Two Good Dogs Page 6

  Cody pulls out her sketch pad and finds a pencil that’s got enough point on it to be useful. Mosley always sketches out his work on paper first, before committing the idea to whatever surface he’s working on. Except about making art, he’s so laid-back. Sometimes it feels like he doesn’t even know she’s there, but then sometimes she looks up from her sweeping and sees him watching her. He’ll ask her to stop, hold the pose. He’s in the “zone” and she’s helping him to work through something. That’s what he calls it. The zone. That’s when she most likes to be there, when Mosley is in the creative zone. Cody flips to a clean page in her sketchbook. Not another horse, no. She should try to expand on her subject matter. Mosley said that. “You have to draw everything, not just what you know you can draw well.” Words of wisdom, certainly.

  Cody looks around the room, doesn’t see anything particularly sketchworthy. She looks out the single bedroom window at the trees that form a backdrop to the property, reds and yellows and permanent piney green. Brown oak leaves stubbornly cling to twigs, and faded yellow beech leaves flutter, raining down, defeated. She’s been to the top of Mount Greylock, been driven up the switchback road with its view-offering turnouts, and each wave of mountain and its trough of valley made her feel like she was at sea. Lost.

  She feels claustrophobic, crowded by the relentless magnitude of the mountains, crowded by her mother. Aching with the weight of the Secret. It’s not so hard to keep silent when there is no one around who knows about Randy’s death, his murder. Maybe she should be grateful that they did move to this hellhole of a place; if they had remained in Holyoke, remained in the same neighborhood where everyone read the local paper and knew what had happened, where her friends were attracted by her unique status as child of the deceased, it would have been a lot harder to maintain a grip on the Secret.

  Every few days, Cody checks the online version of the Springfield papers, looking for references to her father’s unsolved death. Making sure that the shooter knows that she’s keeping her promised silence.

  Framed by the small window with the froufrou curtains wafting gently in the evening breeze is a big blazing red maple tree, its obscene color muted in the fading sunlight. She begins to work, shoves a hank of hair behind an ear. Her tree won’t be pretty; she’ll take liberties with its shape, and the benign maple will show its true intentions. A hanging tree. Mosley says you sometimes have to get down to ugly to make something beautiful.

  The joint is reduced to an ember. She touches it to the edge of the curtain. It crumbles.

  * * *

  Adam thumbs off his phone after a nice, albeit brief, chat with Ariel—she’s fine; he’s fine—and swaps it for the remote, swings his feet up onto the bed, loosens his tie, and points the remote at the television. Chance pokes his nose over the edge of the bed, makes his little Me, too noise. “Come on.” He pats the bed, but he really doesn’t have to make a formal invitation for the dog to leap up, circle once, and snuggle his back against Adam’s side. Adam finds the news. “We should go for a walk before dinner.” Chance doesn’t seem to care either way, although his stubby ears perk at the word dinner. Adam drops his arm across the dog’s back, scratches gently along his ribs. In a moment, Adam gets up, opens his briefcase, and extracts a pint of Jack Daniel’s. The bathroom has only plastic cups, but they’ll do.

  Adam takes his drink outside to the porch. Leans his elbows on the rail, studies the landscape. This time of year, the light becomes butter yellow before tarnishing into sunset. In a few minutes, he’ll take Skye’s advice and go upstairs to the west end of the gallery. The light here is different from that of the Cape, where he and Gina had spent a lot of time. Sunset was their favorite time to walk the beach. He wonders why they never made it up to the Berkshires, two hours and a whole landscape away. Standing, leaning, sipping, Adam is quietly glad that they didn’t. Maybe that’s why he is pleased to stay here again tonight. There is nothing of Gina here.

  Adam finishes the drink, tosses the plastic cup into the wastebasket. There was a time in his life when he felt the world was closing in on him in an unfair and brutal way, and Mr. Daniel’s twelve-year-old product was his best friend. Now he enjoys a pre-dinner drink; later just a nightcap, a liquid reminder that, as bad as he feels now, he has regained control of himself. It was one of Chance’s first influences on him, when the unwanted dog had inserted himself into Adam’s life, requiring an attention that brought Adam out of his self-inflicted funk. A dog needs food and walking and a kind touch. What he gave in return was everything.

  CHAPTER 6

  “So, how long did you say you’ve owned the place?” Adam pumps himself a cup of coffee from the airpot, looks longingly at the bear claws and chooses a banana.

  “It’s a little over six months.” Skye empties a box of sweetened cereal into a plastic cereal dispenser, neatly flattens the cardboard. “Since the end of April.”

  “Work in progress?”

  “You could say that.” Skye blushes a little, and Adam feels like he’s been inappropriate.

  “It’s hard. Start-ups.”

  “Technically, though, it’s not a start-up, not if it’s been in business since 1946.”

  “True. But, for you, I’m guessing, it’s your first go?”

  She opens a new cereal box. “I’ve been in the hospitality business for a long time, but this is another animal entirely.”

  “Well, it’s great. Really.” Adam sets the mug down, squirts a little more coffee into it.

  “It’s not, but thank you for saying so. It’s hard keeping up with daily stuff and then dealing with deferred maintenance issues. Deferred over a decade in some cases.”

  Adam’s already figured out that this hotel is a one-woman shop. And it’s likely that sullen kid of hers isn’t much help. “I hope you have a good handyman.”

  Skye smiles at this. “Yeah, he’s great. When he’s not hunting. Or fishing. Or drunk. I’ve learned to do a lot myself. Except for the room you were in, I’ve painted all the others. I’ve got a punch list as long as your arm with next steps. I’m becoming conversant with plumbing, and wiring.”

  Chance is enjoying the open-door policy of the office and has just wandered in from his self-guided morning walk. Adam’s meeting today is in the afternoon, so he’s going to treat himself and the dog to a good hike in the woods, a thought that prompts him to ask Skye where the best hiking is.

  She pulls out a little guidebook, points to an entry. “Folks like this one; you can see across to Mount Greylock and down into North Adams from a lookout point on it.”

  “Haven’t you been?”

  “I wish I had the time—and the freedom—to go hiking, but this place is really all-consuming.”

  “I guess it would be.” He certainly knows about all-consuming work. “You should find some time to relax, Skye. Don’t let ambition kill your joy.”

  “Ambition? It’s survival at this point, Mr. March.”

  The businessman in him wants to ask her probing questions, get a sense of the scaffolding of this enterprise. The reformed workaholic keeps his mouth shut. He takes his coffee to one of the chairs by the picture window, grabs the local paper from the table. Chance flops down beside him, sighs, and is immediately in a doze.

  “Does your dog like meat loaf?”

  “Why, yes. Yes, he does.”

  “I have some in the cottage. I’d be happy to let you give it to him. Cody won’t be eating it; she’s become a vegetarian overnight.”

  “They all flirt with it, vegetarianism. Comes with a growing awareness of the world and the rampant injustices. It’s something they can control.” He sounds a little flippant; after all, Gina was a hardened vegetarian. It’s Ariel he thinking of.

  “Well, it’s a waste of good meat. I mean, with it already being…”

  “Processed?”

  “Yeah. It’s not so much not eating meat as repudiating me.”

  “As a cook?”

  “As a mother. As someone breathing.”


  Adam laughs. “My daughter once told me that she hated the way I arch one eyebrow when I think I’m making a joke. Made her sick.”

  “Well, you do arch your left eyebrow.”

  “I’ve tried to control it.” This is pleasant, a little repartee. It’s been a while since bantering came easily. Or at all.

  * * *

  Mr. and Mrs. Bickering Couple arrive, not bickering just yet, but I can sense the simmering. He follows his wife as she surveys the array of bagels and cream cheese; dry cereal, packets of instant oatmeal; a hand of bananas in the fruit basket, early symptoms of over-ripeness in the tiny brown spots that have formed overnight. I feel the inadequacy of my offerings in the look on the missus’s face; the resignation to further disappointment in the mister’s fumbling of the stacked paper cups. I won’t apologize, though. This is what I advertise as a continental breakfast, and this is what I provide. You don’t like it, there’s a breakfast place six miles downhill.

  The dog, who has been quietly dozing beside Adam’s chair, lifts his head and pulls himself to his feet, shakes and ambles over to Mr. Bickering Couple. I’m about to say something to Adam, to get him to control his dog, when suddenly Mr. BC smiles. “Hey there, fella. Good boy.” The dog, Chance, whaps his tail from side to side as the man bends over him, giving the dog an experienced back scratch. “Wish we’d known you were pet-friendly, we’d have brought our girl.”

  “We miss her so much.” This from Mrs. BC, who, like her husband, is smiling affectionately at the rather unlovely dog. “Who’s a good boy?”

  From his seat by the window, Adam March raises one arching eyebrow at me.

  “We’re not, actually. Pet-friendly. This is a special case.” I throw Adam an arch look of my own. “A one-off.”

  “Too bad. Lots of places are going to the dogs. So to speak.” Mr. BC—Mr. Abbott—gives Chance another pat. “Catering to people like us, who like to travel with their dogs.”

  I swallow back the obvious question: So why did they choose the LakeView if they wanted a pet-friendly vacation? It’s not in my best interest to query guests about why they chose my hotel over the more upscale or more accommodating hotels farther along the Mohawk Trail. Neither do I make a remark about the way people are nuts for their dogs. Or cats, or what have you. If I allow dogs, what’s next? Iguanas? “Wish I could, but I don’t. More coffee?”

  The Abbotts put covers on their coffees and leave. The dog wanders back to his master’s side.

  “He’s right, you know.”

  “I’m not equipped.”

  “Sure you are. What would you have to do differently?”

  “I couldn’t cope with the fleas, the urine stains, the stink.”

  “You could designate a couple of rooms, put down tile or laminate instead of rugs. Washable bedcovers. Most people who care enough about their pets to travel with them have the flea situation under control. Clean dogs, housebroken dogs, those are the kind that get to travel. Show dogs. Therapy dogs. Service dogs.”

  I throw up a hand, stopping Adam in the same way I stop Cody when the girl gets on a pleading tirade. “No. I really don’t want to get into any more complications. This place has enough without trying to change the program, too.”

  “It’s not exactly like you’d be running a no-tell motel. People like me are happy paying you a premium, and I’m certainly not the only lonely traveler willing to do so to be able to keep his companion with him.”

  “‘Lonely traveler’?”

  “A figure of speech.”

  I think not. Although he mentioned being divorced, he’s wearing a wedding band, suggesting another marriage. But he’s here with his dog, telling me he’s on business. The curious in me gets to wondering if he’s been thrown out, along with the dog. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have left his dog home with the family? Enough conjecturing about guests. “I have to go rouse Cody. Do you need anything else?”

  “Go. I’m fine. And, hey, good luck.” He raises that eyebrow again.

  * * *

  Predictably, Cody isn’t ready. She always wears the same thing, so how hard can it be to pull together an outfit? Skinny jeans, layered tank tops just this side of inappropriate, a flannel shirt or a body-concealing hoodie, depending on the day. And, as always, the beat-up Justin cowboy boots that she bought at Tractor Supply. It all makes me long for a parochial school with its dependable and appropriate uniform.

  With her bangs long enough to touch the heavy frames of her glasses, Sia-like, only the bottom half of Cody’s face is visible. It’s like Cody is hiding behind the scrim of hair and frame. She has perfect skin. A beautiful pair of hazel eyes. Tiny shell-like ears. A slender body, nearly hipless and certainly enviable. But she hides behind the hair, the glasses, the flannel shirt, and the perpetual slump of cultivated ennui.

  A glance at the wall clock with its relentless second hand sweeping away the minutes. “Five minutes. Have you eaten?”

  “Yes.” True enough. A box of Honey Nut Cheerios sits open on the table, the milk, also open, beside it. There’s a scrim of pulp on a six-ounce glass, so I know that Cody’s downed some orange juice.

  “Book bag? Homework?”

  “I can’t find my science notebook.” Cody says this conversationally, as if the notebook’s whereabouts is of little concern to her personally.

  “Have you looked?”

  I am graced with the withering look. I have once again confirmed my status as an irritation in Cody’s tender life.

  “Let me rephrase that. Where? Where have you looked? Did you have it in the office? I start on the litany of places lost things might be: office, bathroom, under the bed, behind the dresser.

  The rumbling sound of a hill-laboring school bus puts a firecracker under both of us. “Just go. I’ll find it and take it over.”

  “Science is first period.”

  “Go!”

  I wander around Cody’s room, looking for the missing notebook. As my cell phone chimes, I find it. The science notebook is peeking out from under the tangle of bedclothes, wide open to a drawing of a spooky-looking tree, a long braid of rope hanging from an outstretched branch. No denying the significance. “LakeView Hotel, good morning.” I use my brightest voice, midweek and a new reservation!

  “Sorry, wrong number.”

  I toss the phone down, stare at the drawing in Cody’s notebook. The subject is disturbing, the hangman’s noose, but the execution is pretty good, no pun intended. If this is a picture meant to show me exactly how Cody feels, I’m confused. Is Cody threatening me, or herself? Should I be worried? Maybe a visit with the school counselor is in order. In the next minute, I decide no. This is me overreacting. As Cody would certainly agree. Still, maybe an informal chat with the counselor wouldn’t be a bad idea.

  * * *

  Ah the scents! The sounds! The mud! I’m more of a city dog, to be sure, but this outdoor stuff is quite fun. Off leash, running after the noise of squirrels, the scent of bunny. I’m not sure I’d know what to do if I ever got close to one, but the chase is the thing. Adam is enjoying himself, too. I can tell by the way he stops along the trail and takes in a deep breath, lets it out with a soft vocalization that sounds like he’s been presented with a big soup bone. Wow. I don’t pretend to know what he’s admiring, but it’s definitely admiration. We go higher and higher and the going gets a lot more vertical. I can feel the exercise in my haunches as I have to do more pushing upward. Eventually, we come to a stopping place, and Adam sits down with a little oof of relief, pulls off one boot, shakes it out. Gina would have loved this place. We should have come. I recognize only one word in that utterance. Gina. For a while it had stopped meaning the woman we lived with and begun to mean sadness, like a different word, elongated in Adam’s mouth. Like a howl. I sense that I had better make myself available for touching and go up to him. I give him a little lick on the mouth, just to let him know that I’m there. Ready.

  Adam puts his boot on and pushes himself off the bench. Come on, bud,
let’s head back. I understand almost all of those words. We go back down the trail at a slightly slower pace. The woodland creatures are no longer quite so interesting.

  CHAPTER 7

  Cody sneaks aboard the school bus that will get her closer to the AC than her own Route 3 bus. This is the first day that she isn’t being picked up by her mother, her first day out of ISS. Black Molly is still incarcerated, although she managed to respond to Cody’s text while under the supervision of the day’s ISS monitor.

  You still ISS

  Yeah. Lucky me

  Sucks

  Word

  Cody keeps her head down, as if absorbed in her silent phone, pretending to belong on this route, pretending to be invisible. She makes no eye contact with anyone, especially the two girls who, along with Ryan, have conspired to make her life a living hell. Taylor and Tyler. When Cody first arrived at the high school, the lone new student in a class that’s been together since kindergarten, she mistook the pair of blond, blue-eyed Amazons as twins. They dressed alike; they talked in the same lingua franca of high-pitched squeals and withering asides. That was her first error in judgment, asking a stupid question: “Are you guys, like, twins?” And that misstep opened up an avenue of abuse. With one ill-considered question, Cody was branded a cretin. “What are you? Gay?” Not meaning gay in the usual sense, or even in the traditional sense of happy. A new use for the word, meaning stupid. Reject. What Ryan whispered into her ear was even more heinous.

  If Cody thought that the girls wouldn’t notice her stowing away on their bus, she was just proving their point that she was a dumbass. She climbs down after them, keeping a safe distance, but one of them turns to look at her. “Hey, you. Girl.”

  Cody turns her back to them, plugs in her earbuds, and marches down the road, ignoring the taunts being tossed at her by the pair.

  “Love the boots.” The mean-girl drip of sarcasm. “Real shitkickers.”

  Cody turns up the volume. Raises one hand, offers the one-fingered wave. She doesn’t think that they’ll pursue her. They’re not that interested.