by Jack Ketchum
Pat’s on the staircase in an instant as soon as she hears that ungodly sound from down below, standing there on the landing half-dressed in bra and silk slip as she watches Roman scramble out of the house with the dog, Caity, hard at his heels until she skids to a stop at the door and Pat calls first his name and then, furious—taking the stairs two at a time—hers.
“Caity! Goddammit! Damn you, Caity!”
The dog’s head snaps back. Freezes her in her tracks.
There’s a look in her eyes she’s never seen before and has never expected to see in a million years, an anger that more than matches her own. The dog’s gaze pins her there. She can’t move for the life of her. She begins to tremble. It’s not the cold.
She hears Roman’s car squeal out of the driveway.
Caity sits.
Slowly, the coiled muscles seem to relax. The eyes grow softer. She blinks and blinks again.
And then she trots over. Sits in front of her and looks up into her eyes. It’s her I want to be petted look. Pet me. She knows it well.
To hell with that.
She isn’t having it. Her hands are still shaking.
No pets for you, bitch, she thinks. Fuck you. She turns and stalks back up the stairs.
The dog doesn’t follow.
Toot-toot. Toot-toot-ta-toot.
He pulls into the driveway, happy as a clam.
How happy is a clam, anyway? And why?
Bart loves this car. It isn’t the Red Baron, no, instead it’s a dark-chocolate-brown but a beautiful bird it is, its owner has cared for it well and the poor sonofabitch must have been way down on his luck, he got it for a song.
He toots again and Pat comes to the door and so does Caity, pouncing out in front of her and bounding across the lawn, Caity delighted to see him and he, just then, delighted to see her too, delighted with everything on this fine sunny afternoon until, as he eases open the driver’s side door, she hits the door with her front paws and he hears the long screeetch of her nails across the beautiful chocolate high-gloss finish.
“Fuck, Caity!” he yells and pushes the door violently open all the way so that she falls to her side onto the driveway with a yelp, landing on her shoulder and he feels guilty about it instantly because it must have hurt but he’s pissed off too, dammit, his brand-new car, his brand-new baby, and he stoops to examine it as she stands on unsteady legs and seems to examine him too.
He wipes at the door. The pale white marks come away easily beneath his sleeve.
Not a problem, thank god. A little polish is all.
He turns and raises a hand to her.
“Sorry, Caits. I’m sorry, babe.”
She backs away. Then turns and plods weary-looking toward Pat and the open door.
Pearl wants to see the dog so she’s brought the dog. And thinking on it, it’s probably a very good idea, it’ll work with what she has to say. What she’s told the police and told her family. What she’s asked the police to please not relate to the press, to which request they’ve graciously complied.
So that to Pearl and the public at large this will be news.
The dog had resisted the collar and leash at first but not for long and lies seemingly quite content now at her feet at the long mahogany conference table with Pearl at the other end and Kitty, the assistant, seated next to her with ballpoint pen and pad, pert and scrubbed and poised for notes.
“We were just talking air dates,” Pearl says. “I’m liking the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.”
“What about Kate Hudson and the vegan guy?” says Kitty.
“Bump ’em. Sound good to you, Patricia?”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“You go much later in that week, you start getting into people’s travel time. Home for the holidays, right? Don’t want to do that. We’re going to want Bart and Robbie too for this one. The entire family. They going to be okay with that?”
She smiles. “They’ll be fine. I can’t promise they’ll say much. They’re not exactly used to the limelight, if you know what I mean.”
“They’ll say enough. And they’ve got a good look together. Two of your basic ordinary guys, easy to relate to. They’ll complete the picture.”
“If you say so.”
“’Course it’ll be mostly you and me. Your story, your charity. Get you off and running. You ready to run, girl?”
“That I am. But listen, Pearl. About the story.”
“Yes?” Pearl is squinting at her, distrustful now all of a sudden. Pat guesses it comes with the territory. In her business you don’t like surprises.
“You wanted to see Caity. You want her to be part of this. Well, she is part of it. A bigger part than you know.”
She pauses for effect. It works.
“Okay. Speak to me.”
“This hasn’t come out in the press. But Caity needs to be a part of it, Pearl. It’s her tragedy too. Like, you know . . . a kind of fall from grace.”
“Excuse me? How so?”
“It’s got to come out. What happened that day. Caity’s role in it. I figured, give the story to you.”
“I’m not following.”
Caity gets up and trots over to Kitty, who smiles and sets the pen on the table and reaches down to stroke her back.
“She likes to hear her name, doesn’t she,” Kitty says. “Good doggy.”
“Well, we all know how she saved Delia from the fire.”
“Sure,” says Pearl. “So?”
“That morning. The morning of Delia’s fall. It wasn’t just an accident. It wasn’t just a fall. It was Caity who knocked her down. Into the car. Into the lid of the open trunk.”
Caity whines, ears flat. Kitty stops petting. They look at her.
“It was Caity who killed her, Pearl. She saved her from that horrible burning, saved her only to be the cause of her death and my god, oh god! We were so wound up that day and so . . .”
Caity vomits all over Kitty’s shoes.
Dimly we feel we’ve heard something like this before, a memory of another time, in some sad other lifetime, heard but not understood, yet now it’s clear what Pat is trying to say and do and the wrongness rises up and pours out of us and Kitty is saying oh! oh! and Pearl is saying jesus! and goddammit! Pat says and rushes to where we back away from the pool of sick in front of us and pulls on the collar, wrenching at our neck and hurt and angry we snarl and turn and snap and there is flesh between our teeth, Pat’s wrist smelling of flowers with the gold bracelet dangling and she kicks us hard between the ribs and we shout out once and let go.
“Goddammit! She fucking bit me!”
“She didn’t break the skin,” says Pearl. “You’re okay. You’ll be okay.”
They watch her slink away beneath the table.
“She ever do this before?”
“Never! No. Jesus!”
“Kitty, let’s clean off your shoes, girl. Take ’em off and go get some towels.”
She nods and does as she’s told.
When they’re alone Pearl regards her across the table. She shakes her head, sighs, gets up, and walks over to the polished cabinetry on the wall behind her, opens one of the cabinets to a long row of bottles, selects one and a pair of highball glasses and sits back down again.
“Glenfiddich. You like?”
“I like. Please. Thank you.”
She unscrews the bottle cap and pours.
“This true about her pushing her?”
“They were roughhousing. Yes.”
Pearl hands her the glass and they drink. She still feels shaky and there’s a dull pulsing circle of ache all along her right wrist.
“And you never told the cops?”
“I told the cops. I asked them not to let on to the media. They didn’t.”
“Makes for a good story though, doesn’t it.”
“In its way, I guess it does, yes.”
“So I’ll ask you again. Is it true?”
“I told you it was, didn’t I?”
&nbs
p; “Yes you did. Problem is, I think you’re full of shit. I smell lies, Patricia. I’ll tell your story, though. I like a good story. And there’s truth there, about the way the world works, the way it bites you in the ass sometimes, so to speak. What’s that line? ‘Never trust the teller, trust the tale,’ And the charity’s a pretty good idea. So yeah, I’ll help you tell your damn story.”
She drinks and then smiles.
“Not sure about having the dog on, though. Have to think on that. I’m not sure Caity likes you.”
Pearl reaches down and Pat sees that Caity’s moved to her side and lies at her feet. Pearl scratches her ear.
“Not sure about that at all.”
SIXTEEN
Put down the fucking magazine, Bart. I’m telling you. She bit me!”
“She did? You’re really serious? Let’s see.”
He turns down the page on “The Ten Best Cars of 2015” in Car and Driver magazine so he can go back to it later—still wondering if, as they seem to be saying and if the Tesla S60 is any indication, electric cars are really the wave of the future—and hauls his feet down off the couch.
“There’s nothing to see. It was two hours ago. She never broke the skin. But she fucking bit me, Bart. She’s got to go.”
“Go?”
“She doesn’t work anymore. I want her out of here.”
“What are you talking about? Put her down? Bring her to the vet? Over one bite? Kinda drastic, isn’t it?”
“No. The vet’s no good. But she doesn’t fit the story, Bart. One minute she’s all Miss Contentment, Happy Dog, with Delia barely cold in the goddamn ground. And the next minute she’s chasing people, biting people, throwing up on somebody’s shoes for god’s sake. Nasty Dog. Neither one works.”
She sits down beside him. Leans in close. Sometimes, he thinks, when her eyes start jittering like this, she kind of scares him.
“But Sad Dog. Think about it. Dammit, that does work. Dog so sad that she runs away. Runs away because the loss is just too much for her, she’s hurting too deeply. Without Delia, she’s lost.”
“You mean, just dump her?”
“Yes. Dump her.”
“That’s pretty fucking cruel, Pat.”
“Life’s cruel, Bart, or haven’t you been paying attention? Look. There’s two outcomes here. One, we keep the dog and she makes us look like fools, prancing around happy all the time or else barfing on peoples’ feet or biting somebody. Or two, she runs away. And we’ve got poetry.”
“Dump her. Just like that.”
“In the desert. You take a drive into the desert. You go for drives all the time. Just bring her with you and let her go somewhere. Hell, for all you know she might even survive out there, or somebody’ll come along and pick her up. Just let nature take its course.”
It feels bad. She’s their dog, for heaven’s sake. Not just Delia’s. She’s the family dog. It might be smart in the long run, the scenario she was proposing, and yes, she might be right, it could play pretty well. They’d get the sympathy vote again for sure. But it still feels mean and bad.
“And you want me to do this when?” he says. “Now?”
“Tomorrow morning. After Rob goes to school. He can’t know. The boy’s too sensitive and he could never keep his mouth shut. He has to believe what the rest of the world believes. She just took off. Ran away. End of story.”
“Jesus, Pat.”
“Nobody can know. Just you and me.”
She takes his hand and gives it a tight squeeze, then simply holds it awhile.
Just you and me. She could always do this to him, he thinks. No matter what.
“In the morning, then,” he says. “I don’t like it but okay. Fine. If you say so. Pour me a drink, would you? A stiff one. No ice. And you got a cigarette? I’m out.”
She smiles.
The voices have stopped. Our body is tired, so very tired. We stare a moment down the hall, then climb the stairs to the bedroom and the open window and what is outside the window is comfort and safety, a single blanket in the cloudy starless night which is truly home in this familiar, once-loved place that no longer is a home, from which so much love has gone. If we could cry, we would. We settle in once again. One last time.
A full moon glows pale and dull behind the clouds.
The moon reminds us.
We have a voice.
Across the street and three doors down at a house painted turquoise a woman sits beneath her porch light, a woman who once waved to us, friendly, from amid a crowd and who looks up from her book now startled, in wonder, as we rise to our lament, as we begin to howl.
He’d found the model online and thought it might be something different for him and it is. No fenders, no grilles, no tailfins, no cockpits, no propellers, no fuselage. No hard edges. Instead, a canopy fringe, spoke wheels, a fitted floor carpet, gas lamps. An eighteenth-century doorless horse-drawn surrey with spindle-back upholstered seats. Minus the horse.
Maybe he’ll build a horse out of wood, like those Greeks in The Iliad.
It was pricey but worth it. The precise workmanship on the raw tender plywood, the tiny attention to detail along the rails, the spokes of the wheels narrowed down just so—and it’s fitting together like a charm.
Whoever designed this cared.
He is easing in the foot-rests with Lady Gaga belting out “Bad Kids” through his headphones when above the thumping bass and don’t be insecure if your heart is pure he hears it distinct and ghostly outside his window from the rooftop along the other side of the house where Caity and Delia always sat nights and he tears away the headphones and listens, the notes sliding high and mournful as though to surround him in his room, digging deep—and he thinks, I’ll build this one for you, Deal. Just for you. I’ll make it a beauty.
SEVENTEEN
We’re thirsty but Robbie provides. He sets down his backpack and cleans and rinses the bowl and fills it with cool fresh water.
“There you go, girl.”
He remembers the kibble, pours some into another bowl and sets it down. The kibble is welcome. We’ve refused wet food for days now so he doesn’t bother. He hefts the backpack to his shoulder and is out the door.
The house is silent.
When we’re finished we go into the living room and lie down on the couch. We try to sleep. We’ve hardly slept all night. A fly is buzzing against the window. It’s a big fly. Sluggish, fat. Its body thumps against the glass, the morning sunlight beckoning. The fly is trapped by its own ignorance, mistaking light for freedom.
We wait for the house to wake.
Way too much to drink last night and I’m getting old, he thinks, I fucking well pay for it these days.
His headache is a three-alarm fire the instant he rolls out of bed and his only consolation is that she’ll be paying for it too, she’d had as much as he had. He weaves on unreliable legs to the bathroom and pops three Aleve, slurping water from his equally unsteady hands cupped against the stream and splashes his face and neck while he’s at it.
Not enough. Not even close. Hair of the dog is what he needs.
Hair of the dog, he thinks. Jesus.
Is he really going to do this?
It had been Boodles last night and you’d think he’d know better by now, fucking gin could kill you no matter how pure it is so he goes downstairs to the kitchen in his T-shirt and boxers for a Glenmorangie straight up and chases it with a glass of water from the tap. Then another. Pours a second and sips it this time, feeling the headache start to recede and the buzz begin to take its place. He gulps another glass of water and considers coffee but the smell of brewing coffee risks serious nausea.
A shower.
Upstairs she is still asleep. A shower is not going to wake her. He does not want to wake her.
He turns the water on as hot as he can take it and pulls the curtain and steps inside. It occurs to him that he used to do some of his very best thinking in the shower. Prepare for the day, reflect on the day before. He
doesn’t anymore. He just soaps and rinses and dries and gets the hell out of there. On this particular morning he figures that’s maybe all to the good.
Don’t think. Just do.
He dresses in a hurry. She groans in her sleep. He goes downstairs.
In the kitchen again he digs out the engraved silver flask and the funnel and fills the flask with a pint of one-fifty-one vodka instead of the Glenmorangie because the flask imparts a harshness to the liquor and you don’t ever want to bruise the smooth finish of a decent single malt.
Never mix, never worry is not one of his mottos.
He has to call her three times to the door leading out to the garage come on, Caity, come on, girl, we’re going for a ride when once is normally quite sufficient and when she finally does appear her tail and ears are lowered and her eyes downcast as though she’s done something wrong, her guilty look, but he doesn’t want to wonder about that, he just wants this finished, over and done with.
He opens the driver’s side door and waits for her to jump up and in as usual. Instead she sits there staring as though unsure, as though the car were something unfamiliar to her.
Weird, he thinks. She loves to ride.
“Go on, girl. Hop in. I’ll roll down the window so you can get some of that good fresh air.”
She huffs a deep breath and climbs inside over to the passenger side.
He slides in behind the wheel and hits the garage door opener and starts up the car. The Firebird purrs beneath him.
Backing out he gives her a glance. She’s looking straight at him. Sweet-looking dog.
Damn.
“Good pup,” he says.
As they approach the community gate he presses the console button for the passenger-side window. She sniffs the air but doesn’t stick her head outside. Seems focused on the road ahead.
“This is not on me,” he says. “Not on me.”