THE SIXTY-FOURTH DAY . . .
(Friday, August 14, afternoon)
MACK:
I’m on the floor. Boo
is conked on top of me. I trained him from sunrise—or tried to. He
just thinks this is some big old party, being locked up. He won’t
do a thing I tell him. Sit means tackle
and kiss.
When Céce left
yesterday, I barely made it out of the room. I slumped in the
hallway, sure the fat man was standing on my chest. They got me
into a chair and wheeled me to sickbay. Nothing was wrong with me,
the medic said.
She won’t come
anymore. Not after that. I don’t know how I made myself shove her
like that.
I hope she gets
another dog.
Boo wakes and
slobbers me, and I shove him off. He starts sniffing around in
circles. I drag his fat butt outside. The rain makes a mess of the
papers I laid out on the caged rooftop in a ten-foot by ten-foot
square, just like Thompkins’s manual said. Let it be a hundred by a
hundred, Boo isn’t setting a paw on it.
“Boo, we don’t
housebreak you, you know we’re both dead, right?”
He knocks me flat to
kiss me. I claw him off and wrestle him. He spins his big old butt
up in my face, his little tail stump wiggling, and sprays me with a
serious wet fart. I let go of him to wave off the stink, and he
breaks for the tabletop. Ten seconds later there’s pee all over
it.
After I clean up the
mess, I get back to where I left off in the training manual, page
two. I thumb the rest of it. Garbage. I pitch it and call for the
guard.
“What’s up?” he
says.
“You won’t be seeing
Boo or me for the next little while or so.”
“Yeah, huh? Where
y’all headed?”
“The
can.”
“Course you
are.”
“Once we go in, we
ain’t—aren’t coming out till Boo does his business.”
“I see.” He doesn’t.
“How long you expect that will be?”
“I bet about an
hour.”
“I never heard of
housebreaking a dog in that way,” he says.
“You got
dogs?”
“Cats.”
“There you go
then.”
Guard shrugs. “Well,
Wash told me you know what you’re doing. Just the same, I am going
to have to write this down in my report.”
“You do what you have
to do.”
“You just remember,
we have an overhead camera in there,” he says. “It’s blurred to
give you privacy, but we can tell if you get to thinking about
hanging up.”
“Appreciate the
warning.”
Guard twitches a
little smile. Nervous type, dot your t’s, cross your i’s,
but he’s all right. Boo jumps up and licks the guard through the
bars, and the guard jumps back. “I don’t know why they picked this
dog,” he says. “My opinion, they stuck you with a lemon. He seems
plumb loco to me.”
“He’s a little
creampuff.”
“That head,” the
guard says. “I don’t know if it has a bit of brains in it. Look at
it. It’s a boulder all right.”
Boo tackles me to
lick me.
Guard nods. “Good
luck with that little creampuff.”
I stock up on dog
biscuits, extra-salty peanut butter, Cheerios and boloney, and
march my Boo into the bathroom and shut us in.
Two hours later I’m
sitting on the bathroom floor with this giant Boo curled in my lap.
He whimpers.
“Sooner you pee,
sooner we get out of here.”
He drops his monster
head into my hands and looks at me with those huge brown eyes. His
tail stump whirls.
I’m training him to
spot pee in the shower, a big old crumbly tile step-in stall. I put
newspapers around the drain. I use the Money section because rich
folks can stand some pissing on for once.
I trained many a dog
to pee in the rain drain up in the hutch. When they were sick and
injured, they didn’t have the strength to make it down to the
street. Winter too. Gets subzero out there, a dog will burn his
paws on the sidewalk. Road salt isn’t good for them either. Dog
needs a fallback plan. All else fails, he has the
drain.
I dip a dog biscuit
into extra-salty peanut butter.
Boo tries to snatch
the cookie. I make him sit and give paw and push back on his
forehead to make him take the cookie real polite. He inhales it,
laps at his nose to get at the salty peanut butter covering it. Now
I set down his water bowl. He drains it dry, whimpers, and digs at
the door to be let out to pee on his tabletop.
I get on all fours
and sniff the floor like a dog looking for a choice spot to pee.
When I get to the drain, I wag my butt like, Hey, this here’s the perfect spot to pee. I circle the drain, unzip my fly, and
pee into the drain.
Boo cocks his head
and sinks to the floor and groans.
Comes a
knocking.
Boo just wags his
tail and cocks his head at the door. Pits make rotten watchdogs.
They love people too much.
Guard says through
the door, “I see you on the camera. Like I said, it’s blurry, but .
. . I know this sounds batty, but from a top view, it looks like
you are acting like a dog, making water over that shower
drain.”
“That would be
correct.”
Stretch of quiet,
then: “You all right?”
“I’m just fine,” I
say.
“Mind-wise, I’m
saying. How you doing?”
“Real real great,
thank you. How you doing?”
More silence, then:
“Why you getting all dog-like and making water over the shower when
you got a perfectly fine toilet right there?”
“Nothing at all to
worry about. This is just part of the normal
training.”
“Well, all right
then,” the guard says, but I can tell by his voice he thinks I’m
some flavor of mental.
(Friday, August 14, dinner shift)
CÉCE:
This new guy is
refilling the bar ice. “Hey, Céce.”
“Oh, yeah, hey
Bobby.” He goes to my school, year ahead of me. I don’t know him
except from Marcy. They’re in marching band together. Marcy’s like
second cymbals, and I think he plays the tuba or whatever. “Didn’t
recognize you with the buzz cut.”
“My mother
left.”
“Huh?”
“She joined an ashram
out in Washington State. She forced us to wear our hair long. The
minute she left, my brother pulled out the clipper.”
“No, hey, it looks
good.”
He shrugs. “It’s a
lot better for the summer anyway.”
“Marcy get you the
job?”
“Saw the sign in the
window. I feel really bad. After Mister Apruzese hired me, Marcy
quit.”
“You’re
kidding.”
“Right before lunch
started. Your mother was pulling double duty. I don’t know what I
did to make Marcy so mad.”
“I’m sure you didn’t
do anything. I better call her. Sorry about your mom.”
He shrugs. “What are
you gonna do? You gotta keep going, right?”
Somebody just punched
me in the throat. He’s shorter and nowhere near as nicely shaped,
but for a moment there he looked just like him, sad and strong at
the same time.
There’s a hurricane
in the background. “What! Talk louder! I’m in
the shower!”
The girl showers with
her phone? “I said, why did you quit!”
“I can’t look him in the eye! Bobby! He was one of my FB
#1’s! He saw the post! The Lefty thing!”
“So, what, you’re
never leaving your house again?”
“I’m gonna go to the east side, move in with my sister!
Start over, you know?”
“Regina’s gonna let
you live with her after the epoxy on her Maxi
episode?”
“Not Regina! Nancy said I could sleep in her craft
room!”
“Marce, you can
not live with Nancy! Nancy tweets more
than you do! I see two anorexic Napolitano girls on their phones,
billions of largely untouched, festering take-out Chinese cartons
all over the house! Death by Twitter! This is not good, Marcy! Come
live with me and the Mella! You’ll have the whole basement
apartment to yourself ! You can smoke all the pot you want down
there, and Ma will never know!”
“It’s really tempting, but I gotta get away from, like,
here! Céce, I gotta go! Maybe I’ll see you around the mall or
something, okay?” Click.
Everybody’s
disappearing.
I swing the dough to
the pizza refrigerator. I stop midway, look over Vic’s shoulder, at
his computer. He’s frowning as he reads to himself. The war. It’s
intensifying again. The U.S. is in the middle of launching a major
offensive.
My mother comes in
with rainbow-colored hair. “Howyas doin’?”
Vic taps his mouse
pad, and the crossword comes up to cover the news. “Good, Carmella.
Good. I love your hair, sweetheart.”
Work is slamming with
a waiting line going out the door. Bobby tries to help, but he’s
kind of klutzy and drops a lot of stuff. Ma’s tables are calling me
over. “Where’s our food?”
Ma’s back in the
kitchen. She’s chewing gum like a cow on crack. The kitchen stinks
of Bubblicious Savage Sour Apple. She keeps picking up the wrong
plates.
Vic works the stoves.
“Carmella, howya doin’, hon?” “Awesome,” she says. “What’s
up?”
Serving Ma’s tables
and mine, I look like I walked in from a rainstorm, just what you
want from your waitress, sweat rolling off her beak into your
eggplant parmigiana.
Then it hits me. The
gum. I check the dining room. She’s not there, not in the bar, not
in the kitchen. I catch her coming out of the walk-in with some
grated. Behind the cheese wheel, there it is, the glass, Ma’s
bright pink lipstick on the rim. I dip my finger and lick
it.
You have to get
really right up in someone’s face to smell vodka on them,
especially when they’re chewing Savage Sour. I get right up into
her face. She’s adding a bill—trying to. I grab her arm and
whisper, “Ma, go home.”
Bobby and Vic are
looking at us. Bobby’s confused. Vic just looks sad. “Céce, that’s
enough now,” he says.
“What’s your problem,
Céce?” Her face is red.
I hiss through
clamped teeth, “You think we’re idiots, Ma?”
“Back off, sister.
I’m serious. You want me to call you out on your stuff in front of
everybody? How many times you disappear a shift? You think Vic
can’t count how many slices he sells, how many he
buys?”
“I’m entitled to one
free meal.”
“Half a cheesecake
isn’t a meal.”
“Ma, you’re sneaking
vodka in the middle of your shift.”
“How many times did
you try to see Mack? Huh? Even after you knew he was blowing you
off, you still went back. We all have our little things we need to
do to get through, okay?”
“Just go, you stupid selfish drunk!”
The table chatter
dies like when you turn off the TV in the middle of America’s Best Dance Crew. I hear the ceiling fans
shimmying, nothing else.
My mother gulps.
Shakes her head. Her face turns red, then gray. “The cornbread,”
she whispers.
“The
cornbread?”
“They don’t like it.”
She holds up a breadbasket. The Parmesan sticks and white rolls are
gone, but the slightly burned loaf of Carmella’s Crazy Confection
remains untouched. No, one piece has a nibble missing. I warned her
that folks might not be too jacked up to munch on cornbread whose
second main ingredient is sourballs. Decorative icing in the shape
of snowmen that are often mistaken for goblins? What does she
expect?
She pulls her checks
out of her apron, gives them to me.
“Where you going
now?” I say.
“Home. Isn’t that
what you told me to do?”
“Carmella, let me
drive you,” Vic says.
“No, Vic. Thanks. I’m
sorry, everybody.” She heads out, stops when sees the customers
staring at her. She turns around and slips out the back, into the
downpour.
The rain never lets
up, and the people keep coming. Vic has to cook and serve. The
bartender helps. Bobby is a little better by the end of the night,
filling in at the stove when Vic is out on the floor. He cooks
second staff meal too, and it’s pretty good, but nothing like
Mack’s.
After we clean up,
Vic hands Bobby his keys. “Drive yourselves home. Bring the car
back tomorrow.”
“I thought you had to
be seventeen to drive at night?” I say.
“Hardship license,”
Bobby says.
“Cool. I mean
sorry.”
He drives slower than
an old lady. Trips over the curb as he walks me to the door with
his umbrella. What sixteen-year-old carries an
umbrella?
“Thanks.” I almost
ask him in for a piece of cake, but I stop myself when I remember
that boys don’t like to come into my house.
“Night.” He runs back
to the car. He’s chubby and he kind of waddles. I flash forward
thirty years and see him in a recliner in front of the TV, eating
ice cream. He looks happy.
I go to the kitchen
for a Slim-Fast, click on the light to find Carmella Vaccuccia
sitting on the stepstool, her shorts around her ankles. She’s
peeing.
“Um, whacha doing
there, Carmella?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Do
you mind?”
“Ma, you’re not in
the bathroom.” Right about now is when I would start yelling at her
to go back to AA, that I’ll go with her again, like me and Ant used
to in the oh so good old days, but frankly, I don’t have it in me
anymore. If she wants to kill herself, I can’t stop
her.
“I’m just so worried
about him.”
“He’s gonna be fine,
Ma.”
“Not Anthony.
Mack.”
I help her upstairs,
make her drink three glasses of water with Alka-Seltzer, and I tuck
her in. She won’t let go of me. “You’re magic,” she
whispers.
“You’re
nuts.”
“You’re doing
it.”
“Doing what?”
“You’re making your
way through.” She strokes my face and kisses my eyes.
She shrugs. “It’s
always darkest before the dawn.”
“That’s a lie, Mel.
It’s a lot lighter just before dawn, and then the sun comes up and
scorches you.”