Читать книгу The Blurry Years - Eleanor Kriseman - Страница 9

02

We moved in with Bruce a month later. My mom said she loved him. I loved him because he had a dog. Her name was Shadow and she was a shaggy mutt whose fur was the same color as my hair. Bruce lived in a real house with a backyard and everything. He had his own landscaping company, and a big truck with his company logo painted on the side. He didn’t cook but he liked to grill and on cool summer nights after my mom got home from work sometimes we would sit outside on the patio while Bruce flipped burgers and flipped the pull-tabs from his beer into the grass. He used to pay me a nickel for each one I could find.

I had my own room at Bruce’s. I missed sleeping next to my mom but I liked being able to close my door, to decorate my room with all the drawings I did in art class. I mostly drew pictures of Shadow. Unless my mom was working weekend shifts, no one was there when I got home from school, and I would let Shadow out to pee and give her some water and a treat and pretend she was mine. Bruce used to keep her in the yard at night, but I started sneaking her in before I went to bed, when they were drinking on the couch in the TV room. Shadow was scared to jump up on my bed at first, but I kept patting the mattress and soon she got used to it, started whimpering at the door at night if I didn’t let her in. One morning my mom came to wake me up for school and saw Shadow and instead of getting mad she just laughed and then it was okay. I could never tell if she was going to laugh or get angry when I did something and it always made me nervous.

We were out on the patio and my mom was at the table, cutting up iceberg lettuce and tomatoes for a salad while Bruce grilled. I was brushing Shadow’s fur. Bruce and my mom were always tired when they got home from work. My mom said she would kill for a job where she didn’t have to be on her feet all day, where she didn’t feel like all she did her whole life was serve people food. “At least my customers tip,” she said, “and I’m not even making their food.” Bruce said nothing, just added more lighter fluid to the grill. Flames burst up from between the iron bars, and the meat crackled.

“Who’s making you dinner right now?” he said. “Who went out and bought your fuckin’ ground meat on the way home from my own job, which isn’t exactly a picnic for me either. At least you get to be inside all day.”

My mom slammed another head of lettuce on the cutting board to get the core out, and the knife slipped off the table and landed on her toe. “Goddamn it!” she shouted, and hopped over to the steps by the back door to look at her foot. “Someone grab me a paper towel, please?”

Bruce kept flipping the burgers.

“Seriously?” She glared at him. “Cal, please? Kitchen?” I dropped Shadow’s wire brush and slipped by my mom where she sat on the steps, grabbing a bunch of paper towels and wetting them carelessly in the sink, bringing her a sopping bundle to wipe up the blood.

“Thanks,” she said, distracted, then, “Bruce—you gonna come look? See if I’m dying?” She waved the streaky red paper towels in the air like a flag. “Losing a little bit of blood here.”

“Skin’s thin on your fingers and toes,” he said. “How many times do you think I’ve sliced my hand open on the job? Surface cut’s gonna bleed like crazy even though it’s not bad. Go inside and put your foot up. Can’t just walk away from the grill here.” She didn’t respond, but she stood up and made her way inside, unsteadily. I could tell it hurt. I went in after her, feeling like a traitor for not going right away, and Shadow followed.

She was on the couch already, clean paper towels stuffed around her toes, leg up on a pillow. “God, he is such an ass sometimes,” she said. I didn’t know what to say so I just held the paper towels in place for her. “Grab my drink for me, Cal?” she said. “I left it on the table.”

I ran back outside. “How is she?” Bruce asked, then looked at the drink in my hand. “Tell her she shouldn’t be drinking if she’s bleeding as much as she says she is. I’ll bring in the burgers in a minute.”

“I don’t think she’s bleeding that bad,” I said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say, not knowing if there was a right thing.

One night when everything was still good, Bruce sat on the edge of my bed before I went to sleep and told me the story of how he’d found Shadow. “And that was it. She sat on my lap on the drive home, whimpering, and I set her up on a towel in the kitchen with a soup bowl for a water dish.” Shadow was eight or nine when he told me the story, and I tried really hard to imagine her as a puppy. She was older than me. “C’mere, girl,” Bruce said, and patted the side of the bed, and she ambled in, licking his hand. He ruffled the fur on the top of her head. Then my mom came and stood in the doorway, and the light in the hall shadowed one side of her face and made her hair glow. “All my girls in one room,” Bruce said. “I’m a lucky guy.”

When Bruce left us a few months later, he took Shadow with him. He didn’t even say goodbye to me unless you count that phone call he made a week later from his new house. I could hear a football game on the television in the background, and a woman—my mom said her name was JoAnn—saying she was going to the kitchen and did he want another Bud. Shadow barked and my breath caught in my throat and I couldn’t talk. I didn’t know what his new living room looked like, so I couldn’t picture him on the other end of the line. I wondered if the woman’s couch was full of crumbs and coins nestled in the cracks like his old one. I wanted him to describe it to me, but all he said was, “I’m sorry, Cal. You know this has nothing to do with you. You’re a good kid.” I felt like he was looking at the television when he said it.

I missed Bruce a little bit, but I missed Shadow more. Shadow hadn’t left my mom and me. My mom hadn’t caught Shadow in the kitchen late at night, whispering I miss you too baby into the phone. All I wanted to do was call her name and hear the click of her paws on the linoleum, on her way to me. We got to stay in the house until Bruce’s lease was up, which wasn’t for another couple months. We had the backyard and the real kitchen and I had my own bedroom but now I didn’t even feel like sleeping alone. It was hard to sleep without Shadow. At night, I missed the heat from her body. She used to sleep on the inside of the bed, between me and the wall, curled up next to my hip, and I could feel her shift and settle throughout the night, still there when I woke up.

After Bruce left, I heard a lot of things my mom said on the phone when she thought I was asleep. “I don’t know, Deb,” she whispered, curled up on the couch. “I just don’t know what we’re going to do when we have to move out.” I tiptoed out into the kitchen and she sat up and angled her body in front of the bottle on the side table. “Cal, I didn’t know you were still up. Debbie, I’ll call you back later.” Or the hissing voicemails she left for Bruce. “How’s your pretty little JoAnn, you fucking bastard?” Even I knew leaving a message like that wouldn’t make me want to come back, if I were Bruce. I wondered if JoAnn drank a lot, if she was nice, if she liked dogs.

I came home from school a couple weeks after Bruce left, expecting an empty house. But my mom was home, drinking a beer in front of the TV. “Bruce is being a shithead,” she said. “We’re going to get that damn dog back.” She looked like she had an idea but not a plan, which made me nervous.

I didn’t say anything on the car ride over. I sat in the backseat, chipping glitter polish off my nails. There was an open can of beer in the cup holder and my mom wanted to steal a dog and I was pretty sure both of those things were against the law. It was August and the AC in the car was broken but I was shivering. This wasn’t something adults did. Bruce had broken a lot of rules but they were adult ones, ones that got broken all the time, on television and in real life.

My mom drove straight past their house and then circled around again. “Checking for cars,” she said. She parked at the end of the block, and we walked down the street like we always did this. Just a mother and daughter walking home from school on a Wednesday afternoon.

My mom knocked on the front door. “They’re not home,” I said. “Remember, we just checked for cars?”

“I know,” she said, in a voice like she thought I was stupid. “I’m just knocking in case the neighbors see.” She tried the front door. It was locked, and for a moment I relaxed. But then she walked around the side of the house. There was just a chain link fence, and then there was Shadow, curled up underneath a tree, then running straight toward us. “You’re going over first,” she said, and held out both of her hands for me to step on. I fell over onto the other side, and Shadow tackled me to the ground, licking my face all over. My mom climbed over next.

“This is disgusting,” my mom said, pointing at a pile of dog poop. “Absolutely disgusting. He doesn’t deserve this dog if this is how they’re going to treat her. Dog shit everywhere.” I’d just started using that word, but not out loud, and not to my mom. “Shit,” I would whisper to myself when I stubbed my toe, or spilled out the last powdery crumbs of cereal on the kitchen counter. “Shit, shit, shit.”

There was a bowl of water by the back door, and another one beside it with a couple crumbs of kibble inside. The grass was nice, like the grass used to be in Bruce’s backyard before he left. There were even a couple of trees with patches of shade beneath them. It looked like she was okay. But then I looked down at her pacing back and forth in front of us. It almost looked like she was smiling. “Yeah,” I said. “Disgusting.” I didn’t see any other poop in the yard.

We walked through the back door and right out the front, leaving it unlocked. It was that easy.

Shadow was quiet in the car, and she settled into my lap even though she was too big for it. I moved my fingers through her fur. She seemed fine, but I would still give her a bath when we got back. I couldn’t stop smiling, even though I knew we’d done something bad. “Can she sleep in my room again?” I asked.

My mom slowed to a stop at a red light and turned to face me. “Well, that’s the problem,” she said. “Bruce knows where we live, remember? So she can’t actually live with us, not for a little while.” I hadn’t thought about that, and it made sense, but then I didn’t get why we’d taken her in the first place.

“Well, yeah,” I said, “but then where is she going to live? And why did we take her?”

“God, Cal, I’m figuring things out, okay! She’ll be fine. We took her because that shithead didn’t deserve her, that’s why. We’ll find her somewhere to live. We just have to drive around for a little bit while I think.” She shook her head, like I’d said something wrong. Shadow leaned against me, and pressed hard into me every time my mom took a corner too sharply. “Fuck,” my mom said softly. “Guess I should have figured that part out beforehand, right?” She laughed.

“Hey! What about Shauna?” she said. “They’ve already got Tubs. I’m sure Tubs gets lonely during the day, right?” Shauna was my best friend, the only friend I ever really hung out with. Tubs was their black lab. He was old and fat and loved to curl up in the squares of sunlight that came through their living room window. “Let’s see what they’re up to!” she said, and made a U-turn to head toward Shauna’s house.

We walked up to the front door, Shadow close behind us. We hadn’t even brought a leash. Shauna’s parents weren’t home, but Shauna was, and so was her older brother Jack, who answered the door. He was in high school and listened to really loud music and only wore black. “What?” he said, without smiling.

“Hi Jack,” my mom said, leaning on the doorframe like she needed it there to hold her up. “Me and Cal were just wondering if you and your family were in the market for a dog.”

“What?” he said, and turned away. “Shauna! C’mere! Callie and her mom are here.”

“Jack,” my mom said, and ran her hand down his arm. “I just thought you and Shauna might want a friend for Tubs.” She smiled at him. “Her name is Shadow.” She’s not your dog to give away, I thought angrily. I want her.

Jack blushed, turning red like the pimples that dotted his face, and shrugged. “Dunno, I’d probably have to ask my parents.”

Shauna ran to the door and hugged me. “Shadow!” she said. “How did you get her back? I thought she wasn’t living with you anymore.”

“What’s going on?” Jack said. We all looked at Shadow and her yellow-toothed grin, wagging her tail furiously.

“Nothing!” my mom said. “We just can’t keep her anymore, you know, we’ll be moving to an apartment again soon, and it’s just not fair to keep her cooped up all day. So we thought you guys might want to take her. Free of charge.”

“Uh, I dunno,” Jack said. He leaned in so Shauna couldn’t hear and said in a low voice, “I think they’re kinda waiting for Tubs to kick the bucket.” I heard it, but she didn’t. He stopped whispering. “I don’t think they want another dog. Tubs just shits all over the house and begs under the table.”

My mom nodded, and ruffled Shadow’s fur. “Uh huh,” she said. “Well, just a thought! You sure? She’s pretty great.” She held Shadow’s floppy ears up on either side of her head.

“Yeah… sorry,” Jack said. “You should probably go, though. My parents are gonna be home soon.” Shauna’s parents didn’t like my mom that much.

“I get it,” my mom said, nodding. “We’ll take off. See you soon, Shauna. Good to see you, Jack.” Jack closed the door, hard.

We sat in their driveway for a while. “Well, we have a couple choices,” my mom said.

“We can bring her back to Bruce, and have her live in that shithole. Or we can give her to a place that will find a really good family for her. What do you think?” I wanted to bring her home with us, more than anything. But Bruce’s backyard hadn’t seemed that bad. She’d seemed happy there, even before she’d seen us.

“She can’t come home with us?” I said, real quiet.

My mom sighed like I was stupid. “Where do you think he’s going to look first, Cal?” She turned around to look at me from the front seat. “He doesn’t deserve her,” she said. “We don’t really have a choice.”

“Then I guess we give her to someone else,” I said quietly. I was getting it now. We hadn’t stolen her for me.

“You’re damn right,” she said. I was trying not to cry. We drove for a little while then pulled into the parking lot of the Humane Society. “Give her a kiss before we go inside!” she said. She unclipped Shadow’s collar and shoved it inside the glove compartment. “Remember, we just found her, right? We don’t know her.” I nodded.

“She’s a sweetheart,” she said, as we made our way to the door. “Someone’ll pick her out right away. Cal, I swear we’d keep her if we could.” We walked inside, Shadow trotting along after us. It smelled like pee, and there were whines and howls and barks coming from the back. And my mom just left her there like it was nothing.

Shadow didn’t get it. The woman at the counter had to hold her back when we turned to walk away. “It happens sometimes,” she said, apologizing to us. “They latch on to whoever’s kind enough to bring ’em in.”

Bruce came by late that night. He didn’t even knock, just barged in. He still had keys. “Where’s my fucking dog?” he yelled. My mom was dozing off on the couch. I was in my room. “I let you stay in this house for free and you go and steal my fucking dog. What’s wrong with you? Where is she?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bruce,” my mom said, in a sleepy voice. “Did something happen?”

“Yeah, my fucking dog disappeared out of my backyard, that’s what!” As Bruce yelled, I heard his footsteps coming closer and closer.

“Don’t you dare wake up my child!” my mom screamed, but she didn’t follow him. My door swung open, and I blinked as he flipped on the light.

“Damn it!” he said, his anger deflating. I guess he was expecting to see Shadow curled up next to me. “Cal, you haven’t seen Shadow, have you?” I was too scared to tell him the truth.

“No,” I said, eyes wide, biting my lip.

He sat down on the side of my bed and started to cry. “I’m sorry, Cal,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” He covered his face in his big hands and wept at the foot of my bed. I didn’t know what to do so I just patted his back for a while. “I’m going crazy,” he said. “I’m sure she just got out, I just had this…” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry I woke you up. Go back to sleep. I’m gonna go drive around the neighborhood and see if I can find her.” I heard him apologize to my mom, and the front door open and close. I closed my eyes but the knot in my stomach was getting bigger and bigger.

My mom tiptoed in and lay down beside me. “We sure got him, didn’t we!” she said. “He’ll never find her.”

“Yeah,” I whispered. There was something about my mom that made me always want to be on her side even when it made me feel guilty. “Yeah, we got him good.”

She drifted off next to me, on top of the covers, and I pretended the warmth of her body beside me was Shadow until I finally fell asleep.