by Barry Graham
When Frank was sixteen, Tony and Becca decided to spend the summer traveling together. They had never spent any time anywhere other than the West, and they wanted a break from the heat, so they decided to explore the North, and maybe head into Canada as well. They considered taking Frank along, but they wanted the time by themselves, and they knew he was responsible enough to be left alone in the house for a few weeks. For his part, he had no interest in spending weeks in a van with his parents, and he was excited by the prospect of having the house to himself.
His friends were envious. None of them had parents who trusted them enough to leave them in charge of a house, and with good reason. Any of them would have thrown a party the first night that their parents were gone, and that was what they wanted Frank to do, but he never did. As his parents’ van pulled out of the driveway, he waved, feeling happy and nervous at the same time. When the van was out of sight, he stood there in the front yard and looked at the empty street, hardly able to believe that his mother and father were gone, and would be gone for between four and six weeks. He felt the sun burning his skin, and he went inside the house, Casey following him.
All afternoon, he wandered restlessly around the house. He would sit in the living room and read a book, then go to the kitchen, make coffee, sit at the kitchen table and read the newspaper, go to his bedroom, look out of the window. Once, he went into his parents’ room and looked at their bed, neatly made, looked at their dresser, with a framed family portrait sitting on it. He felt happy.
In the evening, he got a few phone calls from friends wanting to come over, but he told them not to. He thought they might anyway, and he decided that he wouldn’t open the door if they did. He fixed dinner for himself – fried chicken, potatoes and green beans – and ate it in the living room as he watched T.V. His mother had left plenty of food in the freezer, and there was plenty of money in the bank for him to get more food, or eat in diners.
After he ate, he washed his dishes. Then he fed Casey. He would never know why, but that was the last time he would ever feed Casey.
When he went to bed that night, he fell asleep wondering where his mother and father were sleeping. He knew they would be thinking about him.
In the morning, he got up and ate toast and jelly for breakfast. He ground coffee beans, as his mother usually did, and he enjoyed doing it the way she had taught him to. Casey barked to be fed, and Frank said, “Later. Gotta go to the store for you.”
He didn’t go to the store. After breakfast and a shower, he got in his Buick clunker and drove to Encanto Park, where some of his friends from school were supposed to be hanging out. As he drove, he listened to the Beach Boys on the radio, and he briefly considered driving down to California, but he knew he wouldn’t because he wouldn’t know what to do when he got there.
He found his friends sitting on the grass in the shade of some trees. They sat around and drank sodas and ate hot dogs, and they tried to persuade Frank to have a party at his house, and he said no, they should all drive to L.A. or San Diego together instead, and they said gas was too expensive and their parents would know they were gone. When evening came, they ended up going to a party out in the desert between Phoenix and Cave Creek. There were some girls there, and some making out took place in the shadows of the mesquite, but Frank didn’t get with anybody. He talked with one girl, and she seemed to like him, but he didn’t have the courage to try to kiss her with other people around, and when he asked if she’d like to come back to his house – that was how he said it, “Would you like to come back to my house?” – she smiled and shook her head.
Soon after that, Frank decided to head home. Everybody had been drinking beer, and he was a little bit buzzed, so he drove very carefully. He wondered if his father expected him to bring girls home while he had the house to himself.
When he got home, it was after midnight and Casey was chained up in the yard, where he’d been since Frank had left him early in the afternoon. Frank unchained him and petted him. When they went inside the house, Casey ran to his food and water bowls and lapped up all the water. Frank gave him some more water, and he drank that too. Then he barked, wagging his tail, expecting to be fed. Frank was about to feed him, then he remembered that there was no dog food left. He thought about giving him something from the fridge, some stew meat maybe, but he didn’t do it. He just went to bed. Casey whined a little bit, but he was so glad that Frank was home, he soon forgot that he was hungry and went to sleep in his usual position at Frank’s feet.
In the weeks that followed, Frank always meant to go to the store and get dog food, but he never did. He’d get up, eat breakfast, shower, dress, then chain Casey up outside and go and meet his friends. They’d hang out in the park or at a diner, then cruise Central Avenue in the evenings. If Frank ate dinner at home, he’d give Casey something from his plate, but that was all.
One night, Frank woke up in the morning and found garbage strewn all over the kitchen floor. Casey had managed to force open the door to the closet where the garbage can was kept, then force the lid off the can. He’d eaten potato peel and coffee grounds, and chewed empty plastic bags. Frank yelled at him, knowing he had no right to be angry, but feeling angry anyway. Casey wagged his tail and licked Frank’s hand, thinking Frank might feed him, but he didn’t.
A few nights after that, Frank was awakened by the sound of growling. Casey was standing on the bed, legs stiff, showing his teeth as he stared into Frank’s face. Frank stared back in shock for a few seconds, and then, as Casey took a step forward, Frank realized that Casey was about to attack him. Frank sat up and yelled, and Casey gave a snorting little whimper, jumped off the bed and ran out of the room.
Frank sat there for a minute, collecting himself, then got up, pulled on his pants, and went out into the hallway, half-expecting Casey to be lying in wait for him, stalking him like prey. But Casey was in the kitchen, sitting by his empty food bowl. Frank noticed how thin he was.
Two weeks later, Casey was little more than fur and bone. Frank no longer chained him up in the yard, because he was afraid that somebody might see him and call the cops or the S.P.C.A., or tell his parents when they got home. He tied him to the kitchen door with a leash, which he wasn’t sure was even necessary, because Casey didn’t seem interested in tearing up the furniture, or in doing anything other than lying on the floor by his food bowl. He pissed in the kitchen, and Frank mopped it up. He didn’t shit at all.
Frank found some ground beef in the freezer, thawed it, and put it in Casey’s bowl. He thought Casey would devour it, but he just licked at it, then ate a little bit, and then hacked it up on the linoleum a few minutes later.
Tony called and said they were in Albuquerque and expected to be back in Phoenix the next day. When Frank hung up the phone, he looked at Casey and wondered what he was going to do.
He set the alarm clock, and got up just before dawn. He got dressed, and drank some coffee while Casey lay on the floor. Frank squatted down and petted him, rubbed his ears, and Casey licked his hand. Frank stood up, went to the front door, and opened it. “Hey, buddy. You want to come out with me? Huh? Huh? Yeah, come on.”
Casey got up and slowly followed Frank outside. Frank could see his body trembling as he walked.
Frank went to his car and opened the front passenger side door. “Come on. Get in. Get in. Good boy.”
Casey made a feeble jump, fell back, tried again, and made it into the car and onto the seat.
“Good boy!”
Frank got in the driver’s seat, started the car, and hoped none of the neighbors were watching.
He drove with his left hand on the steering wheel while he used his right hand to pet Casey. It took a half-hour to reach the place in the desert where his father used to take him to let Casey run around and piss and shit. He wondered if Casey recognized it.
“Come on, buddy. Let’s go.” He got out of the car, and Casey followed. Frank walked off the road and onto the dirt, walking slowly so that Casey could keep
up with him. At six in the morning, it was hot already.
They walked for about ten minutes, and then Casey could walk no more. Frank picked him up in his arms. Casey licked his face, and Frank said, “Good boy, good boy,” as he walked farther from the road, deeper into the desert. When he could no longer see the road, he gently lowered Casey to the ground.
He petted Casey one last time. “Good boy. Yeah. Good boy. ’Bye, buddy.” Then he turned and walked away.
He didn’t look back. He’d been walking for maybe a minute when he heard something behind him. He turned around and saw that Casey was trying to follow him, crawling more than walking, wagging his tail when he saw Frank looking at him. Frank turned and ran. He kept running until he reached the road and fell against his car, panting. He looked back, and couldn’t see Casey. When his heart had stopped hammering, he got in the car and drove away.
When he got home, he ate bacon and eggs, took a shower, and then went to bed. He cried into his pillow for what seemed like a long time, and then fell asleep.
He woke at noon, and went to work on tidying up the house. His father called at three and said they were in Flagstaff. When his parents’ van rolled into the driveway at seven, he had freshly-brewed coffee waiting for them.
Tony and Becca both seemed larger than he had remembered them, but it was Becca who told Frank, “I think you’ve grown!” when she got out of the van and saw him. She was wearing a dress in a floral pattern, and Tony was wearing tan-colored pants and a sport coat over a bowling shirt. Goldwater was aiming for the Presidency that year, and Tony’s lapel had a button with a picture of Goldwater’s eyeglasses and the words ASK ME WHY I’M FOR BARRY.
As they went inside the house, Frank hoped the smell of coffee would cover the smell Casey had left in the kitchen, but as soon as Tony stepped inside the front door he said, “Damn, this place stinks. What have you been doing? It smells like piss or something.”
“Yeah. I tried to clean it up, but I guess you can still smell it. I have to tell you something,” Frank said as they went into the kitchen.
“It sure smells like you need to tell me something,” Tony said. “It’s even worse in here. Let’s go sit down.”
They took their coffee to the living room. Tony and Becca sat on the couch, and Frank sat on a chair.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you when you called, because I didn’t want to upset you and ruin your vacation. Casey got real sick, and he died.”
The just looked at him, and Becca’s eyes got wet.
“He couldn’t walk, and he peed in the kitchen a lot. I cleaned it up...”
“Oh, Frank.” Becca came to him. He stood up and she put her arms around him.
“Jesus,” Tony said. “When was this?”
“He was sick for a couple weeks. He died a week ago. I’m sorry for not telling you, I guess it was like lying, but –”
“Did you take him to a vet?” Tony said.
“Yeah. The vet said it was Valley Fever, and there wasn’t anything he could do.” Frank had already taken some money out of the family bank account so he could say he used it to pay the vet.
“Jesus,” Tony said again. “What did you do with him?”
“After he died, I took him out to where we used to take him for walks, and I buried him there.”
When Becca heard that, she sat back down next to Tony and began to cry hard. Tony put an arm around her, but he was looking at Frank. “I’m so sorry, son. I know how much you loved that dog. You gave him a real good life. He got to live to be be old.”
That night, the family went to Durant’s and had a steak dinner, and Frank heard the stories of his parents’ travels. He found it strange to sit in a restaurant that had fired his mother for being pregnant with him, but the guy who had fired her was long gone, and it made no sense to his parents to hold it against the restaurant. When they got home, Becca went to bed, and Tony and Frank sat on plastic chairs outside in the yard and drank iced tea. The chain that had once been used to confine Casey lay on the ground a few feet away from them.
“I’ll tell you something,” Tony said. “You just showed that you’re not a boy anymore.”
“How come?” Frank said, proud and wanting to hear more.
“Because your dog was sick and about to die, and when I called you on the phone you didn’t say nothing about it. I couldn’t even tell that something was wrong. You didn’t act like a little boy, wanting his mom and dad to make him feel better. You handled it like a man. You knew there was nothing we could have done, and you didn’t want us to worry, so you dealt with it all by yourself. That’s what a man does. So you’re a man now.”
SEVEN
When Frank was a man of thirty years, he moved into an apartment complex near the building Laura and her parents had moved into, though he didn’t know Laura.
The residents called it the Bad Boy Apartment Complex, because it was populated largely with guys who were living there temporarily after their wives had kicked them out for the usual transgressions.
Frank wasn’t one of those guys. He had never been married, and had never lived with a girlfriend, though he had dated a lot. He had been working for a couple years in L.A., tending bar and selling tickets at a sports venue, but had come to feel the same way about L.A. that his parents had, and so had returned to Phoenix. He’d stayed with Tony and Becca for a couple months, then moved into the Bad Boy Apartments. Not many of his old friends were still living in Phoenix – while it was a city that people came to, the natives seldom stayed – but it didn’t take him long to make new ones. He got a job selling used cars, which he enjoyed and was good at. Some of his colleagues would only talk to a prospective customer for as long as they thought they might make a sale, and they would sometimes flat-out insult the person and walk away from them when it was clear that they weren’t going to buy a car that day, but Frank never did that. He liked meeting people, liked talking with them, and it never felt like a waste of time even if he didn’t make a sale. Sometimes it actually worked for him – people who hadn’t decided for sure that they wanted to sign on the dotted line that day would like Frank so much that they went ahead and did it. Other times, people who didn’t buy would come back a few weeks or a few months later and ask for Frank. He never understood why his fellow salesmen closed that door on themselves by sneering at people and walking away from them.
His parents were doing well. They had saved their money and made investments, their mortgage was paid off, and, in their fifties, when they worked it was because they wanted to, not because they had to. They had bought into a Mexican restaurant in South Phoenix, and they both worked there part-time. They always talked about retiring, but they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do it. They talked about Frank taking over their part of the business, but he told them he couldn’t see himself working in the service industry again. He’d had enough of that with his stint behind bar in LA. As much as he liked talking with strangers, he didn’t like dealing with people who were drunk and impatient or just arrogant and rude. Both Tony and Becca could put with any amount of rudeness without taking it personally – but if anybody was rude to one of them, the other wouldn’t stand for it. They wouldn’t get angry, though – they’d just tell the person enough was enough, and ask them to leave. Afterwards, they wouldn’t be bothered at all. Frank wasn’t like that; he could understand it if someone had a legitimate complaint, but he always found rudeness depressing. He told his parents he liked what he was doing well enough, and they were glad.
The Bad Boy Apartments were three blocks from the building where Laura lived. She was twelve when Frank moved into his apartment, but it was another year before they met. For the rest of their lives, they would both wonder about that year, wonder how many times they had passed each other in cars, how many times they had stood near each other in the supermarket.
Laura was thirteen. She was still an only child, and she no longer had an imaginary twin sister. She didn’t want any siblings, and she didn’t wa
nt the parents she had. She only lived with them in body; the rest of her lived in better places, places she’d created. She wasn’t good in school, because nothing there interested her, but she spent almost all of her free time reading, and the books she read gave her a life that protected her from the one she had lived so far.
She might be sitting in a classroom while the teacher gave a math lesson, but in her head she was living a storybook, romantic life of adventure and travel, sunsets and ski lodges, beaches and mountain roads driven at night in sleek cars with handsome boys. And at the end of each class she knew no more than she had before it. In the evenings, instead of doing homework, she would sit in her bedroom and read whatever novel contained a life that was different than the one she had.
There were meetings with her teachers and her parents, Laura sitting there in silence as the teacher would explain that she was obviously bright but that she just wasn’t trying, that she wouldn’t do even the most rudimentary work or even pretend to pay attention. Her mother would say the right things in front of the teacher, express the appropriate concern, tell Laura that this just wouldn’t do, and if her father was there he would nod seriously. Afterwards, they’d tell Laura that she had to do better, that she was going to waste her life, but she knew they were just pissed at the inconvenience of having to go to the school to meet with the teachers. They could have tried forcing her to work harder in school, could have tried threats or bribery, but that would have meant more effort than they were prepared to make, and so nothing changed – until Mr. Crossan became her English teacher.
Laura didn’t pay any more attention in English class than she did in any other, but it was the one subject she wasn’t terrible at, just because she did so much reading for pleasure. Her book reports were poor, but not as bad as they should have been considering that she hadn’t read the assigned books. Her compositions were above average, and Mr. Crossan noticed.