by Susan Wilson
Nothing hurts; everything hurts. Pax always knows when this psychic pain occurs. He is instantly at the ready, and he will go so far as to drape his long front legs over Rick’s dead ones and press his body against the man’s chest until he gets the response he wants, the embrace of both arms. Hunching over, Rick will lay his cheek against Pax’s skull, his breath tickling the dog’s ears. Pax will stay motionless until Rick shucks off the spell of phantom pain and panic. Then he’ll jump down from Rick’s lap and grab a ball or a squeaky toy and transform himself from merciful spirit to mischievous sprite.
Eyes bright, he’ll tease Rick with the object until Rick gives the order to put it in his lap. With the bedroom door fully open, Rick can throw the ball or the toy down the hall. Lately, he’s managed to pitch it far enough that he bangs the front door. The big dog skitters down the hallway, rucking up the carpet runner into a roller coaster, catches the ball or the rubber mouse on the rebound, and runs back to Rick. It’s his reward for doing his job. Pax has come to do his job very well.
Chapter Forty
We’d settled into a good routine, Rick and Keller and I. And Pax. Pax was a godsend. Keller did all the heavy work, and I was given the freedom to act like a normal housewife, planning meals and changing the curtains with the change of season. I think that Rick was showing improvement. During the late summer and early fall, we got him out into the backyard a few times, or I should say that Pax did. He’d tease with the rubber ball, poking it at Rick until Rick finally took it and tossed it. If Pax teased enough, Rick might allow us to get him outside and he’d throw the ball for the dog like he had on that first evening. But the weather turned colder and I didn’t want to risk letting Rick go outside and sit. He was so delicate in so many ways. Prone to infections. Every day that went by when he didn’t show symptoms of a bladder infection or a wound infection or a cold coming on was a good one.
Keller started school, testing the waters with a class in English literature. He had that book, the one about King Arthur that he’d kept on his nightstand as long as he’d been living with us, and it turned out that Le Morte d’Arthur was part of the syllabus for that class. I’d never read it, so, because he had a paperback edition from the college bookstore, Keller offered to lend his hardcover copy to me so that we could talk about it and help get him ready for the class discussion. The first thing I noticed was the inscription on the flyleaf: To Keller Nicholson as he begins the journey of a lifetime. Miss Jacobs. Keller was so closedmouthed about his past, whereas I found myself talking about mine, telling him about life in a small Iowa town, about my friends and what high jinks we used to get up to. Things like lighting May baskets filled with horse manure on fire and putting them on the front porch of the school principal’s house, then running like mad, so we never actually got to see the look on her face. Picking all the new lilies in Mr. Bernardsen’s garden and taking them home to appalled mothers. Keller had no such anecdotes, as if he’d passed through his early life, arriving fully formed on the shores of World War II. He chuckled at my exploits but never shared any of his own.
“So, who’s Miss Jacobs?” I asked one day.
“My high school English teacher.”
“You must have been pretty smart in school to earn this.”
“I was. Smart enough.”
It was like pulling teeth. “Was this a graduation present?”
“No. She gave it to me the day before I left for induction.” He looked at me with what I’d come to recognize as his “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies look, but not before I saw a flicker of memory soften his eyes. Whoever she was, Miss Jacobs meant something to Keller Nicholson.
* * *
Keller finally made that chowder that he promised. I took some in to Rick, knowing full well that the challenge of eating left-handed with a spoon was going to be hard. Keller, as usual, didn’t join us for dinner. “Gotta study.” A good new excuse for him to keep to himself, allowing us a privacy we didn’t really need.
As dignified as Pax was, he was a terrible beggar and sat watching us, me on one side of the tray table, Rick on the other, the dog’s eyes following every mouthful. “Go lie down.” I wasn’t usually the one to order the dog around, but that night I wanted no distraction for Rick. Pax gave me one of his “You’ve broken my heart” looks, but he went to his basket. I tied a tea towel around Rick’s neck, set another one in his lap. He might not have been able to feel it, but hot chowder in his lap would have been very bad.
Rick didn’t say anything, just stared into the shallow bowl filled with Keller’s beautiful traditional New England clam chowder. Not thick. A thin cream broth with chunks of potato and clams. He’d bought the clams and shucked them himself, disdaining to buy minced clams.
“Try it.” I took a mouthful. “It’s really good.”
“I can’t. Give it to the dog.”
“I will not.” I set my spoon down and took his, dipping it into his bowl. “Here.” I offered it to his mouth like a mother offers a spoonful of baby food to a child.
Like a child, he screwed up his mouth and turned away. “I’m not a baby. Stop treating me like one.”
“Then pick up your own spoon and eat your dinner.” I don’t know why I got so mad then. It wasn’t a particularly unusual refusal on Rick’s part. It was just that Keller had made this chowder, made it because I said Rick liked it. Rick was being rude. I was glad that Keller wasn’t in the room to hear him, but it would be hard to lie to Keller and tell him that Rick had gobbled it down. “Stop being a baby. You’ve got to learn to use your left hand sometime, and this chowder is worth it.” I set his spoon beside his bowl, took up my own, and commenced eating the rest of my dinner.
Rick sat there, the soup spoon at a right angle to his full bowl. I’d inadvertently put it on the right side. I grabbed it and put it on the left side of the bowl, handle toward him.
“You don’t have to hold it correctly. Remember that’s what the occupational therapist said. Just grip it. Lean in, and eat this damned chowder.”
Keeping my eyes on my own dinner, I didn’t watch as he lifted the spoon left-handed, clubbing it in his hand like a little kid struggling with his manners. He dipped it, catching a little in the bowl of the spoon. Somewhere between the bowl and his mouth, the spoon tipped and the mouthful of chowder went right down the front of him. Slowly, Rick set the spoon down, pulled the tea towel from his neck, and placed it carefully over the still-full bowl. “I’m done.”
Rick refused to try, so I gathered up those bowls, nesting my empty one beneath his full one. I grabbed the napkins and spoons and the waxed paper–sealed rectangle of pilot crackers and fled that room, my head roaring with the unspoken. Chowder slopped over the edges of the bowl, dotting my path from sickroom to kitchen. I didn’t care. I stalked into the kitchen, the brightness glaring down from the ceiling light after the evening dimness of Rick’s room. I was shaking, and that inner vibration of anger thrummed so intently that the chowder left in Rick’s bowl trembled like a lake in an earthquake. A dollop crested the edge and ran down my wrist. It was cold, but I reacted as if I’d been scalded, and slammed the bowls from our wedding china hard into the porcelain sink, and I was glad at the destruction. Shards and chowder flew, spattering the window over the sink and the floor and the counters. One shard struck me on the cheek.
“Are you all right?” Keller was beside me, pulling me away from the sink. A towel dangled from the back of a chair, and he grabbed it, dabbing it gently against my cheek. “What happened? Did you slip?” He sat me down on that chair and knelt to examine me for more damage.
“He wouldn’t eat it.” I was crying, and the words came out in individual bursts.
“Oh, Francesca. Don’t take it so hard.” Keller turned my face toward his. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. Don’t you see, Keller, he’s just not trying.”
Keller pulled me to my feet and, I don’t know if it was instinct or impulse, but he held me in a hug. A
hug is such a simple thing, and yet can mean so much … affection, sympathy, joy. I felt the length of his strong, healthy, complete body next to mine and gave in to the urge to lay my head against his chest. I hadn’t been held by a man in such a long time except for Sid’s cousinly embrace or my father’s paternal one. This was both and neither. I look back now and imagine that he rocked me a little, but I’m not sure that he did. I put my arms around him and felt an equal contentment in the relaxation of his shoulders and back muscles. It would only hit me later, when I knew more of his story, that Keller had not had a hug himself in many a year. Maybe most of his life. I don’t remember how long we stood like that, under the glare of the overhead light, chowder and china all over the place, maybe twenty seconds, maybe an hour. My arms around him, his around me. I could feel his breathing slow. In and out, in and out, until my agitated respiration finally matched his.
Finally, we did let go of each other, laughing a little in that embarrassed giggle of humans who have given into temptation, filing the moment away under things never to speak of. Keller got a mug out of the cupboard and filled it with chowder from the pot still warm on the stove. He buttered two pilot crackers and walked Rick’s dinner down to him.
I should have thought of that. A mug. So simple an answer for a man not converting to left-handedness easily. If I had, that evening’s meal would have been so ordinary. Things would not have been set in motion. Even now, I don’t regret it. Even now, I remember how good it felt to be held.
Chapter Forty-one
They’ve gone out. After dinner, which Keller thoughtfully put in a mug so that he could handle chowder—which was really good; Francesca was right—Keller came back in and asked if he would be all right till ten o’clock or so, when they would be back from the picture show. “I will. Go. Have a great time and be sure to buy her a box of popcorn. She loves it.”
Keller didn’t respond, just made sure that anything he might need for the hour and a half that he would be alone was at hand. “Pax, you stay, keep Rick company.” It was such an unnecessary command in Rick’s opinion, and annoying. Like Pax would ever have to be ordered to stay with him.
It feels surprisingly good to be alone. Completely alone. Like the first time he was left home alone when he was nine years old and his mother had an altar guild meeting and his father was at work. A litany of “don’ts” and a list of “dos.” He spent the afternoon poking around his parents’ closet, looking for clues to their life before him. He found a shoe box of letters, but they were mushy and he didn’t read them all; a pair of shoes from the last century, old-fashioned and surely too tiny for his mother’s feet; a mink stole he didn’t know his mother owned.
“Pax, get it.” Rick points to the vial of morphine on his bedside table. Just sitting there, just out of reach. He’s been asking for morphine every night and then palming the pill so that he can add it to his growing collection. The pain is real, and sometimes he retrieves the hidden pill because he can’t sleep without it. Hide three, take one. It’s a box step he’s losing ground on. “Pax, get it.” Rick has to repeat the order because the dog is unclear about the target. “Vial.”
Cocking his head, Pax picks up the vial in his jaws as tenderly as a retriever picks up a duck. He brings it to Rick, placing it in his hand. “Good boy.” Rick inserts the vial’s screw top between his teeth, but Keller has it screwed on so tight that he’s afraid he’s going to chip a tooth. He then wedges the vial between his useless leg and the side of the chair, but the glass is slippery and turns with each twist, offering no purchase against the threads of the cap. There’s a damp washcloth in the stainless-steel bowl he uses to wash up in the morning. “Pax, get it.” Rick points to the cloth dangling over the edge of the bowl, and miraculously Pax cottons on to his meaning instantly, snagging the cloth in his teeth and carrying it over to Rick. Wrapped in the damp cloth, the bottle stays put and Rick finally gets the cap off. After all this, he extracts two tabs to make up for the effort. And he immediately drops them both on the floor.
The two little pills bounce twice and scatter like mice.
“Shit.”
Pax cocks his head and then scratches vigorously at his side. He gets up and sniffs at the pills.
“Get it.” Rick whispers the command, uncertain whether or not he really wants the dog to put morphine pills in his mouth.
Pax’s sniffing pushes one of the pills into the middle of the floor, visible to anyone coming in the door. Rick maneuvers his wheelchair a little left. Maybe he can roll over the pill and crush it. It’ll look like a little talcum powder carelessly spilled, instead of a clue revealing his exit strategy. The other pill has rolled under the bed; nothing to be done about that.
By now, he has squirreled away fifteen morphine pills. He really doesn’t know how many it might take to, as Shakespeare once suggested, shuffle off this mortal coil, but he’s guessing it’s closer to twenty-five. Every one counts. Losing these two will set him back. In the quiet of the late afternoon, when he is just waking from a nap, before he needs Keller to come in and help him up, he sometimes hears the low rumble of two people in ordinary conversation. They talk back and forth, their words mostly indistinct. A little laughter. Rick tamps down the spurt of useless jealousy and makes himself be glad that Francesca has someone to make her laugh, even a little. He knows that he behaved abominably tonight. She’s only trying to help him.
Francesca deserves so much more out of life than being chained to a man like him. She tries so hard. Kissing him. Putting her hands on him as if she expects the mere power of her touch will fool the demons and put life back into his desire. He’s tried. The only unwounded thing left to him is his imagination, and when he pictures her as she came to him so often, seductive and beautiful and innocent and mercurial, nothing. Not even frustration. Dead to the world. The images that inflicted near-pubescent physical agony on him as a grown man are only images now. Pretty pictures. Not a eunuch. Not a gelding. Intact but impotent. Not a flutter. They had hoped, of course, that even insensate, he could still—what was the word the doctors used? Perform. Do his duty.
They should have tried harder, back when he was waiting to go to war, tried to have a child then. How utterly egotistical and naïve they were to think that they had all the time in the world. That having his child and then losing him would have been a bad idea. Who could have ever predicted that, with him, she was saddled with both: a perpetual child, a helpless man.
“Pax, grab it.” Rick holds out the knotted rope he now uses with Pax to move the chair around. Francesca jokes that they should get the dog a harness, like a sled dog would wear, and let him pull Rick down the street. Pax takes the knot in his mouth and helps Rick aim toward the renegade pill until the wheelchair tire hovers close to it. Rick hesitates. The loss of this addition to his collection is too dear, so he leans forward, stretches out his good arm. His own legs block his reach. Rick lifts his left leg over his right, clearing a path. In trying to reach it, his fingers accidentally move the pill just far enough that he can’t pick it up and he can’t move his chair any closer. “Pax. Good boy. I just need you to get it a little closer to me.” Rick points to the pill but can’t come up with a command that might make the dog actually push the pill closer. “Get it?”
It’s as if the dog is contemplating what to do. Does he understand what Rick wants? He looks at Rick with those wise amber eyes, flooded now with the darker dilation of his pupils in the evening-dim room. He looks at the object, the target Rick aims his finger toward. There is a moment of stasis, of complete quiet, when even the street sounds fade into silence. Rick can hear his own breathing and the soft puzzled sound the dog is making. What what what?
“Get it.”
Using the tiny teeth between his long wolfish incisors, Pax delicately lifts the tiny object up from the floor. His lips close over it and for a moment Rick panics. What if he swallows it? Would human-grade morphine kill a dog Pax’s size? “Give it!”
Pax’s dewlaps curl up i
n a comic mask of distaste as he drops the slightly wet ball of compounded morphine into Rick’s open hand.
The slam of the front door startles Rick and he nearly loses the pill. Quickly, he hands the vial to Pax with the whispered command “Put it.” The dog is his ally. The dog does what he needs, then helps Rick spin the chair back around, so that when Francesca appears in the bedroom doorway, he’s right where she left him, Pax’s head on his dead knees.
“How was the show?”
Chapter Forty-two
Pax doesn’t like it when the three humans are in separate places. Some herd-dog instinct survives in him and he’s only really happy when the three of them find themselves together. However, that isn’t the usual dynamic, and the dog has had to content himself with dividing his time unequally. He knows that his primary function now is to stay with Rick. That’s a role he loves and is proud to have. He delights in being able to carry out Rick’s requests and it is his best task ever to absorb Rick’s darkness into his fur. But he really likes it when he can pester Rick into going outside and throwing the ball for him like he used to. The ball doesn’t go as far as it did long ago, when they’d play in the park and Pax might have to run half the length of the field to get the ball, but it is the only time Rick seems like the old Rick. If, in the old days, Pax might take the ball and run away, playing his version of keep away while Rick chased him, laughing and cursing, he knows better than that now and is willing to return the ball to Rick with dependable speed. Throw, catch, return, over and over, until Rick hands the ball to Francesca and Keller wheels him back into the house. Pax is never ready to quit the game, and he tries not to let his disappointment show. He trails along, hoping that maybe Keller will pick up the game later.