Seventh Heaven (16 page)

Hennessy went into the bedroom with her, still thinking about rocks. The only way to eat them would be to swallow them whole, otherwise you'd crack your teeth to bits, you'd wind up choking on the small, hard pieces. No, you'd have to pick them up, one by one, and open your mouth. You'd have to close your eyes and swallow, and after that you'd have to just accept the consequences of your choice.

T
HE DOG SLEPT BESIDE THE BED, ON A SMALL
blue rug, and at night he ran through his dreams. He ran through the grass and through the rain and in between stars set into the black night.

“Whoa, boy,” Ace would say sometimes, and from where he lay in bed he would stretch out and pat the dog's head. But the dog never woke from his dreams. He only whimpered and turned on his side, and then began running once more. Someone had once cared for this dog, so it did not come as a complete shock to find that someone cared for him again, and he gave himself completely to Ace. All Ace had to do was purse his lips and the dog would run to him before he whistled. The dog spent a good deal of his time waiting for Ace, in the bedroom—where Marie grudgingly allowed him to stay, although she would have preferred the basement or, better yet, the yard—or in the schoolyard, near the door Ace always came through when the bell rang at two forty-five. Someone had once cared for him, that's all he knew. Someone had bought him a leather collar with a silver tag that read:
My name is Rudy. I belong to Cathy and I live at 75 Hemlock Street
. Ace had slipped the name tag off the dog's collar, but he couldn't throw it out. He kept it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket, and already the name tag had etched its shape into the pocket, leaving a permanent ridge.

“Rudy,” Ace would whisper as the dog slept beside him. “Go, Rudy,” he would call as he threw a stick across the playing field after school. He had waited for somebody to ask where in hell he had gotten a purebred German shepherd overnight, but nobody did. For the first few days he had kept the dog hidden in his bedroom. He had smuggled in hamburger meat and bowls of milk. He set down newspapers for the dog to pee on. During the first week Ace let the dog on his bed at night, where he curled up beneath the covers, exhausted from the treatment Cathy Corrigan's father had doled out. The dog's paws were cold as ice and there was still blood between his pads, which left faint red streaks on the floor.

When Marie discovered the pee-stained newspapers in the garbage, she tracked down the dog. She had a nose for anything unclean, and, as far as she was concerned, dogs were worthless creatures. Ace expected her to give him the third degree and scream for the dog to be taken to the pound. But all Marie did was announce that she wouldn't have the dog up on her furniture, and she wouldn't have him begging at the dinner table, and she expected Ace to walk him three times a day. That evening, as soon as the Saint came in from work, Marie said, “Go see what your son brought home.” The Saint knocked on Ace's door, and when he went into the room and saw the dog he crouched down and clapped his hands.

“Come on, boy,” the Saint said, but Rudy was afraid of him and ran under the bed. The Saint stood up and whistled, but the dog wouldn't come. “I could use a dog like that down at the station,” he told Ace.

“Sorry, Pop,” Ace said. “He doesn't like to let me out of his sight.”

That night when they were sitting down for supper, the dog yelped and scratched to be let out of Ace's bedroom.

“That your dog?” Jackie asked.

Ace concentrated on his meatloaf. He'd been avoiding Jackie ever since the accident; he hadn't even gone for a ride in Jackie's new Bel Air, the one Ace had been saving for and hoping to buy. “That's right.”

“Well, keep that woofer quiet at night,” Jackie said.

Ace stared at his brother. With his new teeth and his rebuilt jaw, Jackie looked more substantial, more solid. And yet when the dog yelped Jackie seemed nervous. That was how Ace realized that his brother knew it was Cathy's dog, and that his parents also somehow knew, but they didn't let on any more than Mr. Corrigan had. Ace had worried about Mr. Corrigan; he'd figured there'd be some kind of a scene. Mr. Corrigan would call him a thief, he'd say it ran in the family, then he'd grab the dog or call the police. Or worse, he'd punch Ace, hard, and Ace wouldn't be able to fight back. But that wouldn't stop Mr. Corrigan; he'd smack Ace on the side of the head and leave him lying there on the lawn, in a heap.

Yet the day they finally crossed paths, Mr. Corrigan acted as if he'd never seen Ace or the dog before in his life. You would have thought that fitting the covers onto his silver trash cans took all his concentration. But the dog recognized Mr. Corrigan. The hair on his neck and his ears went straight up, and he made a low growling noise in the back of his throat. Ace stood paralyzed, waiting for Mr. Corrigan to attack him, but all he did was turn and drag his trash cans up to the house.

So Ace wasn't surprised when no one at school asked where the dog had come from. The guys on the corner, out for a smoke before the homeroom bell, didn't say a word, although they all backed away when they saw the dog. Rudy followed Ace everywhere. He stretched out on the tile floor in the bathroom while Ace took a shower; he trotted at Ace's heels on nights when Ace met Rickie Shapiro at the fence along the Southern State, where they kissed until their mouths were bruised. But, like the guys on the corner, Rickie was afraid of the dog. Even Danny Shapiro seemed uncomfortable when he realized the dog would be walking home from school with them every day.

“Does he bite?” Danny asked.

“He's a goddamned puppy,” Ace said. “He's got baby teeth.” Ace threw a tennis ball over the snow on the Winemans' lawn, and Rudy went after it.

“Yeah,” Danny said uneasily as the dog raced back toward them. “Baby fangs.”

“Drop it,” Ace said, and the dog laid the ball at his feet.

“He understands you,” Danny said. “I swear to God.”

Ace knelt down. “Speak,” he said to the dog. Without Danny's noticing, he signaled to Rudy by opening and closing his hand. The dog barked on cue, just as Ace had taught him to do.

Danny Shapiro stepped off the sidewalk and into the street. “That dog's too weird for me,” he said.

Ace was still facing Rudy; the dog stared up at him, his gaze unblinking, his tongue hanging out. “Good boy,” Ace said. Rudy leaned over and sniffed Ace's hand, then slowly licked it. Ace gave the dog a pat, then he stood up and started down Hemlock. When he passed the Durgins', he realized that Danny was no longer beside him.

“What's the matter?” Ace called.

Danny just shrugged. Ace walked back to him, the dog behind him.

“I don't like the idea of that dog around my sister,” Danny said.

“Oh?” Ace said.

“To tell you the truth, I don't know if I like the idea of you around her.”

“You're kidding,” Ace said.

“She's sixteen,” Danny said. “She's my sister.”

“So what?” Ace said.

“So she asks me questions about you all the goddamned time,” Danny said. “I know what's going on. Man, you're not even allowed in our house because of the Cadillac.”

“I had nothing to do with that Cadillac,” Ace said. “And anyway, he got a new one.”

“Yeah. Well,” Danny said.

“Yeah, well, maybe you're an asshole,” Ace said.

“Maybe I am,” Danny said thoughtfully.

Ace turned without a word and walked home with his dog. Danny stayed where he was and pitched snowballs at a poplar tree on the Winemans' lawn. He had a decent fastball, but he wasn't a pitcher. He was a hitter. He had spent years practicing with Ace; Ace couldn't hit, but he sure could tell someone else how to, and he didn't mind spending hours in the deserted athletic field when the temperature hit ninety-five degrees in the shade. He was the only one willing to pitch balls to Danny until dark, or until one of their mothers came looking for them.

They weren't friends anymore, that was all there was to it. Danny didn't know it could happen this way, but it had. Maybe something was wrong with him, maybe something was missing; he should have been thinking about girls, or his college applications, which were sitting in the admissions offices at Cornell and Columbia right now. He should have been thinking about his senior prom in June or the fact that his best friend was walking away from him without a word. But he wasn't. He was thinking about baseball and July afternoons and the way the bat reverberated in his hands when he hit a curveball.

When he stopped throwing snowballs he had no choice but to go home. He went in through the side door so he wouldn't track snow onto the living-room rug. He kissed his mother and told her the rolls she had just put into the oven smelled great. She didn't bother to ask Danny how his day had gone or if he had homework; his days were always great and he always did his homework. He was trustworthy, everyone knew that. He'd be the class valedictorian in June, and he would easily earn admission to either college he'd applied to on the basis of his advanced science projects. He'd been working as a research assistant for Dr. Merrick at the state university every Saturday, studying the effect of vitamin C and cannabis on growth and aggression. He still took the bus up on Harvey's Turnpike over to the biology department every Saturday, but he no longer bothered to feed marijuana to the hamsters. Instead, he fed them oregano brought from home, falsified his data, and pocketed the marijuana.

He would never have thought of smoking it and would have dutifully fed the hamsters all semester, if he hadn't overheard two graduate students joking about how some people would give their eyeteeth to smoke what the damned hamsters were being given for free. Danny stole a cigarette from one of the graduate students, and in the bathroom next to the lab he rubbed the cigarette between his fingers until all the tobacco fell out. Before he left for the day, he replaced the tobacco with marijuana and smoked it on the corner while he waited for the bus. He never wasted the marijuana on the hamsters again.

After he'd greeted his mother and hung up his coat, Danny grabbed a bag of chocolate chip cookies and went into his bedroom. He was fairly certain that no one on Hemlock Street even knew what marijuana was, but he opened his window a crack just in case his mother came in unexpectedly; she'd assume he was smoking cigarettes, and she'd be crushed.

Danny lit up and lay back on his bed and thought some more about baseball. His mind was clear and cool. He listened to the sounds in the house. His mother making dinner in the kitchen, a dinner his father would, as usual, be home too late to share in. His sister in the bathroom, washing her hair in the sink. People thought they knew you, but what did they really know? Danny stubbed out what was left of the marijuana-filled cigarette and put it in an ashtray he kept hidden in his closet. He flipped on his clock radio and watched the dial glow. He had absolutely nothing in common with anyone anymore, and he didn't know why. He loved Ace, but every time Ace started to talk Danny felt like punching him in the mouth.

The music gave him a headache, so Danny turned the radio off and listened to the sound of the parkway. He hated the feeling that everyone was passing him by, but he couldn't stop listening to the Southern State. He fell asleep to it, and woke to it, and, if he wasn't careful, he was about to go nuts to it. He forced himself to get off his bed and change into a clean shirt, then went into the bathroom to wash up for supper. Rickie was still in there; she sat on the rim of the tub reading a magazine. There was a plastic bag over her hair.

“Yikes,” Danny said.

“Do you mind?” Rickie said haughtily. “I'm conditioning my hair.”

Danny ignored her and went to the sink to wash his hands and face. The water that came out of the tap stung him, as if there were tiny bees in the droplets.

“Notice anything strange around here?” Danny said as he reached for a towel.

“Like?” Rickie said.

Danny closed the bathroom door, then hoisted himself up to sit on the counter.

“Like Dad is never here.”

“He's getting ready for April fifteenth,” Rickie said.

Danny wondered if Rickie was truly an idiot or if she had to work hard to be so thick.

“All right,” Danny said. “How about this one: Ace McCarthy.”

Rickie took the plastic bag off her head and ran her fingers through the goopy conditioner. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and stood up to get a better look. She might have a chance to be really pretty if she could only get rid of her freckles. Sometimes she just about went crazy covering each freckle with pancake makeup until her face seemed to be dissolving in the mirror.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Rickie told her brother.

She and Ace had been meeting every night when he went out to walk the dog. He would never have anything she wanted, but she couldn't stay away from him. She was frightened by Ace's silence and the way her pulse seemed so hot and fast when she was with him. But more than anything, the dog frightened her. It followed too closely as they walked along the fence beside the parkway; it nipped at the backs of Rickie's legs and made peculiar sounds, so that Rickie was never quite certain if it was growling or trying to speak. Ace never said much, but when they were far enough from home he always put his arms around her and kissed her for such a long time Rickie didn't know if they'd ever be able to stop. Each time Ace was the one who kept them from going too far; he'd pull away and whistle for the dog, and on the way home he'd walk so far ahead of Rickie she'd have to run to keep up.

“Who do you think you're talking to?” Danny said. “I've seen you.”

Rickie ran the water in the sink and reached for her shampoo.

“Mind your own business,” she said.

“Dinner,” their mother called from the kitchen.