48

Fried clams and french fries. That’s what we end up with, and they are perfect, even if I have to convince midwesterner Mitch that consuming whole clams, with bellies, is the only proper way to eat the bivalves. Clam strips are akin to fake maple syrup—okay but not right.

Mitch pushes the mess from dinner across the table and sets up his laptop. We sit side by side, hoping to get within range of someone’s Wi-Fi. The first thing we do is look at the little video clip again. There he is, my little man, strutting his stuff on some stranger’s deck, his open mouth looking like he’s smiling, laughing. Enjoying himself. As if he’s right at home. I take a big swallow of my Sam Adams, trying to push the lump in my throat down. “What do we do now?”

“Let’s check out the local papers, read their lost-and-found ads.”

Mitch’s fingers fly over the keyboard, scouring the Internet for clues as to Mack’s whereabouts. Artie said he’d left him near Exit 8, so we search for newspapers in that geographic area. We find dailies in Springfield and Ludlow, Worcester and Hartford. None of them have a found ad to give me any hope, just sunglasses, bracelets, and a trash barrel.

Out of his black suit and dressed in chinos and an untucked denim shirt, Mitch looks a little more like the guy I hijacked, and I’m beginning to feel like he has a lot of variations: Hell’s Angel, Beau Brummell, and now average guy. He taps the keyboard. “Let’s put an ad in all of them. Tell me what to say.”

“Blue merle Shetland sheepdog with one blue eye and one brown one, missing in area of Exit Eight off the MassPike. Very intelligent. Answers to Mack. Desperately missed by owner. Call…” I can’t even get my number out before the magnitude of this loss clamps my throat tight.

Mitch pauses in his typing to wrap an arm around my shoulders. “We’ll find him.”

What I wonder is how I’ve managed to find him, this white knight. Life is so random. I would have to be a philosopher to even begin to understand how life isn’t really lived in the big picture, but moment to moment. The big picture was trying to go east cheaply; the moment was when I decided to hop on the back of a Harley behind a total stranger, panic overruling common sense. A woman alone, and this guy might have turned out to be a mass murderer.

I have no idea if there is something happening here between a single mom with a missing dog and a one-legged violinist, but for right now, it’s pretty nice to have his company. I am really not in the market for anything more. I’ve reached the point in life when the need or desire for a permanent fixture in my bedroom is so diminished, I no longer think it’s missing from my life. Still, that arm around my shoulders and the sense of someone else taking care of things is sweet.

Mitch sips at his beer as he patiently fills in all the info for an ad in all the papers. I am suddenly so weary that I can hardly keep my head up. The weight of an entire life believing that my father had turned his back on me has shifted to the weight of knowing that he hadn’t. The relief that at least I know that Mack is alive is almost as heavy a burden as worrying about him. New worries have risen. Having seen him, I may never be able to find him. It is certainly better, knowing for certain that he’s not dead on the side of the road, but also cruel, in fate’s own way, to have him just out of reach.

Just like Tony has been out of reach for the past seven years.

*   *   *

I call the restaurant. I know there’s no way my ex-husband is at home on a Sunday morning. Marcone’s Grill serves one of the best post–Sunday Mass breakfasts in the area. He’ll be there, commanding the troops. This is good for me, because it means the call will be short and to the point and done. Above all, it means I won’t have to chance getting his wife on the phone. Anthony, like me, didn’t remain celibate. Unlike me, he settled down. One of the very few times Tony went east was to attend the wedding. I put him in the charge of a flight hostess and spent the next two days biting my nails until Anthony put him on the return flight.

The kitchen phone rings four times before a female voice answers with a rough, get-out-of-my-way “Marcone’s.”

I ask for Anthony. The rough voice on the other end asks the “Who’s calling?” question and I have almost no idea what to say. Finally, I just give her my name. It clearly means nothing to this woman, and the phone clatters as she drops it onto the counter. I hear her bellowing for Anthony. “For you!” I notice she doesn’t mention who’s calling, even though she’s got my name. This woman needs to polish her secretarial skills. It’s like ambushing Anthony. Very rarely have I ever called him, and this time it’s going to be far more difficult than asking for the support check a little early.

“Marcone.”

“Anthony, it’s Justine”

“Justine, hi. What’s wrong?”

Two little words and the floodgates open.

“I just don’t know what to do.” I can’t quite make my mouth say what I’ve called to say—“Please take him”—but Anthony has figured it out.

“Send him here. I’ll take care of him. You’ve had him all this time, all by yourself.”

It’s what I know has to happen. But I don’t know if it’s really the right thing to do. “I don’t want to lose him.”

“You won’t. You’re his mother, and you always will be. But a little distance may be just the thing.” I remember why I fell for him in the first place, this sensible, sensitive guy. Fleetingly, I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed with him.

“What will Mary say about this? Shouldn’t you at least talk with her?” I realize that I am putting my son into the same position I once suffered, that of stepchild in another woman’s home. I feel my knees quake. I am about to change my mind.

“Mary will love having him. Besides, he needs to get to know his half brothers.”

The difference is in the blood. Anthony’s twins are Tony’s blood.

“Just for a little while.”

“As long as he wants to stay, Justine, he’s welcome.” The phone is muffled for a moment as Anthony responds to someone’s question. In that space, I feel the last of my anger at Anthony dissolve.

“Anthony, I really appreciate your help.”

“You should have asked for it more.”

“I didn’t want to. I chose to cut the ties, after all.”

“Justine, I never meant to be mean to you. I was just so conflicted.” This last word sounds so Brooklyn coming out of Anthony’s mouth.

“What did we know; we were practically kids.”

“Now I have a good business, and a good home. Mary is a great girl. I think Tony will be okay here. I’ll put him to work in the kitchen. Who knows, maybe he’ll like food service.” Anthony’s voice is so excited, I have a flash of guilt that I so deliberately kept Tony away from his father.

“He’s watched me in the food-service industry long enough; I don’t think it has an appeal for him.”

“Fair enough. Look, Justine, I’ll send you plane fare. He can finish the school year in Seattle and be out here for the summer. How’s that?”

*   *   *

It was a good plan, a workable plan. A summer back east, then home to me in the fall. Except that Tony went ballistic.

*   *   *

Mitch has noticed my slump. “You okay?”

“I think I’ve hit my wall. I’m exhausted.”

Which leaves the question of the rest of the night sitting between us.

“I’ll take you back to your mother’s house.”

“Stepmother.”

“Step, then. Or not.”

It’s that little “Or not” that makes me smile. “I really don’t want to go back there. I’m done with that house.”

“Stay here.”

We are back at Mitch’s hotel, sitting in the lounge, having a last glass of wine and munching the endless popcorn provided instead of bar peanuts like those at Candy’s Place. Mitch leans over. “It’s been hard, hasn’t it?”

“You don’t know the half.” I am so tired that I spill out half my life story, only partially edited. I’ve told him about Mack and our dancing and why I am so desperate to have my dog back. I tell Mitch about leaving home the day after high school graduation and why coming back to New Bedford was supposed to heal that breach, and maybe it has. Because my thoughts have been on the past so much, I tell him about sending my son away when he was sixteen and how that made him so hurt and angry that he estranged himself from me. Mitch hands me his clean handkerchief.

I swallow back the uncontrolled self-pity and ask him to tell me about life with a handicapped plate. He talks of being a normal teenager, then not a normal teenager. About friends who were freaked-out and friends who remained loyal. About being a badass when the mood strikes and the way some music is so divine that he plays without even thinking, just letting the music take charge.

And now we’re at that junction where every date eventually arrives—the yes or no moment.

“No expectations, Justine. There are two beds, and I don’t think I snore.” Mitch tosses this out so casually that it almost seems conceivable that I would share a room with him and not sleep with him.

“What about my expectations?”

Mitch smiles and those blue eyes, just the color of the sky on a bright fall day, light up and he is suddenly quite lovely.

His room is only one floor up, but we take the elevator. I can see us in the mirror that lines the walls. I fit neatly against Mitch’s side. My hair is scrambled and I watch myself struggle to fix it. I watch Mitch watching me, so I keep the worry off my face as the questions rise with the elevator.

Do I know what I’m doing? Is this a good idea? Am I simply giving in to all my bad impulses that I have worked so hard to control?

All questions cease when the room door closes behind Mitch and he takes me into his arms in a decidedly not-for-comfort-alone manner. We make love and then I am out cold.

*   *   *

Room-darkening drapes make me think that’s it’s before dawn when I finally climb out of the deepest sleep I’ve enjoyed in two weeks—dreamless, cocooned in the comfort of a hotel mattress and surprisingly cushy pillows. The length of a good man beside me, but respectfully on his own side of the bed. I reach for him and can’t find him. Sitting up, I hold the sheet to my chest like a ravished virgin and see Mitch sitting at the little table provided by the hotel, thumping away at his laptop, his head moving to something on his iPod. A pair of crutches rests against the other chair. I wake up and smell the coffee. He’s been down to the complimentary breakfast and brought up food. On one leg. Amazing man.

Mitch closes his laptop, winds the earphone cords around his iPod, and pushes his chair away from the table. I take that as an invitation. He takes me onto his lap and wraps his arms around me. “Pack your bags, lady, and let’s get outta Dodge.”

“Do you always talk like someone from the Wild West?”

“That’s the Wild Midwest to you.”

“Where are we going?”

“To find your dog. Look.” Mitch turns the laptop so that I can read what he’s found while I’ve been sleeping. “Found, small collielike dog. Gray and black, one blue eye, one brown. Call…”

I nearly weep. “That’s got to be him. Where is he?”

“This is the Moodyville Press. I’ll Google Moodyville; you call the number.”

I wonder if the hope on my face will blind Mitch. My hand is shaking as I punch the number. I misdial twice before I get all ten digits right.

“You have reached Ed and Alice Parmalee. Please leave your message…”

Her voice. The one on the video, the one that calls my dog “Buddy.” Alice. Ed and Alice Parmalee. I know where my dog is.

“Mrs. Parmalee, my name is Justine Meade, and the dog you found”—I actually have to take a breath—“is mine.”