She barked that she did.
2
Dad was waiting for me on the front porch. His pipe was on the rail, along with a pouch of tobacco. Which meant we would be having the talk after all. A serious one.
There was a time when my dad smoked cigarettes. I don’t remember how old I was when Mom gave him the pipe for his birthday. It wasn’t a fancy Sherlock Holmes job, but I think expensive. I do remember she’d been asking him to quit the cancer sticks and he kept promising （vaguely, the way addicts do） that he would get around to it. The pipe did the trick. First he cut down on the butts, then let them go entirely not long before Mom crossed the goddam bridge to get us a box of chicken.
I liked the smell of the Three Sails he got at the tobacconist downtown, but quite often there was nothing to smell because it kept going out. That might have been part of Mom’s master plan, but I never got a chance to ask her. Eventually the pipe went into the pipe-rack on the mantle. At least until Mom died. Then it came out again. I never saw him with another cigarette during his drinking years, but the pipe was always with him at night while he watched those old movies, although he rarely lit it or even filled the bowl. He chewed hell out of the stem and the bit, though, and had to replace both. He took the pipe with him to AA meetings when he started going. There was no smoking there so he chewed on the stem, sometimes （Lindy Franklin told me this） with the bowl upside-down.
Around the time of his second anniversary, the pipe went back into the rack on the mantle. I asked him about it once and he said, “I’m two years sober. I think it’s time I stopped teething.”
But the pipe still came out once in awhile. Before some of the big agent meetings at the Chicago office if he had to make a presentation. Always on the anniversary of Mom’s death. And it was out now. Complete with tobacco, which meant this was going to be a very serious talk.
Radar climbed to the porch old lady style, pausing to inspect each step. When she finally made it, Dad scratched behind her ears. “Who’s a good girl?”
Radar made a woofing noise and lay down beside Dad’s rocker. I took the other one.
“Did you get her started on the meds?”
“Not yet. I’ll sneak the heartworm and the arthritis pill into her supper.”
“You didn’t take the safety bar installation kit.”
“That’s for tomorrow. I’ll read the instructions tonight.” Also the home-care-for-dummies pamphlet. “I’ll need to borrow your drill, if it’s okay. I found someone’s toolbox—initials A.B. on it, maybe his father’s or grandfather’s—but everything in it’s rusty. The roof leaks.”
“You’re welcome to use it.” He reached for the pipe. The bowl was already loaded. He had some kitchen matches in his breast pocket and he scratched one alight with his thumbnail, a skill that had fascinated me as a little kid. Still did, actually. “You know I’d be happy to go up there with you and help out.”
“No, that’s okay. It’s a pretty small bathroom and we’d just get in each other’s way.”
“But that’s not really it, is it, Chip?”
How long had it been since he’d called me that? Five years? He held the lit match—already halfway down the stick—over the bowl and began sucking away. Also waiting for me to reply, of course, but I had nothing. Radar raised her head, smelled the fragrant tobacco smoke, then put her snout back on the porch boards. She looked pretty contented.
He shook out the match. “There’s nothing up there you don’t want me to see, is there?”
That made me think of Andy, asking if there were a lot of stuffed animals and a spooky Kit-Cat Klock that followed you with its eyes. I smiled. “No, it’s just a house, kinda rundown, with a leaky roof. Something will have to be done about that, eventually.”
He nodded and puffed his pipe. “I talked to Lindy about this… this situation.”
I wasn’t surprised. Lindy was his sponsor, and Dad was supposed to talk about the things that bothered him. “He says that maybe you have a caretaker mentality. From when I was boozing. God knows there were times when you did caretake me, young as you were. Cleaned the house, did the dishes, got your own breakfast and sometimes your dinner.” He paused. “Those days are hard for me to remember and even harder to talk about.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
I still didn’t want to tell him I’d made a deal with God and had to keep up my end of the bargain, but there was something else I could tell him. Something he’d understand, and fortunately it was true. “You know how they talk in AA about maintaining an attitude of gratitude?”