by Susan Wilson
Carol edges her way out of the booth. “I’m going to the ladies’.” Belying that, she takes her drink with her.
“No, don’t. Stay.” Meghan reaches out with her damaged right hand,
In a perfect imitation of Mike Meyers’s “Coffee Talk” character, Carol says, “Rosie did something good for you; you did something good for Rosie. Discuss.” And she walks off.
Simultaneously, Meghan and I take long swallows of our drinks. I reach for her hand, take it. She lets me. “So, thank you. For all of it. However it happened. I’m beholden to you.”
She flares up, those silvery patches on her face intensify as the living skin around them darkens. “That’s exactly what I didn’t want. For you to feel beholden.”
“Not beholden in the sense of peasant to king. Grateful. Is that a better word?”
“I just wanted you to have the same freedom as you gave me.”
We dive into another gulp of drink. Flag the server. Another round. Meghan has a Moscow Mule; I’ve got a Lemon Drop.
“Okay, so maybe we’ve achieved quid pro quo?”
Meghan nods.
I think about it for a moment. “Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Why didn’t you, or the Advocacy, or Carol, for that matter, tell me that I had a chance, or even that the Advocacy was working for me? Why keep me in the dark?”
“No one—okay, I didn’t want to give you false hope.”
“Wasn’t I entitled to know?” There is something unintentionally demeaning in this. If she were a man, I would call it being patronizing. “I am not a child.”
“Of course not. But I didn’t want to get your hopes up and then fail in the mission.”
“Did you think I couldn’t handle the disappointment?”
Meghan has no answer for this.
Fail in the mission.
“I wasn’t a mission, Meghan. You could never have failed me.”
Carol slides back into her seat. She picks up her menu and we follow suit.
Shadow
He likes it when she’s happy. Tonight, she told him to stay and watch the property and then left in her car. His heart broke at the sound of the car driving off, but then he remembered his orders and got to work patrolling, sniffing, woofing, marking, and otherwise recalling how it felt to be a watchdog. She would return to a place made secure by his attention to detail. He waited patiently, a sentry by the driveway. Occasionally, he would sit up and yawn, listen for the sound of her particular car coming along the lane.
The night was overcast, but the moon broke through the clouds. He worried then that she would be the one who didn’t return. And then she came back. And, for the first time, he knew her to be completely happy. She bore the scent of someone else, someone she had touched long enough that skin cells had sloughed off and attached themselves to Rosie’s hands. She grinned and snapped her fingers. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Rosie
I am equally worn to a nub and energized, or, more accurately, buzzed with the combination of good food, possibly one too many Lemon Drops, and the relief of finally having the central mystery of my recent life solved. I’ve been so in my own head that I probably could have figured this out on my own if I’d just picked a little at the clues that were there.
Shadow is ecstatic to see me. His tail thrashes and he play bows and hunh-hunns. “Let’s go.”
It’s not that late, but the darkness around this lonesome stretch of back road is thick, punctuated only here and there with determined stars. Not a house light in sight. After last night’s storm, it’s rained on and off today, and everything is wet. The moon is waning, but bright enough as it breaks through the cloud cover to suddenly shed some light on the path that leads to Dogtown. I’ve acquired a pair of Hunter Wellington boots, so the wet grass is not a problem. Skunks are, but we are lucky as Shadow and I head to the old Dogtown road. Dogtown in the daytime is unsettling enough, but at night it takes on a whole different eeriness. One’s imagination runs to werewolves and witches. The uniquely weird sound of a screech owl sends shivers down my spine.
Shadow does what he does best, sticks close by and leads me to his favorite spot, the cellar hole I have come to decide must be where Susannah ended up. Maybe it’s my propensity for romantic notion, my idea that this dog has somehow identified the presence of a woman gone more than 150 years, but I don’t think that’s such a far-fetched idea. I don’t think it unreasonable to believe that my dog might be a descendant of the unnamed dog that attended Susannah. Any more than it is unreasonable that my fairy godmother has turned out to be Meghan. Or that someday my phone will ring and it will be one of my brothers or even my mother calling to see how I am.
Yesterday, I talked to Shelley Brown about the journal. As casually as I could, I mentioned how it was found, and what I’ve read in it. As I feared, she immediately suggested that the book needed to go somewhere appropriate, either the library’s history collection or the historical society’s. I argued back, right off the top of my head, that the book really belonged to the Baxter descendants. She agreed, and asked if I’d be willing to address the issue with them.
Them, as I thought at the time, was Carol. Now I know that it’s Carol and Meghan and Don Flint and a host of others. And, truthfully, I completely forgot about the journal, about Susannah, caught up as I was in the excitement of the moment at the Azorean.
Shadow has led me to the cellar hole, and, as is his habit, he circled and settled in the depression. I shut off my phone’s flashlight and sit on a remnant cellar stone, fondle his ears. I can’t give up that daybook until I find out what happened, if Susannah ever made it to safer shores than this desolate and lonely place. If she and her dog were rescued.
A glance at my phone and I see that there is a voice message from Pete, no doubt about Cecily Foster. But I’m going to let that one wait till tomorrow. Right now, I want to enjoy this quiet outing with my dog and let the pleasure of knowing that someone has loved me enough to do what Meghan set in motion on my behalf. I have not felt beloved in a very long time.
Meghan
It’s really hard to be quiet when you have to get yourself from bed to chair to bathroom, then back to chair, but Meghan tries as hard as she can not to wake Carol up. Or maybe Carol just has the good grace to pretend that she’s still asleep. Shark, on the other hand, is right there, ready to work. He closes the bathroom door, then opens it when she’s ready. The room itself is retrofitted to ADA accommodation specs, but pretty awkward for all that, and the dog is almost more in the way than not. They head outside so that the dog can use his own bathroom facilities, a neat fenced-in area of grass.
The breakfast room in this hillside hotel is beneath the main building, and Meghan takes the path slowly as it curls around and down. Despite the chill in the air, she sits on the terrace with her coffee and homemade blueberry coffee cake—still warm from the oven—after all, she feels the cold only in her upper body. The rest is just blank space. She realizes that she’s forgotten to put anything on her feet, but it’s not so cold that she should worry about frostbite. It’s that lack of sensation that has become central to her identity, to her idea of self.
Carol doesn’t know that she and Marley have broken up. Meghan expects that, like Rosie, Carol will lobby on behalf of Marley’s integrity. She just can’t handle any more drama. Last night was painful, and ultimately releasing, and she wishes that she didn’t have the “Marley situation,” as she thinks of it, and could just be glad that the weight of keeping secrets from a good friend is gone. Today, Carol is taking her to the house so that she can see for herself the work being done and spend a little more time with Rosie before they have to head back. It occurs to Meghan that Rosie might say something about Marley, about their breakup, in front of Carol, in which case she can look forward to being counseled on the long drive home. Shark senses her distress and pokes his nose into the hand that has drifted away from the coffee cake. He licks it and she laughs
. “Hoping for crumbs?”
He wags his tail.
“I should have renamed you Goofy.”
He wags it harder, engaging his whole back end. Happy to have prompted his person out of her funk.
“That looks good.” Carol drops her handbag onto a seat.
“It is. Still warm from the oven.”
Even with the overcast sky, the view of the choppy sea stretched out before them in shades of pewter is stunning. The sand of Good Harbor beach gleams white against the gray, and even from where they sit, they can see that the parking lot is virtually empty. Carol comes back with her breakfast, slides a paper napkin onto her lap. “Not a beach day.”
“No, but it’s a good day to take a ride around. Rosie said we should visit Rockport.”
“She’s settled in, I think.”
“She has.”
Carol takes a bite of coffee cake, makes yummy noises, sips her coffee. “How are you?”
She doesn’t look directly at Meghan, giving her the opportunity to be as casual about the answer as she wants to be.
It makes Meghan think back to adolescence, to when her mother would prove to be right about something and want Meghan to admit it. It was killer, giving her mother her due, letting her know that she’d been right. Right about a poorly chosen friend. Right about getting caught skipping school. Right about the appropriateness of getting a service dog. Has she told her mother yet that she was so very right about that?
Has this been the right thing, coming clean with Rosie? Is the burden lifted? “I’m good. About telling Rosie, yes. I’m okay.”
“And your friendship? How do you feel about that?”
Meghan didn’t answer right away, feeling around for the answer. “There’s a nick in it, but it’s whole otherwise. It’ll heal.”
“Good.” Carol takes a last bite of the cake. “Now, tell me about this business with Marley.”
“How did you find out?” Had Rosie said something? Meghan thinks that now she and Rosie are truly quid pro quo if she did spill the beans to Carol.
“You haven’t mentioned his name all weekend.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Not in and of itself, but you just confirmed what I was worried about. How did I find out? You just told me.”
“It’s no big deal. People break up all the time.”
“I know. I’m just sorry. We liked him. We think he’s a nice man.” Carol wipes her lips with her napkin. “Isn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s very nice.”
“It was hard, wasn’t it, being with someone suffering from PTSD?”
“No, that wasn’t it.” Meghan feels herself sliding into Carol’s trap. “It’s mostly fine, and when it’s not, we cope.” She isn’t aware of using the present tense until Carol gives her a soft smile. Meghan has witnessed interviews conducted by professional interrogators with lots less skill than this mother of grown children.
* * *
Rosie comes out through the back door of the Homestead, her welcoming grin not for the humans in the Lexus, but for the chocolate Lab that comes bounding out of the backseat of the car. He looks to Meghan for permission before throwing himself into Rosie’s arms. “Go say hi.”
Rosie drops to her knees and the dog throws himself into her open arms. He wriggles and she hugs. He does the unthinkable, and showers her with doggy kisses, which she doesn’t discourage. She plants kisses all over his blocky head. She’s laughing and weeping, and the dog is ecstatic to see her, to feel her touch, to be reunited with his first person.
Meghan’s grin reveals she is just as pleased. One of the stranger things about seeing Rosie again was her worry about this shared history with Shark—the ember of jealousy that might spark. She is relieved that it doesn’t. Just to be sure that it doesn’t, she finds herself referring to his former trainer as “Auntie Rose.”
A burly guy in a pair of sagging Levi’s and work boots comes out of the house. Tucker Bellingham. Handshakes all around and then Carol stands back and says, “I think I remember you from years ago.”
“I think you do. We came over here a couple of times while you were visiting. My dad took care of your grandmother’s plumbing, so if I could, I’d tag along, because she made the best cookies.”
“Oatmeal chocolate-chip raisin.”
“Oh yeah. With walnuts.”
There is a moment of silence as Carol and Tucker bow their heads in memory of Gramma Baxter’s baking skills.
Rosie breaks up the moment. “Let’s go in. I want you to meet my dog.”
“Hang on a minute.” Tucker pulls out a measuring tape. “I think that this isn’t going to work.” The back door is not only too narrow to accommodate Meghan’s standard chair, the sill is six inches off the ground. Even the door in the dogtrot won’t allow the chair to go through. The three of them stand pondering the problem until Tucker comes to the only reasonable solution. “Not to worry. I can lift you.”
Meghan is caught in that oh-too-familiar junction of annoyance at the person offering and the resentment that she needs help in the first place. She hates this. She hates the dependence upon others to accomplish such a simple feat. Shark can help her in so many ways, but until he can carry her on his back, she’s too often confronted—ADA regs notwithstanding—with these situations.
Both Carol and Rosie sense Meghan’s thinking and simultaneously chorus, “Go ahead, Meghan, let Tucker do it.”
Rosie and Shark lead them in. Carol follows with the folded wheelchair.
Standing in the middle of the braided rug positioned in front of the warm woodstove where Rosie ordered him to “stay” is a dog, a tall, gray, wiry-haired beast of no recognizable breed. Meghan whistles under her breath. “Holy mackerel. That’s Shadow?” His pictures have not done justice to his actual size.
“It is.”
Shark is at Meghan’s left and she can feel his quiver of excitement at seeing this new dog. “Is he going to be okay with Shark?”
“I think so.”
And both women wait to see how their dogs will react to each other.
As the host, Shadow makes the first gesture, stalking over on stiff legs to Shark, who is obediently sitting beside his person. His head is up, then down as he makes contact, nose-to-nose. Rosie steps closer to Shadow, within reach should the bigger dog take a dislike to this jolly interloper. With interrogatory sniffs, Shadow takes Shark’s measure. No one is saying anything, caught up in the canine version of meet and greet. Meghan thinks that maybe this introduction should have taken place outside, in a less territorial place, but then Shadow sits, raises a paw, and gently places it on Shark’s shoulders, looking for all the world like a guy saying hi to a buddy. Except, and Meghan knows it, this is a gesture of dominance. Shadow is making sure that Shark, although welcome in his home, knows that he, Shadow, is the boss.
Rosie recognizes the gesture, as well. “Shadow, be nice.”
Dogs have their own language of hierarchy, and Shark is well versed. As the guest, the interloper, he responds to Shadow’s dominance by flopping onto the wide plank floor and showing his belly. Nothing to fear here, he says. I’m not a challenger.
With that, both dogs start playing; their mouths half open, they are mock biting. They get rolling around, and finally the humans make them go outside to play.
He misses Spike, Meghan thinks. Or maybe she says it, because she sees the glance Rosie and Carol share. “What?” Rosie says.
“Nothing. Show me the house.”
Rosie grabs the handles of Meghan’s chair to get her close enough to the entryway that she can see through to the best parlor. While the dogs were getting acquainted, Tucker pulled away all the plastic sheeting. An industrial vacuum sits in the middle of the room. Once they’ve had their tour, one of the guys on Tucker’s crew will finish sucking up all the debris from the job, and, Rosie tells her, by tomorrow, this room will be as close to its original condition as it can be made to look. The wide plank floorboards have been sanded
; the plasterboard walls and ceiling are gone, exposing the original beams and the hand-hewn gunstock joists in each corner of the room. The fireplace surround has been cleaned and the newly exposed cherry paneling polished. To see the rest of the house, Meghan sits in her chair, FaceTiming with Carol as she retraces her tour of the day before.
Back in the kitchen Rosie asks, “So, as far as you can remember, there’s always been plasterboard on the parlor walls?”
“Yeah, with old-lady wallpaper on it.” Carol laughs. “Sprigs and ivy, as I recall. I remember her television, a little black-and-white set that no one could ever tune in. Dad was constantly fiddling with the antennae; rabbit ears. No cable. No dish. And Gramma only had a rotary-dial phone, too.”
“When Tucker pulled down the wallboard, we found a cubby next to the fireplace. A wood box. In it was this.” Rosie has an ecru-colored box in her hands, the corners reinforced with metal. She places it on the kitchen table and pulls out a tattered book.
Shark
Rosie Rosie Rosie Rosie. She was there, and it was as if they had never been parted. Until the other dog reminded Shark that he was the new dog in Rosie’s life and that he, Shark, belonged to Meghan. That was a fact that Sharkey hadn’t forgotten, even in the exuberance of seeing his first remembered human being. Meghan was his always, but Rosie was his past.
Rosie
I hand the daybook to Carol. “This is what we found.”
“Actually, the dog found it.” Tucker is behind me, stirring sugar into his coffee. “I don’t think anyone would have spotted it otherwise. It’s a pretty cool object.”
Carol gently opens the book. “Imagine this being tucked away like that for all these years.”
“And you’ve read it?” Meghan takes the book from Carol, looks at me.
“I have, a lot of it.” I tell them as much as I know about Susannah from her book—about her having been a tenant in this house, a healer and widow. I open the journal to my favorite passages, pointing out the methodical way Susannah recorded the quotidian and the remarkable. And I read them this: