Angels Burning (12 page)

“Don't know.”

“Did she go for lots of walks?”

“Don't know.”

He reaches inside the bag and pulls out a mini blueberry pie.

“Let's save that one for when we're out of the car,” I tell him.

He smashes it into his face.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that Singer probably knows how to get blueberry stains out of car upholstery. I don't know how or why Singer is so accomplished at cleaning. He seems both proud and embarrassed whenever I ask for his assistance in this area and I get the feeling the reason behind his expertise is highly personal. This is why I haven't pried but I will eventually. He hasn't worked for me long enough yet.

“You never followed her? Come on, Squirrel Boy. I know you did. I bet you followed her, hiding in the woods the whole time and she never saw you.”

He eyes me through a mask of blue-black goo.

“She goes to the main road and her boyfriend picks her up. She goes to Grandma's house. She goes to Uncle Eddie's.”

Eddie Truly is the former owner of Maybe and the eldest of Miranda's children. He'd be in his late sixties now. He was drafted right out of high school, did one tour in Vietnam, and headed straight for a bottle, a needle, and a dangerous crowd of bikers when he came home. To my knowledge he's never stopped using the booze or the drugs. He did stop hanging out with his old gang when a couple of members broke into his house one night and stabbed him twenty-two times. Drug deal gone bad was the final verdict the police gave at the time. No arrests were made. Eddie wouldn't talk. His survival into a sixth decade is nothing short of a miracle. I can't imagine smart, pretty, Popsicle-loving Camio with the sparkly heart anklet and outdated psychology books having anything to do with him.

“Why does she go to your uncle's house?”

“Don't know.”

“Does your uncle have kids, a wife?”

“He lives by his self.”

“Himself.”

“His self.”

“What does she do there?”

“Goes inside, then goes back out. Sometimes she's crying.”

“You're sure about that?”

“I told Tug.”

“What did he do?”

He falls silent. I know I'm pushing this. He's probably said more words to me today than he's said to his entire family all year.

“He asked her,” he answers me while staring bewildered at his already empty hands covered in blueberry filling and golden flakes of crust. “She got real mad and told him it was none of his business. Then she started crying again and said people are bad and he was right to spend all his time with the woof dogs.”

I watch him watching his hands, trying to decide what to do with them.

“There are napkins sitting right beside you,” I tell him.

He darts a glance at the pile, then wipes his hands down the front of his shirt, his shorts, and ends at his kneecaps before bringing them back to his mouth and licking between his fingers.

We finish the rest of the drive in silence. He pushes his face up against the window and watches the town flash by, sits back and stares at his feet once we're out in the country again, but perks up when we turn onto Neely's road.

The flickering bits of sunlight filtering through the leafy netting of the treetops towering over us gives the shadowy green air a hazy, rippling, underwater effect. I ask him if he likes to swim. He says nothing.

I don't see Tug and Maybe. The four other dogs and Neely are standing with a man and a boy.

I park and get out of my car. Upon seeing me, Neely throws her arms wide and runs toward me, beaming, something I haven't seen her do since before our mother died and our acceptance of the reason why.

She gestures behind her at the dark-haired duo, carbon copies of each other from their matching outfits of cargo shorts, polo shirts, and sandals to their uncertain smiles and right hands raised stiffly in awkward waves.

Of course my sister provides the explanation in dog terms.

“Champ found his way back home,” she calls out to me.

I HAVE PLENTY
of friends with children, grown children at this point. Some—like Nolan—even have grandbabies. And I've been told by them time and again how I can never truly understand what love is since I don't have kids.

Although I should qualify this statement by mentioning that it's always women who tell me this. Men don't seem to share the same belief; usually when I run across one of them crying in his beer over the greatest love of his life, it's a woman who's not his wife, a car, a sports team, or sometimes even a power tool.

From what I've observed over the years, romantic love is largely situational. You fall in love because you're sixteen, or because he has nice abs, or because he offers to put you on his health insurance. It's based on moods, superficial whims, and the needy psychological mess that accounts for human personalities combined with basic lust. Once the romantic love dies out, if a couple is lucky, an enduring companionable partnership continues on. If not, it's splitsville.

A mother's love for her child is something altogether different. It's a force of nature: primal, unrelenting, depthless, inflexible. It can't be bought or taught, replaced or reasoned with. Mothers will put their own happiness and welfare behind that of their children every time.

Well, maybe not all mothers.

Champ was not and is not my child, but I can't imagine loving anyone
more than I did him and still do. When we were growing up together, it was an unforced, senseless kind of love as easy and gratifying as the taste of a drippy soft-serve cone on a summer's day or the unconscious warmth I felt when Grandma tucked an extra blanket over me on a winter's night.

Watching Champ sitting in the plank of sunlight on the staircase landing intently playing with his Matchbox City or hearing the yank of his See 'n Say cord come from another room followed by a barnyard animal sound and his delighted laughter, I'd feel an electric hormonal jolt I was too young to understand. It was a sweet sting, full of pleasure and ache, like the release of finally, secretly scratching a chicken pox scab even though everyone has promised the act will leave a scar.

I've never been upset at him for cutting me out of his life. It would've been too difficult and exhausting to maneuver around each other. We would have always been walking a tightrope between too much to say and too much not to say.

He knew Neely and I knew, and even though he also knew we loved him and would do anything for him, every time he looked at us, he saw something in our eyes we couldn't hide. Not pity. Not anger. Not even shame over not being able to save him from Gil. We could control these emotions. What we couldn't control was the pain. Our pain. The pain someone feels for someone she loves who she can't help, can't heal, can't restore.

I'm not prepared for how bad it hurts to see him again.

“Dove,” he says, and all the years fall away as completely and perilously as an avalanche.

I'm left teetering on a precipice of unwelcome memories and the equally unwelcome discovery that time does not heal all wounds. It may have taken the edge and shine off but the blade has remained permanently plunged in the flesh of my soul, a dull, rusty, eternal reminder.

I try to say his name but nothing comes out.

“It's Champ,” Neely explains, calmly and kindly, like I'm awash in senility.

Champ gives me the goofy, bug-eyed, grandma-without-her-dentures
smile he used to make whenever he thought I was taking too long to understand something that was glaringly obvious to him and Neely.

I bust out laughing and give him a hug.

“And this is your nephew, Mason,” he tells me once we break our embrace.

I glance down at the slight little boy dressed exactly like his dad except he's wearing traffic-cone orange socks with his sandals. The tips of his ears and his nose are sunburned and peeling, both knees have Batman Band-Aids on them, and his hair is shaved into a crew cut similar to Derk's except he has scabbed-over nicks and cuts on his scalp like he's been at the mercy of a drunk army barber.

He has a purple Trapper Keeper clutched possessively to his chest; he shifts it to his left side while extending his right hand to me and says, “I'm named after the jar.”

“He's not named after the jar.” Champ sighs. “He recently discovered mason jars and now he tells everyone this is where we got his name from.”

Mason gives my hand a quick shake.

“Dad's right,” he admits. “My mom wanted to name me Jason, but Dad said every guy named Jason he ever met was a jerk. Dad wanted to name me Milo after Milo in
The Phantom Tollbooth
. That was his favorite book when he was a kid and now it's mine. But Mom said Milo was a nerd name, and Dad said, yeah, all the Jasons would probably beat me up, so they mushed the two names together and got Mason.

“I wish I could be named Thor,” he finishes.

“Who doesn't?” Neely concurs.

“Mason and I decided it was time to take a trip and see the country,” Champ explains while placing his hands on the boy's shoulders, “and he wanted to see where I grew up and meet his aunt Dove and aunt Neely.”

“He got fired,” Mason says, jerking a thumb in his father's direction.

Champ gives the shoulders a squeeze.

“I didn't get fired. I quit.”

“That's not what Stevie said.”

“Stevie doesn't know what she's talking about.”

“Who's Stevie?” I ask.

“His last girlfriend,” Mason replies. “She dumped him.”

“We broke up.”

“She was pretty nice,” Mason goes on with his description. “She never ordered mushrooms on her half of the pizza even though she liked them, 'cause she knew I was afraid they'd touch my half.”

“He doesn't like mushrooms,” Champ explains.

“They're fungus,” Mason supplies, wide-eyed. “Like the stuff the scrubbing bubbles kill in the bathtub.”

“It's not the same thing,” Champ says in a tone that lets us know this isn't the first time they've had this conversation.

“Fungus is fungus,” Mason asserts.

“Hey!” he calls out, jabbing a finger around my side. “There's someone in your car.”

I forgot all about Derk.

Kris, Kross, and Owen are standing next to the passenger-side door licking at ten little blueberry stained fingers wiggling at them through the cracked window.

“It's okay. You can come out,” I tell him. “They won't hurt you.”

“I ain't scared of 'em,” he yells back at me.

“Then why are you staying in the car?”

He doesn't have an answer for me. He throws open the door and pushes his way into the middle of the three large dogs, and they start licking him all over.

He holds his hands up over his face and I think I hear a giggle, but I have a hard time imagining this particular child is capable of feeling glee.

A whistle rings out and the dogs look at Neely, who tells them, “Stop.” Owen and Kris do what they're told, but Kross—her problem child—continues doing what he wants.

She walks over to Kross with Smoke at her heels, slips off the leash she wears draped around her neck the way a doctor wears a stethoscope, clips it onto his collar, and gives it a sharp yank.

“Stop,” she says again.

Kross sits back on his haunches and looks pathetic.

“I'm Neely Carnahan. This is my place, and these are my dogs,” she tells Derk. “Who are you?”

Derk crosses his arms over his chest.

“Derk Truly.”

She looks down at him from beneath the brim of her ball cap, sizing him up like she might a potential new member of one of her obedience classes.

“Are you Tug's brother?”

He nods.

“Tug's on a walk with Maybe. He should be back soon.”

She turns her back on Derk and returns to us. The dogs follow her. Derk watches them go, then decides he should do the same.

He stops a short distance from Mason. The two of them eye each other suspiciously. They look to be about the same age. Mason might be a little older.

“Your socks are stupid,” Derk blurts out.

We three adults turn our heads in unison toward Mason to see how well he'll return Derk's serve. He seems smart and capable but also a little awkward. He could choose not to participate in a volley of insults and take refuge behind his dad or start to cry.

“You're stupid,” Mason fires back. “You're covered in frosting and blueberry pie. Don't you know how to eat?”

Derk isn't prepared for Mason's smash. He sends back a wild shot that veers out of bounds.

“The chief 's a cocksucker!” he shouts, and takes off running.

Neely motions for the dogs to follow him, then she and Champ look at me with varying amounts of curiosity and condemnation in their eyes. I'm flooded with déjà vu. When we were kids they were always looking at me this way, always wondering what I was up to and assuming I wasn't going to tell them the whole story. I have no idea how many times I said to them, “It's better if you don't know.”

“He doesn't know what the word means,” I tell them.

“And that makes it okay for him to use it?” Champ asks.

“He wanted to meet the dogs,” I explain to Neely. “I guess Tug talks about them all the time. But I was only planning on dropping by for a minute. I have a meeting with Nolan and his team.”

“The dogs will stay with him until he realizes he's lost, and then they'll lead him back here. I can take him home when I take Tug,” she volunteers.

“Are you sure?”

“In return, you can make dinner for all of us tonight at your place.” To Champ she says, “Dove's a great cook.”

“She always was,” he says. “Just no Chef Boyardee, please.”

“Don't worry.”

We drop into a clumsy silence, the unexpectedness and enormity of our reunion sinking in for all of us. I never said it out loud to Neely or Grandma, and I rarely said it to myself, but I never expected to see my brother again.