I went downstairs. Radar was sitting at the foot, waiting for me. I dropped the bedclothes on Mr. Bowditch’s easy chair and saw that I’d have to move it and the little table beside it to pull the couch out. When I moved the table, the drawer came partway open. I saw a litter of change, a harmonica so old most of the chrome finish was worn away… and a bottle of Carprofen. That made me happy, because I hadn’t liked to think of Mr. Bowditch ignoring his aging dog’s discomfort, and it certainly explained why the Pet Pantry lady had been so willing to sell me more. What made me less happy was realizing the medication wasn’t working very well.
I fed her, sticking a pill from the new bottle in her food—reasoning the stuff I’d just bought was fresher and maybe more powerful—then went back upstairs to get a pillow for the roll-out. Radar was once more waiting at the foot of the stairs.
“Jesus, you gobbled that fast!”
Radar thumped her tail and moved just enough for me to get by her.
I plumped the pillow a bit, then dropped it on what was now a bed in the middle of the living room. He might grouse about it, probably would, but I thought it would be okay. Pin care for his fixator looked easy enough, but I hoped there was something in Home Care for Dummies about how to get him from the wheelchair, which I assumed he’d arrive in, to the bed and back again.
What else, what else?
Stick the old bedclothes from the guestroom in the washer, but that could wait until tomorrow or even Monday. A phone, that was what else. He’d need one close at hand. His landline was a white cordless that looked like it belonged in a TCM cops-and-robbers movie from the 1970s, the kind where all the guys have sideburns and the chicks have puffed-up hair. I checked to make sure it worked and got a dial tone. I was putting it back in its charging cradle when it rang in my hand. I yelped, startled, and dropped it. Radar barked.
“It’s okay, girl,” I said, and picked it up. There was no button to accept the call. I was still looking for one when I heard Mr. Bowditch, tinny and distant: “Hello? Are you there? Hello?”
So, no accept button and no way to check who was calling. With a phone this old, you just had to take your chances.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s Charlie, Mr. Bowditch.”
“Why is Radar barking?”
“Because I yelled and dropped the phone. I was holding it in my hand when it rang.”
“Startled you, did it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I hoped you’d be there because it’s Radar’s dinnertime. You fed her, right?”
“Right. She ate it in about three gulps.”
He gave a hoarse laugh. “That’s her, all right. She’s gotten a little shaky on her pins, but her appetite’s as good as ever.”
“How are you feeling?”
“My leg hurts like damn hell even with the dope they’re giving me, but they got me out of bed today. Dragging that fixator around makes me feel like Jacob Marley.”
“？‘These are the chains I wore in life.’？”
He gave that hoarse laugh again. I was guessing he was pretty stoned. “Read the book or seen the movie?”
“Movie. Every Christmas Eve, on TCM. We watch a lot of TCM at our house.”
“Don’t know what that is.” He wouldn’t, of course. No Turner Classic Movies on a TV equipped with nothing but—what had Mrs. Silvius called them? Rabbit’s ears?
“I’m glad I got you. They’re going to let me come home on Monday afternoon, and I need to talk to you first. Can you come to see me tomorrow? My roommate will be down in the lounge watching the baseball game, so we’ll have some privacy.”
“Sure. I made up the pull-out couch for you, also the bed upstairs for me, and—”
“Stop a minute. Charlie…” A long pause. Then, “Is keeping secrets in your repertoire as well as making beds and feeding my dog?”
I thought about my father’s drinking years—his lost years. I’d needed to look after myself a lot of the time back then, and I’d been angry. Angry at my mother for dying the way she did, which was stupid because no way was it her fault, but you have to remember I was only seven when she got killed on the goddam bridge. I loved my father, but I was angry at him, too. Angry kids get in trouble, and I had a very able enabler in Bertie Bird. Bertie and I were okay when we were with Andy Chen, because Andy was kind of a Boy Scout, but when we were on our own, we got up to some fairly outrageous shit. It was stuff that could have gotten us in a lot of trouble if we’d been caught, some of it police-type trouble, but we never were. And my father never knew. Never would, if I had my way. Did I really want to tell my dad that Bertie and I smeared dogshit on the windshield of our least favorite teacher’s car? Just writing that down here, where I promised to tell everything, makes me cringe with shame. And that wasn’t the worst of it.