Chapter 31.

Later, in the car on the way back to the Commons, Martha Hiller admitted that she hadn’t been taking her blood thinner prescription. “I was just tired of bleeding at the drop of a hat.” She looked pensively out the window for a few moments, and then she cleared her throat.

Josh tensed out of habit, afraid she was going to change the subject to his worrisome life. Then he realized that would be okay—he could truthfully say he was looking for a teaching job and planning where he wanted to live.

“Frankly,” his mother said, “I’m tired of the whole thing. It wouldn’t be so bad to have a stroke—a real stroke—and never wake up.”

Shocked, Josh didn’t know what to say. But he remembered Vicky’s words: This is not about you. Finally he nodded. He reached over and patted Martha’s hair, now dry and extra curly.

Pulling into the Northport Commons driveway, Josh stopped the car in front of the entrance. As he started to open the door, his mother said, “Wait.” She picked up her handbag. “Josh, I’m going to ask you a favor. It’s something very important to me.”

“Well, sure,” he said, shrinking inwardly from her sober tone of voice.

“Don’t say yes until you know what it is.” She took a sheaf of papers out of her handbag. “This is a copy of my advance directive. I’ve already asked Vicky to be my health care agent, but I need an alternate, a backup in case for some reason she can’t.”

Josh stifled an impulse to put his hands over his ears. “You mean, if you— I’d have to—”

His mother was smiling wryly. “No, you wouldn’t have to ‘pull the plug.’ You wouldn’t have to decide anything. I’ve already decided what I’d want done or not done. You’d just have to make sure that the medical people know what’s in here—” she shook the papers— “and that they don’t decide for themselves.” When he didn’t speak right away, she added, “It wouldn’t be like euthanizing a dog.”

Josh flinched. Martha sighed. “Excuse me for speaking bluntly.” She went on, “If you feel that you couldn’t be my health care agent, I’ll ask my cousin Susie to be the alternate.”

“No, I’ll do it,” said Josh. He took a deep breath. “Of course I’ll do it.” Taking the papers from her hand, he looked straight at his mother. His throat ached, making his voice hoarse. “In fact, I’m honored that . . . that you have confidence in me.”

Martha Hiller looked back quietly for a moment. Then she smiled at him, not a fond motherly smile, but as one adult to another. “Thank you,” she said.

After walking his mother to the elevator, Josh sat in his car for a moment. He placed his set of Martha Y. Hiller’s advance directive on the passenger seat. Running his right hand over the steering wheel, he stroked Molly’s tooth marks. Life with a dog: puppy to ashes in twelve years. Was it worth it?

Yes.

I do want a dog, thought Josh. But first I have to get a job, so that I can afford a dog. As well as a place to live, in which to put the dog.

As Josh drove out through the gates of the senior residence, his thoughts spurted forward suddenly, like water from an un-kinked hose. Maybe he didn’t have to wait until he had a job and a place to live before he got a dog. There was a dog, a special dog, who was already waiting for him: Tucker!

Carol Harrison was fond of Tucker, but even before her accident, she’d seemed overwhelmed by him. And now that she was hobbling around on crutches, she’d probably be relieved to turn Tucker over to a good home. As for Gardner, he didn’t even like the dog.

Josh’s car soon slowed to a crawl in the mid-afternoon traffic along Route 128, but his mind raced ahead. Tomorrow morning, when Gardner Harrison brought Tucker to day care, he’d offer to take the dog off their hands. After work he’d face Barbara Schaeffer with his lease violation. If he had to, he’d move out immediately. Yeah, the Dreamland Motel probably had a vacancy—not right next to Rick Johnson, he hoped.

It had been so clear, from the day Josh met them, that the Harrisons and Tucker were mismatched. Why had it taken Josh all this time to realize that, in contrast, he and Tucker were meant for each other?

It wouldn’t be convenient. But screw the obstacles to true love! Josh smiled as he imagined murmuring into the dog’s flapped ear, “Oh, Tucker . . . It was you, all along.”

A green highway sign announced the exit for Westham. On an impulse, Josh moved into the right lane and drove down the ramp. Parked at a gas station, he called Tanya. Of course it was still his house, too, but . . . “I just wanted to give you a heads-up—I happened to be in the area, and I thought I’d stop by the house to pick up the dog bed.” She didn’t say anything right away, and Josh added, “Unless you’ve changed the locks.”

“No, why would I do that?”

Ending the call, Josh wondered if coming back here so soon was a good idea. Especially to get the dog bed. The dog bed fight last Labor Day had been the beginning of the end for Tanya and Josh.

The trouble had begun about eleven o’clock on that sweltering day, when Josh returned from the store with 12-packs of beer and soda and bags of ice for the cookout. Tanya met him in the driveway as he opened the trunk.

“I thought you were going to take the dog with you.”

What now? thought Josh. “Obviously I couldn’t take Molly on a day like this—I couldn’t leave her in the car, even with the windows down.”

“Fine. Well, obviously she pooped on the lawn right in front of the grill. Please clean it up before you do anything else.”

Josh had walked Molly earlier, just so that this problem wouldn’t occur, but sometimes dogs had more than one poop per morning. “Shit happens,” said Josh. Tanya didn’t laugh or smile. “I’ll clean it up right after I put the ice in the coolers, okay?”

She turned and went back into the house.

Josh carried the coolers out of the garage to the patio in back and filled them with layers of cans and ice. Maybe once the party got going, everything would be okay. Maybe all they needed was more people around, to dilute the acid eating away at him and Tanya.

Josh cleaned up Molly’s mess. By the time he came in the back door, his T-shirt was soaked with sweat under his arms and down his back, and his face seemed to be pulsing waves of heat.

Molly herself lay stretched out on the vinyl kitchen floor. She wagged her tail briefly for Josh, but she was too busy panting to get up. “Yeah,” he told Molly, “black isn’t a good color choice in this weather.”

“Josh,” called Tanya from the living room, over the sound of the laboring window air conditioner. That tone of voice meant she expected him to come and find out what she wanted. Josh didn’t see why he should.

Grabbing a paper towel, Josh ran it under the cold water and mopped his face and the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he called back.

Tanya stepped into the kitchen with the expression of someone who has been pushed past the point of endurance. “I don’t think you understand how much there is to do. People are going to start showing up.”

“What! What is there to do?” As Josh raised his voice, Molly got to her feet.

Tanya pointed toward the living room. “For starters, getting that dog bed out of sight. And the filthy blanket on the sofa. I’ve vacuumed up the dog hair from the floor.”

“Tanya. You’re losing it. The heat must be getting to your brain. This is a cookout, not a black-tie event. Nobody’s even going to go in the fucking living room.”

Molly whined, rolling her eyes from Josh to Tanya and back again.

“Yes, they are, because it’s so hot that no one is going to want to stay out in the fucking yard.” (Molly whimpered.) “Would you make your dog shut up?”

“You’re the one who’s upsetting Molly.” Josh looked down at the dog, who was trying to wag her tail and tuck it between her legs at the same time. He stroked her flattened ears. “Poor old girl. I think the stitches in her mouth still hurt.”

“Which is why we shouldn’t have put her through the pain and suffering, when that very expensive surgery wasn’t going to save her life anyway,” said Tanya.

Josh stared at her. “You’re still pissed about the money. What a big heart.” He was aware that Molly was creeping under the kitchen table, but he couldn’t lower his voice. “The bottom line—and it is literally the bottom line—is, you think it’s more your money than mine. I’m not allowed to make money decisions, because your income is one point five times more than mine. Did you forget who put you through law school?”

“Let’s get it right,” said Tanya. “a) It was actually your father who put me through law school. b) My income is one point seven times more than yours. And c) you’re on my health insurance, because yours is so pathetic. So would you mind very much putting the dog bed out of sight?”

“I’m taking a shower before I have heat stroke,” said Josh.

But before he could even start for the stairs, the doorbell rang. Lugging the vacuum cleaner down the hall, Tanya gestured with her chin at the front door. “Happy Labor Day!” called their first guest.

 

Ever since that day, Josh had filed the incident in his mind as evidence that their breakup was Tanya’s fault. He’d told Vicky the story of the Labor Day cookout from hell, and she’d taken his side. But now the memory only made him feel sad. Tanya cared so much about how their house looked, about having nice things around her. He hadn’t respected that.

On his way to their house, Josh decided to take a detour into the business side of Westham, to the self-storage unit where he’d left his stuff. Liberty Self-Storage was located between a plant nursery and a Target store. The front had a cheery façade of faux shutters and gables, but around back in the parking lot, the access side was bleakly functional. Fittingly bleak, thought Josh. Storage units were for a death, or an eviction. Or a divorce.

It was daunting, when Josh unlocked the door of Unit 5C, to face his stuff jammed together like trash in a compacter. He didn’t know where the Seth Thomas clock was in the tangle, or even who had last handled it. It might have been Carl, or it might have been Josh himself, with the unreal state of mind he’d been in that day. What if the clock was against the far wall—how long would it take him to move everything out and then move it all back again?

But Josh began, wiggling each item loose and setting it in the hall. Luckily the clock was only a few layers in from the door. Luckily he recognized its shape, bundled in a bathmat, on the seat of an office chair.

Josh had intended to pick up the dog bed before Tanya got home, but by the time he left the storage building, it was after five. Now he wasn’t sure whether he hoped to avoid Tanya or hoped to see her.

At the house, Josh started to pull into the driveway, then parked at the curb instead. The yard looked startlingly cared for: the hedge was trimmed and clean, the lawn was an even green, and annuals made splashes of color along the walk. The walk itself was level, with the cracked flagstones replaced.

Tanya came to the front door when Josh knocked. She was still in business garb, a tailored skirt and silk blouse, although she was barefoot. She looked tired and pale, as if she’d spent the summer in the office. “Hey.”

“Hey,” said Josh, holding up the clock. “Can we trade?”

“Oh. I didn’t think— It must have been a lot of trouble to dig that out of storage.”

“Not really,” said Josh. “It was only eight cubic feet into the unit.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but Tanya smiled as she took the clock. “Well, thank you.” She backed away from the door. “The dog bed’s in the living room. I’m glad you’re taking it. The more things get cleared out, the easier it is to get the house ready to show.”

The dog bed was just inside the living room doorway. Josh’s heart lurched when he saw it, and he braced himself as he folded the bulky thing and picked it up. But it didn’t smell like Molly any more. Come to think of it, the color was a shade lighter than he remembered.

“I washed the cover,” said Tanya.

“I can tell,” he said. Was he glad Molly’s scent was gone, or not? “Well, thanks.”

Tanya shrugged. “You know me—compulsive.”

Josh didn’t know what to say, because all he could think was, maybe he didn’t know her.

Tanya took a deep breath and added, “I thought it would be nice for you to get off to a fresh start, when you get a new dog.”

“Thanks,” Josh repeated, with more feeling. He had an impulse to give her a hug, but he wasn’t sure it would be welcome. “So—enjoy the clock.”

Reaching around the dog bed, Tanya gave him a quick, awkward hug. “Take care.”

Back on the expressway, Josh felt his throat aching. Sad wasn’t such a bad feeling. It was as if Josh had opened a closet, dreading to find horrors, but found only faded keepsakes.

 

 

 

 

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Old saying