Shark trots along at Meghan’s side as she motors herself down the block. They’ve got some quick errands to do before work—a stop at the bodega for a sandwich, another at the dry cleaner’s to pick up her dress. She hopes that they’ve been able to get the grease stain out of the jersey fabric. It’s her go-to dress for those increasingly frequent casual occasions when Marley swings by and says “Let’s go to the” and then fills in the blank with anything from getting ice cream to barbecue (hence the stain) to a stroll, or “roll,” as he calls it, to a gallery opening or an afternoon in Central Park. The one place he hasn’t taken her is to his own home, a fifth-floor walk-up.
Since her last weekend with the Flints, Meghan has stopped worrying about spending too much time with Marley. Although Carol had dropped the topic of telling Rosie the truth, she hadn’t been able to keep herself from suggesting that dating was a nice step forward and Meghan should stop saying that what she was doing with Marley wasn’t dating.
They still haven’t taken the next step. In the solitude of her own bedroom, the ambient light filtering between the drawn curtains, she thinks about it and tells herself that there is nothing to be afraid of, this final frontier of recovery. And in the broad light of day, she studies her scars and pinches the insensate skin of her legs and wonders that she can even think about enjoying a physical intimacy. She sees a vague image of herself, an unmoving lumplike thing. Marley deserves better.
Errands completed—success with the stain removal—Shark points the way toward the office. It’s such a nice early-fall day that Meghan decides to forgo the bus and go the ten blocks under her own power. Shark absorbs all the looks from strangers; he is the attractive distraction from her unique occupation of the sidewalk. People see him and smile, and then see her, and if those smiles sometimes soften into dismay, or embarrassment, she’s learned to smile back and nod in that way of New Yorkers, acknowledging without acknowledging. He also makes it clear who needs to give way when they hit those complicated spots in the route, places where construction and open grates and sandwich boards constrict the easy flow of foot traffic. He clears the way at the curb cuts, nosing foolish upright beings out of the way when they don’t sense her behind them. They make almost as good time as if she’d taken a car; they’ve miraculously gotten all the walk lights in their favor. Her mother is still horrified at the idea of her handicapped daughter at large in this city. She has no idea how comfortable it has become.
“Come see, Mom. Come stay with me.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Your father…” Meghan wonders that her mother, who once lived all over the world, has settled so firmly into her little retirement home.
“Then come alone.” She says that and can picture her mother’s face, a mask of fear and horror at the idea of flying alone to a strange city. Before Evelyn can begin the litany of obstacles to what is actually a fairly common adventure, Meghan says, “I’ll send a car to pick you up.”
Evelyn parries the idea by saying, “You must have some time coming. Why don’t you fly down?” Meghan takes a little satisfaction in the fact that her mother, who expresses such concern over her living in New York, credits her with the ability to get to Florida without trouble, a sort of diametrically opposed set of ideas.
“Not yet.” She doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have time coming; she does. But tucked into the very back of her mind, Meghan holds a vague notion that she will use that time when she finally gives in and goes to Rosie. She hasn’t allowed herself to articulate that notion, but it’s there all the same.
Shark rises up on hind legs and punches the steel plate in the wall. The glass door slowly opens and Meghan and Shark go through. Don Flint is in the lobby. “Good morning, Don.”
“Hey, kiddo.” He pats Shark with the hand not holding his travel mug. “Who’s a good boy?” Both Don and Meghan know that patting a service dog is considered bad manners, but Don is family and the rules don’t apply.
Shark wags his tail and gives Don’s hand a quick lick. Shark isn’t one of those reserved dogs who tolerate adoration from outsiders. He pretty much sucks it up.
“You going up?” Don leads the way to the rank of elevators. A covey of young law clerks stand silently, studying their phones. Meghan smiles at Don’s eye roll. “Carol’s wondering when you might grace us with another weekend visit. It’s been a while.”
Marley and she have had plans for so many late-summer weekends that she knows she’s been neglecting her only family. Before she can say anything, Don says, “Bring your friend. We’d love to meet him.”
“I might just do that. But he’s kind of shy.”
“We deal with all kinds. We’ll make him feel comfortable, I promise.” The elevator doors gasp open. Without so much as raising their eyes from their screens, the covey of clerks, noting Don’s rank and Meghan’s chair, stand back to let them on.
As they enter their floor, Don puts his hand on Meghan’s shoulder. “After you get settled in, come on down to my office.”
Shark leads the way to Don’s office, tail active behind, hopeful that there might be a treat in there for him. It’s not without precedent. Don has been known to keep a stash of Wheat Thins in his desk drawer, and Shark snaps them up as if they were meant for canine consumption. Meghan chooses to ignore this training sin. As long as Don doesn’t make Wheat Thins a prize for a trick, she figures the dog knows the subtle difference between a treat and a reward.
She parks her chair in front of Don’s big desk, where he keeps an empty place just for her visits. He comes around from behind his desk and sits in the guest chair beside her. For some reason, Meghan starts to worry that he’s got bad news for her. “How’s your friend Rosie doing?”
“Rosie? I think she’s doing just fine.” Meghan gently scratches the knob at the top of Shark’s skull. “She has this dog now, and I think that’s been good for her.”
“You should go see her,” Don says, and Meghan hears his office voice, the one he gives orders with so gently that most folks don’t realize they’ve been told, not asked.
“Don, it’s not that easy.”
“I think it is. We’ll take you, if you want.”
“I can get there; it’s not that. Marley would be happy to get me there. It’s just that…”
“Look, I know that you think telling her that you had something to do with her release is going to change the dynamic between you. But, don’t you see, not telling her has already done that.”
He’s right, of course. She has begun ducking Rosie, and the absence of her friend’s voice and counsel is painful. But she just can’t keep pretending.
Shark lifts his head to encourage Meghan to keep scratching his occipital bump. Then he drops his head in her lap, sighs.
“Besides, we’d love a report on the house. A firsthand report. Something we can put in the family newsletter.”
Meghan doesn’t mistake an order for a wish. She gives Don a smile. “Let’s give it another month; then there will be more to report on. Maybe in another month, I’ll be able to get inside it and really see what’s going on. At least on the first floor.”
“Okay. Another month it is.”
Meghan knows that there is something unreasonable about this stubborn refusal to solve Rosie’s central mystery. It isn’t like she didn’t have moments during their conversations when she wasn’t tempted, but there is no way, to her thinking, that admitting that she put Rosie up for acceptance by the Advocacy for Justice isn’t going to be a bit awkward. It isn’t just that; it’s also having orchestrated the further benefit to Rosie of having the Homestead project given to her, a place where she can regroup, build up her reserves, and then make her own decision about what’s next in her life. That’s all that Meghan wished for Rosie. But, having done it, she worries now that Rosie will resent the intrusion. The presumption. Meghan knows firsthand that it can be galling to be grateful.
Those first weeks after she had been returned stateside to undergo the surgeries that weren’t life-saving, but those intended to make her life endurable, any act of kindness was enough to make her feel vulnerable to a complete loss of self. An orderly would pick up the dropped magazine off the floor and silently hand it back to her, a thin smile on his lips; a nurse would pat her hand even as she changed out the IV. She was perceived as someone needing comfort, kindness, tenderness, and the feeling was as painful as the persistent ache in her spine, the exquisite pain as her skin sloughed. The numbness of skin not her own. As wounded as she was, she resented being reminded of it by these thoughtless acts of kindness.
Shark presses himself against her, his thick-skulled head in her lap. Meghan strokes his head, puts her cheek against his muzzle. “What would I do without you?” He hunn-hunns. His rudder tail swings. “I’m so glad I have you.” Maybe Don is right; maybe it is time to get over this need to keep Rosie in the dark about her hand in the events that have changed Rosie’s life. For someone who saw some pretty horrible sights in-country, Meghan finds herself squeamish at the thought of having a conversation that begins with “Oh, by the way, I’m the one who put your name in at the Advocacy for Justice. I’m the one who suggested that you go to Dogtown.” The first thing Rosie will want to know is why. Why keep that secret? And that has no answer.
When Meghan gets to the dog park after work, Marley is already there. Spike is flopped down on the ground, exhausted from chasing the ball. Shark goes up and nudges her with his nose and her tail twitches in a halfhearted doggy hello. Marley gives her a similar greeting. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.” She maneuvers her chair to the bench where he sits and sends Shark off to chase his ball. “You’re here early.”
“Been here pretty much all day.” He looks ashy, and she can see a slight tremble in his hand. A bad day. Meghan and Marley have known each other long enough now that she recognizes the signs. Despite Spike’s best efforts, Marley is in his dark place.
She knows better than to ask what has triggered the mood; she understands better than most that talking about it doesn’t necessarily help. So Meghan takes the hand that trembles and holds it in her lap, which has no feeling, and they sit quietly as their dogs come back to sit with them, tennis balls left on the ground.
The sun is setting, so the light between buildings blooms into a gorgeous orange glow and then fades. And still they sit there, although Marley has put a long arm around her against the evening chill. The dogs wait, heads on the laps of their respective people. Other dog walkers have come and gone and now the place is theirs alone. It feels like they are in a cocoon of their own making. No, not a cocoon; that would suggest that they were somehow transforming, growing, and would be released into a glorious freedom. More a cave or a den. A place to hibernate, to lick wounds.
Suddenly, Shark jumps to his feet, shakes, and slams a heavy paw down on their conjoined hands. He woofs.
“I think its dinnertime.” Meghan says.
“Past time.”
“Come up. Stay with me.”
Marley takes back the arm over her shoulders and the hand she’s grasping. “Not if I can’t stay in the way that I wish you wanted me to.”
“I want you not to be alone.”
“I want you to want something more than mollycoddling me, treating me like a…”
“How? How do I treat you?”
“Like a friend. Like you got my six.” He pushes himself to his full height. “I want you to treat me like a lover, not a fellow fallen soldier.”
“I can’t give you what you want.” Meghan grabs for his hand, but he pulls it back. Spike is on her feet, and pushes her way between them, a little confused, her training preparing her for defusing conflict, but this conflict is beyond her ken.
“It ain’t the sex, Meghan. I hope you know that. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Even to her own ears, it sounds tepid, devoid of the kind of feeling he deserves.
Marley snaps the leash on Spike’s collar. “When you can let yourself get to the point where you can accept someone’s true feelings, you’ll have finally recovered. In the meantime, I’ll find another dog park.”
“Marley, no. Please. Come home with me.”
He stands there in front of her, a tall, handsome black man, slightly balding. The trauma of war exposed by the tremor in his hand and the way the curly-coated dog presses herself against him. The disappointment of rejection, for that’s what she has done, writ large on his face.