by Nick Pirog
I look under my paws.
It’s gone.
It’s back.
I charge forward, pounce on it, tumble and roll.
“I think he likes it,” Mom says.
~
The empty cardboard box is open on the ground. It’s about as tall as I am and twice as wide. It’s no different than the cardboard boxes that used to magically appear on the front porch of my old Home. Jerry used to get these boxes all the time. He’d open them up, then leave the empty box on the ground. So there should be nothing special about this empty box.
But there is.
I want to be inside it. I have to be inside it.
I jump into the box, spin around a few times, then curl into a ball.
It’s not very comfortable. The carpet the box is sitting on is much softer. And the cardboard is smelly.
I will myself to get up and get out of the box.
But I can’t.
I never want to leave.
I’m not so sure about all this box stuff.
~
I’ve explored every inch of my New Home and it isn’t so bad. There are lots of things to climb and lots of places to go under. I do this mostly when Sara and Mom are gone, which is a lot of the time.
I don’t know where they go. They don’t tell me.
I climb on the couch, climb up the stairs, I go pee and poop in the weird sand. I wait for Sara and Mom to come home. I think about the red dot. About where it comes from, why I can’t catch it, and why it never shows up when Sara and Mom are gone.
All in all, this isn’t a bad life.
A thousand dogs would kill for this life.
But it’s not for me.
I climb up the curtain and look out the window.
Somewhere out there, beyond the tall, skinny houses and the hills, are Jerry and Cassie.
And I’m going to find them.
Chapter 6
“PARENTS”
Jerry
Chapter 13.
I’m still on Chapter 13.
Over the past three weeks, I’ve rewritten it seven times. Each new version is worse than the previous iteration. I’m wondering if I should skip over it. Like that superstition about buildings and the 13th floor—that it’s cursed. Some buildings don’t have a 13th floor; they go directly from the 12th to the 14th. Others rename the 13th floor “12B” or “14A”, or even “M” (which is the 13th letter in the alphabet). Maybe I should do the same.
I reread the two paragraphs I’ve written, highlight them, then hit delete. Then I delete “Chapter 13” and change it to “12B.”
Worth a try.
I dance my fingers over the keyboard, waiting for inspiration to strike.
It doesn’t.
“Ding-dong.”
I pull the blinds apart and see my parents’ white Explorer parked on the street.
“Ding-dong,” my mother says a second time. This is one of my mother’s many quirks: the human doorbell.
When I exit my bedroom, I see my mother standing on the other side of the screen door, her hands shielding her eyes, leaned over at the waist, peeking into the house. It’s as though she’s peering through a window of the Louvre and not her own home.
Behind my mother, I can see my father in the front yard. He’s rolling on the lawn with Cassie, who had been taking a nap on the front steps and street watching.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, striding toward the front door. I’ve been looking forward to (and dreading) this day. Looking forward to it because it will give me the kick in the ass I need to get out of the house and actually get some writing done. Dreading it because my parents are coming to live with me for three months.
“Hi, honey,” my mother shrieks.
“You can come in,” I say. “This is your house after all.”
“Oh, well, I don't want to walk in on you doing anything unseemly.”
My mother walked in on me doing something unseemly once when I was fifteen and she’s been acting like I’m in the KGB ever since.
I push the screen door open. My mother pulls me into a long hug, gives me two kisses on the cheek, then pulls back. Betsy Ryman is pushing seventy, but she doesn’t look a day over sixty. Her hair is fashionably dyed blonde with pink streaks. She’s wearing equally pink-tinted glasses and a gray bowler hat.
“Nice hat,” I say. My mother has never worn a hat a day in her life.
“I wear hats now,” she says, then waving me forward adds, “Come say hi to your father.”
I walk toward my father, who is on his back in the front grass, Cassie lying across his belly, her tail helicoptering fast enough I fear she may become airborne.
“Hi, Dad.”
He glances up and smiles. “Son!”
My dad wiggles out from under Cassie and brushes the grass off his khaki shorts. Martin Ryman is pushing seventy and looks that way. The afternoon sun reflects off his nearly bald pate (he has a bit of white fluff hanging on for dear life at the sides) which is a constant reminder of my own impending doom. Like my mother, he has glasses (though untinted) which appear to be a few millimeters thicker than his last pair. He’s wearing compression socks pulled up to mid-calf and black Tevas.
My dad pulls me into a hug, then asks, “What’s shakin’?”
“Not a whole lot,” I say. “Just working on a new book.”
“Any ladies?”
I shake my head. “Sadly, no.”
“Talk to Avery lately?”
My father, like most red-blooded males, had been in love with Avery. But to his credit, Avery was especially charming the few times she met my parents.
“No, Dad. I haven’t talked to the girl who dumped me three years ago lately.”
He bobs his head from shoulder to shoulder, then says, “Well, it never hurts to give her a poke.”
“A poke?”
“Yeah on Facebook. A poke.”
Since my parents had both retired in the last two years, they’d gone from barely being able to send a text message to technologically savvy millennials.
Attempting to switch the subject, I ask, “You guys need help with your luggage?”
“We already brought it in,” my mother says.
“I didn’t see it.”
She shakes her head and asks, “Do you even read my texts?”
“Sometimes,” I say with a shrug.
She scoffs, then says, “We’re staying at the Winston’s instead. They’re in Europe all summer.”
The Winston’s house is the one directly across the street, which on closer inspection, is where my parents’ Explorer is parked.
“Oh,” I say, trying to fight back a smile.
“We don’t want to cramp your style,” my father says. “You know, in case you do get a lady.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He winks at me, then glancing down at Cassie—who after letting my mother give her a few hearty pats, laid down at my father’s feet—my father says, “Speaking of ladies, when’s the last time this pretty lady went for a walk?”
“It’s been a few days.”
My dad shakes his head shamefully, then says, “Well, why don’t you go grab her leash and I’ll take her for a little trot.”
I go inside and grab Cassie’s leash, then hand it to my father. At the sight of her leash, Cassie starts zooming around the yard.
My dad clips the leash to her and the two start down the street. Cassie doesn’t give me a backward glance. Once they round the corner, my mother gingerly puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “How are you doing? You know, with Hugo being gone.”
I let out a long exhale. “I’m dealing.”
“It’s been four months, dear. Maybe you should get a puppy.”
“A puppy?” I scoff angrily, though it isn’t as if I haven’t considered it. Half of me wanted to get a puppy the day after Hugo died. Something to help soften the blow. But that would be cheating. Hugo deserved
to be grieved. “I’m not getting a puppy.”
“It was just an idea. I read on the internet that sometimes that’s the best way to move on. And you have to admit, Cassie would love a new playmate.”
I shake my head in silence.
My mother can see she’s upset me and smiles softly, then gives me a hug. I don’t want the hug, but after a long second, I fall into it.
“My heart is just so sad,” I mutter, my eyes filling with tears.
She lets me cry against her, as I cried against her in nearly the exact same spot twenty-five years earlier. The only other time I have felt such sorrow.
“He was a good boy,” she says. I can feel her let out a few sobs against my cheek.
Cassie, as evidenced by the past few minutes, is all about my father. It isn’t that she doesn’t like my mom; it’s that she’s weird around females altogether. But Hugo loved my mother. And my mother adored him. He was her granddoggy.
After a few more sobs, my mother releases me, massages her eyes behind her pink lenses, then says, “Let us get settled for a few hours and then come over for dinner.”
I force a smile and nod.
Cassie
I love Martin. Partly because he spoils me. But mostly, because he made Jerry. And did I mention, he spoils me!
“Okay, last one,” Martin says.
We’re sitting on a bench by a big fountain. There are a bunch of people walking around and a few other dogs. I know this is the time of year when all the people come. Sometimes there will be so many people it’s hard to get around them.
Martin tosses the cookie in the air and I follow it with my eyes, then I open my mouth and chomp it out of the air.
It’s delicious.
Peanut Butter.
Martin wipes his hands together, shows them to me, then says, “No more, pretty lady.”
Jerry calls me Girl.
The delivery man calls me Honey.
Martin calls me Pretty Lady.
“What do you want to do now?” Martin asks. “Do you want to go to the lake?”
The lake?
I haven’t been to the lake since last summer.
I bark.
Yes, the lake!
Jerry
“Come on, girl,” I say.
Cassie’s eyes flutter open. She’s been zonked out since she got back from the lake with my dad. I give her a light shake. Her golden fur is still slightly damp. “We have to go.”
She raises her head for a moment, then lays her head back down.
I laugh.
I’ve never seen her so tired. But then again, I haven’t played with her much for the past three months and she hadn’t been swimming for almost a year. She’s probably out of shape. Underneath these thoughts, like a nest of termites slowly eating away at my brainstem, is another reason I know she’s so tired—she’s ten years old. But my current psyche is too fragile to think about Cassie aging and I mentally release a bug bomb.
“Come on, Cassie. I bet my dad will feed you scraps under the table.”
This gets her attention and she pushes herself up and stretches. Down-dog, up-dog, then she jumps off the couch.
(A little over a year ago, I moved from my upstairs bedroom to the guest bedroom on the first floor. Cassie was only nine at the time, but I didn’t see any reason she needed to be bounding up and down the stairs several times each day.)
I watch to see if there’s a hitch in her step or if her hips have that buffering lag.
They don’t.
Thank God.
Before leaving, I give myself a quick once-over in the bathroom mirror. I’ve put on a short-sleeve collared shirt and I’ve styled my hair, parting the thinning strands up and to the side as is currently guy chic.
I’m not sure why I’m dressed up. Am I trying to impress my parents? Do I just want to remember how it feels to be properly attired and groomed? What am I trying to project?
I decide to switch out the collared shirt for a T-shirt and pull on a hat. Then Cassie and I cross the street and push into the Winston’s house. From the outside it looks reminiscent of my parents’ house, but the inside is considerably more elegant. My parents both recently retired and while they have a decent nest egg, they can’t spend extravagantly for their remaining years. But the Winstons are wealthy, Mr. Winston having a few patents under his belt which made him a small fortune.
Cassie and I cross through a marble foyer onto a dark wooden floor, then into a kitchen that is Food Network worthy. My parents are both standing around the kitchen island. My father is holding a glass of white wine. My mother is sipping from a tumbler, no doubt Captain and Diet Coke. There’s a plate of raw tenderloin steaks and a large bowl of salad resting on the island. A perfume of chocolate wafts from the oven and my mouth waters at the thought of my mother’s world famous brownies.
My mother runs around the island and gives me a hug, kiss, kiss, as though we didn’t do the same routine a few hours earlier. My father picks a carrot from the salad bowl and feeds it to Cassie. It’s like watching a rerun of an old sitcom you’ve seen a million times.
After feeding Cassie a few more carrots, my dad opens the fridge and hands me a beer.
Several years after I moved from my hometown of Medford, Oregon to San Francisco, I went back to visit my parents for the holidays. A new micro-brewery was built in my absence and my father insisted we do a father/son beer sampling one afternoon. We sampled a dozen beers and predictably, my father wanted to rank them from best to worst (my dad always wants to rank stuff, whether it be Will Ferrell movies, to months in a year, to brands of bottled water) and after hounding a poor waitress for two pens and some paper, we did just that.
I’m not sure if it’s my father’s waning memory or if it’s a long-running prank, but my father always brought me the beer I ranked dead last (the beer we both ranked dead last). An atrocity called Backward Bill’s Buttermilk Beer which was crafted around alliteration and not digestibility.
I crack the beer open and take a small sip. It’s worse than I remember. It’s an abomination. It’s sour dairy creamer meets Coors Light. But being the good son that I am, I give a nod and a satisfying, “Ahhhhh.”
This makes my father immensely happy and I say, “Thanks, Dad.”
“You bet, son. I brought seven cases.”
I nearly choke on my second swig, though I can’t be certain if it’s because my father has brought me seven cases of this liquid nightmare or if it’s simply my esophagus rebelling.
“Seven cases,” I choke out. “You don’t say?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I hope you’ll help me drink them.”
He shakes his head. “I’m actually not a big fan of that one. Something about the combination of buttermilk and beer.”
Yeah, because it’s disgusting.
“Well, I’m gonna go throw these bad boys on the grill,” he says, lifting the plate of steaks. He glances down at Cassie and says, “You want to come with me, pretty lady?” My father likes to eat little pieces of steak while they cook, and I know Cassie will also get her fair share.
The two disappear to the back deck and my mother asks, “Have you talked to your brother lately?”
My brother Mark lives in Michigan. He’s eight years older than me and we have always been more acquaintances than friends. Like we’ve worked for the same company for thirty years but have always been in different departments.
I say, “Not in a few months.” He sent me a heartfelt condolence message after Hugo died, but we hadn’t talked on the phone in over six months.
“He just made partner,” my mother exclaims.
“Partner? Really? That’s great.”
Making partner in his law firm is a big deal and I wonder why my brother hadn’t at least shot me a text. But then again, maybe he worried it might feel like he was trying to rub it in my face. Here he was happily married for going on fifteen years, two great kids, nice ho
use, and now partner in one of the Midwest’s most prestigious law firms. And here I was a one-hit wonder, single, living in my parents’ vacation house, and cashing royalty checks which barely covered my diet of bologna sandwiches and Chex mix.
My mom nods and says, “You know, he’s really proud of you.”
She must have seen me mentally tabulating my SSCI (Sibling Success Comparative Index).
I arch my eyebrows.
She says, “Every time I talk to him he’s always saying how someone found out that he’s related to you and they tell him how much they love your books.”
On the off-chance I did talk to my brother, he usually had one of these stories, but part of me always thought they were fabricated for my benefit.
“Books or book?” I ask.
“Books. The second and third ones are better than you get credit for.”
Tell that to Robin_Readsalot77 who just yesterday posted a review for Pluto Destiny: “This book was torture. I’d rather get waterboarded for eight hours.”
Anyhow, my mother is a retired English teacher and though she’s completely and utterly biased, the words still feel good to hear.
“I liked them,” my father shouts, who can apparently hear our conversation through the window.
My books are probably the only fiction books my father has ever read. He mostly reads biographies and WWII epics, but mostly, he surfs the net on his phone.
“Thanks, Dad,” I shout.
“How’s the next one coming?” my mom asks.
Part of me wants to steer her back to how Mark is proud of me, but I’m not that desperate for validation.
Or am I?
“It’s coming along nicely,” I lie.
“When can I read it?”
“Oh, maybe in a few months.”
“Can’t wait,” she says.
There’s a ding and my mother turns.
It’s the timer on the oven.
“Brownies are done,” she shouts, then gives me a few winks.
I sniff at the air. Underneath the aroma of chocolate, there's a hint of something else. Something herbal.
“Mom?” I say.
