“Course not, sweetheart,” Vic says.
Ma rolls the ancient dial to the community college station for Punk Hour. DJ sounds like he’s huffing lighter fluid. Between the commercials a song occasionally comes on, this really old hard-edged music, The Clash, Iggy Pop, The Ramones. The station fades to crackles every time Vic makes a turn, and Ma constantly retunes the dial. She starts singing along with this band called Suicide. The song’s called “Dream Baby Dream,” and the singer keeps telling us that our dreams will keep us free. Sure they will.
I reach over the seat and click off the radio. “How can you stand it, Ma?”
“It makes me feel good,” she says. And that’s all anybody says until we pull up to the house and Vic pats our arms and nods. “It’s all gonna be okay.”
“How you figure that?” I say.
“I just know it.” Vic’s face is pocked and gray and fragile in the shade-side light. We go into the kitchen. Vic makes coffee.
Anthony is unconscious in post-op recovery, but apparently he’s stable. We can’t go down and see him yet, because they might have to move him to another hospital. Do I even
want
to go down and see him? Will I recognize him?
I head upstairs for a shower, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. I just sit there in my towel, on the floor of the upstairs bathroom, the same floor Grumpy died on. I flip through what I was flipping through while on the toilet this morning, when my life only sucked: a magazine,
Bark,
for dog lovers. It came in the mail yesterday, from Anthony. He picked it up at the PX for Mack. Could I leave it with him next time I visited?
No, I can’t. Mack gets what he wants: He’s dead.
His absence leaves me with plenty of shoulders to cry on, plenty of people to tell me everything will be okay, but no one to believe. He did exactly what he promised he’d never do: He left me stranded.
I’m looking out the bathroom window. It’s still light out, but the streetlights are on, and the gnats are swarming.
THE SIXTY-SIXTH DAY . . .
(Sunday, August 16, just after midnight)
MACK:
The gnats are chewing at us. But if I close the window, we’ll roast.
Thirty-odd hours in the bathroom. We’re staring at each other. Boo licks my face with his extra-long tongue. It hangs out of his mouth three inches when he sleeps.
He pees on the side of the toilet. I’m mopping up the mess with newspaper when I suddenly understand what he needs.
I’m an idiot. How could it take me this long to figure it out?
I take the wet paper and lay it around the shower drain and lead Boo into the stall. He smells his mark in the paper and starts to pee on it.
I give this blessed dog a quarter pound of boloney dunked in peanut butter. I’m howling and hugging him. We’re running around the training center.
I get him full of water again. “Boo, pee.”
He gives me paw.
“Nuh-uh.
Pee
.” I lead him into the stall. He smells himself in the newspaper and lets loose over the drain again, and again I feed him boloney and praise. “
Good
pee.
Good
Boo.”
I take the dirty papers and set them out on the roof, and Boo nails them there too. For a slice of boloney, this dog will climb a tree to spray a newspaper hung in its top.
Wash is in the door frame. He was ripped from deep sleep again, but he’s grinning. Has a phone to his ear. “Yessir, I have good news. No, I said
good
news.”
(Monday, August 17, morning of the sixty-seventh day . . .)
Four days since I told her I never loved her. She hasn’t come back. It’s done. If I didn’t have Boo with me right now, I don’t know.
Thompkins stands tall to watch, arms folded with his lame hand tucked into his armpit. Wash watches from the door.
“Boo, sit,” I say.
Boo sits.
“Boo, pee.”
Boo puts up his paw.
“Boo, I want
pee
.”
Boo trots to the shower stall, lets loose over the drain, comes back out with a spinning tail for his baloney reward and a “Good boy” from me.
Thompkins scowls. “Can you make him go outside?”
I lay out a paper on the roof. “Boo,
pee
.”
Boo trots to the paper, lifts his leg, pees what dribble he’s got left.
“Mister T., this dog is housebroke.”
“I still don’t understand the reasoning behind getting the animal to eliminate in the shower drain.”
“Sir, a dog needs options. You take him outside, he knows it’s cool to make water outside. But if he’s stuck alone in the house or with a paralyzed veteran who can’t let him out—”
“He won’t be
put
with anybody who can’t let him out, as I
told
you. How many times must I say this? He is not a medical aid animal. He is a companion. The veteran may be physically disabled, but in order to qualify for the animal he or she at minimum will need to be able to provide for the animal’s basic needs, for example, letting the animal out to eliminate and for the last time
stop, pinching,
your
wrist
.”
Blizzard of radio static now. Roof cage hot. Day hazy gray. Heat lightning inside me. I see myself going crazy on Thompkins. My hands are getting tight to do it. I step toward him.
Boo cuts me off. He sits between me and the man. He nudges me for petting. Leans into my leg. Big eyes. Tongue hanging out his mouth. This bait dog from the fight pits. A dog that lived terror and came out the other side with his heart still open.
I can’t forsake this dog.
The radio static fades, and the world comes back with sounds of a hot summer day, men working a tar rig out behind the tent, an airplane climbing.
I hold my head up and look the man in the eye. “Mister Thompkins, due respect. These vets, sometimes they need to drink at night. You know, to keep from getting scared and sad, right? So, let’s say the poor vet passes out drunk. As a fallback, Boo can go into the bathroom,
eliminate
over a drain, where you can rinse away the mess. Better there than on a carpet or a bed, right?”
Thompkins looks at me for a long time. He makes a note in his book. He leaves.
Boo fetches his chewed-up Frisbee.
“Think Thompkins is gonna have to fire me, Wash?”
“I think he’s gonna have to rewrite his training manual.”
“I don’t know what that dude wants from me.”
“I expect he’s just one of those people who don’t know how to give praise. Son, deep inside, he sees you are doing just fine. He would have pulled you from the job by now if he thought otherwise. As much pressure as you feel to come through for him, he has that much pressure to come through for his people.”
“The vets.”
“I believe so. No, I wouldn’t ever expect a word of praise from Mister Thompkins. His praise is his silence, and he gave you that. Hey?”
“Yessir?”
“How you doing?”
I look at my boy Boo chasing his Frisbee. He isn’t on a caged-in rooftop. The incinerator stacks, low-flying jumbo jets, sun-faded concrete, and the razor wire—all fade away. Boo’s running through a field of wild grass. “Wash, I’m doing just fine.”
THE SEVENTY-FIRST DAY . . .
(Friday, August 21, just after lunch shift)
CÉCE:
Ma’s at the bar. She sips her coffee. Sober a week. She and Vic pretend to do the crossword.
Last night the doctor called to tell us the second surgery on Anthony’s larynx went well. He can’t talk just yet, but in a few days he’ll probably be well enough to have visitors. We can come down and see him next week, what’s left of him.
Ma’s phone blips with an e-mail. She checks the sender, pushes the phone toward me. “I can’t.”
Subject:
Yo
I can’t either. I give the phone to Vic.
Vic clears his throat. “ ‘ Ma, Cheech, Vic, it’s all good. We’re gonna get through this. I’m doing great. One request: Don’t come down here, okay? You’ll only get freaked out. I’ll be home soon and we’ll figure out this whole thing then. Do me a favor, keep sending that cornbread to the guys, okay? They love it and they sure could use it. Rehab is going great. I’ll see you in a month or so. Love you all like a madman. Chin up, folks. xox Ant.’ ”
Vic frowns, clicks the e-mail closed. “Well,” he says. He puts his hand on Ma’s shoulder.
Ma nods. “Well,” she says.
“You know,” Vic says, “I really think you ladies should get a dog.”
“Please?” Ma says to me.
“No,” I say.
“Yeah, a rescue,” Vic says. “Just think about it, I’m saying. You know,
mull
it.”
“Abso
lute
ly not,” I say.
“Oh absolutely,” Vic says. “One of those vet buddy dogs for Anthony, maybe a pit bull.”
“A
pit
bull?” I say. “Are you insane?”
“Almost certainly,” he says. “Kid, you need to do this.”
“I don’t and I
can’t,
” I say.
“Sure you can. You just do it. Perhaps I’ll make some inquiries.”
“Will you
stop
?” I say.
“Never,” Vic says.
“Céce”
“
No,
Ma.”
(Saturday, August 22, 3:00 a.m. of the seventy-second day. . .)
I’m in Ma’s bed. She’s not. I check the bathroom. No. Downstairs, probably cruising
petfinder.com
again. “Mel?” Not in the den. Kitchen? Nope. She dumped all the alcohol in the house after that last binge. Maybe she went out to a bar?
The basement.
The downstairs pantry, where we keep all the Costco crap. She’s on the floor, an empty bottle of vodka at her side. She started in on a jug of cooking wine with a straw. She’s slurring so softly, but I think she’s saying, “Was that bad, what I did? You and Mack? Saying you. Could sleep down. Here? Was that wrong?” Her eyes flutter and she passes out. I’m shaking her and screaming her name, but she won’t wake up. I call Vic. He calls an ambulance.
They pump her stomach. The doctor says, “The good news is, based on what you’re telling me, your mother isn’t so much the paradigmatic alcoholic as a self-medicating addict who engages in heavy episodic drinking.”
“What a relief, Doc. Really, thanks so much.” I head back into her room.
Ma’s asleep, Vic’s at his iPad. “You gotta keep going,” he says.
“Do you, though?”
“The answer to the Vaccuccia family’s situation is a dog.”
“Vic, say it again, and I’ll get the Hammerhead to sucker you into another game of cards.”
“Céce,” Ma says, except it comes out “She-she,” because she has an oxygen mask over her mouth. She’s still out of it. She waves me to her bed and works up a smile. “Ah ah ee.”
“Huh? I can’t hear you with the mask.”
“Ah ah ee.”
“Anthony? Anthony
what
?”
She shakes her head, frustrated. “Ah
ah
ee.”
“I can’t under
stand
you.”
“Easy, ladies,” Vic says.
She’s crying. “Ah
ah
ee. Ah.
Ah.
Ee.”
“Goddamn it, Ma—”
“She’s sorry, Céce,” Vic says. “She’s saying
I’m sorry
.”
(Five days later, Thursday, August 27, morning of the seventy-seventh day . . .)
Anthony e-mails me a video: His face, throat and hand are bandaged. He’s balancing on the back wheels of his chair. His hospital buddies cheer him on. The video is pixilated and dark, and you only see him from the side, but I don’t see any feet on those foot holders. I see no calves. No knees. When he left home, he was taller than Mack, and Mack is six one. Was six one.
The video zooms to a close-up. Anthony rasps,
“Don’t worry, kid. It’s all good. Love ya like a crazy person.”
Ma calls up from the kitchen, “Ready, babe?” We’re going to market with her cornbread, the flea market.
I can’t show her this video.
Bobby is at the curb with the Vic-mobile. Ma’s flipping him a few bucks to help us out. He wears old-man glasses. “I lost one of my contacts. I think it might be behind my eye.” He drives forty miles an hour in the fifty-five zone.