Skylight Confessions (15 page)

"I can't believe how cute they are." Blanca tapped on the glass and one of the baby basset hounds came over and licked the glass.

"Oooh," Blanca crooned. "This one. Sam would love it."

"Sam doesn't want a puppy," Meredith informed her charge.

"Look at its ears! They're so long it's tripping over them."

They decided to go in, just to look. The bell rang over the door, and the man cleaning out fish tanks looked up. George Snow. He'd opened the shop three years ago, knowing that sooner or later this would happen. He had promised Arlie he'd never search the child out, although he'd gone to several dance recitals, seated in the back row; he'd gone to many of her soccer games. He wondered sometimes if he'd been wrong to make a promise like that, but Arlie had held on to his hand until he'd sworn it.

"Shout if you need help."

"I don't think we will," Meredith called back.

"We need help!" Blanca called at the very same time.

George Snow laughed and came over to look at the puppies with them. He couldn't believe how tall Blanca was; she had a dancer's posture and she wasn't shy.

"I'm taking the little one in the corner," George told them. "The runt of the litter. I used to have a collie, but he died of old age. So I'm ready for a pup."

"I love your puppy," Blanca said seriously. "But I love this one more." The silly one that had licked the plate-glass window.

"Which one don't you love?" Meredith wanted to know.

"I'll give you a discount," George Snow said. "Actually, you can just take him. I'll never be able to sell all these puppies."

Meredith noticed the resemblance between Blanca and the pet-shop owner. Brown-eyed blonds with narrow faces and long eyelashes.

"Are you related to the Moodys?" she asked. "We really couldn't take something like this without paying."

"Just trying to find this pup the best home possible." George lifted up the puppy and placed it in Blanca's arms.

"His name is Dusty," Blanca said, and then, embarrassed to have claimed the puppy as though it were her own, she added, "But Sam should pick his name."

"No. Dusty's a great name," George Snow said. "I think I'll call mine Rusty." Mr. Snow put together a package of dog food and bowls along with a collar and a leash. "If you want some obedience lessons, you can bring him back and I'll help you train him."

"Your mom is going to have a fit," Meredith told Blanca.

"Stepmom," George Snow said. "I knew the family way back when," he added when Meredith gave him a look.

"I can't believe I let you do this," Meredith said on the way home.

"You didn't let me. I'm old enough to make some decisions."

"Uh-huh. Don't blame me if they won't let you keep him."

"You're kidding, right?" Cynthia said when they walked through the back door.

"He's for Sam," Blanca said, kissing the basset hound on the nose.

"Unconditional love," Meredith added.

"Is that the kind of love that will make the poop in the yard disappear?" Cynthia asked. "Because I won't have anything to do with this creature. You can quote me on that."

Blanca and Meredith carried Dusty up to Sam's room. They knocked on his door. Blanca hid behind Meredith, holding on to the puppy. Sam opened the door a crack. The smell from inside was dreadful, the stink of old laundry and cigarettes and rotting food.

"Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying." Sam's words were slurred. He'd recently gotten off, and his mouth was caked with dried saliva. It was getting worse. They all knew that. All he wanted was that dreamless sleep.

"Ta-da," Blanca said as she jumped before her brother with Dusty in her arms.

"You actually got a puppy? I told you explicitly — no fucking puppies. I can't be responsible for that thing. You know me. I'd leave it somewhere and it would die of starvation or something."

"His name is Dusty," Blanca said. "I thought you'd love him."

"You go on and love him," Sam told her. "I'm not genetically inclined."

Meredith and Blanca took the puppy back down to the kitchen.

"We can get him something else," Blanca said. "We'll find the right pet."

The puppy raced over to Cynthia, who was cooking dinner at the stove. He stepped on his ears and tripped.

"Oh, you poor thing." Cynthia bent down and picked up Dusty; she fed him a bit of hamburger meat from her fingers.

"Sam doesn't want him." Blanca was gathering together the puppy food and the dog dishes. "We have to take him back to the store."

"You can't take him back!" And then, as though startled by her own response, Cynthia added, "It's not humane! He's used to us now."

"I thought you didn't want him," Meredith said.

"I don't," Cynthia said firmly. "But he's not going back to some wretched pet shop where he's treated miserably."

"It wasn't wretched," Blanca insisted. "Mr. Snow is nice. He said he would train Dusty for free if we wanted him to."

"Really? Mr. Snow said that? Well, I had Newfoundlands when I was growing up," Cynthia said. "I'm perfectly capable of training one little basset hound all by my lonesome."

"What about the poop in the yard and on the rugs?" Meredith reminded her.

"Here's your water, Dusty," Cynthia said, setting down a dish in the corner, and that was that. No more discussion.

"We have to get Sam something else," Blanca kept saying all through the week. "Something that suits him." Blanca took this quest seriously. "Something he'll love."

Meredith went back to the pet shop one afternoon while Blanca was at school and Sam was up in his room, sleeping.

She was there to look around; maybe pick up a chew toy for the puppy, who was gnawing on the legs of the kitchen table.

"Hey there," George Snow said when she came into the shop.

"How's Dusty?"

He'd sold all the other puppies except for the one he'd kept; that pup was sleeping in a box behind the dog-food display.

"Dusty's fine when he's not pooping or chewing on something,"

Meredith said. "Looks like Rusty is, too."

"Blanca's not with you?"

Meredith noticed that Mr. Snow's brow furrowed exactly the way Blanca's did when she was worried, an occurrence that happened far too often for a ten-year-old girl.

"Do you have some connection to Blanca?" Meredith asked. "Is that why you gave her the puppy?"

"I was a friend of her mother. Friend of the family. Did you need more dog food?"

"I need a pet for Blanca's brother. He's not a fan of puppies."

Sam.

"Yes. Sam."

"He's not your average boy," George said. "His mother used to tell a story about people in Connecticut who could fly when need be. Maybe he's one of them. They grew wings when they had to escape. When the ship was going down or the house was on fire."

"We're pretty much at that stage," Meredith said.

George led her into the back room, where there was a makeshift kitchen and a lunch table. On a perch in the corner there was a small parrot. The bird was green with ultramarine and red and orange streaks.

"Get out," the parrot said to them.

Meredith laughed. He sounded exactly like Sam.

"I swear I didn't teach him that. He's a foundling. Someone left him on the doorstep in a box. I guess they couldn't keep him anymore. I call him Connie, short for Connecticut."

"Cynthia would kill me."

"The stepmother. I knew her. A runner. Lived next door." "She switched to tennis. But I think she's giving that up, too."

"She won't even notice the parrot. You don't have to walk it or throw a ball for it." George gave the bird a peanut. "Connie's only a baby. Winston Churchill's parrot lived for a hundred years. This is a pet that won't up and die on Sam and disappoint him, like everything else has." George Snow cleared his throat; he wasn't comfortable having a serious conversation with a stranger. "I heard about what happened outside the market."

"Well, that." Meredith wasn't about to discuss Sam with this man. "I can't afford a parrot. And if you know the family then you know John Moody would never pay for one, let alone approve of it."

"Well, Connie's free."

Meredith studied the angles of Mr. Snow's face. He seemed so familiar, so kind. "Are you the kind of friend of her mother's that Blanca should know about?"

"Well, she does know about me. I'm the pet-store man."

Meredith packed the parrot and all of its belongings into her VW. The foul-tempered creature muttered and squawked all the way home. She felt like turning around and bringing the bird back to the shop, but she headed home. She thought about how easygoing Blanca was, how different from Sam and John Moody. A kindhearted girl who thought about others and worried too much.

"You cannot bring this thing into the house," Cynthia said when Meredith carried in the perch and the nighttime cage and the sacks of food and the cuttlebones and the bells. "This time I mean it.

Birds are filthy."

"Get out," the parrot said.

"Oh, nice. Why not a vulture?" Cynthia was fixing chicken for dinner, and the naked uncooked bird sat in a glass dish atop the stove. The little basset hound was at Cynthia's feet. He trotted over to sniff the birdcage. "Stay away from that thing, Dusty!"

"Maybe a pet will snap Sam out of his own world and back into ours."

"Was he ever in ours?"

"Let's try. Let's just fucking try something before we lose him completely."

The women stared at each other. Dusty was wagging not just his tail but his whole body.

Cynthia nodded. "I'm sure in no time Sam will teach it to call me a murderess, but maybe that will give him some pleasure." She was stunned by what had just happened between herself and Meredith.

"I cannot believe you said 'fucking' to me. Like it's all my fault."

Cynthia was worn down by everything. She wasn't much like the woman George Snow remembered. She'd completely given up tennis. The most she could manage was a long walk in the morning with Dusty. Sometimes she started crying for reasons she wasn't clear on.

"It is not your fault," Meredith said.

"Fine," Cynthia said. "One week. If that thing is flying around my house and pooping, he's gone." She went back to adding onions and mushrooms to her chicken dish. "I do have a heart, you know."

"No one ever said you didn't," Meredith said.

"I know you don't like me. You take their side. But I wasn't so horrible. I didn't know she was dying when John and I got involved. He didn't tell me until two months after she'd gotten the diagnosis. And then he cried and I felt sorry for him. So I deserve to have to deal with parrots and drugs, I guess. It's payback. And by the way, Sam disappeared this morning and I have no idea where he is. I can damn well guess, unfortunately."

When Blanca got home, she was thrilled with the parrot.

"It's perfect!" she said, even though the bird had tried to bite her as soon as she reached out her hand. "Sam will love him."

They could all guess that if Sam was out of his room, he'd gone to New York. He owed people money in Bridgeport, and the last time he'd gone there he'd come back bloodied. He stole from purses, piggy banks, and coat pockets and went to New York. This time he took the silver serving spoons from Cynthia's first marriage.

By the time Sam arrived home via taxi, Blanca was already in bed. It was long after midnight. Meredith was sitting on the stairs in her nightgown. Sam's eyes were half closed as he stumbled in.

He was deep in the land of no dreaming. Right in the center of the deep, dark nothingness.

"Hey," he said as though Meredith sitting on the stairs at two in the morning was perfectly natural. "What's up?"

"Blanca and I got you something. She tried to wait up for you."

Sam stank of sweat and his coloring was bad. He went around Meredith and continued up the stairs.

"Did you want to tell me where you were?" Meredith said, following him.

"Do you think I'd tell you the truth?" Sam said.

They had reached Sam's door.

"If you don't love your gift, I can take it back."

"I'll hate it whatever it is. We both know that."

"I'm not so sure."

Sam opened the door to his room and there was the parrot on its perch.

"Holy shit," Sam said.

"The pet-store owner told me to tell you he's from an old Connecticut race that can fly." "Did he?"

"George Snow," Meredith said.

"A man with feelings, the poor idiot. I remember him. Cried his eyes out. Do you think he was in love with my mother?"

"I don't know." Actually, she was sure of it.

Sam approached the parrot and offered his arm. The parrot eyed him, then moved sideways along the perch onto Sam's arm.

"He's heavy," Sam said in wonder. "Say something to Meredith,"

he told the parrot. "Get out," the parrot said. Sam threw his head back and laughed. "I love him," Sam said. "I truly do."

Meredith could feel something inside her breaking apart.

"Does he say more? Can I teach him to say whatever I want him to?"

"You can try. I have no idea what his vocabulary might be. He was a foundling. George named him Connie."

"Does the murderess know about this?"

"Cynthia has a heart," Meredith said. "Somewhere in there."

"What about the old bastard?"

"Sam," Meredith warned. "Cynthia will talk your dad into it. If you want to keep it."

Sam sat on the bed and stared at the parrot.

"What you're doing is too dangerous, Sam. If you keep on with all these drugs I'm going to switch to the other side. I'll tell them to send you back to rehab."

"It's done. I swear it." Sam meant it at that moment. But he'd meant it many times before. This much was the truth: "I can't afford it anyway. I'm broke and it's such a waste of money."

"Just so we both understand: the parrot is a bribe."

Sam turned to her and grinned. "The best bribe ever." The usual whirring inside Sam's head had slowed down and he could feel something straight on. It was almost like happiness, if only it wasn't so slurred. It was damn close. Close enough.

Sam allowed Meredith to hug him. "Enough," he told her, pushing her away when she made some sappy comment about what a great kid he was. "Let's not go overboard."