by Paul Griffin
“Appreciate the warning.”
Guard twitches a little smile. Nervous type, dot your t’s, cross your i’s, but he’s all right. Boo jumps up and licks the guard through the bars, and the guard jumps back. “I don’t know why they picked this dog,” he says. “My opinion, they stuck you with a lemon. He seems plumb loco to me.”
“He’s a little creampuff.”
“That head,” the guard says. “I don’t know if it has a bit of brains in it. Look at it. It’s a boulder all right.”
Boo tackles me to lick me.
Guard nods. “Good luck with that little creampuff.”
I stock up on dog biscuits, extra-salty peanut butter, Cheerios and boloney, and march my Boo into the bathroom and shut us in.
Two hours later I’m sitting on the bathroom floor with this giant Boo curled in my lap. He whimpers.
“Sooner you pee, sooner we get out of here.”
He drops his monster head into my hands and looks at me with those huge brown eyes. His tail stump whirls.
I’m training him to spot pee in the shower, a big old crumbly tile step-in stall. I put newspapers around the drain. I use the Money section because rich folks can stand some pissing on for once.
I trained many a dog to pee in the rain drain up in the hutch. When they were sick and injured, they didn’t have the strength to make it down to the street. Winter too. Gets subzero out there, a dog will burn his paws on the sidewalk. Road salt isn’t good for them either. Dog needs a fallback plan. All else fails, he has the drain.
I dip a dog biscuit into extra-salty peanut butter.
Boo tries to snatch the cookie. I make him sit and give paw and push back on his forehead to make him take the cookie real polite. He inhales it, laps at his nose to get at the salty peanut butter covering it. Now I set down his water bowl. He drains it dry, whimpers, and digs at the door to be let out to pee on his tabletop.
I get on all fours and sniff the floor like a dog looking for a choice spot to pee. When I get to the drain, I wag my butt like, Hey, this here’s the perfect spot to pee. I circle the drain, unzip my fly, and pee into the drain.
Boo cocks his head and sinks to the floor and groans.
Comes a knocking.
Boo just wags his tail and cocks his head at the door. Pits make rotten watchdogs. They love people too much.
Guard says through the door, “I see you on the camera. Like I said, it’s blurry, but . . . I know this sounds batty, but from a top view, it looks like you are acting like a dog, making water over that shower drain.”
“That would be correct.”
Stretch of quiet, then: “You all right?”
“I’m just fine,” I say.
“Mind-wise, I’m saying. How you doing?”
“Real real great, thank you. How you doing?”
More silence, then: “Why you getting all dog-like and making water over the shower when you got a perfectly fine toilet right there?”
“Nothing at all to worry about. This is just part of the normal training.”
“Well, all right then,” the guard says, but I can tell by his voice he thinks I’m some flavor of mental.
(Friday, August 14, dinner shift)
CÉCE:
This new guy is refilling the bar ice. “Hey, Céce.”
“Oh, yeah, hey Bobby.” He goes to my school, year ahead of me. I don’t know him except from Marcy. They’re in marching band together. Marcy’s like second cymbals, and I think he plays the tuba or whatever. “Didn’t recognize you with the buzz cut.”
“My mother left.”
“Huh?”
“She joined an ashram out in Washington State. She forced us to wear our hair long. The minute she left, my brother pulled out the clipper.”
“No, hey, it looks good.”
He shrugs. “It’s a lot better for the summer anyway.”
“Marcy get you the job?”
“Saw the sign in the window. I feel really bad. After Mister Apruzese hired me, Marcy quit.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Right before lunch started. Your mother was pulling double duty. I don’t know what I did to make Marcy so mad.”
“I’m sure you didn’t do anything. I better call her. Sorry about your mom.”
He shrugs. “What are you gonna do? You gotta keep going, right?”
Somebody just punched me in the throat. He’s shorter and nowhere near as nicely shaped, but for a moment there he looked just like him, sad and strong at the same time.
There’s a hurricane in the background. “What! Talk louder! I’m in the shower!”
The girl showers with her phone? “I said, why did you quit!”
“I can’t look him in the eye! Bobby! He was one of my FB #1’s! He saw the post! The Lefty thing!”
“So, what, you’re never leaving your house again?”
“I’m gonna go to the east side, move in with my sister! Start over, you know?”
“Regina’s gonna let you live with her after the epoxy on her Maxi episode?”
“Not Regina! Nancy said I could sleep in her craft room!”
“Marce, you can not live with Nancy! Nancy tweets more than you do! I see two anorexic Napolitano girls on their phones, billions of largely untouched, festering take-out Chinese cartons all over the house! Death by Twitter! This is not good, Marcy! Come live with me and the Mella! You’ll have the whole basement apartment to yourself ! You can smoke all the pot you want down there, and Ma will never know!”
“It’s really tempting, but I gotta get away from, like, here! Céce, I gotta go! Maybe I’ll see you around the mall or something, okay?” Click.
Everybody’s disappearing.
I swing the dough to the pizza refrigerator. I stop midway, look over Vic’s shoulder, at his computer. He’s frowning as he reads to himself. The war. It’s intensifying again. The U.S. is in the middle of launching a major offensive.
My mother comes in with rainbow-colored hair. “Howyas doin’?”
Vic taps his mouse pad, and the crossword comes up to cover the news. “Good, Carmella. Good. I love your hair, sweetheart.”
Work is slamming with a waiting line going out the door. Bobby tries to help, but he’s kind of klutzy and drops a lot of stuff. Ma’s tables are calling me over. “Where’s our food?”
Ma’s back in the kitchen. She’s chewing gum like a cow on crack. The kitchen stinks of Bubblicious Savage Sour Apple. She keeps picking up the wrong plates.
Vic works the stoves. “Carmella, howya doin’, hon?” “Awesome,” she says. “What’s up?”
Serving Ma’s tables and mine, I look like I walked in from a rainstorm, just what you want from your waitress, sweat rolling off her beak into your eggplant parmigiana.
Then it hits me. The gum. I check the dining room. She’s not there, not in the bar, not in the kitchen. I catch her coming out of the walk-in with some grated. Behind the cheese wheel, there it is, the glass, Ma’s bright pink lipstick on the rim. I dip my finger and lick it.
You have to get really right up in someone’s face to smell vodka on them, especially when they’re chewing Savage Sour. I get right up into her face. She’s adding a bill—trying to. I grab her arm and whisper, “Ma, go home.”
Bobby and Vic are looking at us. Bobby’s confused. Vic just looks sad. “Céce, that’s enough now,” he says.
“What’s your problem, Céce?” Her face is red.
I hiss through clamped teeth, “You think we’re idiots, Ma?”
“Back off, sister. I’m serious. You want me to call you out on your stuff in front of everybody? How many times you disappear a shift? You think Vic can’t count how many slices he sells, how many he buys?”
“I’m entitled to one free meal.”
“Half a cheesecake isn’t a meal.”
“Ma, you’re sneaking vodka in the middle of your shift.”
“How many times did you try to see Mack? Huh? Even after you knew he was blowing you off, y
ou still went back. We all have our little things we need to do to get through, okay?”
“Just go, you stupid selfish drunk!”
The table chatter dies like when you turn off the TV in the middle of America’s Best Dance Crew. I hear the ceiling fans shimmying, nothing else.
My mother gulps. Shakes her head. Her face turns red, then gray. “The cornbread,” she whispers.
“The cornbread?”
“They don’t like it.” She holds up a breadbasket. The Parmesan sticks and white rolls are gone, but the slightly burned loaf of Carmella’s Crazy Confection remains untouched. No, one piece has a nibble missing. I warned her that folks might not be too jacked up to munch on cornbread whose second main ingredient is sourballs. Decorative icing in the shape of snowmen that are often mistaken for goblins? What does she expect?
She pulls her checks out of her apron, gives them to me.
“Where you going now?” I say.
“Home. Isn’t that what you told me to do?”
“Carmella, let me drive you,” Vic says.
“No, Vic. Thanks. I’m sorry, everybody.” She heads out, stops when sees the customers staring at her. She turns around and slips out the back, into the downpour.
The rain never lets up, and the people keep coming. Vic has to cook and serve. The bartender helps. Bobby is a little better by the end of the night, filling in at the stove when Vic is out on the floor. He cooks second staff meal too, and it’s pretty good, but nothing like Mack’s.
After we clean up, Vic hands Bobby his keys. “Drive yourselves home. Bring the car back tomorrow.”
“I thought you had to be seventeen to drive at night?” I say.
“Hardship license,” Bobby says.
“Cool. I mean sorry.”
He drives slower than an old lady. Trips over the curb as he walks me to the door with his umbrella. What sixteen-year-old carries an umbrella?
“Thanks.” I almost ask him in for a piece of cake, but I stop myself when I remember that boys don’t like to come into my house.
“Night.” He runs back to the car. He’s chubby and he kind of waddles. I flash forward thirty years and see him in a recliner in front of the TV, eating ice cream. He looks happy.
I go to the kitchen for a Slim-Fast, click on the light to find Carmella Vaccuccia sitting on the stepstool, her shorts around her ankles. She’s peeing.
“Um, whacha doing there, Carmella?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Do you mind?”
“Ma, you’re not in the bathroom.” Right about now is when I would start yelling at her to go back to AA, that I’ll go with her again, like me and Ant used to in the oh so good old days, but frankly, I don’t have it in me anymore. If she wants to kill herself, I can’t stop her.
“I’m just so worried about him.”
“He’s gonna be fine, Ma.”
“Not Anthony. Mack.”
I help her upstairs, make her drink three glasses of water with Alka-Seltzer, and I tuck her in. She won’t let go of me. “You’re magic,” she whispers.
“You’re nuts.”
“You’re doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“You’re making your way through.” She strokes my face and kisses my eyes.
She shrugs. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“That’s a lie, Mel. It’s a lot lighter just before dawn, and then the sun comes up and scorches you.”
THE SIXTY-FIFTH DAY . . .
(Saturday, August 15, after midnight)
MACK:
We’ve been in the bathroom since noon. I’m panicking now. Boo paces, holding in his water. He will not go near that drain.
“Boo,” she says. “Pee.”
Boo circles the roof and squats over the rain drain and pees.
Céce lets out with a scream and that little snort that’s in her laugh sometimes.
Knocking.
“Yep?”
“Mack, I’d like to talk with you a minute, if you can spare one,” Wash says.
“Yessir. Course.”
The door cracks open and Boo blows through the slot, fairly knocking over Wash. He lets a good half gallon go on that tabletop. When he’s done, he hops down to me, sits nice and gives me his paw.
Wash clears his throat. “How’s the paper training coming?”
“Working out a few kinks, but we’re gettin’ there.” I get to cleaning up the mess. Can’t get Wash to stop helping me. He’s in his street clothes, hair like he got woken up with a late-night phone call, like Tony’s that night he came to save me and my pittie girl out by the highway. Wash’s wife has got to hate me. Tony must hate me more.
Boo grabs the paper towels from my hand to get me to chase him.
“Now, I’m not criticizing you, okay?” Wash says. “I’m just a bit concerned about you holing up in the bathroom with that Boo there for so long.”
“Wash, trust me, this is the only way to get this variety of dog to spot pee.”
“Spot pee?”
I explain it to him.
He listens real close. When I’m done, he nods. “Well then, I am satisfied that you know what you are doing.”
“I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t. Let’s have a little sit-down.” He pours from a Sprite bottle into two cups. “Son, you don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Oh, I want to do it all right.”
“It’s a lot of pressure—”
“No pressure, Wash. I love it. Gonna be fine.”
“I feel I might have put you in a jam, you know?”
“Sir?”
“Your young lady friend there. Got to be hard on you. You have a lot going on, trying to work that out. Now you have the dog here. Are you sure this Boo here is trainable?”
“Positive.” I look at Boo. On my look, he jumps me and knocks me out of my chair and pastes me with slobber. I tell him “Sit,” and he sits on my chest, all ninety pounds of him. I brush his coat with forked fingers. It calms him down. “Wash, could I ask you something along the lines of a question?”
“Go ahead, son.”
“Your wife,” I say. “What color is her hair?”
He blinks a couple, and then he sips his soda. “Well, she dyes it blond-ish.”
I nod. “You ever see those folks who comb the beaches with those metal detectors? This couple I saw, they would go to the shore every night.”
“How’d they make out?”
“They’d find bottle caps and rusty nails, like that, but never anything good.”
“Hm.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Not sure why I told you that.”
“Well, let’s figure it out. Why’d you tell me that?”
“I guess I was just thinking, like, when you tell your wife a secret, and you have no doubt that she’ll keep it forever, that’s kind of like finding buried treasure, right?”
“I believe it is,” Wash says. “I believe it is exactly that.”
“How many kids you all got, Wash?”
“Three. I’m sorry, two. My oldest died in the war. Just last year.”
“I see.”
“He was a chopper pilot. Twenty-eight years old. His craft went down secondary to equipment failure.”
“I’m real sorry, Wash. Sorry I made you talk about it too. Him, I mean.”
“You didn’t make me, and I don’t mind talking about him, so don’t you trouble yourself. His name was Ezekiel.”
“I like that name a ton.”
“We nicked him Zeke.”
I nod. “I have a friend training to go over there. Army. He’s got to be into his seventh week of basic by now. Probably the best dude I ever knew.”
“How’s he making out down there?”
“Dunno.”
Wash nods.
We sip our Sprites and you can tell there’s nothing left to say, so I say, “Maybe I ought to get back to work.”
“All right then.”
“Wash?”
“Yup?”
“Thanks for worrying about me.”
“I’m not worried, and you shouldn’t be either. I’m a hundred percent certain you are going to do well by Boo here. Now, you go and train your dog as you see fit.”
I feed Boo more peanut butter. He drains a bowl of water. He scratches at the door to get at his tabletop. I do my thing, act like a dog, pee into the drain, and Boo just slumps flat and groans. We fall asleep curled into each other. I wake up to Boo licking my eyes.
I wonder what I would do if she came to visit one last time.
Boo whimpers to be let out of the bathroom.
(Saturday, August 15, morning)
CÉCE:
I dust off my bike and hit the road. Steamy rain escorts me to the VA hospital, uphill all the way. I lock my bike to the handicap rail that zigzags to the main entrance. Not that anyone would steal the piece of crap. Anthony put it together from junk parts. I have a sissy bar.
“I want to volunteer.”
“Need to beef up the résumé for those college apps, right?” Nurse Nasty says.
“Truth?”
“If it’s available.”
“I want to be a good person.”
“You’re not now?” she says.
“No. Now I’m a self-centered mope.”
“Interesting. What are your skills, besides moping?”
“I’m good at making pizza. Maybe I could teach a class?”
“Or maybe you could wheel the veterans out to the garden and sit with them and read the paper to the blind ones.”
“Cool. I don’t mean cool.” I take the application to the waiting room and turn to this guy sitting at the end of the row of chairs. “ ’ Scuse me, you got a pen?”
He’s not in a chair but a wheelchair. In a hospital gown. “Is it winter yet?” he says. He’s staring out the window, at the lush trees snapping around in the hot wind.
I have to get out of here.