Heaven Adjacent

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Well. My phone number.”

  “That’s usually best.” The woman picked up her pencil and tapped the eraser against the monitor a number of times. She seemed to be counting words. Or maybe even characters. “Sixty-two fifty.”

  “Sixty-two fifty?”

  “Sixty-two fifty.”

  “I thought newspapers placed found ads without charge. You know. Because advertising something you found is a good Samaritan thing to do.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “He’s not even my dog.”

  “You want the ad, or don’t you?”

  “No. Not that one. But I still need to find his owner. So let’s start over.”

  The woman sighed. She held her finger down on the delete key for a couple of seconds. Then she re-poised. “Okay, shoot.”

  “Found. Dog. Chudley. And the phone number.”

  “Thirty-two dollars.”

  “It’s about one-tenth as long!”

  “That’s our minimum. Thirty-two dollars.”

  “Fine,” Roseanna said.

  She sighed, and began to dig around in her purse. She glanced over her shoulder at the dog, who was still leaning nervously against the door. She shot him a look that said he was entirely to blame for all of this. He returned a look that said he accepted all that guilt and more.

  “You could have left the dog in the car,” the woman said.

  “I thought you’d want to take his picture.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “So his owner can recognize him?”

  “Do you really want to know what an ad with a photo would cost you?”

  “No,” Roseanna said. “Never mind.”

  She dictated her phone number to the woman and counted out thirty-two dollars in cash onto the desk.

  “Okay,” the woman said, still not looking directly at Roseanna’s face. “This will run a week from Thursday.”

  “A week from Thursday? Is that a joke? What am I supposed to do with him in the meantime?”

  “That would not be my department.”

  “Why will it take so long?”

  “The deadline for this Thursday’s paper is passed.”

  “Why does it have to run on a Thursday?”

  The woman stole a direct glance at Roseanna, but just a quick one. And somewhat sideways, if such a thing were possible. “This is a weekly paper. I thought you knew that.”

  “And this is the only paper that serves this area.”

  “It is.”

  “And it’s a weekly.”

  “Correct.”

  Roseanna sighed again and pulled to her feet.

  Her plan had been to ask the whereabouts of the nearest animal shelter. But now she couldn’t. Because a week from Thursday was too long. By then a shelter might already have done what shelters do to unwanted dogs.

  She stood over the unwanted dog and stared down at him, which seemed to intensify his anxiety.

  “Okay,” she said. “I guess I have to take you home with me.”

  “I’ve never seen that dog,” the woman said to Roseanna’s back. “I don’t think he lives around here.”

  “You couldn’t possibly know every dog in the county.”

  “Couldn’t I?”

  “Well, anyway, even if you did know every dog in the county, he could be a dog someone just brought home.”

  “You haven’t lived here for long, so let me tell you what happens. People don’t want a dog, so they drive it way out into the country and put it out of the car. It’s like that old thing where your father takes your dog to the pound, but he says he took it to live on a farm where it can chase rabbits all day long. People convince themselves it’s some kind of a dream life for a dog out here, but mostly they starve or get run over on the highways.”

  Roseanna took her eyes off the dog and looked back over her shoulder at the irritating woman. “You’re just a treat in every sense of the word, aren’t you?”

  The woman glowered at Roseanna in return. “You know, a handful of the locals are looking into whether there’s an ordinance against your junk.”

  “They can look the other way as they drive by.”

  “You’re missing the point. It’s mostly the extra traffic they don’t like. Though some are into the principle of the thing because they don’t find them scenic.”

  “I feel sorry for people like you,” Roseanna said. “You look at whimsical animal sculptures and see junk. You look at this perfectly nice dog and see something that somebody threw away like garbage. Now why would someone throw away a perfectly nice dog like this?”

  Roseanna bent down to grab the dog up into her arms. He half stood in nervous anticipation, then urinated all over his own front legs and the newspaper-office carpet.

  “That might be a clue right there,” the woman said.

  Roseanna held the dog with the sheer force of her will, staring at him where he sat on the curb and repeating the word “stay” in the most authoritative voice she could muster.

  In between stays she bought a local—weekly!—newspaper out of an automated rack, separated out its double pages, and used them to cover the passenger seat of her Maserati.

  “Okay,” she said to the dog when the paper seemed thick enough. “You can get in now.”

  The dog hopped into her car as if he understood English perfectly. Clearly he was used to being somebody’s dog.

  Based on his confidence level, Roseanna thought, maybe not somebody very nice.

  Roseanna sat down in the driver’s seat and watched for a moment as the dog padded around on the crinkling paper, which seemed an impediment to his sitting or lying down. Eventually he settled, seemingly against his nature.

  They set off toward home together.

  Roseanna looked over at the dog, and he looked back. His eyes seemed to hold a better understanding of the situation than a dog should by all rights possess.

  “Okay,” she said. “I get it. We all have something like that in our lives. Something we look back on with a wince. That we know was not our finest moment. I can forgive that if the newspaper people can. But if you think you’re coming into my house, you have another think coming. You’ll live outside until your owner calls. If it’s rainy and cold, you can stay in the barn.”

  The dog stared into Roseanna’s face as if translating her message into Dog one word at a time.

  Roseanna knew, as the words came out of her mouth, that the dog’s owner was not going to call. Much as she had wanted to resist the rude woman’s assessment that the dog had been dumped, it struck Roseanna’s intuitive gut as a likely scenario.

  “Damn,” she said suddenly, making a U-turn in the deserted road. “I forgot to buy dog food while I was in town.”

  When she arrived home, Roseanna had a talk with the dog before letting him jump out of the car.

  “Now, you have to stay on the property,” she said. “No more of this sniffing around in the middle of the road. I’m not going to tie you up, because that’s just plain mean. So you’ll have to be on the honor system.”

  Good going, Roseanna, she thought to herself. Like a dog understands the honor system.

  “Maybe I’ll make it the little girl’s job to keep tabs on you,” Roseanna said.

  She stepped out of the car and opened the passenger door for the dog, who jumped down. Roseanna balled up the newspapers and began to walk them over to the outside trash cans.

  There she ran smack-dab into Melanie. More or less literally.

  “Oh, you’re still here,” Roseanna said, hoping it would be enough of a hint. Then, just to be sure, she added, “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

  “Yeah, I hope you don’t mind!” Melanie squealed. But then she talked over any chance Roseanna might have had to express her objections. “We met that nice young man, David Nelson. He’s teaching Dave to fish. Dave’s always wanted to learn how to fish, but we live in the city, you know? As soon as Dave catches his first fish, w
e’ll be moving along.”

  Great, Roseanna thought. It only took Nelson three days to catch one, and he seemed to already know quite a bit about the task.

  “I was just thinking it’s getting late in the afternoon,” Roseanna said, trying to be more polite than the situation warranted. “You know. When you move on, you want a little daylight to get wherever you’re going.”

  “Oh, we already set up our tent down there. On the other side of the trees, where the other guy’s been camping.”

  “You have a tent?”

  “Yes, this is a camping trip for us, didn’t we tell you? We figured if you didn’t mind the young man’s tent down there, you wouldn’t mind ours. We’re not where you could see us or hear us from the house.”

  Then Melanie trotted off down the hill toward the stream before Roseanna could offer any objection.

  I could probably hear you from Myanmar, Roseanna thought as she watched the woman’s back grow smaller.

  She looked down at the dog, who looked back at her with some visible measure of distress.

  “Sure,” she said. “No problem. Everybody just make yourself at home.”

  The dog turned his head away in shame.

  Roseanna asked him, “You think if I placed a newspaper found ad for those people anybody would call?”

  The dog wagged nervously, as if it pained him not to be able to answer.

  Roseanna gave up, sighed, and walked back into her house.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nice Life You Got Here . . . Be a Shame if Something Happened to It

  Roseanna was chopping firewood with a splitting maul—no small task even in her improved physical condition—when the old man came puttering up on his motor scooter, trailed by a cloud of brownish smoke. He pulled off into the dirt when he saw her metal zoo. He set the kickstand on the tiny bike, which was loaded up with fully packed saddlebags, and cut the noisy engine.

  He didn’t seem to have noticed her yet.

  He walked to the fence and pulled off his helmet with what looked like a great deal of effort, exposing a mostly bare scalp. He leaned on her fence.

  In time he sat down carefully in the dirt, his elbows braced on his own knees, and stared some more.

  Roseanna left her work and walked to where the old man sat. He jumped when he saw her. Tried to struggle to his feet but failed quite miserably and fell back onto his rump again.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind. I was just looking.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “That’s what they’re for. I made them for looking.”

  She opened her mouth to start more of a real conversation with him. Something that could lead to the story of Alice. Then she closed her mouth again. Because it struck her that a few of the people to whom she’d told that story still had not moved on.

  Granted, most had. She’d had three iron-zoo-related conversations just that week with people or couples who had politely loaded into their cars and gone home to their own lives afterward. Still, the surprising number of people who hadn’t—three, to be exact—had left a mark on her psyche. It made her want to be more cautious.

  “I wonder if I can trouble you for a glass of water,” he said. “I hate to be a bother. But it’s been such a long ride since the last time I saw anyplace to stop and eat or drink.”

  “Of course,” Roseanna said, realizing that the poor old man was overheated and weak. “Come up and sit on the porch in the shade, and I’ll get you something.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that. My hearing’s not the best.”

  “Come up and sit on the porch in the shade, and I’ll get you something,” she said again, much closer and louder this time.

  “Well,” he said. “You’re very kind.”

  “I think I made a calculation error,” he said. Then he took several long gulps of the water.

  She placed a bowl of corn chips between them and sat with him.

  “Not really calculations,” he added. “I think that’s the wrong word. It wasn’t mathematics I was working on. What I miscalculated was my own ability. I’ll be eighty years old in a couple of weeks, but I’m as healthy as a mule. So I thought I’d be fine riding that little scooter in the long haul. But I think I was giving myself too much credit.”

  “How long a trip did you plan?” she asked, being sure to keep her voice strong.

  He cut his eyes away. “That’s hard to say,” he muttered under his breath.

  Roseanna decided not to press him, as he clearly did not wish to be pressed.

  “Oh,” he said suddenly. “I haven’t introduced myself. My apologies. Martin Mayhew.”

  “Rosie Chaldecott,” Roseanna said. “What made you decide on such a small motor scooter?”

  “I wouldn’t really say I decided on it. More like it decided on me.”

  That hardly explained the situation. But Roseanna realized she was famous for such dodges herself. And, for that and other reasons, it was against her nature to pry.

  Meanwhile he had finished his water. And between the two of them, the bottom of the corn chip bowl was no longer fully covered.

  Roseanna realized she had developed a strong sense for that moment when people knew it was time to leave her property but badly wanted not to. It struck her as a strange talent to haul through life.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked. Because part of her wanted to hurry him back on his bike and make sure he left, while another, stronger, part of her wanted to do so with no guilt whatsoever.

  Martin cut his eyes away.

  “It’s kind of you to ask,” he said. “But I’ve troubled you enough.”

  They crunched in silence for a moment more. Then Roseanna reached into the corn chip bowl and found nothing but a sprinkling of leftover salt.

  “That doesn’t really answer the question, though. It’s your own business, so I’m certainly not insisting you answer. But there’s nothing rude about saying you’re hungry, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “I had coffee and a pastry at a gas station this morning. It was a poor choice, though, because it’s nothing that’ll stick with you, if you know what I mean. Just sugar and flour. When it runs out, it runs out on you hard. And what with these days getting so warm and all, I ended up feeling a bit woozy. So it was mighty kind of you to take me into the shade and offer some water and a little snack. I’m indebted to you for that.”

  “I don’t have a lot of food in the house,” Roseanna said. “I was supposed to drive into Walkerville later this afternoon and do some shopping. And I haven’t yet. But I could make peanut butter sandwiches. And I have some milk. At least we could get some protein and some calories into you before you move on.”

  Roseanna watched his refusals crumble. She could see it in his eyes. Once the food in question had been described, he could no longer push it away by suggesting it was too much trouble on her part.

  “A peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk would be manna from heaven, Rosie. You are very kind.”

  As they walked into the house together, it struck her that all this kindness to strangers might have been a contributing factor in their not tending to leave.

  “Tell me again how you happened to come by that tiny little scooter?” Roseanna asked, loudly, as they sat back from their finished meal. “I think I didn’t quite understand your answer about that.”

  “It was my wife’s.”

  “Was?”

  “My wife passed away last month.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “She had cancer. Suffered with it for the longest time. And our finances suffered right along with her. But I guess that’s getting a little personal, and, anyway, you don’t want to hear my troubles.”

  “Nonsense,” Roseanna said. “I’m beginning to think that’s the reason we’re all down here on this planet together. To try to make things a little easier for each other. Why else would we interact with people at all? You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, but if you
feel like talking about it, I don’t mind.”

  “We had insurance,” Martin said.

  Then he stared at his empty plate for a surprising length of time in silence. She sensed he was teetering on the edge of a decision about disclosure—to clam up entirely or let it all out. She could see the moment—a brief instant before he spoke again—when he opted for the latter.

  “That is, she had insurance. I have Medicare, but my wife was a good bit younger—sixty-four to my eighty—and it didn’t come quite soon enough to help her. I don’t know if Medicare would have been better than the insurance we had for her. Looking back, seems just about anything would have been.”

  He scowled at his mostly empty milk glass as if it were an errant insurance provider. Then he plunged on.

  “We both worked all our lives and put money away for a rainy day. Kept our policies in good standing and all that stuff. You know. All the things they tell you to do to take good care. But it’s a funny thing about insurance companies. They love to take your money when you’re healthy, but then when you get sick, they don’t pay nearly as much as you were set to expect. In fact, they almost always manage to pay you less than you paid ’em in premiums all those years. But then I guess if they didn’t, they wouldn’t still be in business and doing fine. They disallowed a bunch of charges and only paid eighty percent, and the twenty percent was enough to bury just about anybody. I lost the house and I had to sell my car. That scooter is most of what I’ve got left. That and a little pension. Emphasis on the word ‘little.’”

  Roseanna said nothing for a time, because she had no idea what to say.

  “I really don’t think well of insurance companies at this point in my life,” Martin added.

  “Can’t say as I blame you.”

  “Starting to seem like a racket to me. A little bit of one, anyway. Like when people used to have to pay protection to the mob, otherwise something terrible would happen to their business. I guess the difference is that the insurance companies don’t literally cause the bad thing to happen. But they ask so much money, and you don’t have a lot of choice, because you want to protect that nice life you built. I paid the high premiums so I wouldn’t lose the house. And I lost it anyway. So they might as well have been the mob.”