by Susan Wilson
* * *
It’s on his bed, the little pouch. The crossword puzzle book is there, and a newly sharpened pencil. He can’t help himself: He grabs it almost as soon as Keller wheels him into his room. He dips his fingertips in the pouch and closes his eyes. They’re there. He’ll count them later, just to make sure, but it feels right. He doesn’t even care if Keller is watching, curious.
“Missed your crosswords so much?”
“It’s pretty boring in there.”
“I’d have brought them. Why didn’t you ask?”
“Hey, no problem. I just thought of an answer I missed; I can complete one of the hard ones.”
Keller still has that tense look.
“What’s on your mind, Nicholson?” Get it out in the open, deal with the consequences.
“I need a little time.”
“You’re entitled. You never take a day off. I mean, for things other than funerals.”
“No, just the afternoon. I have some stuff I have to do.”
“Go. We’re fine.” Relief blunts any curiosity. If any man needs some downtime, surely Keller does.
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s not like I’m not going to dock your paycheck.” Rick smiles, broad and real. But Keller doesn’t and that tense look migrates across his face.
“Tell Francesca I’ll be back by dinnertime.”
“Fine.”
Keller stands in the widened doorway. “She’s a good wife. Don’t you ever forget it.”
Rick nods, perplexed and a tiny bit annoyed. Keller has stepped a little over the line. Pushed himself a tiny bit too much. Of course Francesca is a good wife. What’s his point? Rick slides his hand into the pouch and begins to count his pills. What if Keller found the morphine? Would he have told Francesca? Or would he just have put them back in the vial, which he’ll keep out of both Rick’s and Pax’s reach? Honor among thieves? Honor between veterans of the same killing fields? She’s a good wife. Are they teammates or are they rivals?
Chapter Sixty-one
“Don’t make lunch for me. I’m going to go get gas in my car.” It’s the best excuse he can come up with, but there’s no way he can stay in this house, smile over grilled cheese sandwiches, and pretend that everything is all right. He just isn’t that good an actor.
“Eat first. It’s all ready.” Francesca is holding a plate with four sandwiches stacked on it.
Keller grabs half a grilled cheese sandwich, bites into it, then calls the dog. “Pax will go with me.”
“He just had a ride.”
Keller doesn’t answer and he doesn’t care if Francesca is puzzled by him. He just needs to get out of this house. He swallows the rest of the half sandwich, calls the dog, and pulls his jacket out of the coat closet. “I won’t be long. You and Rick enjoy a quiet lunch. Have some time together.”
“What’s going on, Kel?”
“Nothing.” He takes a shallow breath. “Nothing’s wrong. I just need some air.” He won’t look her in the eye. He doesn’t want to see if she believes him, or if the boat of their friendship is taking on water. Nothing happened.
Keller drives aimlessly, following Quincy Shore Drive for a mile or so, circling around Hough’s Neck to get another view of the Harbor islands. The water is choppy today; cream-topped waves leave foam on the gritty shore. Pax sits beside him, as close as a girlfriend on the bench seat of the secondhand Ford. He stops for gas, throwing fifty cents’ worth into the tank. He could just keep going. There’s nothing at the house that he can’t live without. No memorabilia, no souvenirs. Nothing he owns has sentimental value. Keller ruffles Pax’s fur around his neck. “What do you say? Where would you like to go?”
Pax huffs, sneezes, but has little other comment.
“Someplace they couldn’t find us. Someplace far enough away they couldn’t come looking for you.”
Keller checks his wallet. Every Friday, Francesca leaves an envelope on his bureau, as if handing him a paycheck would somehow remind him that he isn’t a member of the family but what he really is, a paid employee. Slightly better than a boarder, not quite a friend. Not anymore. Thirty bucks. Enough to keep moving for a while. A little tremor of excitement tickles him under his rib cage. A bit like that tremble of anticipation as he left Hawke’s Cove for the service. Then he’d had a destination, a plan, a destiny. Right now, he’s rootless and as free as he’s ever been in his life; he can point this car in any direction and just go. No wrought-iron fences keeping him in. No authority, whether Clayton’s or the army’s, telling him where to go and what to do. A break from this tension-wrought situation.
The idea of that freedom is enough to make Keller go a little too fast through these city streets, his right foot empowered by his thinking, until he slams on the brakes at a stoplight.
Pax is unseated by the sudden halt, and he bangs his muzzle on the dashboard.
“Sorry, fella, so sorry.” Keller pats the dog and takes a deep breath. Something catches his eye; the handle of Francesca’s purse peeks out from under the front seat, where she’d stashed it out of the way for the trip home from the hospital. The sight of that singularly Francesca-associated object puts paid to any notion of flight. He can’t leave her, even if it would be the best thing. Oh, he could return the purse and gather his few possessions, give notice in a proper and professional way, and then leave. Nothing stopping him from doing that. And they would find another aide. Now that they know they can adjust to having the help, a properly trained aide would be better for them anyway. Someone who comes in without any strings attached. Without any strings growing stronger every day. Pax would stay in the car; they’d never realize he was gone until Keller was long gone.
In his life, Keller has had most everything stripped from him by circumstance. But he’s not sure that he can strip Pax from Rick with the same harsh entitlement that his aunts had in stripping him of his freedom; or that Clayton had in using him as slave labor. For your own good. And unless he stays with Rick and Francesca, Pax will be stripped from him. And every day he’ll be forced to tamp down this unforeseen and unwelcome desire for another man’s wife. Which is the harder choice? Lose Pax or lose Francesca? Keller realizes that there is no choice. Leaving, he will lose both. In fact, the truth is, he has neither.
When the light turns green, Keller turns left, heading back to where Rick, in his perpetual gloom, sits in that room. And where Francesca waits, maybe a little worried about him instead of Rick for a change.
Chapter Sixty-two
Francesca has come in with lunch, but Rick can see that she’s preoccupied. Three and a half sandwiches. For once, she doesn’t come in smiling and full of chat for the sake of filling up the silence in that room. She talks, but her heart isn’t in it. “Do you want another half? Do you want tea or coffee?” She doesn’t realize just how well he knows her. Keller’s absence is the gorilla in the room. Rick wonders if maybe they had a fight.
She’ll just keep pretending that everything is hunky-dory. It is so wearing. Sometimes he thinks that Francesca is holding up his world on her back, and it plagues him that she won’t admit that she’s tired. On her most aggressively cheerful days, he thinks that he’d give his other arm for her to be honest with him, to rage against the shitty end of the stick she’s holding. He’s survived another bladder infection, but that only serves to pump up her shortsighted optimism that he’s going to improve, that these things are just temporary setbacks. Get back in the game! She’s like a fan who never gives up hope. A real fan overlooks bad games and cheers for the team no matter what. Francesca really needs to accept defeat.
But this time, Rick can see that Francesca’s preoccupation isn’t about him, and it’s like he’s being cheated. Why should she be so concerned about their aide’s wanting a little break? So what if Keller didn’t want to eat his lunch. Why should she even be thinking about it? He goes back to thinking that Keller and Francesca have had a disagreement. But when a man and a woman have a fight, t
here has to be a certain kind of intimacy to fuel it.
Rick bites a chunk out of his sandwich; doesn’t answer Francesca’s benign question about beverage. He hears only the high note of tension in her voice, as if she’s being garroted with an unspoken question.
“He took Pax with him?” The grease from the sandwich coats his fingers.
“I guess so. Yes.” Francesca hands him a napkin. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“He shouldn’t be taking Pax if he’s going out for any length of time. I need him.”
“So does he.” Francesca drops her unfinished sandwich on the plate. “Did he seem upset to you?”
“No. Just a man needing an afternoon off to clear his head.” Really, why is she so concerned? Like a teenage girl worrying about the disposition of her crush. Rick shoves the rest of his sandwich into his mouth to stop it up before he says something he will regret.
“Are you done?”
It takes a second for Rick to realize she means done with lunch. “Yeah.”
She removes the plate with the uneaten halves and leaves him as he is, sitting in that chair, facing the door, through which he seldom goes, the grease from his sandwich still on his fingers. Pax should be here to lick them off. Rick manages to turn his chair around so that he is facing the interior of his room. What sky he can see through the open blinds is opaque in the thin daylight, and the first sting of wet snow hits the pane.
It seems like hours pass before Rick finally hears the front door open. He closes his eyes with relief. Pax is back. Keller has brought him back. The big dog bounds into the room, his fur cold and sprinkled with hard balls of sleet. He shakes and sprays Rick with moisture, then commences licking Rick’s fingers one by one, like a mother dog licks the ins and outs of her puppy. Careful, considered, and devoted. Done, the dog’s tongue unfurls to lick his dewlaps and he settles his head in Rick’s lap for an ear rub. Rick strokes deep into the ear, sliding his fingers up the length of it, moving the cilia. In the pearly winter light, a darker skin emerges within Pax’s ear—his tattoo. The mark that designates him as a war dog, a dog who saw service. Who, like him, was wounded in action. Keller’s loyal partner on the battlefield.
Not one of the men with whom he served in that doomed squad survived. Removed from the battlefield, Rick was also removed from his platoon. Languishing for months in the hospital, first in England and then here, Rick lost contact with anyone he served with. Some guys, he knows, cling to those associations, reluctant to give up the camaraderie, the mythical brotherhood of battle, but he doesn’t. Nor is he willing to seek out any connection. Not after what happened, and the fact that he survived. “Survivor’s guilt.”—that’s what the shrink called it the one time he met with one. Don’t beat yourself up. You tried. Wasn’t your fault. Oh my, how many platitudes have been lobbed at him by all and sundry. Doctors, nurses, the shrink, Francesca. But not Keller. Keller listened to his story, but he didn’t attempt to absolve him.
Rick can’t read the numbers written on the inside of his dog’s ear. The thick cilia obscure four of the digits; he’d have to shave the inside of the ear to read them. Pax whines a little; Rick is holding that ear too tightly. He lets go, pushes the dog off his lap.
* * *
The sound of sleet hitting the window. The room is a little cold and Rick shrugs more blanket up over his shoulder. As he does most every night, he has awakened suddenly and without a known disturbance. He hears the click of the dog’s toenails coming down the stairs, Pax alert, as always, for his awakening. Usually, the dog is there before his eyes open, sensitive to Rick’s coming awake even from a distance. But lately, Rick has awakened alone in this room, comforted only by the quick sound of those nails on hardwood.
The dog comes in and touches him with a cold nose, as if he’s been outside. He wags his tail and does the doggy equivalent of tucking Rick in, resting his head in the crook between Rick’s shoulder and chin. Rick knows that as soon as he drifts off, the dog will go away. Go back up to the bedroom Keller uses now that he’s been invited into the house, a narrow landing width away from Francesca and the room she occupies alone, sleeping in their marriage bed, a room he’s never seen but pictures exactly as the one they had in their first apartment.
Sometimes in the quiet of the deep night, when the street traffic is done and the furnace is satisfied with the temperature and shuts off, Rick thinks he can hear them. The creak of a floorboard. The sound of a bedspring complaining. Like someone has gotten up and moved to another bed. It’s just house noises, he tells himself. But tonight he hears murmuring. In the middle of the night, they are close enough to whisper to each other.
Last night they were alone in this house.
Rick presses his ear against his pillow, covers his other ear with the stump of his pitching arm. But he still hears them. Whispers carry farther than the natural voice. He uncovers his ears and strains to listen for distinct words. There is only the rising and falling of tone, and a slight crescendo/decrescendo, as if the conversation were scored with musical notation.
Is it the wind singing through the naked pear tree in the backyard, or the water gurgling in the radiators? It must be the sound of windshield wipers on a lone car on the next block. The train whistle, a foghorn. The sound of his own blood squeezed through his heart? But no. It’s voices above him. Whispering to each other. He’s sure of it.
Chapter Sixty-three
Pax circles and paces, utterly aware of Rick’s agitation. He won’t go back upstairs again tonight because he knows that Rick will not fall back into deep sleep again. There is a peppery scent emanating from him, and the remnant sharp scent of the hospital, where they found him and brought him back here. Rubber and alcohol wipes, baby lotion and iodine. Pax wrinkles his nose at the odors but keeps his chin on Rick’s bed so that Rick can touch him. Through those fingertips, the dog judges that Rick’s racing heart is slowing, but the agitation has not diminished and the clutch of those fingers occasionally becomes painful.
It’s like when Keller and he were on night patrol, both of them listening for the sounds of the enemy. Sounds weren’t enough, and everything depended upon Pax’s being able to distinguish the difference between the scent of German sweat and that of his people. As different as black and white to the dog. Sounds weren’t always as distinctive. A German bullet dropped from a cold and clumsy hand sounded the same as an American bullet hitting the bare earth. In the fog, sounds from the east could sound like they were coming from the west. All muffled, blurred. But scent told the story, and the dog ensured his comrades their safe passage through tight boundaries. Rick’s scent is as different from Keller’s and Francesca’s household scent as that of the Germans was from the Allies’.
Rick is listening, and so Pax listens. Outside are only the normal sounds of night creatures moving and cold drizzle pinging off the gutters. Inside, he hears the breathing of sleeping people, the tick of the kitchen clock. Because Rick is, Pax is also on alert, but he cannot fathom what he’s supposed to be listening for. It makes him anxious, and he pants a little, paces, returns to Rick’s side. They are both awake until a heralding bird announces the momentary arrival of dawn. It has stopped sleeting and the nocturnal creatures have slipped away. Between that early bird’s reveille and the laggards’ the moment of predawn is more silent than the entire night.
Overhead, a bedspring protests the shift of a body. A floorboard creaks. Very softly, Pax murmurs. Rick is finally asleep.
Chapter Sixty-four
I waited that whole afternoon, listening for Keller’s return, half-expecting that he wouldn’t come back, maybe more than half-hoping that he wouldn’t. It was all too complicated. I loved my husband as much as I ever had, but the spiky passion that had pushed us into a quick marriage and then had elevated to grand heights during our failed baby-making attempts was withered and in danger of dying out entirely. Which was all right. Unnecessary, only a vestige left. Love between us was different now.
Keller’s t
ouch had reminded me of passion, that’s all. I would not act on it. I didn’t need it.
When he came home late that afternoon, the sun long down, the headlights of his car beaming briefly against the white wall of the living room as he pulled into the driveway, I kept out of the way. I heard Pax’s nails skittering down the hall to Rick. I could smell the winter air seeping into the house through the breezeway as Keller passed from garage to kitchen. I stayed where I was, turning on the lamps, pulling the drapes. I felt him approach more than heard it. I threw my shoulders back and pasted a smile on my face. There is no avoiding someone who lives in your house. The membrane between us had to be retained. We hadn’t broken it; neither could we try testing it again.
“I’m glad you’re back. How about hot dogs for dinner tonight?”
Keller slid his jacket off his shoulders and reached into the hall closet for a hanger. For a tense moment, I thought he wouldn’t speak to me, that he didn’t understand that we had to move ahead, to maintain our alliance as Rick’s cobbled-together family. “Sure. Beans, too?”
Such a funny topic for reconciliation. Hot dogs and beans.
“Oh, and I found this.” Keller held out my purse. “It was under the front seat.”
I took it from him. “How careless of me.”
He headed in to check on Rick, leaving me in the hallway, my purse in my hand. I had to wonder, had my purse not been in his car, would he have come back?
Chapter Sixty-five
Francesca had given him new shoes for Christmas, a nice pair of cordovan oxfords like he used to wear on travel days. Rick had smiled and thanked her, then watched as she put them away in his closet to be forgotten. It was so Francesca, to have given him something that suggested he might someday be seen in public again. For his birthday, she’d given him new pants, a pair of everyday khakis like he used to wear on weekends. Something presumably to replace the stained and thin-in-the seat pants he’s maneuvered into every morning by Keller. Rick wonders if these pants will even fit him. She’d bought his usual size, thirty-four, out of habit, not allowing for the fact he no longer has muscle on those thighs. He’s shrunk. The only muscle he seems to still have is the one in his left arm, pumped up from playing tug-of-war with the dog. It’s the only muscle he’s using, although the therapists keep after him to use as much as he can of his back and shoulders. Rick has used the weather as a good excuse not to bother going to physical therapy. Too cold. Too snowy. Too icy. Too windy. Too lazy. It’s too much. Too much to keep asking Keller to wrangle him in and out of the car, in and out of chairs, in and out of buildings. Keller doesn’t complain. They should give him a damned raise.