16

When I was a kid doing homework at the kitchen table, Adele would come up behind me and press one finger into my neck at the place where skull and vertebrae meet, forcing me to look down at my papers.

“Are you going to pass that mess in?”

I’d look at the math work sheet with the gray smears across the work space from the too-hard eraser at the end of my stubby pencil, testimony to my struggles with the subject.

“Use scrap paper if you can’t do it neatly.”

She never offered to help me figure out the arithmetic.

I often wonder where my father was when she was jabbing me with a finger or shoving me ahead of her to my room. Or chastising me for not closing the peanut butter jar tight enough or the bread wrapper secure enough. Or slapping me because she interpreted my response to some demand or question as impertinent. “I will not have impertinence.” I thought impertinence was a venal sin. I would have confessed it had she ever taken me to confession. I’m not making it up, remembering it wrong, when I believe that Paul never suffered any of these physical and verbal assaults. He fluttered in and out of the kitchen, on his way to a practice or a game, or to meet up with friends, leaving the jars open and the bread hanging out of the wrapper like a tongue. He wasn’t expected to sit at the kitchen table to do his homework; his homework was done in the privacy of his room. A gentle knock and reminder not to stay up too late, the only words his mother ever said to him on the subject. I know for a fact he wasn’t burning the candle on his homework. He was doing other things, things that I could hear through the thin wall of my former walk-in closet.

I wonder if Paul will be there today. As the Bonanza bus nears the transportation center in New Bedford, I notice that my hands are shaking in a barely visible tremor. Nerves. I haven’t seen any of these people, my family, in years. I might not even recognize Paul. The last time I saw him was maybe ten years ago. I really can’t recall. I came back for his wedding. I had received an invitation and I have no doubt that it was the subject of great debate, whether or not to waste an invitation on me. I was long gone. Paul and I had never kept in touch. I knew that it was a courtesy invitation, probably sent because the poor bride had foolishly insisted that I get one, harboring some prebridal expectation that she’d be able to heal family rifts out of kindness. I was just contrary enough to tick off “Yes, I will attend” on the tiny RSVP card. I mailed it to the bride’s mother, wondering if she had any idea who Justine Meade was. I’d gone back to my maiden name a couple of years after leaving Anthony. In a further act of defiance, I changed Tony’s name to Meade, too. He was young enough that changing his name seemed like a normal thing to do. Another new school, another new neighborhood. Another name. Simple.

Maybe it was more like eighteen years ago. Time has a way of zipping by, the mile markers racking up so fast, whole decades disappear from sight in the rearview mirror.

Having spent my last ten bucks on the Boston cab, I sling my duffel over my shoulders and begin to walk. I have to climb Johnnycake Hill, New Bedford’s best-known street, with its cobbles and whaling museum, and work my way under route 195 to the other side of town, where the double- and triple-deckers, built back when the city had industry, line residential streets. It is a perfect September day, warm and dry, with a high thin veil of cloud in the southwest, portending lousy weather in the next twenty-four hours. It’s a nice day for a walk. If I had my dog with me, he’d be hoping that we would come to a park, where I could slip off his leash and toss the tennis ball for him. I actually have a tennis ball in my duffel. I brought one with me, as if they might not have them in New Bedford. I have the ball but not the dog. The hope that I had when the guard, Troy, told me about the CBs and how the drivers would put the word out is already fading into the more familiar sense of despair. I’m not a child, too easily inclined to hope for magic. I’m an adult whose life has pretty much been magic-free. The idea of a convoy of truck drivers caring enough to help find Artie is pretty far-fetched. Why should a group of anonymous drivers moving from one side of the country to the other care about my stolen dog? I wipe the “cavalry to the rescue” image out of my head.

I am at the corner of Lawton and Green. The house that I grew up in is half a block away. I can see the triple-decker that still belongs to my father looming over the ranch-style single family house that we crammed into for the eight years I lived there. It must suit Adele and my father so much better now. It’s really a house meant for two. Before I make that final turn, I pull out my phone and call Saundra.

It is ominously quiet behind Saundra’s voice. No barking. “I’ve got it posted online and I’ve contacted all the Sheltie rescues I can find from Cincinnati to Boston. Any word at all? Where are you?”

“No word. And I’m almost to the house.”

“You need to focus on your dad. We’ll keep going here. Do you need anything?”

“Just to find Mack.”

“We’re praying for you.” And just like that, the background is filled with Saundra’s pack barking joyously at being let in.

No one, to my knowledge, has ever prayed for me before. Tears prick at my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I can’t let them start, because they might never end.

Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I march myself to the middle of the block and face my childhood home. It is the same vinyl white that it has always been, grimy now with decades of street dust. A pair of plastic shutters flank the picture window that looks out on the street and the neighbors’ houses, no view worth such a large window, and one that had to have custom-made drapes to keep those neighbors from looking in. The foundation plantings have grown from shrubs into bushes and need a good trimming. Unkempt—that’s the word that comes to mind, and I am a little surprised. Adele is a house-proud woman. This place doesn’t look like anyone has taken care of more than getting the grass cut in years. I wonder how long my father has been sick.

I don’t know which door to use. Should I mount the three cement steps to the front door and ring the doorbell like a guest? Should I go through the one-car carport and open the side door and call out: “I’m home!” like a family member? As it turns out, Adele spots me and opens the front door, pushes wide the complaining screen door and stares at me. “It took you long enough. Come on in.”

Now I know I’m home.