Becoming Chloe (7 page)

I don’t bother to answer. I just leave. I know the answer, I just don’t bother to tell him. Because I could. That’s the answer.

To prove that I could.

On the way down the front steps with Chloe I hear Pammy’s voice again. “Jordy.” I turn around and she’s on the cold steps behind me in pajamas and bare feet. I walk back to her and stand a couple of steps down so we’re the same height, looking each other in the face. “Take me with you, Jordy.”

“I can’t, peanut. I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m just barely keeping my own head above water here.”

“Oh. Okay. Do me a favor, Jordy?”

“What’s that, peanut?”

“Be okay.”

“Okay,” I say. “Okay, I’ll really try. Will you do me the same favor?”

She doesn’t exactly answer. Just says, “Bye, Jordy. Bye, Chloe.”

Chloe does that parade wave again.

Then my mother comes down the stairs and grabs Pammy by the arm and spins her around and sends her running back into the house with a swat on the butt. Like Pammy was three or something. “It’s cold out here. Get in that house before you catch bronchitis again.”

My mother turns back to me. She looks at me like she’s seeing me differently. I’m out here in the bright daylight and she sees something she didn’t see before. I expect her to say, Jordan.

You’re almost a grown man now. In other words, I never learn.

I guess I should have noticed she was looking at my forehead.

“You still have that scar,” she says.

“I’ll always have that scar,” I say.

On the night of the first snow, we’re in our new place. In a real bed, with a mattress and box springs. And on a frame, not even down on the floor. With sheets. There’s a gas furnace, and it’s kind of rattly and loud, but it really makes the place warm.

There’s a window right by the bed, and we’re lying here, not quite asleep. I think we’re both lying here just enjoying this. Just feeling how great it is to have sheets, heat. A bathroom five steps away.

I look out the window and it’s snowing. Hard.

“Look, Chlo,” I say.

Her head pops up and she watches the snow for a minute.

Then she throws the covers back and runs out the back door, still in her nightshirt with her feet bare. I’m thinking maybe she’s planning on making snow angels in her nightshirt, in which case she’ll freeze. She’ll get frostbite for real. I watch out the window and she runs across the yard to the dog run and opens it and Bruno comes waddling out to greet her. Then she brings him back into our apartment.

“What are you doing, Chlo? Bruno never gets to come in the house. You know that.”

“He’ll get cold.”

“He’ll also bite me.”

“No, he won’t. Watch.” She leads Bruno by the collar over to our bed. “Bruno, this is Jordy. Be nice to Jordy. Give him your hand, Jordy.”

Reluctantly, I hold one hand out for him to sniff. He sniffs it, licks it once, then flops down on the rug beside the bed with a deep sigh. Smart dog, I think. He knows if he bites me, he’s back out in the snow.

Chloe climbs back into bed with me. Her feet are wet and freezing. I make her give them to me so I can rub them until they warm up. So she doesn’t get frostbite.

“Chlo, that dog slept outside for years before you lived here.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But now I live here.”

Bruno is already snoring. Also, it doesn’t take long to discover that flatulence is a Bruno concern. But I know better than to complain. I snore sometimes, and Chloe doesn’t make me sleep out in the snow.

It’s a few months later. Nearly spring. I’m on my way to check on the old guy, who lets us call him by his first name now. Otis. I’m on my way to check on Otis, because it’s my job. He’s going downhill. Chloe is lying on the bed watching I Love Lucy. We have a TV now, but as far as Chloe is concerned, there’s only one program on, ever. Everything else bores her to tears.

“I’m going to check on Otis now,” I say.

“Check on Bruno, too. Okay, Jordy? Will you see if Bruno’s okay?”

“Why? Doesn’t he seem okay to you?”

“Not really.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Nothing. He’s not doing anything. He just doesn’t feel good.”

“Well, he’s an old dog, Chlo.”

“He was old when I met him,” she says. “Today he doesn’t feel good.”

Otis is asleep, and I have to shake him to wake him up. Even though it’s only a little after seven.

“Oh, did I fall asleep?”

“Otis,” I say. “I think there’s a problem with Bruno.”

“What kind of problem?”

This is a hard one to field. The kind that only Chloe could put her finger on. But after going out to check on Bruno, I agree.

He’s not himself at all.

“I’m not sure, Otis. But I think you need to look at him.”

“I can’t walk all the way out there.”

“I could bring him in. If he could just come in this one time.”

“Well, sure,” Otis says. “If you think it’s serious.” He’s caught the mood of concern from me now. It has him awake and he’s worried. “You think it’s serious, huh?”

“Yeah, I think so, Otis. I think he’s . . .”

And then I can’t bring myself to say it. Which is funny, because I faced death every day for years. I came within an inch of it, right before I left this town, and I recently returned to the scene of the crime. I might have even dealt it out to somebody else. But right now, tonight, I can’t make myself say the word.

“I think he’s in trouble,” I say.

❃ ❃ ❃

When I get back out to Bruno’s run, it’s dark and still pouring rain. At first I can’t find him. At first I think he’s just up and disappeared.

Like someone or something beamed him out of here.

But I do find him in time. But of course by the time I find him I’m cold and soaked to the skin.

He’s managed to crawl into the narrow space between his doghouse and the fence. And there’s no getting in there after him. I have to move the doghouse aside. I have to pull it into the center of the run. It’s been at the end of the run for a long time. It was comfortable there. It had dug a rut for itself. Now I’m cold, wet, and out of breath.

“Bruno,” I say. His head doesn’t even come up.

As I take hold of his collar it occurs to me that he might bite.

Even though he hasn’t bitten me for a long time. Instead he just turns his big eyes up to me. Opens his eyes to the rain. Gives me this look, like, Do I have to, Jordan? I’m tired. Couldn’t I just stay here?

I encourage him to take a couple of steps. He does. Two.

Exactly. Then he goes into a sprawl, each leg pointing a different direction, like Bambi on the ice. Except when Bambi did it, it was cute. I give up and carry him.

Chloe is standing at the front door to Otis’s house, holding the door open for me.

“Get a blanket,” I say.

She goes to find one. I stand in the entryway holding Bruno.

We’re both dripping buckets of water onto the mat. Muscles in my back are straining. My arms are beginning to tremble.

“Hurry up, okay, Chlo?”

I can’t bring myself to set him down on the carpet because he’s covered with mud.

“I don’t even know where Otis keeps blankets. Where do you keep blankets, Otis?”

“Hall closet,” Otis calls. After a moment I hear the rhythmic scuffling of his walker.

Chloe comes running back with a blanket and throws it down like a nest on the carpet. “I’m putting it here by the fire, Jordy. You’ll have to light a fire.”

I set Bruno on the blanket. Just for a second my back screams louder than it did when I was holding him. Why didn’t somebody put that dog on a diet?

We look up, and Otis is shuffling across the carpet. His face doesn’t look like his face. It looks like the face of someone else, someone softer and more open. It takes him a minute or two just to cross the living room. Bruno watches his progress without even raising his head.

“Oh,” Otis says. “Oh. Oh, Bruno. He is in bad shape, isn’t he?”

“Light a fire, Jordy,” Chloe says.

“Should I take him to the vet, Otis?”

“No, don’t,” Otis says. “He’s dying. Vet hasn’t got a cure for that yet.”

“No, don’t,” Chloe says. “He wants to be at home, Jordy. He wants you to light a fire.”

Otis and I are having a moment. We’re sitting on the couch together, have been for hours. Watching Chloe and the dog.

They’re on the other side of the room, by the fireplace. Every now and then I’ve been getting up to feed more wood into the fire. Chloe didn’t raise her head the last time. Maybe she’s gone to sleep. We know Bruno is sleeping. We can hear him snore all the way over here.

Chloe dried him off with towels. Put another blanket over him. Me, I had to run around to our apartment in the rain to dry off and put on warm clothes. Then again, this isn’t my last night on the planet. She’s lying with him the way she sleeps with me every night. Draped over him like she’s looking for the doorway into his skin. I watch rain stream down the windows in the dark.

It gives me a feeling that the whole world is taking a moment to be sad.

Otis says, “Nobody ever loved my dog before but me.” He says it quietly. It’s a moment between us, one not designed to reach all the way to Chloe, who has better things to do anyway.

“Nobody ever even liked my dog before but me.”

“I like Bruno,” I say.

Otis looks over at my face, a serious taking-in. It occurs to me briefly that Otis’s last night on the planet might not be a long way off, either. “I guess you might,” he says. “Yeah. I guess by now you do. He’s not the most likable dog who ever lived.”

“He grows on you.”

“I was wrong about you. You turned out to be all right after all. When I first met you, I had my doubts.”

“Both of us?”

“No, you. I always liked her. Granted, she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. Now, I can say that, because you know I love the girl.”

“She’s funny,” I say. “Lots of things she can’t do as well as we could. But then other things she does better.”

“Like what?” Otis asks. He’s sleepy. He’s a little boy past his bedtime. He yawns.

“Music. Art. Other things. She’s the one who knew Bruno was sick.”

“Not sick,” Otis says. “Dying. Call it what it is.”

Just as he finishes that sentence we hear one last loud, strange snore; then the snoring stops. Stays stopped. Chloe picks up her head. Her face is all lit up, beaming. She’s looking at a spot in the corner of the room, high, near the ceiling.

“Wow,” she says. “Bruno,” she says. “Good dog.”

I look over at Otis and he’s watching her closely. Intensely, like he sees something he never saw before. I guess I could be wrong. If I’m right, he never says what it is he sees.

In the morning, before anyone else is awake, I bring the wheelbarrow around to the front porch. Then I go into the living room and lift Bruno for the last time.

“What are you going to do with him?” Chloe asks. I don’t know she’s awake until she asks that.

“I’m going to bury him in the backyard.”

“Is that what Otis said he wanted?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s what Bruno said he wanted, too.”

While I’m digging, Chloe squats with her back against the fence, drawing something with her markers. She still has that same pad and markers. When I give Chloe something as a present, she doesn’t lose it, and she’s slow to use it up. It’s like she saves it for special occasions.

The rain’s let up for a time, but it’s left the ground soft. I also think there’s more on the way, but it was nice enough to give us this break. Give us a chance to bury our dead.

Chloe says, “Jordy? What does it mean to die?”

“I don’t really know,” I say. “I know what it means for the people who don’t die. It means we never get to see that person again. But I don’t know what it means for the one who dies.

That’s not very much to know, I guess.”

“It’s okay, Jordy. You did fine. Is Otis going to die?”

“We’re all going to die, Chloe.”

“Is Otis going to die soon?”

“Yeah, probably. Pretty soon.”

“Are you going to die soon?”

I miss one shovel motion, the way a heart will miss one beat worrying about something else. I wonder if that heartbeat ever gets made up again. If we ever get that back.

“No. Why would I die?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking, what would I do if you did?”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Nobody can really promise that, Chlo. But there’s no reason why I should die any sooner than you do.”

“Good,” she says. “Good. I would hate it if you died sooner than me. I would hate that.” Then she draws in silence for a while.

I look at her face and try to put my finger on something.

Something that’s there, but never was before. One of those things Chloe has always been missing, yet a trace of it is hanging around somewhere. But I’m not even sure what it is.

When the hole is about three feet deep, I tip Bruno into it.

Then I get down there with him and arrange him a little so he looks more comfortable. So I don’t have to picture him doing a bad Bambi imitation for all of eternity.

I’m about to throw the first shovelful of dirt onto him when Chloe yells, “Wait!”

She’s done with her drawing now, but she takes the scissors and begins cutting. She ends up with a big round disc of paper with a little eye hook on top, like a dog tag. She lets it flutter down and land on Bruno’s side.

“Okay, now,” she says.

I look down and see she’s made Bruno a giant dog tag that says good dog, with the word bruno written in vertically, twice. The two O’s in the words bruno are shared with the first O in good and the O in dog. It occurs to me that I never would have known Bruno was a good dog if Chloe hadn’t told me.

As I shovel dirt onto it, I actually notice a lump in my throat.

I haven’t cried for so long. I can’t even remember the last time.

Maybe I’m regaining my ability to feel things. Which I absolutely refuse to do until someone can guarantee me it won’t be retroactive.

“Jordy,” Chloe says. “You’re crying. That’s so nice.”

In the middle of the night I wake up and Chloe is not draped all over me. Not in the bed beside me. I crane my neck to look in the bathroom, but the door is open and I can see she’s not there.