A Dog Called Jack

by Ivy Pembroke

  “None of that is what I’m talking about,” said Ellen, “and you know it.”

  “Trust me, Ellen, I know precious little these days. I just made my little boy leave every single familiar thing in his life to come live in a completely different country where he doesn’t know anyone or anything.”

  “He knows the girls and me,” said Ellen.

  “And none of that is what I’m talking about,” said Sam, echoing her words, “and you know it.”

  Ellen, after a moment of studying him, said, “You did it with the best of intentions, Sam.”

  “Standing in the middle of a sea of boxes with a child outside who’s barely speaking to me, it’s hard to remember what those were,” said Sam, and hated that he said it, because it sounded so pathetic.

  But Sam had forgotten, in all the years he had lived in the States: you could be pathetic in front of your big sister. Ellen just slid off the counter and pulled him into a hug and Sam was not in a mood capable of refusing a hug. He squeezed a little tighter and thought how this was part of the reason he was here in the first place: to have someone around who gave him a moment to be the huggee instead of the hugger. Sam had moved Teddy and himself home for a lot of reasons, but right now this seemed like a most vitally important one.

  Ellen said, “You’re a good dad—I know you know that. You’re just having a moment. But you are a really good dad, and he loves you a lot, and he’s going to be okay. He’s resilient.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “I’ve noticed.” Sam really wished he hadn’t had cause to notice how resilient his son was.

  “He’ll make friends and he’ll get settled and he’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, and took a deep breath. “Yeah, you’re right.” He released Ellen from the hug and went to turn back to the all-consuming task of moving.

  Except that Ellen took his arm and said, “Wait, I have one more really important thing to tell you,” and pulled him back into the hug. “You’re going to be okay, too,” she said.

  And Sam would not have said that he’d needed to hear that out loud—Sam would have said, in fact, that he’d been okay for a very long time now—but he suddenly found himself so very grateful that Ellen was there.

  * * *

  Pari Basak was spying through the fence on the goings-on next door.

  Pari was a very good spy.

  “Pari!” her mother shouted. “Come inside for a second!”

  Pari frowned, leaning closer to the fence. The new boy was sitting outside, looking very unhappy for some reason, and Pari could swear that she’d seen Jack making his way through the garden next door.

  Her Jack.

  “Pari!” Mum shouted more insistently.

  “Ugh,” Pari muttered. “Mum!” She raced inside just so she could protest being called inside. “I was doing something.”

  “What could you have been doing outside?” asked Mum vaguely, because she was distracted by what she was doing, which was packing up pakoras.

  “I was . . . looking at the new boy.” Pari’s mum didn’t like the word spy.

  Mum looked up. “What new boy?”

  “The one who moved in next door,” Pari said.

  “Leave him alone,” Mum said automatically. “Do you want to come with me to your uncle’s?”

  Pari had zero interest in going to her uncle’s. She wanted to stay here and spy on the new boy and figure out where Jack was. Jack’s whereabouts were very important. She said, “No.”

  “You can stay here then and wait for Sai to come home from the library,” said Mum.

  Sai, Pari’s older brother, was not at the library. Sai was at the Pachutas’, two doors down, with his girlfriend Emilia. But if their mother knew that, it would be, as Sai had put it, an epic freak-out. Sai wasn’t supposed to be dating anyone. Sai was supposed to be spending all-day-every-day studying at the library so he could get into a good university and have an excellent career. Even though it was the summer vacation.

  “Yeah,” said Pari, who was nothing but united with Sai in her desire to Keep Mum From Freaking Out, and who also felt kind of bad for Sai, because how boring was spending all-day-every-day at the library for your summer vacation? “I’ll wait for Sai to come home.”

  Mum gathered up her pakoras and tried to juggle them all while also pointing a Mum Finger in Pari’s direction. “Don’t bother the new boy next door.”

  “Got it,” Pari said, nodding.

  And then Mum paused and looked at her and smiled.

  Pari knew that smile. She knew what came next.

  “You’re just so beautiful,” Mum said, and then dropped a kiss on the top of Pari’s head. “See you soon!” she called.

  Pari went to the front window and watched Mum until she couldn’t see her anymore.

  Then she immediately slipped out the back door, walked over to the fence, and peered through it. At Jack. Jack. With the new boy.

  * * *

  “We were busy,” Sai informed Pari, when he let her into Emilia’s house.

  “You were just snogging,” Pari said. “That’s not important. This is important.”

  “Hiya, Pari,” Emilia said, coming into the kitchen and pulling her blond hair into a ponytail as she came. “Can I make you a cuppa?”

  “No,” said Pari, marveling at how Emilia could worry about tea at a time like this. “There’s an emergency.”

  “What’s the emergency?” asked Sai, sliding onto a chair at the kitchen counter, not looking appropriately alarmed.

  “A new family is moving in.”

  “I saw that,” Emilia said, where she was now pulling biscuits down from the cupboard. “Want some?” she offered in Sai’s and Pari’s direction. Again: like there was no emergency going on.

  “Thanks, babe,” Sai said.

  Emilia gave him a playful whack on the back of the head.

  “Don’t call me ‘babe.’ ”

  Sai stuck his tongue out at her, grinning.

  Emilia shook her head and picked up her cup of tea and led them back to the lounge.

  Pari said urgently, to get them back to being focused, “There’s a new boy and he’s sitting outside in his back garden with Jack.”

  “So?” said Sai, settling onto the sofa next to Emilia.

  Pari for a second couldn’t manage to say anything. How could Sai not see what a tremendous deal this was? “So?” she echoed. “So? Are you mad? How can Mum think you’re at the library all the time, when you’re so thick?”

  Sai frowned. “A boy and a dog are outside, what’s the big—”

  “Jack is supposed to be my dog,” Pari said, pointing out the obvious.

  “Jack isn’t your dog,” said Sai. “Jack is nobody’s dog. Jack’s the street dog.”

  “Right. But he’s going to be mine. Once I can convince Mum and Dad.”

  Sai and Emilia both looked like they thought that wasn’t going to happen, when it was totally going to happen. Obviously. Only not if this new boy stole Jack from her.

  Pari sat cross-legged on the uncomfortable, fancy chair in the Pachutas’ lounge. Clearly, this called for strategy.

  Emilia glanced outside the front window, then sat a little straighter and said, “Uh-oh. Your dad’s home. Might be time to sneak back. Don’t start too much of a war over Jack, Pari. There’s enough Jack to go around.”

  Pari rolled her eyes, because Emilia clearly just didn’t get it.

  Sai gave Emilia a kiss.

  Emilia said, “See you tomorrow, babe.”

  Sai said, “Don’t call me ‘babe.’ ”

  Emilia stuck her tongue out at him.

  * * *

  Arthur Tyler-Moss wasn’t often home before Darsh Basak, which was why Arthur wasn’t often witness to the flurry of activity provoked by the sight of Darsh at the top of the street. Arthur watched from his kitchen, where he was chopping herbs to add to the hotch-potch meal he had bubbling away on the stove, as the teenaged Basak boy and little Basak girl came squeezing through
the tumbledown fence on the left, darted through the back garden, and then squeezed through the tumbledown fence on the right.

  And Arthur said to Max, “We really must mend the fences.”

  “Nonsense,” said Max. “Do you really care that our back garden aids the cause of young love?”

  Jack, barking happily, came streaking through the back garden, froze at the sight of Max through the door, and then changed direction to come bounding over to him, tail wagging happily.

  Arthur gave Max a look. “Why is Jack begging at our door?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Max innocently. “It certainly isn’t because I ever feed him.”

  Arthur sighed and leaned down to reach the very back of the cabinet under the sink, where he pulled out the box of dog biscuits Max had “hidden” there and shook it in Max’s direction.

  Max did not look chastised, because Max never looked chastised. He just said, “Thank you, darling,” and took the dog biscuits and opened the door to give some to Jack.

  Arthur said, “You know, other people’s husbands hide evidence of their infidelities. You hide dog biscuits.”

  “Lucky for you the only creature I’m having an affair with is a dog,” replied Max.

  “That sounds alarming,” Arthur said. “Don’t say that you’re having an affair with a dog.”

  Max grinned as he closed the door, leaving Jack on the other side. Jack wagged his tail once more, then turned to bark at a squirrel, then followed the Basak children to their back garden.

  Arthur said, as he chopped the herbs, “It isn’t that I mind young love—”

  “Oh, good, I was afraid you were about to say something dreadfully unromantic,” said Max.

  “—it’s just that if something happens to them while they’re on our property squeezing through ramshackle fences, then—”

  “Hush,” said Max. “That was dreadfully unromantic. You sound like an insurance agent.”

  “I am an insurance agent.”

  “We have new neighbors,” said Max, changing the subject and coming over to stick a finger in Arthur’s concoction and taste it speculatively.

  “I saw the flamingo,” Arthur said. “How is it? Good?”

  “Adventurous,” Max decided.

  Arthur decided that was good enough to eat. He tossed his pile of herbs in and stirred everything together and said, “Did you go over to say hello?”

  “To who?” asked Max blankly.

  “The new neighbors,” said Arthur.

  “What?” said Max. “Of course not. Is that a thing we do now?”

  Arthur shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we should start. It would be polite.”

  “The politest thing would be for all of us to ignore each other and get on with our own lives and not interfere with theirs. The old man was already over there bothering them.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I spied on them, of course. I spy on everyone while I pretend to be home all day ‘painting.’” Max put elaborate air quotes around the word.

  “Ah, I knew the painting thing was all an elaborate ruse. Come, let’s eat my adventurous food.”

  They sat at the table together and Arthur turned on the television to watch the news and decided Max had been right in his assessment that the meal was “adventurous.”

  Max said, after a moment, “Are you okay?”

  Arthur said immediately, keeping his eyes trained on the television, “I’m fine.”

  Max, not to be deterred, said, “You were home earlier than usual today—”

  “I’m fine,” Arthur said again.

  “I know that last week was—”

  “I’m fine,” Arthur repeated, as sternly as he could. And then felt mean, so added, “How are you? Are you okay?” and looked across at Max.

  Who looked steadily back at him. “Fine,” said Max, after a moment.

  “Good,” said Arthur. “We’re both fine.” He turned his attention back to the television.

  Max said, “We’ll just try again, love, it’s bound to—”

  “Can we not talk about it right now?” asked Arthur, hoping he didn’t sound like he was begging, even though he basically was. “I would like to not talk about it right now.”

  And after a moment Max, bless him, agreed, “Yeah.”

  * * *

  Outside the last house on the row, where Penelope Cheever lived alone and wrote freelance articles on a wide range of topics and where she’d carefully cultivated a herb garden after writing an article on developing a green thumb, and a small struggling beehive after writing an article on the importance of bumblebees to the environment, Pen was setting out healthy food for Jack. Because if she didn’t do it, nobody would. She also shook out the bushy spring of her hair from the ponytail she’d trapped it in for her run, pulled out the ingredients for a protein shake, and then jotted on the notepad she kept by the fridge for just such occasions: Flamingos. Why are they pink? What other animals are pink? Why do they stand on one leg? Are birds just weird? YES, BECAUSE DINOSAURS.

  Critically she studied what she’d written, decided to let it marinate a little bit longer in her head. One never knew where one might find a good idea for an article, and the flamingo that had just appeared in the handkerchiefsized front garden of the house down the street could turn out to be good inspiration.

  In the meantime, she called out, “Hello, Jack!” to the dog, who had appeared to start eating the food she’d set out, enjoyed the tail wag she got in reply, and turned her attention to her protein shake.

  * * *

  The thing about moving, thought Sam, in a new house full of new sounds and old things that didn’t really seem to fit, was that it never felt real until the first night.

  Sam had done his fair share of moving, but there had been a while there, with Sara and Teddy, when he’d stayed put. He had been out of practice with packing, and he had forgotten how untethered one could feel in a house whose creaks and angles were still unfamiliar. He’d blithely sent Ellen home to feed Sophie and Evie, reasoning that surely he and Teddy would have to fend for themselves in the new house sooner or later, and sooner had seemed just fine to him. And now he was wondering if that hadn’t been a gross miscalculation. He was missing Ellen’s presence. He realized he’d been relying on her to buffer how painful it was that Teddy seemed so unhappy.

  Sam had set up a small folding table in the dining area and had improvised using boxes as chairs. He had wanted this to seem like a grand adventure, but Teddy looked hardly interested in eating his pizza and definitely not at all like he was on a grand adventure.

  Sam said this. “You don’t look as if you’re on a grand adventure.”

  Teddy looked dubious of Sam’s sanity.

  Sam wondered if other people’s eight-year-olds looked at them this way. Sam hadn’t really known any fellow parents of eight-year-olds in the States. Sara had been friends with some fellow parents, but none of Sam’s friends had had children. It had been another point in favor of moving back home: start over, make new friends with the parents of kids in Teddy’s class, not be labeled instantly as The One With the Dead Wife that everyone whispered about as he passed in the hallway.

  Sam continued bravely in the face of Teddy’s skepticism, “And this is indeed a grand adventure.”

  “So you keep saying,” said Teddy, sounding unimpressed.

  “What we are going to start doing,” said Sam, arriving at this conclusion on the spur of the moment, “is we are going to start saying one adventurous thing that happened to us during the day, at dinner every night.”

  “Every night?” repeated Teddy.

  “Every night when we eat dinner, which is . . . yes, every night.”

  Teddy lifted his eyebrows at Sam. “You think something adventurous is going to happen to us every single day?”

  “I do, yes,” said Sam. “Even if the adventurous thing is just . . . finding a really big spider in the bath.”

  “That’s a terrible adventure,�
� said Teddy.

  “Or the adventure could be spilling chocolate milk all over yourself in the morning.”

  “That’s another terrible adventure,” Teddy said, but his mouth was twitching with the opening act of a fully-fledged smile instead of looking dour, and Sam would take that.

  In fact, Sam wracked his brain for another terrible adventure. “Or the adventure could be accidentally brushing your teeth with mud.”

  Teddy gave in and giggled. “That’s so gross,” he said. “How would that even happen?”

  Sam watched his son laugh and thought how he’d say all of the silliest things he could for the rest of their lifetimes if it kept Teddy laughing. He said, “I don’t know. That’s what makes it an adventure. You never know, afterward, how it all happened. That’s how I know we’re going to have an adventure every day. Because that’s how life is: a series of things you can never quite explain afterward. All adventures.”

  Teddy gave him his typical dubious look, mirth vanished. “Like moving to England?”

  “Moving to England is the greatest adventure we’ve undertaken in a long time,” Sam said. “And that’s a good thing. Don’t you think that’s a good thing? Don’t you think that we needed to . . . find new adventures to have? We were just having the same adventures, day after day, and they weren’t even good adventures, and . . . that’s no good. That’s not a life.” Sam studied Teddy closely, wondering if Teddy was grasping what Sam was saying. He knew he had not been the only one trapped by the continual box of tragedy that the community wouldn’t let them out of, even years later; he knew that Teddy had felt it, too. He just didn’t know if Teddy was willing to admit it.

  Teddy said, “But they were our adventures, back home.”

  “And whose adventures are these, that we’re having here? It’s still us having them. It’s still you and me. They’re still ours.”

  Teddy looked at his pizza, flicked at a piece of pepperoni, generally looked unconvinced.

  Sam said gently, “Listen. This is going to be a good place, where we’re going to meet nice people and make nice friends and have nice adventures.”

  Teddy looked up at Sam from underneath his sandy fringe. “How do you know that?”

  “I’m very smart?” Sam tried.