuseness. I nudge Adam; he smiles, gives me a pat, and shakes himself (well, not really, but the human equivalent) into a better frame of mind. Because I couldn’t pinpoint this girl’s trouble spot, I could only hope that my antics would still work.

  They did, but only mildly. A dark car pulled into the parking lot and I caught a new emanation from the girl, a frisson of fear, pungent and sudden. I felt the girl’s hand on my head and I pushed myself against her. Maybe I helped because when two ladies got out of the car, the emanation of fear quickly dissipated.

  CHAPTER 5

  Adam March turned up just as I was checking in an older couple reliving their youth by visiting the places they’d been on their honeymoon fifty years before. Mr. and Mrs. Abbott had bickered their way into the office and, key in hand, were bickering their way back out. I catch the glint of amusement in Adam’s eye as he stands aside to let them by. “You let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you,” I call to them. “Like get you dueling pistols.” This last remark under my breath.

  “Nothing says second honeymoon like a good squabble,” Adam says as he walks up to the desk. “Ms. Mitchell, I’m here to throw myself on your continued mercy. Can we have our room back?”

  I don’t see the dog, so I have to ask, “You and the dog?”

  “Yes.” Adam glances toward the open door. “He’s checking things out.”

  “How many nights?”

  “Just tonight. I think.”

  I try to make a good show of studying my computer screen, scrolling down and across, as if seeing if there is anywhere I can possible squeeze him in. I even pull a frown of concern.

  “And I’m happy to pay the same surcharge as I did for last night.” He’s beaten me to the punch. I calculate the revenue in my head and have no choice but to smile and ask for his credit card.

  “Cody should have room nine all set, so I’ll put you back in there.”

  “I look forward to another stunning sunrise.”

  “You should pay attention to the sunset, too. The view isn’t quite as dramatic, but the sky gets very pretty. You can get a nice view from the upper porch.”

  “I will, thank you.” He takes the key out of my hand, pauses. “This is a nice place, Ms. Mitchell, perfect for a guy like me.”

  “How so?”

  He just shakes his head, as if he doesn’t really have an answer. Smiles that nice smile. “It just is.”

  There isn’t anyone else expected to check in on this Tuesday afternoon, so I put up my sign and lock the office door. Cody has left the housekeeping cart on the porch instead of putting it in the laundry room. She knows better. It looks terrible, this cart full of helter-skelter bottles and brooms, dirty sheets billowing out, parked bluntly in front of the stairwell door. No pride. No sense of ownership, that girl. In the next thought, I pardon Cody. She’s only fourteen, after all. How responsible was I at that age?

  With everything else going on in my life, I have given up meal planning in favor of something closer to “If it’s Tuesday, it must be meat loaf.” Tonight, it’s accompanied by baked potatoes, and in deference to the idea of a well-balanced meal, I’ve opened up a can of corn.

  Cody sits down with a thud. Contemplates the slice of meat loaf on her plate, the same meat loaf that she’s eaten for years, but this time she’s looking at it as if I have finally lost my mind, or that I’m trying to poison her. “I can’t eat this. It’s disgusting.”

  “You ate it last week. And the week before…”

  “And, yeah, the week slash month slash years and years before that. But. Not. Anymore.”

  “And when did you decide this?”

  “I’ve been working up to it. I’m considering becoming a vegetarian.”

  “Okay. So, no meat?”

  “Duh. That’s what a vegetarian is.”

  “Fish?”

  “I hate fish.”

  “Chicken?”

  Cody shrugs. “Maybe. But not every day.”

  “I come from a meat-and-potatoes background. We didn’t do vegetarian in the Lenihan household. I don’t think I know how.” I say this hoping to get a smile, but, as usual, she doesn’t give me an inch. I wonder for a second whether maybe the preponderance of red meat on the menu contributed in some way to my father’s early death. Then I remember that he died of a brain aneurysm, faulty wiring.

  “I bet there’re recipes online.” Cody splits her baked potato and lathers it in butter, adds a handful of shredded cheddar cheese, smooshes it all together.

  “And I bet you can make them.” I am not going to add specialty cooking to my task list. Uh, no. “You find them, give me the ingredients, and I’ll get you the stuff, but I’m not going to cook two different meals.”

  “You could do it. Convert.”

  It’s the first time in a very long time that Cody has suggested something we could do together. I should be glad. “I’ll think about it. I’m guessing you aren’t expecting canned corn and frozen peas as part of your diet. Vegetarians have to eat stuff like hummus and kale. Tofu.”

  Cody shoves her bangs out of her face, gives me the death look. “You think that I’m some baby who doesn’t know what it takes to avoid meat without sacrificing nourishment?”

  “Yeah.” Why are we fighting about this? We should be laughing. It should be a fun thing to do, plan meals, learn how to cook with fresh food. “Are you hanging around with vegetarians?” I jokingly make the word sound like it’s a cult. I want a smile. Give me something.

  “No. Not exactly.”

  “Who are you hanging out with?” I know that this is a good parenting question, know who your kid’s friends are. It gives me a little boost to think Cody really does have a peer group, even if it’s vegans or vegetarians.

  “Nobody you’d know.”

  “I’m sure I don’t, but I’d still like to know their names.”

  “Hers. Molly.”

  “Why don’t you have her come by some afternoon after school? I’d love to get to know your friend.”

  “I really don’t think you would.”

  “Why?”

  Cody doesn’t answer, just shoves the untou
ched plate aside and goes to her room. Conversation over.

  I poke at my own meat loaf. Maybe it is time to try a little harder with meals. I push the contents of my dinner plate into a plastic container, do the same for Cody’s untouched dinner, search for the covers, and can come up with only one that fits. It is one of life’s bigger mysteries, along with missing socks, where the tops to GladWare containers go to when they disappear.

  * * *

  Cody kind of regrets walking away from the dinner table. Not rejecting the meat loaf, but forgoing the baked potato, which is her favorite with cheddar cheese mashed into it. She’s hungry and too stubborn to go back out and grab the potato off her plate and bring it back into this closet that her mother thinks is an adequate space. At least the dump in Holyoke had a real closet; she didn’t have to hang her stuff on pegs against the wall. Well, they’ve got a couple of rooms occupied—that guy with the dog is back—so Skye will go hang out in the office most of the evening and Cody can get herself something to eat when her mother leaves the cottage. She pulls the remnants of Mosley’s joint out of the tampon box. Lights up.

  It’s weird, having given up Molly to her mother, like they had more in common than the fact that Black Molly is in the in-school suspension room, too. They don’t talk. No one talks in ISS; the monitor makes sure of that. But on the way to pick up lunch this afternoon, Black Molly slipped a scrap of paper into Cody’s pocket, leaned close, and whispered, “Case you want some fun.” Cody takes it out now. The handwriting is abysmal, like the numbers have been written by a six-year-old. She doesn’t know if she should be pleased to have the attention of the only other student more despised than she is, or despondent. What the hell. She inhales a mouthful of dope, thumbs the number into her phone directory. Saves it. Exhales. She doesn’t think that the fun Black Molly has in mind is going shopping together, and that thought makes her smile. Skye think she’s trouble now, well, there’s a whole world of exciting trouble out there.