The Dog Year (19 page)

“Know this,” said Claire. “I don't need your help, then or now. I have help, and Sara's right in some respects, Lucy: You're a train wreck. It's time to start thinking like a grown-up.”

*   *   *

Lucy unlocked her front door, dropped her car keys on the table, and walked into the kitchen. She turned on the water faucet and stuck her head into the cool stream of water, letting it run over her face. There was a loud knock at her door, a pause, and then more, louder rapping. Mopping her face with a dishtowel, she moved to her entryway.

Mark stood under the porch light, clearly on high alert. “I can't find Sara. She got away from me at the hospital.” Lucy hesitated. Mark said, “Claire's too sick to help me with this, Tig would have to call Sara's caseworker, and Kimmy . . . well, she's got her hands full. It looks weird, a man searching by himself for a teenage girl. I need your help.”

Lucy pulled on a long down jacket and followed Mark onto her front stoop. “Mark. I . . .”

“I know,” he said. “We need to talk. But first, we have to find Sara. She's got nobody.”

Little Dog moved to follow the two of them but Lucy turned to her and said, “Not this time, pal,” and pointed inside the house. Little Dog gave her a look.
Praise the Lord, I can't take any more drama,
she seemed to be saying.

“Where should we start?” Lucy asked Mark as they sat together in his car.

“I already tried the place she said was her foster home. I guess she hasn't been there in two weeks. There's a group home she goes to sometimes. They hate cops. I don't blame them. Doing the right thing and following the law aren't always the same.”

“Anywhere else we should check?”

“She camps out sometimes when the weather's nice. But it's way too cold for that now.” Lucy frowned as she tried to visualize Sara somewhere, huddled in the dark. “There's a trailer park where she had a friend, but the woman was a small-town dealer. She left town.”

“Christ,” Lucy breathed.

“Yeah. Her father lives down south somewhere. We try and keep her out of the system so she doesn't get sent back there. But she doesn't trust anyone. Gets in trouble. She stayed with Claire until Claire got sick, and then she panicked. She wants to stay with me, but I'm a guy. And a cop. I'm not a foster parent. It's impossible. She doesn't understand.”

“I had no idea. I mean . . . until today, when I saw the scars on her arm.”

“She's just another terrified kid. The truth is, I could have ended up like her.” Then, without warning, Mark pulled the car to the shoulder. “I just had a thought,” he said as he executed a U-turn. “I think I might know where she is.”

He turned onto the road that Lucy usually took to get to the Humane Society, and for the first time, she saw the
DOG PARK
sign posted with only the smallest of arrows pointing the way. An asphalt drive circled around, leading into a clearing and a gravel parking lot. Mark put the car into park and stepped out, as Lucy followed close behind. A sharp wind blew her hood back and she grabbed it and held it at her chin.

“Sara!” Mark called, moving quickly toward the gate.

Lucy said, “I'll check the bathroom and catch up to you. Do you have a flashlight? It'll be dark soon.” Mark nodded, and headed back to his car while Lucy stepped onto the gravel path to the brick building that housed the restrooms.

“I don't know if that's open in the winter,” he called out to her.

At the door, Lucy yanked the large metal handle and was assaulted by the smell of urine, overlaid with a chemical odor. A tiny dog bounded forward, yapping furiously. He seemed to have springs attached, and Lucy jumped back, letting the door slam shut. “Sara?” she called through the din of the barking, made exponentially worse with the hollow echo of the bathroom. “Are you in there?”

“Larry, shut up,” Sara said to the dog. And to Lucy, she said, “Get out of here. I'm fine.”

“Mark! She's here.” Lucy pulled the door open a crack. “Sara, I know you don't want me here. But Mark's here, too. We're worried. Let me take a look at that arm.”

Mumbling now, Sara said again, “Get out of here.” But her voice quavered. The dog had quieted and was now sitting in Sara's lap. Lucy opened the door wider. And in the fading light of day, she could see the sweat on Sara's forehead.

Mark rushed up to the door. “Sara, what the hell?”

Lucy knelt down. She could hear Sara's teeth chattering, and when she felt the girl's forehead, it was hot. “We've gotta get her out of here,” she said to Mark. “She needs medical attention.”

Sara arched her back when Mark leaned down to pick her up. “No. No hospital.”

“We can take her to my house. I've got everything we need there,” said Lucy.

“Okay, no hospital,” Mark agreed. “Lucy is going to take care of you.”

The fight seemed to leave Sara's body and she went slack.

“I'll drive,” Lucy said. Mark folded himself, Sara, and Larry into the passenger seat of his truck and let Lucy take the wheel.

*   *   *

At Lucy's house, Mark ran Sara through the front door while she clung to her whining dog. A filthy sleeping bag, a damp wool blanket, and her grubby army knapsack fell to the hallway floor outside Lucy's bedroom. “I need my bag. Where's my bag?” she said, but her voice was weak. Mark bumped her elbow as he returned to the hall to retrieve the backpack, and the girl went rigid with pain. She whimpered.

Lucy asked gently, “Can I move Larry?”

“No!” Sara cried. So Lucy worked around the dog, removing Sara's coat to inspect her arm. It had doubled in size in only an hour, and the skin was shiny and hot to the touch.

Lucy riffled through the piles and boxes littered on the floor of her bedroom. She yanked out a bag of Lactated Ringers IV solution, some tubing, and a couple of syringes. She found a vial of antibiotics and a roll of bandages. She selected a needle for starting an IV and pulled a tourniquet off the floor.

“What is all this stuff?” asked Mark, but Lucy ignored him. Before long she had an IV hanging from the bedside lamp, and antibiotics were being pumped into Sara's vein along with fluids to combat shock. Lucy stabilized her arm with bandages and a rolled towel and helped her to swallow some Vicodin for pain, left over from Lucy's own injuries in the accident that had derailed her life.

“You're going to feel better in just a minute, honey.”

Sara shut her eyes. But not before handing over one final insult. “You suck, Mark,” she said.

Lucy lured the miniature pinscher, Larry, onto the floor with fresh water and food, and after he ate, Mark lifted him into the sink and carefully bathed him, watching filth run into the sink and down the drain. Little Dog watched with interest from her perch in the kitchen. Remembering, Lucy thought, a similar night in her own dog history.

“Have you ever seen her this bad before?” Lucy asked him as they toweled off the dog.

“Oh yes. When she was using.” He scratched his chin. “We came to AA around the same time. Her caseworker had just placed her with a foster family. She didn't want to be at AA any more than I did. But you heard her. She's good at naming your issue. Telling it like it is. She got close to all of us.”

“What'll happen to her?”

He shrugged. “She's a kid. Homeless. Broke. What chance does she have?”

“She could stay with me.”

Mark leveled his gaze at her.

She dropped her eyes and nodded. Gesturing for Mark to follow, she led him into the almost-completed addition. “I started the renovation when I thought I was going to try and get pregnant with my husband's frozen sperm. I wanted the baby's room to be perfect.”

Mark looked around the newly painted, restful room and nodded. “I get that.”

Lucy shook her head. “No, wait. There's more.” She stepped into the room, putting distance between herself and this man she knew so little about. “I'm so far away from who I was when I was with Richard. I'm not the kind of person who has sex with someone she hardly knows.” Mark looked like he was going to protest but Lucy dropped her hand to her abdomen before he could speak. “I'm pregnant,” she said. Then she added awkwardly, “I got pregnant when we . . .”

Mark's jaw dropped like a marionette's on a hinge. Mrs. Bobo sauntered into the room and rubbed her body against Mark's leg, her tail winding around his calf like a flirty admonishment.
What did you think would happen, stupid boy?
she seemed to be saying.

“I think . . .” he started, then turned away from Lucy and moved down the hall to the bathroom. Lucy heard the water come on.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mark walked back into the nursery and eased himself onto the floor. “When my wife and I were in counseling,” he said, “the only thing she wanted to talk about was my drinking. After a few visits, the counselor spoke to my wife about the struggle to give up drinking. You know, from the alcoholic's perspective. I suppose he was trying to create a connection between us. He talked about the temptation of alcohol. The chemical hook. The pattern of behavior that's so difficult to break. How challenging it can be to live with someone who is trying to get free of it.” Lucy sat on the new wheat-colored Berber carpet. Mark unbuttoned the top button of his uniform.

“My wife listened to all of this and then said, in a flat voice, ‘That's just it. He hasn't tried, not even for five minutes, to give up drinking.' Then she looked at me and said, ‘We're done here,' and walked out the door. She filed for divorce the very next day.”

“Is that when you gave up drinking?”

“I wish I could say yes, but no. I didn't give up until they warned me at the force that I was going to lose my job. That was rock-bottom for me: not losing my wife, but losing my job. Coming in third—after beer, after work—isn't what any woman wants. It's a hard sell for anyone. The truth is, I didn't deserve her.”

“I hit bottom after the accident, when I lost Richard and miscarried the baby. I've been clawing around in the muck ever since. No offense,” she added, casting a quick gaze his way.

“I'm not offended by that. But I've been hurt by other, less honest things you've done.” Mark stretched out on the floor, his back against the wall. “When I was a kid, I used to think about how I'd be with a son. The ways I'd be better than my father. How I would talk to someone in high school. But then I started drinking and nothing became as important as the drink. After rehab, I just kind of wondered if I'd ever get the chance again. I've got to ask, Lucy. Is this what this is? A chance to be a father?”

“You're already a father. I'm going to keep it. I just don't know if we get to keep each other.”

L
ittle Dog hopped onto the couch and nudged Lucy. She pushed the dog's wet nose away and pulled an afghan up over her shoulders. She'd fallen into a dead sleep on the couch after Mark left the night before, both of them having decided to get some rest. Put off any major decisions until they'd each had some time. Mark's night-shift schedule provided the perfectly timed break for both of them. Lucy groaned and Little Dog wagged a good morning, her tail hitting both the couch and Lucy's hip with solid precision timing. When she heard the front door close, Lucy snapped to attention. Out the front window she saw Sara inch down the driveway, slowed by her unbundled sleeping bag and her injured arm. She sprang off the couch and yanked the door open.

“Sara?”

The girl stopped mid-stride, as did her dog. Although her face wasn't visible, Lucy could almost see her close her eyes, exhale, and think:
Caught. Shit
.

“I wonder if you and Larry would like to stay for breakfast. Mark had to work night shift last night. He said you like eggs.”

“I don't need your help.”

“No,” Lucy said, “but I could use yours. You were right. I've been acting like an idiot. Come eat.”

Sara was unfazed. “That's how it works in the movies, isn't it? Some reverse-psychology bullshit.”

Lucy's only parenting experience was from the perspective of her own childhood. Her mother used humor, and her father used bluntness.
I'm not trying to manipulate you. Nobody's here to win.
To Sara, she said, “Right now I'm talking eggs, not therapy.”

There was a long silence in the quiet morning. Then Sara said, “My arm hurts.”

*   *   *

In the kitchen, Lucy pushed eggs, toast, and fried potatoes onto a plate for Sara just as the girl stepped out of Lucy's room wearing Richard's clothes. She had on a red-plaid flannel shirt and his old Wisconsin Badgers sweatpants rolled at the waist, and she held her arm protectively against her chest. With her pale skin and her dark hair wet from the shower, she looked like a bedraggled chimney sweep from a Disney movie.

“Would you like something for pain?” Sara shook her head no. “Even Tylenol would help. And you're due for another dose of antibiotics.”

Sara ignored Lucy and began eating her breakfast. She moved like an ordinary teenage girl who lived in a home with people who loved her but who aggravated her to no end. She covered her mouth when she chewed, anchored a lock of hair behind her ear, smeared catsup on her eggs, and glowered. She snuck Larry a bite of egg.

“I fed Larry what I feed Little Dog,” Lucy said. “Hope that's okay.”

“You and Mark a couple?”

“No! Good God, no.”

She saw fury flash across Sara's face as she leaped to Mark's defense. “Why not? Cop not good enough for a doctor?”

“We hardly know each other.”

“You are such a liar.”

Lucy considered the waif of a girl sitting before her. “Okay, you may be right that we . . . we know each other. But I can only see myself with my, um, with Richard.”

Sara finished her eggs. “Larry and I walk in the dog park in the morning. He can only poop if he's walking. And he prefers the dog park to pretty much anywhere else.”

“First more antibiotics and Tylenol. Then I'll take you.”

“Why do you have all this stuff at your house? Are you sick, too? Claire's got a ton of this stuff at her house. Has this white tube coming out of her chest. She's always putting a needle into it.”

Lucy looked at Sara and took a deep breath. “I stole it all from the hospital. That's why I go to AA. Remember when I said I don't drink? I got caught stealing, and now I'm not allowed to work until I get my shit together.”

Sara raised a pierced eyebrow and said appreciatively, “Dude.”

*   *   *

After her shower, Lucy walked without hesitation into her old bedroom, where she'd set Sara up with the IV. “Ready?” she said before realizing that Sara had fallen asleep. At rest, the girl looked almost lifeless, wrapped in Richard's clothes and bundled up in the bedcovers Lucy had once shared with her husband. Almost lifeless, and yet clearly more at home in this bedroom than Lucy herself had been for a very long time. Lucy backed out of the room, pulling the door quietly closed.

In her living room, she rested her chin on the back of the couch and watched a little girl across the street trying to pull an old-fashioned woman's roller skate down the icy sidewalk with a long, dirty shoelace. She was wearing a fabulous gold snowsuit with a rainbow hat, and every time she placed the skate upright and tugged on the lace, the skate rolled an inch and toppled over. With the patience of a neurosurgeon, she righted the skate and tried again. Lucy wanted to call out to her and say, “Keep at it, honey, this is perfect training for life. But remember, as soon as you master it, somebody will take off two of those wheels, add a man, and make you hold down a full-time job.” She held her tongue, though
. Who said she wasn't good with people?

She grabbed her phone and considered calling Charles, or maybe Tig. Instead, she decided to call Sidney. Anything to avoid dealing with her own future.