The Dog Year (13 page)

A
s she stood at the living room window, Lucy buttoned her navy pea coat and fiddled with her keys. She watched as the family from across the street piled into their car, the old Dr. Seuss rhyme in her mind.
Father, mother,
sister, brother, this one is my other brother
.

The boys juggled into the van, bouncing past each other, the girl ignoring their attempts to pull her into the fun. They jiggled and settled into their preassigned seats like eggs in their carton. The father loaded backpacks, lunch boxes, and a briefcase into an open hatch back, then got into the driver's seat. The mother helped buckle the little boy into his car seat and adjusted the buttons on his coat. She pushed his hair out of his eyes and leaned in for a kiss. Then she stepped aside as the vehicle backed out of the driveway. Lucy, from an opposite vantage point, watched as the carload of kids moved down their street. The mother blinked into the sun, and before returning to her house, she caught sight of Lucy watching her. Startled, Lucy waved, first with uncertainty, then with more conviction. The mother raised her hand with less enthusiasm. Maybe she was unnerved to be seen tending to her family by one so obviously single and unencumbered by children. Or maybe she was judging. Lucy couldn't tell. As the woman pulled the collar of her jacket close, Lucy turned from the window.

“Hey, sunshine. Whatcha doin' up so early?” Charles shuffled into the living room with his hair mussed and his brown horn-rimmed glasses askew, clothed in boxers and a white V-neck T-shirt.

“I'm going to AA. Then I'm going to walk Little Dog.”

“You look kinda perky.”

“I feel a little perky.” She grabbed her keys, Richard's gift, and Little Dog's leash, and headed for the door.

Charles caught the screen before it slammed shut. “Cool,” he said. “But, Luce?”

“Don't say anything negative. I feel good, and I don't need your snarky little-brother humor to give me any reason to slow down.”

“You gonna attach that leash to your box there, or consider taking Little Dog with you?”

Little Dog sat at Charles's feet, looking quizzical, her head tilted, her nose quivering in overdrive.

“Oh! Of course! C'mere, girl.” Little Dog sprinted down the steps and into the front seat, where she looked gratefully back at Charles. Lucy positioned the seat belt around the dog and said, “You'll get used to it. It's for your own good.” Out the window she said to her brother, “Thanks. Have a good day at work.”

The gray day soothed the colors in the trees, which were hungover from a summer of partying. Lucy pulled to the shoulder of the road as the first drops of rain hit her windshield, thinking that maybe the gray day and AA might be too much for her tenuous good mood. Little Dog leaned in, responding to the car's abrupt change in direction, and Lucy glanced at Richard's gift, as if it were a reminder that AA should come first and she should stop making excuses. Lucy turned the car back around and headed toward Serenity Center.

“I'm indecisive,” she said to Little Dog. “Aren't you glad you're buckled in?”

Another mile with only one more unplanned turnaround and Lucy pulled into the Serenity Center parking lot. Cracking the windows for Little Dog, she stepped into a spitting rain. Lucy noted Claire sitting in her car and watched as the woman dropped her head into her hands. Lucy knocked on Claire's window and Claire's pale, drawn face shifted as if a theater curtain had been drawn and snapped into place.

“You okay, Claire?”

“Well, of course, dear heart. Here, grab these donuts. Every single one is pink, frosted with pink sprinkles. If Claire is buying, Claire gets to pick.”

“You looked a little, I don't know, tired a minute ago.”

“Fighting the good fight sucks you dry some days.” Claire hauled herself out of the car, staggering a little. Lucy thought she spotted a copper-colored cane stuffed against the passenger-side door. “We better get inside. Ron has been a stickler lately for punctuality. Easy for him. He gets to ride everywhere.”

Lucy lifted her hand to touch Claire's back but she stopped before making contact.

Inside, Tig, Ron, and Sara were already seated, heads turned inward, deep in conversation. Mark stood with his back to the group with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Claire announced, “I brought the donuts. If there ain't any new members, can we eat a donut, skip the readings, talk about something important that will change my life, like a Macy's sale on Spanx, and go home?”

“You know the rules, Claire.”

In an uncharacteristically weak tone Claire said, “Please, Tig?”

Sara rushed to Claire's side, shooting a glance at Tig. “Here, sit.” She pushed a metal chair over to her. Claire fell into it gracelessly, and Lucy watched as Sara's usually sour countenance softened into girlish worry. “Can I get you some water?”

Claire took Sara's hand and said, “Honey, what I need is you right by my side, eating a pink donut and telling me about your night last night.”

Mark was wearing glasses over the patch on his eye. He turned to the group and frowned at Claire.

Sara said, “Last night was fine. Boring, mostly. Had to meet with my caseworker. The anniversary is coming up.” She looked at Lucy. “What are you looking at?”

“Okay, Sara. You don't get to pick a fight because you're entering uncomfortable territory,” said Tig.

“When's she gonna tell us her stuff?”

“Sara,” Mark said, “it took you a month and a half to tell us your name.”

“Screw you, Troutman. Just because I don't blab like a little girl, like you do.” She laughed and for the first time to Lucy, she looked her real sixteen years instead of sixteen going on forty.

“Don't make me come over there.”

With a black fingernail Sara flipped Mark off. Claire whispered to Lucy, “It's like watching
True Grit
,
ain't it? They've been friends a long time, those two.”

“That's interesting,” said Lucy. “You wouldn't think they'd have much in common.”

“Loneliness is the great communicator, my dear. Everybody speaks that language
and
understands it.”

Lucy examined Mark from her quiet corner of the metal folding table. She pictured him alone, not drinking, no dog, no spouse. It was a familiar snapshot.

“He and Tig work hard to keep Sara out of the system. I know she stayed with him for a short time. She moved out when some dickhead from a meeting implied a biblical relationship between them. She gave the guy a black eye, was put on probation, then took her backpack and disappeared. She's only been back six months. She won't even talk about where she's staying.”

Then Kimmy pushed through the door and silently sat in her usual spot. Taking out her knitting, she began working on a skein of yarn, examining each stitch before poking her needle into a loop. Claire glanced at Kimmy, did a kind of double-take, and said, “Kimmy?”

Kimmy didn't look up. “Claire.”

“Is that a bruise on your chin, darlin'?”

“Dentist.”

“Y'all went to the dentist after we had dinner last night?”

Kimmy brushed her hair forward. “Leave it.”

Sara said, “What fucking good is this group if we can't help our own people?”

Kimmy looked over her reading glasses. “The meetings are good for me, Sara. They help me.”

There was a beat of silence. Then Tig spoke up. “Lucy. You don't have to talk about anything difficult, but maybe you could tell us just a little something about you.”

Lucy's heart jumped to attention and she immediately felt like the little girl in class who's called on to answer a question about a subject she knows nothing about. If there had been a tiger in the room, she'd have been ready. Her body was bathed in adrenaline, ready for fight or flight.

“I . . . I haven't prepared anything.” Her eyes darted around. She looked at her hands and opened her mouth.

“She was the smartest girl in the school. Not the class, but the entire school.”

The group turned their attention to Mark, who still stood by the window. “For homecoming she was in charge of making a poster. Lucy and I are both townies, you know. We went to high school together. We were around before they changed the mascot from the politically incorrect Warriors to the now ridiculous Hodags. So you know most posters were pretty straight. Go Warriors! Or Hilltown Warriors are Number One. But not Lucy's. She had this long ream of paper where she painted an Indian chief with a flowing mane of feathers and a spear poking a skirt-wearing gladiator in the butt. You know what the caption read?
WE'RE GONNA POKE-A-UR-HAUNTUS
. Get it, Pocahontas? Half the school didn't even get it! It was classic.” He threw his head back, laughing at the memory.

Kimmy stopped knitting, Claire looked between Mark and Lucy, Ron stared, and Sara, unimpressed, said, “Dude. Seriously?”

Even Tig blinked, surprised by the view Mark had provided of the secretive Lucy.

That's when Lucy saw again the younger Mark of her high school days, keeping his head down, hiding his intellect quietly, appreciating a kindred square peg, while she secretly tutored the idiotic prom king, hoping he might say hello to her in the hall.

*   *   *

On her usual dart-out-the-door exit of Serenity Center, she'd suggested to Mark that they meet at the Humane Society the next day, after lunch. Hardly waiting for him to answer, she moved quickly into the parking lot. By now she had almost perfected her exit: keys in hand, then ignition, then reverse. Nonetheless, Tig had caught Lucy just in time to say, “Nobody's normal, Luce.” And then, inexplicably, “AA is serious about no relationship for a year, and definitely not with someone from AA.”

Lucy had looked at Tig with a blank expression for a beat too long. Tig said, “Mark.”

Lucy widened her eyes. “Mark and Claire?”

“No, Lucy. You and Mark.”

Lucy inadvertently covered Richard's gift with her hand as if it were a child listening to the cursing of adults instead of a gift-wrapped box sitting on the front seat of her car. Then she said, “Dr. Monohan, you could not be more off base.”

*   *   *

It had been a full twenty-four hours since that last meeting and now Lucy waited, tapping her steering wheel while watching a group of dogs play in the side yard next to the South Central Wisconsin Humane Society. She checked her watch and fiddled with the clasp, unlocking the silver linking mechanism, locking it back, finally pinching the tender flesh of her wrist after the fourth time. It was as if the watch had slapped her and said,
Enough
.

Lucy didn't know if Mark worked, slept, or polished his guns in the afternoon. She figured the less she knew, the better. If he showed, fine. If not, she could breathe a sigh of relief, pick up an application to volunteer at the shelter, and report back to Charles. She tried to silence all the fussbudgets in her mind.

One thing she knew for sure, though. Waiting around by herself for ten minutes in a parking lot was a whole lot better than riding with Mark and trying to make unscripted conversation with him as they drove together to the humane society. Twenty-five minutes of tongue-tied driving and self-conscious stuttering would likely undo her. She'd probably steal his pine-tree air freshener and then have to do hard time for it.

Lucy touched Richard's gift, riding shotgun next to her, and fished out a CD from her glove box:
Speak Mandarin in 500 Words
. She shoved the CD into the player. A woman's musical voice came loudly through the car speakers,
“Huaˉnyíng.”

“Huaˉnyíng,”
she said aloud, matching the woman's volume.

There was a rap on the window and Lucy whipped her head around. She opened the window and the voice said, “
Nı˘jıˉntiaˉn?
How are you today?”

Mark stood smiling, his face unguarded, a little boy expecting a puppy at the end of the day. “How do you say ‘excited' in Chinese?” he asked.

Lucy shut the volume off on the CD and opened her car door. “You look like Christmas morning.”

Mark gave her a bashful look. She'd read him too accurately. “Nah, I'm a hard-hitting cop. Takes a lot more than a dog to soften this hide.”

“Okay, tough guy. Let's go pet some puppies.”

Notices for classes of all kinds papered the glass doors of the Humane Society:
TEACHING KIDS KINDNESS
,
BIG DOG AGILITY TRAINING
, and one with large block letters that advertised placing old dogs with old dogs. Lucy stopped to read a handwritten notice on a page from a yellow legal pad. It was taped slightly askew, as if its author had been rushed—and maybe a little conflicted, too.

FIVE-YEAR-OLD MALE GOOSE, VERY GOOD WATCHDOG, NOT FRIENDLY, NOT GOOD WITH KIDS, NOT GOOD WITH ANYBODY. JUST A GOOD WATCHDOG (GOOSE). NEEDS A GOOD HOME IN THE COUNTRY. NEEDS TO GO SOON. FREE.

“Hey, this one looks like it's for you! You're kind of a watch goose yourself.”

Mark read the note and turned to her in mock outrage. “How do you know I'm not good with kids? For your information, kids love cops. We're the good guys. I always do career days at the elementary school. Let them sit in the cruiser. Let them feel up my steering wheel with their sticky hands. Check their parents out in the system.”

“You don't, not really.”

He smiled at her. “Not the parent-check thing, okay, but the rest of it, yeah. I don't let them wear the hat anymore, though. Learned my lesson the hard way, combing my hair for nits.”

“Ah, lice. The gateway STD. Show me a kid with lice, and I'll show you a future herpes sufferer.”

Mark gave her a sidelong glance and Lucy added, “Nah, I'm kidding.”

“Dr. Peterman, you're a few clicks off.”