The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs: A Novel (18 page)

I hang up and think about last night and what Lewis said. The thing is, my experience with Denise and Tina was exhausting, terrifying, humbling, and, wait for it, simply wonderful. It was the rush of what was possible. It was the novelty of actually being thanked, not so much in words, but in a moment of tacit understanding. In my years as a veterinary pathologist I’ve always felt as though I was late to the party. Last night, for the first time, as a real veterinarian, I was finally its life and soul.

And let’s not forget the other big event from last night, my encounter with Amy, the waitress at the diner. I’m not quite sure what happened there, but I instantly felt like a teenage boy with a summer camp crush. Ridiculous. It’s not as though it can go anywhere. When I head back to Charleston, what am I going to do, exchange friendship bracelets? Promise to write every day?

“Dr. Mills?” It’s Doris. “I put this together for you. It’s the bad debt.”

Doris hands over a piece of paper with a handwritten list of clients and the amount of money each individual owes. There are about thirty names, and as I requested, she’s made two columns: those who can pay, but don’t (the Haggertys make this row), and those who can’t afford to pay, but try their best (Denise Laroche makes this row). Everybody knows everybody in this town and, I’m guessing, few more so than Doris. Why not exploit her bitterness and innate nosiness?

“Good work, Doris. Not as bad as I thought.”

“That’s for last month, December. I’ll start on the rest of last year tomorrow.”

“Whoa! That’s bad.” And then my inner monologue slips out from under my breath. “What was he thinking?”

Doris looks as though she is dying to give me her opinion and damn the consequences, but she puffs up and reins in her tongue, the smart schoolgirl who always knows the answer, forced to give the other kids a chance. “I’ll be at lunch.”

“Before you leave, I wonder if you could do one more thing for me?”

She waits, increases the frequency of her blinks.

“I need you to call our telephone provider and ask them to hook us up with wireless Internet access. See if they’ve got any deals.” Preferably a package that’s free for the first month.

“Hold on, hold on.”

Doris scurries over to her desk, scrambles for a piece of paper, and scratches out a note, her lips mouthing the words “wireless Internet” like she’s learning a foreign language. Then she digs out an antiquated piece of secretarial equipment, her Rolodex. Squinting at a card, she picks up the phone and dials a number. Maybe I should be grateful she didn’t step outside and send a message via carrier pigeon.

Further updates to the twenty-first century will have to wait till another day. It’s time to hunt for information about feline kidney disease, all the stuff I never needed until now, like how to treat, how to monitor, and how to recognize that a cat can be suffering, enduring a sad existence, even if it doesn’t appear to be in pain. Fifty minutes pass before I have the confidence to call Ginny Weidmeyer, and even then I’ve got the appropriate pages open and to hand.

“You didn’t have to get back to me so soon.”

“Not a problem. I strive to be timely and organized.” Part of me hopes she’ll notice how this raison d’être clearly distinguishes me from Cobb. How many times would I be trying to tell Cobb something about my school day, only to watch his eyes glaze over before he said, “Sorry, Son. Forget to submit a blood sample” or “Forgot to call a client.” Cobb thrived on chaos, and for a kid competing with these more important priorities for his attention, this felt a lot like rejection.

“You know,” says Ginny, “there were a couple of things I forgot to tell you.”

I brace myself, half-expecting her to go off on me. Or maybe she knows the rock is a fake and I’m about to find out that Steven is actually a hired gigolo.

“Chelsea’s diet: she’s on special food to reduce the risk of crystals in her urine. You think she should stay on it?”

“Um, definitely. Assuming she’s eating it.”

“Steven says she is. He feeds her first thing in the morning, before he brings me my cappuccino. He’s such a love.”

Ginny Weidmeyer has it bad. And her affection for Steven threatens to trigger my vomiting control center.

“Very good,” she says. “Now the second point concerns you.”

“It does.”

“Yes. Both Steven and I got a good feeling about you this morning. And I can tell Chelsea likes you too.”

I hear a little tremble creeping into her words.

“I want you to know that if, at any time, you think Chelsea needs a …”

The line goes silent, as though she can’t bring herself to finish the sentence. There’s a rustle, a sniff, and I imagine her wafting away the emotional vapors.

“Sorry about that. What I mean is, if at any time you think Chelsea needs a kidney transplant, please, please, do not hesitate to refer me. It doesn’t matter where in the world. It doesn’t matter how much it costs. My trust fund for my cat might not be quite as big as Leona Helmsley’s for her dog but let’s just say money will never limit Chelsea’s health care.”

Because I think of myself as a scientist, I prefer the concept of “eureka” to “lightbulb” moments. Regardless, this is a significant revelation. “Trouble” Helmsley had a $12 million trust fund. “Not quite” could still mean pretty big. Now it all makes perfect sense—Steven must be a gold digger, fooling Ginny with an engagement ring made of cheap cubic zirconium.

“Of course,” I say, “but let’s hope it never comes to that. I have plenty more homework to do on Chelsea’s case.”

“Thank you so much, Cyrus. We’re so thrilled you’ve found your way back to our little corner of the world.”

Another five minutes of banal chitchat and I eventually hang up, but Ginny’s compliment lingers like a take-away message. And for a moment, the constant awkwardness and prickly unease I have felt since returning to Bedside Manor disappears, replaced by a buoyant easy calm I have not felt since before my mother died.

There’s a bark, the sound of knuckles rapping on a door, and my golden pillow vanishes, causing my head to thud into the seat cushion. I swing my feet off the couch and stand up, trying to get my bearings. The curtains are open, but it’s dark outside, and there’s a wad of canine hair plastered to my left cheek. I wander in the direction of another knock and another bark and find Lewis standing at the top of the stairs.

“Time is it?” I ask, squinting into the landing light while Frieda delivers another overblown greeting.

“Just after five.”

I yawn. “Guess I needed to catch up after last night.” Sensing a reprimand, I add, “Don’t worry, I’m going to visit her owner before my interview with Mr. Greer.”

Lewis manages to look at me as though he’s wavering on this proposal. “Actually, I wondered what might happen if you claimed to have found her. Deliver a baby. Discover a missing dog. You’d be a local media sensation. Caseload would triple overnight.”

Is he being serious? “You seem to be forgetting the man who brought her in paid me to kill this dog.”

“Point taken. Best sort it out tonight. Don’t want to find an angry mob in the waiting room wielding pitchforks and torches.” He scratches along Frieda’s back. “You got a second?”

Frieda is so enamored of Lewis I have to peel her off him and slip her behind the door. My mentor gestures for me to follow him downstairs, across the work area, the waiting room, and out through the chiming front entrance.

“Look up there,” says Lewis, standing in a swirl of moth-size snowflakes, head craned back. “I forgot to tell you, if you don’t get the snow off the roof tonight, especially over the front door, you’ll have the making of an ice dam by morning. This way.”

Brushing past me, he heads to the far end of the waiting room. There’s another door marked
PRIVATE
, and we enter what used to be a storage room in the days when Bedside Manor could still afford to purchase medical supplies and pet food. The room’s practically empty, but its proximity to the waiting room gives me an idea.

“You know it wouldn’t take much to convert this into a second exam room.”

Lewis comes to a halt, like he’s set off an alarm exiting a department store. He wheels around to face me. “Now you’re talking.”

I say nothing. He’s clearly mistaken an idea to generate more income as a long-term commitment. “Where are you taking me?”

“You haven’t explored this part of the house?”

“Why would I? It always spooked me when I was a kid.”

Lewis worries his chipped upper incisor with his lower lip but doesn’t answer, as though I’m meant to notice his intentional silence. He turns, slides back a heavy brass bolt, pulls open a door, flips a switch, and at the bottom of a narrow and steep wooden staircase a fluorescent strip light flickers, hums, and pops into life. By the third step down I’m assaulted by the organic aroma of a moldy fieldstone basement.

I join him at the bottom. To my right, in the shadows, I make out an ancient oil heat furnace and a sump pump (probably for those rare times in this part of the world where water takes on a liquid state). Lewis heads left into the shadows, swatting at a string dangling from the ceiling that turns on a bare electric bulb.

“What’s this?” In part I’m asking about an extensive collection of woodworking tools—an enormous workbench, a band saw, a miter saw, and enough sanders, chisels, clamps, and jigs to start a furniture store.

“Bobby Cobb got into working wood,” says Lewis. “Chairs, desks, refurbishing antiques. He was good. Made me a nice birdhouse one time.”

But what really catches my eye, what I’m really referring to, is everything else. There’s a timeworn armchair, an electric space heater, a dorm refrigerator, and a coffeemaker. A solitary white mug perches on the workbench, the dry, shiny brown remnant of Cobb’s last drink down here clinging to the bottom of the ceramic.

“I know I’ve seen that roof rake somewhere,” says Lewis, rooting around in my peripheral vision. He’ll get no help from me because I’m too busy comprehending what lies against the wall abutting the bench. Adjacent to a Peg-Board tool organizer there’s a large corkboard overrun by a collage of photographs. Lewis mumbles something but the photos reach out and suck me in. Once again, they are new to me. Me as a kid with a broken arm, pouting as I display my cast. Me as a crying toddler, holding a stuffed rabbit missing an ear, no doubt chewed off by a dog. Me on my mother’s lap, showing off a gap-toothed grin, brandishing an ice cream like I’m the Statue of Liberty. My eyes glide on but I drift back to this last photo. Blindly, the sticky little fingers of my free hand reach upward to caress my mom’s cheek, to ensure our connection. And I can tell my mom is basking in the moment, sticky fingers and all. This is the Ruth Mills I loved—mother first, letting down her guard and succumbing to our emotional bond. Thanks to her, the boy in the photo appears happy and secure. Today, a disquieted forty-year-old man must admit how this picture only affirms a state of mind, a lapsed awareness of just how much I’ve lost.

My eyes hopscotch across the rest of the collage. Each picture is either of me, or of my mother and me. None of Bobby Cobb. Inevitably I’m drawn to the perfect square of brown cork in the dead center of the compilation. It seems strange, this halo of family memories with nothing at its core. Had Bobby Cobb run out of photos, or was there a single photo missing? I take another step closer to make a more careful inspection. In each of the four corners of the empty center square I can make out a distinct and tiny hole where a pin had punctured the cork.

I glance over at Lewis, and there’s a moment, a half second, when I catch him looking at me before he turns away.

Is this hunt for a roof rake a bluff? Is this really about me finding these photos?

“Here we go,” says Lewis, reaching behind an orderly row of old paint cans to unearth a series of interlocking, one-inch diameter aluminum poles, together with a broad aluminum blade. “Fit these together and you’ve got yourself a good twenty feet. More than enough to reach your roof.”

“What do you know about these?” I jerk my chin toward the board.

Lewis puts down the rake and joins me, scanning the collage as though he’d never noticed it before.

“Looks like you and Ruth, back in the day.” And then, on an exhalation, he adds, “You still miss her.”

I could say,
I try not to because it hurts too much
, but I prefer to think he’s made a statement, not asked a question. I wait a beat. “And this?” I gesture to the chair. “Not exactly the coziest corner of Bedside Manor.”

Lewis turns to me, maintaining the same level of scrutiny as he did for the photos.

“Bobby told me this was the only part of the house without memories. That’s why he liked to come down here. A place to call his own.”

I can’t help myself.

“You knew him better than anyone. The two of you never got to talking over a bottle of Jack?”

“That ended a long time ago.” Lewis breaches my personal space, making sure his message is clear.

“Really?”

Lewis keeps going. “Definitely. Swore he took his last drink way before your mother died. Developed a wicked sweet tooth though. Always sucking on a peppermint, and he’d gladly drive an hour in a snowstorm to get an ice cream sundae and a decent coffee.”

This is news to me, Cobb realizing too late he had a drinking problem. Not that he was ever a mean drunk. More accurate to say alcohol sustained his isolation. I let it go. “There’s a picture, in his bedroom, me running track. I only went to this high school freshman year and I don’t remember seeing him at a single meet.”

Lewis’s lips move, but the intensity in his stare doesn’t let up. “Just ’cause you didn’t see him, doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”

I let this sink in. “Did he ever talk about me?”

Lewis cracks a wary half-smile. “Only all the time.”

I let out a forced laugh. “Couldn’t have been pretty.”

“He never said a bad word about you.” Lewis is dead serious, and in contrast to my uneasy levity, his words hit me like a two-by-four. I feel the tension tighten around us.

“That’s hard to believe.”