When CJ finally got up out of bed to go to the couch, she went very, very slowly, pushing a thing that looked a little like a chair in front of her that she held on to very tightly. The chair-thing had tennis balls on it, yet she didn’t throw them for me to chase. I scampered around at her feet, delighted to see her up, but she was breathing loudly and didn’t seem happy.
Trent, though, was very pleased when he walked in the door. “You made it to the couch!” he greeted her, smiling.
“Yeah, only took me an hour.”
“That’s really great, CJ.”
“Sure it is.” CJ looked away with a sigh. I jumped up on the couch and nuzzled her hand to help her feel better.
Every day after that CJ would get out of that bed to move around the apartment, always pushing the thing with tennis balls. Then one day we started taking walks outside. The snow was melting the first time we she did this, so the car tires were making loud ripping noises on the pavement and everywhere I could hear dripping and splashing. We only went a few feet down the sidewalk, the tennis balls on CJ’s chair-thing getting wet. A few days later, it had snowed again and we only went a few steps before we turned around. The day after that, the sun was out and it was warm and the snow was melting and under it I could smell new grass.
Our house had an outside room called a balcony. Trent put a box lined with rough carpet out there and called me to it. “This is where you can go to the bathroom, okay, Max? It’s your own special porta-potty.”
The rough carpet was softer than the cement floor of the balcony. I loved to lie on it when it was breezy and open my nose to the intoxicating mix of smells from the loud streets below. Sometimes I’d smell Mrs. Warren, the lady who often came out onto the balcony next to ours. “Hello, Max,” she would say to me, and I’d wag.
“You’re not supposed to lie in it, Max,” Trent told me when he came out to see me there. CJ laughed with delight. I didn’t know what was going on but resolved that if it made my girl so happy I’d lie on the rough carpet as often as possible.
As the days turned warmer, CJ would take her chair-thing and walk farther and farther, always going very slowly. On none of these walks did we stop to pick up Katie or any other dogs.
I became familiar with our route and looked forward to stopping at a bed of nose-level flowers along the way. There was some male dog I had never before met who had always marked the plants, and I sniffed very carefully before raising my leg in the same area.
“Max loves to stop here and smell the flowers,” CJ told Trent one time when they were both walking me.
“Good dog, Max. Stop and smell the roses,” Trent said. I heard that I was a good dog but was much more focused on the scent of that other dog.
Some days were better than others for CJ. On one of her bad days she was lying in bed when I heard fumbling at the front door, so I raced up to it, barking. When it opened, I was astounded to smell who was with Trent.
Duke!
Duke bounded into the room, full of manic energy. I raised up on my back legs and took his head in my front paws and licked at his lips, truly glad to see him. His big tongue came out and slapped against my face over and over and he was moaning and shaking, so happy was he to be with me. He dropped onto his back so I could climb on him, and we wrestled and squirmed joyously together.
“Come on back, guys,” Trent said. We went to CJ’s room and she sat up in bed.
“Duke!” she called out.
Duke was so excited to see her that he jumped right up on her bed. CJ gasped with pain. “Hey!” Trent yelled.
The lamp next to CJ fell to the floor and there was a flash and then the room was darker. Duke, panting, leaped around, crashing into things, then launched himself back on the bed. “Get off, Duke!” CJ said, and she was angry.
Snarling, I bit at Duke’s heels, and he shrank to the floor, his ears back.
What my girl needed, I realized at that moment, was calm and stillness. When Duke jumped on her it hurt her and his boisterous behavior made her and Trent mad.
To be a good dog in this house meant being less loud and active. CJ needed quiet.
With Duke finally more under control, CJ pulled his head to her and scratched his ears. “Okay, Trent, how did you pull this off?” she asked.
“Not hard to track Barry down. I just called him at his office and explained what I wanted. He wasn’t going to say no,” Trent said.
CJ stopped scratching Duke and looked at Trent. “You mean, he wasn’t going to say no to you.”
“Right. Well…”
“Oh, Duke, I am so, so happy to see you,” CJ crooned.
I jumped up on the bed but did so nimbly and crept up to where Duke was getting all the love. I knew CJ would want me there, too. I was the most important dog in the situation.
After Duke left, CJ and Trent had dinner at the table instead of back in her bedroom. I liked it better when she ate in bed because she often would hand me little morsels, but they seemed happier sitting with just their legs within reach of my nose, for some reason. I sat patiently under the table, on patrol for falling food.
“Maybe dialysis wouldn’t be that bad,” Trent said.
“Oh God, Trent.”
“I’m just saying, if it has to happen, we’ll deal with it.”
“If it happens to me, we will deal with it?” CJ said sharply.
For a few moments there was nothing but the sound of their forks on their plates.
“I’m sorry,” CJ said softly. “I do appreciate everything you’re doing for me. God, that was so Gloria of me.”
“No, you’ve been through a lot, you’re in pain, and dialysis is scary. It makes sense for you to get pissed for me to suggest it would somehow be my experience, too. But what I really meant is that I’ll support you every way I can, no matter what it takes. That’s all.”
“Thank you, Trent. I don’t deserve a friend like you,” CJ replied.
When they were done eating, Trent put food in my bowl. I loved the plinking sound of dinner landing in my metal bowl, and danced circles waiting for him to put it down.
“Now watch. Pray, Max, pray.”
Trent held the food away from me, but he was leaning over and I caught the smell on his breath. I knew what he wanted, and signaled.
“See?” Trent said, laughing delightedly.
“That’s so weird. I’ve never seen him do that before,” CJ said.
“He’s saying grace,” Trent said.
As the weather grew warmer, CJ and I would venture farther and farther on our walks. She eventually stopped pushing her tennis ball chair-thing out in front of her but would lean on a hooked stick a little as we slowly made our way down the sidewalk. I had learned to be very patient and would walk next to her at the pace she wanted to go—protecting her now meant making sure she didn’t fall over or feel pain from walking too fast. Sometimes Trent would come home in the middle of the day and walk with us, and he, too, adopted a slow gait.
It had been so long since I had been on a car ride, I had pretty much written off the idea that I would ever get to be a front-seat dog again, though there were always plenty of cars in the streets. So I was surprised when I was put in a crate, one with hard sides and a lot more room to move around in than the soft one, and carried out of the building by Trent. He put me on the backseat of a big car.
“Buckle the crate in,” CJ said. “It’s safer with the seat belt on.”
I yipped a little when the car drove off with Trent at the wheel. Had they forgotten I was here?
“Oh, Max, I know, but we’re right up front. You’re safer in the back,” CJ said.
I hadn’t heard anything I understood, but I could feel the love in CJ’s voice. I pondered my reaction. I wanted to keep barking until they let me out of the crate, but I remembered the time when, as Molly, I left the ocean with CJ and I took the long noisy ride with a dog barking the whole way—nobody let him out of his crate, and his barking was irritating to me. I didn’t want to irritate
CJ—not upsetting her was how I took care of her now. So I settled down with a long, forlorn sigh.
“First time I’ve ever left New York in August. I was always so envious of everybody—the heat was murderous,” CJ said.
It was a long car ride.
“You’re not going to tell me where we’re going? Not even now?” CJ said after a while.
“You’ll figure it out,” Trent replied. “Until then I want it to be as much of a surprise as possible.”
It was very hot outside every time we stopped, but we spent the night in a place so cold I slept under the blankets with CJ. Trent had a different room, but it smelled pretty much the same as ours.
As I fell asleep, I thought of the last really, really long car ride I’d taken, where we wound up going to the ocean. Was that where we were headed now?
We had been driving a long time the second day and CJ slept a lot of the time, but when she woke up she suddenly became very excited.
“Oh my God! Are we going where I think we are?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Trent said.
“How did you find it?”
“It wasn’t hard to do. Public records. Ethan and Hannah Montgomery. So I called and said you wanted to visit.”
In my crate I wagged a little at hearing the names Ethan and Hannah spoken in the same sentence.
“Wasn’t hard to do for you. How come you know how to do all this stuff? I was always so much smarter than you,” CJ said.
“Oh right, you were smarter? I can’t even reply to that; it’s frying my memory circuits.”
They both laughed.
“Do they know we’re coming?” CJ asked.
“Oh yes. They’re pretty excited.”
“Oh my God, I can’t wait. This is amazing!”
I fell asleep, made drowsy by the steady droning of the car noises.
When I woke up, the scent wafting through the car made me dizzy. I knew where we were, and when the car stopped I cried, eager to get out. “Okay, Max,” Trent said. Warm evening air flowed over me as Trent opened my crate door and held my leash. I bounded into the grass.
Ultimately I shouldn’t have been surprised: eventually everyone returned to the Farm.
Several people poured out of the house and ran down to see me and also CJ.
“Aunt Rachel?” CJ asked uncertainly.
“Look at you!” the woman shouted, hugging CJ as the others milled around.
There were three women and two men and one little girl. I recognized the scents of all but the little girl.
“I’m your aunt Cindy,” another woman said. She bent down to offer her hand to sniff, but Trent pulled me back, my collar going tight as he yanked the leash.
“Uh, that’s Max; he’s not real friendly,” Trent said.
I was wagging, so happy to see everyone and to be back home. Were we going to live here now? That would be fine by me.
“He seems nice,” Cindy said. I strained forward and managed to lick her hand and Trent laughed. Pretty soon Cindy picked me up and I was nose-to-nose with everyone in the family.
“Let’s go inside,” Cindy said. She handed the leash to the little girl, whose name was Gracie.
It was such a pleasure to mount the wooden steps, even though it did take more of an effort than when I was a bigger dog. Proud that I knew my way, I forced myself through the door first, feeling the leash go slack as Gracie dropped it.
There was a woman sitting in a chair in the living room. She was old, but I’d know her scent anywhere. I bounded right across the room and into her lap. It was Hannah, Ethan’s mate.
“My goodness.” She laughed as I squirmed and licked at her face.
“Max!” Trent called. He sounded stern, so I hustled off Hannah’s lap and ran over to see what sort of trouble I’d gotten into. He snagged my leash.
“Grandma?” CJ said.
Hannah stood up slowly and CJ walked to her and they hugged for a long time. They were both crying, but the love and happiness between them swept through and touched everyone who was watching.
TWENTY-SEVEN
We did not stay on the Farm to live, but we spent more than a week there. I loved racing around with my nose down, tracking all the familiar scents. There were ducks in the pond, a whole family as always, but though I stood and watched them for a while, I didn’t bother to chase them. Not only was there never any profit in that, but the two largest ones were as big as I was. It was the first time in a long while that I thought about how small a dog I was as Max. It did not seem right that a dog should be the same size as a duck.
There were strong horse smells in the barn but no horse to be found, which I considered fortunate. If CJ had wandered in there I would have faced down that horse again, but the prospect of doing so as Max, and not Buddy, made me more than a little afraid.
CJ spent much of her time walking and talking with Hannah, who moved at the same slow speed as my girl. I stayed by their side, proud to be protecting both of them. “I never gave up hope,” Hannah said. “I knew that this day would come, Clarity. CJ, I mean, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” CJ said. “I like it when you call me that.”
“I could barely contain myself from screaming like a teenager when your boyfriend telephoned.”
“Oh, Trent? No, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“He’s not?”
“No. We’ve been best friends forever, but never like as a couple.”
“Interesting,” Hannah said.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Nothing. I’m just happy you’re here, that’s all.”
One afternoon it rained and the roar on the roof was as loud as the cars I could hear from my special carpet on the balcony, only without the honking. The windows were open and the wet, earthy smells came flooding into the room. I lay lazily at CJ’s feet as she and Hannah sat and ate cookies without giving me one.
“I feel guilty that I didn’t try harder,” Hannah told CJ.
“No, Grandma, no. If Gloria sent you that lawyer letter…”
“It wasn’t just that. Your mother moved so many times after Henry … after the plane crash. And life has a way of getting so busy you don’t notice how quickly time is passing. Still, I should have done something, maybe hired my own lawyer.”
“Are you kidding? I know Gloria. I grew up with her. If she said she’d sue you, she meant it.”
My girl went to Hannah and they hugged. I sighed, smelling the cookie crumbs still on the plate. Sometimes people will set a plate down for a dog to lick, but most of the time they forget.
“I have something for you, though,” Hannah said. “See that box on the shelf, the one with the pink flowers? Look inside.”
CJ crossed the room and I sprang to my feet, but she merely picked up a box and brought it back. It didn’t smell very interesting.
CJ held the box in her lap. “What are these?” she asked. Whatever was inside smelled like papers.
“Birthday cards. Every year I bought you a card and wrote you what had happened since your previous birthday. Marriages, births … they’re all in there. I didn’t realize when I started how many cards I’d wind up writing. At one point I had to find a bigger box. No one expects to live into her nineties.” Hannah chuckled.
CJ was playing with the papers in the box, completely oblivious to the obvious connection between the cookie crumbs and her deserving dog, Max.
“Oh, Grandma, this is the most wonderful gift I’ve ever received.”
At dinner I would lie under the table and Rachel and Cindy and other people would sit with CJ and talk and laugh and everyone was very happy. So I was surprised the day when Trent began moving suitcases out of the house and into the car, because I knew it meant that despite how happy CJ was, we were leaving.
Humans do that: though it might be more fun at the Farm, or a dog park, they will decide to leave and then that’s it; they leave. It’s the job of the dog to go with them once he’s marked the area
with his scent.
I was in my crate in the car. My girl had completely forgotten I was a front-seat dog. “It’s like Grandma gave me all the memories of my life, the life I missed. All my memories in a box,” CJ said as we drove. She was crying and I whimpered, wanting to comfort her even though I couldn’t see her.
“It’s okay, Max,” CJ told me. I wagged at my name. “I’m not crying because I’m sad. It’s just, I’m so happy to have seen them, and yet to know I missed so much, and that I could have missed so much more…”
“It’s overwhelming,” Trent said quietly.
“God, yes.” She sighed.
I curled up in a ball. Clearly, whatever was going on, they were not going to invite me out to be a part of it.
After driving for many hours, I sat up in my cage, because for the second time on the car ride the smells were familiar. Eventually the car stopped and I waited patiently in my crate to be let out, but CJ and Trent just sat in their seats.
“Okay?” Trent said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to see her.”
“Okay.”
“No,” CJ said. “I mean, whenever I see her I just wind up feeling bad about myself. Is that terrible? She’s my mother.”
“You get to feel however you feel.”
“I don’t think I can do it.”
“Okay then,” Trent said.
Well, I’d had as much of this as I could stand. I yipped in frustration.
“Be a good dog, Max,” CJ said. I wagged at being a good dog.
“So, you’re sure? You want us to leave?” Trent asked.
“Yes. No! No, I should go in; I mean, we’re right here,” CJ said. “You wait, okay? I’ll run up and see which kind of mood she’s in.”
“Sure. Max and I will sit tight.”
I wagged. The car door opened and I could hear CJ getting out. I waited expectantly when the door shut, but she didn’t come around to let me out.
“It’s okay, Max,” Trent said. I whimpered. Where was my girl? Trent leaned over and stuck his fingers through the bars and I licked them.
A Dog's Purpose Boxed Set Page 46