by Paul Griffin
“That’s horrible,” Ma says.
“We’ll take it off as soon as we get him inside.” The guard tells us to wait in the vestibule, and he heads back to the van.
First out is the dog.
Oh. My. God.
Ma and I claw each other’s arms. “He’s so cute.”
“Huge.”
“Look at that tongue.”
“Look how fat!”
“How pretty.”
“That tail.”
“Those eyes.”
The giant one-eared pit bull sits and waits, looking into the van. The other guard helps the prisoner out. Tall thin dude in a baggy orange jumper. That hood. A white mesh sack with patches over the eyes. Ghostly. The guard has him by the arm and coaches him as he turns him toward the house. Toward us. Shackles clink on the driveway. The driver has the dog on a leash, but he doesn’t need it. The dog walks behind the prisoner. The shorter guard helps the dude up the porch steps into the house. “All right,” the guard says, and the prisoner stops. The dog peeks from behind the prisoner’s legs to look at me and cock his head. That tongue hanging out of his mouth. When I smile, his tails whirls.
“Ladies, my name is Sergeant Washington.” He indicates the prisoner with a nod. “My friend here would like to have a look around your house. Would that be all right?”
“Please,” Ma says.
“Hold still now, son. Close your eyes and open them slowly, till they adjust to the light.” Sergeant Washington takes off the hood.
Suddenly the house is freezing. And dark. Airless. I think I’m breathing, but I can’t be. My lips and fingers are numb. I half fall into the couch. I know where all the heat went now: into my stomach. It’s cooking something up down there, making squishing noises—loud—as it twists. I’m going to cough blood.
Ma yells at Sergeant Washington, “What the flip is this? You think this is funny? Seriously, why are you doing this?”
The sergeant squints at her, then at Mack. Mack’s mouth is moving, but I can’t hear him. He’s talking to me, though. I read his lips, and he keeps saying, “Céce.”
“You come heavy,” I say.
“What?” he says.
“You’re finally inside my house, and you come in chains.”
“I’ll kill him,” Ma says. “Victor Apruzese is a dead man.”
“Let’s all settle down,” Sergeant Washington says. He’s calm. The other guard is too, but they’re resting their hands on their gun butts. “Now,” the sergeant says, “nice and easy, what all’s going on here?” His eyes dart from Ma to me to the other guard to the kitchen door to Mack. “Son, how do you know these folks?” He turns to Ma. “Ma’am, are you the one who makes the goblin breads?”
“They’re snowmen,” I whisper, my eyes on Mack, his eyes on mine. Ma explains how Vic must have duped us. As she talks, Mack and I stare. His face is hard, tight lips, jaw clenched. Two tears, his, spike the carpet. “Tony?” he says. “But he’s still training, no?” His eyes drop to my chest.
The stickpin. I still wear it every day.
I’m a fool. I’ll never be more embarrassed in my life. Letting him see that I still love him, even after he treated me like I was weeks-old garbage our last visit—or what I thought was to be our last visit. But this is the one. This is the final time I’ll be with him. I’m sure of it now. The chains on his arms and legs. I can’t bear to see him like this.
“The dog?” I say. “What’s his name?”
Mack looks down at his feet.
If he did, I’ll never forgive him. I make a clicking sound, my tongue against the inside of my teeth, the way he taught me. The dog looks my way. “Boo,” I say.
The dog comes to me. He rolls into my feet and over onto his back for me to scratch his stomach. But I don’t. The new Boo does a wiggle worm dance for me. I back away.
“How could you?” I say. “How could you do that to her? To me?”
“I did it for her,” he says. “For you. Céce, please.” He’s stepping toward me, reaching out to me, his arms stunted by the chains and the guards’ pushing them down. They’re pushing Mack back into the wall, trying to calm him. He’s crying out to me. I almost can’t hear him. Now I’m the one drowning in white noise, the whoosh of a UPS truck flying by the house. He yells from where they have him pinned to the door frame, as I back away, “Céce, hold up, just for a second! I gotta tell you something!”
No, I can’t hear it, not again, no matter how nicely he says it, the truth he needs me to know so we can move on, what he tried to tell me in the visiting room: that we can’t love each other anymore.
My legs are shaky as they hurry me through the hall, to the front door, out onto the porch, toward the street.
“Céce?” Ma says. “Céce!”
I’m running to the corner, pulling the stickpin from my shirt, throwing it, pulling my phone, waiting for it to boot up. Hurry—dialing—before I change my mind. Ringing. “Bobby, you wanna go to the movies?”
(Saturday, September 12, ten past noon)
MACK:
“Wash, I swear I didn’t know—”
“I know you didn’t,” Wash says. “Let’s everybody just stay calm now. It’ll be all right.”
“What do you want to do here, Wash?” driver says.
Wash sizes up Mrs. Carmella. She’s got her arms crossed, and she’s tapping her foot fast. She’s glaring at me. “I think we’re okay here, Jack,” Wash says. “Why don’t you go on out to the front porch and wait to see if this Vic gentleman shows up.” Wash backs up a bit to the kitchen doorway, turns half away, pretends to check his phone.
I force myself to look Mrs. Carmella in the eye. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“You ought to be. Do you know how worried sick we’ve been about you? Do you know what you put her through? Not even a word from you. That poor girl, laying her heart out for you, going all the way over there? You were awful to her, Mack. You were mean to my daughter.”
Boo leans into my leg. His tail whirls, shaking him, shaking me. “I had to be mean to her.”
“No. Hey, look at me. No. You didn’t have to hurt her like that. You could have explained it to her. You could have let it wind down slowly. You should have given her the time to take it in, that you two had to let go.”
“It would have hurt too much, the slow fade.”
“You’re not giving her enough credit. She’s a smart girl. A strong woman.”
“Not her. Me. It would have hurt me too much.” I know I’m right too. Seeing her just then? Her soft brown eyes? Sucking her lips to hide their shivering? I saw my lips on hers.
The stickpin. Still wearing it after all this time.
How many times have I fallen asleep to the memory of us, and there she was right in front of me, and I didn’t even get to hold her hand, to tell her what I need her to know?
If I’d touched her, even for a second, I would have started it all over again, the lie that someday we can be together.
Boo nudges my hand. He just has to show me he’s a whirly-tail Boo.
“I meant I was sorry about Tony, ma’am. Can I just peek in on him and say hi?”
Tony’s name gets her misty and madder. “He’s still down south, in rehab. The two of you. What’s wrong with you? Throwing everything away, for what?”
Boo crosses to her and leans into her leg and looks up at her with that dopey tongue sticking out of his mouth. His tail is spinning so fast you almost can’t see it. She bends to cuddle him. She squeezes him. “Look at his eyes,” she says. He licks her head like it’s ice cream.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry about everything.”
“Let’s get you some cornbread,” she says, or I think that’s what she said. I can’t really focus on anything but the door. Damn me, but after all that pushing her away, I pray she comes back.
The weeks of seeing her only in my mind, the details of her fading.
That little gold fleck in her left eye—I can’t ever forget that. I h
ave to burn it into me to carry me through the nights. I need to look into her eyes, just for a minute, to kiss her one last time, no matter what it costs us.
(Saturday, September 12, an hour and a half later)
CÉCE:
Me and Bobby have a seat between us. In the empty seat are two jumbo buckets of popcorn. I’m eating, not tasting; watching, not seeing. Popcorn shrapnel speckles Bobby’s gut. He spills his soda bucket. “Yup. Yup. There I go again. Sorry about—”
“It’s fine.”
I just had to pick a comedy. I should have picked the tearjerker, for cover. The last person I want to talk with about Mack is Bobby. I don’t know how I’m not losing it in front of him. Fortunately, he’s really into the movie. His tongue is sticking out of his mouth.
I can’t see the screen. My eyes are blurry with the memory of Mack in my living room and the movie I want to see: The guards fade away. Carmella fades away. Mack’s chains fade, and now it’s just the two of us—the three of us. The new dog. The new Boo. We run. We escape. We’re together, forever.
Maybe they’ll give us one last minute alone together. How could they not?
He was supposed to be at the house from noon to two, and then they were taking him back.
“Bobby?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Don’t tell me what time it is.”
He checks his phone. “It’s one forty.”
“Don’t let me leave this seat, Bob.”
He stands up to make room for me to get out. “You look like you have to puke,” he says.
I’m heading for the aisle. “Trip me.”
He trips himself as he waddles after me with a near-empty popcorn bucket. “Here, barf into this.”
I’m running through the lobby. Out the door. Into the warm afternoon breeze. Once I ran a mile in eight minutes. Twenty pounds ago. I’m sprinting for the bus, pulling away . . . gone, but I’m still hauling. My lungs are like, Are you insane?
I flag down an unmarked cab, the only kind that comes around here, but the drivers are fast. Twenty minutes. I’m going to make it. I can be there for him—
“—here for you,” he says. “Céce, you can tell me anything and everything.”
“Not everything. Not this.”
“Yes, this.” We’re in the hutch, just after being together for the first time. It’s July 19, and I’m shivering.
“When I was nine. When that dog bit me in the alley that time. When it bit me in the face? I wasn’t alone.”
“All right?” he says. “Who—”
“Marcy. Marcy was with me. She said we shouldn’t cut through the alley. That the old man who lived in that house had a pellet gun, and he was crazy enough to use it. He’d shot Marcy’s sister for cutting through his yard. One of the pellets was still in her ass fat. I laughed. I thought that was funny for some reason. Like it was something that happened in a cartoon, not in real life. The radio said the temperature was a hundred and two but felt like a hundred and sixteen with the humidity. It was either cut through Pellet Man’s yard and be home in the air-conditioning in three minutes, or go all the way around the block and be home in ten. I can’t believe I was so stupid. All for seven minutes.”
“I would’ve done the same,” Mack says.
“No. You would never do what I did that day. The guy didn’t even seem to be home. No car in the driveway, shades drawn, outdoor light left on from the night before. So I hop the fence. Marcy’s calling me an idiot and telling me to come back. I’m laughing at her, telling her to have fun melting as she hikes around the block. I fill the dog’s water bowl, go to kiss its head, the dog latches on and won’t let go. Marcy hops the fence. She’s jerking on the dog’s collar—”
“And the dog spun on her and latched on to her arm,” Mack says. “A dog tied up like that? He’s cornered. If he thinks he’s under attack and he can’t run, he has to fight. That’s why you grab the back legs and lift them high. Marcy was done for the minute she grabbed the dog’s collar. You didn’t break her arm.”
“Break it? It was destroyed. Do you know how many surgeries she had? The rods and pins—”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault. It went on and on. The dog won’t let go of Marcy’s arm. Marcy’s screaming for help, and what do I do? I leave her there. Now the idea that Pellet Man is going to shoot me doesn’t seem so far-fetched. And in my mind he’s not shooting pellets, but slugs. I hopped the fence and ran, Mack. Covering my ears to block out her screams. After she warns me not to cut through, she hops the fence to save me, and I left her there.”
“You couldn’t have pulled the dog off her.”
“I could have run for help. Instead I ran because I was afraid I was going to get in trouble, for trespassing, for getting bitten in the face, for getting Marcy bitten. I hid in somebody’s hedge and just froze there. The police came ten minutes later, and then the ambulance got there ten minutes after that. Ten minutes of being with that dog. And all the while I’m in that hedge, sucking the blood through the cuts in my lips until I threw up.”
“Céce.”
“She never made me feel bad about it, either. She talked about it like it was something that just happened to her, not something I caused.”
“You were nine years old.”
“I deserted her.”
“No,” he says. “You’re a friend to her.”
“Some friend.”
“You take care of her. Getting her the job at the Too. Being on the phone with her all the time, listening to her, hanging with her.”
“Out of guilt.”
“You’re a friend to her. To me. That’s gold.”
Gold so bright I see it after I close my eyes. The sun. I feel it falling. I’m running out of time. The cab has moved a quarter mile in the last ten minutes. The traffic on the highway stretches as far as I can see. “If you get off the highway and take the side streets it’ll be faster, I think.”
“More mileage, though,” the cab driver says. “It’ll be cheaper to stay on the highway.”
“Please, the side streets, hurry. How fast can you get me to my drop-off?”
The driver revs into the service lane, toward the exit ramp. “If the streets are clear, five minutes.”
I’ll make it with time to spare. I’ll be in his arms, telling him what I need to tell him, face-to-face. Looking into his eyes as I say what he never gave me the chance to say.
(Saturday, September 12, 1:45p.m.)
MACK:
Mrs. V. is holding my hand. She has to sit close to me. The chains that run from my wrists to the chain around my waist are short. I’m happy she’s friends with me again, but I wish it was Céce’s hand in mine.
I don’t blame her for not coming back. I was weak, wanting that last kiss with her. It’s better this way, that the last time we touched was that long kiss in the rain, at her front door, the night before everything changed, when we had hopes, when we felt safe with each other, keeping each other’s secrets.
I’m in the basement apartment, where Tony will be. I’m sitting at his desk. Boo lays his giant head in Mrs. Carmella’s lap for petting. She cradles him. Wash is in the corner, talking soft into his phone.
It’s quiet down here. You can’t hear the traffic too much. On the side of the house Vic built a ramp that leads up to the street for when Tony and Boo go walking. Wheeling. We practiced with Mrs. Carmella playing Tony in the wheelchair. Boo followed behind, except when he got to a narrow hallway. Then he went onto his belly and crawled under the wheelchair. I can train him out of that, no problem. Couple of other things I need to do to get him ready to live in this house, but I can knock them out in the time we have left together. Eight days ought to be enough time.
Eight days.
“Mrs. Carmella, I saw the utility shower when I peeked into the laundry closet off the hall there. I trained Boo to make water over the grate. You rinse it down right after.”
“You trained him to pee in the drain?”
“It’s like a cat box. For when folks are out of the house and Boo is alone. Or if Tony’s having a tough time getting outside to, like, walk Boo.”
“The burns,” she says. “Apparently they’re worse at night. He’ll be on painkillers. For a bit.” Boo nudges at Mrs. Carmella and gives her his big brown eyes. “That tail,” she says. And then to me: “Show me.”
We take Boo to the drain. “Boo, pee.”
He cocks his head and gives paw.
“Pee.”
Gives other paw.
Mrs. Carmella touches Boo’s muzzle, points to the drain. “Boo, pee.”
Boo trots in, makes water over the drain, and hops out for his cookie reward. Cuffed, I have a hard time getting it out of my chest pocket. Mrs. Carmella helps me and leaves one of her hands on my heart while she gives Boo the cookie.
“Amazing,” she says.
“You have a special dog here, ma’am.”
“Mack, look at me. You’re amazing.” She’s reaching out to me.
I look past her to Wash. He pretends to be studying his fingernail beds. He gives me a quick look and a nod that it’s okay.
In me is this feeling of lightness. It’s a one-way hug with my hands chained, but she’s hugging me fierce. Her arms are strong from years of carrying trays full of food.
“Mack, all those times we invited you to come in, you never wanted to?”
“I wanted to.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I close my eyes and remember the walk-through with Boo. The pictures on the walls, on top of the TV, in windowsills and on tables. So many pictures. The faces. The Grumpy that Céce was always talking about. He’s not grumpy at all, smiling in every picture. Pictures of Tony and Mrs. Carmella and Céce and sometimes Vic and plenty of Marcy too. I swear Céce looks so pretty in every picture. They’re in different places, the family. Snowy places. Beach places. But they’re always together no matter where they are. There’s a feeling of forever in those pictures, on these walls, in this house. Especially the kitchen. The pictures cover every inch of the kitchen walls—