THE SIXTY-FIRST DAY . . .
(Tuesday, August 11, morning)
CÉCE:
We’re at Curves, arm
curls. “You gonna take it again?” Marcy says.
“Nope. I’m more
comfortable with people having low expectations of
me.”
“Good. I’m like,
losing friends all over the place. What is wrong with
people?”
“They don’t like
seeing embarrassing pictures of themselves on your Facebook
page.”
“What the flip do you
know, Céce? You’re like the laziest status updater in our grade. By
the way, I’m getting a lot of friend requests with the snap of you
and the murderer making out as my profile pic.”
“Stop calling him
that.”
“Tell me you didn’t
go there again. Oh. My. God. You gotta move on already.”
“Stop! Telling me!
What to do.”
“You don’t have to
get spastic about it.”
“I wish I told
him.”
“Told him
what?” she says.
“That I love
him.”
“Cheech, get yourself
the black Chucks, put a safety pin through your eyebrow, and make
every song on your Nano an emo ballad. Snap. Outofit. You’re lucky
he didn’t kill you.”
“He never would have
hurt me.”
“Right, because
you’re so not hurt now.”
My biceps are
burning. “I hate exercise.”
“That’s why they call
it exercise, duh.”
“Wha?”
“Let’s go smoke a
bowl.”
“I was thinking more
like let’s hit the diner for cheesecake breakfast.”
“Compromise: We hit
the diner and smoke a bowl.”
I go in for the
takeout while she lights up behind the Dumpster. My one day off and
I’m trapped in Marcy’s sucky, depressing life. She drags me to the
city pool. Bazillion little kids screaming, sounds like ninety-nine
cats shredding each other. All the guys are getting up into this
one girl’s grill. She’s wearing a shoelace for a top.
“Hate lying out,” I say.
“Take off your
towel,” Marcy says. She’s sweating in her long-sleeve T-shirt.
“C’mon, advertise the globes, girl. Get the cutie-pies looking our
way. Wait, that dude is totally mackin’
on you.”
“He’s leering and he has a ball of socks tucked into his
suit.”
“Those are socks?
Those are socks. Ew, here he
comes.”
“How you doin’,
Mami?”
“Gag,” Marcy
says.
He moves on to the
next towel. “How you doin’, Mami?”
“This
sucks.”
“Why you gotta be so
stank, Cheech?”
“I don’t want to be.
I don’t know what I want to be.”
“Take off your
towel.”
“I’m gonna get a
knish.”
“If you lost like
fifteen to seventeen pounds, you would be like
twenty-second-prettiest in our grade. Serious. Wait, twenty-third.
By the way, can you tell Carmella to stop trying to push her crappy
cornbread on the customers? They chew it in front of her, and then
when she turns away they spit it into their napkins. You gain ten
pounds just looking at it, shit is like all
butter. Serious, Céce, have you tasted it?”
“Marce, you ever feel
like you’re just kind of floating along?”
“All the
time.”
“Anthony is on his
way to getting shot at, and we’re poolside.”
“Where you going now?
You better not be going back to that prison. Céce Vaccuccia, wait
up. Céce.”
(Tuesday, August 11, afternoon)
MACK:
“You sure, son?” Wash
says. “She came an awful long way again now, right?”
“Wash, if I go down
there, you know what’s gonna happen.”
“I expect she’ll say
hi, you’ll say hi, you take it from there.”
“It’ll be like
cutting a healing wound. She’s almost through it. Another month,
she won’t even remember me.”
“How about you,
though?” he says.
“How’s
that?”
“How you going to be
in a month when she stops visiting?”
“I’m not goin’ down
there.”
“Her mother’s here
too,” Wash says.
“Bad to
worse.”
“Guard in the center
says she brought some pretty interesting baking. Says they look
like goblin squares, but that they taste just fine.”
“They’re snowmen.
Christmas cornbread.”
“In August?” Wash
says.
“I know. No, sir. I
have to stick to my plan.”
Wash nods. “Okay.
Then let’s go see the AW.”
“The
AW?”
“We’re looking to
become part of a statewide program called You Can Teach an Old Dog
New Tricks,” the assistant warden says. “These Old Dog folks are
interested in helping exceptional men and women segue to
community-service-oriented careers after they finish their
bids.”
“What does
segue mean?”
“Transition. Move
on.”
“Warden, I ain’t
segueing to anything anytime soon.”
“Kid, I’m fifty.
Trust me, time has a way of passing faster the older you get. Now,
we’re not even publicizing this yet, because we don’t know if we’re
going to be accepted into the program. The program directors are
giving us a trial run, and then they’ll evaluate whether we’re up
to hosting the show. This is a one-shot deal. They’re giving us one
dog. That’s it. We do right by this dog, we get more dogs, more
chances for our people to be part of the program. On the other
hand, if we blow this, they’ll take the program someplace else.
Lots of prisons want to be a part of this, so we have to be
perfect. This is a highly competitive situation. They like the
trainer to be at least thirty years old, but I have to go with my
best chance for success this first time around. Mack?”
“Yessir.”
“I’m thinking about
offering you a chance to be our man. I’m personally accountable for
this application. Should I stake my credibility on you? Sergeant
Washington identified you as a possible excellent trainer. Wash has
a good eye. I rely on his instinct. If I put you in on this thing,
are you going to show Wash and me the respect we’re showing you?
You going to do a good job?”
“This is a trick,
right?”
“You would train the
dog to be a companion for a veteran,” he says.
“Wounded?”
AW nods. “You would
focus on housebreaking, teaching simple commands. Basically make
the dog a good buddy for the vet.”
“Sounds
easy.”
“Hold up. These are
dogs rescued from the shelters. Broken animals aimed at broken
soldiers.”
“Trained by broken
folks,” I say.
He nods. “You’re on
point. I won’t candy it for you. It’ll be a challenge.
So?”
“Warden, I killed a
man.”
“I know what you did,
son.”
I chew at my
thumbnail. “I guess I could give it a shot.”
“I don’t have to tell
you what happens if you mess up my deal.”
“You don’t and I
won’t.”
“Let’s get you in to
meet the program director.”
(The next morning, Wednesday, August 12, the sixty-second
day . . .)
“Mister Morse,” the program director says. He’s like
forty-five or something. Another ramrod-up-the-ass-type dude.
Except he hides his left hand in his right. Palsy struck, I
figure.
“You can call me
plain old Mack.”
“I will call you
Mister Morse, and you will call me
Mister Thompkins. Here’s how this works: You make one wrong move,
you’re out. You blow it, I blow it,
see?”
“Yessir.”
“I don’t need to be
out looking for a job in this economy.”
“No
sir.”
“Mister Morse, I’m going to be frank: You’re not making a
good impression on me.”
“How’s
that?”
“Looking away like
that. You know what I think of a man who can’t look another man in
the eye? I think he’s either weak or a liar, or both. So which is
it?”
“So which is it?” she says. “I’m too ugly to look at? Or
are you hiding something from me?” Soft hands on my face. She turns
my head so I have to look at her.
“You’re too pretty to look at.”
“Now that you’re looking me in the eye, I almost have to
believe you.”
I force myself to
look the man in the eye. “Sorry, sir.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be
better.” He sighs, rubs the back of his head, glares at me like I’m
the cause of his headache. “This is not like training a Seeing Eye
dog, you understand?”
“That’s real good,
because I only know how to train a dog to be a human
dog.”
“What is that
supposed to mean and why are you pinching the inside of your wrist
like that?”
If Céce was here
right now, she’d hold my hand to keep me from doing
it.
“Basically you want
to housebreak the animal. This is by far the most important thing.
We can’t be passing out dogs who are not disciplined. You have to
get the animal to eliminate on a regular schedule, in a certain
area. You will teach him not to jump or beg. Sit, stay, give paw,
leave it, heel, simple commands. I will give you a list and
specific training manuals. Now, I’m told you have a learning
disab—”
“I can read. Mostly.
Just takes me some time, and I got plenty of that now. So you don’t
have to sweat me about—”
“Hey. Do. Not. Interrupt me. I was going to say,
before you so rudely cut me off, that the manuals are largely
pictures anyway.” He eyes me hard. “The pay is forty-five cents an
hour. Will that be a problem?”
Getting paid to play
with a pit bull? “I think I could work with that, forty-five an
hour.”
“Indeed. Mister
Morse, all we want to do is make the
animal a well-behaved friend. Good company to cheer up the sick
person, okay? A dedicated, faithful companion. Do you think you can
handle that and will you stop pinching
your wrist? I find it very disturbing.” Bad eyes on
me.
The
hissing.
I swallow hard, stare
a little past him to avoid his eyes. “I think I can do that,
sir.”
“Mister Morse, look
at me. Do you want to do the job? Or
have I just wasted a lot of my time on an
opportunist?”
“How’s
that?”
“I know your type.
You act all one way to get the gig, and then you slack off. Look at
how you’re sitting, slumped over like that. Like you’re hiding
something. Sit up straight—”
“Why you got to
disrespect me? What I done to you? I’m calling you sir, and you
treat me like I’m dirt? Why?”
“Stop. Pinching. Your
wrist.”
“I’m trying
to.”
“Don’t try.
Do.”
“You yellin’ at me
ain’t helping me.”
“Right here, right
now, I’m not here to help you. You’re here to help me. And if I
determine that you can’t help me, then we have nothing to talk
about.”
The static. Electric
snowstorm. I sit up and force myself to match his stare. Got to
hold it. I need this gig. I need something good so
bad.
Thompkins frowns. “If
you last two days, it’ll be a miracle.” He pushes a pen and a paper
filled with small print across the table at me. “Sign
there.”
“What’s it
say?”
“In the event of
complications, no lawsuits will be filed.”
“Complications
like?”
“Death.”
“I would never kill a
dog.”
“I meant if the
animal kills you.” He nods to his assistant, this skinny lady with
pocks on her cheeks. She looks like she might have seen a day or
two in the joint herself and done some street living to get there.
“Let’s have him meet the animal,” Thompkins says.
The assistant leads
us down the hall into an empty sickbay room. Trembling in the
corner is the biggest, dopiestlooking blue-nose pit bull. His head
is fairly the size of a basketball. He’s scarred, half an ear gone.
His eyes, though. My God. His eyes are worlds, gold brown. He
knocked over an apple juice carton left open on the table. Except
where’s the carton? Wait, is that apple juice on the tabletop, or
pee?
“What do you want to
name him?” Thompkins says.
“Boo.”
“Speak up. And stand
up straight.”
“Boo.”
“That’s what I
thought you said. Boo. An auspicious
beginning.”
“Boo,
come.”
The dog runs to me
all wiggly and dopey. He bumps his head into the table and knocks
himself over on the way. To hell with my dog-greeting rules. I
crouch and open my arms wide to the dog. He rolls right up and
hides his head in my armpit. His tail stump whirls so fast it
shakes his whole body and mine too.
This dog is a
creampuff. This is gonna be cake.
The Old Dogs, New
Tricks folks need a day to set up where me and Boo are going to be
living, the top floor of this old jail they’re not using anymore
because it needs revelations, or however you say it. It all starts
tomorrow.
I can’t sleep. Wash,
putting his neck out for me.
I bet Wash has a nice
little house, aboveground pool in back, grandkids in water wings
splashing at his dogs. I bet his wife is the kind of woman who
holds your hand at night, the two of you falling asleep like that,
fingers locked, like that night ...
. . . I tell her I love her. In the alley, the rain.
Fingers locked. I tell her over and over, but she never says it
back.
(The next morning, Thursday, August 13, the sixty-third
day . . .)
We have six weeks.
We’ll be together, 24-7. We get two hours a day out in the field
next to the garbage dump to exercise. Boo has to wear a tracking
collar. Me too, on my ankle.
Training center is
made of cells with their walls knocked down. Table is made of
safety plastic, the kind on playgrounds, won’t crack, no shanks.
Same with the chairs. Supposed to pass for a kitchen. Shelf-bed for
me and a plastic crate for Boo to bed in. Nothing else. Bad light
in here. Place is a creepy old hole. Boo doesn’t seem to mind. He’s
all eyes on me. Tail spins every time I look at him. The caged
rooftop off the back doubles for the yard Boo will live in if he
passes training. If he doesn’t pass he’s going back to Animal
Control, where probably he will be put to sleep, because who wants
a fierce-looking street mutt that failed training? If he goes, I do
too, out of the program and back into the tent.
I say,
“Sit.”
Boo jumps to kiss me.
He knocks me flat.
Thompkins’s eyes say
he has as much doubts about Boo as he has about me.
“He’s just saying
hello,” I say.
“Tell that to the
paralyzed vet he knocks out of a wheelchair,” Thompkins says.
“Chain him to the ring in the wall. Sit.”
“Sit.” I lift Boo
from under the snout and push down on his backside.
“Not him.
You.”
I sit up straight in
the chair, force myself to look Thompkins in the eye.
Thompkins eyes me a
long time. Boo yips. He wants to play.
“Mister Morse, the guards see you on the surveillance
monitors but they are told not to interfere with training, unless
they think you might be injured.”
“Boo won’t
bite.”
“You can know an
animal for years and it might still turn on you. That is an ugly
truth, but true nonetheless.”
“Most truth is ugly
when you get all the way down to—”
“Don’t talk. Listen.
I have five sites and fourteen dog trainers to mind. I won’t be
here but once a week, twice max. Mister Morse, stop turning away your eyes.”
I look at him, and
he’s shaking his head. I want to tell him that even though I’m a
killer, I’m other things too. I don’t know what
exactly.
He points to the
manuals lined up on the counter. “Follow the protocols in order.
Page one shows you how to teach the dog to sit. Even the slowest
dog should be able to learn sit within the first day or so. Any
other result is an indication that something is wrong not with the
trainee but the trainer.”
I eye Boo. He spins
his tail.
Thompkins stands up.
Stern face. Slings his left arm behind his back to hide it and
offers his right hand. He’s got a stronger handshake than I’d have
thought.
“I won’t let you
down, sir.”
He frowns. He
leaves.
I let Boo off the
leash. He jumps onto the table and sprays it with pee. Six weeks to
train this dog? I eye the clock like I have six
minutes.
“Morse?” guard calls.
“You got a visitor.”
(Thursday, August 13, morning)
CÉCE:
You can’t give the
prisoners anything directly. Any gift of food and the like goes to
the guards before you even get close to the visitor center. They
X-ray the package and deliver it later—if the person you’re
visiting chooses to accept the gift. He’s got a lime cornbread
coming his way, Carmella’s Citrus Surprise.
The guard says he’s
coming. I lick my lips and check my hair, using the scratched metal
on the front of the pay phone for a mirror. I decide my hair’s a
mess and needs a ponytail when he marches up to me.
He seems taller. He’s
definitely thinner. His hair is a little longer. Those dark eyes.
He’s even more beautiful than I remembered.
The sudden heat in my
stomach makes me woozy. I whisper his name as he reaches out to me
to take my face in his hands and kiss me.
No, not kiss me. He
grabs me by the shoulders. He grabs hard.
“Hold up there,” the
guard says.
Mack doesn’t hear
him. “First and last: I don’t ever want to see you
again.”
I shake no.
“What?”
“You
deaf?”
I’m laughing and
trembling. My teeth chatter. “I don’t get it. This isn’t funny,
baby—”
“Who the fuck you
callin’ baby?”
“Mack—”
“Don’t touch me, girl. Just get along now. Serious.
Go.”
“But you love me. I
know you do.”
“Don’t you get it? I
told you that to get you to fuck me.”
“Shoulders to the
wall, son.” The guard crosses toward us.
“We had us some fun,
all right?” Mack says, ignoring the guard. “Let it go. Hey, I’m
lookin’ you in the eye right now, right? I don’t love you.” He
goes. I follow. “So you expect me to believe I was what,
just—”
“What was around. You
think I’m playin’ with you, girl? You’re gettin’ to know the
real me now, all right?”
“Mack, don’t do this.
Please. I never got to say it to you.”
“Fuck you talkin’
about?”
“I never got to tell
you I—”
“Will you get on out?
Goddamn, man. Just git!” He pushes me away.
Wait, he just
shoved me. Oh my god.
The guard pulls his
baton, but Mack’s done with me, turning and quick-stepping for the
door.
I run toward him, but
the guard holds me off. He rips me off my feet and swings me back
toward the exit, and I’m screaming over my shoulder the whole time,
“Go ahead and run then! You’re a coward, Mack Morse. Fucking
asshole! All I wanted to do was say ...
I hate you! I hate you.”
Everybody’s staring
at me. They’re looking at me the way I look at them, with pity.
With Thank God that’s not me. Except it
is me this time. It’s my turn to be
torn in half.
Carmella’s at the
bar, folding napkins and getting mascara on them as she uses them
to dab her eyes. She’s watching Lifetime, the weekly
mother-with-cancer tearjerker. Motherdaughter scene, mother on her
deathbed.
I roll my eyes, tap
myself a soda, realize it’s Sprite, gag, spit it out. Back to
Pepsi.
“You’re not even
gonna cry for me when I die,” Carmella says.
“Would that make you
happy, Ma, if I cried?”
“Very.”
“Then I’ll cry, Ma.
I’ll cry until my eyes fall out of my head and I have to walk
around with a stick.”
“Thank you,
babe.”
“You got it, babe.” I
head into the walk-in for my cheesecake. Knocking. “Come
in.”
Vic sits next to me
on the cheese wheel. “Howya doin’?” “Any better would be
illegal.”
“Lemme have a piece
of that cake,” Vic says. “He didn’t come down again?”
“He did. Except it
wasn’t him. He sent some punk who looked exactly like
him.”
Vic nods slowly. “I
think it’s time I go talk to him.” “Good luck.”
“Oh, he’ll talk to
me.”
“Don’t, Vic.
Seriously.”
“I know what I
know.”
“Promise me you’ll
leave him alone?”
“Go check in on
Marcy. She’s been in the bathroom for a while. I knocked twice. The
first time she said she was fine she sounded like she was sobbing.
Second time I believe you could say she was keening.”
“Keening.”
“I’d send your
mother, but she’s keening at the bar.”
I head into the
bathroom. Marcy is keening all right, staring at herself in the
mirror.
“Marce?”
“They call me Lefty.
They posted it on my page, Céce. That dick Brendan? He flippin’
tweeted it. Knew I shouldn’t have gotten naked with him.” She
rolls up her sleeves and holds out her arms. The left doesn’t
extend the whole way. The shoulder is rolled forward and her hand
hangs at an odd angle. After all those childhood surgeries, it’s
not quite right. And the scars. “Does it really look that bad,
Céce? Does it?”
Now I’m
keening.