Why They Run the Way They Do (18 page)

“Maybe we could be in a talent show,” I said.

“I don't think we're that funny,” Lizzie said.

Some of the dogs were very small. Little terriers, weighed no more than eight or ten pounds. He'd come home with the stories about what had happened to them, and I'd be like, who would even
think
of that? He was one of the founders of the first no-kill shelter in our state, but even at the no-kill there were dogs that nothing could be done with, dogs you couldn't in good conscience adopt out to anyone. There had been four of those dogs living with him when we'd met. By the time I left, there were eleven. There were rooms in my house I couldn't enter. We'd both been bitten too many times to count, our arms and legs scarred with wounds he'd stitched up himself because if we went to a hospital then a report would have to be made. “When I said no kill, I meant no kill,” he'd said to me on several occasions. And how could you not love a man who cared that much, a man who would stay up all night sitting three feet (no closer, no farther) from a beagle who cried in her sleep, or who cuddled a muzzled greyhound who did not want to bite you, really really did not want to, but would if given the chance?

“Someday they'll find you both dead in the house,” Lizzie had said once. (I'm Going to Tell You What You Already Know . . . ) “They'll find what's left of you. You wouldn't live with wolves, would you? You wouldn't share your house with tigers?”

And in the end it was true that, all danger aside, all bites forgiven, I no longer loved him but only pitied him, resented him, only felt foolish and cheated for the years I'd spent in that house competing for his affections when it had never even been close. How could I compete with a one-eyed-chow mix who had suffered his whole life, and now, wordless, asked for nothing in return but
just to not be tortured
, nothing in return but simple understanding when he snarled and lunged at the actual hand that was feeding him?

“Maybe tomorrow you could let me get a triple word score,” I said to Lizzie, the night after we went out with Jeremy. She had been beating me especially brutally the previous few days, and had just played “LIFE” off my
E
to claim the last triple word score on the board. “Just one, you know? Just maybe you could leave
one
for me tomorrow, if you don't have anything all that great to play on it. What do you think?”

“I thought you didn't care,” she said.

“I don't
care
-care,” I said. “I just feel like sometimes you could not win by quite
as much
. Are you going to beat Jeremy like this? Because normally people don't really like being
demolished
.”

She looked at me over the half glasses. “That's nice that you're so worried about him,” she said. “I think he can probably handle it.”

“Well you might just want to warn him. That's all I'm saying.”

I imagined Jeremy here, at the table with us, the jet packs whizzing by the window, his big stupid octopus magician banker arms reaching out to play some pathetic three-letter word that closed off a whole section of the board, “SIT” off my
I
with his
T
on a double letter score, still thinking he had a chance against her. God, three-person Scrabble. The box said “2–4 players” but that was crap. No serious Scrabble player ever played three-person Scrabble, never mind four. The board was too crowded. There were not enough decent letters to go around.

On Friday Lizzie was at an all-day workshop at her school. I left the house a little before noon to walk to the coffee shop, and saw Jeremy standing in the corner of the parking lot, leaning against a stop sign. I had one moment when I was sure he was actually a creepy stalker murderer, staking out our apartment, but then he saw me and waved his big gangly arm and trotted over.

“Hey,” he said. “Can I walk with you for a minute?”

This was when I realized that he had been standing in the parking lot waiting for me to come out. It was muggy and his forehead was slick with sweat. He didn't drive. Where had he come from? How long had he been lurking there?

“Sure,” I said.

“Something's happened,” he said. He stuffed his hands in his shorts pockets, which stifled his gangliness in a disconcerting way. “Something amazing but I feel really bad about it. My wife and kid are coming back from Ohio.”

I only missed one step, but it was a big one, off the curb, and it took me four more steps to not fall down. “I didn't know you had a wife and kid in Ohio,” I said, once I had righted myself.

“We've been separated for almost two years. Because of the drinking. Lizzie knew about it. I thought it was all over. But yesterday Julie called and said she wants to give it another go.”

I stopped and turned to him. “Does Tina know about the magic?” I whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Never mind,” I said.

“Listen.” He grabbed my arm. It was the kind of grab that was just one degree too rough, the kind of grab that set off warning bells. But maybe he was just frantic. He looked frantic. He looked like he hadn't slept. “They're coming back,” he said. “They're getting in the car and driving here. Today. Until I met Lizzie, this was all I ever thought about. This was everything. My girl's seven years old. Next week she's eight.”

“That's wonderful,” I said. “Tell her I said happy birthday.”

He let go of my arm. “Why are you such a bitch to me? You don't even know me.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Why are you standing on a street corner telling the sister of the girl you're dating that your wife and kid are driving in from Ohio? Why don't you call your sponsor? Why don't you talk to, I don't know, Lizzie? Maybe?”

“I don't know what to say,” he said.

“Do you want to give it another go?”

“Of course,” he said. “It's my wife and kid.”

“And what about Lizzie?”

“I know,” he said. His creases creased. He deflated like a big gangly armed parade balloon. “That's the part I feel so bad about. She's a great girl. But, you know. It's my wife and kid.”

“And why are you telling me and not her?”

He gathered himself again, looked at me square. “I thought maybe you could tell her for me,” he said.

Because men, I thought. Because this was what they did. Because they were capable of love but they were always loving the wrong things: bourbon, Labrador mixes, wife&kid in Ohio. And then they could never get themselves out of anything. There were no tricks for that.

She was at her workshop until late so it was after ten when we started playing.

“Listen,” I said. “I have to tell you something.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It is. Jeremy told me he's going back to his wife. Or his wife is coming back to him. Wife and kid. From Ohio.”

“Wow,” she said. “He told you that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was waiting in the parking lot, all lurky. He didn't want to tell you himself.”

“I don't blame him,” she said. “I wouldn't want to tell me, either.”

She was quiet for a minute. She drew her tiles and began to arrange them on her rack. She didn't seem particularly sad. As a child I always imagined she was too smart to be sad, that the two things did not naturally coexist, that sadness indicated some sort of intellectual failure—a lack of grasping the complete situation, perhaps—of which she just wasn't capable. Of course, I grew up and realized this wasn't entirely true, but her sadness still seemed smarter and more respectable—somehow muted, less pathetic—than my own.

“That was his big dream,” Lizzie said. “When I first met him, when we were just friends, he told me that was the thing that kept him sober, thinking that might happen.”

“Well,” I said. “Yeah. I guess it did.”

“It must be nice,” she said. “To get a prize for not drinking. A reward.” She rearranged two letters on her rack. “You know, to
win
. Must be nice.”

I tried to think of something funny to say but I couldn't come up with anything. For the first time since I'd moved into the townhouse, the days and years ahead seemed like they might be days to be endured instead of relished.

Then she said, “Too bad I don't drink anymore.”

She had never said anything like this to me before, not even as a joke. “Do you need to call your sponsor or something?” I asked.

She looked up from her letters. “You are my sponsor,” she said. “And I'm yours. We sponsor each other.”

“Since when?”

“Since the Carter administration.”

“Oh,” I said. “I didn't get the memo.”

“Well, now you finally know what you've been doing all these years.”

It was late. But we had nothing to get up for in the morning. We could play all night if we wanted. There was no one to answer to.

“As your sponsor,” I said, “I will now let you beat me at Scrabble.”

“That's very big of you,” she said.

This is not a story about a new beginning. This is not a story about screwing up your courage and getting back out there. This is just a story about closing the door and playing Scrabble with your sister. At least for a while. At least for the summer.

“Draw your letters already,” Lizzie said.

It had been three days
and the dog was still in the freezer. Simon went down every couple hours to check on her, though what exactly he was checking for he couldn't say. Each time he opened the lid she was still a stiff chocolate Lab with frosted whiskers, stretched the length of the Frigidaire Elite. He'd gaze at her until he felt he was letting too much of the chill escape, and then he'd gently lower the freezer lid and climb the basement steps, the cordless phone moist in his hand.

He'd been trying to reach Rachel since Sunday night. She'd taken Charlie skiing in the Poconos, where her parents had rented a cabin for the week. They'd planned the trip long before the dog had been diagnosed, so of course Simon had initially agreed to it, but when Rachel had come to pick up Charlie on Saturday morning Simon had greeted her grimly at the door, shaking his head.

“This is it,” he'd told her. “I swear to god, she's not going to last the day. You can't take him away now.”

“We're going, Simon,” she'd said. “You've told me eight times she's not going to last the day.”

It was true that the dog had been dying for a long time. The vet had said it would probably be only a matter of a few weeks, but it had now been well over two months without a lasting, significant decline. Some days she wouldn't touch her food, but other days she ate with the vigor and single-mindedness of her healthy self. Many evenings she stared dolefully at him with what he was certain were pleading eyes, and he would prepare himself to put her down the following day. But then the next morning she'd explode out the front door and across the lawn after a terrified squirrel. It was like anything else, Simon thought. As it turned out, you could never really tell what the next day of your life would bring. Most of the time even the weathermen were wrong about tomorrow.