Here to Stay (17 page)

“I don’t think they’ve hatched yet. Well, the ball pythons hatch. I’m not sure if the corn snakes are born from eggs or born live. He keeps talking about monitor lizards, too. Do you know what they are?”

“I know that the Komodo dragon is the world’s largest.”

“He can’t breed those, can he?” asked Sissy.

Elijah shook his head. “Most of Monitors aren’t so
big, but none of them have what you’d call gentle dispositions. We used to get them into the Humane Society occasionally.”

Gene was nowhere in sight when they parked.

They got out of the car, glancing about and heard Oscar’s baritone bark from inside combined with another sound, another bark, not so deep.

Sissy and Elijah exchanged glances as they climbed the steps to the porch and knocked.

Gene opened the door almost immediately. He had a leash in his hand, and on the end of the leash was a sable German shepherd puppy. A female, ears up.

The puppy was wearing a pink ribbon.

Sissy blinked, wondering by what stretch of the imagination Gene thought they needed another puppy and believed that he was the proper person to pick one out.

He said, “Her kennel name is Starry Night Marie Curie.”

Sissy’s eyes widened. The Starry Night Kennel was in Canada, and their dogs were good. The owners maintained that they had kept their lines free of megaesophagus, a genetic condition that had begun to plague Sissy’s. A dog with an enlarged esophagus regurgitated food and was at increased risk of aspirating. Such a dog couldn’t even be sold as a pet, but must be given for free to someone willing to assume the risks and trouble of having such an animal.

The puppy was pretty, too, Sissy had to admit. “How on earth—Why did you do this, Gene?”

“You like dogs, and I could afford it,” he said proudly. “I decided if you don’t have room for her she can live here with me and Oscar.”

“I think we can find room for her,” Elijah said, biting down a smile. He knew full well that Sissy was probably hating the fact that she hadn’t been able to choose the puppy, but this one had a very pretty face. “It’s a generous gift, Gene.”

“Well, it was actually a trade. I had a clown ball python, and they were interested in her.”

Elijah did not marvel that the snake and the dog were of equal value. He knew the prices placed on exotic reptiles.

They stepped into the foyer, and Sissy crouched down to pet the puppy, then glanced up and seemed to notice something for the first time.

“Gene Workman, what have you done to your grandmother’s house?”

Gene behaved as though he heard no censure in her tone. “It’s part of my surprise for you. You were worried about how Oscar’s getting along. I did it for him.”

Gene had, throughout the house, cut waist-high doors in various walls and plastered the edges of the openings. “I don’t like to leave doors open,” he explained, “so this way I don’t have to get up when Oscar wants to go somewhere else. It makes it easier for him to patrol.”

“But now you have all these open dog-sized doors,” Sissy reasoned.

“It’s not the same,” Gene replied placidly.

Oscar gave a big dog smile and raced back and forth through two doors, which gave him a nice long indoor running stretch. Marie Curie sat down and watched him.

When they returned home that night, Sissy entered the bedroom to find a white hooded sweatshirt, with a picture of a German shepherd on the front lying on her
pillow. Not at any dog show had she seen either such a nice representation of the breed or such a nice all-cotton sweatshirt.

She picked it up and looked at Elijah, then pulled it on.

Only then did she discover the envelope in the front pocket. Elijah watched as she drew out tickets to the Chicago ballet.

“That’s just one thing I thought we’d do,” he said. “Ezra’s taking four days off to spend with us.”

Sissy turned to him, trying to forget her bad feelings, especially the one that somehow he had chased Ezra away—first by insisting that Ezra know Clark and the reverse, then in not joining her to beg Ezra to stay near home.

She said, “Thank you, Elijah.”

He smiled, but she felt again the distance between them.
He’s just going through the motions
, she thought.
There’s no romance left for him.
But she didn’t know what to do about it. Some days she felt the same way.

June 3, 1993

S
ISSY WISHED
, not for the first time in the past year and a half, that Elijah had never quit working as an investigator for the Humane Society. She’d even found herself saying, “Why couldn’t you just devote yourself to the kennels?”

But Elijah couldn’t. Elijah had started the nonprofit Bless the Beasts, a camp for inner-city kids who had been in trouble that taught them to care for animals and treat them with gentleness, reasoning that people who are kind to animals will refrain from being violent toward people.

The camp property was a long parcel down the road from their home. The animals included cats, dogs, rabbits, nonvenomous reptiles, birds and horses. Elijah was its director and had hired three counselors, all college-age. A local veterinarian volunteered three hours a week to see to the animals and to give the kids talks on veterinary medicine.

The vet was an attractive woman named Corinne Foster. She was thirty-eight years old, divorced from a violent man, and Elijah seemed especially interested in hearing about that situation, as Maureen was still married to Cole.

On Eddy’s last day of eighth grade, a half day, Sissy spent the afternoon with her daughter in Kansas City, driving Gene’s half-ton pickup truck—his business’s main vehicle—and picking up agility equipment for her training business and some home gymnastics equipment she’d promised Eddy if she got straight A’s. Elijah had been against all the purchases, saying that they shouldn’t spoil Eddy and that the dog-training business should pay for itself—which it didn’t when you tallied up agility equipment.

So Sissy was surprised by the willingness with which Elijah unloaded their purchases when they got home.

Soon he was talking about Corinne. “She says she didn’t leave her husband until it passed the threshold of what she’d been used to growing up. But my father wasn’t an alcoholic. He wasn’t mean to my mother or any of us. So why does Maureen stay with Cole?”

It was unanswerable. Sissy moved the agility equipment to where she wanted it in the yard, repositioning a tunnel. It was 8:00 p.m. but still not dark. She watched
a firefly blink nearby, then looked at Elijah. “Are you attracted to her?”

She saw it in the dusk. He flushed.

“She
is
attractive,” he said, an evasive answer if Sissy had ever heard one.

“Are you involved with her?” Sissy demanded. She wasn’t sure she’d know if Elijah ever became involved with another woman. He was aloof toward her most of the time; how would she recognize a change?

“Of course not. She volunteers at the camp. I’m married. I would never be unfaithful to you.”

Sissy believed him. She also believed that he might
wish
to be unfaithful but not do so, that he was capable of carrying a torch for another woman without any declaration of love, any physical manifestation. Well, how far could that go?

She tried to quiet her doubts. But she could see that Elijah was smitten with this other woman, that he admired her. Corinne had a twelve-year-old son, and Elijah had remarked what a good mother she was.

Now he added, “She’s not like that, either, Sissy. She’s like us. Her husband was her childhood sweetheart. She’s never been with another man.”

Sissy had reached for a long-handled scoop to clean up after one of the dogs, a spot she’d just seen, but she stopped, stared at him.

Elijah glanced at her, then turned his attention to setting up one of the agility jumps.

“In just what context did she vouchsafe
that
confession?” Sissy asked. “What were you talking about that made her feel comfortable telling you how many lovers she’s had?”

Elijah heard the question and tried to convince himself that Sissy’s tone was unwarranted. Corinne Foster had found his to be a sympathetic ear for her small frustrations in being a single parent, her discomfort around most men, her fear of dating. He’d thought of himself as a sort of older brother to her. But now he wondered,
It’s more than that, isn’t it, Elijah?

Corinne seemed to have a sort of hero-worship for him, speaking admiringly of the kind of husband and father he was, of the compassion required to be director of Bless the Beasts.

He was going to have to stop it, stop listening to her confidences, discourage her from confiding. Sissy was right.

He wanted to walk over to his wife, to reassure her of his love, but right now he felt as guilty as if he
had
been unfaithful.

Sissy let three of the dogs into the yard, including her favorite of Round-Off’s puppies, a promising black-and-tan bitch named Coco. She tossed a ball for Round-Off, then murmured, only loudly enough for Elijah to hear, “I guess you think she’s more pure than I am because you weren’t my first.”

Elijah’s breath caught. Not in shock that she could say something like this after twenty-plus years of marriage to him. No.

Because some small part of him did feel this way.

Pure
wasn’t the word.

Sissy was passionate, more passionate than good. He’d always loved her in spite of this, but he still admired old-fashioned values.

Something he’d vowed never to ask came out of his mouth. “Was Clark?”

Sissy felt hot anger surge through her. How dare he care about this? She walked up to him in the growing darkness. “No. But I’ve been faithful to you since I walked away from Clark, and I don’t deserve your censure on this. Especially not from someone who seems to be playing a little loose with his own vows.”

“That’s not true.”

But she had already stalked past him and into the house.

He felt small for having criticized her and knew that his questions really came from the pain, so many years ago, of learning that Ezra was not his biological son.

Men had been matching dogs for centuries, but never before had animal abuse investigators had to deal with the effects of something like ArgRan. Worse, the dogs’ brains had been surgically altered so that they would not stop fighting even to save themselves. D’Angeles hated breaking up fighting rings because the dogs couldn’t be kept as pets, not unless it could be arranged that they would never see another dog.

—
Gone to the Dogs: A Nick D’Angeles Mystery
, Elijah Workman, 1993

June 10, 1994

E
DDY LIKED HELPING
her father at Bless the Beasts, and he paid her decently, too. She worked in the office, organizing the paperwork on the campers. She helped with the grounds, planting flowers around the office building. Most of the time, the campers—or clients as they were sometimes called—cared for the animals, but sometimes Eddy gave them pointers on teaching obedience to the dogs.

Her father had just gotten off the phone to a grant-writer and was getting ready to make his next call. Eddy
had been collating orientation sheets for the first summer session, which would begin the following week.

She’d been thinking of something for a while, had even mentioned it to Ezra on the phone, though her oldest brother, she had to admit, hadn’t been keen. Gene, strangely, had been more interested. “Dad, do you and Mom have any special romantic traditions? Well, like, I know about the dog presents on your anniversary.” She hadn’t meant to say that word, then decided the slip didn’t hurt at all. “Do you have a song or anything?”

Her father had been turning a page in the steno pad he used to write down things he needed to do that day. He stilled or seemed to. He didn’t look at Eddy. “Yes.”

Eddy waited for him to say more.

“The first song we danced to.” He seemed especially economical with his words. “It’s called ‘Let It Be Me.’”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Not surprised.” He turned his steno page.

“How does it go?”

Everything in Elijah had filled with pain. He could remember the last time he’d heard the song. Fourth of July, several years before. He’d been refinishing the deck, and Sissy had done some of the sanding, still looking amazing in shorts and a bikini top, and she’d had on some radio station that was playing golden oldies, greatest hits of whatever year. It had come on.

She’d looked over at him, seeming half-frightened.

He hadn’t been able to do anything because he’d remembered the time he’d heard it before that—leaving the hospital after Ezra’s snakebite.

He wished he could summon the romantic feelings, the intensely passionate feelings, that he used to have for
Sissy. But something in him had changed. He was grateful for his life, grateful for his children and his work, grateful for his beautiful wife. But things were different.

He had become very attracted to a divorced veterinarian. After Sissy had said what she had to him about it, he’d become aloof toward Corrine. Then, when she’d tried to share another personal confidence, he’d said, “I really can’t listen to this. I’m attracted to you, Corinne, but I’m married, and I’m going to stay married.”

She had asked if he would prefer she not help out at Bless the Beasts.

He’d told her that he had no way of replacing what she did.

So she had continued to come, but she was obviously saddened by the distance between them, and he’d had to curb his feelings constantly until he felt like begging her to never return. Then, this spring, she’d moved away, and now a young male veterinarian came to see the animals and talk to the kids.

But things were not the same with Sissy, and now Eddy had asked him about that song.

Well, he felt nothing, so why not. He tried to remember, and he sang a few lines for his daughter.

She said, “I’ve heard that song! That’s so romantic, Dad.”

He stood up, saying, “I’ve got to check on Mr. Rogers.” One of the birds, named by a camper. He had no reason to check on the bird, who’d had surgery recently but was fine. Elijah just had to get out of the office, get away from his daughter’s eyes, because his own were betraying him.

He strode through the damp heat toward the aviary, and once inside, he leaned against a pole and tried to
compose himself, tried to rearrange his whole being into someone he used to be.

E
DDY RODE HER RACING BIKE
to her brother’s house. Oscar appeared in the doorway of the Quonset hut where Gene kept his breeding animals, and Eddy headed over to the building, got off and leaned her bike against it.

He was inside, feeding crickets to the tarantulas and scorpions.

“I found out they had a song,” she said without preamble. “‘Let It Be Me’ by the Everly Brothers. So if we can get a band, we can get them to play it. Can we have a band, Gene?” For their parents’ surprise twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration.

“I don’t like bands,” Gene said. “I don’t think Mom and Dad do, either.”

“It won’t be a party without a band. Don’t go all Ezra on me and say you’re not sure it’s a great idea.”

“Is that what Ezra said?”

“He pointed out that they eloped after Mom left someone else—‘my father, by the way’ was how he put it—at the altar. I said, ‘So what?’”

Gene said, “We should definitely have a big celebration.”

“I told him you thought so, and he said, ‘That figures.’”

Gene gave the ghost of a smile, which was as close as Gene ever came to smiling.

“He also said that I think everything’s all hearts and flowers between Mom and Dad, but it’s not.”

Gene looked at her, then opened another tarantula “shoebox” and dropped in crickets, made a notation on the container’s pad of paper and moved to the next.

“Is that true?” Eddy suddenly demanded.

“Is what true?”

“That there’s something wrong between them.”

Gene gave another of his small half smiles.

“Is it true?” Eddy demanded again.

“I don’t know,” Gene answered.

“But you think we should have an anniversary party?”

“Yes,” he said.

She finally took off her bike helmet and resumed planning. “So, it will be Fourth of July weekend…”

June 30, 1994

S
ISSY WATCHED
Elijah climb into bed. They’d both slept naked throughout most of their marriage. It amazed Sissy how good he still looked at fifty, his stomach hard, his shoulders and arms muscular. Granted, he’d never been work shy, and she knew he did carpentry around the camp as he did home. He kept his hair short, and it had gone iron-gray over the years, but with his dark complexion and rugged features he seemed even more attractive than he had been when he was younger.

As she slid into bed beside him, she wondered if he would reach for her this night.

He did. He turned to her with a characteristic sweetness that retained its remoteness and said, “And how is my wife?”

I’m still his wife,
she thought. And he did tell her that he loved her. But she never knew what was going on inside of him. Never in their whole married life could she remember him discussing his emotions.

As he touched her, touched her intimately, she whispered, “I wish you were still in love with me.”

He stilled, his hand cupping her gently. Elijah had no idea how to answer. “What makes you think I’m not, Sissy?”

His answer brought a lump to her throat. Why hadn’t he just denied it, said he loved her as much as ever?

“Never mind. I think I sometimes expect too much of you.”

Elijah wondered if this was true. “I love you,” he said. “My God, Sissy. You’re the only woman I’ve ever been…close to. You’re my wife, the mother of my children.” He felt the emotion in his throat that he’d known when Eddy had asked him about the romance in her parents’ marriage. He put his lips against her hair, which smelled like her apple-scented shampoo.

Sissy wanted romance and passion from him. He held her closer. “I love you,” he repeated.

“I don’t know what I’ve done to make you…disenchanted with me.”

He
was
disenchanted in some way, but it didn’t matter, did it?

Just to her because somehow he’d let it show. “I’m disenchanted with myself, if anyone. It’s nothing to do with you.” As he spoke, he realized this was the truth. He’d been idealistic when he was younger, even when he was still working for the Humane Society. Now he knew he was helping kids get away from dogfighting and other types of animal abuse, helping them to become better people. But somehow he’d pictured himself and Sissy doing something together. Not just the kennel. Something to improve the world. Their children were almost all grown. Wasn’t it time?

He kissed the top of Sissy’s head, then lifted her face, drew her lips toward his, touching her beautiful, healthy body, still muscled from playing tennis.

She said, “I’m going to be on the radio next week. Talking about dog training.”

“Local radio?”

“The public radio station.” She paused. “They asked if you might join me.”

“Really.” It wasn’t a question. Just a thought.
How can I grow back with her,
he thought,
if we don’t work together on what matters to us?

And they did both care about dogs, though they expressed it in different ways. “How do you feel about that?” he asked.

“I think it might be fun.”

“I’ll do it,” he agreed.

Sissy felt his caressing of her resume and wished she hadn’t revealed her anxiety about the depth of his love for her. She kissed him back, becoming for a time the wild girl who’d been in love with him so long ago, who’d seduced him the same day she’d left Clark at the altar.

July 3, 1994

S
ISSY WAS ECSTATIC
. Marie would be going to the Eukanuba show.
Westminster, Westminster
, she thought. Marie wasn’t a bitch of her breeding of course, but the Starry Night bitch Gene had gotten for her.

She was going to breed Oscar and Marie after the show.

Elijah said they had too many dogs now, and he was right, Sissy knew. They had two sixth-month-old pet dogs from Leia’s last litter, and a year-old boy with
megaesophagus from Round-Off’s. Sissy couldn’t tell which side the mega had come from and wondered if she should breed Round-Off again. Of course, there’d been no mega in the previous litter….

The sound of Jet Skis from the lake was incessant. It was Sunday, and Sissy told herself,
Two more days.
Two more days and the riotous Fourth of July weekend would be over.

She’d hoped Ezra would come down from Chicago, but he’d said he was spending the weekend with his girlfriend’s family. Sissy knew that today was her twenty-fifty wedding anniversary, but she couldn’t work up any excitement about the fact. Certainly many marriages didn’t last that long, and hers wasn’t a bad marriage. Yet the dreams of her girlhood which should have come true, which she’d believed were coming true in her marriage to Elijah, had somehow gone awry.

Not that there weren’t those occasional times when she felt especially close to him while making love, or when she especially appreciated something funny he said, something that was so Elijah. And only Elijah could really appreciate the funniness of Gene cutting waist-high doors in the walls of her mother’s house, now dubbed by Eddy “the Hole in the Wall.” Sissy hadn’t thought it was funny at first, of course.

She was still deeply attracted to Elijah, but it was too tiring to try to make him love her back. The time when she’d feared he might begin an affair with another woman—even leave her for another woman—was gone, and had been even before the beautiful veterinarian moved away.

The problem was that she wanted him to love her—to nearly worship her as he had long ago. Now he seemed resigned to her faults and failings. What was more, she no longer had the confidence that came from being a little bit wild. In the years since she’d stopped teaching drama at the high school, her life had become increasingly tame, and she felt this as cowardice on her part. Especially since she knew Elijah didn’t share her strong desire to get to Westminster.

“Well, we’re going to get there anyway, aren’t we, Marie?” she told the pretty bitch.

“Get where?”

It was Elijah. He’d come out into the morning sunlight on the lawn, barefoot and dressed in swim trunks and nothing else.

“Westminster,” Sissy answered matter-of-factly.

“Yes, I think you are.”

You?
If only he had said
we
.

“Eddy’s up to something with Gene,” he said.

Sissy glanced up. “Like what?”

“I have a feeling we’re in for a surprise party.”

“What?” She was dressed in her kennel-cleaning clothes and had thought of putting off washing her hair for another day.

“Just a guess,” he said. “But someone did call and ask if this was where we wanted the keg delivered.”

“Keg! Gene doesn’t even drink, and Eddy’s not of age!”

“It occurred to me it was somebody’s idea of a joke. But then they wanted to know if this was the address of the party. So I think we should just act surprised.”

And wash my hair,
Sissy thought.

“It is our twenty-fifth,” he said. He’d already wished
her a happy anniversary when he awoke beside her that morning.

He’d thought long what to get her for this milestone. By the night last week when she’d asked again if he was still in love with her—or more precisely said that she wished he was—he still hadn’t chosen a present. She’d told him then what she wanted.

She wanted him to be in love with her, to feel his passion.

But for him, that would mean facing again the moment of learning she’d lied to him about Ezra, the hurt of that moment. He needed to somehow transcend that pain. On top of that, he must somehow undo the damage he’d done to her, by valuing her less than he should have.

So he’d made his own plan for this day.

“Want to go out in the canoe?”

She looked at him in surprise. “I’ve got to shower and wash my hair before this party.”

“Your hair is beautiful and smells good,” he said, catching her hand. “Come out in the canoe with me.”

“And there are all those people on Jet Skis.”

“I know where we can get away from them.”

“Should we take any of the dogs?”

He thought about this. “One well-behaved dog.”