by Susan Wilson
Now, along with the resurrected paintings, there is a new calendar on his wall, a Christmas gift from the hardware store that Keller patronizes, featuring an old-fashioned tractor on the top above the months. He doesn’t know why Keller stuck that in here. Rick’s not the Iowan. What does he care about tractors? What does he care about dates? The worst part is, no matter what month it is that, red riderless tractor sits in that same cornfield. They’re up to March and still that cheerful tractor doesn’t make any progress. The calendar is supposed to chart his progress. But that isn’t moving forward, either.
Since his last hospital stay, Francesca and Keller have become determined that he not spend all day, every day, in this room. Francesca says, “It’s time, Rick. It’s just no good to be sitting here mostly alone for so much of the time.”
“You need to get moving, bud,” Keller adds.
They cite the bedsores and the chance of succumbing to pneumonia as reason enough to get moving.
It’s like leaving the safety of a cave for the uncertainty of an open plain—darkness to light. The afternoon light in the west-facing living room bothers his eyes. The overhead light in the kitchen glares down. It exhausts him. On good days, Keller and Francesca pile him, all bundled up in wool coat, hat, and gloves, into the car and she drives him down Route 3 to “see the sights” while Keller goes to school. They pass through Hingham and Duxbury, admire the scenery and make wrong turns here and there, giving the outing the aura of an adventure. But they don’t talk about much of anything. She repeatedly makes sure his numb legs are covered with the plaid picnic rug, as if he could feel the cold on them.
At night, he feels like a little kid made to sit at the grown-up table. Keller and Francesca sit on opposite sides and carry on conversations based primarily on gossip about the few neighbors Francesca has come to know and people Keller meets at college. Rick has nothing to contribute until they touch on current events, and then he can trot out opinions gleaned from the newspaper and the radio. He’s become quite an expert on the rise of communism, but he knows nothing about his neighbors.
* * *
“Spring training starts next week.” Keller helps himself to more mashed potatoes, as if he’s oblivious to the challenge in that remark. Is he kidding? Bringing up a subject like that, as if Rick cares.
“Doesn’t seem possible another year has flown by.” Francesca is a party to this. She hands Keller the butter dish.
“Or at least another season. I’ve only got six weeks left in the semester.” Keller slices off a pat of chilled butter. “I’ll be out by early May.” This semester, Keller has taken on a full course load, and he spends every minute that he’s not tending Rick’s needs with his head in a book.
Rick gestures for the butter. “Have you declared a major yet?” He’s going to give the spring training remark a pass. Keller is a man, and men do pay attention to such things.
Keller leans over and cuts the butter for Rick, dropping the pat on his potato. “That’s kind of like deciding what I want to be when I grow up.” He laughs a little, then shrugs. “Believe it or not, and Francesca thinks this is a good idea, I’m thinking of education.”
“A teacher.” Rick presses his fork onto the solid bit of butter, squashing it into the mound of mashed potatoes. Francesca thinks it’s a good idea. It’s like he’s the third wheel in this ménage. Keller and his wife are always having these little casual exchanges, just as if they were the married couple and he was the goddamned tenant. Catch up if you can with their private jokes and the showy finishing of each other’s sentences. Try filling the holes in the dialogue that, for them, need no explanation. Keller hands her the butter before she asks. “Good for you to have a goal. A real career.”
“Speaking of which…” Francesca sets her utensils down, folds her hands.
He remembers when she would cast her eyes down like this, when they were alone and he knew that the moment she raised her eyes to his, he’d be incapable of denying her anything.
“Rick, we think that maybe it’s time for you to start thinking about what you might want to do.” Francesca looks him in the eye.
“‘We’?” He lays his fork down on the side of his half-full plate. “Do? Do what?”
The little moue of annoyance is a new expression for her. “For a living.”
“Well, as you say, spring training has started already, so I guess I’m too late for baseball.”
“Good one, Rick.” Does Keller actually believe he’s joking? Does he think this conversation is going to end in guffaws?
“Sweetheart, there are things that you can do.” It’s like she’s a lion tamer and sweetheart is her three-legged chair. She cracks the whip. “We need you to at least think about it.” Again the we.
“How can I—”
“You have an accounting degree, right?” Keller’s perfect right hand holds a fork suspended in mid-flight. His perfect left hand is clutched in a gentle fist and rests on the table.
“Yes.” They’re ganging up on him. He can’t believe this. “And how am I supposed to go to an office? Are you going to chauffeur me every day? And hang around so I can be helped to the bathroom? You know, to empty my bag?”
Rick feels Pax’s nose bumping the sleeve-wrapped stump of his arm, lifting it as if he expects Rick to pet him with that invisible hand. He ignores it. A paw goes onto his leg and he’s aware of that only because he can see what the dog is doing. The dog is breaking the house rules against approaching the table and no one says anything until the dog speaks: Roof. He might be asking Rick to settle down, calm down. He is asking and, in pushing himself against Rick, pushes Rick away from the table.
How easy it is for people who don’t have disabilities to imagine that it’s mind over matter to overcome them. How dare these two conspire against him; how could Francesca be consulting with Keller about things that should be only their concern, between husband and wife? It’s none of Keller’s business. Francesca’s disloyalty brings a hot flush to Rick’s face, but his anger is turned at Keller. Keller is overstepping himself. “Take me to my room. Now.”
“Rick, we’re just saying that you’re in much better condition than you were even a month ago. It’s time. Time for you to—”
“Keller, maybe it’s time for you to shut up.”
Chapter Sixty-six
Pax put himself in between them, his front end in Rick’s lap, his tail end backed up to Keller’s chair. He whined a little, an oddly plaintive sound in the silence that followed Rick’s hard-sounding words, like a human growl warning off a challenger. His tail wagged slowly, like a dog that expects a beating and hopes a show of submission will prevent it. Ears back, nose down. This discord was agonizing. They had finally begun acting like a proper pack and Pax was sorely afraid that now the pack, his pack, was disintegrating. Only one male can be leader; the other must either submit, or leave.
He followed as Keller pushed Rick back to his room. Instead of settling Rick in, Keller turned and walked out, leaving Pax to decide where he should be. A soft snapping of fingers and Pax went to Rick, sitting down in front of him, ears still in the supplicant position, hoping that Rick’s heartbeat would slow to normal and the blast of heated anxiety would lessen as he found Pax’s ears.
“What do they want of me?” Soft whisper into an ear, a susurration that tickles him a bit. “What does she want of me? I’m not the man she married. Is that what this means? Because I’m no longer a provider?” A ragged breath. “They don’t understand that I’m scared. Scared that I’ve lost everything.”
Rick’s fingers dug deep into the nape of the dog’s neck. Pax closed his eyes, infused with the primitive recollection of being safe in his mother’s jaws. When she’d gripped him thus, she’d been moving him out of danger. Rick’s grip suggested that there was some danger Pax could not glean through his usual senses. Some danger emanating from within Rick.
Pax could hear the tiny tick-tick of the pills bumping into one another as Rick groped into that bit
ter-smelling pouch at his side.
Chapter Sixty-seven
An official-looking envelope arrives, a string of lawyers’ names emblazoned on the upper left-hand corner. Clayton’s estate has been probated and Keller Nicholson is the sole heir. He now officially owns the house, the boats, the moorings, the pier, the acre of unkempt pasture, and the half-acre woodlot. Keller has never owned anything in his life but that secondhand Ford, so the idea of this, even something as shrouded in unpleasant memory as that house, is a novelty. Becoming the default owner of Clayton’s holdings has had the unexpected effect of coloring Keller’s worldview. He may be a boarder here, but elsewhere he’s a man of property.
Mooring rental will pay the taxes. Clayton had redone the roof a couple of years ago, so the house is in pretty good shape. He doesn’t have to see it, or even pick up the key from the lawyer. The foursquare two-story fisherman’s house can sit and wait for him, for when he’s ready. For when he knows what he should do.
* * *
Francesca bends over her tangled yarn and Rick yawns over a magazine. Keller has his textbook open to the chapter on the Romantic poets and is making notes. Pax is in the fetal position in his basket, twitching in some rabbit dream. Or maybe a night-patrol dream. Keller still has those. But now his nightmares are informed by Rick’s story. Of explosions and falling through space. He dreams all too often of losing Pax, of not being able to find him. Or finding him in pieces. He wakes in a cold sweat from those nightmares, relieved beyond words to always find the dog still there, in one piece, hogging the narrow cot.
Keller closes his textbook and excuses himself from the domestic scene. The dog is instantly awake, ready to do whatever Keller asks. He waves Pax back. The dog belongs in this room with them. As if to underscore that, Rick speaks to the dog. “Pax, stay here.”
Keller suppresses a flash of annoyance; it’s as if some other handler has ordered his dog. As if his command needs seconding. But this isn’t some other handler; this is Rick. Rick, who has every right to command Pax. Keller has successfully turned the scout dog into a useful tool; retraining not only has reverted the war dog to a safe family pet but has also turned Keller’s canine partner into a lifeline for his once and future master. For Rick. Francesca is focused on her yarn; her mouth twitches as she struggles to untangle the rat’s nest of blue worsted.
Rick has everything, Keller thinks. He leaves the room before he can blush at the selfish and unbelievably juvenile thought. He’s jealous of a cripple.
He’s got an army reserve weekend coming up and he’s actually looking forward to it. He definitely needs a break from this stultifying atmosphere of domesticity. He’s deeply tired. A couple of days outside, obeying clear and emotionless orders, forgetting the quotidian tasks of caring for an inert and angry man, will go a long way in refreshing his own spirit. Since the abortive suggestion that Rick start thinking about what work he might take on, they’ve kept their silence on the subject, waiting, hoping, that Rick will come around. But the black thing that inhabits him hasn’t lifted enough to make that possible. They have begun color-coding his days: Today he’s a little blue—a gray day. Very black today. Pax has become their bellwether. When he gets Rick to throw a toy, engage in a persistent game of fetch, then they know it’s a good day. It’s mid-May, and the semester is a week from done. Warmer weather has meant that on the days that playing with the dog brightens Rick’s mood to pink, Keller wheels him outside. But when the dog comes out of Rick’s room with a squeaky toy hanging out of his mouth and teases Keller or Francesca into playing, they know that it’s a bad day for Rick. He won’t emerge from what Keller has dubbed his “Cave of Gloom,” and everyone else will tiptoe around, as if afraid to disturb the black thing that draws him into himself.
Francesca has released the yarn from its Gordian knot. She smiles and begins to cast on. She is relentless in her knitting. Socks and scarves, sweaters and vests. Keller’s bureau drawer is filled with her largess. They all itch. He itches to touch her. Their chaste adherence to a dual loyalty and honor doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about breaking this unspoken and mutually enforced prohibition. There are days when Rick is so intolerant of her, days when Keller wants nothing more than to take her away, show her how it is to be loved properly. And then he watches her eyes as she deflects Rick’s antagonism, wholly absent of hurt. Keller can’t overlook the other days, the ones when Rick’s equilibrium is level and the two, husband and wife, share a joke or a smile fraught with the secret code of marriage, which Keller can’t begin to understand.
But then there are the other moments, when the three of them—and Pax—become something like a family. Keller doesn’t imagine that he is their child or some hybrid husband and brother, but a valued member of a small family that has built a retaining wall out of necessity. And those are the days that most break his heart. If he desires Francesca, it is as a man desires the unattainable, with bittersweet longing. If he feels like a part of a cobbled-together family, that fulfills a greater and more gentle longing.
Keller heads through the breezeway into the garage, checks the hardware store thermometer on the wall. Fifty-eight degrees. Warm enough. Tomorrow he’ll bring his stuff back down here, where he can get away from feeling like he’s skating on thin ice; no relief from proximity. Pax pads in, sniffs the corners, and sits beside him. “Ready to move back down here?”
Roof.
“Me, too.”
The envelope informing him that he’s an heir takes up space on his workbench. He’s left it there with Miss Jacobs’s letters, as if they were tools or scrap wood. Keller rips a sheet of paper from his notebook.
Dear Miss Jacobs,
You were absolutely correct. I have the dubious distinction of being Clayton Britt’s sole heir, with the attendant inheritance taxes. So, without looking for it, I have it all. Nonetheless, I won’t be back anytime soon. I’ve got a good thing here, and my studies are going very well. You’d be impressed with my vastly improved vocabulary.
He asks her to keep an eye out for potential tenants. He could bank the income. Add to the little nest egg built on his mainly unspent pay from his active service. A little more money would help to keep things afloat here. The occupational therapist and the physical therapist agree with them that Rick is perfectly capable of working at an office job, but until he accepts that he’s as healed as he’s likely ever to be, a little silent contribution to the household expenses from Keller will help keep them on an even keel. Francesca never needs to know that he’s paying for groceries or home improvements out of his own pocket.
I’ve got a good thing going here. That’s an enigmatic statement for sure. There are days when he’s perfectly happy, and others when he questions his sanity. What is really keeping him here? Pax nudges his writing hand as if to hurry him along. “Please think kindly of me and let me know how you are.”
Maybe he should think about selling the house, but Keller balks at the idea. No, the house in Hawke’s Cove will wait for him. For when he finally has had enough.
Chapter Sixty-eight
Lately he feels a stiffness in his hindquarters that he’s never had before, not even in those few days after he’d been wounded and strangers had handled him until Keller came back from his own wounds. It’s just a little harder to get up, and the basket is so much more comfortable than the floor, even if the square of light warms it up. Better yet is the couch, and he’s been deliberately disobedient every chance he gets, having been encouraged into misbehavior by the couple of times Francesca and Keller have invited him up to sit between them as they listen to the noises coming from the box in the living room.
Nothing else is diminished. His hearing is just as acute, his eyesight what it has always been. And his nose, superior instrument that it is, still carries the stories to him on the air—the air in the house and the air outside. In the house, the air is thick with the story of his people. How they use their voices but say nothing. How they emit the olfactory aura of discontent. He si
ghs and yawns and settles his head or paws on each of them in turn. But they don’t take as much comfort from him as they did. Keller disappears. Rick dismisses him. Francesca orders him out of the kitchen. Even those painful times when Rick clutches at his nape, sucking the stillness and comfort out of him, have changed. Less frequent, less successful. Almost as if Rick has chosen to suffer his fear and distress alone. Like a mother hiding her nest from other dogs, even perhaps her mate. A hidden den is easier to defend.
A walk to the beach with Keller usually gets the kinks out. Pax hears the breezeway door open and he looks to Rick to see if he can go greet Keller. Rick’s eyes are down, as they often are, and his fingers are playing within that little pouch he has attached to his chair. The bag holds those tiny white pills that the dog can smell even through the thick duck cloth. They clatter together as Rick fingers them, audible enough to the dog, if not to anyone else.
Chapter Sixty-nine
Pax materializes at Rick’s bedside. Rick has gotten himself into a sitting position, the undisturbed blankets still neatly across his lower half. His pillow is folded in half, propping him against the headboard of the hospital bed. He holds a glass in his remaining hand. On the canyon formed by his motionless legs is his collection of twenty-two little white pills. The twenty-second spheroid is today’s victory. He’s been counting them. The number never changes, never improves, never becomes a sure thing.