Where We Belong

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  “Hmm. You think this couch is too close to the door? You think she climbed up on the back of it and braced herself on the wall and leaned way over?”

  “I have no idea. But let’s move it farther away. Just to be safe. And I’ll just have to apologize to Paul one more time.”

  The next morning, Paul’s fifth day home, I woke up to find the door wide open and one of the kitchen chairs dragged over by the door.

  I woke my mom again.

  “Well, I was right about one thing. She doesn’t bother to cover her tracks.”

  “I’ll move the table and chairs down to the garage before I go to work. You go apologize to Paul one more time.”

  “Right. Like we don’t say that every morning. Like we should be so lucky that it’s only this one more time.”

  On Paul’s sixth day home, the door was hanging open again. In front of it was my locked trunk and a rickety stack of books.

  I woke my mom.

  “I think we’re screwed,” I said. “Pardon my language.”

  “It’s more polite than what I would have said.”

  “It’s just not going to work.”

  “I did some research.”

  “Did you find anyplace decent?”

  “Not close. Not someplace we could go visit anytime.”

  “I better go talk to Paul.”

  I paused a long time at the back door, my hands and my ear against the wood. I wanted some evidence he was awake. I thought I heard water from a faucet, so I knocked.

  Paul opened the door, all dressed and shaved.

  “Good morning,” he said. “She’s right where she always is.”

  “You’re being incredibly patient about this. But it feels like it’s time to talk about the fact that it isn’t going to work.”

  “Come in.”

  I followed him into his kitchen and sat at the table. He poured me a cup of coffee and put sugar and milk in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say or when I was supposed to say it. It seemed like the whole thing had already said itself. So I sat there like a lump and watched him get Rigby’s food ready. He put it down in the corner and called her, and she came in, looking stiff and limpy, Sophie tagging right behind.

  Then he sat at the table with me, with his own cup of coffee, and we stared at them and didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Just as I was gathering up to talk, he beat me to it.

  “It just doesn’t seem like such a terrible situation,” he said. “I thought it would be. But it isn’t. Don’t ever quote me on this. Don’t tell anyone I said it. I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you, and I’m trusting you not to take it the wrong way. But it’s a little like having another dog. A very well-behaved one. I know she’s not a dog. I totally give her credit for being a human girl. But she’s doing a dog impression, so that’s what it’s like for me. It’s not like having another person in the house. Another person would be looking at me. And trying to talk to me. I’d have to be careful what I said and did in my own home. Sophie never looks at me. She doesn’t even seem to know I’m here. Or maybe she doesn’t care. Either way, she really doesn’t take up any space at all.”

  “So… I’m not sure what you’re saying. Or maybe I know what you’re saying, but I can’t believe you’re saying it. You’re saying it’s okay?”

  “I’m saying… I wake up, and she’s sleeping quietly on Rigby’s bed, and then you come get her and take her out to meet her ride to school. And it just doesn’t seem like a thing she should be confined to an institution for doing. It just doesn’t feel like such a terrible thing.”

  My mom was up and dressed when I got back, and looking plenty stressed out. In fact, she looked like she might be about to throw up.

  “What did he say?”

  “You’re absolutely, positively not going to believe it.”

  I made a mental note that I had until winter to teach Sophie to close the door behind her after letting herself out.

  PART THREE

  When I Was Sixteen, and Now That I’m Seventeen

  1. Smile

  My mom was sitting at our little kitchen table, in the corner of the apartment, when I came out from behind the room divider, first thing in the morning. She was drinking tea and eating buttered toast.

  It was a year and a half later, and we still didn’t have a third chair. We didn’t need one. Sophie was never home. She was at school or she was at Paul’s with the dog.

  “It snowed buckets in the night,” she said. “Put on your boots before you go.”

  “Okay.”

  “You might need snowshoes or cross-country skis to get to the house.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “I’m half joking. But it’s deep. Try to get Sophie back a little early, so I can get her all suited up. And we’ll have to climb over that big snowdrift the plows leave behind. If the plows have even been through. You think the plows have been through? Did you hear them? Maybe the schools are closed.”

  “I guarantee you the schools are closed. It’s Christmas vacation.”

  “No, that starts tomorrow.”

  “No, that starts today.”

  “Not for Sophie.”

  “Yes, for Sophie. I asked twice. Everybody goes out on the same day.”

  “Oh. I wonder how I got that wrong.”

  “No idea.”

  I was anxious to get going. Paul needed help first thing in the morning. The sooner the better. I wondered if my impatience showed.

  “How’s the dog? Any better?”

  “Mom. It’s not something she’s going to get better from.”

  Her forehead wrinkled up. I waited for her to say something, but she never did.

  “Paul needs help with her. I have to go.”

  I held onto the railing on the way down the stairs, kicking snow off as best I could before stepping down. When I was sure I was off the last stair and on the ground, I took a long step and sank in up to my knees. But I just kept going, even though my boots were filling up with snow.

  Paul had his back steps shoveled off. He must have been up awfully early.

  I rapped on his back door.

  “It’s open,” he called. “Come in.”

  I did. And headed straight for Rig.

  She was lying flat out on her side on Paul’s bedroom floor, on the heated bed Paul had bought her. She was covered with a heavy handmade quilt, and Sophie. When she saw me, Rigby lifted her head about halfway up and thumped her tail, bouncing part of the quilt up and down.

  “Think we can get through this again?” Paul asked me.

  At the exact moment he asked, he handed me a cup of coffee with sugar and milk.

  “We just will,” I said.

  I looked down at Sophie, who, bizarrely, did not look calm. I hadn’t seen her not look calm since the first few days we’d moved in here. Her face was twisted, like something invisible was poking into her side. And she was making fussy little complaining noises.

  “Let me just set this coffee down,” I said.

  “You can drink it first. She can wait.”

  “That doesn’t feel right. I think what Rigby wants should come first.”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  I set my coffee on his bedside table.

  “Come on, Sophie,” I said. “Come on, Rigby. Let’s move. Let’s go out.”

  Sophie didn’t get up. Usually she got up. She just lay there. Fussing and frowning.

  “How long has Sophie been like this?” I asked Paul.

  “Just since Rigby woke up this morning. When Rigby slept, she slept.”

  I had a theory. But I didn’t like it. So I didn’t share it. I shoved it down and hoped it would go away. I lifted Sophie by both elbows. She complained bitterly, but she didn’t fight being lifted.

  “Ready?” Paul asked me.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  We worked together, the two of us, to help Rigby get on
her feet. It had been a major production for nearly a week. That morning, it was closer to an impossibility. I had to keep stopping and getting her legs back under her. And Paul had to keep her from falling down as I did. My back had been seriously sore for as long as I could remember. I didn’t even want to think how Paul’s must feel.

  When she was standing and fairly balanced, we got on both sides of her. We each had to take a side and stay close, because she could unbalance to either side at any time. If we gave her enough room, she’d go down.

  We led her carefully to the front door. No more back door for Rigby. The back door was nothing but a landing, with stairs. Rigby didn’t do stairs. Rigby hadn’t done stairs for months. Outside the front door was a little patch of fairly level ground. Just one step down on her way out, one step up on her way back in.

  Every step we helped Rigby take, Sophie complained. Like someone stuck a pin in her each time Rigby put her weight down. It wasn’t helping me bury my theory at all.

  When we got out front, I saw that Paul had done a little shoveling there, too. So Rigby could walk around without stepping in deep snow.

  “You got a lot done for so early in the morning,” I said.

  “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

  We steadied Rigby carefully as she stepped off that one concrete stair. Then she half squatted immediately into a peeing position. Without even sniffing around first. And almost fell over. Paul caught her, but then he slid and went down on one knee himself, and a big explosion of sound came out of him. I knew he’d hurt himself. I just didn’t know how badly. But he stayed there and braced her until I could get her centered again.

  She couldn’t really stop peeing once she started, so she peed all over her own back legs as we stood her up again.

  “We can take her in now,” he said. “She won’t need to do anything more.”

  “She’s still not eating?”

  “She hasn’t eaten for almost three days.”

  We walked her back inside, Sophie following behind and fussing. We got her centered over the bed and tried to help her down easy, but it came out more like falling. The bed protected her from being injured. But I knew it must have hurt her poor arthritic bones. She winced but made no sound.

  Sophie shrieked once on impact, and then curled up against Rigby’s side.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor by Rigby’s head and stroked her ears, and she set her gigantic gray muzzle on my knee and sighed.

  Paul came back with a bowl of warm water and a rag, and cleaned off her back legs, and dried them with a towel, and we covered her up again.

  “How bad did you hurt yourself?” I asked him.

  “I probably won’t know the whole story until I try to get out of bed tomorrow. But, anyway, bad enough.”

  “Your back?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  I wanted to ask how I’d get Rigby out in the morning if he was injured. Without bringing my mom into his house. If he’d liked that idea one bit, I’m sure he would have suggested it a long time ago.

  I didn’t ask. Because there was no good answer. If we couldn’t do it, the two of us, I couldn’t do it alone.

  “I have a theory about Sophie,” I said. “The way she’s acting.”

  “Will I like it?”

  “No.”

  First I thought he really didn’t want to hear it. And never would. Then he tugged at my sleeve and flipped his head toward the kitchen.

  Before I left Rigby, I said the same thing I’d said to her every day for the past three months. But not out loud. I never said it out loud. And yet I trusted the message to get delivered all the same. I said, silently, If I don’t see you again, Rigby, I love you and goodbye, and thanks for everything.

  I picked up my coffee and joined Paul in the kitchen. At first, we just sat.

  “I think the pain medication isn’t working anymore,” I said.

  “It’s nearly enough drugs to kill her. I can’t believe it wouldn’t kill her pain.”

  “I think the pain’s breaking through.”

  “I thought this was a theory about Sophie.”

  “It is.”

  I could tell he didn’t get how, but he didn’t ask. Probably because he didn’t want to know.

  “Sophie imitates the inside of Rigby. Which has mostly been calm. And when Rigby was all excited to see you, Sophie imitated that.”

  “So you’re saying she’s fussing because Rigby is in pain.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “You know if I can’t keep her relatively pain free, I’ll have to take her to the vet and decide this.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I just thought I should tell you.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. I guess. How sure are you? Maybe she’s fussing because she knows she’s going to lose Rigby soon. Maybe she can sense that.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you think it’s the pain.”

  “You heard her when we were walking Rigby to the door. Every step. Every time Rigby put her weight down. And when Rigby hit the bed, she shrieked. Rigby didn’t make a sound, but Sophie shrieked.”

  He closed his eyes. At first, he didn’t look like he was breathing at all. Then he sighed. Long and strangely slow. The silence was starting to scare me.

  He got up and walked back into the bedroom. I didn’t follow. I’d grown roots, and they were tangled up with the chair legs.

  He came back out again in about an hour. Or two or three minutes. It was hard to tell.

  “I’m not even sure how I’d get her to the vet. We’d need another person or two just for that.”

  “Or maybe the vet would come here.”

  “Maybe.”

  We finished our coffee in silence. And it was so heavy, that silence. It was so heavy, it felt like the heaviness of it was sitting in my stomach, pulling it down. Like it might tear right through the bottom of my stomach and keep going.

  “It’s a hard decision to make,” he said. “If she still wants to be here, I don’t want to cut her short. If she’s in pain, I don’t want to prolong it. I don’t know what to do. What should I do, Angie?”

  I didn’t answer. Because I didn’t know.

  I tried to answer. I tried to at least say I didn’t know. But the words were too huge. They got stuck coming out.

  After a few minutes, I said, “I think you should call Rachel.”

  “And tell her what?”

  “Ask her to come up.”

  “For what?”

  “For support. You were there for her when she was losing Dan.”

  “She didn’t ask me to be, though. She said I should stay up here and enjoy my retirement.”

  “That was when he was going in for surgery. Not when she found out he was going to die. She wouldn’t have wanted to go through that alone. Would she?”

  “Maybe. She wanted to be alone the minute he died.”

  “Do you want to be alone? Or do you want her here with you?”

  A couple of breaths, both of which I could hear. Then he said, “It would be nice to have her here. But… that’s… I don’t know how to say what it is. To tell her that out of all the people I’ve ever had in my life, she’s the one person I want with me at a time like this it says an awful lot. It almost tells her all there is to tell.”

  “Paul. It’s been a year and a half. Don’t you think it’s time?”

  He shook his head. Almost violently.

  “It’s too much. I can’t do it now. It’s too much all at once.”

  “Fine. Then ask her to come up because you need another pair of hands to get Rigby to the vet.”

  He said nothing. For a bizarre length of time. Like he hadn’t heard, or had no opinion on what I said.

  Then he jumped up suddenly. “That’s good,” he said.

  Which made me proud I’d thought of it.

  He called Rachel, who agreed to come up the following day.

  When I woke up the next
morning, my very first thought was that I might not be able to be with Rigby on her last days. Because maybe when Rachel got here, Paul would want me to make myself scarce. And Sophie. I hadn’t even asked if Sophie could be there. And yet, after all this time, I wasn’t sure how anyone could get her to be anywhere else.

  It felt bad. Really bad. I could feel it in my chest, and I remember thinking I knew why they call it getting your heart broken. That was exactly how it felt.

  But then I thought, If I had it to do over again, would I do the same?

  I would have. I knew I would have. Because she was Paul’s dog, so Paul was more important.

  So I just got up and faced the day and got ready to find out.

  What else was I supposed to do?

  The back door was unlocked, which usually meant Paul was up. But when I went in, I couldn’t hear him, and he didn’t seem to be around. I stuck my head into the bedroom to check on Sophie and Rig. Paul blinked back at me from the bed. He was awake, but not up.

  “I was up till three,” he said. “But it’s okay. You can come in and check on them.”

  Rigby was fast asleep on her side. She didn’t wake up and thump at me. Sophie was lying on her back, not touching the dog in any way. Staring off into space. Smiling.

  “Sophie is smiling,” I said.

  “That’s odd,” he said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Sophie smiling. What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think it means Rigby’s not in pain this morning?”

  That’s when it hit me. And I think it may have hit him at the same time. Because he got over to us fast.

  I watched him put his hand on Rigby’s chest. Then on the side of her neck.

  “She’s not in pain,” he said.

  He covered her up with the quilt. All of her. Even her beautiful black and gray head.

  We sat in the kitchen and waited for Rachel to get there. We didn’t talk much while we were waiting.

  Except I remember at one point, I said, “She saved you from the decision. Because she knew it would be hard for you. That was nice of her.”