Two Good Dogs

by Susan Wilson

  The innkeeper and Adam simultaneously chorus “Jesus! That was close!” and then laugh.

  “Please don’t make me go out in that.” Adam pulls his glasses off and shoves them into his breast pocket. Smiles. Touches the dog again.

  “Guess I’d be pretty mean to do something like that. Okay. You and the dog can stay, but I have to put you in the least-nice room.”

  “Just so long as it’s grounded.”

  “I know, we’re up high, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate the view in the morning.” She hands him a clipboard with a registration form attached, a blue pen. “If you would just fill that out. Sign the bottom.”

  Adam dips into his jacket pocket for his wallet, extracts his credit card, bends to the task of filling in the registration form while Chance patiently sits at his feet. He hands the clipboard back.

  “Oh, and”—she looks at the form—“Mr. March, I’ll have to charge you a fifty-dollar cleanup fee for the dog.”

  Adam doesn’t say anything about highway robbery. In his experience, dog-friendly hotels vary from no extra charge to exorbitant fees. “No problem, Ms.…?” He glances at the brass-colored name tag affixed to her white blouse. “Mitchell.” Skye Mitchell. Interesting first name.

  Plastic Adirondack chairs are scattered along the cement-floored porch, and the innkeeper straightens them into alignment with each numbered door as she leads Adam and Chance to the last room on the first floor. Room number 9.

  She asks, “So, are you in the area for business or pleasure?”

  “Business.” A reluctant reentry into his working life.

  The key sticks a little as she unlocks the door.

  The scent of old rug and Pine-Sol waft out as the heavy door is pushed open. It’s just like so many hotel rooms he’s been in, two queen beds opposite the bureau with the television on it, a big flat-screen one. There is a small round table flanked by two vaguely Danish Modern chairs beneath the picture window, which is obscured by heavy drapes drawn across it. A far cry from his days of expense accounts and suites at the Ritz Carlton or the Taj. No minibar, no room service, just a little fridge and an unplugged microwave.

  Skye points out the bathroom, “This might be the last room on my to-be-painted list, but the bathroom window doesn’t leak. I really wouldn’t have put you in here if it did.” It’s a tiny space, but clean and well stocked with towels and toiletries. She hands him the remote. “Continental breakfast starts at six-thirty.”

  Another flash of lightning, another crack of thunder, but it’s clear that the storm has moved east. Adam feels a little foolish; he could certainly make North Adams easily now that the rain has let up and the visibility is better. Chance is waiting outside, sniffing the air. Adam takes the key from Skye’s hand, thanks her again. “I have a bed for him, so he won’t be on one of yours.”

  “Good. But I’ll still have to dry-clean those spreads.” Then, as if she’s a little taken aback by her inhospitableness, she smiles. It’s a nice smile, Adam thinks, but one that she has to remember to use.

  * * *

  I really like this place, I’m glad that Adam decided to stop here. First of all, there’s the wonderful aroma of critters. Outside, not inside, although I’m pretty sure there was a mouse in the wall of our room. Which could be fun, but Adam always discourages me from indoor hunting. Hunting really isn’t my thing, but I’ll do it if the opportunity arises. Outside is the scat of all sorts of woodland creatures, most of which I have no name for. Deer, certainly. Squirrel, absolutely. Skunk. Oh yeah. Fortunately, I’m smart enough to give those buggers a wide berth. The farther away I wandered from the building, there lay odors from other rodents I’ve never encountered. Best of all, I got to be the first to mark the territory with my kind of scent. Not another canine has been in this area for a long time. The best I could come up with, and immediately covered, was old. Canine, yes, but possibly not dog, the idea of which gave me this excited little thrill. I shook myself.

  Second, I like this place because Adam let me sleep on the bed. The human bed. A total crime in our own place, but for some reason, maybe forgetfulness, maybe being so tired, he didn’t object when I took the second bed.

  Third, I like this place because it is neutral. By that I mean that Adam doesn’t have any association with it. There is no scent of Gina, no possessions lying around that require holding, sniffing. He had only one drink before bed. He’s not sitting with his head in his hands, thinking, dwelling on her absence. I miss her, too. She was kindness itself to me way back when I was not the dog I’ve become.

  When the lady who opened the door to the room for us came out, I was waiting for her. It’s always been my policy to befriend the people who extend hospitality to us. I sensed that this was a near miss, this hospitality; although the hostility I felt coming from the young one really wasn’t directed at us; and the coolness from the woman wasn’t really hostility in the proper sense, more a tension that had nothing to do with us, and more with the girl, who I assessed at a breath was her kin. Nonetheless, I did pick up on the more traditional anti–my kind of inhospitable attitude; thus I waited for her on the porch, having shaken off the rain from the tip of my nose to the tip of my tail, which I wagged as she came out.

  She froze in place. I countered her fear with a little dance I do, forepaws tapping, head wobbling gently from side to side, tail whipping in my best pantomime of big galoot. That’s what Adam calls me when I do it for him, Big Galoot, usually followed by some kind of treat. This lady didn’t have a treat, but she quickly relaxed and timidly extended a hand, which I sniffed politely, then licked. She didn’t like that, and quickly withdrew the hand without giving me a pat on the head, which was all I was hoping for. That’s okay. Baby steps are fine. I am certain to win her over on the next round.

  The door opened and Adam stuck his head out, saw the two of us standing there, and said something to the lady in their tongue language that I interpreted as conciliatory. What he had to apologize for, I can’t imagine, but in the next moment he called me in and I did as I was told. I’ve been well schooled in the past few years—I am a certified service dog now—I hardly ever disobey, as long as I understand what’s expected of me.

  * * *

  Ick. In the laundry room, I squirt a dollop of liquid soap into my hand and scrub away the feeling of soft, wet dog tongue. It’s not that I don’t like dogs; I do. At least I like them well enough. I’ve just never had one. And I’m not a big fan of dog kisses. Especially out of the mouth of such an unattractive dog. I just hope that he doesn’t have fleas, although that seems unlikely, given his owner’s well-groomed look. Adam March hardly seems like the kind of guy who would have a flea-bitten dog. He also doesn’t look like the type who would have a chewed-up pit bull, but there’s no figuring some people out. It’s enough that I’ve scored a walk-in room rate, plus surcharge for the dog, and that will help. I won’t really dry-clean that duvet. Everything here is washable in the venerable industrial-size washer and dryer. That extra fifty bucks will cover the overdue installment on Cody’s braces. God works in mysterious ways.

  My phone jingles with my mother’s ringtone, my weekly dose of skilful interrogation. We dispense with the formalities quickly and get down to the only subject we both care about, Cody. Florence Lenihan should work for the government; before I can throw up my barricades, she’s gotten me to confess that my beautiful, intelligent, perfect child is in trouble again. I try to keep these things from my mother, partly because I don’t want her to think that any part of my life is payback for the hell I put her through when I rebelled against her comfortably middle-class life and ran off with Peck’s Bad Boy, the rebel without a cause, the attractive nuisance that was Randy Mitchell.

  “I still need to deal with her cutting detention. She did the detention for defacing school property and another one for not showing up at the original detention, but, Mom, I don’t have the feeling that she’s learned any lesson at all. She’s shrugged off the punishment as the price of d
oing business, and the question is, What is the business?”

  “At least she’s not selling dope out on the street like her father did at her age.”

  “He never sold it at that age.” Unsaid was that he was at least seventeen before he got into the business.

  “Whatever.” My mother affects the lingua franca of hipness without irony. “I wish I could say send her to me, but I can’t. I can’t take on the responsibility.”

  “I could never do that. Be separated from her. As much as she aggravates me, I can’t imagine life without her.”

  It’s been only the two of us for a long time. Cody has no memory of living in a two-parent household, not that what Randy and I had could ever have been called a household. Ever since I threw him out before she turned two, it’s all been on me. Single motherhood. A choice, a preference. Like my mother before me—in her case widowed, not divorced—I have stayed away from complicating my life with relationships. It’s been a privilege, being the only parent. And, for the most part, it’s been easy. Until now.

  I tuck the phone between my shoulder and ear and bend to pull the sheets out of the dryer. The static snaps and shoots up my arm and I nearly drop the phone. “It’s really all I have in my arsenal, so I’ll tell Cody that she’s grounded and she’ll shrug and give me the eye roll, and happily take the grounding as yet another reason not to socialize with the kids her age.”

  “Still no friends?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “She’s a bright kid, a nice kid. Why can’t she make friends?”

  “Maybe because Cody refuses to engage, or maybe there’s something about her that keeps her isolated.” If she’s treating me with such disdain, how is she treating others?

  “So, where does Cody go when she disappears?”

  Ah, yes, the very question I taunt myself with. “Nowhere, she says. She just walks.” I snap the sheet into submission, fold it, and add it to the pile of clean linen.

  “Why is taking a walk a bad thing?”

  “It’s not the walk; it’s the radio silence, the not knowing where she is. It’s the taking a walk to nowhere when she should be in detention.”

  “So how long will you ground her?”

  “The punishment must fit the crime, so a week. And I’ll assign her to clean room number nine tomorrow. We have a guy staying with us who has a dog with him, so maybe that will add to the punishment.”

  “A dog? Since when?”

  “It was a mercy booking, and no, I’m not turning the LakeView into one of those pet-friendly places.”

  The sheets are folded, the pillowcases, too. I can hear the sound of my mother’s grandfather clock chime six o’clock.

  “Skye, you’re doing a fine job. Stick to your guns and don’t fall into the trap of trying to make up for what Cody thinks are your deficiencies. They aren’t. They’re about being a good parent.”

  Once in a while my mother makes me feel better.

  Maybe tomorrow, after school, I’ll see if Cody wants to get mani-pedis together, a little girl fun to encourage her to open up a little; take advantage of the unexpected largesse of Mr. March’s arrival avec dog and even get pizza. I know what I’m doing, what I always do—make up for being a parent. Most of the women I know who have kids Cody’s age are older, closer to fifty than I am to forty. A lot closer. The benefit of being a young mom is also a hazard. The desire to be an authority is undermined by the equal and compelling desire to be a friend. Heck, I know women my own age who are still living at home with their own mothers. Women still trying to figure out who they are. I’ve known forever who I am. Guess that’s the price you pay for being married the day after high school graduation. A single mom at twenty-one. You grow up fast. You simply grow up.

  * * *

  Cody Mitchell inserts her earbuds and scrolls through her music until she finds the playlist based on Mosley’s recommendations. In her bureau drawer, tucked into a tampon box, is a half-used joint, one that Mosley had put out and carelessly left in the ashtray sitting on his worktable. Cody knew he’d never miss it; in fact, she sometimes thinks that he’s leaving these treats for her on purpose. She likes that about him. He’s so cool about stuff. More so than Kieran, who always acts all big brotherly around her. Mosley doesn’t treat her like a kid, more like a respected grad student. Soon, very soon, she is going to get up the courage to show him some of her work.

  Her old art teacher, Mrs. Dumont, really, really liked Cody’s work and made noises about her having some real talent. But because of her academic schedule, Cody couldn’t get into the art class at her new school. Skye had promised, on her mother’s grave—which, if you think about it, is stupid, ’cause Gramma Florence is still kicking—that Cody would have an even better art program at the new school, and now she can’t get into the class and has had to give up her art just because her mother got the hare-brained idea that life in this backwater would be better. That owning a freakin’ hotel was an improvement over a regular paycheck as a concierge and access to the Ramada pool year-round. Cody has made the loss of art class something to chew on, a plank in her campaign to keep her mother at arm’s length. An injustice that she can dwell on to the point where she actually believes it.

  Well, Mosley will be an improvement over a high school art teacher, for sure. And if he liked to hold her close in a bear hug now and then, big whoop. It was him being friendly, that’s all. And if the bear hug occasionally went on for an uncomfortable length of time, well, that was the price of being allowed to hang around.

  “Cody? You in there?”

  Cody tosses her hair back and sighs, tucks the unlit joint under her pillow. Here it comes. “Enter.”

  Skye is wearing that face, the one she puts on when she’s about to get all parental. The one she thinks is intimidating. Her serious face. “We have to talk.”

  “I know. I won’t do it again. I’ve served detention; don’t you think it’s a little late to start ragging on me?”

  “First of all, drop the tone. Second of all, no, I don’t. We haven’t discussed where you went. You’ve been lucky; I’ve been distracted.”

  Cody bites back the obvious retort about how Skye is always distracted, mostly because it’s not true. Because they live “over the shop,” as it were, there is hardly a time when Skye isn’t aware of Cody and what she is or isn’t doing. Up in her grill is how Cody describes it to herself. What are you doing, honey? Need some help with homework? Do you want to invite someone over for a sleepover? As if. “So, what’s my sentence? Hard labor or the seg?”

  “Guess it’s seg. That is, you’re grounded for the rest of the week, and that includes the weekend. And maybe we should be watching a little less Orange Is the New Black.”

  Cody bursts out laughing. “So how is that different from the rest of my life?” She’s gratified to see the serious-parent expression dissolve.

  “Oh, honey, I know it’s been hard for you.” Skye sits on the bed beside Cody. Now she’s in for it, the heart-to-heart. She moves over. “It’s hard for both of us, but you have to make an effort. You can’t wait for them to come to you.”

  Cody knows the words to this tune pretty well. “You can’t force it, Mom. And, really, I don’t care. It’s meaningless to me.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “Well, I do. And there’s no amount of wishful thinking on your part that will make it different. You brought me here, and I’m suffering the consequences.”

  Booyah. Here comes the conciliatory hug. Cody allows herself to lean briefly into her mother’s embrace. Tries not to put her head against her mother’s shoulder. Just when Cody is trying to figure out how to extricate herself from her mother’s embrace, Skye’s cell phone rings and miraculously she’s released.

  Skye backs out of the room, talking in her concierge voice, and blows a freakin’ kiss. Cody doesn’t even pretend to catch it. Once the door clicks shut, she retrieves the joint, attaches a roach clip to it, and hunts around for the lighte
r she keeps squirreled away.

  Mosley’s stuff is good, and within a couple of minutes Cody can feel the ever-present weight of the Secret lighten. Six months, almost seven, and nothing has happened. She’s kept her end of the bargain. She’s keeping her end of the bargain. No one knows. Hopefully, he knows that she’s keeping her word. The man who killed her father.

  Another toke and the lightness darkens; the density of the Secret thickens. The weight in her chest feels like his hands felt, holding her against the brick wall, pressing her so that her feet didn’t touch the ground.

  * * *

  “You will say nothing to no one.” She was speechless, in shock from what she’d seen, but he shook the promise out of her; the back of her head hit the wall. “You say one word and you—and your mother—will die.”

  “I won’t.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I’m staring out of the plate-glass window of the office-cum-breakfast room and wish that I could enjoy the view instead of noticing the peeling paint of the porch posts supporting the decking of the gallery above them. It’s a remarkable view, with the mist rising up through the clenched fingers of the interlocking hills. Ethereal. Primeval. The mostly empty parking lot. One car. The guy with the dog. On final rounds last night, I’d expected to hear the dog bark as I walked past their open window, but it was quiet except for the very human noises of a nose being blown, a sigh.

  I’ve put the coffee on, poured the 2 percent milk and store-brand half-and-half into pitchers, filled bowls with cut-up fruit, and cleaned the crumbs out of the industrial toaster. One guest. I put four of the six bagels back in the refrigerator, leaving out the plain and the onion. I look at the banjo clock ticking away on the wall above the reception desk. Jeepers, it’s time to wake that girl up. Not since she was a little girl in pigtails has this kid been harder to get up. Every morning, it’s the first battle of the day. If I’m lucky, it’s the only one. If Cody is in a mood, it’s only the beginning of hostilities.

  The door opens and Mr. March and his dog come in.