Thad and Isabel left the house in a hurry and for a while I was all alone in it. I needed to pee very, very badly so I sat by the door, which is how I would let Thad and Isabel know that I needed to go outside. After a long time the door suddenly opened from the other side. This was a surprise, but I took advantage of things and ran out into the night.
“Simon! Simon!” The voice belonged to Franklin Dobbs, Isabel’s father. “Simon, come back here!”
I peed for a long time and went back.
Franklin Dobbs stayed in the house with me for the rest of that night and the next day and the next night and part of the following day, while Isabel was gone and Thad was mostly gone. Franklin and I were having a nap on the couch that second afternoon when I heard a noise outside. Franklin stood up and opened the door, and Thad and Isabel walked through it. Isabel was holding something in her arms and Franklin wanted to see it immediately. He talked to it very softly and said, “Oh, you are a beautiful girl.” Then Isabel noticed me and said, “Simon! Hello, boy!” And Thad bent down and put his arms around my neck.
“Would you like to see the baby?” Thad asked me.
Isabel lowered herself onto the couch, patted the cushion, and said, “Come on up, Simon. Come meet Julie.”
I scrambled onto the couch, put my nose in the air, and sniffed. A wonderful, delicious smell was coming from Isabel’s lap. I poked my nose into the bundle of blankets and snuffled around, wagging my tail. Then I found the baby’s face and gave it an exuberant lick.
“He likes her,” Isabel said softly. “I think this is going to be okay.”
That night, the first night the baby was with us, I sat expectantly at the door when I needed to pee. It was my regular evening peeing time, but no one noticed me. Not Franklin, who couldn’t take his eyes off the baby; not Thad, who was cleaning up a number of messes; and certainly not Isabel, who was hugging the baby to her chest, something she had been doing quite a bit since she came home.
Nothing was usual about the evening. Franklin wasn’t supposed to be there anymore. I knew that because Isabel kept saying, “Dad, really, you don’t need to stay. Thad and Julie and I will be just fine.” But Franklin kept replying, “She’s my granddaughter. I can’t bear to leave her yet.” Then Isabel would look at her watch.
The messes Thad was cleaning up were mostly created by things having to do with the baby. For instance, there were diapers. Dirty diapers. They smelled lovely to me, and every time Thad put one in the kitchen garbage, I scratched at the cabinet door, trying to get at the pail. Once, I opened the door. I was pleased with myself, but Thad said, “What are we going to do? Simon wants the dirty diapers.”
“You shouldn’t be throwing them away in the kitchen,” Isabel replied. She called this from the couch in the living room, where she was still sitting, the baby attached to her front. “That’s disgusting. They smell too much.”
“What am I supposed to do with them?” asked Thad.
“Well, where did we put the diaper pail?”
Then there was the matter of wrapping paper. Because Julie had arrived so early, Isabel and Thad’s friends had not had time to give a baby shower. It turned out that this shower had something to do with gifts—and nothing to do with water—and all afternoon, people kept dropping by with presents for Julie. The presents were enclosed in paper, which Isabel and Thad peeled off and I flung about the room and tore up with my teeth. By evening, there were bits of soggy paper all over the house.
There were other messes for Thad to clean up too, and this is why, when I needed to go outside that night and I sat at the door, Thad didn’t see me. He was busy cleaning. Isabel didn’t see me because she was still sitting on the couch in the living room clutching Julie, and Franklin didn’t see me because he was on the couch too, his eyes stuck on Julie.
I let out a whine.
I scratched at the door.
I barked.
I barked more loudly.
At last Thad said, “Oh, I think Simon needs to go out.” And he opened the door. Just in time.
Later, after Franklin finally went home, Thad and Isabel climbed into their bed. They took Julie with them. I jumped up after them and was about to fling myself down in my usual spot in the very middle of the bed, when Isabel cried, “Simon! No!” and snatched up the baby. “He almost sat on Julie!” she exclaimed to Thad. “He’s so big he could have smothered her.”
“Honey, he’s not that big,” said Thad, although he was studying my feet again. “Still, I wonder whether it’s safe for Simon to be in bed with the baby.”
That night I was told to sleep on my own bed on the floor.
During the next few days, Thad found the diaper pail, and people didn’t drop by quite so often, but Isabel was tired all the time. This was because Julie cried all the time. All day, all night. Thad stayed home from his job for a while, but eventually he had to go back to work, and still Julie cried and cried. Isabel held her and walked with her and sang to her. Sometimes she said, “Please stop crying.”
I began sitting by the door more and more often. I sat there even when I didn’t need to pee. It was fun to go outside, and I missed the birds and insects and grass, the sun on my fur and the wind in my face. But if I sat by the door too often, Isabel would say, “Simon, I don’t have time for this.”
One day Isabel was holding the door open for me (again) when I saw something in the bushes by the porch that made me stop in my tracks. I stopped so suddenly that Isabel nearly closed the door on my rump. I barely noticed. I stared into the bushes and barked. And barked and barked and barked.
“Simon, what on earth is it?” asked Isabel as Julie began to cry again. She peered into the bushes and saw the cat that was crouched there. “Oh, poor thing,” she said. She disappeared into the house and came back without Julie. Then she closed me into the kitchen and went outside again.
By the end of the day, Isabel and Thad had added the cat to their family. Her name was Estelle, and she was fun to chase.
One night Thad came home from work and stood in the doorway and said, “Well. This is some household.”
Isabel was sitting on the couch in the living room, which was an enormous mess, holding a screaming Julie. Julie could make sounds that were as loud as the screeching of an owl. I was running after Estelle, and when Estelle reached a wall and realized she couldn’t go any farther, she clawed her way up the curtains and tried to balance on the rod, but the rod fell and so did Estelle and so did the curtains.
Thad took this all in and said, “I don’t suppose dinner is ready yet.”
Isabel looked at him in exactly the same way I had once seen Mrs. Merrion look at Mine the fox. Then she burst into tears.
“Never mind. I’ll order a pizza,” said Thad quickly.
“It isn’t that!” exclaimed Isabel, and Julie cried louder and harder.
Thad picked up Julie and walked her back and forth, back and forth, through the living room. (Twice he tripped over a magazine that had fallen to the floor.) “What is it then?” he asked softly.
“Emily called today.”
“Emily Steiner? From your office?”
Isabel nodded. “She reminded me that I said I would start working from home this week. And I want to. I mean, I really want to. I’m going crazy here. But”—she looked around at screaming Julie, the living room in its disarray, the curtains, me—“how can I do any work?” She paused. “I never even got dressed today. . . . Simon, stop that!”
I had discovered that Estelle was hiding beneath the fallen curtains, and I was nosing under them, my rump in the air, while Estelle hissed lustily at me.
“Simon, I said stop that!”
“Come on, boy. You’re going to get in trouble.” Thad handed Julie back to Isabel and pulled me away from the curtains. Estelle shot out of the room. I started to go after her, but Thad had a grip on my collar. “Simon,” he said sternly, and I sat down. “Good boy.” He turned back to Isabel. “I think it’s time to start looking for a n
anny,” he said.
Not long after this, people started coming by, one at a time, to talk to Isabel and Thad. Each one sat in the living room (Thad had cleaned it up), and Thad and Isabel would ask the person a lot of questions about babies and cleaning and cooking and past experiences. Then the person would leave, and Isabel and Thad would have a discussion of their own. It would always end when one of them sighed deeply and said, “Well, I guess we’ll have to keep looking.” They were beginning to sound frustrated.
But then a woman named Zoe came by and when she left, Isabel and Thad looked at each other and grinned, and Isabel said, “She seems perfect.”
“She has lots of experience,” agreed Thad. “And she said she’d do light housekeeping and get dinner ready for us.”
“Let’s ask her to come back tomorrow so we can talk to her again,” said Isabel.
Zoe returned the next day. She was a small woman, and young, who looked friendly enough, but she didn’t smell right to me. I kept my distance from her. When she sat in the armchair, I crept to the far end of the room, lay down, and stared at her.
Isabel and Thad were smiling. “We wanted to talk to you a bit more,” Isabel said to Zoe. “Quite honestly, you’re the best person we’ve talked to so far. And we’ve talked to a lot of people.”
“We’re hoping you’ll take the job,” added Thad.
Zoe glanced at me (I was still staring at her) and then she looked at the carpet. “I really need the job,” she said finally. “And you seem very nice, and Julie is adorable, but . . .”
“Is it the cooking?” interrupted Isabel. “You don’t have to start dinner every night.”
“No, it isn’t that. It’s, well, the dog. Cats are one thing, but dogs . . .” (I continued to stare.) “I just don’t like them. And anyway, I know I’d have my hands full with Julie and the housework and everything. I wouldn’t have time to walk a dog. So I’m really sorry, but I don’t think this will work.”
Isabel and Thad exchanged a glance. “Zoe,” said Thad after a moment, “give us until tonight, okay? Don’t accept any offers today. We’ll call you by six o’clock.”
After Zoe left, Thad and Isabel sat in the kitchen and had a long talk.
“She really is the best person we’ve seen,” said Isabel. “Maybe we could arrange for doggie day care for Simon.”
“We can’t afford that. Not on top of Zoe’s salary. It would hardly be worth your going back to work.”
“I have to go back to work!” cried Isabel.
“You know what I was thinking?” said Thad a little later. “Your father has been awfully lonely since your mother died. And he loves Simon. Maybe . . .”
“Simon is good company,” agreed Isabel. “And it’s true that Dad loves him. But do you think he can handle a dog? He’s starting to slow down. And he didn’t get a very good report from his doctor last week.”
“I think Simon is exactly what your father needs,” said Thad heartily. “Your dad’ll get out of the house, start taking walks again. It’ll be perfect.”
“I suppose.”
Two days later, Isabel and Thad packed up my toys and my bed and my food and drove me to Franklin’s apartment. They took me inside and said, “Good-bye, Simon,” and, “We love you, Simon,” and even though Franklin tried to coax me onto the couch with him, I sat at his door for a very long time, waiting for it to open from the other side.
7. HENRY
Henry’s first day at school without Matthew passed uneventfully. At recess he sat outside on a bench next to the back door of Claremont Elementary. He thought about how this year he was one of the oldest students in his school, and next year, when he entered middle school, he would be one of the youngest. He studied his Carlos Beltrán baseball card. Then he made a drawing of Owen pitching to Antony in the daily recess softball game.
After a while, Henry lost interest in drawing and baseball and Owen and Antony, and he listened to the teachers on playground duty discuss the stock market.
“Luckily, most of our investments are in municipal bonds,” said one. “They’re much safer.”
Municipal bonds, thought Henry. He would have to find out what they were.
The other teacher replied, “We decided to get rid of all our bank holdings. They seem too risky right now.”
“Bank holdings. Hmm.” Henry pulled out a pad of paper and made some notes.
The bell rang then and Henry’s classmates streamed past him and into the corridor. Henry joined the end of the line. If only he knew that a dog named Buddy would be waiting for him when he got home.
At dinner that night, Henry expected his parents to mention the Christmas list. Neither one did. They didn’t mention it the next day or the day after that. What was wrong? Had they not noticed that he had resurrected his two-year-old list? That was how badly he still wanted a dog and a doghouse and everything for a dog. Maybe the list was too sloppy, and his tidy librarian parents hadn’t liked the look of all the cross-outs.
Or maybe, thought Henry as he sat on the bench on the playground again one afternoon, his parents hadn’t even read the list yet. Maybe it had gotten lost in the giant stack of mail on the counter. Henry ran home from school that day—pelted all the way down Nassau Street, around the corner, and along Tinker Lane to his house. He let himself inside and made a beeline for the pile of papers in the kitchen. He shuffled through the stack, didn’t see the list, and shuffled through the papers once more, just to make sure. No list. Where was it? Henry was wondering whether it would be all right to search his parents’ desk when he glanced across the kitchen and saw that the list had been smoothed out and posted on the refrigerator. It was right there in plain sight where his parents could look at it day after day. He noticed that someone, probably his mother, had put a large red exclamation point on the top of the page. This, Henry supposed, meant that his parents were amused by the list. They hadn’t taken it seriously. They also hadn’t mentioned the list, Christmas, and certainly not the request for a dog.
Henry thought back to the last time he had asked his parents for a dog. The conversation, which had taken place just two months earlier, had not gone well. It had started when Henry said, “Remember when we went to the animal shelter?”
His father replied, “I do. We adopted Amelia Earhart. That was fun.”
“Maybe it’s time for another fun visit,” Henry had said.
His father, who had been reading on the couch, put his book down, removed his glasses, and looked squarely at Henry.
“Could we go just to look at the animals?” Henry had asked.
“Just to look?” his father repeated.
“At the dogs,” said Henry.
“But just to look.”
“Well, at first. But then maybe we could come home, talk about what we looked at, and go back again.”
Henry’s father was quiet, so finally Henry had said, “Dad, please can’t I have a dog? Please? ”
Henry’s mother had joined them then. She sat on the arm of the couch and said, “A dog, Henry? Haven’t we already had this discussion? Several times?”
“Yes, but I’m eleven now.”
Henry’s mother had let out a long sigh. “I know what will happen if we get a dog,” she said. “You’ll love it and play with it, but your father and I will be the ones who wind up walking it and feeding it and training it and cleaning up its messes. Do you know how much work a dog involves?”
Henry had shrugged. He hadn’t given much thought to those things. He just wanted a dog.
Now he thought about that conversation and realized his parents had been trying to tell him something. They had been trying to say that they still hadn’t thought he was responsible enough to care for a dog. Huh. Well, maybe that really had been true when Henry was younger. But now he was almost ready for middle school. He was much more mature and responsible. He just needed to prove that to his parents.
“Aha!” said Henry aloud. “That’s the key.”
The next morning when
Henry’s mother knocked on his bedroom door and called, “Henry! Time to get going!” Henry opened the door with a flourish and grinned.
He was fully dressed.
“Don’t forget to make your b—”
Henry indicated his bed. It was neatly made.
After breakfast, Henry lugged the overflowing recycling cans from the garage down to the bottom of the driveway.
“Henry,” said his father when Henry reappeared in the kitchen, “remember, today is recycling day. You—”
Henry led his father to the front door and pointed to the street.
His father looked at him in surprise. “You remembered!” he said. “And you did the job perfectly.”
“Thank you,” Henry replied modestly.
When school ended that day, Henry left his classroom and walked past the gym and the office to the library where his mother was sitting at her desk working at the computer.
“Hello,” said Henry.
“Well, this is a surprise,” his mother replied.
“I thought I’d walk home with you today.”
Henry and his mother walked through Claremont, and Henry said he had heard there was a big school board meeting coming up. “I certainly hope the budget passes,” he added.
His mother looked curiously at him, but Henry walked along as if he always thought about school boards and budgets.
The moment they got home, Henry sat down at the kitchen table and started his assignments. When he was finished, he carried his books upstairs and set them in a neat pile on his dresser. He looked around his room and decided it was a bit messy, so he spent some time tidying it. He picked up all the things that were lying on the floor and put them where they belonged. Then he crawled under his bed to see what might be there. He found a lot of clothes, two CDs without their cases, and some pencils he thought he’d lost. He was about to put the under-the-bed clothes away when he realized they had been there for so many months that they no longer fit him, so he laid them on his chair. He thought that some of the shirts hanging in his closet were now too tight, and that at least one pair of shoes had also become too tight. He gathered up the too-small articles of clothing and stacked them neatly in a shopping bag. After that, he opened his wallet, took out all of his money, and placed it in an envelope. He carried the shopping bag and the envelope downstairs.
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