CUT TO MUTT
Santiago’s tail started twitching when she sensed Lee at the end of the block, too far away to be seen. When she felt the mild vibrations of Lee’s flyer wagon bumping along the sidewalk, her tail began to thump. When she actually heard his footsteps, her tail wagged so violently she nearly knocked herself over. Of course she’d forgotten. Forgotten that Lee didn’t have time for her these days; forgotten that from his point of view, the sun no longer shone from her canine butt—that lately she was just an unremarkable mutt to her boy. Lee came through the gate and gently brushed Santiago away when she jumped up to greet him. “Not now, girl.”Santiago waited until he’d gone inside the house, then shimmied under the rhubarb leaves until only her tail showed, and waited for sleep.
SEQUENCE ENDING AS IT BEGAN, WITH A CLOSE-UP OF THE MUTT
CAMERA OUT, AAAAAND … CUT!
LET’S CALL IT A DAY, FOLKS
CHAPTER TWENTY
There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
Lee looked out his bedroom window but didn’t really “see” anything. Not the sunshine creeping up on his mother’s marigolds, turning them into orange balls of fire, not the three blue eggs in the nest under his window that had overnight morphed into three gaping beaks screaming for breakfast, not even Santiago’s thumping tail in the rhubarb patch (the opening of Lee’s eyes every morning automatically set Santiago’s tail a-thumpin’—she sensed his waking even when she wasn’t in the same room). Life might as well have been a silent black-and-white movie for all Lee noticed or cared. Black and white. Black or white. Either you care or you don’t. Simple as that.
And it wasn’t so bad, really, this not caring. More like a relief. Lee just wished everyone would stop being so overly worried about him. He didn’t like the weight of their concern. It irritated him—the worried look in Agnes’s eyes, the way Mrs. Burns had gone easy on him on his final mark (that piece-of-crap essay he’d handed in wasn’t fit to line the bottom of a canary cage, let alone earn a B-plus), the very fact that his mother was right now downstairs frying bacon for him—a treat she generally reserved for special occasions. Her little attempts to lift Lee’s spirits made him uncomfortable. Not to mention the fact that bacon was wasted on him these days. He didn’t have much of an appetite and everything tasted the same, anyway. If Gertrude had served him a bowl of Santiago’s Chuck Wagon Vittles, he probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Oh, God, Lee closed his eyes, Santiago. The thought of her sad eyes these days was enough to make him feel like the biggest crud on earth. Having the power to make or break a dog’s day was not a responsibility he wanted right now. And it’s not that he didn’t love Santiago. Love had nothing to do with this. He just didn’t have the energy to fake cheerfulness. Not with her; not with anyone. Feeling down in the dumps is hard enough, thought Lee, but trying to convince people (or dogs) otherwise takes more energy than running a marathon. Backwards!
Lee heard the MSN “ding-dong” informing him that he had a new e-mail. Terrific. He plunked himself down in front of the monitor, although he didn’t know why he bothered. These days the only stuff he ever seemed to receive was junk mail (and the odd idiotic note from Rhonda—Dear Daddy, sorry to hear you’ve been diagnosed with Zactly Disease—your face looks zactly like your butt! Heh, heh! Your Pal, Ron).
Lee checked the sender of his latest e-mail—“Angel Wings.” Again! I can’t believe this, thought Lee. How many times had he “unsubscribed” himself from this stupid mailing list. Their sappy inspirational messages made him want to hurl. Lee read the message:
AWESOME PRAYER
May today there be peace within you.
May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
Remember that friends are quiet angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly. Just send this to four people and see what happens on the fourth day. Do not break this, please. There is no cost, but lots of rewards.
Lee banged the delete key. If he was exactly where he was “meant to be,” then life was a bigger joke than he thought.
As he got up to leave, Lee noticed the tip of a familiar scribbler poking out from under his bed—The McGillicuddy Book of Personal Records. He flopped heavily onto the mattress and flipped through the pages. Man, oh man. Was it possible that he’d aged a hundred years in one week? Suddenly his handwriting looked like it had been scribbled by a six-year-old. He shook his head as he flipped through the pages of idiotic facts, figures, and records. It all seemed so weird and childish now. What thrill had he ever gotten out of being able to say that he’d bounced a stupid basketball for twelve straight hours without stopping? What did it say about him? Only this: that his longing to be good at something, anything, had turned him into a fruit-loop crazy enough to believe that any hard accomplishment had the power to transform him. Into what? No more than a basketball-dribbling nitwit, thought Lee. Embarrassing. Humiliating, even.
So that was one good thing about not caring, Lee decided. At least you didn’t run the risk of turning yourself into an obsessed nincompoop (accent on the poop). Lee dumped the scribbler into the wastebasket on the way out of his room. The smell of frying bacon in the hallway—along with Gertrude’s hope that it would bring a smile to his face—made his shoulders slump. Shoot. He didn’t take any joy in disappointing the people around him. Maybe if he just made an effort …
“Yum, bacon!” The sound of his own phony voice made him feel nauseated. No, he just couldn’t do it. “Thanks, anyway, Mom, but I’m just not hungry. Give it to Santiago.”
There followed a short silence. Then …
“You give it to Santiago,” snapped his mother, surprising Lee with her impatience. “That poor dog has been half-starved for your affection for weeks. If you can’t give her that, then at least give her this!” She shoved two pieces of bacon into Lee’s hand. It was still hot. Lee felt the heat burning in his cheeks instead of his hand.
As he watched Santiago chaw down the bacon in the front yard, tail wagging a mile a minute, slobber flying, Lee realized that there were some things that he still cared about. Or, at least, wanted to care about. What he felt on the inside was his own business. No one could touch that. But the outside was a different story. Okay, so he’d do the hard thing. For the sake of the people around him, he’d break a world record in faking it. Lee Sonny Daddy Beanpole Einstein McGillicuddy breaks an all-time world record for faking a good mood 24/7. God help me.
Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
– Charlie Chaplin
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rhonda sat on her front steps in the choking sun, chucking tiny pebbles, one at a time, at the petunias lining the front walk. She was aiming at the throats of the dopey flowers—if I get one in, I’ll go say hey to Lee. If I don’t, I’ll go in and eat some raw cookie dough. By the time she’d come to the last pebble in her hand, she realized she didn’t want to sink the stupid thing—cookie dough was sounding pretty good about now—so, of course, she sunk it.
Rhonda put her chin on her knees and stared down at the caterpillar droppings peppering the concrete steps around her feet. If she kept perfectly still, she could hear the little turds dropping through the leaves. Rhonda brushed off the top of her head, stood up, sighed, and walked toward Lee’s house. She could see him digging up dandelion roots with a dull butter knife in his front yard.
Rhonda had learned not to expect much from Lee these days, so she was surprised when he said, “Hey,” back and actually smiled. It was a weird smile, mind you—the kind you might give an annoying old relative who expects you to be sweet, and doesn’t know a darned thing about you; easier to just give ’em what they want sometimes. But weird or not, at least it was a smile. Rhonda gave a cautious one in return. For all she
knew, this was some kind of trick of his to draw her in, just to knock her down.
“Doin’ anything?” she asked.
Lee looked at the butter knife in his hand and the pile of dandelion roots by his knees and gave her a “duh?” look.
“Yeah, well,” she said, “can’t ya think of anything better to do than that?”
“Like what?”
Rhonda thought about saying something totally insulting just then, so he’d be forced to chase her, just like in the old days. Instead, she played it cool.
“I dunno, bike ride or something?” She waited for him to laugh in her face.
“Sure.”
Sure. That’s what he said, just like that. Not “Take a hike, pipsqueak,” or “In your dreams, dumbo.” Just, “Sure.” This was too easy. It made Rhonda nervous. And anyway, now that he’d said yes, she realized she didn’t even want to go for a bike ride with Lee McGillicuddy. She’d only wanted to pester him a bit.
But Lee was already up and brushing the mud from his knees as he headed toward his bike. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at Santiago. Might as well kill two birds with one fake stone, thought Lee. He whistled for Santi like he used to, and she came bounding toward him.
Lee slipped Santiago’s leash over his handlebar and walked his ten-speed over to Rhonda’s side of the street. He waited at the end of her front walk. Rhonda wondered what she could do to get out of this, but couldn’t think of a thing. She pulled her own bike from the weeds by the fence and got on.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Name it,” said Lee.
Oh, man, what was up with him? When was the last time he’d ever let her decide anything? Now she was sure he was cooking up something evil. Well, good, thought Rhonda. I like it better that way. She rode ahead, with no particular destination and tried to prepare herself for the prank he was surely about to pull.
When she’d ridden for almost twenty minutes, and found herself nearly at Roblin Boulevard, she looked behind, half expecting to find him gone. He was there, though, and as soon as he noticed her looking, he gave her that idiotic smile again. The next time she looked around, the smile was still there, as if pasted permanently on his face. It was fake. You didn’t need to be Einstein to figure that out. And it infuriated her. To have Daddy McGillicuddy, of all people, following her blindly like some mindless, blockhead puppet disgusted her. And disgust always made Rhonda merciless.
Fine, vacuum head, you’re going to follow me like some idiotic puppy, I’ll lead you so far your legs’ll fall off from pure exhaustion. And she picked up the pace and rode like the wind. She made it all the way to the tracks at Wilkes Avenue before realizing that if she were going to force Lee’s legs to fall off, her own would be hitting the dust in the process. As she slowed her pace, she could almost hear the muscles in her calves gasping for breath and cursing her name. This was ridiculous.
Rhonda squeezed her hand brakes for all they were worth and sent gravel spraying everywhere.
Lee burned to a stop just inches from her back fender. Rhonda swung a leg over the crossbar of her boy’s bike, dumped it in the gravel on its side, and marched over to Lee. She was about to let him have it, give him a piece of her mind, tell him to stop acting like a loser and more like the self-respecting jerk she used to know. She intended to knock the wind out of him with her words, give him something to think about, maybe even use a few choice swear words. She opened her mouth to do just that, but what she saw on Lee’s face stopped her cold. Rhonda had seen the same thing in her own mirror once or twice in her life. She knew what it was, that clean little trail cutting its way through the Wilkes Avenue dust on Lee’s cheek. She knew the telltale signs of a tear. Oh, no. No no no no no no no. No way. This isn’t what she’d bargained for. She’d known Lee for a long time. She guessed that meant she must care about him. But dealing with his stuff—anybody’s personal stuff—was something she wasn’t made for. There were shoulders in this world meant for crying on, and hers definitely wasn’t one of them. Rhonda had always imagined that if her shoulder got wet, she’d melt away like the Wicked Witch of Oz. “Help me. I’m shrinking, I’m shrinking!”
Rhonda closed her mouth, turned around, pulled her bike from the side of the road, and got on.
“What are you doing?” called Lee, out of breath.
“Going home. I forgot, I have some things to do.” She started to ride, then looked back. Rhonda could see Lee standing on the side of the road, taking a puff from his asthma inhaler with one hand and patting Santiago’s head with the other. Suddenly she felt painfully sorry for him. Great. Almighty, frickin’, frackin’ great. Rhonda turned her bike around and slowly pedaled back to Lee.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Don’t wish me happiness. I don’t expect to be happy all the time … It’s gotten beyond that somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor. I will need them all.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Lee was less than thrilled to see Rhonda heading back. He’d been doing the good-humor thing for less than an hour now, and already the weight of it felt heavier than the asthma currently pressing down on his chest like an elephant. Truth be told, he wished Rhonda would just go home, but when his asthma got this bad, it wasn’t a smart idea to be left alone in the middle of nowhere. A few trips to the emergency ward in the middle of the night had taught him that.
“You okay?” asked Rhonda.
“Yeah,” said Lee, feeling the Ventalin already easing some of the pressure in his chest. “I just need to rest a bit.”
Lee and Rhonda looked across the tracks at miles of open field once used for farming. The only thing to break the monotony of the blowing prairie grass was an old weathered barn in the distance, with a swayback roof that surely sagged even lower than Lee’s spirits. Looked like one good gust of wind could have reduced its sorry old gray bones to a heap of rubble. They headed toward it through the long grass.
“I should have brought water,” said Lee, after they’d been walking for what seemed like forever. Santiago’s tongue was nearly touching the ground (which didn’t seem to matter to her; she looked happier—more quenched—than she had in days).
“Looks like there’s an old well over there,” said Rhonda. “Let’s see if there’s any water in it.”
Lee knew that there was about as much chance of water in that well as good cheer in the cockles of his heart right now. But he followed Rhonda anyway, stepping over a rusted barbed-wire fence and picking his way through the long, stiff grass. He knew Santiago would come out of this day five pounds heavier in burrs alone, and he also knew who’d have to spend hours cutting them out of her fur. As much as it wasn’t in him to devote hours to someone else’s well-being when his own was in such a cruddy state, he knew it would probably be a good thing. Santi deserved better than what he hadn’t been giving her lately.
“Cool,” said Rhonda when she reached the well. Bricks were missing from the rim in places, the mortar crumbling, and there were cobwebs across the mouth of the hanging bucket, but it was the kind of thing you might take a picture of, thought Lee, if you were that way inclined. Lee liked old things. He had an instinct to leave them undisturbed—let Time be the artist and work its changes. But Rhonda was different. She liked to fiddle. She liked to leave her mark on the world as sure as Santiago was leaving hers near the corner of the old barn right now.
“Look at this,” she said, cranking the handle of the shaft and watching the bucket rise. She dropped a stone into the well—no wet plunk, just a dismal echoing clink as the rock hit the bottom, and from the time it took to land, Lee judged that this well was good and deep.
“You’re outta luck, girl,” called Rhonda to Santiago, who by now was checking out gopher holes. Lee sat on the edge of the well and rested his head against the post. He watched Rhonda nosing around the well. He was glad she’d found something to take up her attention
. Lee knew how awkward his moodiness made her feel.
“I’m going to check out that barn,” she said. “Anyone coming?” Santiago was the only one to take her up on the offer. Lee watched them bound through the knee-high grass toward the barn and disappear around the corner. He could hear Rhonda chattering away to Santiago. He hoped she wouldn’t go and do something stupid—put her foot through a fool floorboard in the loft or something. He didn’t have the energy to fish her out of a mess today. Lee lay in the grass near the well and closed his eyes.
The sun felt surprisingly good. Lee tried looking at the inside of his eyelids—brilliant blood red when he squeezed his eyes tight, mellowing to a puke-orange with firefly flashes of blue and yellow when he relaxed them. And if he looked far enough down to where his lids just barely met, he could see a strip of blue-white light that glowed like the end of the Luke Skywalker laser he used to shine from his bed at night. Lee hadn’t done this kind of eyelid watching for years, and strangely, the white light filtering into his brain felt like something he’d needed for longer than he knew. By the time he half-realized that he was slipping into a dream, the light had filled his entire head, and was working its strange magic on his sleepy brain …
Lee drifts and drifts until he isn’t sure if the white light in his head is a state of mind, or a taste, or smell, whether it is his mother’s lips upon his forehead, or a soccer ball sailing slow-motion into a net, a foot crossing a finish line, or the lingering note of a violin. Or even the difference between the quiver of a violin’s string and the humming of his own vocal chords. All Lee knows is that he is drifting, drifting, upward, like a kite. He can feel the reassuring tug of a string attached to his shirt, though, as if someone—feet planted firmly on the earth—has hold of the other end. And when he feels the string slowly reeling him back to earth, he wonders if he isn’t a kite at all, but a fish at the end of a line in an upside-down sea of clouds.
The McGillicuddy Book of Personal Records Page 9