by Garth Stein
“Of course, there has to be a nurse on duty, around the clock.”
“They work in shifts—”
“They work in shifts, but still, the one on duty takes breaks.”
“So someone needs to be there to help.”
“And since we’re always around.”
“We have nowhere to go—”
“And you have to work.”
“So it’s best.”
“Yes, it’s best.”
Denny nodded without conviction. He got into the car, and we drove off.
“When’s Mommy coming home?” Zoë asked.
“Soon,” Denny said.
We were crossing the floating bridge, the one Zoë used to call the “High 90,” when she was younger.
“Mommy’s going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a while,” Denny said. “Until she feels better. Is that okay with you?”
“I guess,” Zoë said. “Why?”
“It’ll be easier for—” He broke off. “It’ll be easier.”
A few days later, a Saturday, Zoë, Denny, and I went to Maxwell and Trish’s house. A bed had been set up in the living room. A large hospital bed that moved up and down and tilted and did all sorts of things by touching a remote control, and that had a broad footboard from which hung a clipboard, and that came stocked with a nurse, a crinkly older woman who had a voice that sounded like she was singing whenever she spoke and who didn’t like dogs, though I had no objection to her whatsoever. Immediately, the nurse started fretting about me. To my dismay, Maxwell concurred and Denny was preoccupied, so I was shoved outside into the backyard; thankfully, Zoë came to my rescue.
“Mommy’s coming!” Zoë told me.
She was very excited and wore the madras dress that she liked because it was so pretty, and I found her excitement infectious so I joined in with it, I embraced the festivity, a real homecoming. Zoë and I played; she threw a ball for me and I did tricks for her, and we rolled together in the grass. It was a wonderful day, the family all together again. It felt very special.
“She’s here!” Denny called from the back door, and Zoë and I rushed to see; this time I was allowed inside. Eve’s mother entered the house first, followed by a man in blue slacks and a yellow shirt with a logo on it who wheeled in a white figure with dead eyes, a mannequin in slippers. Maxwell and Denny lifted the figure and placed it in the bed and the nurse tucked it in and Zoë said, “Hi, Mommy,” and all this happened before it even entered my consciousness that this strange figure was not a dummy, not a mock-up used for practice, but Eve.
Her head was covered with a stocking cap. Her cheeks were sunken, her skin, sallow. She lifted her head and looked around.
“I feel like a Christmas tree,” she said. “In the living room, everyone standing around me expecting something. I don’t have any presents.”
Uncomfortable chuckles from the onlookers.
And then she looked at me directly.
“Enzo,” she said. “Come here.”
I wagged my tail and approached cautiously. I hadn’t seen her since she went into the hospital, and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. It seemed to me the hospital had made her much sicker than she really was.
“He doesn’t know what to think,” Denny said for me.
“It’s okay, Enzo,” she said.
She dangled her hand off the side of the bed, and I bumped it with my nose. I didn’t like any of this, all the new furniture, Eve looking limp and sad, people standing around like Christmas without the presents. None of it seemed right. So even though everyone was staring at me, I shuffled over to Zoë and stood behind her, looking out the windows into the backyard, which was dappled with sunlight.
“I think I’ve offended him by being sick,” she said.
That was not what I meant at all. My feelings were so complicated, I have difficulty explaining them with any clarity even today, after I have lived through it and had time to reflect upon it. All I could do was move to her bedside and lie down before her like a rug.
“I don’t like seeing me like this either,” she said.
The afternoon was interminable. Finally the dinner hour came, and Maxwell, Trish, and Denny poured themselves cocktails and the mood lifted dramatically. An old photo album of Eve as a child was taken out from hiding and everyone laughed while the smell of garlic and oil floated from the kitchen where Trish cooked the food. Eve took off her cap and we marveled at her shaved head and grotesque scars. She showered with the help of the nurse, and when she emerged from the bathroom in one of her own dresses and not the hospital gown and robe, she looked almost normal, though there was a darkness behind her eyes, a look of resignation. She tried to read Zoë a book, but she said she couldn’t focus well enough, so Zoë tried her best to read to Eve, and her best was fairly good. I wandered into the kitchen, where Denny was again conferencing with Trish and Maxwell.
“We really think Zoë should stay with us,” Maxwell said, “until…”
“Until…” Trish echoed, standing at the stove with her back to us.
So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is comprised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication. Trish’s robotic repeating of the single word “until” revealed everything about her state of mind.
“Until what?” Denny demanded. I could hear the irritation in his voice. “How do you know what’s going to happen? You’re condemning her to something before you even know.”
Trish dropped her frying pan onto the burner with a loud clatter and began to sob. Maxwell wrapped his arms around her and enveloped her in his embrace. He looked over at Denny.
“Please, Denny. We have to face the reality of it. The doctor said six to eight months. He was quite definite.”
Trish pulled away from him and steadied herself, sniffed in her tears.
“My baby,” she whispered.
“Zoë is just a child,” Maxwell continued. “This is valuable time—the only time she has to spend with Eve. I can’t imagine—I can’t believe for a second—that you would possibly object.”
“You’re such a caring person,” Trish added.
I could see that Denny was stuck. He had agreed to have Eve stay with Maxwell and Trish, and now they wanted Zoë, too. If he objected, he would be keeping a mother and a daughter apart. If he accepted their proposal, he would be pushed to the periphery, he would become an outsider in his own family.
“I understand what you’re saying—” Denny said.
“We knew you would,” Trish interrupted.
“But I’ll have to talk to Zoë about it to see what she wants.”
Trish and Maxwell looked at each other uneasily.
“You can’t seriously consider asking a little girl what she wants,” Maxwell snorted. “She’s five, for God’s sake! She can’t—”
“I’ll talk to Zoë to see what she wants,” Denny repeated firmly.
After dinner, he took Zoë into the backyard, and they sat together on the terrace steps.
“Mommy would like it if you stayed here with her and Grandma and Grandpa,” he said. “What do you think about that?”
She turned it over in her head.
“What do you think about it?” she asked.
“Well,” Denny said, “I think maybe it’s the best thing. Mommy has missed you so much, and she wants to spend more time with you. It would just be for a little while. Until she’s better and can come home.”
“Oh,” Zoë said. “I still get to take the bus to school?”
“Well,” Denny said, thinking. “Probably not. Not for a while. Grandma or Grandpa will drive you to school and pick you up, I think. When Mommy feels better, you both will come home, then you can take the bus again.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll come and visit every day,” Denny said. “And we’ll spend weekends together, and sometimes you’ll stay with me, too. But Mommy really wants you with her.”
Zoë nodded somberly.
“Grandma and Grandpa really want me, too,” she said.
Denny was clearly upset, but he was hiding it in a way that I thought little kids didn’t understand. But Zoë was very smart, like her father. Even at five years old, she understood.
“It’s okay, Daddy,” she said. “I know you won’t leave me here forever.”
He smiled at her and took her little-kid hand and held it in his own and kissed her on the forehead.
“I promise I will never do that,” he said.
It was agreed then, perhaps to neither of their satisfaction, that she would stay.
I marveled at them both; how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient. At that moment, honestly, I had grave doubts as to my ability to interact on such a level. I wondered if I could ever become the human I hoped to be.
As the night wound down, I found Denny sitting in the stuffed chair next to Eve’s bed, nervously tapping his hand against his leg.
“This is crazy,” Denny said. “I’m going to stay, too. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No, Denny,” Eve said. “You’ll be so uncomfortable—”
“I’ve slept on plenty of couches in my life. It’s fine.”
“Denny, please—”
There was something about the tone of her voice, something pleading in her eyes, that made him stop.
“Please go home,” she said.
He scratched the back of his neck and looked down.
“Zoë is here,” he said. “Your folks are here. You’ve told me you want Enzo to stay with you tonight. But you send me away? What did I do?”
She sighed deeply. She was very tired and seemed like she hadn’t the energy to explain it to Denny. But she tried.
“Zoë won’t remember,” she said. “I don’t care what my parents think. And Enzo—well, Enzo understands. But I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“Like what?”
“Look at me,” she said. “My head is shaved. My face looks old. My breath smells like I’m rotting inside. I’m ugly—”
“I don’t care what you look like,” he said. “I see you. I see who you really are.”
“I care what I look like,” she said, trying to muster her old Eve smile. “When I look at you, I see my reflection in your eyes. I don’t want to be ugly in front of you.”
Denny turned away as if to shield his eyes from her, as if to take away the mirrors. He looked out the window into the backyard, which was lit with lights along the patio’s edge and more lights that were suspended in the trees, illuminating our lives. Out there, beyond the light, was the unknown. Everything that wasn’t us.
“I’ll pack Zoë’s things and come back in the morning,” he said, finally, without turning around.
“Thank you, Denny,” Eve said, relieved. “You can take Enzo. I don’t want you to feel abandoned.”
“No,” he said. “Enzo should stay. He misses you.”
He kissed Eve good night, tucked Zoë into bed, and then he left me with Eve. I wasn’t sure why she wanted me around, but I understood why she wanted Denny to go: as he fell asleep that night, she wanted him to dream of her as she used to be, not as she currently was; she didn’t want Denny’s vision of her to be corrupted by her presence. What she didn’t understand was Denny’s ability to look beyond her physical condition. He was focusing on the next turn. Perhaps if she had had the same ability, things would have turned out differently for her.
The house grew quiet and dark, Zoë in bed, Maxwell and Trish in their room with their TV blinking under the door. Eve was settled into her bed in the living room with the nurse sitting in a dark corner playing a page of her word-search book, in which she circled the hidden messages. I lay next to Eve’s bed.
Later, Eve was asleep and the nurse nudged me with her foot. I lifted my head and she held a finger to her lips and told me to be a good dog and follow her, which I did. She led me through the kitchen, through the laundry room to the back of the house and she opened the door that led to the garage.
“In you go,” she said. “We don’t want you disturbing Mrs. Swift during the night.”
I looked at her, puzzled. Disturb Eve? Why would I do that?
She took my hesitation as rebellion; she snatched my collar and gave it a jerk. She shoved me into the dark garage and closed the door. I heard her slippers tread away, back into the house.
I was not afraid. All I knew was how dark it was in the garage.
It wasn’t too cold, and it wasn’t overly unpleasant, if you don’t mind a concrete floor and the smell of engine oil in an absolutely pitch-black room. I’m sure there were no rats, as Maxwell kept a clean garage for his valuable cars. But I had never slept in a garage before.
The time clicked by. Literally. I watched it click by on an old electric clock that Maxwell kept on the workbench he never used. It was one of those old clocks with the numbers on little plastic tabs that rotate around a spindle, illuminated by a small bulb, the only source of light in the room. Each minute was two clicks, the first when the little plastic half-number was released, the second when the half-number settled, revealing an entirely new number. Click-click, and a minute went by. Click-click, and another. And that’s how I passed my time in my prison, counting the clicks. And daydreaming about the movies I’ve seen.
My two favorite actors are, in this order: Steve McQueen and Al Pacino. Bobby Deerfield is a very underappreciated film, as is Pacino’s performance in it. My third favorite actor is Paul Newman, for his excellent car-handling skills in the film Winning, and because he is a fantastic racer in his own right and owns a Champ Car racing team, and finally, because he purchases his palm fruit oil from renewable sources in Colombia and thereby discourages the decimation of vast tracts of rain forest in Borneo and Sumatra. George Clooney is my fourth favorite actor because he’s exceptionally clever at helping cure children of diseases on reruns of ER, and because he looks a little like me around the eyes. Dustin Hoffman is my fifth favorite actor, mostly because he did such great things for the Alfa Romeo trademark in The Graduate. Steve McQueen, though, is my first, and not only because of Le Mans and Bullitt, two of the greatest car movies ever made. But also because of Papillon. Being a dog, I know what it’s like to be locked in a prison cell without hope, every day waiting for the sliding door to open and for a metal bowl of undernourishing slop to be shoved through the slot.
Hours into my nightmare, the garage door opened, and Eve was there in her nightgown, silhouetted by the night-light in the kitchen.
“Enzo?” she questioned.
I said nothing but I emerged from the darkness, relieved to see her again.
“Come with me.”
She led me back to the living room and she took a cushion from the sofa and placed it next to her bed. She told me to lie on it, and I did. Then she climbed into the bed and pulled up the sheets to her neck.
“I need you with me,” she said. “Don’t go away again.”
But I hadn’t gone away! I had been abducted!
I could feel the sleep pressing down on her.
“I need you with me,” she said. “I’m so afraid. I’m so afraid.”
It’s okay, I said. I’m here.
She rolled to the edge of the bed and looked down at me, her eyes glazed.
“Get me through tonight,” she said. “That’s all I need. Protect me. Don’t let it happen tonight. Enzo, please. You’re the only one who can help.”
I will, I said.
“You’re the only one. Don’t worry about that nurse; I sent her home.”
I looked over to the corner, and the crinkly old woman was gone.
“I don’t need her,” she said. “Only you can protect me. Please. Don’t let it happen tonight.”
I didn’t sleep at all that night. I stood guard, waiting for the demon to show his face. The demon was coming for Eve, but he would have to get
past me first, and I was ready. I noted every sound, every creak, every change in air density, and by standing or shifting my weight, I silently made it clear to the demon that he would have to contend with me if he intended to take Eve.
The demon stayed away. In the morning, the others awoke and cared for Eve, and I was able to relinquish my guard duties and sleep.
“What a lazy dog,” I heard Maxwell mutter as he passed me.
And then I felt Eve’s hand on my neck, stroking. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”
24
For the first few weeks of our new arrangement—Denny and I lived in our house, while Eve and Zoë lived with the Twins—Denny visited them every single evening after work, while I stayed home alone. By Halloween, Denny’s pace had slowed, and by Thanksgiving, he visited them only twice during the week. Whenever he came home from the Twins’ house, he reported to me how good Eve looked and how much better she was getting and that she would be coming home soon. But I saw her, too, on the weekends, when he would take me to visit, and I knew. She wasn’t getting better, and she wouldn’t be coming home any time soon.
Every weekend, without fail, both Denny and I visited with Eve on Saturday when we picked up Zoë, and again on Sunday when we delivered her home after our sleepover; we frequently took our Sunday meal with the extended family. I spent the occasional night with Eve in her living room, but she never needed me as much as she had that first night when she was so afraid. Zoë’s time with us should have been filled with joy, but she didn’t seem altogether happy. How could she be, living with her mother, who was dying, and not with her father, who was very much alive?
Zoë’s schooling had briefly become a point of contention. Shortly after she began staying with Maxwell and Trish, they asked to transfer Zoë to a school on Mercer Island, as traveling back and forth across the I-90 floating bridge twice a day was a burden for them. But Denny put down his foot, knowing how much Zoë loved her Madrona school. He insisted she remain there, as he was her father and legal guardian, and also, he maintained, since both Zoë and Eve would be moving home in the near future.
