Last Chance

by Norah McClintock

  He looked at me for a moment, frowning a little, as if he was trying to figure out where to start.

  “Antoine lives with his mother and his kid brother, who’s seven,” he said finally. “And with whatever boyfriend his mom happens to bring home. The latest boyfriend”—he made the word sound like an insult—“when he gets mad, he likes to take it out on other people. Mostly smaller people. I bet you don’t know any guys like that, do you?”

  I didn’t, but I didn’t tell Nick that. I didn’t say anything.

  “Besides being a bully, the guy’s an idiot. Took a swing at a cop who pulled him over for speeding. When Antoine got his sentence, the boyfriend was in lockup. Antoine’s in open custody now, in a group home. The boyfriend, though, he just got out. He’s back at Antoine’s house, with Antoine’s mother and Antoine’s brother. Antoine only found out this morning when his kid brother called him, crying.”

  Oh.

  “That still doesn’t make it okay for Antoine to kick his dog,” I said. “Or to threaten me.”

  “No kidding,” Nick said. His face was grim. He glanced around, checking to see if anyone could hear us. “But he’s not what you think,” he said. “He’s not a bad guy. He deserves another chance.”

  He sounded just like Kathy when she had described the RAD dogs.

  “And you want me to give him that chance?” I said.

  “I know it’s not your style. But would it kill you?”

  I stared at him. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t as bad as Antoine. Maybe he wouldn’t take his frustration out on a dog. And maybe Kathy liked him and believed him when he said he hadn’t taken any money. But he was still the person I had caught back in junior high running out of the office with charity money. He’d just taken it. Taken it and spent it. He was here at the animal shelter now because he had been charged and convicted of some kind of violent crime. And what about the roll of bills that I had seen him slip through the fence to his friend Joey? Kathy saw one side of him—the side that he chose to show her. I saw another side. For all I knew, he could be making up a sob story about his friend just so I wouldn’t report him.

  “If Antoine’s not really a bad guy, what’s he doing here?” I said.

  “He volunteered to be here, same as me,” he said, looking hard at me. “Same as you.” I felt heat in my cheeks. So he had heard what my father had told Mr. Jarvis. “Even good girls can slip up, huh?”

  “That’s different,” I said.

  “Yeah. I bet it is.”

  Boy, even when he wanted something from me, he couldn’t help sneering at me.

  “I mean, what was Antoine charged with?” I said, trying to stay calm. “What did he do?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “You want me to give him a break. So I think I have the right to know.”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Right. I started to move around him. He stepped in front of me again.

  “Okay,” he said. “He warned the guy—the boyfriend—to leave his brother alone.”

  “Warned him?”

  “Okay, so maybe he kind of threatened him,” Nick said. I waited. Nick watched me for a moment. “Maybe with a knife.”

  “Maybe?”

  “He was looking out for his kid brother,” Nick said. “Things got a little out of hand. The boyfriend got nicked.”

  “Got nicked? Like, oops, the knife jumped out of Antoine’s hand?”

  “Antoine nicked him,” Nick said, sounding exasperated. “The guy took five stitches.”

  “And Antoine got charged?”

  “Yeah, he got charged. The boyfriend made sure of that. The day before they sent Antoine to the group home, the boyfriend messed up and got arrested. He didn’t make bail. He got sentenced to eight months, so Antoine relaxed a little. He knew the guy wasn’t going to mess with his brother. But now the guy’s out and he’s back living with Antoine’s mother.”

  “And that’s why Antoine kicked his dog? He was taking out his anger on him?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “And yeah, I know he has to stop acting the way he does. But if you ask me, the boyfriend has to stop taking things out on little kids. And Antoine’s mother has to maybe think about the guys she’s spending time with.” He shook his head in frustration. “Look, I promise he’ll never hurt the dog again. If he does, I’ll report him. Hell, you can report me too if you want. I don’t care. All I’m asking is that you give him one more chance.”

  Give one more chance to a guy who had attacked another guy with a knife? This really was foreign territory. And it sure made me wonder.

  “What about you?” I said.

  “What about me?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Nick’s eyes turned to ice, and there was a chill in his voice when he answered.

  “We’re not talking about me,” he said.“We’re talking about Antoine. Are you going to tell on him or what?”

  I met his cold eyes and told him exactly what I was thinking. “I don’t know,” I said.

  He shook his head in disgust. “Yeah, well, whatever, princess,” he said. “I’m not going to get down on my knees and beg.”

  As if I had asked him to.

  He started to turn away.

  “Hey, Nick?”

  He looked over his shoulder at me.

  “Where did you get the money you gave your friend Joey?”

  For a second he almost looked hurt.Then he wheeled around and stalked away.

  Kathy was still in her meeting when I got back to my desk. I couldn’t have told her what Antoine had done even if I’d wanted to, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. What if Nick had been telling the truth? What if Antoine had the kind of home life that I couldn’t even imagine? What would happen if I told? Would he get kicked out of the program? Then what would happen to him?

  Did I even care?

  I guess I did, because when Kathy dropped by my office after her meeting, I told her that Mr. Jarvis had signed the grant applications and that the courier had already picked them up, guaranteeing delivery of her grant proposal by the end of the day. And that was all I told her.

  Later, when I went to the staff kitchen to wash out my mug, I heard Nick’s voice inside. While I waited out in the hall for him to leave, I heard him say, “He’s been doing really good.”

  “Really well,” Kathy corrected in a gentle voice. “I know. Both Ed and Stella have told me.”

  Who were they talking about? Was Nick telling her about Antoine? Was he afraid that I would say something?

  “So,” Nick said, drawing out the word, sounding like a nervous little kid, “I was wondering, you know, about after.”

  “After?”

  “After the program is over. I was wondering . . . if Orion keeps on the way he has been, you know, if he succeeds in the program . . . ”

  He wasn’t talking about Antoine after all. He was talking about the big dog.

  Kathy laughed. “You’re leading somewhere, Nick, I can feel it. Spit it out.”

  Silence, followed by a rush of words. “It’s about finding a good home for Orion,” Nick said. “I want to know if I can adopt him, you know, if he keeps doing as great as he has been doing.”

  More silence. I wished I could see the look on Kathy’s face. Was she surprised by Nick’s question, or had she been expecting it?

  Finally, she said, “Orion isn’t the only one who has been doing well. Ed says you take the program seriously. So does Stella. She told me that you’ve been studying up on dogs. She said that with all the reading you’ve been doing, you know almost as much as she does.”

  I remembered Nick sitting at the picnic table with his book and highlighting pen. I wondered if he paid as much attention in school as he did to that book.

  “And Ed says that the rest of the boys look up to you,” Kathy said. “He says you’ve been a good influence.”

  Silence from Nick. Then a sound like a sigh.

  “But, Nick, you know the policy. Your jo
b—the job of all RAD participants—is to train the dogs so that they’re ready for other people to adopt, not so that you can adopt them yourselves. Besides, they don’t allow pets at the group home.”

  Nick lived in a group home? That was news to me. But I really shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, he was here because he had been in trouble with the law.

  “I know,” Nick said. “But what if I knew someone who was interested in adopting him? What would they have to do to make it happen?”

  “I don’t understand,” Kathy said.

  Neither did I.

  “I told my aunt all about Orion. She wants to meet him. She’s coming here this afternoon to pick me up. She said she might be interested in adopting a dog.”

  I wondered if the shelter had a policy on relatives of RAD participants adopting dogs that were in the program.

  When Kathy spoke again, she sounded surprised. “Your aunt is picking you up? You’re not going in the van with the rest of the kids?”

  “I’m getting sprung for the weekend,” Nick said, his voice buoyant now. “Actually, that’s the other thing I was wondering about.”

  “More wondering,” Kathy said with a laugh.

  “I got permission to spend the weekend with my aunt. Sort of time off for good behavior,” he said. “I was wondering about a little time off for Orion too. I was thinking maybe my aunt and I could take him home for the weekend so she could get acquainted with him. What do you think? She already said it was okay with her if it’s okay with you. And she’s got a nice place, her own house. It’s about a block from a park where they have an off-leash area for dogs.” He told Kathy where his aunt lived. I knew the neighborhood. It was in the east end of the city.

  “Nick, believe me, if I could say yes, I would. But I can’t. You know that. As long as an animal is in our care, it has to stay at the shelter.”

  “But my aunt has already said she might be willing to adopt him.”

  “First,” Kathy said, “Orion has to succeed in the program—which isn’t over yet.”

  “He will succeed,” Nick said. “I know he will. He’s a good dog.”

  I pictured Orion—massive, powerful, and fierce. But good? Then I pictured him sitting at Nick’s command and extending a paw for a little girl to shake.

  “Still,” Kathy said, “it wouldn’t be fair to expose him to a whole new environment before he’s ready. And it wouldn’t be fair to your aunt, either. What if Orion forgot himself? What if he reverted to his old behavior?”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Nick said.

  “But if he did, it would leave the shelter open to a lot of problems. It could even jeopardize the RAD program, and I don’t think you want that to happen, do you, Nick?”

  Silence.

  “I’m sorry, Nick, but I’m going to have to say no. And to be honest, I’m not even sure about your aunt adopting him. I’m not sure that fits with the policy.”

  “You said the policy is that kids in the program can’t adopt the dogs. My aunt isn’t in the program. I don’t even live with her.”

  “But you’re going to,” Kathy said. “Isn’t that the plan? After you get out of the group home, you’re going to live with your aunt.”

  No answer. Then, “She’s coming to pick me up,” he said. “I told her I’d introduce her to Orion.”

  “I think that would be okay,” Kathy said. “I’m sure she’d be proud to see how much work you’ve done with him. Now if you’ll excuse me, Nick, I have to get back to work.”

  I retreated quickly before either of them could see me.

  . . .

  At the end of the day, as I started across the lawn toward the parking lot, I saw my father with Nick and a woman

  I didn’t recognize. I guessed she was Nick’s aunt. My father was bent over slightly, shaking Orion’s paw. Then he spotted me.

  “Hey, Robbie,” he called. “Come here. You’ve got to see this.”

  But by the time I reached them, my father was deep into a story that I wished he’d stop telling.

  “Dad,” I said. If he’d paid the slightest attention, he would have read the warning in my voice. But my father never pays attention when he’s regaling an audience. He would have made a great actor, according to my mother. “He certainly has the ego for it,” she’d said.

  “Small, puppyish teeth,” he was saying, “not at all like the teeth on this fine animal here.” He patted Orion on the head and didn’t even pause, let alone jump (like I did) when Orion sprang to his feet and barked.

  “Sit,” Nick said firmly.

  Orion sat.

  “Nipped Robbie’s little bottom,” my father went on. “The man who owned the dog said that the animal was just being playful—puppies are like babies, they sometimes do the wrong thing, but they’re not being malicious—”

  “Dad,” I said again. Even to my ears, I sounded a lot like my mother. Maybe that’s why my father did what he always did when she tried to caution him. He kept right on talking.

  “Anyway, Robbie screamed. She was just a child,” he said. “And this puppy, the poor thing got scared and it held on for dear life. Left a little scar back there, if I’m not mistaken.” Nick and the woman with him gave me a sympathetic look.

  “It was not a puppy!” I said. Nothing that big could possibly have been a puppy. “And you weren’t even there.”

  “It must have been traumatic,” the woman said.

  “Still,” my father said, “no harm done, other than a deep-seated fear of dogs. Which is why it’s both ironic and, well, maybe even therapeutic that Robbie’s little scrape with the law resulted in—”

  “Dad,” I said. I grabbed him by the arm. “We should go.”

  “In a minute,” he said. He turned to the woman.“This is my daughter, Robyn,” he said. “Robbie, I guess you’ve already met Nick. This is his aunt, Beverly Thrasher.”

  “Call me Bev,” Nick’s aunt said to my father. He’d charmed another one.

  Nick nodded curtly at me.

  “Robbie may be the only animal rights advocate in the world who’s afraid of the animals she’s defending,” my father said with a chuckle. “But I give her a lot of credit. She stands up for what she believes in. A few weeks ago, she and her friends were at a protest march . . . ”

  I sighed. Here we go again. I could try to stop him. While I was at it, I could also stop the sun from setting and Earth from rotating on its axis. I went to lean against his car instead.

  At first, Nick stayed to listen to my father’s story. But after a few minutes, he led Orion over to where I was standing. I took a step back and avoided meeting the dog’s eyes. Now what, I wondered.

  “You didn’t rat on Antoine,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Nick glanced back at my father.“Your dad seems okay,” he said. “You know, for a rich guy. He’s pretty funny too.”

  “He’s not all that funny,” I said. “Sometimes he’s a real pain.”

  “He likes to tell stories about you, huh?”

  What an understatement. “It’s like a hobby to him.”

  “Well, now I get why you’re always so nervous.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Around him.” He nodded to Orion. “Like that first day you were here.” He reached down and scratched the animal affectionately behind the ear. The big dog pressed up against Nick’s leg, his whole body quivering with pleasure. Nick laughed. “He looks like a dog, but believe me, half the time he acts like a pussy cat.”

  He grinned at me, and his whole face changed. Most of the time when I saw him, he was deadly serious, like he was thinking about something unpleasant or remembering something bad. And when he was serious, he looked almost dangerous, partly because of the scar that cut like a ribbon across his right cheek. I wondered how long he had had it and how he had got it. But when he smiled, the scar seemed to vanish. Instead of looking like a guy who was ready to pound on someone out in the school yard, he looked like a kid who had just
earned a gold star from the teacher.

  “He’s doing great in the program,” he said with pride.

  “That’s nice,” I said. I knew that Mr. Schuster saw something promising in the big dog. And Nick sure seemed taken with him. But you couldn’t have paid me enough to adopt a beast like that.

  A hand fell on my shoulder. My father’s hand.

  “Come on, Robbie. You’d better get a move on, or we’ll get stuck in rush-hour traffic,” he said, as if the delay were my fault.

  “We’d better get going too,” Nick’s aunt said. “Glen will be waiting.”

  “Glen?” Nick said.

  “I told you about Glen,” Nick’s aunt said. “He’s coming over tonight. I thought it was time the two of you finally met.”

  Nick’s face clouded. I wondered who Glen was.

  “Well, nice meeting you, Nick,” my father said, thrusting out a hand. Nick seemed a little stunned by the gesture, but he shook my father’s hand.

  . . .

  When we got back to the loft, my father started to prepare supper. He has a huge kitchen, with a massive gas stove, a stainless steel state-of-the-art refrigerator, every kitchen gadget on the market, and racks of pots and pans. The kitchen, like the rest of the place, had been planned and stocked by the interior designer my father hired when he took over the building. I guess the designer was under the impression that my father’s kitchen skills extended beyond making coffee and pouring milk over dry cereal, which at the time they didn’t. But in the four years that he’d been living on his own, he had actually learned to cook. I perched on a stool at the counter, watching him throw together black bean quesadillas, which he served with his own special green chili.

  “So,” he said, not trusting himself to look at me, “I guess your poor mother is holed up all alone in a hotel somewhere by now.”

  “Very subtle, Dad.”

  He flashed me the smile that he claimed had won my mother’s heart all those years ago. “You think so?”

  “No. And I’m not going to talk about her. She hates it when I talk about her.”