by Susan Wilson
Rosie
Teddy’s apartment doesn’t have a doorbell, so I knock. Even I can tell that my initial knock is tentative, as if I am reluctant to impose myself, afraid of disturbing him. I am, I suppose. I am struck with bashfulness, or its more insidious relative, cowardice. He’ll be surprised to see you. He won’t want to see you. He’ll be angry. He’ll be glad. He’ll welcome you with open arms. He will slam this door in your face. My inner dialogue is a rant of incoherence.
Shadow stands beside me, his expression suggesting that he doesn’t understand how I’m not using my magic hands and just opening up the door. I knock again, this time with a little more emphasis. Not so much that it would sound like I was a bill collector on the stoop, rather than a friend. Do people ever arrive unannounced anymore, what with the ability to drop a warning text? I don’t even have Teddy’s number. Until an hour ago, I didn’t even know that he was living here.
Maybe he’s not home. Maybe that’s better. I’ll write to him. Give him some warning. Maybe he knows I’m here and is hiding.
When we were little, before his injury, hide-and-seek was one of our favorite games. Teddy was good at it, managing to hold his breath even as I got so close that I could smell him. This thought makes me realize that my dog absolutely knows that someone is behind that door. I can tell by the way his head is cocked, the way he’s capable of hearing even a held breath.
Shadow pushes his head against my hip, as if pushing me to knock again. So I do. The dog pumps his front feet up and down, his signature move for when he is impatient. Obviously, there are no conflicting emotions for him; he fully expects the door to be opened.
Then I hear him, his voice as he calls out, “Who is it?”
I don’t have an answer. “Um, me?”
A solid pause.
“Who?”
“Teddy, can you open the door?” Have I been gone so long that he doesn’t recognize my voice? His only sister’s voice? I think that the answer is yes. I haven’t spoken to Teddy in more than six years. Could anyone hold the memory of a voice for that long? “It’s Rosie, Teddy.”
The extra-wide front door opens and my brother and I face each other across the threshold. Is the look on my face as astonished as his is? I’m surprised at how grown-up he is; how tall, despite the chair, or maybe he looks taller because the chair he sits in is one of those high-tech ultralight chairs that the para-athletes use. No longer sunk in a sling of a seat, he is upright and looking altogether handsome. The last time I saw him, he was hunched, as well as angry and weeping; wearing borrowed funeral clothes. Today, he stares at me and I see a grown man dressed in a tidy polo shirt and jeans. What he sees, I don’t dare guess. An older version of my former self? Someone for whom the sparkle had long since flattened out?
“Rosie? What are you doing here?” His eyes dart to look behind me, as if he thinks I am a fugitive and the cops are on my tail. “How did you get here?
“Brenda told me where you were living.”
“Brenda?”
“Brathwaite.”
“I know who Brenda is. I just meant. I just meant that I am surprised…”
“That she told me? That she speaks to me?”
I’m still standing in the hallway. A door down the hall opens, shuts. “Can I come in?”
He makes room for me to enter his apartment, and Shadow and I follow as Teddy rolls his chair into the comfortably large space of his uncluttered living room. All has not changed with my brother; I spot an unfinished jigsaw puzzle on his dining-area table. A big flat-screen television is on one wall. No coffee table, no obstacles in that room. A two-cushion couch in masculine brown and a plaid armchair are the only pieces of furniture, both neatly pushed to the opposite wall, leaving a wide swath of oatmeal-colored wall-to-wall industrial carpet. A picture window with drapes pushed to either side looks out onto the courtyard central to all four buildings. I see my mother’s influence in the way the drapes are held back with tasseled tiebacks—her signature decorating touch.
I haven’t rehearsed this reunion. I have no preconceived notions about how it might go, and so I stand, then sit, then stand. Neither one of us speaks for the longest time—long enough that the dog finally takes charge. He stalks over to Teddy to sit in front of him, then drops one paw into my brother’s lap, for all the world like a guy putting out a hand in friendship. Teddy stares at the thing in his lap, then says, “Heck of a dog.” He puts a hand out for Shadow to sniff, then ruffles Shadow’s neck fur. The look on Teddy’s face is so plainly distressed.
“I shouldn’t have come, I shouldn’t have surprised you like this. It wasn’t fair.”
“No, it’s okay, Rosie. I’m just stunned, that’s all.”
I lean down and hug my brother.
For half an hour, we babble and cry and babble some more, until finally my story is more or less told. Over a cup of Barry’s Irish tea, I begin to get a sense of his life. This place is designed for people like my brother, all handicap-accessible and with on-call help available. A medi-lift to pick him up to take him to his job delivering interoffice mail at a corporate office park. A medi-lift to bring him back home. This program at the mercy of a successful annual fund-raising campaign by the nonprofit that runs it. Teddy is not quite independent, but better than he might otherwise be.
For a moment it seems like everything that happened to me will somehow be worth it if I can help my brother.
“You should have a dog. A service dog.”
“Is that what he is?” He gestures toward Shadow, who is sound asleep at my feet, stretched out so that he is an obstacle to both of us, or a perimeter.
“No.” For the first time, I admit to myself what Shadow is. “He’s more of a therapy dog. It’s what I did—I trained them, Teddy. Service dogs.”
“When?”
“In prison. It was—is a program. It works. You’d have someone to pick up what you drop, shut off the lights.”
“I can clap for that. And I have a grabber stick.”
“Shark, my first dog, has made it possible for his person, who is now maybe my best friend, to live alone and have a job. She lives in New York City.”
“I live alone. I have a job.”
“You live in a group home.”
“That’s not how I describe it.” There’s the old Teddy, the one with the scowl. The one mad at the world.
“I’m sorry. I’m a little sensitive about living in an institutional setting. This is certainly better than that.”
The scowl doesn’t lighten. It intensifies, as if he’s just realized the elephant is in the room. “What happened, Rosie? Why did you leave us?”
Is this the party line? I left them? That I wasn’t pushed out because I was making a life for myself? I almost say this, but then hold my tongue. “How’s Mom? Is she all right? Brenda said I should go see her, and I got the impression that something was the matter.”
Teddy manipulates himself away from the table, around Shadow, to stare out the picture window. I can tell that his low-set view can’t give him anything but a look at the collection of stunted trees that form the landscaping of the courtyard. Maybe the heads of people walking by. Limited.
“Teddy? Is there something you don’t want to tell me?”
He shrugs, always an awkward gesture, since he can barely lift his left arm. “How can I know what I do or do not want to tell you? You are a stranger to me. How long has it been? Six years? More if you count those months you left us to work out Dad’s terminal illness and how to defend our home against eminent domain.” He puts one palm on the windowpane. I can almost hear Mom yelling at him not to touch her clean window. “You were gone from us even before that. You couldn’t wait to leave, and getting into that fancy college just started the transition from our sister, their daughter, to a stranger who looked down on us.”
“That is so not true!” We could be our elementary school selves.
“Isn’t it? Do you remember how you kept correcting my grammar?”
“You did.”
“I didn’t want you to be handicapped. I mean…”
We both heard what I’d said and spontaneously laugh.
“Did you think perfect grammar would make anything better for me?”
“It couldn’t hurt.” Shadow is no longer recumbent, but sitting up, his eyes following the conversation, his ears at the alert. “So, you still haven’t told me what’s going on with Mom.”
Teddy rolls himself away from the window, turns his chair to face me. “There’s nothing wrong with her that getting a life for herself wouldn’t cure. She’s being passed around from Paulie to Frankie to Pat. Bobby’s the only one who won’t take her, because he lives in a place not a lot different from this one. Too small.”
“Is she depressed?”
“Probably.”
“Is she getting help?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
I sit down on the couch. Shadow rests his head in my lap and I stroke his ears. I feel a wash of guilt. I should have pushed harder to break through her silence. What kind of daughter am I, what kind of woman, to give up so easily?
“How long has she been like this?”
“Since Dad died.”
“So why hasn’t anyone told me? If not Paulie, you, Teddy. I feel like I was shunned. And I don’t know why.”
“Mom is a very powerful woman and she forbade us to.”
“And you grown men kowtowed to her?”
He has the good grace to blush. Shadow leaves me and waltzes over to Teddy. Again, he drops his big head into someone’s lap and gets an ear scratching as a reward. Teddy looks up at me. “Tell me more about service dogs.”
“I can introduce you to one,” I say.
Meghan
The text from Rosie reads When can I give you a call? This is followed by six happy faces, which should drive Meghan into hitting the call button to find out what is going on, but she doesn’t. This is not a good time at all. Will call you when I can, she replies, and leaves the phone on the table. She simply doesn’t have the strength to fake happy.
Meghan pulls away from the kitchen area and motors into the living area. Marley sits on the couch, his dog at his feet, or more accurately, on his feet. He stares straight ahead at the television. He is very upright, very stiff, as he has been ever since the most recent mass shooting. He doesn’t have the sound on; he uses the closed captioning instead of having to hear the continual replay of video from phones recording the mayhem, the barrage, broadcast over the networks. His big hands haven’t stopped shaking. Spike has done her best, pressing herself into him, resting her head on his feet, nosing his hands until he grabs her fur. Meghan has done the best she can. He won’t stop watching, and he won’t talk. She has seen only mild episodes of his PTSD; this shooting has caused Marley to spiral into a full-blown panic attack. He cries and makes no apology for it. She can’t get him to eat; she can’t get him to rest. She has called in sick because he can’t bear to let her leave the apartment.
To be fair, Marley had warned her. When she cried to him about her own fears, he warned her that his were a bigger issue in terms of their relationship. She might be afraid of intimacy, he said, but he was just simply afraid. Most days, he told her, he could pretend he wasn’t. Spike helped normalize his world. Having Meghan in his life made him feel good. But on days like this, when the sound and fury of senseless violence made this country look like the worst of Afghanistan, then there was nothing he or anyone could do to mitigate his panic.
“Can you call Dr. Markowsky?”
“He’ll only tell me to come in. I can’t. Not yet.”
“Would he prescribe anything?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want me to call him?”
Marley takes her damaged hand in his. “Do you have any oxy left?”
Meghan hasn’t used her painkillers with any frequency in months, but she keeps a prescription for emergencies. She remembers how close she came to dependency on those little white pills, and her other hand goes out to touch Shark’s back. “Yes. But they’re meant for pain.”
Marley lifts his chin to look into her eyes. His are bloodshot. “Ain’t that what I’m going through?”
“You’re safe. You don’t have to worry.” She knows he’s not in a place where he can take in her words; she’s uttering the same kind of babble a mommy offers an inconsolable child. But it’s all she’s got.
“Isn’t that what all those people thought, too? Going to have some fun. Less safe than I was in Afghanistan, walking down the street in full body armor.”
“I was there, too, Marley. You forget that sometimes. I wore the armor; I commanded a platoon; I sent people just like you into buildings. I was blown up. So, yeah, I get your fear. I recognize it and honor it. But I’m not going to let some crazy asshole take my freedom from me out of fear. I’m going to keep on living the best life I can. The fullest.”
Shark is on his feet; Spike, too.
Tenderly, Marley takes her face in his hands and kisses her. “Then let me touch you.”
In Iraq, in Afghanistan, Meghan’s troops needed her; they needed her orders, her direction. They needed to know that she was there, that she was in charge, and that she could be trusted with their lives. She reveled in that responsibility. She was content in it, comfortable being their leader. Marley Tallman needs her now. It is a far more harrowing responsibility, being someone’s comfort.
She shuts off the incessant television coverage of the latest shooting, then moves herself from her chair to Marley’s side on the couch, where he wraps her in his long arms. He whispers in her ear, her good one, “Sometimes I envy you.”
“Why?”
“Because people can see your damage.”
She has no answer for that. She certainly doesn’t envy him, with his unpredictable and uncontrollable reactions to sound and circumstance. And then she thinks that not all of her damage is visible, and he certainly can’t envy her that. “Touch me.”
For a long time, the world condenses into the feel of his skin against her living skin, his touch, his slow kindness. For her, there is no magical release, no well-what-do-you-know moment, but there is a soft transition. She sighs and he kisses her fingertips.
Afterward, she invites both dogs onto the couch with them, and there they are, the foursome, holding and stroking, huddled together against the frightening things.
Meghan’s stomach rumbles and she thinks that at least she’s got feeling there. “I’m going to make lunch.”
Marley shifts. “No, let me.”
She stays put as he eases himself out from under the dogs and heads into the kitchen area. This is good, she thinks. He hasn’t eaten in days. She watches him from the couch, making sure that he is moving, is really foraging for sandwich makings. She’s drained, exhausted. It’s harder sometimes to cope with his emotional pain than with her own physical pain. And yet she is undeniably content.
“Grilled cheese?”
“That would be lovely. And can you toss me my phone?”
Marley walks it to her.
“Rosie called. I’ve got to call her back.”
“Tell her hi from me.” Marley bends and kisses Meghan.
A sense of relief washes through Meghan. He’s through the worst. And maybe she is, too.
Rosie wants Meghan to show her brother Teddy what a service dog can do.
Shark
He is exhausted. Spike is, too. They spoon together in the larger of the three dog beds in the apartment. The storm of emotion from their people has become a distant rumble. Their people have weathered it and now both dogs fall into a well-earned and deep sleep.
Rosie
It should be enough, this reunion with my youngest older brother, but it isn’t. My original purpose in making the journey away from the solitary comfort of Dogtown was to see my mother. The urge to bail, to call it a day, is strong, but my spine has stiffened over the course of the past few year
s. “Where’s your phone?” He tells me and I hand Teddy his phone. “Tell her whatever you want, but don’t let her say no.”
“Call her yourself.”
“She won’t answer me if she sees my number.”
“I can dial, and you speak.”
“She hangs up on me.”
Teddy can’t look at me. “Really?”
“I’m not going to demonstrate it for you. Just ask if she can drop by.”
Teddy has told me that she makes a habit of dropping in, taking care of his laundry, making sure he has food in the fridge. For all his vaunted independence, he’s still letting his clinically depressed mother take care of him. He says it makes her feel better. I think that it’s part of her problem, having these chronically dependent children. She babysits her grandkids for the rest of them; for Teddy, she babies him.
“Hey, Mom. I’m good. Just wondering…” Teddy stares at me as he speaks to our mother. Just like in a dime-store novel, the look is daggers.
I flash back to our youth. Teddy in his chair, me dancing around him, wearing a towel as a cape and holding a Barbie doll in one hand, flying it past his face as if she were Wonder Woman, as if I were Wonder Woman. I see Teddy getting mad, yelling for Mom to make me stop. Defenseless against me and my mobility. My lack of deference toward his immobility.
I put my hands on his shoulders as he asks our mother to drop what she’s doing and come see him. He doesn’t have to work hard. As always, Teddy asks and Mom does.
* * *
I have paced and sat and paced and helped myself to a bottle of water uninvited, drinking it all in one long swallow, and still my mouth is dry. Teddy has said nothing. He’s set the stage and now he has left me to act out the story. He wheels himself into his bedroom, shuts the door. Stoughton and Randolph share a border, and within fifteen minutes I hear the key in the lock. My mother has her own key to Teddy’s apartment. Why am I not surprised?