Stay with Me (25 page)
Authors: Paul Griffin
“Home. Isn’t that what you told me to do?”
“Carmella, let me drive you,” Vic says.
“No, Vic. Thanks. I’m sorry, everybody.” She heads out, stops when sees the customers staring at her. She turns around and slips out the back, into the downpour.
The rain never lets up, and the people keep coming. Vic has to cook and serve. The bartender helps. Bobby is a little better by the end of the night, filling in at the stove when Vic is out on the floor. He cooks second staff meal too, and it’s pretty good, but nothing like Mack’s.
After we clean up, Vic hands Bobby his keys. “Drive yourselves home. Bring the car back tomorrow.”
“I thought you had to be seventeen to drive at night?” I say.
“Hardship license,” Bobby says.
“Cool. I mean sorry.”
He drives slower than an old lady. Trips over the curb as he walks me to the door with his umbrella. What sixteen-year-old carries an umbrella?
“Thanks.” I almost ask him in for a piece of cake, but I stop myself when I remember that boys don’t like to come into my house.
“Night.” He runs back to the car. He’s chubby and he kind of waddles. I flash forward thirty years and see him in a recliner in front of the TV, eating ice cream. He looks happy.
I go to the kitchen for a Slim-Fast, click on the light to find Carmella Vaccuccia sitting on the stepstool, her shorts around her ankles. She’s peeing.
“Um, whacha doing there, Carmella?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Do you
mind
?”
mind
?”
“Ma, you’re not in the bathroom.” Right about now is when I would start yelling at her to go back to AA, that I’ll go with her again, like me and Ant used to in the oh so good old days, but frankly, I don’t have it in me anymore. If she wants to kill herself, I can’t stop her.
“I’m just so worried about him.”
“He’s gonna be fine, Ma.”
“Not Anthony. Mack.”
I help her upstairs, make her drink three glasses of water with Alka-Seltzer, and I tuck her in. She won’t let go of me. “You’re magic,” she whispers.
“You’re nuts.”
“You’re doing it.”
“Doing
what
?”
what
?”
“You’re making your way through.” She strokes my face and kisses my eyes.
She shrugs. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“That’s a lie, Mel. It’s a lot lighter just before dawn, and then the sun comes up and scorches you.”
THE SIXTY-FIFTH DAY . . .
(Saturday, August 15, after midnight)
MACK:
We’ve been in the bathroom since noon. I’m panicking now. Boo paces, holding in his water. He will not go near that drain.
“Boo,” she says. “Pee.”
Boo circles the roof and squats over the rain drain and pees.
Céce lets out with a scream and that little snort that’s in her laugh sometimes.
Knocking.
“Yep?”
“Mack, I’d like to talk with you a minute, if you can spare one,” Wash says.
“Yessir. Course.”
The door cracks open and Boo blows through the slot, fairly knocking over Wash. He lets a good half gallon go on that tabletop. When he’s done, he hops down to me, sits nice and gives me his paw.
Wash clears his throat. “How’s the paper training coming?”
“Working out a few kinks, but we’re gettin’ there.” I get to cleaning up the mess. Can’t get Wash to stop helping me. He’s in his street clothes, hair like he got woken up with a late-night phone call, like Tony’s that night he came to save me and my pittie girl out by the highway. Wash’s wife has got to hate me. Tony must hate me more.
Boo grabs the paper towels from my hand to get me to chase him.
“Now, I’m not criticizing you, okay?” Wash says. “I’m just a bit concerned about you holing up in the bathroom with that Boo there for so long.”
“Wash, trust me, this is the only way to get this variety of dog to spot pee.”
“Spot pee?”
I explain it to him.
He listens real close. When I’m done, he nods. “Well then, I am satisfied that you know what you are doing.”
“I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t. Let’s have a little sit-down.” He pours from a Sprite bottle into two cups. “Son, you don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Oh, I want to do it all right.”
“It’s a lot of pressure—”
“No pressure, Wash. I love it. Gonna be fine.”
“I feel I might have put you in a jam, you know?”
“Sir?”
“Your young lady friend there. Got to be hard on you. You have a lot going on, trying to work that out. Now you have the dog here. Are you sure this Boo here is trainable?”
“Positive.” I look at Boo. On my look, he jumps me and knocks me out of my chair and pastes me with slobber. I tell him “Sit,” and he sits on my chest, all ninety pounds of him. I brush his coat with forked fingers. It calms him down. “Wash, could I ask you something along the lines of a question?”
“Go ahead, son.”
“Your wife,” I say. “What color is her hair?”
He blinks a couple, and then he sips his soda. “Well, she dyes it blond-ish.”
I nod. “You ever see those folks who comb the beaches with those metal detectors? This couple I saw, they would go to the shore every night.”
“How’d they make out?”
“They’d find bottle caps and rusty nails, like that, but never anything good.”
“Hm.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Not sure why I told you that.”
“Well, let’s figure it out. Why’d you tell me that?”
“I guess I was just thinking, like, when you tell your wife a secret, and you have no doubt that she’ll keep it forever, that’s kind of like finding buried treasure, right?”
“I believe it is,” Wash says. “I believe it is exactly that.”
“How many kids you all got, Wash?”
“Three. I’m sorry, two. My oldest died in the war. Just last year.”
“I see.”
“He was a chopper pilot. Twenty-eight years old. His craft went down secondary to equipment failure.”
“I’m real sorry, Wash. Sorry I made you talk about it too. Him, I mean.”
“You didn’t make me, and I don’t mind talking about him, so don’t you trouble yourself. His name was Ezekiel.”
“I like that name a ton.”
“We nicked him Zeke.”
I nod. “I have a friend training to go over there. Army. He’s got to be into his seventh week of basic by now. Probably the best dude I ever knew.”
“How’s he making out down there?”
“Dunno.”
Wash nods.
We sip our Sprites and you can tell there’s nothing left to say, so I say, “Maybe I ought to get back to work.”
“All right then.”
“Wash?”
“Yup?”
“Thanks for worrying about me.”
“I’m not worried, and you shouldn’t be either. I’m a hundred percent certain you are going to do well by Boo here. Now, you go and train your dog as you see fit.”
I feed Boo more peanut butter. He drains a bowl of water. He scratches at the door to get at his tabletop. I do my thing, act like a dog, pee into the drain, and Boo just slumps flat and groans. We fall asleep curled into each other. I wake up to Boo licking my eyes.
I wonder what I would do if she came to visit one last time.
Boo whimpers to be let out of the bathroom.
(Saturday, August 15, morning)
CÉCE:
I dust off my bike and hit the road. Steamy rain escorts me to the VA hospital, uphill all the way. I lock my bike to the handicap rail that zigzags to the main entrance. Not that anyone would steal the piece of crap. Anthony put it together from junk parts. I have a sissy bar.
“I want to volunteer.”
“Need to beef up the résumé for those college apps, right?” Nurse Nasty says.
“Truth?”
“If it’s available.”
“I want to be a good person.”
“You’re not now?” she says.
“No. Now I’m a self-centered mope.”
“Interesting. What are your skills, besides moping?”
“I’m good at making pizza. Maybe I could teach a class?”
“Or maybe you could wheel the veterans out to the garden and sit with them and read the paper to the blind ones.”
“Cool. I don’t mean
cool
.” I take the application to the waiting room and turn to this guy sitting at the end of the row of chairs. “ ’ Scuse me, you got a pen?”
cool
.” I take the application to the waiting room and turn to this guy sitting at the end of the row of chairs. “ ’ Scuse me, you got a pen?”
He’s not in a chair but a wheelchair. In a hospital gown. “Is it winter yet?” he says. He’s staring out the window, at the lush trees snapping around in the hot wind.
I have to get out of here.
Some lady in a wheelchair yells at me for locking my bike to the handicap ramp.
I pedal to the animal shelter, or halfway there, until my pedal breaks. I walk the godforsaken bike the rest of the way, uphill, wondering if I should just leave it on a corner for somebody to take, except who would take a bike that was garbage even when it had two working pedals? I open the shelter door, and it’s hotter inside than out on the street. Barking and crying. And the stink. They make me watch this ten-minute video and hand me a pooperscooper. All pit bulls here. Scraggly, as Mack would say. Eyes open too wide, ears back but not soft, pinned flat. They have seven days to be adopted. Most won’t be.
One kind of looks like Boo, but she’s wild. I take her out for a walk, and she nearly pulls me into speeding traffic. I try to do all the things he showed me, get her to walk behind me, to heel, but I’m no Mack Morse. I just don’t have the gift. Any dog I get will have to come trained, except who can afford a dog trainer?
I try to dream it every night, dream
him,
but it feels more and more like a movie I think I’ve seen before. Somebody else’s story. I still remember his eyes, though. The way he looked at me that last night, when we were together in the alley, the rain smashing us. He looked into my eyes for such a long time, not saying a word. I kept saying “What? What are you looking at?” And he just had that sad smile, and he was shaking his head, and he kept looking.
him,
but it feels more and more like a movie I think I’ve seen before. Somebody else’s story. I still remember his eyes, though. The way he looked at me that last night, when we were together in the alley, the rain smashing us. He looked into my eyes for such a long time, not saying a word. I kept saying “What? What are you looking at?” And he just had that sad smile, and he was shaking his head, and he kept looking.
I bring the dog into the shelter by the back alley. This dude is dragging garbage bags to the Dumpster. Ten or so. “They’re triple-bagged,” he says.
“What?” I say.
“You look like you’re worried they’ll spill out.”
I press the leash into the man’s hand and I run. My brother is about to head overseas and wade through carnage, and I can’t find the courage to work at an animal shelter. I suck. On the upside, somebody stole my bike.
I hike home. If riding from home to the VA to the shelter was uphill the whole way, how is that when I backtrack the exact route home, it’s all still uphill? And how do you ride a bike and hike for two hours, sweat the whole time, don’t eat or drink anything, and you still gain a pound? My ass is killing me.
I head down to the highway to bring Cashew Man a PBJ sandwich and an eight-pack of Costco tuna for the cats, but he isn’t here anymore.
(Saturday, August 15, afternoon)
MACK:
After twenty-some hours cooped together in the bathroom, me and Boo know each other pretty good. He sits fine now, gives double paw, goes to his belly for cookies, then for a scratch under his jaw, then just a sweet word. What I cannot get this dog to do is pee anywhere but on top of that table.
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