by Susan Wilson
And yet, although Rick knows that the dog sleeps in the garage with Keller, if he wakes in the night, he finds the dog with him, as if he’s been there all along.
* * *
As has become their habit at lunchtime, the three of them cram into Rick’s room. Francesca has changed out of her new dress and is back in her workaday housedress. She moves the rolling over-bed table into the middle of the room to accommodate Rick’s wheelchair and two kitchen chairs, and places a plate of egg salad sandwiches on it so that they can all reach.
Keller comes in with a bandage around his left forefinger. “Stupid mistake. Thought my finger was a nail.”
Lucky for him he has his right hand and it doesn’t impair his ability to eat his sandwich.
“Any requests for dinner?” Francesca touches up the edge of a sandwich with her finger and puts it in Rick’s hand. As she licks the extra mayo from her finger, an image of her in bed flashes through Rick’s mind, until he slams the lid on it.
“I have an idea. You suggested going out, so why don’t you and Keller go?”
“No. I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
Keller is shaking his head as if the idea is apostasy. He is adhering to some protocol of his own invention.
“It’s fine. You two both need a break. Go get some fried clams. Bring some back for me.”
“What if…”
Rick puts his half-eaten sandwich down, takes Francesca’s hand. “Nothing is going to happen for the hour it may take you to eat dinner. You’re not leaving me in danger. Besides, I have Pax. He’ll keep me company.”
Francesca and Keller look at each other with almost the same expression of skepticism. Or, is it something else, a nervous shyness? Like two adolescents. Two wallflowers suddenly forced to dance? Rick realizes that he has no idea what kind of relationship these two have with each other. She speaks of him only in terms of how much he’s helping. Keller never speaks of Francesca except to say she’s in the kitchen or running an errand. It’s obvious to him now, the way they seem to exist only on the periphery of each other. Coworkers, not companions. He doesn’t know why that bothers him. It seems like they should be better friends than that. It means that Keller may yet be an imposition on Francesca even while he’s giving her enough freedom to go get her hair done.
“I mean it. You both deserve a break.”
Keller slips a crust to Pax. “I could do with a clam plate. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten clams.”
“We’d only be gone a little while.”
Rick can’t tell if Francesca says that like a decision, or if she’s trying to convince herself he can be left alone even for an hour. Has he become that much of a child that he can’t be left? Life has become such an if/then equation. If they had had a baby before he went to war, would he then have come back infantilized? If he had died, would she then have been able to move on with her life instead of being trapped here with him? If he had come back whole, would the unspoken fact of their earlier failure to conceive been finally addressed? Maybe, if there had been no war, they would have conceived. It’s a stretch to blame God for not giving them a child when they’d had the opportunity, but sometimes Rick does. And then he thinks that it’s probably for the best. How would Francesca have coped with an active child’s needs and those of a needy husband?
Keller points to the remaining half sandwich. “Anyone?”
“I can make more; I have more egg salad made up.” Francesca looks ready to jump out of her chair.
“No. I’m done.” Rick sets his unfinished half back on his plate.
Keller finishes the sandwich in two bites. He starts to wipe his mouth on the back of his hand but stops himself and uses his napkin. “I should get back to work.” He grabs the back of the extra kitchen chair and leaves Francesca and Rick alone.
Pax looks after Keller but remains where he is, at Rick’s side, patiently waiting for another crust. Rick hands him the rest of his sandwich.
“I think that maybe it’s a good night for lamb chops. The butcher has them on special.”
“Francesca, go out. Take Keller and go out.
“Rick, I feel a little awkward about…”
“It’s not a date, Fran, it’s a little break from cooking.”
There is a faint tinge to her pale cheeks, not quite a blush, not quite embarrassment. It’s as if she’s been thinking about Keller and has been called out on it. Either she’s uncomfortable with him or she’s not. “All right. You’re right.” She stands up, gathers the plates into a stack. “But just be sure I’d rather be going out with you and that I’m going to keep pestering you until you say yes.”
“I need time, Francesca. I need more time.”
“You can have all the time you need, but you have to promise me that you’ll try.” She drops a kiss on the top of his head. “Promise?”
“Yes.” The word has the sooty taste of a lie.
Chapter Thirty-one
If he had the capacity to put into words what he feels, Pax would think himself a lucky dog. If being safe and warm and well fed is one part of what a dog needs and wants, having the companionship and affection of his best people is three-quarters of perfect. One friend to be with as he dozes in the narrow patch of sunlight that ekes its way between the former blackout curtains in the small Rick-smelling room. The same friend to ask him for favors like picking up dropped things. Another friend to keep his training sharp, heeling, fetching, sniffing out potential threats to the home. Sit, stay, and even, when out in the woods, scaling barriers. Finally, the woman who gives him the best of the belly rubs, her fingers equipped for deep scratching and an instinct for the right places.
Yes, Pax is a lucky dog indeed and his sense of well-being tempers his still-youthful energies. He’s been through the toughest of times—separation from those he loved, a time of required aggression and wariness—and come out mild-mannered and willing to accept this triumvirate of masters.
There is only one thing that puzzles him: why these three don’t seem to be as content as he is. They are like a small pack lacking a leader. He’s tried to step into that role, but their humanness limits their comprehension. He’s taking as good care of them as he can, but they still insist on a separateness from one another. They don’t snap at one another, and if they are jockeying for position in the pack, it’s too subtle for him to detect. Instead, there is this deference. Keller was admirably alpha when they were a pack of two. But his position in this group is unclear. Francesca, as a female, is a likely candidate, but she, too, refuses to take the lead. If he had to, Pax might give Rick the leadership, but his ability to hunt or protect or mate is clearly compromised, and that should remove him from the head of the pack. So Pax watches out for all of them, not entirely comfortable in his role, finding it hard to interpret from day to day exactly what it is these three humans want from one another. At least he knows what they want from him. To be there for each of them.
Yes, he’s a lucky dog.
Chapter Thirty-two
I think that it’s still there, Ray’s Clam Shack. Across Quincy Shore Drive from the beach, back in those days they served food fried in a deep fat fryer filled with liquefied Crisco, a maxed-out cholesterol feast and absolutely divine. I was a kid from the Midwest. Fresh seafood was a treat, and that fried mess of clams and french fries and tartar sauce was exotic to me. Keller insisted we get clams with bellies, suggesting that clam strips were akin to eating margarine instead of butter—just not good enough. I admit that it took a bit for me to get used to the taste and feel of the contents of a clam belly, but once I did, I never went back to the untutored Midwesterner’s version of clams.
Even though the place was only a few blocks from home, we took my car. Partly because Rick’s take-out dinner would be cold if we walked it home and mostly because neither one of us was interested in prolonging this excursion, leaving Rick home alone and potentially helpless. What if something happened? That sentence should be in all caps. Pax was
there, at the ready to retrieve anything Rick could point to. Keller had refined the dog’s mission to include getting Rick’s sweater, which lay at the foot of his bed, or dragging his lap robe up and over his knees. Should the evening paper arrive when we weren’t around, the dog would push his way out the front door and take it in to Rick, this last without a command or, to the best of our knowledge, anyone training him to do it. We still hadn’t seen him open the front door to get back in. But, with all that, the dog couldn’t dial a phone or put out a fire. Worst-case scenarios plagued me.
The other reason I thought we should take the car was because we were still very shy with each other and this whim of Rick’s was best accomplished quickly. Without the third party of Rick, or even Pax, we were only a little better than foreign dignitaries without a common language.
We took our dinner to the beach, finding an empty bench to sit on side-by-side, the greasy bags between us. And we talked, as parents of young children do, of our two common interests. Rick and Pax. How funny Pax was with that squeaky toy hanging out of his mouth. How much better we both thought Rick was using his left hand.
Conversation petered out and we sat back to admire the view of the Boston Harbor islands.
Keller scuffed his feet in the sand. “This is lousy sand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kind of, well, kind of city sand.”
I laughed. “You’re a beach sand connoisseur?”
“Sort of. Spent a lot of time standing in it.”
“Where?”
“Little place called Hawke’s Cove. Up north of here. I lived for a while with my great-uncle.” Keller lifted a whole clam dipped in a coating of tartar sauce to his mouth, chewed. “He’s a commercial fisherman, mostly close to shore.”
“That must have been nice, being on the water.”
Keller didn’t say anything for a moment, then shook his head. “It wasn’t vacation. It was hard work.”
There was no nostalgia in his voice, as there might have been with a lot of men. Even hard work has its nostalgic quality—a pride of purpose, of accomplishment. With Keller, it sounded more like he had survived something. He didn’t elaborate then; only later did I learn about his virtual slave labor and understand that he had indeed survived something.
“Is that where you learned to eat clams with bellies?”
Keller gave me one of his infrequent smiles, and for the first time I saw that he had a really nice smile and wished that maybe he’d use it more. “That and how to make a mean chowder.” He pronounced it in that quintessentially New England manner: chowda. “I’ll make it some night if you want.”
“Rick would love that. It was always what he ordered when we went out.” And then I remembered that Rick avoided using a spoon. “Well, maybe not yet.”
Keller knew what I meant. “He will. I promise.”
The scenery recaptured our attention. A small boat was powering its way toward one of the islands, and I couldn’t imagine what reason it might have for such a journey. As far as I knew, there were no inhabitants on the tuft of island that the boat was headed toward.
“That’s a lobster boat; he’s out checking traps. He’s probably got them set where there’re rocks. Lobsters like cover.” Lobstas.
“Another thing your uncle taught you?” I crumpled up my empty cardboard clam boat and shoved it in the paper bag.
“Yeah.” Keller followed suit, and grabbed both empty bags. We needed to pick up the order for Rick. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Rick was a ballplayer, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, why won’t he let me bring in a radio so we can listen to the games? You’d think that he’d want to keep up.”
Hadn’t Keller noticed the fact that Rick left the sports section unread? I chalked up his insensitivity to youthful callowness. Of course, he wasn’t a youth and it wasn’t callowness. Eventually, I figured out that his bluntness had more to do with his upbringing, or lack thereof. “It’s too painful. He was slated to become a starting pitcher with the Boston Braves, but instead he went to war and lost his dream.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“If you want to listen to the games, feel free. But don’t think that you’re going to get him to.”
“I thought that if he’d listen to the radio, he might, I don’t know, start to feel better.”
“By being reminded of the loss of the thing that meant the most to him?”
“Look, he’s in there all by himself, staring at the wall. Unless you’re in there, or I’m making him play chess, he’s probably only thinking of his loss.”
The thing Keller couldn’t know is that I understood Rick exceedingly well, including his aversion to the topic of sports. For a long time, I felt the same aversion every time one of my ballpark acquaintances or a friendly neighbor down the block announced that she was pregnant, something that was happening postwar with startling regularity. Or I stood next to a mother with a pram beside her in the butcher shop, watching out of the corner of my eye while she tucked the baby in more securely and smiled down with that Madonna smile all women are capable of. I tossed out the baby pictures my Iowa girlfriends kindly sent to me, inviting me to share in their joy.
Maybe making Rick listen to ball games was a good idea. After all, I was a little better now, having a new focus forced upon me with Rick’s challenges, so that the sight of a pregnant woman on the street corner no longer made me avert my eyes. And there were so many of them. It was as if the world had gone procreation crazy in order to make up for the staggering losses of war.
“At least now he’s got Pax. And you. Before it was…” I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t admit that those months of being Rick’s only caregiver had been anything other than a privilege.
“Just you. Yes, it’s a good thing that I’m here to help. And it’s really good that Pax can at least get him to smile once in a while. But, Francesca, it isn’t enough.”
I was done with this conversation. I know he hadn’t meant to, but he was making me feel like I had somehow failed Rick by not making him listen to baseball on the radio, forcibly reminding him that life and baseball had moved on without him. Well, they also recommended rubbing dogs’ noses in their messes to punish them. “Let’s go get the order and go home.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stir up trouble.”
“It’s not like I don’t see what’s wrong, Keller. You never knew him as the man I married. He was charming and funny and sexy and full of life. He was full of life.” I hated the way my voice broke. I hadn’t cried in a long time, not since I realized that tears really never relieved. They just pushed my thoughts inward, until I felt sorry for myself.
“The war took that from him, didn’t it? I get it. But he’s got the whole rest of his life to live, and if he can’t even leave his room, what kind of a life is it going to be? For him, and for you.”
The little lobster boat had moved out of sight around the curve of the island. A pair of seagulls had landed close by, attracted by our impromptu picnic. I had nothing to toss to them. We had eaten every bite. “Do you plan to stay on?”
“Do you want me to?”
“We do, but the question is, do you want to stay?” It came to me that Keller was done with taking care of a man who hadn’t come through the war in the same way he had, with his limbs intact and his spirit undiminished. He didn’t answer right away, and I could feel my heart hammering at the fear he would say good-bye and leave me once again alone with my husband.
“I do.”
I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath until I released it. “Oh, good. Good.”
“But it’s not enough.” A coincidence of words, or had this been what he’d meant earlier about it not being enough?
“We can’t pay any more, honestly.” It was a pittance, eked out of Rick’s benefits. We were feeding Keller, and providing a place to sleep. Even living with us, he had exp
enses—a car, clothing, and so on. Here he was at the beginning of his postwar life, living like a Victorian servant.
“No. That’s not what I mean. I’m thinking of taking advantage of the GI Bill and going to college in the fall. I can do both, go to school and help out with Rick. If I can stay on with you, I mean.”
“Of course you can.” I almost giggled in relief. He’d stay. I felt reprieved and I knew that Rick would be pleased, even if he didn’t say so.
Keller tossed the bags into a trash can and we dashed across the street, back to where Rick’s dinner was waiting to be picked up. I don’t know why, but we dashed hand in hand.
Chapter Thirty-three
“Pax, pickitup.” Rick points to a medicine bottle sitting on the edge of the bedside table. It holds his painkillers—fifty little white pills guaranteed to take the edge off his continuing pain, if not cure it.
Pax watches Rick’s gesture, identifies the target, and goes to the table. He lifts the bottle gently, glances back at Rick to confirm that he has the right object, and then brings it to him.
“Good boy.” Rick scratches the dog’s chest, then runs his hand over his head. “Really good boy.”
Unscrewing the cap with his teeth, Rick shakes out two of the pills. He slips the morphine into the pocket of his sweater. Now his problem is how to put the vial back on the nightstand so that neither his wife nor Keller will notice. He is stockpiling, week by week, a dose of morphine he hopes will put an end to this nonsense. He’s tired, really tired, and he could just take everything that’s in this vial now, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want it to look like a suicide. There, that’s the word. Suicide. Death by personal choice. A death that would disqualify Francesca from his life insurance. One of these nights after Keller gets him settled into bed and Francesca has kissed him good night, he’ll swallow his purloined hoard of morphine pills, send Pax out of the room, and fall asleep for all time, putting an end to this half-life.