“He was really going to do it.”
“Who was really going to do what?”
“Connor.”
I stood a minute. Panting. Watching the news settle on
the inside of her. Of course I was only watching the outside of her, but I could still see. It was on her face. I didn’t know where the dogs were, so they must have been inside the
cabin. Nothing else would stop them from greeting me.
“He did have his father’s gun,” I said. “He lied about that.”
“Does he still?”
“No. I threw it in the river. He said he doesn’t want
it anymore. He said he changed his mind.”
“Good.”
For a minute we just stood there. Looking at each
other. Really looking at each other. None of that “near
miss” business.
“You know what this means,” I said. “Don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what you think it means.”
“You saved him.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You did. You kept a person here in the world. You
saved a life. So that’s like … I don’t know how to say it.
It’s like a repayment. It’s like … one down and one to go.”
She didn’t hear it the way I’d hoped she would at all.
I watched her face harden. I watched her recoil from the
idea.
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
“That’s not the way the world works, my friend.”
Her voice was all armored. But at least I liked the way
she’d called me her friend.
“Why isn’t it?”
“You want to go tell Freddie’s or Wanda Jean’s parents
that this makes up for their loss?”
“I didn’t mean it did. That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Well, what did you mean, then?”
She had her arms folded across her broad chest now.
Just below the top of the bib of her overalls.
I felt like she’d just thrown me a hard essay test, and
I didn’t have any answers. But then one came to me.
And I thought it was good. I thought I’d get an A on
this test.
“I guess…,” I said. “I guess I mean if you can save
somebody … I mean, isn’t that a good enough thing?
Isn’t that enough reason to stay?”
I thought it was a better answer than she did, apparently.
She shook her head. Let out a little low chuckle that
seemed to be at my expense.
“Ah, youth,” she said. It reminded me of something
my mother had said to me. “When everything in life is
so damned simple.”
Then she walked up onto her porch and opened the
door to her cabin. As she walked in, the dogs came spill-
ing out and ran to me.
And jumped on me. And whimpered at me. And
kissed me.
So at least I had that.
I fell to my scratched-up knees and held the dogs
around their necks and spoke hurt words into their ears.
“Well, she did save him,” I said to them. “And that is a good reason to stay.”
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They gave me sympathetic looks. They couldn’t pos-
sibly have known what I was so upset about. But to me
their looks seemed almost to say, “Well, we all know how
she is, don’t we? We know how she can be, but we love
her all the same.”
Or at least that’s how I interpreted their gazes, and I
have some solid truth to back it up, because that’s what
you really do get from dogs. And it’s no small thing to
be loved all the same, let me tell you.
* * *
When I got home, and stepped into my kitchen, my mom
was holding the receiver of the phone. Waiting to see if
it was me coming in.
Really, who else could it have been?
I knew I had a phone call, and I knew it was Connor.
She covered the mouthpiece with the heel of her hand.
“It’s Connor,” she said. “It’s the third time he’s called
for you. I hope nothing’s wrong.”
“No. It’s fine. Nothing’s wrong. He’s just really excited
about his new kitten.”
It bothered me to lie so smoothly and so easily. But I
did it for my friend. I couldn’t look her in the eye, though, which might have made her suspicious. Then again, I
didn’t look her in the eye very often.
I took the phone from her. I was hoping she would
leave the kitchen. She did not leave the kitchen.
“Hey,” I said to Connor.
“Everything go okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Wow. Whew. I’ve been jump-
ing out of my skin here. Nobody saw you?”
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
“No. It’s fine.”
“Where did you put it?”
I could feel my mom standing close. Feel her listening.
But I didn’t look up at her, because I didn’t want her to
know it was a problem.
“It’s fine,” I said again.
“Oh. Is your mom right there?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Okay. Good. Because I’m going to tell you something,
and this way you just have to listen and you can’t argue
with me. So just stand there and don’t say anything, okay?”
There was a pause on the line, and I thought he might
really be waiting for my permission. So I said okay, even
though it made me nervous. It sounded like he was about
to read me the riot act for everything I had ever done
wrong to him in our lives. Every time I hadn’t been what
he needed.
I could not have been more wrong if I’d been trying.
“You’ve been a really good friend,” he said. “And I
haven’t.”
“No, you are.”
“Just listen,” he said. “Don’t talk.”
“Okay.”
My mom moved across the kitchen to the fridge and
started rummaging around in there. But I had to assume
she was still listening.
“Not lately I haven’t been,” Connor said. “Lately
you’ve been bending over backwards to try to help me,
and I haven’t been much good at all. And I’m not saying
it like I did last time—like you shouldn’t even be friends
with me. I’m not saying that. I want you to be. I just want
you to know that I’m going to do better now.”
A pause while I waited to see if he was done.
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“It’s a deal,” I said.
“I’m sorry for the way I’ve been.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Well I am. Thanks for what you did for me today.”
“Anytime,” I said.
Then, strangely, we both burst out laughing.
“Well, not anytime,” I added.
We said our goodbyes, and the incredibly stressful part
of that incredibly stressful day got to be over.
I looked up at my mom, and she looked back at me.
Probably to see if I would tell her what all that had been
about.
“He just really loves that new kitten,” I said.
253
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tell Them Your Story
Come Monday, my brother and I were halfway to the bus
stop together after dinner. On our way to the meeting.
I walked. He limped along on his crutches.
At first we didn’t talk.
The sun was on a long slant, but it was still hot. Now
and then a neighbor had driven by and honked a hello to
us. One, old Mr. Harrigan, had rolled down his window
and given Roy a big thumbs-up. Probably for serving in
the war and then getting home. I could tell that one made
my brother uncomfortable.
When Roy finally opened his mouth, I thought he
was going to talk about that. But he took us in an entirely
different direction.
“Why don’t you want to be on the track team?” he
asked me. Like he was seriously interested in my answer.
He hadn’t seemed seriously interested in anything since
before he left for the war. Except for his meds.
“I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to explain. I just …
when I run in the woods, with those dogs, I just feel …
like … completely free. And when I run on the track at
school, I’m with these other guys who don’t really like
me. And the coach is watching. And everybody would
be judging me. Or at least I’d feel like they were. And
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it’s just the complete opposite. It’s like being in a cage or something.”
“But you could do both,” he said.
By then we’d arrived at the bus stop. There was no
one else around. I sat. He just stood there, leaning on his
crutches. I think getting up and down was hard for him.
Once he got up, he didn’t tend to sit unless he figured
he could stay a while.
I looked up at him, but he was staring off into the
distance, and I don’t think he noticed. I got this feeling,
like that moment perfectly summed up everything be-
tween me and my brother since he got home. Me staring
at him, hoping to see something. Find something. Him
a million miles away in his head.
“I guess I could do both,” I said. “But why do the
school part at all? I mean, if I don’t like it much.”
For a time, he didn’t answer. Then he looked down
into my face, which felt surprising. Jolting, actually.
“I don’t usually say things like this to you,” he said,
“but here goes. I would appreciate it very much if you
could see your way clear to take that spot on the team as
a favor to me.”
He looked away again. We both looked up to see
the bus coming, but it was many blocks down the street,
and it had just missed one of the only two stoplights in
town.
“Why would that be a favor to you if I did?”
We just kept staring at that bus, stopped at the red light,
like we’d never seen anything so fascinating in our lives.
“I tried out for track,” he said.
“You never told me that.”
“I didn’t make it. I wasn’t fast enough. You don’t just
come home from school and tell your kid brother, ‘Hey,
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
today I tried to go after something I really wanted and
fell flat on my ass.’ And now I can’t even run badly. I’ll probably never run again. So if I could go to a track meet
and see you doing it … taking that spot on the team I
could never snag, well … I would like that.”
The light turned green, and the bus made its noisy
way to us.
“Okay,” I said. “Then I will.”
* * *
“How long do we have to keep going to these meetings?”
he asked me.
We were on the bus. Counting the stops until it was
time to get off. Or I was, anyway. That might have been
the last thing on his mind. He might have been leaving
all such logistics to me.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Maybe till it’s not so
uncomfortable for you to go?”
“That’s bizarre,” he said, his eyes still off in the distance.
After our brief track team moment I had lost him again.
“Why is it bizarre?”
“So long as I hate going, I have to go. Then, just as I
figure I don’t mind it much anymore, I’m off the hook.”
“You can still go if you want. I think some of those
people have been going for years and years. Sounds like
it, anyway, when they share. And you can get a sponsor
like people do, so you’ll have somebody to talk to outside
the meetings.”
The word “sponsor” sounded weirdly commercial, but
it was, in program terms, more like a personal mentor.
“Why do you hate it so much?” I asked, when he
didn’t answer.
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“I don’t hate it. I just figure they’re waiting for me to
tell them my story.”
And that was the end of that conversation. Because
I couldn’t tell him he was wrong. I couldn’t say no they
weren’t. Of course they were waiting for him to tell his
story. And so was I.
And I, for one, was getting stretched pretty thin wait-
ing to hear what had happened.
We rode and walked the rest of the way to the meet-
ing in silence.
* * *
We were in the part of the meeting when it was almost
time for the sharing to start. That’s when it happened. That final tilt of the teeter-totter that puts you fully on the other side. The final huge tipping point of the summer of 1969.
We had done all the readings. The leader had asked if
there were any newcomers in their first thirty days. Roy
hadn’t raised his hand. Roy never raised his hand. I don’t
think he was trying to pretend he had been clean long-
er. At least I chose not to believe that. I think he wasn’t
going to call himself a newcomer in his first thirty days
until he was off the pain meds. I think he was claiming
no clean time at all.
The leader had run through the process where they
give out these little key tags they called “chips” for anyone who had thirty, or sixty, or ninety days. Or six months,
or nine months, or anybody who was celebrating an an-
niversary of a year or multiples of years.
Only nobody was. But they went through the list every
time, calling off all those milestones to see if anybody
wanted to raise their hand and take a chip.
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
I saw a few sets of eyes flicker over to the door, so of
course I looked where they looked.
Zoe Dinsmore was just stepping into the room, clos-
ing the door behind her.
She either hadn’t seen me yet, or had seen me and her
eyes had moved on. She was looking at Roy, and Roy
was looking back at her.
And, now, this part was weird. At the time.
She nodded to him. And he nodded back.
I couldn’t have told you exactly what the nod meant,
but it was an acknowledgment of something. Something
they shared between them. Which was absolutely stun-
ning to me, because I had no idea they’d ever shared
anything between them. But I could see it was not the
kind of no
d you exchange with a stranger. It was a nod
to some level of mutual history. It was an understanding.
Some things don’t need explaining. Some things are just
plain on their surface.
They broke off their gazes, and Zoe found herself a seat.
She sat across from us, and her eyes came up to mine.
Just very briefly. She offered me one weak, sad little smile, then looked down at the table.
The leader, this guy named Jeff, spoke directly to her.
He said, “We just finished giving out chips, but I’ll
ask again. Anybody here in their first thirty days of
recovery?”
Zoe raised her hand, still staring down at the table.
“My name is Zoe, and I’m an addict,” she said.
And instead of the usual group response, which would
have been “Hi, Zoe,” just about everybody in the room
said, “Hi, Zoe. Welcome back.”
* * *
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“I’m thinking there’s not a single person in this room
who doesn’t know my story well enough to tell it them-
selves,” Zoe said when she was called on to share. “Am
I right about that?”
Her eyes scanned the room. No one spoke. No faces
seemed the least bit confused.
“Good,” she said. “Then I won’t waste your time
with that, because you know it, and I hate like hell to
talk about it anyway. I’ll just tell you this. If you’re thinking of going out again, don’t. Don’t even mess with it.
Just consider that I did the research for you and it still
stinks out there. And the addiction problem you used to
have hasn’t gotten any better while you were recovering
in these rooms. If anything, it’s gotten worse. It’s like
you’re in here thinking you have all this insurance, but
meanwhile your disease is out there doing push-ups on
the porch. You think you can let it out of the box and
then put it back in again when you’re ready because you
did it the one time, so maybe you get overconfident and
think you did that with your own superior will. So you
let it out, and then you look at it, and you look at the box, and your disease is like a thousand times bigger than the
box, and you can’t for the life of you figure out how you
ever got it to fit in there in the first place.
“I almost didn’t make it back here,” she said, her eyes
flickering somewhere close to mine. But no direct hit. “I
almost took myself out instead. But I guess that wasn’t
what my higher power had in mind for me. I guess the
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