Chapter Twenty-six

As it goes, it’s not as bad as it might be. The garage is fairly well ventilated and the roll-out cot isn’t the worst thing Keller has ever slept on. It’s better than sleeping on the lumpy couch on the enclosed porch at his aunt Biddie’s house, and certainly more private than Meadowbrook or a barracks. They’ve given him a three-drawer bureau with an attached mirror and an old-fashioned pitcher and bowl. He’s got bathroom privileges, but he prefers to shave in the garage rather than take up time and make a mess in the house bathroom. His second-floor bedroom at Clayton’s was smaller and, like this garage, unheated. He’s on trial, he knows, and heat in the garage is the least of his concerns. If this situation doesn’t pan out, well, Keller doesn’t like to think of what might happen if it doesn’t.

No, the accommodations aren’t bad, but all the same Keller feels a lot like he did as a kid, living in someone else’s house, on someone else’s terms. Not exactly welcome, not exactly family, not exactly friend. At least he gets a paycheck and his free time is his own. The job is physically demanding, and at night he aches in places he never has before, not even after hauling pots and nets and gear from boat to shore. Not even after sleeping in a foxhole dug out of the rocky soil. The struggle to get Rick from bed to bath to chair and back again is a challenge even for someone as used to hard work as Keller is. Mrs. Stanton suggested that he visit the VA to get some pointers on how to lift a body, and maybe he will one day.

Pax spends most of his time in what Keller thinks of as Rick’s sickroom. He’s not sick, at least not in the sense of enduring a disease, but it is clear that this room has become his whole world, that to venture out of it is a labor-intensive struggle to get the clumsy wheelchair over the sill and through a door that barely accommodates its width. Leaving the house is worse, requiring Keller to throw his weight counter to the weight of the man and chair and roll it down step by step. He thinks it would almost be easier if he lifted Rick out of the chair and carried him, but Rick balks at that, the indignity of it. So, for most of the day Pax sits with him, his head on Rick’s lap, eyes closed as Rick strokes his head over and over. Sometimes Keller hears him talking to the dog, whispering words that are meant for the dog’s ears only. The dog patiently takes these confidences in and never reveals what they are.

But every night, Keller is quietly joined in the garage by his dog. He never orders Pax to come, but in the hour after Rick has been put to bed and Mrs. Stanton has gone upstairs to her room, the dog, having surveyed the property and deemed it safe, comes through the half-open door to crawl into Keller’s narrow cot. Stretched side by side, they both drift into sleep.

*   *   *

“I don’t see any shoes.” Keller has gotten Rick up, toileted, shaved, and into a short-sleeved shirt and loose trousers.

“No point in shoes.”

“You still have feet. You need something on them.”

“Why? It’s not like I’m walking out of here.”

Keller abandons the search for shoes, kneels down in front of Rick, and slides on a pair of open-back slippers. The left one falls off. He puts it back on. “All set. How ’bout we get you into the kitchen for breakfast?”

“Just have Francesca bring it in here.”

“She’s set the table.”

Rick says nothing.

Pax bangs the den door open with his head and Rick finally smiles. “Hey, big boy.” The dog bounds in, tail swinging. He plants his head in Rick’s lap, eyes up, ears up, doing his morning greeting routine. The dog fills up a lot of the space in the tiny room and Keller has more than once had to rescue pill bottles and teacups swept off the low tray table beside Rick’s chair.

Keller leaves to tell Francesca that she needs to set up the breakfast tray again. He’s batting zero as far as getting Rick to leave his room. He tries every morning, and every morning Rick ignores him or gets mad. “I didn’t hire you to pester me. I’m comfortable and it’s not worth the struggle. I’m in the way. Leave me alone.”

“I don’t know why you keep trying.” Francesca has already set up the tray with juice, toast, scrambled eggs cooling off too quickly. She picks it up. “Grab some eggs for yourself. The coffee’s ready.” She gracefully swings the tray up like an experienced diner waitress and disappears down the hall.

There is one place set. Francesca’s used plate and fork are in the sink. Keller pours himself some coffee and helps himself to the rest of the eggs. He doesn’t sit, but leans against the counter, forking cold eggs into his mouth and sloshing black coffee after them. He can hear her voice, but not distinctly. It always sounds the same to him, like she’s mollifying a child. She doesn’t treat Rick like a man anymore; she treats him, in Keller’s opinion, like a truculent ten-year-old.

This is a house with very little thought given to decor. Keller knows that they moved here hastily. She’s told him how it was. After months of waiting, Rick’s discharge from the hospital seemingly happened overnight. Francesca has been so consumed with caring for Rick that she’s done little to make this small house homey. Furniture, sure; curtains, yes. But only a picture or two on the walls. One picture in particular tells him more of their story than he’s been able to figure out from the bits of conversation he’s had with either of the Stantons. Rick in a baseball uniform, in mid pitch, his back leg kicked, his pitching hand just unfurling across his chest. It’s telling, he thinks, that this photograph is in a room where Rick never goes.

Keller has fashioned a clothes rack in one corner and his uniform and fatigues hang there, at the ready for his one-weekend-a-month service in the Army Reserves. This will be the first time he’ll be away from the Stantons, and the first time since boot camp that he won’t have his dog by his side. It’s just a weekend, and not far away, just down on the Cape at Camp Edwards. It’s been a bit of a surprise, how guilty he feels. Having just gotten the Stantons to where they are comfortable in having him around to do all the physical work and now leaving her to struggle with it for two nights. Guilty because he’s really looking forward to being among healthy, fit men, even if it’s only to drive a truck from one base to another in simulated maneuvers. Rick wears on him.

The other night, Keller brought up the subject of baseball, like any two guys sitting in a room might do. “What do you think of the Red Sox’s chances this year?”

“I don’t. I don’t think of that at all and I’d prefer it if you wouldn’t talk about it.”

Rick slammed the door on that topic, which frankly leaves very little for the two of them to talk about during those uncomfortable moments while Keller bathes Rick or lifts him from chair to toilet. War talk isn’t anything either of them wants to discuss, and, without the masculine conversational safety net of sports talk, that only leaves Pax.

She’s not much better. At least calling her “Missus” has worn off. She’s got a couple of years on him, like she might have been a senior when he was a sophomore, just about that much. Caring for her husband has prematurely aged her. Not in appearance, except for the dusky circles beneath her eyes, but in spirit. Maybe it’s just that being married to an older guy, you can’t be a kid. Keller was never a kid, either, but he’s pretty sure that Francesca has become this way, not been raised to it. He understands Francesca’s seriousness, and, coupled with the weight of her burden, her gravity.

But it’s not a bad situation. After all, he’s still got Pax.