Learning to Stay (33 page)

“Go on,” I tell her, waving the leash at the shrinking patch of sun she called home earlier this afternoon. But she just stands there, staring at
me and looking uncertain. “Go on,” I say again. Jones sits, watching me and panting.

“Fine,” I say. “Suit yourself.”

I head inside the house, hang the leash where I found it, and retrieve my things from upstairs. Then I write a terse note for Brad and leave it on the kitchen table:
Sorry, couldn’t stay. I’ll call soon. —E.

In the time it’s taken me to do those few things, though, the sun has dropped and the air has cooled. There aren’t any pools of warm left for Jones to lie in and she barely has a coat to speak of.

“Come on, girl,” I say to her. I pat a staccato beat with my palm against my leg and Jones falls in beside me. The least I can do is bed her down in the barn before I go.

When I enter the lower level, though, I find no sign that Jones—or Brad—has been sleeping there. There are no nests of blankets or straw or hay, no food or water bowls. I shake my head, puzzled. And then my stomach sinks as I think about the woman in the café.
What if
—I start to form the question in my mind and stop myself. Because Brad wouldn’t do that. Brad wouldn’t be staying with some other woman, not when he’s still married—when we’re still married.
Would he?

The dusty, hazy light filtering in through the barn windows swirls around me. I feel dizzy and faint and sick as the pieces fall into place in my mind, like the cams of a combination lock. Brad hasn’t called.
Click
. Brad hasn’t been sleeping in his room here.
Click
. Brad didn’t even seem surprised that I was leaving, or curious as to why, and most of all, he didn’t seem to care.
Click
.

How did we get here?
I think, as the memories flood in.

I am standing in the airport, seeing Brad off on his second term at Oxford. I’ve known him for only fifteen days, but it feels like as many years. I don’t know when I will see him again, or if. We have kept the past weeks fun and wholly lacking in substance, like three squares of
cotton candy a day. For all I know, there will be another version of me waiting to greet him on the other side of the pond when he disembarks, though I don’t ask. I want to, but instead I chew on the inside of my cheek, because these are the rules of a fling. He has almost reached the security checkpoint when he turns and walks back to me. “I almost forgot,” he says, handing me a folded piece of paper. “Clear the second week of March.” He kisses my forehead and then he’s gone, swallowed by a swarm of people all moving inch by inch toward destinations scattered across the globe. I am at the stairs leading to the parking ramp before I realize that in my hand is not his itinerary, but one with my name on the top. Unaware of the people clamoring past me, I sink to the stairs right there, so amazed I can’t even stand.

I am sitting at the window of my apartment overlooking West Washington Avenue, sipping a beer in the dark—waiting. Bare, sinewy tree branches stretch like veins against the skin of a darkening sky. My heart trips every time a car slows, but most come to a full stop farther down the street, at the Indian restaurant I hadn’t realized is so popular. By the time the right headlights slow and then darken, I’m three beers in and feel like I’m coming home instead of the other way around.

Spring. The air is warm and cool all at the same time as it breezes through the car’s open windows. I have officially made it through an entire year of law school; I’m a 2L. I’ve celebrated by having a Snickers Fun Size bar for dinner followed by one-too-many dirty martinis (which would be, approximately, one). I sing along with gusto to “Back in the New York Groove,” but I mangle the lyrics, getting them right only on the refrain and making up the rest. Brad is driving and he rolls up the windows. I shoot him a look meant to convey both incredulity and hurt. “Do you not want anyone else to hear?” I ask. “Is that it? You’re embarrassed by me?” He takes my hand in his, and without letting his eyes stray from the road, brings it to his lips.
“Baby, you’re so good, I just want you all to myself,” he says. And I believe him.

Recalling these moments is like having a psychic tell me about past lives I’ve lived. I know they happened, but I don’t feel as if they happened to me.

I can hear Jones’s whining. It’s constant and insistent, and I follow the sound to the top of a newly repaired stairway at the very back of the barn. The stairs lead up toward the hayloft, and even in the dim light I can see that the steps have been replaced with new wood and the floor joists reinforced. The stairs are steep and the railing on either side has been removed. Images of Jones falling to her death flash through my mind. I imagine that dogs don’t have the same ability as cats to land on their feet after falling from great heights, and I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell Brad that the dog he so adores died on my watch because of a missing stair rail.

“Get down from there!” I hiss at Jones, but she ignores me. Her snout is pressed into the door at the top of the stairs, her gaze fixed on the handle as if willing it to open.

“Jones!”

Nothing.

“Jones, come!”

Nothing.

“Jones, treat,” I say, hoping that if I can’t be commanding, perhaps I can entice her with food I don’t have to offer.

“Cookie? Goodie? Snausage?”

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a dog so intent. She hasn’t so much as tipped an ear in my direction. I assume there’s a rabbit or squirrel or raccoon up there, but the sun is going down and it’s getting late. Brad will be back any moment, and I want to be gone when he is.

To be safe, I climb the stairs on all fours. When I reach Jones, I pat her haunches and tell her she’s a good girl, which is not my actual
opinion of her at the moment. I just don’t want to startle her. I hook a finger in her collar and tug it toward me.

“Come on, girl,” I say. “Let’s go.” When that doesn’t work, I repeat, “Let’s
go
!” She looks at me out of the corners of her eyes, little half-moons glowing in the almost-dark.

I plead with her. Cajole. Pull on her, which is not unlike pulling on a cinder block. Nothing works.

“Fine,” I say, exasperated. “Fine! Get it out of your system. Go chase that poor little bunny into the hay bales and then we go.”

I turn the knob and fling the door open in front of me, expecting Jones to fly through it. Instead, she walks in and I can hear her nails clip-clipping on wood as she trots and then stops. I hear her lie down with a sigh.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. When they do, I don’t see what I expect: the same old stacks of hay bales that long ago molded, the broken floor of the hayloft riddled with holes and loose boards, or chains and tools and decrepit lawn mowers tossed haphazardly about the place.

Instead, in front of me is a giant room with newly laid pine floors and walls, windows with the factory stickers still affixed to the glass, and in the opposite corner from where I’m standing, a wood-burning stove. There is a wrought-iron bed made up with a denim duvet, a braided rug on the floor next to it, and closer to the stove, a desk and chair. Along the opposite wall are cabinets—the start of a kitchen—with space and plumbing roughed out for inserting a stove and refrigerator. It smells new, fresh. It smells something like hope.

I move closer to the desk, and as I do, I see rows and rows of index cards tacked to a bulletin board above it. Some contain lists of directions—
To Town/From Town, To Rick’s Shop/From Rick’s Shop
. Other cards outline a daily hygiene routine broken down into morning and night; skills to work on with Jones; a list of phone numbers,
including one for a Randy Colenso that I don’t recognize; and a list of meal options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is a daily schedule of morning, afternoon, and evening routines broken down to the hour and a separate list of medications and the times Brad is supposed to take them.

The cards are bent and worn, and I can picture Brad standing before this bulletin board and selecting which ones he’ll need to carry with him that day. It’s a bittersweet image—my husband, who could once wax poetic about the political and economic nuances of the Eastern Bloc countries, needs an index card to tell him when to brush his teeth.

I walk to the sink that’s been installed in the almost-kitchen. A dirty glass with the remnants of what looks like dried lemonade sits unwashed in it, a juice glass holding one toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste is next to it on the edge of the sink. There’s something strange about this space that I’m having a hard time pinpointing until it comes to me. It’s not what’s there that’s odd; it’s what isn’t. There’s no glass of half-drunk Jack on the nightstand. No jug of Jack on the counter. No nest of blankets on the floor next to the bed. And no sign of the woman from the coffee shop.

That woman. The thought of her makes my stomach constrict, makes my blood feel like it’s curdling in my veins. And it reminds me that I need to get going. I’ll call Brad when I’m well on the road and tell him I left Jones up here, which is where it looks like she belongs, given the fluffy dog bed she’s lying on and the full bowl of water next to it.

I take one last look around. Jones watches me with her big brown eyes, and right then, I wish she could talk. She seems wise, and I’m sure she’s seen enough to give me a good idea of what Brad has been doing here. Of where I might stand with him. Of where we stand with each other.

“You’re just a dog,” I say to her, reminding myself of the ridiculousness of this train of thought. “And I’m clearly losing my mind, right girl?”

I bend down and scratch under her chin and down to her chest. I remember reading somewhere that dogs like this much more than being patted on the head, especially since their chest is pretty much the one area they can’t reach to groom or scratch themselves. Then I take her big block of a head between my hands. “You be a good girl, and take care of Brad now, okay?”

I pat her head anyway because it’s hard not to pat a dog’s head, and she squints her eyes closed as I do, either out of contentedness or squeamishness—it’s hard to tell just then.

“Who says I need taking care of?”

When I spin around, Brad is standing there, studying me.

Brad has left the door open, and after trying so very hard to get in here, Jones darts out. I can hear her tearing through the downstairs and out into the oncoming night. I look at Brad, raising an eyebrow, wondering if Jones is okay.

“She probably heard a chipmunk,” he says.

“Poor chippy.”

Brad walks over to the bed and sits down on it.

“I gotta tell you, that dog is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says, looking wistfully out the door after Jones.

I nod and try to hide my grimace with a smile. He has no idea how cutting that single comment is, because he sweeps an arm wide and asks, “So, what do you think?”

I can tell he’s proud of it, but all I’m able to do is nod in approval. Because when I look at him, I see the woman from this afternoon and hear him saying that a dog is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, negating, in a flash, every minute of our five years together. I don’t have it in me to muster the amazement I felt when I first opened the door to this place.

“You okay?” he asks me.

I nod. “Just tired. Lots going on,” I say, tapping a finger against my temple.

Brad stands up and I’m afraid he’s going to move toward me. Instead, he slaps both hands on his legs and says, “Okay. I know there are things that need talking about, but here’s the thing. I’m starving. It’s almost dinnertime and I haven’t eaten yet. Let’s grab a bite, and we can talk.”

I don’t know what to think. The man in front of me looks like my husband and now he’s even acting like him. He’s calm and rational and seems at ease in his own skin. “It’s because of her,” a voice inside me says. Though I don’t want to believe it, that voice, I can’t help it. What else has the power to bring about the changes I’ve seen in Brad? In my experience, only love.

He’s holding the door open, waiting for me. “Come on,” he says.

I follow Brad out the door, down the steps, and across Mert’s expansive backyard toward the car. At the last minute, Brad stops and calls for the dog.

“What are you doing?” I ask Brad.

“Getting Jones.”

Jones trots out of the tree line. Brad calls to her: “Come on, girl. Wanna go for a ride?”

I tug on my husband’s arm. “Brad, why make her sit in the car?”

He shakes his head no and whistles for Jones, who runs toward him like a cannonball on legs before leaping into the air, confident that Brad will catch her. And I can’t help but think,
How nice. How very nice for her.

Jones rides on the truck’s bench seat between us, sitting up and watching the road intently. Well on the other side of town, we pull up outside a dilapidated building with shingles for siding and front steps looking like they could collapse under their own measly weight.

Brad gets out and calls for Jones. Once on the ground, she sits in
front of him, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. Brad scratches behind her ears and then clips the leash on her. He starts leading her toward the stairs.