But What About Me?

by Marilyn Reynolds

  Getting on?” the bus driver says, calling me back from the past. I step onto the bus, fumbling around in my backpack for my bus pass. The driver taps his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

  “Sorry,” I say, showing the pass and finding a seat toward the back.

  When I get home there’s a message on the machine from Mom to call her at work.

  “What’s up?” I ask, after I finally press one for the Hamilton Heights branch, press three for accounting, and then press extension 216 for my mom.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you all day,” Mom says. “And I’m afraid I was a bit harsh about Danny. I know he’s been through a very bad time.”

  “I think he still really misses his mom. And his dad has sort of deserted him as far as caring about him goes. It’s like he’s a total orphan.”

  “What you said about me not knowing Danny very well kind of struck home. How would you feel about inviting him over for dinner sometime this week?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  Friday evening we make salad and spaghetti and garlic bread

  and Danny comes for dinner. It’s not a big deal, just one more plate

  on the table and a fresh tablecloth instead of the three straw placemats that are usually on the table. Well, I guess Rocky thinks it’s a big deal because she reeks of my mom’s perfume and she’s wearing a dress.

  Rocky is not what you’d call subtle. As soon as Danny walks through the door she runs up to him. “Smell me,” she says.

  “Rochelle!” Mom says, pausing over the salad. “That’s hardly a polite request.”

  Danny leans down and smells the spot on Rocky’s neck that she’s pointing out for him.

  “You smell so good,” Danny says. “Oh, and my heart,” he pats his chest in a quick, fluttery motion. “Is that a love potion?”

  Rochelle blushes and leans closer to Danny.

  “Hi, Mrs. Arredondo,” Danny says.

  “Hi, Danny. Call me Gloria, though, remember? Mrs. Arredondo makes me feel old.”

  My mom has told him this about a thousand times, but I know how he feels. It’s weird calling someone else’s parent by their first name, and it’s also weird doing the Mr./Mrs. thing.

  All through dinner, Kitty rests her head on Danny’s knee and looks up at him as if she’s not been fed for a week and he is her only hope. Finally, he slips her a piece of garlic bread.

  “Now she’ll never leave you alone,” Mom says. “I’ve never known a dog to love garlic the way this one does.”

  “You’ve never known any other dog,” I remind her.

  Rochelle finishes her food before anyone else is even half done.

  “Come on,” she says to Danny, pulling on his arm. “Come play ping-pong with me.”

  “Rochelle, let Danny finish his dinner in peace,” Mom says.

  “He’s already eaten a lot!” Rocky says.

  We laugh, but Danny seems embarrassed. “I never sit at a table and eat dinner anymore,” he explains.

  “Then you’ll have to come more often,” Mom says.

  Danny helps himself to more spaghetti, then passes the dish toward Mom.

  “Don’t tempt me! I’ve got to lose ten pounds before Grant gets back.”

  “You shouldn’t lose weight, Mrs. . . . Gloria,” Danny says.

  “You’re just right.”

  Mom laughs. “It’s that or buy a whole new wardrobe, and I can’t afford all new clothes.”

  “Want to hear my solo?” Rocky asks Danny. “I have to sing a solo for the Christmas choir concert,” Rocky says, like she hates it. She really loves it, though, because she practices all the time. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, much less Christmas, but judging from Rocky’s constant practicing, you’d think the concert was only a day away.

  “Rochelle, let Danny eat,” Mom says, again.

  Danny laughs. “I’ve been wanting to hear your solo,” he says.

  “See?” Rocky says to Mom.

  Then she starts singing “Oh Holy Night” at the top of her lungs. When she finishes we all clap, but Danny shows the most enthusiasm, probably because he hasn’t been hearing “Oh Holy Night” about a thousand times a day.

  “I’m good, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Danny laughs.

  “And modest, too,” Mom says.

  After his third helping of spaghetti, Danny wipes his mouth and sets his napkin on the table beside his plate.

  “That was really good,” he says. “Thank you.”

  Mom looks at him intently, like she’s adjusting her vision.

  “How are things with you these days, Danny?”

  The other night she was talking to me like Danny was the scourge of the universe and tonight she’s all friendly. Go figure.

  “Things are cool,” Danny says. “School, job hunting, same old stuff.”

  “Are you in school now?” Mom asks.

  He nods his head yes. “Finishing my high school equivalency, then I can start city college—right now I really need a job, though.”

  This is news to me! The last I’d heard Danny wasn’t going to school at all. I look at him, trying to make sense of what he’s just said, but he doesn’t look my way.

  “Do you know anything about carpentry?” Mom asks.

  “A little. When I was younger my dad used to take me out on jobs with him. He taught me how to do some stuff,” Danny says.

  “We’ve got a little work that needs to be done around here. Are

  you interested?”

  “Sure.”

  Mom starts showing Danny all of these things that have been bugging her, like where the bookshelves have been loose since the last earthquake, and the section of back fence that needs to be rebuilt.

  “Can you do it?” Mom asks.

  “No problem,” Danny says.

  They arrange a schedule and Mom says she’ll pay Danny six dollars an hour, then she puts her dishes into the dishwasher and goes into the other room to watch the news.

  Danny takes one of those really little bottles of Jack Daniels whiskey from his pocket and pours some into his glass of water. “Want some?” he asks, quietly.

  “No,” I say, surprised by what I’ve just seen.

  Danny pours the rest of the contents into his glass and puts the empty bottle back in his pocket.

  “Just a little something to keep me warm on the way home,” he explains. “No big deal.”

  I’m probably looking at him strangely. I can’t tell how I look, but I know I’m feeling strange.

  “Free,” he says, pulling four other little bottles, all Jack Daniels, from various pockets. “Gladys knows a guy who works for the airlines . . .”

  “Gladys?”

  “You know, Alex’s mom. Anyway, this guy brings stuff to her all the time. She keeps all the vodka for herself, but she gives the rest away,” he laughs. “She’s a trip.”

  “She helped you out the other day,” I remind him.

  “For sure. You know my dad’s never gone to the police station to clear things up? He’s going to make us go through the whole hearing business, maybe even get us put on probation, with a record. I can’t believe that shit.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “Who can talk to him? He’s an asshole.”

  “But you used to talk to him, didn’t you? I mean, you said tonight he used to take you with him on his jobs sometimes.”

  “Yeah, I don’t get it either. When my mom was around my dad acted normal, but as soon as she died he turned into the biggest asshole in the world, always on my case about every little thing— my pants are too baggy, my haircut’s not normal, I’m a slob—I probably don’t even breathe right as far as he’s concerned.”

  “Maybe he really misses your mom, too.”

  “Right. The grass wasn’t even growing over her grave before he started having whores to the house.”

  Danny’s whole body changes when he talks about his father. His face looks drawn and tight.

  “I don
’t give a shit about him, anyway.” He adds a little more Jack Daniels to his water, which now looks sort of brownish. “I give a shit about you, though,” he says.

  “How romantic,” I tell him, laughing.

  He pulls me toward him and kisses the top of my head. I lift my head, to kiss his lips, but we’re interrupted by Mom yelling at us above the noise of the TV, “Don’t forget to rinse your dishes and put them in the dishwasher when you’re finished.”

  Danny laughs, but then he gets this sad look on his face.

  “What?” I say.

  “What? What do you mean?” he asks.

  “What are you looking so sad about?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Sometimes I miss having a mom to tell me what to do. There’s nobody now to tell me to rinse my dishes and put them in the dishwasher.”

  “Somebody just did,” I say.

  “Yeah, but you know what I mean. It’s not the same.”

  He downs his whiskey-laced drink, puts the glass and his plate in the dishwasher and gives me a quick, distant kiss.

  “I gotta go,” he says, and he’s out the door before I can even say good-bye.

  In my room I wait for a tapping at my window, but it doesn’t come. Danny didn’t even say when he’d see me again. He does that sometimes. He’ll tell me something private, like he misses his mom, but then after he says it, he acts sort of mad, or like he has no feelings. He isn’t always easy to understand.

  I force Danny out of my mind and concentrate on English and

  biology. I’ll save calculus for the weekend.

  In the story about Gregor Samsa, when he tries to talk to his family and the manager from his work, he scares them because he sounds like an animal. And then when they see him, they all go nuts. And all the time he’s trying to meet his responsibilities, no matter how he looks or feels.

  Even though I want to be a vet, I’ve never been very interested in bugs. But the next time I see one, I’m going to be extra careful not to step on it, because now I know how Gregor feels.

  Sometime around three in the morning, after I’ve been asleep for hours, Rocky comes and gets in bed with me. She snuggles up close to me and asks, “Are you glad I’m your sister?”

  “Yeah,” I mumble, not wanting to wake up for her questions.

  “I’m glad you’re my sister,” she says.

  I wonder how she’d feel if I turned into a giant beetle and oozed a sticky brown substance? Would she still be glad I was her sister?

  Chapter

  8

  First thing I do when I get to the Humane Society Saturday morning is check on the dog Antoinette brought in. She is so still I’m afraid to take a closer look, but then, seeing the movement of her upper body, I walk softly to her cage.

  “Hey, Beauty,” I say.

  She lifts her head slightly. I open the cage and reach in to pet her. It doesn’t look as if she’s eaten much. I take a bit of food in my fingers and hold it under her nose. She sniffs at it.

  “Come on, get strong,” I tell her.

  She licks the food and I offer her a few more bites. I know not to try to feed her too much at one time because her poor stomach probably couldn’t handle it. I pull the water dish close to her but she puts her head back down on her paws. I go to the supply room kitchen, get some ice from the freezer and put it in a plastic freezer bag. Then I bang the bag with a hammer until the ice is in small chips and take it back to her cage. I take a small chip and gently push it into her mouth, then another. Looking at me with dull, sad eyes, she taps her tail weakly, twice.

  “Makes you wonder about people, doesn’t it?”

  It’s Dr. Franz, in her green lab coat. She checks the dog’s eyes, mouth, skin, listens to her heart, and jots some notes on her information card.

  “Will she be okay?”

  “Hard to tell. Malnourished, dehydrated, miserable skin condition. I don’t see evidence of any major internal disease. Physically, she has a strong heartbeat, but I’m not sure how strong her heart is for life anymore . . . Want to make the rounds with me?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Bye, Beauty,” I say to the dog.

  “Beauty?” Dr. Franz smiles, looking at the skinny, mangy dog. “That’s a perfect name for her,” she says, writing “Beauty” on the information card that’s attached to the cage.

  “And her owner’s the beast,” Antoinette says, as she pauses at the cage to look in on the dog.

  Helping mix vaccines for the newer “residents” and hearing Dr. Franz talk about each animal as she makes the rounds is one of my favorite things to do around here. We start with the newly arrived strays.

  “Sometimes I think I should open a nicely decorated clinic in Sycamore Hills and work with pampered poodles and Persian cats and not think about animals that are neglected or abused. I’d never have to end another healthy animal’s life just because no one wanted to give it a home.”

  Dr. Franz is nearly six feet tall. She’s older than my mom and younger than my gramma. I guess that makes her somewhere between forty and sixty-five. Her hair is gray and it’s only about an inch long. I’ve never seen her wear anything but jeans and a T-shirt and the green lab coat she wears when she’s working with the animals. When it’s cold she wears a down jacket that she’s had since college. I’m not sure she’d fit in with the Sycamore Hills crowd, but I don’t think it’s a serious consideration anyway.

  She marks a card on the cage of a young Labrador retriever, scheduling him for neutering the next day.

  “I’d make more money,” Dr. Franz says, moving on to the next cage.

  I follow along in silence. One thing I learned early on here is that there are days when some of the staff get all down and it’s best not to bug them with questions or try to talk to them on those days. They sort of protect me and the volunteers, too, as far as euthanasia goes. If we ask what happened to one of our favorite dogs, or cats, or rabbits that’s no longer in its cage, staff members always say “adopted.”

  That’s true about eighty percent of the time, but it’s not always true. Most people don’t want to think about a healthy, homeless animal being put to death, so they accept the “adopted” answer without further questions. I can tell, though, whether the staff member is telling the truth, or just saying what they know people want to hear. “Really?” I ask, when I see the sadness creep around the eyes and mouth. And a shake of the head, or silence, tells me that “adoption” was a euphemism for a quick, painless death.

  The first time I held an animal that was being put down, I wasn’t sure I could stand it. But I knew I needed to see the whole picture, not just the easy part.

  She was an old cocker with health problems, black, with gentle eyes, but not the kind of animal that gets adopted. She was trying to lick my face when she got the injection. Five seconds later she was dead. I managed not to cry until later, when I was with Danny, and he held me in his arms.

  “You helped that old dog into heaven,” he’d told me.

  I hope that’s true, but I doubt it. I think I just helped her out of the world in the kindest way possible.

  Dr. Franz’s mood lightens with the puppies who clamber in heaps over their brothers and sisters—healthy, cute, energetic puppies—the kind who always get adopted—really adopted.

  “Pay no attention to me,” she says. “I love this work, and it’s important. Maybe I’ll leave the poodles and Persians of Sycamore Hills to you.”

  I laugh.

  “Have you sent your college applications off yet?”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk with you about that. Would you write a recommendation for me, for Davis?”

  “Of course. Just bring me the forms.”

  The screeching call of the caracara fills the air. “I guess you got a recommendation from Toopee,” Dr. Franz says.

  Back in the infirmary we pause again at Beauty’s cage. I hand-feed her a few more bites.

  “Why don’t you take over with this one?” Dr. Franz says.
r />   “How?”

  “Keep a check on her diet, regulate the mange medication, get rid of the fleas, socialize her, set her up for vaccinations, and spaying, when the time is right. You can handle that.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, pleased with the assignment.

  Early in the afternoon Sinclair and I go to the back parking lot with cleaning supplies for the mobile pet adoption van. We clean and disinfect all of the cages and wipe down all of the hard surfaces inside the van, including the floor.

  “Here, I’ll buy you a soda,” Sinclair jokes, taking two cans of cola from the van’s tiny refrigerator and handing me one.

  We step outside and lean against the van, drinking soda and talking. I see a familiar looking Honda turn into the alley. It’s Alex and Danny. They park next to the van and Danny gets out. There’s some older guy in the back seat—someone I’ve never seen before.

  “Hey, Pups,” Danny smiles.

  “Hi.” I stand and walk toward him.

  “Hi, Daniel,” Sinclair says, reaching toward him.

  “Hey, Sinclair,” Danny says, shaking Sinclair’s hand, then turning toward me.

  “I need to talk to you,” he says.

  “I’ll see you inside,” Sinclair says, as he walks through the back gate near the kennels. “’Bye, ’bye,” he says to Danny.

  “Listen, Pups. Something came up. You know how I was supposed to start work on your fence this afternoon?”

  “Yeah. Mom was off to the lumberyard for materials before I even left for work this morning.”

  “Well, something’s come up. I need to go take care of some business with Alex and his brother.”

  “His brother?”

  “Yeah, Joey,” Danny says, nodding toward the car. “He got home last night. They let him out early—overcrowded facilities—they had to make room for the new ones coming in—kind of like here, only he didn’t get ‘adopted,’ they just let him loose,” Danny laughs.

  “What am I supposed to tell Mom?” I say. “Why don’t you call her?”

  “No, Pups, I’ve got to hurry. You can tell her, can’t you?” Danny says, looking at me intently. “This is important. I don’t have time to explain it all now, just believe me, it’s important.”