23

The posters on the backseat mock Ed every time he gets into the Cutlass, nagging him with a task shirked. But he seems to forget about their existence the moment he pulls out of the garage. Especially if the dog is with him. Just goes out of his mind. Pfft. Gone. Oops, should remember to do that. Today, Ed remembers, and he takes the signs out, tears them into neat quarters, and stuffs them in the bag of trash he’s jamming into the barrel for today’s pickup.

Alice catches him in the act and he gets defensive. “Don’t you think that it’s odd that we haven’t seen any lost posters? Wherever this little guy came from, it isn’t from around here. He’s either run away or been dumped, and there’s no telling how far afield he’s gone. We could be hanging posters and putting ads in all the wrong places. Let’s give it a rest.”

Ed doesn’t miss the expression on her face, a look of relief with a suggestion of puzzled gratitude, and Ed walks out the door rather than look at her, because it has been too long since he’s seen an expression like that on his wife’s face.

It’s not the same thing, but Ed remembers that smile the day that he offhandedly suggested that they stop birth control. It wasn’t like she’d been pestering, or hinting, or sighing at the sight of babies, but somehow he knew that her thoughts, after a couple of years of marriage, were turning broody. “Let’s let nature take its course.” That was how he had inelegantly phrased it. But you would have thought that he’d given her diamonds, not so much that he had made the suggestion, but that he, Edward the oblivious, had recognized a need in his wife without having to be told outright. It was a big moment in their marriage. Of course, they had never expected that it would take so long to accomplish, that nature certainly took her course, but that pleased smile still lingers in his memory and whenever he thinks of the early days, the years before life got hard, he pictures Alice smiling like that.

Life is divided into uneven thirds: Before Stacy, Being Parents, and After It Happened. They are halfway to having lost her longer than having had her. And, after it happened, Ed stopped being able to read Alice. The clues and nuances became too hard to interpret, or maybe he just lost the knack for it. Maybe it just got too hard, or the telepathy they once had between them was like wires in an old electrical cord, frayed and dangerous. The connection cut in one disastrous moment.

Ed bends over his mower, a self-drive, electric start, mega sixteen-inch blade Toro. There’s always a little regret in putting the Toro to bed in the fall. End to another summer. Not that anything particularly special happens in the summer. Now that he’s enjoyed his first full unemployed summer, with no vacation to look forward to because, as his pals at Lil’s say, every day’s a vacation, Ed has had a hard time recognizing the season except for the sweltering heat of the dog days of August, when the heat lay thick in the air. That, and the endless tasks of watering and mowing. Mowing and watering, growing the grass to cut the grass. Ed wraps the tarp over the Toro, binds it with a length of clothesline, and tucks it into its corner of the garage. He’ll have to get the snow blower serviced pretty soon. Don’t want to wait until everyone else thinks of it and there’s a rush at Stan’s Tractor and Mower Repair.

A rush of despair rocks Ed with its suddenness. His whole life is calibrated by seasonal machinery. He thinks of that song: Is that all there is? Some singer with a sexy, husky voice. He can only recall that single line in the chorus, and it orbits through his mind: Is that all there is? Is that all there is?

Ed pulls himself upright. It’s only from bending over that he’s gotten these weird feelings. There’s nothing wrong. It’s fine. Mostly, day-to-day life is fine.

Suddenly, the dog is beside him, the silly squeaky toy gripped in his teeth, and he’s shaking it furiously, as if it’s a rodent. The thing squeaks like a mouse, so the pretense is pretty understandable.

“Hey, you wanna play? Gimma that thing!” Ed pries the toy out of the dog’s mouth and plays a little hand-to-hand keep away. The dog actually looks like he’s laughing and he rears up like a pony, catching the hydrant in midair as Ed tosses it.

The dog drops the toy at Ed’s feet, looks up with expectation, and then sits. “You’re such a good boy. Are you my good boy?” Ed swoops down and gives the dog a hug, burying his nose in the white fur of his ruff. “Who’s a good boy?”

*   *   *

At the top of the stairs, Alice watches Ed play with the dog. She hears the baby talk and thinks that his friends would think that Ed had lost his mind. He doesn’t look the baby talk type. But he is. When she couldn’t soothe the baby, Ed always could. Stacy held close in big arms, against a wide chest, a whispered lullaby. “If that mocking bird don’t sing, Daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”

Who’s my little baby girl?

*   *   *

Even though the man has taken him on several go-for-a-rides, they haven’t taken him to Justine. Mack loves go-for-a-ride. At least he did until go-for-a-ride ended up in the cab of that truck. But this man doesn’t go far, or for long, and has only left him waiting for a little while, measured in whether Mack chooses to lie down and snooze or remain upright in the front seat, tail curled around his forepaws, eyes on the place where the man has gone. When the man comes back, he proffers a whole strip of bacon. Mack, being a well-trained dog, accepts this treat with gentleness, a tail wag, and a quick head bob. Bacon is Justine’s training tool of choice. Little crumbles just big enough to hide in a hand, doled out at the correct completion of his movements: circle, reverse circle, side step. The man isn’t making any of those hand signals that mean bacon; he’s just handing it over, in a strip. Mack would be more than willing to do a few movements if asked, but this is okay, too. So go-for-a-ride is good. But it isn’t getting him where he wants to be.

When Alice puts on her yoga pants and sneakers, Mack believes that it means they will dance. He accompanies her to the back door, prancing on his little white front feet, his pointy muzzle split into a grin. Maybe, just maybe, Justine will be where this woman takes him to dance. He will find Justine there.

When Justine first taught Mack to dance, he thought it was just more of the same sort of training that they had been doing for a long time. He enjoyed showing off to the others that he could sit-stay longer and more attentively than any of them. He loved the leaps over rails and the scurry through the fabric tunnel. He understood on some organic level that doing all these things, touching the right spots on the platform, leaping accurately and quickly over bars, weaving through the poles as fast as an otter, was the point of the exercise. When he did his best, there was always loud applause, and sometimes he got to stand by himself in the ring while the Important Person presented Justine with objects that Justine smiled to receive and always let him nose. No other dogs, just him.

Then Justine began to ask him to weave not through poles, but between her legs. Leap, not over a pole, but over a short cane. Rise up on his legs and wriggle his tail. Walk backward, forward, and place his paws against her back. Some hand signals were so subtle that he had to keep his eye on her at all times, sometimes having to decide what it was she wanted, because the movement was only a degree different from another one. A bow instead of a cocked head. Walk or army crawl.

So when Alice pulled on her yoga pants and tied her soft white shoes to her feet, Mack got excited. Those were practice clothes. When Justine wore those clothes, they’d head to the high school gym and meet up with Saundra and her pack. Juicy was always there, and Sambucca, the blue-eyed husky Mack has always had a crush on. And sometimes Griff, who was a slow learner but tried hard.

If Alice hadn’t put on her go-to-dance clothes, Mack would have settled for another day of waiting. But she had and now he was excited. He even barked. One short piercing bark, just to let her know that he was pleased to be going back to work. Maybe Justine would be there.

But then Alice hadn’t taken him where she was going. And when she came back, she smelled of sweat but not of other dogs. Not of Justine.

Go-for-a-ride is good. And walks are good. The kibble is different but good. The couch is okay, a little firmer than the soft cushions on the couch Mack uses at home with Justine. When Alice leaves the house or goes upstairs, he settles down on the right-hand cushion, balling himself up tight, nose tucked beneath tail. It’s his default position, the one from which he takes the most comfort. Once asleep, he will unfurl like a flower, stretching to take up half the couch. But to start, he likes making himself small and compact, pretending he’s a wolf on the tundra. At first, Alice made him get off the couch, but now she understands that snuggling on the couch is a good thing. Mack has taught her that it is nice to let him rest his head on her legs and stroke him. She’s learned already about the nice soothing spot in his ear. They still haven’t learned his name and he’s not sure how to teach that to them.

Ed has learned about the ball. That’s a good thing, especially since he throws it a lot farther than Justine does, so the game is much more challenging. Mack likes the long slope of the backyard and the way he has to dig in his feet to prevent himself from crashing into the bushes. Snapping up the ball, he runs pell-mell to the top of the hill, where Ed waits, slapping his knees to encourage speed. He’s good with the squeaky toy, too. Knows the same game of keep away that Justine plays.

Mack doesn’t know how long he’s been here with Alice and Ed. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Justine disappeared. Time is nothing to him, measured out in meals and walks but never adding up. Mack has adapted to the rhythms of this household, knowing that she rises first, that he goes to bed last. Breakfast is eaten in silence. The routine is more obvious to him now than it was at first. Like Justine, Alice has a set pattern that includes food, exercise, and baby talk. Ed has a less predictable pattern, but he seems to be the one with the car keys.

Alice takes him for walks. Although sometimes when they go, she talks to him in a serious, sad way. When she does that, Mack has learned that a joke is a good way to change that tone. So he’ll grab her sleeve gently in his teeth, or fake nip at her heels as if to say, This is about fun. Keep moving. Sometimes he just barks until she breaks out of her mood with a laugh and halfhearted warning to stop it.

There has been a change in the air. Not only are the days a bit cooler, but the people in the house are treating him in a new way. At first, being shy, they treated him with courtesy and a little distance, which was appropriate. He was a stranger in their home. But now, now they are more casual with him, easy. Ed keeps bringing him new toys. Today it was a stuffie. Mack loves stuffies, and, unlike his terrier brethren, he doesn’t gut them to extract the squeaker, but gently bites the fuzzy bone-shaped toy to get it to emit the irresistible noise, then uses it as a pillow.

There’s lots to like about being a guest here, but he still wants Justine to come and get him.

Every time they offer Mack go-for-a-ride, he thinks that Justine will be there. Every time they pass the cemetery gates, he asks them to let him out to see if there’s a hint of her scent on the ground, to see if Justine has come to get him. But they never do.