Atticus

by S. Bennett

  They’re in reverse order, and I give her a little explanation.

  “I just took this one this morning. Look how big his paws are.”

  “Oh, here’s the one where he ate our freaking pound cake a few weeks ago. Took the heavy pan right off the counter and set it on the floor before he gorged. Asshole dog.”

  Even though I was mad at him, I still took pictures of him to memorialize how unrepentant he was.

  “And look at this… the way he sleeps in bed on his back.”

  I flip to another picture. “This is a good one… sitting at the fence of the cow pasture, watching the cows. He never even barks at them.”

  I go on and on, and Charmin oohs and aahs. She laughs at my stories when I tell her how destructive he’s been. We both agree it was probably a good thing Chuck kicked us out when he did.

  Slyly, she says, “In hindsight, I’m glad he took a shit in Chuck’s shoe. I hope it still stinks.”

  My wicked smile tops her sly look. I tell her in a conspiratorial voice despite the fact no one can hear us, “I swear to God, Charmin… he did it on purpose. He knew how to scratch at the door to go out and poop. I saw the look on his face, and I’m not kidding… he knew what he was doing.”

  We both crack up laughing.

  Then Charmin sobers a bit, takes my hand, and squeezes it. “If Atticus knew what he was doing, then he surely knew it would get you two booted. Maybe Atticus was put in your life so that exact scenario would happen to force you into a new life. One you were meant to have.”

  “You mean like fate or something?” I ask. As loony as that sounds, it also sounds… right.

  Charmin shrugs. “I don’t understand that philosophical shit. I just think you are in a good place because of that dog.”

  “Agreed.” The time on my phone catches my attention. “Shit… I’ve really overstayed. I have to get going.”

  “Okay.” We both rise from the couch, and she walks me to the door. Before I reach for the knob, she touches my shoulder. “There’s something you need to know, Hazel.”

  I turn to face her. “What’s that?”

  “Darren has been by a few times looking for you,” she says, and my stomach pitches slightly. I’d like to say I don’t think of Darren anymore, but that would be a lie. There’s always something that makes me think of him on a daily basis.

  “What does he want?” I ask.

  “He never said. And I didn’t tell him where you were. I knew you were working at the clinic because Bernard told me, but I didn’t know if you wanted to see him or not.”

  “He probably wants to serve me with divorce papers or something,” I say thoughtfully. I realize… it doesn’t make me sad.

  Doesn’t make me happy either, but I’m not crushed by the imminent end of my marriage. I think that’s definite validation that my self-esteem has become strong and stable.

  “I better give him a call,” I say. “Might as well get this all over with.”

  She nods, and then surprises me with a hard hug. I squeeze her back. “Want to get together sometime? Maybe dinner?”

  “Sure,” I reply. “That would be nice.”

  And it would. I’ve forgiven her, and she’s still very much my friend.

  CHAPTER 25

  Hazel

  A rivulet of sweat trickles down my back to disappear under the band of my shorts. Droplets fall from my forehead and splash onto my hands as I pull weeds out of the flower bed that borders the front porch of Oley’s house. It’s barely ten in the morning, but it’s already hotter than the burning fires of hell.

  The front door opens first, then the screen with a loud squeak. Atticus comes barreling out with Oley hobbling on his cane behind him. His limp has seemed worse the last few days.

  Atticus bounds down the three porch steps to me with tail wagging and eyes rolling. He’d been enjoying the cool air conditioning with Oley while I got my yard chores done. Atticus starts licking my face, more from enjoyment of the salty sweat than any true affection. He’s a dog that will give a kiss or two in greeting when he’s excited to see me, but this continual licking that now extends to my neck and left shoulder is going too far.

  “Get off, you big doofus,” I say as I swat him away. He ignores me and lunges his head forward, his big rough tongue catching me along my nose. I go from my hands and knees to my haunches, which gives me better leverage to push Atticus away.

  He finally takes the hint, running onto the porch where the shade is minutely cooler. I consider forcing him back inside since it’s so hot out here, but a few minutes won’t overheat him, and I’m almost done with my task. With the back of my hand, I wipe off my sweaty face, wincing at the feel of the gritty dirt I’m leaving behind. After a few unsteady steps, Oley sits heavily in one of the rockers right in front of the flower bed I’m working on.

  Oley has never made the extra work I do for him around here a condition of me being able to live here so cheaply. The only price he ever requested was the two hundred a month he originally set. But I know he’s giving me such a good bargain that I don’t mind doing this stuff for him. There’s no way in hell a man at his age, with his physical limitations, can get down here in the dirt and pull weeds. Plus, I know that the pretty flowers neatly maintained bring him joy, so this is what I do every Saturday morning.

  “Looks good,” Oley observes as he starts a slow rock in the chair. Atticus flops down beside him, and Oley drapes his non-cane arm over to scratch his back for a few minutes.

  “If I do it weekly, it’s not so hard,” I say as I go back to pulling weeds. I toss them over my shoulder onto the grass. I’ll rake them up when I’m done, and then take them out to the burn pile. The first time I’d raked up grass clippings for Oley and asked where his waste bags were so we could set them out by the road for pickup, he laughed at me.

  “That’s not how we do things in the country,” he’d said with an almost imperious look down his nose at me. “We burn things.”

  And truthfully, it’s really fun to burn things, so I never mind adding to the burn pile.

  “How’d things go with Charmin last night?” he asks. He hadn’t had a chance to ask me when we’d returned with the pizza. We all ate, then him and Bernard watched the game. I’d fallen asleep on the couch, waking up to find the game over and Oley’s car gone. He must have taken Bernard home.

  “It was good.” I look up briefly, giving him a smile before going back to my work. “We’re going to try to get together some time soon.”

  Oley doesn’t ask anything further. He’s not nosy and all up in my business. Never has been.

  Doesn’t mean I don’t volunteer some stuff because let’s face it… Oley’s my closest friend and he’s given me a lot of wise counsel in the past.

  “She told me Darren’s been looking for me.” Pausing my weeding, I sit back on my haunches, peeking at him through the porch rails. “I guess to serve divorce papers or something.”

  “How’s that make you feel?” he asks, gauging the impact it’s having on me before he offers anything.

  I shrug. “I don’t feel much of anything about it.”

  “If that’s truly the case, then just give him a call and get it done with.”

  “Well, yeah… that’s the easy thing to do except it’s not easy,” I reply as I go back to the weeding. “I mean… we were married for six years.”

  “And he cheated on you and kicked you out,” he reminds me pointedly.

  I wince. It still hurts to be reminded of it. But it also makes my blood boil, and my head snaps up to look at Oley. “You know what… I do feel something. I feel pissed off, and don’t call me on my language.”

  Oley chuckles. “Give him hell when you call him, Hazel… but sign the papers. You don’t need him.”

  “That’s the truth.” I give him a saucy wink before I get back down to it. I start yanking weeds with more vigor, imagining Darren’s head in the middle of each one I rip from the ground.

  “Tara called a bit ago,”
Oley says hesitantly. When I look up at him, he’s got his head turned and gaze focused over the side yard rather than at me. That tells me whatever he’s getting ready to say is causing him some difficulty. Like most humans, we have a hard time looking others in the eye when things get tough.

  “Oh, yeah?” I ask lightly.

  Tara is his daughter. She’s a yoga instructor in Raleigh and her husband Will is an attorney. They have a seventeen-year-old daughter named Abigail, which was Oley’s wife’s middle name. I’ve not met them yet. In the three months I’ve been living here, Tara and her family haven’t come to visit even though Raleigh is just a few hours away.

  I try not to let that color my opinion about Oley’s daughter, but it kills me when I hear Oley talking to her on the phone and he’ll hopefully ask, “Think y’all could come for a visit one weekend?”

  Then he’ll remain silent for several minutes while Tara tells him exactly how busy their lives are and how they can’t. She’ll then offer for him to come to Raleigh to visit them, to which Oley declines. I’m not sure if he just can’t make the trip on his own, or if he’s just discouraged.

  “She wanted to let me know they’re doing Thanksgiving at Cameron’s house this year, and wanted to make sure I put it on the calendar.”

  “Huh,” I say noncommittally, and his gaze comes back to mine. Cameron is Oley’s son. He’s some bigwig at a bank in Charlotte, and his wife spends her days playing tennis at the country club. He talks to his father less than Tara does.

  “I told her I couldn’t make that type of trip on my own.” He says that casually… in a matter-of-fact manner. Oddly, his eyes don’t appear troubled at all. Perhaps I misjudged the difficulty of this conversation.

  Oley doesn’t offer anything else.

  But I do. “Would you like me to drive you there?” I ask hesitantly. Charlotte is a good five-plus hours away.

  I expect relief to overtake his expression. Instead, he cuts his gaze back out to the side yard, pointedly refusing to look me in the eye.

  I don’t have time for this. My back is aching, I’m hot and sweaty, and little stones are digging in my knees. “What’s wrong, Oley?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he snaps. “I just thought… that perhaps we could do Thanksgiving here at the house if you didn’t have any plans. Invite Bernard, of course.”

  My jaw drops open, but I hurriedly close it again. My lips curve upward into a smile. “I think that’s a great idea. I can cook a turkey, and we’ll have all the classic sides. But… are you sure you don’t want to go spend it with your kids?”

  Oley shakes his head, and his eyes turn a little sad. “They don’t bother to come visit me, so why should I bother to go visit them?”

  It’s a fair point. Plus, Oley’s not in the greatest of health. Driving that distance would be hard on him.

  “I wasn’t sure if perhaps you had plans with your family,” he says uneasily. That’s when I realize the source of his uncertainty over Thanksgiving. He has no clue if my family is in play or not.

  Standing from the flower bed, I brush dirt and bits of mulch off my knees, remove the gardening gloves, and place them on the porch railing that separates me from Oley. “Why would you think I had plans with my family?”

  “I wasn’t sure,” he says cautiously. “You never talk about them. You told me early on your dad was dead and your mom and sister live around the area, but that you’re not close. I didn’t bother to ask more, because well… not all families are close. Look at my kids, who can’t even be bothered to come visit me to make sure I’m okay or not.”

  I nod in understanding, suffering from the guilt that I live less than fifteen minutes from my mom, but I don’t go see her. My sister lives a bit further north of town, but it’s not prohibitive to me if I wanted to visit her. I just… can’t.

  Putting them out of my mind because it makes me feel wretched to think about them, I brush off Oley’s worry. “They wouldn’t expect me there, so I’d love to cook for you and Bernard. Can we invite Charmin, too?”

  “Of course we can,” Oley assures me. “Would you like to invite your mom and sister?”

  I scratch at the back of my head, focusing on Atticus. “They wouldn’t want to.”

  “Why not?” he asks, leaning forward in the rocking chair.

  I don’t answer.

  Can’t for that matter.

  My throat has a lump of guilt and embarrassment preventing any words.

  Oley raps the end of his cane against the railing. “Why not, Hazel?” he pushes.

  I guess he’s decided to poke all up in my business.

  Atticus is almost eye level with me through the porch rails. He’s watching with interest from underneath those brown eyebrows. His eyes are pinned on me now, the blue truth teller lasering into me. I feel like he’d know if I lied. Oley might not, but even though dogs can’t understand much of the English language, I still think he’d know.

  With a sigh, I step out of the flower bed and head up to the porch. I step over my dog to take the rocker to Oley’s left. He shifts his weight and turns to look at me.

  Atticus pushes up from his spot on the other side of Oley to sit right before me. He pushes his head into my stomach, demanding I pet him.

  Which I do because he’s like my security blanket.

  My zen.

  My doggie Xanax.

  CHAPTER 26

  Atticus

  I might not understand the full language Hazel and Oley speak, but coupled with facial expressions, tone, and body language, I know a lot more than they give me credit for.

  My human needs me, so I give her my head to pet. It’s hot as blazes out here and the air conditioning inside calls to me, but this is more important right now.

  Hazel blows out a hard breath that gusts warmly over the top of my head. “My dad died three years ago. It was sudden… a brain aneurysm. I hadn’t talked to him for almost seven months before he died. Not because I hated him, or he was a bad person, or a horrible father. But because he was disappointed in how I turned out, and I couldn’t stand to see it in his eyes.”

  Right there… not sure the deeper meaning behind what Hazel just said, but I sense sadness and guilt. Her fingers work behind my ears, not because I need it but because she does.

  “I’m not following, Hazel,” Oley says gently.

  Hazel leans back in her chair which frees my face that had been pressed into her. She stares down at me while she rubs behind my ears in a way that makes my back legs shake. I return her look, feeling no pressure or compulsion to blink away the sadness gazing back at me. I could stare at her for hours, but my preference would be for her to happy.

  She turns her head to look at Oley, her fingers still digging down into those little muscles right behind my ears. “I left home when I turned eighteen, three months shy of graduating high school. I was boy crazy… well, over a certain boy, you understand. My parents were horrified I’d dropped out of school. Tremendously disappointed in me. They ranted and yelled, telling me I was stupid to do something like that and I’d regret it one day. That a boy wasn’t more important than finishing school.”

  “But you didn’t listen to them?” he surmises.

  “Nope,” she replies with a grimace, and I can feel the self-hatred radiating off her. It makes me whine just a little. She spares me just a brief glance, a little smile to reassure me, and continues. “And of course, they were right. Without getting into the details of how I continually messed up, let’s just say I went from bad relationship to bad relationship with no direction or aim in life other than to just be needed by a man. I worked in bars and partied.”

  “But you still had some type of relationship with them,” Oley guesses. “I mean… you left school what… thirteen years ago? But you said your dad died three years ago, and you’d talked to him seven months prior.”

  “I left home fourteen years ago,” she corrects. “And yes… I still had a relationship with my parents and sister. It was very tenuous, and
I often didn’t show up on their doorstep unless I needed money or something. My parents always opened the door to me, though. They were disappointed and wished for better things for me, but they loved me no less. I know that, which just makes me feel even more guilty for the poor choices I made.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t get it back,” Oley suggests. “If they love you, the door will still be open.”

  “It would be,” Hazel replies confidently. It’s the tone of voice I hear from her most often these days, and I like it. “If I went to my mom’s house right now, she’d open that door wide to let me in.”

  “But—” Oley prods.

  “But,” Hazel says with a sad smile, her eyes getting wet. I smell the salt in them before I see it, and it makes me sad. Jumping on her, I put my forearms on her thighs. I lick at her face, making those tears go away.

  Hazel chuckles and gives me a hard hug, probably just to stop the licking. Then she pushes me back down to a sit before her.

  She looks to Oley. “I can’t. I just can’t do it. When my dad died, and I sat down and did the math… that it had been seven months since I’d bothered to talk to any of them, I was so ashamed of myself. For my selfishness, that I would go about life as if they didn’t matter, and for how horribly I took them for granted. I was so worthless as a daughter and a sister that I didn’t deserve to be with them. In a way, I think a lot like Bernard… that they’re better off without me.”

  “Hazel,” Oley says softly, his eyes pools of sorrow and empathy. I wait for the wetness to come to his eyes, poised ready to jump and lick if necessary.

  “I made my bed,” Hazel says resolutely. “I’ve accepted the consequences of how I treated them.”

  “What about your sister?” he asks.

  My other senses kick in, and I swear I can feel the heat coming off Hazel as her face turns red. My body quivers with the unmistakable need to jump on her. Cover her up. Chase away the pure shame I’m feeling radiating off her. There are not many times I feel guilty about the bad things I do, but on those infrequent occasions when I know I really let Hazel down with my antics, it’s not a pleasant feeling to have.