Junk Shop: A Dog Memoir

by Jennifer Erickson

  Katherine stepped back. Her eyes darted all over Truffle, like she was reading her.

  "Your grandfather cared," she said. "He's the one who called me. He paid for the program."

  "Grandpa?"

  "You didn't know?" Katherine was reading the horizon now. "How could you not know?"

  Corey put a protective hand on Ashley's shoulder and guided her into the passenger seat.

  Katherine grew smaller as we drew away.

  Corey said, "You were in rehab?"

  She said, "I thought he didn't want me."

  I had learned something from that night spent with Virgil on the back room floor. So I knew more than Ashley, it seemed.

  Here's how it goes: Ashley tracks down her birth grandparents when she is sixteen and angry and erratic. She hitch hikes all the way from Indiana on her spring break, confronts Virgil, accuses him of many things that are true, and settles right into her mother's old room, needy and defiant. It is deja-vu. Yes she looks like her mother. But more: Once again, Virgil feels that niggle. There is something more happening. More than teenaged hormones and the ache of abandonment and a desire to assert her independence.

  By this time, Virgil's wife Helen is gone, and he has sworn that he will not make the same mistake as with Judith. He wants Ashley to find a little bit of life's promise, even if he cannot seem to find it for himself.

  Being naturally unobservant of the female species, he needs help. And so after snooping in Ashley's backpack and days of agonizing deliberation, he picks up the dreaded telephone and he calls the counsellor at Ashley's high school so far away in Indiana.

  Is this usual, he asks? Is this how teenagers behave? And is despair inheritable? And what can be done? I have my savings, the college fund we had tucked away for Judith. Can money help her?

  And so Katherine, the counsellor, knows that some people care to the best of their ability, and simply lack the tools for hugs and deep conversations and warm fuzzy memory making, and knowing that the girl has grown up in a family that does not understand her, a disappointed family, a family trying to distance themselves from her problems, brokers a deal, long distance.

  Ashley never sees it coming.

  There is an intervention, a sort-of kidnapping, a lockdown facility with counselling. And when she turns eighteen and is released, she is wary, but lighter somehow.

  Virgil sends her a get well card chosen painstakingly from the racks at Safeway, inserts a check and signs it "Your Grandpa."

  He doesn't hear from her for a year, and when he does, she shows up with a dog.

  Stuart the Apartment Manager

  Corey said I had to watch out for Stuart the Apartment Manager. He was a wiry Vietnam vet and his mouth was like a sniper hiding in the thicket of his beard.

  Corey always checked outside before hustling me to the car in the morning. And when I did my Business on the patch of lawn by the carport before bed, we had to be quick and stealthy.

  One day we saw Stuart inspecting the dots of dead grass, and we ducked down behind the reclining sofa when he scanned the face of the building. It was only a matter of time before he rooted us out.

  So we were startled but not surprised one night when Stuart stepped from the shadows behind the garbage enclosure while I squatted silently on the patch of lawn.

  Corey muttered to me, "I do the talking."

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Stuart said.

  "I'm just watching her for a friend--" Corey began.

  "No dogs allowed. Ever. You see the signs there? And There? Get that dog off this property right now or I'll fucking shoot it, and I'll stuff it and put it on my mantel."

  "Yes, sir. First thing--"

  "Now."

  "Ah. Now?" Corey danced toward the apartment, then back to me.

  Stuart tailed us inside so Corey could get his car keys and then Corey put me in the car and drove me out to the street and parked me under a street lamp and left me.

  "You're a dog," he said. "Think of the car as an RV. Spread out on the back seat. You'll be fine."

  But I didn't feel fine. It wasn't like sleeping in a car with Nelson all those years before. I felt lonely, and I worried.

  I Know About Your Tiny Truffle Heart

  I moved to Ashley's house. And then, a couple of weeks later, Corey moved in, too. He said it was because Stuart was an asshole and because his lease had expired. But I knew it was because Truffle worshiped him, the way he had always craved. And also, it was free.

  Ashley's house smelled of Cherry Blossom body spray and Lavender Explosion laundry detergent. The chemical combination seared the space behind my eyes. Every time I walked in, it was like getting water up my nose.

  I wondered what smell she was trying so hard to conceal from us. Was it the smell of her fear? Or of her tiny truffle heart? I watched her watching me.

  I watched her and I tested her.

  "Hey," I would say to Ashley, just to mess with her, "I know about your tiny truffle heart." Or sometimes I'd comment on what she was thinking or wearing or what we should have for dinner.

  Little stuff.

  And if she Heard me, she never let on. Maybe she thought it was all in her head.

  She had a crease of worry between her eyes, and her pulse throbbed in her neck like a jumpy little rabbit.

  I would start up and growl at nothing. I moved her shoes and dragged her dirty underwear out of the clothes hamper and heaved myself up on the counter to lick the butter out of the butter dish.

  And I would stare into her eyes and dare her, just dare her, to try to punish me.

  I wanted to break her open, to see what she was really like inside. If Corey had a façade, Truffle had armor, and how can you trust someone like that?

  You can't trust them until you know whether they'll go for the kill if you show them your throat.

  "I do like him," Ashley said into her cell phone one day. "He seems wonderful, but I just have this feeling like there's something he's hiding from me, you know?"

  Corey was at yoga class and Ashley and I had been looking at Facebook when her phone jingled. As she answered, she put me outside on the deck, which once again made me think she knew my secret. I was listening at the sliding glass door, ears pivoting for maximum sound reception. Dogs have very good hearing, you know.

  "Okay…this is just between you and me, right?"

  I straightened and leaned in to catch every word.

  "I worry that they might be involved in something illegal…I don't know! But the thing is, how could they possibly make a living with a shop like that? It could be a front for, I don't know, drug running or something?

  "The customers come in. They have more customers than you would expect, but some of them are really creepy. I mean, if it were my shop I'd make them leave, and then they want to buy random, just…junk, and I'm not sure, but I think Corey sometimes switches out the merchandise while he's ringing them up."

  I pressed my nose to the glass, trying to decipher the squawk on the other end of the line.

  "Okay, explain this: Every time I ask about the basement, he changes the subject, and he won't let me go down there. He's got all these excuses: It's dirty or the lights don't work. There are mice. The stairs are unsafe.

  "Why doesn't he trust me? What's he hiding? It could be, like, a drug smuggling tunnel and I wouldn't even know, right?"

  In her voice, I heard not just worry and confusion, but...longing.

  So, yes, she was concerned that Corey was involved in something illegal. But also, she felt left out. I know all this because I can see things about people. But in other ways, Ashley was a mystery. Could she Hear me talk? I wasn't sure. And what did she see in Corey? And Corey in her? From my point of view, neither had much to offer, but maybe that was why they liked each other. They were alike. Both of them so bland, so mass-produced, at least on the outside. But what was on the inside?

  Corey's interior was just a scaffolding to hold up his charming facade. There wasn't much very
admirable in there, but there wasn't anything terrible, either.

  Truffle was another matter, though. I waited, I needed, to know what was underneath.

  She glanced my way, and I tried to pretend I hadn't been listening, but there were all those tell-tale nose prints all over the glass. She narrowed her eyes at me. I pretended to focus on a squirrel traversing the top of the fence.

  "And," she whispered as she turned into the hallway, "I think the dog is in on it…It's not funny!" she said, laughing.

  A few days later I finally cracked Truffle's armor.

  I pulled a bloody maxi-pad from the trash can in the bathroom, unwrapped it and arranged it in the middle of the off-white living room carpet while Ashley answered the door. She and Corey had invited Guests for dinner. Ashley had baked a lasagna. Corey had vacuumed.

  I watched from the hallway as she air-kissed her friend Logan and Logan's boyfriend, whose name Ashley kept forgetting. Corey shook No-Name's hand and accepted a bottle of screw-top wine.

  Ashley and Logan started for the kitchen arm-in-arm.

  "Oh, God. Ugh. Sorry. Tim-Tom-Ted, don't look! Just stay there for a sec. Corey, I'm going to kill your dog."

  I poised to flee while Ashley palmed the maxi-pad. I skittered out of the way when she charged down the hall to dispose of it in the bathroom receptacle.

  Corey and Tim-Tom-Ted leaned on each other and laughed, and Logan said, "So this is Sophie the Mafia dog?"

  Ashley glared at Logan and cut her eyes to Corey. "Shh."

  "You're paranoid," said Logan, "but I love you anyway."

  Ashley smiled weakly, and then, out of nowhere she started to cry. And then she was sobbing. And everybody stopped teasing her, and even I felt a little bit sorry for her.

  And then I knew: underneath her armor she was tender.

  As she left later that night, Logan whispered in Ashley's ear, "Just ask him about it. I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation."

  After the Guests went home, Corey and Ashley washed dishes together and polished off a second bottle of wine. They were both tipsy, and Corey called me into the kitchen.

  "Sophie," he said. "I want you to apologize to Ashley."

  I smoothed my ears back to look innocent and tried to decide what to say. Ashley twisted the dish towel in her hands, then turned away to mop down the counter.

  Corey glared at me and said, "and you'd better make it good."

  "Truf--" I broke off when Corey jabbed a finger at me.

  "Ashley," I started again.

  She paused in her wiping, but didn't turn.

  Corey gently turned her to face me, and kept his arm around her shoulders.

  I said, "I apologize for embarrassing you."

  Corey nodded. "And?"

  "And I promise I'll be a good…doggie" I rolled my eyes, "from now on."

  I flopped onto my back, paws in the air, and when Corey still didn't seem satisfied, I craned my head away to expose my throat.

  "I accept your apology," Ashley said.

  As I heaved myself upright and pogoed off to bed, feeling dirty, Ashley turned to Corey.

  "What are you hiding in the basement?"

  I paused in the hallway to listen.

  "I really don't know very much about the basement," he said at last. "But have you ever noticed that people see what they want to see?..."

  Funny, I thought he hadn't been paying attention.

  Once I saw what was in Ashley's chocolate truffle heart, we came to an understanding.

  She might still pretend she couldn't Hear me, but she treated me with more respect.

  And we were united in our desire to conduct research regarding the basement.

  She hired an exterminator, an electrician and a Guy Who Hauls Junk and sent them all into the basement. None of them got much work done, and each had a different excuse never to return.

  We moved into the apartment above the store and Ashley sold her condo. We got new carpet and Stainless Steel appliances.

  Corey and Ashley entered a new phase of Genuineness that was almost genuine. They decided to start fresh, clear out the old junk. Make Room In Their Lives For Something Positive.

  It had to start with the basement. It was a fire hazard, they said, psyching themselves up.

  Ashley Finds the Diary

  "Look at this," said Ashley, down in the basement a few months later. She scratched her smudged nose and flourished a dusty book at Corey. "It's a diary!"

  I watched from the top of the stairs as she brushed the cover reverently and squinted at the pages in the forty watt glow of the bulb dangling above her.

  "Hmm," he said, jammed a stained pillow into an overflowing Hefty bag and cinched it tight.

  She set the diary on the third step.

  "What? You're keeping it?" he asked.

  He lifted two sacks and edged up toward me.

  "Why not? It could be interesting."

  "I doubt it."

  For the rest of the day, as they hauled loads to the dumpster and shifted broken furniture and swept, I kept my eye on that diary, sitting so innocently at the edge of the stair.

  "Why don't we celebrate?" said Corey, finally, tapping out a victory tattoo on the back of the dust pan.

  Ashley leaned on the broom handle. "I could use a beer," she said.

  They kissed like they'd just decided something life-changing and traipsed past me in a cloud of dust.

  "You stay here, Sophie," said Corey, without actually looking my way. I heard the jingle of keys and the clatter of the cowbell, and all went silent.

  The basement door was still open. The diary sat on the step. I was pretty sure it was the diary Virgil had told me about, the diary that had started all of this. The receptacle for all of Judith's pain. The cause of decades of regret. I limped down the steps, one at a time, and sniffed it over, and wondered whether I still trusted Virgil's judgment after all we had been through.

  Should the diary remain hidden? Was its story too painful for Ashley? Could any good come of her knowing the truth that had haunted Virgil for so long, and the angst that had caused her mother to jump off a highway overpass?

  Stories can be teachers and comfort and road maps. I still believe that. But did I believe that some stories were dangerous? I sniffed that diary and I felt pain so acute, so piercing that it shot me through the heart. It was the same thing Ashley's chemical fragrance did to my brain.

  I felt all of Judith's hatred for her parents, her self-loathing. The angst. The lack of perspective. The sickness. And I thought, no. It is too powerful. If Ashley cries over a maxi-pad on the carpet, this is not something she can use.

  Someone else, maybe they could benefit from such a story. But not Ashley.

  And then I considered where the diary could be hidden. Where could I put it that curious Ashley couldn't find it?

  I nuzzled the pages open. My nostrils twitched in disgust. But really, the decision had already been made. I tore off a page with my teeth, and I ate it.

  By the time Corey and Ashley reappeared, slightly tipsy, the diary was mostly devoured. Pieces of the cover were scattered through the basement. I was waiting in the display window with the stomach ache of my life, cheeks puffed out to keep from barfing, focusing on the sidewalk. Ashley and Corey swayed toward me, hand in hand. The cowbell clattered.

  I recycled the diary into a neat pile on the dirt parking strip by the tree, then dry-heaved a few times. The world spun.

  "We'd better get you home," Corey said, and picked me up.

  As he grunted up to the old apartment with me in his arms, Ashley bent over the mess on the parking strip.

  "I think she ate that diary," she said.

  "Stupid dog," muttered Corey.

  We Whimpered With Full Hearts

  It was late autumn. Virgil had long been buried, and leaves skitter-skittered in the streets.

  Corey and Ashley were laughing together. They had cleared everything from the corner that used to hold old games and toys, cut cryst
al bric-a-brac and war medals, and had covered the linoleum with plastic sheets.

  They rolled yellow paint onto the dingy wall and took turns smudging each other's faces with paint as though it were wedding cake. They giggled and leaned on each other and they had forgotten me. I sat in the display window, the smell of interior acrylic piercing my brain, watching people come and go along the sidewalk. The shop was Closed For Renovation.

  Ashley had a Business Plan and a Loan and also a Half Carat Diamond Ring that she kept adjusting under her latex glove.

  Outside, it started to sleet, and a car pulled to the curb. A woman with a head-tail climbed out of the driver's side and scurried around to the sidewalk. It was the sway of that head-tail that attracted my attention. There was something familiar about it.

  I stiffened and watched as she unbuckled a small child from a safety seat and lifted her out, tugging a little red hood on to protect the child from the sleet.

  Now the sleet was falling slant-wise. Not so much falling as hurling. And the woman and the child were blurry behind it, struggling with a large purse and a diaper bag, then dashing for Latte Love. The child stared back my way.

  And the way they dashed was oh-so-familiar. And just as they left my field of view I thought I heard the child say, "Good Girl!" in her squeaky-toy voice.

  "Hey! Hey!" I barked, and jumped down from the display. I ran to the door and scratched and scratched.

  "Sophie, Jesus!" Corey called. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  "Lemme out!" I yowled.

  As soon as he twisted the knob I forced my way through and chased after the head-tail and the little girl, but I was too slow, and they had vanished inside Latte Love leaving nothing but a whiff of Home.

  I whined and tried to peer between the Visa sticker and the Coffees of the World display. My breath fogged the window.

  "It's me," I cried. "It's me! It's me! It's me! Pleeeeease!"

  "Sophie, go away," came Robyn's muffled voice from behind the glass.

  And then I could feel the electricity, the current of recognition.

  "Sophie?" Another voice may have said. A more muffled voice.

  "I'm sorry Mrs. Metcalfe, it's his stupid dog…" Robyn's voice tailed off.

  "We used to…" the muffled response. "…another dog maybe someday…Lily loves dogs…"

  Corey had me by the neck and was hauling me backward.