A Man of His Own

by Susan Wilson

  In another life, I’d have washed that charming babyish wallpaper and planned where to put a crib. I hated that room, a reminder of the end of our first, best goal.

  In all that time, Rick had never told me what happened and I believed that he couldn’t remember. It wasn’t unusual, after all. Traumatic amnesia. All I knew was that in the ambush, all of his men were lost, Rick the only survivor.

  Rick kept Keller in his room, leaving me to fiddle around in the kitchen, craning to hear their voices, wondering what could be going on. Pax panted and paced the hallway from Rick’s room to where I stood, useless, in the kitchen, too late for lunch, too early for dinner. The dog looked at me with a clear concern and all I could do was pat him and mutter words meant to soothe him. “It’s all right, big guy. It’s good to have you back. Will you be happy here? Did you miss us? Can you go back to being our dog?” My questions left my mouth unattached to any thought. “Will you miss him?” Him, Keller.

  Finally, Keller appeared in the archway. He still had that military bearing about him, shoulders back, chin lifted, hands rigidly at his sides, the right one clutching the brim of his hat. I looked at his face for the first time, really looked at him, at the angular planes of his face and the aquiline nose suggesting an old Yankee heritage. What I saw was a man moving into the next stage of his life. His mouth was drawn into a military scowl, but his eyes, a deep muddy brown, glinted with enough hope that I felt my own burn.

  Pax immediately went to him and sat at his left knee. I never saw a signal. Keller made no overt sign, but without hesitation the dog planted himself where he belonged. I saw the truth clearly now: This dog had formed an attachment as deep as an attachment between lovers. No part of Keller touched the dog, but the connection was as visible to me as if they’d been chained to each other. I wanted to hate him, and yet I couldn’t. I understood him.

  “What are we going to do?” I whispered, as if I thought myself alone in the room.

  “Mr. Stanton wants to talk to you.” Keller moved aside, the dog gracefully moving with him. I pushed past them to go to Rick, my hand reaching deep into my apron pocket to find a handkerchief. I was already in tears.

  I expected to find Rick hunched down and devastated, and every inch of me pulsed to comfort him; but instead, he was sitting in his chair, straight and confident, his good arm crossed over his bad one. Without preamble, he laid out his idea. Keller Nicholson would stay on as Rick’s aide. Room and board, and a small weekly salary in exchange for lifting and dressing and bathing and all the tasks that made up my day. In exchange for Pax.

  “Franny, it’s up to you. It’ll take the physical burden off of you, but I know that having another person in the house means more work for you in other areas. But he’s big, he’s capable, and he’s rootless.”

  “And we avoid having to argue about Pax.”

  Rick nodded. “Yeah. At least for a while. It’ll give us all a chance to adjust.”

  A stranger in my house. We knew nothing about him except that Pax was a big fan. I felt like we were trusting a dog as a reference for an employee, a star boarder, an interloper.

  “I haven’t struggled. I haven’t complained. I want to take care of you.”

  Rick reached out his hand and grasped mine. “I know you do.”

  I pressed the crumpled handkerchief up to my eyes. He hadn’t touched me in a long time, and the feel of the soft skin of his palm against my more work-worn hand was too warm and I worried about a new infection starting. I’d forgotten how warm a kind hand can be.

  “We give him a month.” He squeezed my hand and let go.

  “All right.”

  And so Keller Nicholson came into our lives and nothing was ever the same again.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  As it goes, it’s not as bad as it might be. The garage is fairly well ventilated and the roll-out cot isn’t the worst thing Keller has ever slept on. It’s better than sleeping on the lumpy couch on the enclosed porch at his aunt Biddie’s house, and certainly more private than Meadowbrook or a barracks. They’ve given him a three-drawer bureau with an attached mirror and an old-fashioned pitcher and bowl. He’s got bathroom privileges, but he prefers to shave in the garage rather than take up time and make a mess in the house bathroom. His second-floor bedroom at Clayton’s was smaller and, like this garage, unheated. He’s on trial, he knows, and heat in the garage is the least of his concerns. If this situation doesn’t pan out, well, Keller doesn’t like to think of what might happen if it doesn’t.

  No, the accommodations aren’t bad, but all the same Keller feels a lot like he did as a kid, living in someone else’s house, on someone else’s terms. Not exactly welcome, not exactly family, not exactly friend. At least he gets a paycheck and his free time is his own. The job is physically demanding, and at night he aches in places he never has before, not even after hauling pots and nets and gear from boat to shore. Not even after sleeping in a foxhole dug out of the rocky soil. The struggle to get Rick from bed to bath to chair and back again is a challenge even for someone as used to hard work as Keller is. Mrs. Stanton suggested that he visit the VA to get some pointers on how to lift a body, and maybe he will one day.

  Pax spends most of his time in what Keller thinks of as Rick’s sickroom. He’s not sick, at least not in the sense of enduring a disease, but it is clear that this room has become his whole world, that to venture out of it is a labor-intensive struggle to get the clumsy wheelchair over the sill and through a door that barely accommodates its width. Leaving the house is worse, requiring Keller to throw his weight counter to the weight of the man and chair and roll it down step by step. He thinks it would almost be easier if he lifted Rick out of the chair and carried him, but Rick balks at that, the indignity of it. So, for most of the day Pax sits with him, his head on Rick’s lap, eyes closed as Rick strokes his head over and over. Sometimes Keller hears him talking to the dog, whispering words that are meant for the dog’s ears only. The dog patiently takes these confidences in and never reveals what they are.

  But every night, Keller is quietly joined in the garage by his dog. He never orders Pax to come, but in the hour after Rick has been put to bed and Mrs. Stanton has gone upstairs to her room, the dog, having surveyed the property and deemed it safe, comes through the half-open door to crawl into Keller’s narrow cot. Stretched side by side, they both drift into sleep.

  * * *

  “I don’t see any shoes.” Keller has gotten Rick up, toileted, shaved, and into a short-sleeved shirt and loose trousers.

  “No point in shoes.”

  “You still have feet. You need something on them.”

  “Why? It’s not like I’m walking out of here.”

  Keller abandons the search for shoes, kneels down in front of Rick, and slides on a pair of open-back slippers. The left one falls off. He puts it back on. “All set. How ’bout we get you into the kitchen for breakfast?”

  “Just have Francesca bring it in here.”

  “She’s set the table.”

  Rick says nothing.

  Pax bangs the den door open with his head and Rick finally smiles. “Hey, big boy.” The dog bounds in, tail swinging. He plants his head in Rick’s lap, eyes up, ears up, doing his morning greeting routine. The dog fills up a lot of the space in the tiny room and Keller has more than once had to rescue pill bottles and teacups swept off the low tray table beside Rick’s chair.

  Keller leaves to tell Francesca that she needs to set up the breakfast tray again. He’s batting zero as far as getting Rick to leave his room. He tries every morning, and every morning Rick ignores him or gets mad. “I didn’t hire you to pester me. I’m comfortable and it’s not worth the struggle. I’m in the way. Leave me alone.”

  “I don’t know why you keep trying.” Francesca has already set up the tray with juice, toast, scrambled eggs cooling off too quickly. She picks it up. “Grab some eggs for yourself. The coffee’s ready.” She gracefully swings the tray up like an experienced diner waitr
ess and disappears down the hall.

  There is one place set. Francesca’s used plate and fork are in the sink. Keller pours himself some coffee and helps himself to the rest of the eggs. He doesn’t sit, but leans against the counter, forking cold eggs into his mouth and sloshing black coffee after them. He can hear her voice, but not distinctly. It always sounds the same to him, like she’s mollifying a child. She doesn’t treat Rick like a man anymore; she treats him, in Keller’s opinion, like a truculent ten-year-old.

  This is a house with very little thought given to decor. Keller knows that they moved here hastily. She’s told him how it was. After months of waiting, Rick’s discharge from the hospital seemingly happened overnight. Francesca has been so consumed with caring for Rick that she’s done little to make this small house homey. Furniture, sure; curtains, yes. But only a picture or two on the walls. One picture in particular tells him more of their story than he’s been able to figure out from the bits of conversation he’s had with either of the Stantons. Rick in a baseball uniform, in mid pitch, his back leg kicked, his pitching hand just unfurling across his chest. It’s telling, he thinks, that this photograph is in a room where Rick never goes.

  Keller has fashioned a clothes rack in one corner and his uniform and fatigues hang there, at the ready for his one-weekend-a-month service in the Army Reserves. This will be the first time he’ll be away from the Stantons, and the first time since boot camp that he won’t have his dog by his side. It’s just a weekend, and not far away, just down on the Cape at Camp Edwards. It’s been a bit of a surprise, how guilty he feels. Having just gotten the Stantons to where they are comfortable in having him around to do all the physical work and now leaving her to struggle with it for two nights. Guilty because he’s really looking forward to being among healthy, fit men, even if it’s only to drive a truck from one base to another in simulated maneuvers. Rick wears on him.

  The other night, Keller brought up the subject of baseball, like any two guys sitting in a room might do. “What do you think of the Red Sox’s chances this year?”

  “I don’t. I don’t think of that at all and I’d prefer it if you wouldn’t talk about it.”

  Rick slammed the door on that topic, which frankly leaves very little for the two of them to talk about during those uncomfortable moments while Keller bathes Rick or lifts him from chair to toilet. War talk isn’t anything either of them wants to discuss, and, without the masculine conversational safety net of sports talk, that only leaves Pax.

  She’s not much better. At least calling her “Missus” has worn off. She’s got a couple of years on him, like she might have been a senior when he was a sophomore, just about that much. Caring for her husband has prematurely aged her. Not in appearance, except for the dusky circles beneath her eyes, but in spirit. Maybe it’s just that being married to an older guy, you can’t be a kid. Keller was never a kid, either, but he’s pretty sure that Francesca has become this way, not been raised to it. He understands Francesca’s seriousness, and, coupled with the weight of her burden, her gravity.

  But it’s not a bad situation. After all, he’s still got Pax.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Rick! Keller! Francesca! All together, sometimes even in the same room. To Pax, it feels like all the uneven places in his life have smoothed out. It’s as if everything that had gone before was leading to this. Early life with Rick. The Rick-less time with Francesca. The exciting time with Keller when he had a job with commands instead of a job, like now, where he is allowed to perform tasks of his own invention. He is busy all the time. Mostly, he keeps Rick company. This isn’t the Rick of old; this is a sedentary Rick. He never throws balls or sticks or leashes him to run along the streets. He no longer takes him to the park, or along the Charles River to walk for miles and miles. If Rick no longer requires active company, he more than requires inactive companionship. Pax gives himself over to this new dynamic. As long as he is nearby, within reach of Rick’s hand, he is on duty. If Rick is in his bed, Pax lies alongside him, even when Francesca makes him get down. If Rick is in his chair, Pax sits with him. He waits while Rick goes into that place where he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, breathing only shallowly. Pax has figured out that if he nudges Rick, or drops a heavy paw on his lap, Rick will emerge from this fugue state. Good boy. Job well done.

  It might have been a joy to have both of his men in the same room, but there is this thread of tension that corrupts the perfection of it. He goes from one to the other, as if to tell them that he isn’t divided between them, but is holding them together. But they don’t understand. Francesca doesn’t understand, either, and sometimes all Pax wants is to leave all three of them behind and spend a solitary hour in the backyard, waiting for the squirrel that lives in the cherry tree to come within reach.

  At night, without orders, Pax divides his time unequally, finding Keller a better bunk mate. After all, they had kept each other warm during those long, harsh months of cold and commotion. Sleeping outside or under the precarious shelter of broken buildings; huddled together with backs against stone walls. Keller’s body spooning his, each taking a turn enjoying deep sleep.

  Not once has Keller ever ordered him aside for a mate, locking him out of their shared sleeping quarters, like Rick has. Even though Rick and Francesca now sleep in separate places, Pax still prefers his wartime buddy’s warmth to stretching out beside either of the other two. Not that Francesca would ever let him on her bed.

  But, on occasion, Pax leaves Keller, his acute ears hearing some small anguish coming from Rick. Then he goes back to Rick’s room, places his cold nose against his first man’s cheek, and waits for the grasp of his unsteady hand to tell Pax that he is helping. That he is doing a good job.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I extracted a straw, inserted it carefully between the floating lumps of vanilla ice cream and deep into the soda. I took a deep draw of the concoction and then caught a look at myself in the soda fountain’s mirror. Foolish, girlish, I gave myself a pinup girl wink and took another sip. I’d had my hair cut, and it fanned my face in effortless curls. Unlike so many others, I never had to submit to the heat and stench of a permanent. My fair hair was always curly enough to avoid chemical interference and responsive enough to obey ordinary rollers and bobby pins. Maybelline carmine red banded the straw where my lips pressed. My indulgence. My vanity. Hair done and lips painted, I could have been any wife going home to a husband who would appreciate that she was taking care of herself. For all the good it did me.

  This was luxury. An hour without guilt because Keller would give Rick his lunch and then bring out the chess set. Miraculously, he had managed to get Rick to play the game with him, when all other attempts at the distraction of cribbage or poker or rummy had failed. Maybe because it was something easily played one-handed.

  In any event, Keller’s presence had given me the opportunity of an afternoon to myself. If I’d had any friends, I’d have gone visiting or talked one of them into going out to lunch. Living as we did, in near isolation in a town where we knew no one, hadn’t bothered me at first. But once Keller was there and I was allowed some guiltless free time, I began to miss the easy companionship of the other baseball wives. But it had been too long, a lot of the players had changed, and the truth was, I didn’t live that life anymore. I didn’t want to gossip about who might be traded, or whose wife was pregnant. Especially who was pregnant.

  I might have called on Clarissa, Sid’s wife, but to be honest, I hadn’t taken to Clarissa. She was nice enough, but I didn’t have the urge to pull her into my confidences. He’d married a Boston Brahmin Vassar girl and I wasn’t her kettle of fish, either. We smiled at each other at our occasional family dinners, but we’d never be the kind of friends who chatted for hours on the phone.

  I wrote often to my high school pal Gertie, now Mrs. Donald Richmond, proud doyenne of five hundred acres six miles beyond Mount Joy’s town limits and mother to three little boys. Gertie’s life was full of farm t
alk—crops, cows, and corn prices—and kids. I had nothing to offer but medical updates. I had half a dozen stock sentences and I alternated them so that it didn’t look like I was writing the same letter over and over: Rick is doing well this week. We had a good visit with the VA docs. We had a little setback with his catheter, but all is well now. The leaves are turning beautifully. We’ve had three big snowstorms in the past two weeks. The summer is proving to be rainy. Blah, blah, blah. Life’s just peachy.

  My erstwhile boyfriend Buster Novak had been killed in action in the Pacific. I confess that sometimes I wondered what it might have been like had I accepted him. After all, my life hadn’t turned out a whole lot different from that of farmwife. My daily concerns, with the exception of corn prices, pretty much came to the same thing as any farm wife dealt with: feeding my men, keeping the household running, looking out for the windstorms that blew through my existence every time Rick succumbed to a depression that never quite lifted. The adventure and culture and excitement were long gone, subsumed by the daily struggle to survive.

  When Keller appeared with Pax, that gave me something interesting to tell Gertie. “Rick is really happy to have Pax back. Nicholson is such a big help. He’s taken over all the heavy lifting for me. It’s made such a difference.” I was one gush away from making it sound like Keller was a willing participant in the Stanton drama, instead of a man who was there because we’d held his beloved Pax hostage. A little variation on the wisdom of Solomon. Everybody wins, right?