by Susan Wilson
But right now his problem is how to get the little bottle back to where Keller left it. Rick is facing in the wrong direction. After the laborious morning routine of getting him out of bed and cleaned up, Keller always leaves him facing the door. They’ve been working on a new command, one invented to give Rick a little more freedom of movement within his room. Folded up on the tray table is a terry-cloth towel. He grasps it and shakes it toward the dog. “Pax, pull me.”
Pax loves this new game and cheerfully mouths the end of the already-shredded towel.
“Pull me,” Rick repeats.
With Pax’s teeth gripping the towel and his weight sunk into his back legs, Rick keeps a resistance on the other end like a game of tug-of-war, until the chair slowly revolves and Rick is facing the bed instead of the door.
Perfect. Except that the space between the hospital bed and the wall is too narrow to navigate in the chair. He needs to get the dog to replace the vial, or at least get it onto the table. “Here, Pax.”
Pax is at the ready, his tail swishing across the bare floor in anticipation of further usefulness. Rick gets the dog to take the bottle in his mouth. “I have no idea what to ask, so let’s try: ‘Put it down.’” Pax happily holds the vial and wags his tail, but his eyes are pure doubt. “Okay, whole new command for you. Pax, put it.” He points to the table, but the dog puts the bottle in his lap. “Good boy.” Rick has the dog take the object back and then touches the edge of his bed. “Put it.” The dog puts it in his hand. “No. On the bed.” This is stupid. He doesn’t have Keller’s innate ability to communicate with this animal. He doesn’t have the right words or the right tone of voice. Like everything else in his life, he can no longer make it work.
Rick hears the connecting door between the kitchen and the breezeway open and then the sound of drawers opening and shutting. The smell of fried food precedes Keller and Francesca down the hall. In the half a minute it takes Francesca to gather a plate and napkin, Rick has to figure out what to do with the vial. Reflexively, he underhands it toward the bedside table. It bounces with a glass-on-wood clang and hits the bed. Rick wishes he’d used a curve.
“Is everything all right?” Francesca is behind him. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Rick hopes she’s referring to the fact that he’s facing away from the door. “Pax and I are just working on our commands. He’s turned me around. So, what did you bring me?” Francesca turns him back around and gestures to the dog to leave the room. “Pax, out.” The dog bolts out, as if he’s been held captive. Francesca settles a dish towel across Rick’s chest, tucking one end of it under his useless arm. He feels like a child and he peevishly pulls it off. “No utensils necessary for this dinner; you don’t need to put a bib on me. I won’t get sloppy.”
He hates it when he speaks to her like that. But, honestly, the mothering thing is beginning to wear thin. She treats him like, well, like an invalid. At least Nicholson has the good grace to ask if he needs something done before assuming he wants it.
Francesca lifts a cardboard boat of whole-belly clams out of the bag. “Keller’s going to stay with us. He told me so tonight.”
“I thought it was our decision, not his.”
Francesca looks stunned, then mad. It’s a new expression for her, and he’s perversely pleased with himself for inciting a wholesome emotion for once. “I said he could. It’s what we want, isn’t it?”
“As long as you’re still okay with it. I know this hasn’t been easy.”
“It’s all right. It’s fine.”
Rick sees that it is. This having a stranger in their midst has moved from odd to ordinary. “So where is he?”
Francesca looks away from him, her chin tilted a little, and Rick remembers how it once felt to take that chin in his hand and lower it so that their lips met. “He’s listening to the baseball game.”
“Oh.” Of course he is. It’s August and the season is building toward the World Series.
“He wants to know why you never listen.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. It’s too hard for you.” Now she looks back at him and the sadness in her eyes is more painful to him than his physical hurts; it splinters him. He has six pills in his sweater pocket. He needs to find a better place to keep them, but there is nowhere in this room that isn’t touched by the two other people in this house. No privacy.
Chapter Thirty-four
Keller has arranged things so that part of the garage looks like a bedroom—the cot, the bureau, and mirror—and part looks like a sitting room. He has a radio plugged in on what doubles as his workbench and he can listen to the baseball games that Rick refuses to listen to. Keller rescued an easy chair from a neighbor’s curbside trash and he’s positioned it with an upended ammo crate for a footstool so that he can comfortably drink a beer and listen to the game or read a few pages of Le Morte d’Arthur under the light from his new pole lamp. With his first paycheck, he sprang for the radio and lamp, and in a couple of weeks he’ll find himself a rug remnant so that when cooler weather comes, he won’t be walking on cement. In his whole life, Keller has never before enjoyed having a place of his own, the privacy of an empty room. He’d been in isolation, sure, but that wasn’t solitude; that was punishment. A windowless room at the top of the third floor in the administration building, no light, no food, no blanket. This is privacy. No one to interfere with him, no one to bully him.
His experience of women hasn’t been one of maternal care and kindness; his aunts were resentful of his extra mouth and the extra work, more quick to slap him than to praise him. He learned to keep out of the way, stay in the corner, not ask for more. Matron Willis at Meadowbrook looked the part of a kindly lady, a bit overstuffed, never seen without her apron, loose bun twisted on the top of her head; however, she was anything but. She and her husband, whom the boys called “Willie Whiskers” behind his back due to his walrus mustache, were the houseparents of his dormitory at Meadowbrook. Fifty truants and thieves, miscreants and the dispossessed lived in each of the four buildings charmingly called “cottages” by the founders of Meadowbrook School for Boys. There was nothing parental about their oversight. Matronly Matron Willis had a quick hand with the wooden spoon, and more than one boy was deafened by a blow to his ear with it. The boys were treated essentially as prisoners, and corporeal punishment, or being locked up in isolation, was the rule of the day.
Francesca takes care of him, making sure that he gets enough to eat, and that if he has a favorite, she cooks it. She brings him clean sheets every Monday. She seems happy to do it, even though he’s said he is fully capable of washing his own sheets. It makes her seem like a landlady, as if this is a boardinghouse, except that they’re paying him to be here. He’s stopped her from actually making up his bed. He makes sure he joins her in the backyard when she’s bringing in the sun-dried clothes. He carries the basket in for her.
Keller never entirely closes the door between his space and the breezeway, and at least for now, while it’s still warm, the house door is also kept open so that he can be summoned at a word. The open doors don’t diminish his sense of happy solitude, but it’s nice to be within call of people who seem to want him to be there.
Pax comes in, tail wagging gently. “Hey, bud. Time for a walk?”
Roof.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Keller ties the undone laces of his shoes. As he does every night, he heads down to the beach so that he can throw sticks for the dog. Tonight, the simple exercise of heeling off leash is the only reminder of their war work. The dog sticks like glue to his left leg, sitting as Keller waits at the curb for traffic to pass; never allowing himself to be distracted by the admiring glances of passersby. They pass Ray’s Clam Shack on their route and Keller thinks about what he told Francesca about wanting to take advantage of the GI Bill and go to college.
Keller pulls a thick stick out from under a set of cement steps leading down to the beach from the sidewalk promenade. It’s a par
ticularly good one and he keeps it hidden so that they have it every time they walk to Squantum. He puts Pax in a sit-stay and then flings the stick as far as he can into the water. “Get it.” The dog bounds after the stick, snags it, and crashes through the shallow water back to Keller. Imagine how much the dog would enjoy the cove below Clayton’s house. Keller shakes off the thought. This city beach is just fine, thank you. The idea of going back to Clayton’s house still has the power, after all this time, to squeeze his heart with dread.
The truth is, he hadn’t really thought about going to college; it wasn’t something that had ever been suggested to him as a goal. Not even Miss Jacobs had ever suggested that he apply, probably because she knew Clayton would never approve of such a lofty ambition. She was lucky to get him to allow Keller to finish high school. Keller can hear Clayton’s voice in his ear, as if the old man were standing behind him: Don’t be getting above yourself, boy. Fisherman don’t need no college.
Francesca had beamed at him, asked him what he might want to study, encouraged this crazy out-of-the-blue idea. Saying it, that he wanted to go to college, wasn’t anything more than a ploy to ensure that he can stay where he is, here with Pax. The money is scant, true. But the alternative would mean that he’d have to fight over Pax with the two people he’s come to feel responsible for. He can’t do it to them or to himself. Or to Pax. The dog is so content. All the months they spent during the war, and yet he never saw the dog’s tail wag so much as it does now. Oh, there were times when a mission was accomplished and everyone could relax and the big dog would get a little silly. But they were never 100 percent safe, and so, never 100 percent relaxed. Neither one of them slept a full night until now, although Keller knows that Pax makes the rounds from room to room a couple of times a night. Still, it’s a home-front kind of patrol. No real threats.
Francesca’s reaction to his plan had been so genuine, as if she’d been worried that he might leave them. He’s become necessary and welcome. Keller suddenly blushes at the thought of his grabbing Francesca’s hand to run across the street last night. There wasn’t even any traffic bearing down on them. It was impulsive, and the memory of it judders through him. Her hand wasn’t as smooth as he had imagined. Her fingers linked through his were stronger than he might have expected from such a little woman.
“Pax, get it!” He whips the long stick as hard as he can. It tumbles end over end, and the rocketing dog is nearly there when it hits the sand.
She hadn’t pulled it away in horror; she’d laughed and run with him like they were little kids. Maybe they looked like sister and brother. Keller finds himself smiling at the softheaded idea. She’s so small and fair, and he’s not. No one would take them for siblings.
Funny, Rick’s insistence that they go out to dinner last night. It wasn’t so much that he wanted them to leave him alone, but more like he hoped they’d work a little on improving their own association. He was right. Even in that short time alone—without the buffer of Rick or the dog—a little of the reserve that Keller and Francesca keep between them was sanded off.
It’s getting dark so early these waning days of summer. Looking away from the glow of Boston in the night sky, he sees a sprinkling of stars has emerged. Keller can pick out Sirius, the dog star, always at the heel of his master, Orion.
Pax bounds up to Keller, shaking the stick as if it’s a living creature whose neck he wants to break.
“Leave it.”
The dog places the heavy stick at Keller’s feet.
“Time’s up, Pax. Let’s head home.”
Home.
Chapter Thirty-five
His two men confer and now Pax is being taught something new to do for Rick. All of his new accomplishments take place in this space. It’s quite a change from the field work that he and Keller had done, long runs, lots of energy burned off, the flinty scent of danger overhanging every action. In comparison, these new accomplishments are really pretty tame. With Keller, he was part of a hunting pack. Lead dog, his followers flanking the prey and then taking it down for him. Here, he is domestic, nest building without a mate. Pickitup. Pull me. And now a two-part exercise: Take it. Put it. The men use a rubber ball as the training object, so he takes it in his mouth and then moves to a spot that Rick points to with his forefinger. Keller has taught him that Put it means to carefully put the object in the spot that he thinks Rick wants him to. It’s not an easy task. Sometimes it’s really hard to determine where Rick is pointing. He’s dropped the ball on the floor, on the bed, on the table and had to go retrieve it when it bounced away and under the hospital bed. Crawling under the lowered metal frame isn’t an easy thing for the big dog to do and makes him think of his war experience, crawling on his belly beneath rifle fire. Rick gets impatient and says no no no no a lot. Finally, Pax masters the nuances of Rick’s gestures and has a perfect run of placing the object on the table when Rick points to it, on the bed, and, yes, on the floor as directed. Then they try other objects, like the little bottle.
Keller is pleased with him, but Rick keeps asking him to repeat the same exercise long after Keller has left the room. It has gone beyond mere practice and is sliding out of the realm of a game. Rick’s repetition of the series of commands to retrieve an object, give him the object, take the object, and then put it where Rick indicates has taken on the same intensity as those exercises with Keller as the big guns thundered over their heads and the men around them depended on them to secure the way. Rick’s aura suggests life and death even though the object isn’t to locate an enemy hidden in a thicket, but to bring him a glass vial.
Rick’s praise goes beyond a mere touch. Pax doesn’t understand his words, but he knows that the tone of Rick’s voice means that he is extraordinary.
Chapter Thirty-six
We had a ramp, thanks to Keller. He’d also appealed to my landlord, played the veteran card, I think, and had gotten grudging permission to widen the doorways and remove the sills to accommodate Rick’s chair. A few days of noisy carpentry and Rick was, in our minds at least, set free. In his mind, it made no difference. He wouldn’t budge.
“It’s a beautiful day, and you haven’t been outside since your last doctor’s appointment. Come on, we’ll go for a ride, maybe get some ice cream.”
He looked at me as if I was treating him like a child. Which I was.
“I’m fine in here. You go.”
“Keller’s made this possible for you. At least come out into the yard. You haven’t seen my lilies.” My tone had tensed up, so that I wasn’t so much cajoling as badgering.
Keller glanced at me and I could see the warning to be patient. It was hard. I’d been patient with Rick for months. More than a year. Would I be damned if I got a little impatient now and then? No one understood better than I did the magnitude of his loss, but it was my loss, too. It was, in my mind, the way life was now, and no amount of hiding in a darkened sickroom was going to change that. He needed to accept that things weren’t going to go back to the way they had been. I didn’t want him to spend the rest of his days like this, a self-incarcerated captive.
“Pax will keep me company. No need for you two to sit inside on such a nice day.”
“Rick. Please.”
My husband looked at me with a dull stare. Even his eyes had changed since the war. Eyes I’d once said were the blue of a Delft tile were now the color of distant shadows. He no longer looked at me with bright eyes, with happiness and anticipation, with humor or mischievousness. With desire. The war not only had taken his arm and left him wheelchair-bound but had also stolen his spirit.
“Okay. That’s fine. But I’m opening these goddamned curtains.” I pushed his chair aside and yanked open the dark drapes that kept his tiny room in a state of perpetual gloom. Sunlight burst in, revealing dirty streaks on the windowpane. I unlocked the double-hung window and raised it. Fresh late-August air, bearing the faintest tinge of a sea breeze, pushed into the room, ruffling Rick’s hair. He looked like an underworld creature ex
posed to the light of day, squinting against the sudden brightness.
I’ll never forget it, what Pax did then. He picked up the rubber ball that they used for training and poked it into Rick’s left hand. Reflexively, Rick took it, and I could see the habit of squeezing a ball hadn’t been amputated with his pitching arm. Pax stood back and barked as if to get Rick to throw the ball. Which he did, in an awkward throw, as if trying to rid himself of a nasty object. He threw the rubber ball right out the window and, to our amazement, the dog leaped out after it. In seconds, he was back in the house, ball in mouth and dancing on happy front feet, as if to say, Do it again! And Rick did.
“It would be easier on him if you went out in the backyard with him.” Keller kept one hand on the back of Rick’s chair. He’d come running at the sound of our excited voices, skidding into Rick’s room as if he thought we were on fire. “He’d love it if you would.”
The dog came pounding back into the room, nails skittering on the hardwood floor, ball clutched in his jaws, tail beating from side to side. He’d let himself in through the open breezeway door, open because we had hoped that we’d be wheeling Rick out of the house for his inaugural ride down the new ramp. Pax then took it in his head to tease Rick, to play a little game of keep away with him, making him reach for the ball, stretch a little.
“Gimme that, you mutt!” Why was it that the only time my husband seemed amused was with this dog?
Pax pranced around, shaking the ball like prey. His tail swept a metal washbasin off the bedside table, and the stainless steel clanged against the bare floor. In the next moment, he knocked the pile of magazines off as well, the National Geographics flopping to the floor like dead fish.
“I think he’s telling you something, Rick.” Keller grasped the handles on the back of Rick’s chair and swung him around so that he could back him out of the room. Rick made a token protest, but Keller ignored it and kept going. “You’d better get outside with him before he wrecks this room any more.”