by Greg Kincaid
The golf cart, driven carefully by Doc’s wife, silently came to a stop near the front entrance and by the red ribbons and GRAND OPENING signs. Todd and his girlfriend, Laura Jordan, were at the door greeting guests. Todd wore his trademark red Converse sneakers and held a mixed-breed dog in the crook of his arm. From this vantage point, the small dog curiously took in her surroundings. Laura, too, had a dog with her, a large white Pyrenees mix, Gracie, who stood calmly at her side.
Doc Pelot found Todd’s boyish appearance—from his cowlick-ridden blond hair and his lopsided grin to his red sneakers—to be wholly entertaining and could not help giving him a big smile. “Hello, Todd. You and Laura are superb greeters.”
Doc was not just amused by Todd, he was proud of him. Todd had at an early age found a path of his own, loving animals. He’d stayed on that path and had gone further than anyone might have imagined. Doc Pelot, who’d mentored Todd during some of those years, felt his eyes water. He swung both legs out of the golf cart and, staying seated, held his arms open. “Todd, get over here. Now, set that dog down and give me a hug.”
Nearly everyone who met Todd would agree: you could count on him for many things of inestimable value. Hugs were one.
Todd lowered the dog to the ground and stepped forward to hug his aged teacher and friend, the dog at his heels.
“Welcome home, son. It’s been a long time coming. More work than we could have imagined and way too much money. But we’ve finally made it. Opening day.”
“It’s good to be home, Doc.” Todd reached down and patted the rather strange-looking creature that was now circling them excitedly, eager to do her own meet-and-greet with Doc Pelot. “This is Elle—the dog I told you about.”
Doc gestured for Todd to put the dog on his lap and gave her a closer inspection. He held her face close to his own and said, “How wonderful to finally meet you in person! What does L stand for anyway? ‘Lovable’?”
Todd answered, “It’s Elle, not L. E-L-L-E. It’s French! Someone at Heartland came up with the name. She figured a dog that looked like this probably needed a fancy-girl name.”
Doc enjoyed the irony. “Of course, how could I miss it?”
Doc Pelot continued his inspection, running his hands through her soft but wiry coat. She was about twenty pounds, energetic, and healthy-looking. The dog had clearly been put together by a mischievous committee. She had the coloring and the head of a golden retriever but was wirehaired and had a dachshund-like torso—with too-short legs on a too-long body.
Doc Pelot set the dog back down on the ground. He’d heard all about Elle in his regular phone conversations with Todd and knew the little mutt’s history. She was a survivor, and it was as if she held life more precious as a result of the difficult path she’d traveled.
Todd complained that Elle was overly friendly with every person she came into contact with, and he was worried that the dog had not bonded to him in particular as much as she’d bonded to all of humanity. Todd stepped around the subject, but Doc Pelot had the impression that training Elle was proving to be a difficult task. Still, Todd clung resolutely to his mission. He was determined to train Elle as a service dog.
He reached down and patted her enthusiastically, then winked at Doc Pelot and said, “Elle is the only dog I know that likes the vet.”
Doc grinned approvingly. “Smart dog. Knows what’s best for her.” He asked with raised eyebrows, “How’s her training going?”
“She’s great.”
“I’m sure she is, but that’s not what I asked.”
Before Todd could answer, one of the shelter supporters got out of her car and, after waving to Doc Pelot, opened the back of her SUV. Two dogs jumped down. They stood patiently while their owner snapped leashes on both of them. Elle took one look at her canine sisters and bolted. Exuberance on four short legs. Todd yelled, “No! Elle!” but it was too late.
Elle barreled into the two dogs with tremendous enthusiasm. Her body language seemed to scream, Hey, guys! I’m Elle! Do you want to play? In the ensuing melee, the poor woman fell to the ground, caught in a tangle of leashes and tails. She looked up, surprised. The squat, furry tornado that had descended upon her was now two inches from her face and trying very hard to get even closer. Hello! Hi! I’m Elle! Wanna play? Wanna play?
Laughing and apparently unhurt, she allowed the golden dervish of a dog to climb onto her lap. She held the little dog close to her. Elle whimpered with delight and generally acted as if it were a reunion with her long-lost Siamese twin. The lady said, “Oh, my, little doggy, I think you’re wonderful, too,” before handing Elle over to a slightly embarrassed Todd. “Missing something?” she asked him.
“Sorry. She’s a bit…” Todd struggled a moment to come up with the right word, and when he did, he pronounced it carefully: “Enthusiastic.”
Laura had a hand over her mouth, trying not to giggle. “Todd calls her Elle,” she said to Doc Pelot’s wife, who had joined her at the shelter entrance, “but I’d call her Nitro.”
“A fine, fine dog!” Doc called out to everyone.
With Elle firmly tucked back under his arm, Todd helped Doc out of the cart and rejoined Laura and Doc’s wife. Todd reached to open the front door of the new shelter for everyone. As he walked through, Doc Pelot beamed. “Looks like Crossing Trails has an animal shelter. Let’s go run it.”
The real-estate agent described their home as a “starter” house: affordable for a young couple but needing some TLC. Link whispered to his wife, “The house may be a starter, but this much work will finish me.” They bought it anyway, six months before Keenan was born. They worked feverishly, late into the nights, peeling wallpaper and debating the right gender-neutral wall color for the nursery before finally settling on canary yellow.
A little more than two years later, when Abbey was four months pregnant with Emily, they walked into the third bedroom together. She stared at the cream walls and the accumulated boxes of junk that hid the soft, but stained, beige carpet. “I have some ideas for the baby’s room.”
Link put his hands on his hips. “Me, too.”
Abbey was surprised. Link had never done much to assert himself in the decorating realm. “What?” she asked.
“Move the boxes to the basement and keep the white walls and brown carpet.”
“Really, Link, the carpet is beige, not brown.”
“The kid will never know the difference, and neither do I.”
Her lower back hurt, there were two days’ worth of dishes in the sink, and laundry was piling up. She shrugged. “Works for me.”
Keenan’s and Emily’s bedrooms were at the end of the hall, its floor covered with bumpy seafoam-green carpet that Link had tried unimpressively to lay himself. The wrinkles in the carpet mimicked irregular waves marching to a distant shore. Two years later the baseboard molding meant to finish the job still sat in the basement uninstalled.
When the children were out of diapers, Link pulled out the cracked, stained, and chipped fixtures from the hall bathroom, but they hadn’t found the money to replace them, so now the master bath was the bathroom.
On the west wall of the hall, between the always-closed bathroom door and the family room, were photographs, arranged chronologically from older shots to newer ones, as the children (and their parents) aged. The most recent framed picture was from a trip to Disney World this past June, when Keenan had turned seven and Emily was still five. The two children were smiling, holding hands—Keenan wearing his red Power Rangers T-shirt and Emily clutching her pale blue PAW Patrol backpack. Link and Abbey, wearing floral Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts, held hands and smiled, their faces carefree and slightly sunburned.
A week after they returned from Florida, having spent their small cash reserves and pushed up their credit-card balances for a once-in-a-lifetime dream vacation, the real-world implications of the governor’s state income-tax cuts hit the small family like a Kansas tornado. Link lost his job driving an asphalt truck for the Kansas De
partment of Transportation, and Abbey was forced to take weekend shifts at the battery plant for extra cash.
Unlike his little sister, Keenan was not a deep sleeper. Each evening when Link and Abbey assumed that the children were fast asleep, a familiar discussion ensued, with the same disappointing conclusion every time. Keenan tried but could not grasp the full meaning of his parents’ conversation, yet he had come to recognize the nightly rise and fall of the anger and frustration in their tones, even if the words themselves were confusing.
Back in their bedroom and unaware of their audience, Abbey took Link’s hand in her own, trying to calm him. “I know you don’t like to talk about it, but we have no choice.”
Link turned over on his side, but not before muttering, “It’s the nagging I don’t like.”
“I’m sorry that it sounds that way to you.” She touched his shoulder. “It’s just not working, Link. We’re sinking.”
“I know that. We both know that. So what do you want me to do about it?”
“Can’t we just talk?”
“About what?” Link asked, fully aware that the range of subjects was not to his liking.
“We need to talk about the DUI, the drinking.”
“Really?” Link asked. “Of all the things I don’t want to talk about, you bring that up?”
“I’m struggling with it. I’m scared.” Abbey tried to hold Link’s wrist, as if she could stop him from slipping away, going over the edge.
“You don’t need to be scared. It won’t happen again.”
“In the middle of the day?”
“It was a mistake. I get it. Please drop it.”
Abbey rolled over and muttered about what she was having the hardest time forgiving: “With the kids in the car? How could you?”
When Keenan got up the next morning, he carefully folded his pajamas and put them in the drawer, then dutifully made his bed. These were commitments Abbey had extracted from him when she purchased his Star Wars bedspread and pillowcases at Walmart. His tasks complete, he closed the door to his room and wandered into the living room. He found his mother half sitting, half lying on the sofa, with her grandmother’s patchwork quilt wrapped around her thin frame, still wearing the worn-out pink house slippers that Santa had given her last Christmas. He crawled under the quilt and nestled in beside her. “Mama, are you sick?”
She wiped her eyes on the sleeves of her stained bathrobe. She was too busy doing everyone else’s laundry to do her own. She clutched Keenan’s little hand and held it tightly. “No. I’m fine.” She used her fingers like a comb, running them through his fine, tawny hair. Abbey was forever vigilant about being honest with her children, so she reframed her answer. “I will be fine.” She realized that he was already dressed for school. The kid was amazing. So independent. One of the first complete sentences Keenan had strung together, as a two-year-old, was “Self do it.”
She put both her arms around his warm, little-boy body and held him close, like he was the most precious thing in the world. Because, after all, he was.
There was something strange that transpired when she held her children. It started the day they were born and grew stronger as the years progressed. It was an understanding. A deep, mutual commitment. One to the other. Love, sure, but more than that. She couldn’t put a word to it. It felt maternal, instinctual, but somehow otherworldly, spiritual, too. Sometimes the connection seemed so close that it hurt. Abbey wondered if the feeling was put there for a reason. Was it the primal feeling that makes mothers do anything for their children? No sacrifice too large, because no loss could be larger.
Keenan interrupted her thoughts with practical concerns. “Will you go to work today or stay home with Daddy and Emily?” Since that day when the sheriff took Keenan and his sister to their grandparents’ house, his father had been staying home, not going to work. Keenan knew from the late-night conversations between his parents that his father was in some sort of trouble. It worried him. His father’s eyes often looked funny, and frequently he said his words wrong. He wondered if his daddy was sick.
Abbey put her thumbs on the orbital bone just beneath his eyes and tried to carefully wipe little bits of sleep from his face with her poorly manicured nails. She wondered what in the world caused that stuff to form. She could tell from the circles beneath his eyes that he’d not been sleeping. The child was sensitive, intuitive. She was sure that both the children felt the pressure in the house. It was so thick now that you could mow it and stack it like hay. Abbey tried her hardest to be lighthearted. She rapped out her words, singsonging a rhyme that came from nowhere. “I go to work….You go to school.” She pressed her nose into his face. “Otherwise we both be a fool.”
“Hey, Mom!” Keenan said as he pushed his mother’s face away with his frail little hands, suddenly smiling. “That was pretty good.”
“Bet you didn’t know that before I worked at the battery plant, I was a rapper. Had me a big ol’ long Cadillac limo, four bodyguards, all the pizza I could eat, and all the beer your daddy could drink.”
“Wow, that’s a lot!”
“Don’t you know it.”
When Emily rose, she passed by her big brother’s bedroom. The door was shut, so she trudged sleepily into her parents’ room and climbed in beside Link. He pulled his waif of a daughter close to him. With his eyes still closed, he gently prodded at the figure beside him and asked, “Vegetable or mineral?” before concluding, “Neither.” He inhaled deeply. Smelled. His voice became animated, surprised. “Why, by golly, it’s a munchkin! I better call the Wicked Witch and see if she lost herself a fuzzy little munchkin, ’cause I found me a good one curled up right beside me. This one is up to no-good munchkin mischief. That would be my guess.” He gripped her little leg like he wasn’t going to let it go. “Wonder how much the witch will pay me for one ornery, lost munchkin? Maybe forty bucks on a good day.”
Emily snuggled in closer. “Daddy, I’m not a munchkin, I’m a girl!”
Link sniffed again. “You sure smell like a munchkin. Kind of sweet, like pumpkin pie and chocolate-chip cookies baking together in the oven all at once.”
“Daddy, your beard tickles. Where’s Mommy and Keenan?”
“Don’t know about Keenan, but last time I checked, Mommy was scaling the lofty peaks of Mount Self-Righteous.”
“Where is Mount Elf-Writes-Us?”
Link used his eyes to point to the ceiling. “Way high up, where the air is thin and hard to breathe.”
Emily laughed. “Like on the roof with the stars?”
“Maybe. Should we go find her?”
Emily wiggled out from his grip. “Yes. Let’s go look for her.”
Link threw off the covers. “Lead the way, fearless munchkin leader.”
When Link and Emily entered the family room, they found Abbey still on the sofa with the covers pulled nearly over her head. Keenan was in the adjoining kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal. Emily jumped onto the sofa. “Mommy, are you in here, or are you on the roof with the stars?”
Frowning, Abbey looked out from under the covers and pulled Emily in close for a morning kiss. “On the roof? With the stars? Honey, what are you talking about?” Suddenly she gave Link a sharp glare, peering over Emily’s head. Her blue eyes flashed subtle shades of hurt, tinged with anger. “What did you tell her?”
Link shrugged. “Nothing. We were just playing a game. Guessing where you might be.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t say that to the children.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m always here for these kids. Right here—when they need me. I’m not on the roof. I’m not with the stars. I’m here.” Emily sensed the grown-up voices getting louder and pulled away from her mother to go sit with Keenan.
Link rolled his eyes. “It’s always something with you.”
Keenan took the spoon from his cereal and started to rap the top of the kitchen table. “You go to work….I go to school….Otherwise we both be a fool.” He set the sp
oon down and looked to his father for parental approval. It wasn’t there.
Link stared at Abbey in disbelief and then walked toward Keenan and accused more than asked, “Where did you learn that?”
Keenan looked up casually. “Mommy.”
Link shook his head back and forth, then turned and glared at Abbey. “That’s hitting below the belt.” He spit out his words, disgusted with his wife. “Even for you.”
Emily had taken her PAW Patrol backpack to the kitchen table and was busying herself with its contents, occasionally looking up at her parents. She scooted her chair closer to Keenan’s.
Abbey sighed. “It’s not what you think, Link.”
“Pretty clear how you feel.”
“Please, Link, don’t be so sensitive. It was just a silly song I made up.”
“Yesterday I was insensitive. Today too sensitive. Why don’t you just say it: an unemployed drunk. That’s the real problem. I’m the fool. Right?”
Abbey looked at him hard. “You know what? You’re right. You are the problem.” She struggled against a thunderhead of tears, ready to burst open. “I have to work so many hours.” Her eyes welled up, and her voice cracked. “Link, I just can’t do it. Not anymore.” As the tears began to fall freely, she became even more upset, knowing that crying and fighting in front of the children was the worst. “You’re not here for us. Now I feel it’s going to be the same for me. I can’t be here for my babies. I hate it. Please don’t tell them I’m not here for them. We’ve both got to be here for them.”
Link stood there with his hands by his sides. He felt like a boy being scolded. He couldn’t feel any worse about himself. He couldn’t even get the job at the Sonic drive-in. A job he would have turned his nose up at six months back. Now he’d take it in a heartbeat. Unmoved by her tears, feeling more angry than sad, he started to walk off. “I don’t need this. Not now.”
“Link, don’t—” Abbey started to get up, to go after him, but as the front door banged shut behind him, she sank back down on the couch, willing the crying to stop. She had to get it together for these kids.