Earnest (22 page)

C
HAPTER
44

D
espite the rain, more than a hundred of the house's supporters gathered in Thrifty Market's parking lot. Bumping umbrellas, they greeted each other in jeans, rain hats, and hoodies. Under Thrifty's green-and-white-striped awning, April Pringle and Lloyd McGregor, minus his bagpipes, talked and waved their hands. As excitement rippled through the crowd, someone shouted, “Save the tree! Save the house!”

If only,
Anna thought.

The city council's vote tonight might as well be the peak of a crescendo in Beethoven's “Battle Symphony,” which old Mr. Webster played too loudly on his ancient stereo. Months of worry and effort had built to this moment, and every day of those months was etched in the tension on Anna's face. All afternoon while Joy had made last-minute calls to round up allies, Anna and Earnest had handed out flyers about the meeting, and Lauren had painted signs for the crowd to carry down the block to city hall.

“It's now or never.” Joy stamped her feet in the chill. “We should get going in about twenty minutes.”

“I have six flyers left. Anybody need one?” Anna asked.

“Put them on windshields. Lots to choose from.” Lauren swept her hand through the air to indicate the parking lot. “There's still time to get people to join us.”

Anna glanced around at cars to target. “Look who's here.” She pointed two rows down to Jeff's blue Honda.

“Slap one of those babies on him. Stick it to him,” Joy said. “Leave it facedown so he can't miss it when he climbs behind the steering wheel.”

“That would be mean,” Lauren pointed out.

“He's earned mean,” Joy said.

“It would be throwing gasoline on fire,” Lauren warned.

“Whose side are you on?” As Joy pushed damp hair back from her face, her dark roots showed.

Anna hesitated. “Jeff doesn't need a reminder about the meeting.”

“Your flyer wouldn't
remind
him. It'd notify him that enemies are waiting for him at city hall,” Joy said.

Anna shook her head with indecision. “I don't know . . .”

“Do it! Go get him! Or I will.” Joy waved her fist.

If Jeff hadn't been Gamble's Benedict Arnold, we wouldn't be here in the first place,
Anna thought. “I guess you're right.”

While Joy and Lauren handed out signs, Anna and Earnest walked to Jeff's car. Earnest seemed to sense that something disagreeable was about to happen because he pressed back his ears and let her know,
I prefer harmony and peace.

Normally, Anna would have agreed with him, but not after a day of strong tea, adrenaline, and gearing up to plead for the house. She lifted Jeff's windshield wiper and set the flyer facedown on the glass. Just as she was replacing the wiper, footsteps approached from behind—and Earnest whined and tugged his leash.

Anna didn't have to look to know that Jeff had caught her in an underhanded act. But it was hardly criminal; she felt justified, and she refused to slink away, embarrassed. She turned around as Earnest threw himself at Jeff.
You're here! You're here!
said each fervent tail swish.

“Hey, Earnest.” Careful not to drop his grocery bag, Jeff stooped down and greeted him.

Then looking solemn, he straightened up and stared at Anna intently enough to singe her skin. “May I ask what you're doing?”

“Um . . . Well, I was . . .”

Across the parking lot, the crowd began to wave signs and chant,
Save the tree! Save the house!
Joy yelled, “Yahoo!”

“You were . . . what?” Jeff asked, not giving Anna an inch of slack.

“You don't have to treat me like I'm three.” Anna slipped on self-righteousness like a porcupine pelt. “I was leaving you a flyer about tonight's meeting.”

“Obviously I know about it. I don't need your flyer,” Jeff said. “You were being sneaky and passive aggressive.”

No one had ever accused her of that! Anna bristled her quills. “And
you
are being insensitive. You can't expect me to sit around and watch you destroy Grammy's house. No way will I not try to stop you.”

“No way will I not do the job I was hired for. I do have a job, if you remember. I work,” Jeff said.

“You don't have to be sarcastic.” Anna folded her arms across her chest. “And just for the record, I could never forget that you work.” She said “work” as if skunks were spraying from the letters. “Your work ruined everything.”

“
Wait
a minute . . .” Jeff narrowed his eyes.

“
You
wait,” Anna interrupted, fueled by the evening's tension. It felt good to speak her mind. “You knew how much I cared about Grammy's house, but you arranged to tear it down without a thought of me. Cedar Place was more important to you than I was. You wanted everyone to admire you. You thought you'd prove you weren't like your father, but you won't prove a thing except that you think only about yourself.”

Jeff looked like his lungs were collapsing and there was no more oxygen left in the parking lot for him to breathe. Lines that Anna had never seen before appeared around his squint, which seemed to be about both self-protection and disapproval of her. Rain spattered his glasses.

“You're the one thinking about
yourself,
” he snapped. “You think a house can make up for your parents' abandoning you, and it'll keep you tied to your grandmother's love. But it won't. The past is gone, and a house isn't going to bring it back. You threw us away for
that
.”

Earnest's grief-stricken eyes went back and forth between the two people he loved most. He couldn't help but pick up their anger. He whimpered,
Stop! Stop!

“Look what you've done to him.” Jeff's words seemed bitten off rebar. “You've upset him. Hell, you've upset his whole life. Because of you, he lost his family.”

“Because of
me?!
What about because of you? You're in total denial.”

“And you're blind and stubborn,” Jeff shot back. “Have you ever considered for a single second that Mrs. Blackmore wanted to build a big-box chain store? I persuaded her to go for a building that would fit in downtown, and I designed special spaces for you and Joy and Lauren's shops. You wouldn't listen to what I was trying to do. All you cared about was chasing the past, but life goes on.”

Anna stepped back, withered by Jeff's anger. She needed space.

“Your grandmother's dead,” he continued. “You can't get her back, but you could have had me, and I loved you. Brian Cooper promised me a raise for Cedar Place. I wanted it so we could get married. What a joke.”

Wails came from deep inside Earnest.
Stop fighting! Oh, please, stop. I can't bear it.

Jeff squatted down and cradled Earnest's head against his chest. He smoothed back Earnest's ears and kissed his forehead. “I'm sorry, Buddy. I really am. I promise you'll never have to hear those words again.”

The crowd chanted,
Save the tree! Save the house!

Anna wanted to say that the last thing she ever meant to do was upset Earnest, but she was too shocked to speak. Regret seemed to swallow her in one large gulp—regret about her beloved dog and maybe about other things as well—she'd have to sort them out when she could think straight.

From across the lot, Joy shouted, “Come on, Anna. We're about to leave.”

With effort, Anna stuffed all her feelings back inside.

Jeff kissed Earnest again. “Take care of yourself, Buddy. I'll pick you up tomorrow and make this up to you. I'll buy you some cheese. We'll go for a hike.”

Without a word to Anna, Jeff stood up, yanked the flyer off his windshield, and wadded it into a sodden ball. He tossed it in with his groceries, set the bag in his backseat, and locked the car. As Jeff turned around and stormed toward city hall, Earnest yanked his leash and tried to follow.

Anna pulled him back. “Come on, Sweetheart. We have to go.” She led him toward the crowd.

Clearly torn, Earnest looked at her, then at Jeff's retreating back, like he was trying to decide which of his people needed him more. His eyes darkened with confusion. Anyone could tell that his loyalties were split, and he was unsure what to do—and the uncertainty caused him visible pain. He slumped as if he were an electric dog and someone had unplugged him from his socket. His ears and tail drooped.

Earnest's paws followed Anna, but his eyes followed Jeff to the sidewalk as he started across Rainier. Earnest was so focused on Jeff that he hardly seemed to notice all the noisy people. When Anna bent down to pick up the sign that Joy had left for her, she accidentally loosened her grip on Earnest's leash. For the first time ever, he jerked it out of her hand and ran.

“Wait, Earnest!! Wait!” She tore after him.

Anna chased Earnest to the curb as his leash dragged behind him.

“Earnest, come back here!”

On countless occasions, Earnest, the world's most responsible dog, had felt his duty was to keep Anna safe, and he had pulled her back from jaywalking. He'd always looked both ways before crossing a street. But now he was so intent on reaching Jeff that he did not consider his own well-being. Without looking, he dashed into Rainier as Jeff stepped up on the opposite curb.

Time seemed to pass in slow motion. There were a million points when the action could have stopped and Earnest could have paused or turned around. He could have slowed his charge to Jeff by only a second, and it might have made all the difference.

But he kept running. Anna saw his paws skim over the asphalt. With every step, his ID tag clinked against his collar's buckle, and his ears flopped against his head.Their tinge of biscuit beige outlined the triangle shape. The rain had dampened the fur on Earnest's back so it was darker than usual, more honey than wheat.

As Earnest reached the center of Rainier, Anna heard a screech of brakes and a hideous thump. She screamed and ran to him. Jeff turned around and ran to him too. In the glare of a pickup's headlights, Earnest was lying on the asphalt in a pool of blood.

C
HAPTER
45

J
eff scooped Earnest off the asphalt and carried him, bleeding, to the car. He set him on the backseat as Anna slid over next to him from the other side. When Jeff climbed into the driver's seat, each of Earnest's whimpers shaved a strip off Jeff's heart. He had to get help before it was too late.

When he pulled out of Thrifty's parking lot, he glanced in the rearview mirror. Tears were streaming down Anna's face. As she tried to comfort Earnest, Jeff heard him lick her hands to try to comfort
her.
How could he be concerned for Anna when
he
was obviously hurt? He must have felt the same concern for Jeff when he'd run into the street.

Jeff blinked back his own tears at Earnest's selflessness. Jeff could hardly keep driving. He clutched the steering wheel till his knuckles turned white.
Just get to the clinic,
he told himself.
If you break down, you can't do Earnest any good
.

 

Everything in Dr. Nilsen's waiting room seemed unsettled. Huddling at the bottom of the aquarium, the clownfish looked sullen and barely fanned their fins. The kissing gouramis weren't puckering up, and the angelfish looked like they were tired of trying to live up to their name. The scraggly plant at the receptionist's counter was wilting. Her silent phone seemed to brood about not being asked to ring after closing time.

Sitting next to Anna on a Naugahyde sofa, Jeff jiggled his foot, thrummed his fingers on his knee, and stared into space. The drive here had flattened him emotionally, but he'd expected to feel better once he got Earnest into Dr. Nilsen's capable hands.
Wrong.
Now Jeff was more shattered than in the car. He felt like he was lost on Uranus, and his rocket back to Earth had broken down.

He now saw in blazing Technicolor the toll on Earnest of his and Anna's fight, and he felt chastened to the core. If Earnest did not survive, Jeff would never, in ten lifetimes, shake his guilt for distressing him so much that he'd tried to cross the street to comfort Jeff tonight. He could be reincarnated in ten different countries in the next three hundred years, and in each new body, he would feel horrible remorse if he came upon a dog. His remorse would be unshakable, eternal. He could not escape it. Ever.

Anna looked like she felt the same.As she sniffled and swiped her cheeks with a crumpled tissue from the bottom of her purse, Jeff bet she'd give anything to relive the last hour so Earnest would not have gotten hurt and they wouldn't have to be here. Sharing the regret should have brought them closer together, but they stared into space, in their own worlds, as if he spoke Chinese and she spoke Romanian—and if they tried to talk, they wouldn't understand each other.

What would Jeff say anyway when piggybacked onto his remorse was horror at Earnest's injuries and fear that he might die. His blood was smeared all over Jeff's sports coat, pants, shirt, and hands. He might as well have just laid down a scalpel in an operating theater.

So far he hadn't gone to the restroom and cleaned himself up because Dr. Nilsen might come out to let them know Earnest's prognosis—and Jeff would be gone. He also felt a superstitious nagging that washing off Earnest's blood would be like washing
him
down the drain. Sticky hands were far easier to live with than that disquieting image.

 

“Want a cup of Dr. Nilsen's coffee?” Jeff asked Anna.

“No, but thanks for asking,” she said.

“Mind if I get one?”

“You don't have to ask
me.
”

“I'm worried about crossing the room and leaving you here. You don't look so good.”

“Yes . . . well . . .” Anna contorted her fingers into an anatomically challenging position. Weeping had smeared her mascara. Her face was puffy, but the rest of her seemed to have withered and shrunk. Her hair stuck out in tufts, which suggested that a tornado may have sucked her into its vortex and spit her out on a freeway in rush-hour traffic.

“I'll be okay if you cross the room. Go get your coffee,” she said.

“You're sure you don't want any?”

“All I want is for Earnest to be okay.”

“Me too.”

“I know.” Tears trailed down Anna's cheeks again.

 

We're falling all over each other, trying to get along,
Jeff thought as he stretched out his legs, crossed his ankles, and sipped his coffee. Earnest's injuries had shown Jeff—and surely her, too—that their grievances against each other meant nothing compared to their love for him. Earnest mattered most. They'd do anything for him. Like they also used to feel they'd do for each other.

Jeff would take a while to sift through Anna's accusations tonight. For now, he was willing to admit she was right about one thing: Proving that he was not irresponsible like his father partly fed Jeff's drive for success. But he would never agree that his job had been more important to him than Anna had been, or that he'd thought only of himself when he'd taken on Cedar Place. He'd hoped for it to help, not hinder her. His intentions had been honorable.

On the other hand, he'd admit that not telling her about the project from the start had been a mistake. And he should have better understood the importance of Mrs. Blackmore's house to Anna. Any little kid whose parents had abandoned her to pursue their ambitions would have latched on extra hard to a caring grandmother—and to the house they shared. And when the little kid grew up, she was bound to be touchy about the ambition of someone she loved—especially if it made her feel abandoned again, a hurt repeated.

Jeff couldn't blame Anna for her feelings. He blamed himself for not being more sensitive to them. He was very, very sorry. About Anna, Earnest, everything. The whole damned mess.

Jeff wrapped his arms around himself to hold in his regret.
Anna is right. When it comes to importance, love ranks right up there with water and air
. Jeff would quit his job and beg on the streets if only Earnest would be okay—and if only they could all go back to the peaceful life they'd had.

 

Dr. Nilsen had stayed after hours to take care of Earnest. The long day showed in his shoulders' slump and the sag around his eyes. Lacking his usual energy, he plodded into the reception room. He pulled an empty chair from the row along the wall and sat facing Jeff and Anna. He said, “I know you're upset. But don't worry. Earnest's going to be all right.”

Jeff's eyes met Anna's. Their collective relief seemed to fill the room and press against the walls. He let out a slow no-longer-tortured breath and said, “That's fantastic news.”

“He's stable. We've cleaned him up and given him pain meds.” Dr. Nilsen leaned forward and rested his wrists on his knees. “So here's the plan.... Tonight I want to x-ray Earnest's chest to see if he's got extra air in his lungs. That'll tell us if the car ruptured his diaphragm. The car also skidded him on the pavement so he's got road rash and some bad lacerations. I'll have to stitch up one on his thigh right away.”

Dr. Nilsen paused and looked at Anna. “Are you all right?”

Jeff turned to her. Her face was as white as drafting paper.

“Don't faint on me. I can only take care of one patient at a time,” Dr. Nilsen said.

“Do you want some water?” Jeff asked her.

“I'm just wobbly. It's hard to hear about stitches in Earnest. I'd rather they were in me,” Anna said.

To shore her up, Jeff took her hand. It was cold and stiff, but it was the most familiar hand in the world to him besides his own. She did not pull away or seem to mind Earnest's blood on Jeff's skin. Something between him and Anna seemed to shift. Months of wasted anger piled up at their feet like discarded calendar pages.

“Do you mind hearing about a broken leg, Anna?” Dr. Nilsen asked.

She shook her head.

“I'm pretty sure Earnest's left femur is fractured. I have to x-ray it too. Our surgeon will be here tomorrow morning, and he can put in a metal plate.”

“Will Earnest have a cast?” Jeff asked.

“No, but maybe bandages, depending on the surgeon's incision. Earnest will have to be confined for four to six weeks. You'll be able to take him out to do his business a few times a day, but otherwise you'll have to restrict him.”

“How?” Anna asked.

“In your kitchen or a crate. The surgeon can talk with you about all that.” Dr. Nilsen cupped his hand around his stethoscope's chestpiece. “So are we all in agreement here? You want me to go ahead?”

“Absolutely,” Jeff said at the same time that Anna said, “Of course.”

“You two need to go home. Earnest knows you're out here, and he keeps looking for you. He might relax if you were gone,” Dr. Nilsen said.

“Can we tell him good-bye?” Anna asked.

“If you only stay a minute.”

Dr. Nilsen led them through an exam room to the back of the clinic.When Jeff stepped into the surgery, his pulse seemed to stop, as if his heart had decided it ached too much to pump any more blood. Earnest was lying on Dr. Nilsen's steel table, looking moth-eaten around the edges. His fur was rumpled, and his eyes, exhausted. But he raised his head and tried to get up—in Jeff's opinion, a valiant act. A technician with a gap between her front teeth held Earnest down.

For Earnest's sake, Jeff forced himself to act nonchalant. He coaxed his reluctant lips to smile and pretended that his buddy was fine and Jeff was used to seeing him with cuts and broken bones. But Anna's sharp intake of breath showed that she could not fake aplomb as well as Jeff. He pressed his hand against her back and steered her to the steel table.

Jeff stroked Earnest's ears, then cradled his chin in his hands. “Oh, Buddy. I'm so sorry,” he whispered.
Sorry you're hurt. Sorry for the misery we've caused you tonight—and for months
.

“I'm sorry too.” Anna leaned down from the table's other side and kissed Earnest on top of his head. Anyone would have thought that her and Jeff's apologies to Earnest were also meant for each other.

“We can't stay, Sweetie. We have to go home so you can rest.” Anna's voice wobbled like the rest of her.

“Dr. Nilsen's going to take good care of you,” Jeff said. “In the morning the surgeon will fix your leg, and then you can come home. Soon you'll be good as new.”

As Anna kissed Earnest again and Jeff leaned over and stroked his muzzle, he rested his head on the table and seemed to relax. Perhaps he sensed that his people were understanding each other again and a match had been struck in their relationship's dark, unhappy room. He thumped his tail on the table, a weak and nearly silent gesture, but it was the best he could manage.

Jeff urged himself,
Hold it together
.