Two Good Dogs

by Susan Wilson

  North Adams, home of Mass MoCA, has turned modern art into the last hope of a town whose industry has fled. Cody asks to be dropped off at a former factory, now an art studio complex. There are a couple of guys in there who don’t seem to mind her hanging around, although she knows they think of her as more of a pet than an art groupie, but that’s okay. Cody does coffee runs and cleans brushes, keeps quiet and doesn’t ask stupid questions when she does speak. Kieran and Mosley, a pair of hipsters in ironic black glasses and paint-spattered skinnies; the one building installations that defy gravity and the other, Mosley, working in what he calls mixed media, which looks to Cody like anything he feels like doing. Cody just likes the smell of paint, the pungent scent of an acetylene torch.

  “What up, Cody?” Kieran is standing on a three-step stool, wire cutters in one hand. “Hand me that coil of wire, would you?”

  Cody finds what Kieran wants. The reel of thin copper wire is surprisingly heavy and it takes both hands to lift it up to him. He measures a length, snips it, and begins weaving it into his sculpture. Even though she has yet to discern the actual subject of this wire and felt and found-object sculpture, Cody has to admire the way Kieran seems to know exactly where he wants to attach the wire, with never a moment’s hesitation, as if he has this blueprint in mind. His stuff reminds her of a bird nest she once found, filled with bits of dog hair and paper. Her own feeble attempts at creativity are more organic. Certainly less interesting.

  Mosley saunters in, his blue eyes at half-mast. “Buffalo Bill, how you doin’?” His flannel shirt carries the lingering scent of his afternoon joint. Mosley suffers from some illness that allows him to use medical marijuana. He prefers his dose in the old-fashioned method, forgoing the edible for the combustible. Cody thinks that it’s a little strange that the scent most reminds her of the old guy who owned the fruit stand near their old house in Holyoke. He’d sit outside all day, smoking tiny black Italian cigars that looked more like licorice than a White Owl and stank like sin.

  “Hi, Mosley. I’m good. Can I help with anything?”

  Today, Mosley is good for a couple of make-work tasks, and pretty soon he has Cody set up cleaning brushes and sorting them into proper coffee cans. He’s older than his studio partner, and kind of looks like more of an old-school hipster, like Elvis Costello, than the trendier-looking Kieran. He sometimes slips Cody a buck or two for her help. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he barely notices she’s there, and other days he takes a real interest in her—talks about how he stuck to the dream, how he’s going to have the best collaborative around, how he’s just waiting for that right patron to discover him. Cody shakes back her lank hair and jabs a handful of brushes into a can.

  “I’m going to need a ride home. That okay?”

  Neither Kieran nor Mosley say anything for a moment. The LakeView is hardly on their way anywhere, a better-than-twenty-minute ride into the hinterlands. Cody holds her breath, but she doesn’t look at either man, pretends an unconcern she doesn’t feel. She really doesn’t know what she’ll do if they say no, that they can’t cart her home today. In the summer, when the light persists into late evening, it’s no big deal to walk the hour or so it takes to get back to the hotel, but now, well, it’ll be dark in an hour and those blind curves and sidewalkless country roads are scary. Not like the well-illuminated city streets she grew up on. These Berkshire roads are treacherous and still foreign.

  Worse-case scenario, call Mom. Suffer the lecture. Get a ration of shit from the old lady. Hope that she gets distracted by something and quits yelling. Even Cody knows that the tone of voice her mother uses couldn’t really be called yelling. She kind of wishes that she would raise her voice, give Cody a proper tongue-lashing. Skye falls mostly into the world-weary, hands-up-in-surrender tone of someone afraid of really saying what she means. Cody hates it that her mother treats her like a child, like a delicate, ego-sensitive kid, not wanting to inflict bruised feelings on her by speaking her mind.

  If only Skye knew just how fragile Cody really was, how vulnerable. She thinks that, six months after the fact, Cody is still upset by the death of her father, that her behavior is from grief. Randy was murdered less than a week before they moved into the LakeView. Cody’s let her mother believe that she’s mad only because Skye went ahead with her plans to move, as if Randy’s death were of no importance. Skye offers half-felt apologies, explanations for why it had to be that way, explaining over and over that they had to stay the course and the freight train was unstoppable, the handoff from the previous owners needing to take place on the arranged day. The Closing, always spoken of with a capital letter, couldn’t be put off. She doesn’t say it, but Skye implies that Cody and Randy weren’t all that close, that maybe some of this angst is just from being a thirteen-, now fourteen-, year-old with a sense of drama. She is grieving, of course. But it’s for her life before the Secret took control.

  It’s not that. No, Cody’s whole being is brittle from the Secret. The weight of fear. Of pretending. The Secret is kind of like her shadow. Like Peter Pan, who freaked out when his shadow was stolen, Cody grips her secret close, knowing that if it becomes separated from her, she’ll die. It’s become an entity. A physical part of her, like her stomach or her eyes. As she can suddenly be aware of her heart beating or her stomach gurgling, or her intestines cramping, she is made aware of the Secret hiding within her.

  “Can you? Take me home?” Cody folds her arms across her middle. Throws Mosley a beseeching look.

  “Yeah. I’ll take you. But you’ve got to make arrangements for transportation home before you come back here again.” Mosley passes her another handful of brushes.

  “I will, I promise.” It’s a lie, but, really, what choice has she? Cody can’t imagine not coming here to this studio, soaking in the atmosphere of creative juices, the adult companionship. Her peers are idiots. Pink-loving, Hello Kitty–toting, anime-fixated children. Innocents. Here she listens to the music of grown men who have evolved: Springsteen and Costello, Knopfler and Emmylou Harris. Radiohead. Pearl Jam. Old stuff, ancient history, but still surprisingly enjoyable when set as the backdrop to the work itself. Wire and found objects are defined by a sound track of classic rock and heavy metal. Swashes of color on a rough plank informed by vintage grunge.

  “But I can’t take you all the way. I’ll drop you close, but not at the door.”

  “Of course.” Cody rubs the sable tip of a fine brush against her cheek, smiles. Mosley’s reluctance to get close to meeting her mother seems so understandable. Why would he want to get caught up in Mitchell family drama? Or be assaulted by the well-meaning but clueless friendliness her mother has been known to thrust on unsuspecting strangers; her professional friendliness.

  * * *

  The late bus has passed by the LakeView without stopping. I’m standing at the window, staring out to where the road curves around the property and up into the hills. No Cody. No surprise. The phone call from the principal, Mrs. Zigler, also came as little surprise. An afternoon driving around, wasting precious gas on searching for a daughter I knew full well would make herself impossible to find, has left me with heartburn. Not actual heartburn, but an all too frequent emotional sensation lodged in my chest that makes me wonder if I really could treat it with Tums. It is the sensation of losing control of a fourteen-year-old. A child who has grown from being a sunshiny charmer into a sullen renegade. It goes beyond—well beyond—ordinary adolescent hormonal acting out. Cody simmers. She’s that old-fashioned pressure cooker sitting on a too-hot burner, the release valve rattling noisily. Except that Cody isn’t noisy. She’s quiet. Very quiet.

  It’s closing in on dark now and I have no idea where she is or when she will return. I’ve learned long ago that repeated texts and phone calls go unanswered, like throwing pebbles into the sea. Nothing. Unlike so many of her generation, Cody disdains the cell phone culture, and today it’s clear that she’s left hers home. My one allowable call alerts me to the abandoned phone caught in t
he tangle of sheets on Cody’s bed, with its singular ringtone identifying me as the caller. I’ve gotten over being miffed at the Wicked Witch theme, choosing instead to think it funny. Too clever by half. Surrender, Dorothy!

  What kid doesn’t cling to her phone? It was the consolation prize I bestowed upon her when we moved so far from her friends, a way to keep in touch; a way for her to have some freedom of movement without my abnegating parental authority. All I ask: Just keep me informed. Her disdainful reply: Of what? I have no life here.

  Today, as so often, words, like those pebbles, plink beneath the surface and disappear.

  CHAPTER 2

  If the weather hadn’t been so rotten, Adam March would have pressed on, making his destination of North Adams and the Holiday Inn. But the rain was coming down in sheets and the visibility was almost nil. Climbing into the Berkshires and into the teeth of a thunderstorm along a winding and completely unfamiliar road had him gripping the steering wheel of his trusty Jetta and gritting his teeth in a pantomime of Man against Nature. Behind him, oblivious of the conditions, slumbered his constant companion, his pit bull, Chance.

  Blurry headlights shone in his mirror, someone impatient with him, no doubt a local who knew where every switchback was on this mountain road, someone who wanted this flatlander out of his way. Ahead in the murk there glowed a white sign with LAKEVIEW HOTEL 2.5 MILES in red lettering, an arrow beneath the name, pointing to the right. He could barely read the bent road sign, identifying this as Meander Road. Another glance in the rearview mirror and those headlights were closer than ever and clearly attached to a very large truck. Impulsively, Adam signaled the turn, gunned the Jetta up the steep incline of Meander Road, and pointed the car toward the LakeView Hotel.

  At the sound of the turn signal, Chance lifted his boxy head, pushed himself upright, then yawned.

  “Hey, what do you say we stop now? The weather isn’t improving and I’m beat.” Hearing no dissension from the backseat, Adam took that as a yes.

  * * *

  “Sorry. We have a no pets policy.” The girl behind the desk pushes her horn-rimmed glasses back up on her small nose, takes a swipe at her bangs. She looks at Chance, then at Adam. There is a scrim of regret in her wry expression.

  “Look, I’ve been driving for hours, the weather is terrible, and I just need to stop.” Adam pushes up his own spectacles. “He’s a good dog. Very well behaved, in fact; he’s a trained therapy dog.”

  “Where’s his vest?”

  To Adam, this girl seems a little young to be manning a hotel reception desk. “In the car. I’ll get it. Will that help?”

  “I’m not in charge.”

  “Can you please get whoever is in charge?”

  The girl shrugs. “She’ll be back in a minute.”

  Adam smiles and pats Chance on the head. “It’ll be fine, old man. You bet.”

  Chance runs his massive spade-shaped tongue over his dewlaps, making a sloppy sucking sound. He flops down on the threadbare rug in front of the reception desk. Adam takes in the shabby collection of mismatched chairs, a small scuffed-up maple table set in front of the massive picture window overlooking the now-invisible view, a fan of tourist brochures on it. Historic Deerfield, Mass MoCA, Mount Greylock, Tanglewood. Shopping!

  A tall woman with fair hair tucked up in a hasty bun pushes through the office door with a bundle of wet towels in her arms. She doesn’t immediately see Adam standing near the table.

  “Mom.” Louder, more exasperated: “Mom.”

  “What is it, Cody?” The woman spots Adam. “Oh, sorry.” The harried look is quickly replaced by a professional smile. “Welcome to the LakeView.” She dumps the armload of wet towels behind a door. “How can we help you?”

  “This guy has a dog? He wants to stay here?” The girl sounds like his daughter, Ariel, at that age, all uptalk; sentences always sounding interrogative, never declarative. Not so much petulant as insecure. His daughter, a sophomore at college, his only family now, the voice on the other end of the phone once or twice a month.

  It’s been three months. How is it possible that a quarter of the year has passed so quickly? Ninety days, give or take. Adam feels less like he’s on a trajectory toward the rest of his life and more like he’s still looking backward and wondering why Gina isn’t there.

  * * *

  Adam March sat in the visitor chair, both hands holding the lifeless hand of his wife. He was unshaven, exhausted, too tired really even to weep. Too tired even to think. There was a meditative quality to this silence, to this thoughtlessness. The opposite, he supposed, of mindfulness, which was a popular buzzword flying around. To him, mindfulness was an excuse for utter selfishness. He couldn’t focus on himself; his self no longer existed in the way that it had a mere hour ago, when his whole self had been lodged in battle against this robber, this thief in the night who had stolen Gina from him. Now that the battle, her battle really, not his, was over, Adam was unable to gather a single thought. Soon they would come in to ask him to let them take her away. This hospice room, this place, had become a second home to him, a comfort. What would he do without these people? Whom would he turn to now?

  A weight bore down on his leg, the boxy head of his dog, Chance. “Oh, Chance, what are we going to do without her?” He wasn’t even embarrassed to ask this out loud.

  Chance lifted his head from Adam’s leg to nudge his fingers where they still gripped Gina’s. He made a sound, a soft rumbling noise in the back of his throat. He sat, looked at Adam, then raised his muzzle and howled.

  The sound was what Adam would have made himself if he could. The dog’s ululation was the perfect accompaniment to Adam’s grief. As always, the dog, his constant companion, had said the right thing. Adam extricated his fingers from Gina’s, set her hand gently on the side of the bed, straightened the bedclothes for the last time. Five days before, they had taken away all of the mechanical devices, the hiss and bip of the monitors and oxygen apparatus silenced for the first time in a hundred days. She looked nothing like the healthy, strong-willed, opinionated, loving, guiding light he’d married four years ago. This skeletal form was not how Adam wanted to remember her; he wanted to remember her as she had been. How they both had been. How she’d kept him to his better self.

  He knew he should make some phone calls, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud. He knew he should let the hospice workers finish their task. He knew he should take Chance out for a break. They had both been in here, in this tiny, airless room, for what seemed like years, not less than a week. It should have happened sooner; it should have taken longer. He wanted it to be over; he wanted it never to end. He went to the casement window, shoved back the curtain. It was broad daylight, and that surprised him. How could the sun have risen like it did any other day? He looked out over the Boston skyline. A jet etched a perfect descending arc toward Logan, filled, no doubt, with people glad of the journey’s end. A safe arrival.

  There was a soft tap on the door. Adam realized that it had been more than an hour since Gina was—what was the term they used? Pronounced. As if death were a new word that needed practicing. He’d been there, and for that he was grateful. She hadn’t slipped away, as he’d feared, while he was out of the room. Every time he took Chance out to pee, Adam had rushed back to this sanctuary of waiting, anxious that she’d have passed while he was paying attention to inconsequentials, like eating a plate of eggs handed to him by one of the staff.

  Adam moved away from the window and opened the door. “Come in.”

  The hospice nurse gave him the kind of smile that he’d been dreading, a gentle, kind smile signifying that, for the first time in his life, he was the object of pity. He, Adam March, who once was the object of disgrace, until Gina and this dog named Chance saved him from himself.

  * * *

  “Sir?”

  Adam pulls himself out of his thoughts, walks back to the tall reception desk, puts on his best smile. “Yes, if it’s at all possible, I�
�d really appreciate not having to go back out in that.” He thumbs toward the picture window. The rain is coming down so hard now that it cascades off the porch roof, a shimmering curtain in the lights.

  Chance gets to his feet, shakes himself, and opens his massive jaws in a canine simulacrum of a smile.

  “That’s some dog.” The woman has that look on her face, the one the uninitiated most often wear at the sight of the chewed-up pit bull. Brindle-colored, one ear half gone, scars lining his muzzle, along with black crescents of scar tissue on his chest and flanks, Chance displays his past on his body.

  “He’s a sweetheart.” Adam has had this conversation over and over.

  “I’m sure he is, but we have a policy.”

  Adam puts one hand on Chance’s smooth head, pulling the patience of the dog into himself. It’s what he’s learned to do when he feels the annoyance or frustration begin to swell. Touch the dog to deflate it. “Well then, can you recommend another place close by?” Adam has a good eye for desperate and he can see that this place isn’t exactly turning away droves of would-be customers.

  At that moment, a bolt of lightning sears across the window, followed almost immediately by the concussion of thunder, close enough that the windowpane rattles.