The place was really starting to smell of shit and piss. Bean didn’t seem to notice as she scurried over and gave Snook a hug. The dog fussed over her, tail flapping, snout nuzzling her neck, her tongue licking at Bean’s face and making her giggle. Two of the puppies were watching their mum and nosing around the girl, mimicking her interest. The third just lay on the mattress next to a smear of her own poo. There were two male puppies and one female, so Bean had named them Mario, Luigi and Peach. It was Peach who didn’t get up, just lifted her head and angled it to see where her mum was.
Bean noticed. ‘What’s wrong with Peach?’
Tyler knelt down and stroked her. Her brothers snuffled over, sniffing at his hand as it ran through her fur. He placed the palm of his hand against her chest, felt a racing heartbeat. He did the same to Mario to compare, but it felt the same. Peach’s eyes were milky, like she couldn’t focus. Tyler knew nothing about raising dogs, house-training, any of it. Snook ambled over and nudged Peach, licking her face, and the puppy responded with a faint flick of the tail and a high-pitched keen.
‘Tyler?’
There was worry in Bean’s voice.
‘Maybe she’s just tired,’ he said.
But it was obviously more than that.
‘Should we take her home, feed her up?’
Tyler shook his head as he stroked the pup. ‘The best place for her is with her mum.’
Bean made a show of covering Snook’s ears as if the dog could understand them. ‘Mums are not always the best at looking after their children.’
Tyler gave Snook a stroke of her muzzle and moved Bean’s hands away.
‘Peach can’t eat anything we give her,’ he said. ‘Puppies only drink their mother’s milk until they’re stronger.’
Bean stared at Peach, who had put her head back down on the mattress. Luigi stumbled and fell on top of her, and Tyler lifted him off.
‘But what if she doesn’t get stronger?’ Bean said.
Tyler took a deep breath. ‘Let’s just wait and see, OK?’
Bean frowned, knew she was being fobbed off.
She fussed over Snook and the puppies as Tyler got up and looked around. He picked up an old magazine and ripped out a few pages, used them to scoop up as much of the puppies’ shit as he could, all the stuff that was on the mattress or nearby. The shit was runny and left dark stains behind as he piled up shitty magazine pages in the old fireplace full of masonry rubble and dust.
Bean’s comment about mums not looking after their kids was obviously about Angela, but he pictured Monica in that hospital bed, Ryan holding her hand.
The puppies had gone quiet. Tyler saw that they were all feeding, Peach less enthusiastic than her brothers, Snook’s teat occasionally falling from her mouth, making her search about, groggy and unfocused. Bean had her bottom lip sticking out as she gently stroked Peach, nudging her back towards Snook’s teat.
He wondered how much Bean remembered. For a little while after she was born, Angela seemed to get her shit together. She stayed off the hard drugs and restricted herself to functional heavy drinking, enough to be able to keep a baby clean and fed, just about. Maybe it was having to focus on Bean that gave her the idea that life was worth sticking at.
But gradually she began slipping back into old habits. Barry and Kelly were teenagers by then and concentrated their growing anger on belittling their mum, with a lot of success, driving her back to smack and leaving Tyler to pick up looking after Bean. Angela became so incapable and incoherent that she was sometimes a danger to Bean. Ovens left on, cigarette scorch marks on the carpet, which could easily have become infernos. Once she forgot Bean in her buggy completely, leaving her in the car park outside the tower block. Tyler heard his sister’s screams as he walked home from school, God knows how long she’d been there, her nose and fingers freezing in the winter weather, her bum red with nappy rash once Tyler got her upstairs and changed. Angela was asleep on the floor in Tyler’s room, and he was unable to wake her. Next day he couldn’t get any sense out of her, she claimed to have no memory of it. He suspected she’d gone out to score and in the adrenaline rush and alcohol haze she’d simply forgotten she had a baby to look after.
He should’ve reported it. Maybe Bean would’ve been better off in a foster home or with adopted parents. But he knew he wouldn’t get to go with her, they’d be separated, and he couldn’t stand that. Besides, he was doing a decent job of looking after her, cleaning up around Mum and making sure he and Bean got washed and fed every now and then. And the truth was, Angela would die without them. She might die anyway, of course, but it would happen quicker if there wasn’t that tiny spark keeping her going, somewhere buried deep down, the idea that she was supposed to be a parent, supposed to look after these kids, even if the reality was the opposite.
And as time went on, Tyler was less likely to report Angela’s failures to social services because it would be even more likely that he and Bean would be split up. He learned to cope with Angela’s erratic behaviour, learned to watch out for his sister and make sure he had all eventualities covered. And Angela retreated, sensing his growing confidence and competence. She slumped further into self-pity and smack, the spiral of those two things. Tyler wondered if he’d made a mistake, maybe covering for his mum and looking out for Bean made Angela abandon her responsibilities, because she knew Tyler would pick up the slack. But what the fuck was the alternative – endanger Bean? He wasn’t willing to do that, not back then and not now.
He sighed.
‘Come on,’ he said to Bean, still stroking Peach. He made a mental note to look into why puppies might get sick. ‘Time to go home.’