by Susan Wilson
* * *
The dog is snoring and sporadically twitching in his sleep, until his dreaming makes him kick out with both hind legs, punching Adam right between the ribs. He moves away, finding himself on the very edge of the bed, three quarters of it given over to a sixty-pound dog. It’s time to get up anyway. Adam wants to do another drive-around in North Adams before heading back to Boston.
Adam swings his bare legs over the edge of the bed. Chance raises his head, flops it back on the pillow, apparently happy to let Adam shower before letting him out. Skye has replaced the two-cup coffeemaker in room 9, so Adam gets that started. He’s got to put on the same clothes as yesterday, and has had to use all of the hotel toiletries Skye stocks. They’re pretty little things, and he feels a little silly using the rose water–scented soaps. Any port in a storm, he thinks, and squeezes some peachy-smelling shampoo into his hand. He’ll skip shaving, reluctant to use the treacherous disposable shaver Skye handed him last night. Adam would rather sport a day-old scruff than risk slicing off bits of his chin, adding another scar to the one on his cheek.
Chance executes a Downward Dog, then goes to the door. The day outside is surprisingly warm, and the sunlight on the new snow is blinding. In the distance, a crow cackles, its noisy disquisition accompanied by the music of melting icicles. A town plow scrapes at the roadside slush, sending a cascade of rotten snow onto the pristine layer. Cody is at the edge of the parking lot, waiting for the school bus. Skye will deal with Mosley, who is probably not a creep, but he is certainly lacking in judgment. Chance is back and looking for breakfast. “Sorry, pal, you’re not getting pizza again. We’ll head out in a few and grab a bite.” Chance gives him a hangdog look, as if to say, Why are you are trying to starve me? “You’ll last.” Adam scratches behind the dog’s ear, moves down his spine to his rump. Chance rotors his hind leg in ecstasy.
There’s nothing to pack, so moments later the pair of them are ready to leave. The old fashioned door key requires that Adam check in at the office and drop the key off. Skye is in the back room, behind the reception area. Adam can see her bent over her desk, one arm akimbo, the other shuffling papers. She looks so intent that he doesn’t want to disturb her, so he gently places the key on the reception desk and leaves.
After another attempt to find the dog, he will treat himself to breakfast in North Adams before pointing the Jetta toward home. Funny word that. Home. Home no longer feels like home, but some familiar place no longer comfortable, welcoming. Home is where my dog is, he thinks. Pats Chance, who is riding shotgun as they head out to look for the dog.
* * *
The sun sufficiently warms the surface of the snow so that I find the scent almost immediately. Even though the tracks are covered up by the snow that has filled them, they are visible to me. I trace where my friend had repeatedly come to the boarded-up doorway of the place where we found him. I find his paw scent where he has scratched at the boards, and his urine, telling me the story of how he wouldn’t give up on being let into this empty place, his canine belief that his person would eventually be there to let him in. I can taste through my nose the despair when he is forced to retreat, to shelter. I give up sniffing at the house to follow the traces, until I find him shivering beneath a bush. He is happy enough to see me, but despondent otherwise. He is stiff with cold, and labors to get to his feet to greet Adam, who has made his way through the sticky snow. He has been patiently waiting for his person to come, but it is my person who gently extricates him from his bushy shelter, who offers him food and warmth.
He is one lucky dog, this guy. Lucky for him my person is stubborn.
* * *
The big Timex wristwatch was the first present Cody ever gave me out of her own choosing. She was about six, and my mother had taken her Christmas shopping. Cody had fixed on the watch, a man’s, because she could read all the numbers. It’s a reliable timepiece, and right now it’s suggesting that it’s time to get started on the rooms. The couple I have doing housekeeping have abandoned me for more lucrative work on the ski slopes, an annual tradition that no one bothered to mention to me when I kept them on. As with Carl, I seem to have inherited the Carrolls from the previous owner, who apparently didn’t see anything wrong with the way they all carried out the business of keeping the LakeView in shape—that is, when it suits them. The Carrolls have a work ethic only marginally better than Carl’s. As I was myself a veteran of the change in ownership clean-slate philosophy of firing all old staff, I bought into the concept of consistency when the previous owner made his case for keeping Carl and the Carrolls on board. Now it doesn’t seem like such a smart, kind idea. Especially now that I know that they are all related. Some folks might say that’s a charming small-town tradition, but the end result is impossible to deal with. I like charm along with the best of them, but this isn’t charm; it’s charity.
Coming out of the back office, I spot the key to room 9 on the desk. Adam has left without rebooking. I hang the key back on its hook, surprised at the little twinge of disappointment I feel; sorry to have missed his departure, to not have gotten to say good-bye.
The only other rooms to do up aren’t rebooked for today, so I’m thinking that there is no time like the present to run my maternal errand. I can do the rooms later. What I intend is to gently convince Mr. Mosley Finch that he’d be wise to back off using Cody as a life model. I’ll work the word underage into the conversation.
In ten minutes, I’m on the road, wipers beating away the backwash of the car in front of me. The day’s surprising warmth has already begun to take down a bit of the winter’s accumulation of snow; rivulets of snowmelt fill the ditches in a merry downhill run. It’s the kind of winter day that brings with it the fleeting hope of spring, the welcome thought that all will be well.
I pull into the parking lot and only then wonder if I should have called ahead. What if this Mosley guy isn’t here? What if he’s too busy? Well, I’m here now, and I have enough of the Mama Bear in me that I’m not about to slink off.
Inside, the bright sunshine streams down, illuminating several workstations. There is artwork in various stages of completion. Some of it is interesting, some of it just odd. Not quite knowing where to go, I stroll down the former factory floor, taking in the atmosphere, trying to figure out why it is that Cody is so enamored of this place. The artists in residence this morning nod to me, or don’t, depending on the depth of their concentration on their work. One, a scruffy but nice-looking young man, smiles at me, puts down his handful of metallic netting. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Finch.”
“He’s in a meeting. I’m Kieran. Maybe I can help?”
“Kieran, yes. My daughter is Cody Mitchell; she’s spoken of you.”
“Great kid. Nice kid.” Kieran gestures toward a wooden folding chair, suggesting that I might want to sit. I don’t.
“Well, she can be. She’s taking lessons? With Mosley?” I hear myself use the uptalk voice and tamp it down. “She does chores around here for him.”
“She does stuff for all of us.”
“But he’s the one giving her lessons.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“What kind of artist is he?”
“It’s complicated; he uses several media, but I guess you could say that he’s a painter.” Kieran picks up the metallic cloth again. It reminds me of something a knight would wear. Chain mail. The object dangling from a beam is cruciform; perhaps it’s supposed to be a person. Who knows.
“And he likes to use life models?”
The light above is so perfect that I can see the flush begin to rise in young Kieran’s cheeks. “It’s totally fine. Really.”
“Well, I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, I suppose you might not. But, really, like, uh. He’s fine. He’s a professional.”
“I’m sure he is.” I turn away from Kieran and the weird half-human dangling object. A door opens, and the first thing I notice about him is that Mosley Finc
h wears exactly the same kind of horn-rimmed glasses that Cody has taken to wearing instead of her contacts. The second thing is that he’s a lot older than I’d been led to believe. And, third, he knows exactly why I’m here.
“Mr. Finch. A word, please.” I lead Mosley Finch into his own office.
The office, unlike the factory floor beyond it, is dark, no natural light filtering into the cluttered space. An industrial hanging light casts a cone of brightness over two wooden folding chairs. Finch points to one, and this time I sit, perched with a posture my mother would be proud of. Finch sits in the other, pushing himself back a little with one Frye-booted foot, as if to make a bit more space between us. Just in case I bite. Instead, I give Mosley Finch my best concierge-style smile. It’s not my real one. It’s friendly enough to get him started.
“Ms. Mitchell, it’s been really great having Cody here. She’s doing such a good job with her art, and—”
“Just tell me that you will never, under any circumstances, ask my fourteen-”—I pause so that the number sticks in his mind—“-year-old daughter to disrobe for you.”
“She wasn’t, um, nude. She was wrapped very modestly. Grecian. You know what I mean.”
“I know that you will never do that again. Not if you want her to keep working here.”
“I don’t. I mean, she doesn’t have to.” He sits back, throws his hands into a gesture of What’s it to me. “If you’re worried about her, then we’ll call it quits.”
“But she loves being here.”
“I know. She loves art. And, Ms. Mitchell, she’s quite good at it. Maybe you want to pay for lessons instead of her working for them.”
I should have known that he’d play that card. There is no margin in my budget for anything that is discretionary, like art lessons. There is barely any margin for food and gas, and certainly that’s more important than art lessons. I’ve had to ask my mother for next month’s orthodontist payment. Again. Over the phone, I got the distinct sound of her sniff, a sound I’ve endured all my life, the sound of exasperation. At least I couldn’t see her elevated eyebrows.
Once we’re on our feet, once the income is even a dollar more than the outgo, then I’ll plump for art lessons. It seems like I’ve been making myself that kind of promise for a very long time. “I can’t.”
“She’s got a talent that needs to be nurtured.”
“I know. And there’s no way I can let her continue to barter for it by posing for you.” I stand and slide the zipper of my jacket up to my chin.
“You really don’t understand art, do you?”
“I understand that you are close to having me file a complaint of sexual predation on a child under the age of eighteen.”
“You have no cause to go to that extreme. No proof.” But the high color in Mosley’s cheeks suggests he’s not confident of that, certainly not confident that Cody hasn’t said something to me. How is he to know that Cody would rather die than confide in her mother?
“Mr. Finch. I’m willing to let her continue to swap chores for lessons if you are.”
“All right. Yeah, sure.”
“But she doesn’t model. And you are never alone with her.”
“I can’t promise that; people come and go around here.”
“Yeah, you will.” I tap into a reserve I’d forgotten that I own, the deeper part of me, which isn’t afraid of jerks like Mosley Finch, that part of me that thrilled to rebellion. My surge of righteous maternal anger is heady stuff, even kind of pleasant for a brief invigorating second. As quickly as it rises, the feeling passes and I stalk out of Finch’s office before I lose my mojo.
Outside, I have to pause long enough to still my fast-beating heart. It seems like my life is one confrontation after another. If it isn’t with Cody, it’s on behalf of Cody, like with this Finch guy. It’s with Carl, or the Carrolls, or the sick-making amount owed on my latest credit card bill, the one that never seems to go down.
I walk over to the edge of the parking lot, where the river runs against cement walls and is channeled over a man-made dam. There are abandoned houses across the way, a rickety-looking footbridge tying the scene together. That must be the place where they found that boy, and it makes me wonder if Adam has found the dog after all. I wonder when he’ll be back. If he’ll be back. Poor guy. Losing a spouse is harder on a man.
I feel a sudden and desperate urge to cry, and I press the back of my glove against my mouth, but it isn’t Adam’s situation that’s brought this on. I stifle it. I haven’t got the luxury of feeling sorry for myself. I’ve got to find a way to make it succeed. Adam has suggested that I open the place up to the, as he puts it, dog community, and maybe I should, but in the next thought I squelch the idea as creating more work in an unequal proportion to the fact that it is still only me and, sometimes, Cody doing it. I really can’t afford Carl anymore, except for plowing, and the Carrolls have done me a favor in taking off.
* * *
“I guess you get to go into people’s rooms.” Black Molly is pricking Cody’s arm with a common pin, dabbing the bloody spots with various food colorings mixed together into a muddy black.
“Yeah. You should see some of the shit people do.” She is trying hard not to wince at the pain of the homemade tattoo, or at Black Molly’s questionable artistry. It’s supposed to be a lightning bolt, but it looks more like a scar. “Gross, most of it.” They are sitting in Molly’s tiny bedroom in the double-wide trailer that she calls home. There is a pervasive odor of onions and cat urine. The mobile home, as Molly prefers to call it, has a blue plastic tarp stretched out from the side, and all of the stuff that doesn’t fit inside sits under it. The tarp, which also acts as an awning over the door, bulges in the middle with snow, and a slow trickle of snowmelt drains at the lowest point.
“Ever find anything good?”
“Like?”
“You know, stuff.”
“What? Like drugs?”
“Duh, yeah.” Molly pricks another set of holes, dabs in the homemade ink.
“No.”
“Have you ever looked?”
Cody shrugs, and Molly grasps her hand harder, holding it down on her knee. “Keep still.”
“I don’t think most of our guests are into drugs. I mean, a lot of them are, like, old.”
“Even better. Old people need pain pills. Oxy or Percoset. Vicodan. Booze.”
“Maybe. I don’t have time to look around too much. Gotta scrub those toilets.”
Black Molly wipes the last of the blood away, examines her work. “Why don’t you see what you can find. Share it with your pal.”
Cody shrugs. There’s no way she’s going to do that, but Black Molly doesn’t need to know that. “Okay. Sure.”
Black Molly is done, and she fishes a flattened box of smokes out from under her pillow, offers one to Cody, who is examining the rough image on her forearm. Cody is both appalled and exhilarated by the fact that Molly boldly lights up in her own house, doesn’t even open the tiny crank-out window over her bed. Blows smoke right up to the yellowed ceiling tiles. Of course, she’s never seen an adult in this place. She feels stupid, but she has to ask: “You don’t get in trouble for smoking?”
Molly laughs, coughs, pulls a flake of tobacco off her tongue. “Shit no. They don’t care. Where do you think I get them?”
“I figured that you, I don’t know, stole ’em.”
“I do. From them.”
Cody thinks this is hilarious. “I get my pot from the guy I work for, one used joint at a time.”
“He gives it to you?”
“Hell no. He’s got so much of it, medicinal purposes, he doesn’t even miss it.”
“Good to know.”
Immediately, Cody realizes that she’s said too much. Molly is going to expect her to share her pilfered roaches. Cody takes a drag off the cigarette, blows it out quickly. Looks at the lightning bolt inscribed in her skin.
“So, I bet it’s no biggie for you to slip a tab or two out
of some a-hole’s bag?”
The cigarette is making Cody feel a little dizzy, not a good dizzy like pot, but a slightly nauseated dizzy. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“It ain’t for me, you understand? Not to use. We can make bank on all kinds of shit.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. How you figure my brother has that cool Tony Hawk board? Like he’s got some kind of after-school job?” Molly falls back into the unmade bed, laughs at herself.
Cody shrugs, tamps out the cigarette in the tin ashtray Molly has produced. “I’ll see what I can do.” It’s a lie, but better to play along.
Cody isn’t oblivious to what her father had been, and why he might have ended the way he did. Randy Mitchell liked the easy way, had no scruples about how he made his money. He did favors, he said; people liked him. Skye has never sugarcoated the truth about Randy to Cody, never hidden the fact that he was nothing but a small-time crook, no one to emulate; that she, Cody, has better blood in her. Skye has never said that he deserved what he got, but she’s never said that she was sorry, that she felt any grief over his death, as if it had come as no surprise to her and good riddance.
But she didn’t see it happen. Skye didn’t watch as Randy went from an empty-promise deadbeat dad to simply dead. And she’ll never know that Cody did. The image still has the power to make her gasp. The feel of Randy’s killer’s hands on her, shaking her, pushing his face into hers. Exacting a promise.
When Cody was little, maybe in first or second grade, Skye sat her down and gave her the talk. The one about how she must never keep a secret from her mother. That if someone asks her to keep a secret, her first job is to tell. “I know it sounds strange, Cody, but you must never keep a secret from me.”