The Dog in the Freezer (4 page)

It was hard for Gregory to disappoint Dad. “I want to tell Dad there are other things in life besides basketball. But what are they?”

I barked at him. I wanted to say that he'd find out soon enough. And he did. He got the lead in the musical Tina was directing. And he was good! The acting bug bit him. Not being so shy anymore, he discovered he loved getting up in front of an audience and hearing their applause.

Gregory wanted me with him more than ever. When he got the lead, he insisted Tina find a part for me.

“Can he sing?” Tina asked.

I had to audition. It was a little embarrassing. It wasn't my idea of the way a serious dog behaves. I did it for Gregory. For my audition, I sang three different notes. Tina spoke of them as musical howls. That's a matter of opinion. I made my debut as Sam the Singing Dog, who comes to the rescue when the fire alarm fails. I don't want to take anything away from Gregory, but I was the hit of the show.

Ron never stopped trying with Tina, and she never stopped saying no. When Gregory got the lead in the play, Ron demanded a leading part, too. He wanted to play the arsonist who sets the school on fire. Tina gave him the role of the caring school counselor, everybody's friend and advisor. The role must have rubbed off on him a little, because he mostly stopped harassing Gregory.

Gregory never talked to anyone about what happened to us. Who would have believed it? He kept talking about it to me. Of course, I listened. I've always been Gregory's perfect listener.

Gregory and I have walked in each other's shoes—or as I like to say, paws—and it changed us forever. Gregory said what happened to us changed his life. That his eyes were open now. You had to go for what you believed in. Not to be immodest, but I always thought that, in that turnaround, some of my outlook on life rubbed off on him, and stuck.

“If I could only figure out how it happened, Einstein…,” he would say time after time. “It's like a dream, isn't it, Einstein? Is it that way for you, too?”

For me? No. For me it was all real. Things happen, and then more things happen, and there's no use trying to figure them out, because you never will. That's the way I see it.

A PRISONER IN CLIFFSIDE PARK

Newark International Airport was a huge place. Coming off the plane, while I was still in the tunnel, I suddenly panicked. What did my uncle look like? What if he wasn't here?

“Jerry looks like your dad,” Mom had said, “and so do you.”

The trouble was I couldn't remember what my father looked like. He had died when I was a baby.

There was someone waiting at the gate. His fist shot up in the air when he saw me. He was in whites: T-shirt, pants, and sneakers. A tennis player, maybe.
A movie star? A chain-saw murderer? Or just a guy who liked to come to the airport in white clothes and meet people? His hair was a little thin on top, but he had a nice braid in back. Was that my uncle? He had a maniac smile and a voice you could hear from one end of the airport to the other. “Lucas?” he boomed.

I had my camera around my neck, but I didn't take a picture. There was still doubt in my heart. “Uncle Jerry?” I said.

“Uncle?” He looked around. “Who that? So you're Lucas. Hey, you're big. You look terrific.” And then he grabbed me, got his arm around my neck. I thought he was going to choke me. I fought free.

“Hey, what's the matter?” he said. “I just wanted to give you a little hug. You know, men can hug and kiss now.”

I wanted to get back on the plane. Nothing personal, but I wanted to go home.

“Let me get that,” he said, trying to take my knapsack.

“It's okay, I've got it.”

“It looks heavy.”

“It's light.” The knapsack weighed a ton. I'd packed it with magazines and books I was going to read this summer.

“Lucas! Do I call you Lucas, or do you prefer
Sir
Lucas?” He laughed like he'd said something really witty.

“Lucas is okay, Uncle Jerry.”

“Call me Jerry,” he said. “ ‘Uncle' is for old guys.” He had very large bright blue eyes.

It was hot on the highway. I knew I wasn't going to
find my father here. I wasn't looking for my father. But I must have expected something, because I felt let down. I kept striking my cigarette lighter. It was just something I did with my hands, but Jerry acted like I had a nicotine habit ten miles wide. “I don't want you smoking in my car or my house or anywhere near me.”

“I don't smoke,” I said.

He kept going. It was bad for his health, he said, bad for my health. He didn't like smoking, his girlfriend, Kiki, didn't smoke, and he didn't want me smoking. “I'd hate to have to tell your mother I'm sending her back a tobacco junkie.”

At that point I was tempted to jump out and hitchhike back home.

Coming here had been Mom's idea. She was going to summer school in Pittsburgh to get a year's worth of credit in speech therapy, and I was going to Cliffside Park to bond with my uncle. Translation: I'd be in a safe place, and she wouldn't have to worry about me every minute.

“No arguments, Lucas,” she'd said. “End of discussion. Period.”

“Who's arguing, Mom?” I'd said, wanting to argue. “I'll go to Pittsburgh with you.”

“And live with me and three other women in one room?”

“Then I'll stay home.”

“No way am I leaving you alone for six weeks.”

What Mom thought was her winning argument was that I was going to spend time with my uncle Jerry, my
father's brother. “Your closest male blood relation.”

I didn't know about the blood, but like so much stuff in my life it was a done deal. If Mom had had to, she would have packed me in a box and shipped me to Jerry UPS. I couldn't wait to grow up and be on my own.

Jerry drove and talked. And talked. He talked about himself, his running, his biking, his business. He repaired rips, tears, and burns to automobile upholstery. “All the damage people do to the inside of their cars. Cigarette burns—they're the worst. I use a secret formula.” He lowered his voice. “I can't even tell you, Lucas.”

“That's okay,” I said.

After the highway, we drove down long avenues, past street after street of little houses. “Here we are,” Jerry said, pulling into a driveway. He jumped out of the car and yelled to a man in the yard next door. “Hey, Dave.” The man was holding a long pole with a pair of shears at the end of it, and he was cutting branches. “This is my nephew, Lucas,” Jerry called.

The man leaned the pole against a tree and walked back to his house.

“He doesn't like me,” Jerry said. “I talk to him every time I see him and he's never answered me.” He smiled like it was the greatest thing. “He hasn't talked to me in five years. What do you think of that?”

Any thought that Jerry was like my father went out the window. I went back to the theory that he was a maniac.

In the kitchen he said, “Sit down, Lucas. I bet you're starved.”

I didn't sit down. “I'm here under duress,” I said.

“Du ress?” he repeated, and gave me that weird grin.

“Duress means I don't want to be here.”

“I know what duress means, Lucas. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. You're not going to run away, are you?”

“No. I'm not going to run away.”

“Good. I'd hate to call your mother and say I don't know where you are.”

“Nobody has to watch me,” I said. It sounded babyish. Everything I said sounded stupid here.

Later he showed me my room. “You're going to love it,” he said. It was half the size of my room at home. It had a bureau and a cotton mattress rolled up against the wall. He got me sheets, a pillow, and towels, and he brought in a framed picture of him and my father when they were boys. “Did you ever see this? You can tell we're brothers, can't you?” He set the picture on the bureau. How's that? Something to think about, isn't it? Well, good night. I probably won't see you in the morning.”

I opened the window. I rolled out the mattress. It was too hot for blankets. I kicked my sneakers off, threw off everything but my shorts, and lay down. I thought of my room, the posters on the walls, the model cars in the bookcase. My computer! Mom's friend had found it for me secondhand. I could find things to do in my room at home for weeks.

This room was like a cell in a prison. I was the prisoner and Jerry was the warden. Mom was the parole board. I wasn't getting off till I served my sentence.

RUNNING GIRL

The first time I saw Running Girl I was sitting on the steps of Jerry's house, fingering the cigarette lighter and watching the leaves tipping and bobbing in the light. It was too hot to be inside.

It was my third day. Jerry wasn't around much. He had his job, his daily workouts, his girlfriend. That morning, while it was still cool, I'd walked around the neighborhood. I had found the library, an ice-cream shop, a diner. I went in and ordered blueberry waffles with the money Jerry had left me. I bought myself a comic and went back to the house and read it. I thought about Billy, Howard, and Trac. I imagined the three of them sitting at the edge of the swimming pool at Schiller Park, maybe talking about me and thinking I was in New York City this very minute, up on top of the World Trade Center. I'd told them my uncle and I would be doing all this great stuff. I didn't tell them I was going to be stuck in Cliffside Park, across the river from New York, all summer.

I struck the lighter too hard and it flew out of my hand. That's when Running Girl and her pack of dogs appeared. She was about my size, big, and a little overweight, like me. Long hair down to her waist, a flash of earrings. Older. Her legs were going up and down, they were rotating, they were moving forward.

I didn't know why I was looking at her. I wasn't interested in girls. Trac would tell you that. Howard was interested, but he was peculiar anyway. He had a mustache
already, or what he called a mustache.

It wasn't like she was the first girl I'd ever seen, either, but I got up and followed her. I couldn't help myself. If Trac were here, he'd say I'd lost my brains. By the time I got to the corner, I was sweating and she was out of sight. “Jerk,” I said to myself, “running after a girl you don't even know.”

It was all part of this moron summer. Living with my uncle, who I hardly knew, in a place I didn't want to be. I sat outside and waited for Running Girl and the dogs to come by again.

I WAVE TO RUNNING GIRL

Whenever I saw Running Girl, she always had dogs with her. Three red dogs one day, then a fat white one and a bunch of brown dogs the next. The day after that they were all beagles. Maybe she loved dogs so much she went around begging people to let her run their dogs. Or she had a dog-sitting service. Or she worked for a dog kennel. I began to wish I had a dog so we could meet. People with dogs always talked.

One day, I waved, and she waved back. I wanted to talk to her, but she went by too fast and I was too lazy—too slow to get up and follow her. But mostly, I was too shy.

THE MORE YOU DO,

THE MORE YOU DO

“Meet Moose the Noose.” Jerry ripped off his tie and held it out like something dead. “I hate this thing.”

“Why do you wear it?”

“It's my badge. I'm a professional, an engineer of auto beautification. Without it, I'm just a grease monkey. I had a fantastic day today. How was your day?”

“Okay.”

“Just okay? I want you to have a really terrific time.” He got me in an armlock. “I mean, really. You having fun here? I worry about you. You don't talk much, do you, Lucus? Are you happy? I want you to be happy. It'll make me happy. Do you know what I'm saying? It's not like we're strangers. I mean, me and your father, you and me, it's blood. That's heavy, man.”

He rapped his head into mine and for a minute we stood that way, squeezed tight against each other, our heads together like we were both thinking deep into each other's minds.

The phone ringing broke the spell. He went to take his messages off the machine. I could hear them echoing from the other room. One hollow voice after another. Most of them were about work.

Because Jerry got mostly business calls, I wasn't supposed to answer the phone when he wasn't there. If he wanted to talk to me, he said, he'd ring twice and hang up. “Then I'll ring three times and hang up. That'll be the signal. Then the next time I ring, you pick up. Is that brilliant, or is that brilliant?”

“Brilliant,” I said.

“How many push-ups can you do, Lucas?”

“I don't know.”

“I could do a hundred at your age.” When he wasn't working, he was running or biking or in the gym. He was training for a triathalon—an eighteen-mile run, a five-mile swim, and a twenty-two-mile bike race. “Can you do ten push-ups?” he asked.

“I guess so.” In school, I mostly faked them. The gym class was big and the teacher couldn't see everyone.

“Come on, let's do some together.”

I got down and did ten and stopped.

“Let's have another five,” Jerry said. He was doing them with me, but on the tips of his fingers.

I did five more.

“Super, Lucas! Each day, add another five. Before you know it, you'll be ripping off a hundred like it's nothing. The more you do, the more you do. That's a life lesson, Lucas.”

I'd made him happy.

RULES FOR DOGS

Every day I thought about talking to Running Girl. In my head I had these fantastic conversations with her, where I'd talk and she'd listen, and everything I said was incredible.

By accident one morning, I saw her going into McKessney Park. There was a bagel shop near the entrance where I sometimes stopped, and I saw her going into the park with a German shepherd. I followed her and watched as she and the dog ran around the track.