Charity found me out by the dumpsters, having a cigarette, end of a long day, end of a long week, end of another long year. I hadn’t slept any the night before—the fireworks kept me up—and the kitchen was hell. It was one of those mornings I couldn’t do anything right. Three tags came in for every one sold. We were buried for five hours straight.
The truth is I hadn’t slept any that year, for obvious reasons, I guess. I had one year sober to save my marriage. Sobriety did not help me sleep. Anytime I fell into dreamland, a nightmare would yank me awake, plus Lav slept with Rusty, and I slept alone, on the couch, which was tweaking my back. After what I’d done, I couldn’t argue, and Lav continued to drink, because what could I say, I was buried there, too. It felt like I’d never escape.
I’d quit with the pills before I met Lav, and now I’d quit everything else, except these dumpster breaks, because I needed something. For me, that need was a fact. But of course I told Lav I’d quit cigarettes, too, so my self-righteousness could be total, a self-righteousness I nurtured in secret, just like the habit itself.
Even though Charity knew none of this drama, I felt guilty, caught in the act.
“What the hell is wrong with people?” Charity began. Charity approached customer service as an opportunity to investigate this mystery. A huge bag of trash was slung over her shoulder. She dropped the bag at my feet. Likely the bag weighed more than she did. Her bones nearly broke through her skin.
“This asshole in there,” Charity said, violently chewing her gum. “He’s totally clueless, he orders his eggs ‘well done,’ whatever that means. I’m like, ‘Well done how?’ and he looks at me like I’ve stumped him, he’s failed the test. Then he orders a burger, a patty, on the side. ‘And how do you want that?’ I ask. ‘It’s for my dog,’ that’s all he says, as if that answers that. Well, I look around, I don’t see a dog, then this asshole opens his coat, and stuck in his pocket he has this dog, a puppy, it’s tiny, new born.” Charity paused as the image sank in. I dragged on my cigarette.
“Service animals only,” I said. “Did you tell him that?”
“That puppy is dead,” Charity continued, “no way will that puppy survive. This asshole’s from Mars, he’s like a zombie, his brain has been fried into mud.”
“So what did you say?” I hefted the bag of garbage onto my back.
“What did I say? I’m telling you. What did I say? Oh my god.”
Charity opened the dumpster so I could heave the bulging sack in. Bits of eggshell speckled my shoes. My apron was splattered with grease. The smell from the dumpster got into me like a spirit in need of a vessel. Charity gagged, making a face. “Disgusting,” she said. A seagull circled and squawked overhead, like a vulture, about to descend.
Then Charity left me to finish my break, now ruined by what had to come, namely, some kind of confrontation, a recurring theme in my life. New Year’s resolution, I thought, extinguishing my butt: no more confrontations. Serenity. Peace at last.
* * *
The zombie wasn’t a zombie at all, just a man, fallen from grace, though of course, at the same time, Charity was right, his soul was held hostage elsewhere. His skin had been battered and weathered and scarred, and his nails thickened like teeth. In his lap, he’d made a bed of his coat, where the puppy curled and slept, eyes shut tight as new buttonholes, snout as soft as cheap cake.
As I approached, the man dipped his head, flashing the top of his skull, then sipped his coffee, and smiled at me, a gap-filled, black and brown grin. I looked at the man. I looked at the puppy. The man dipped his head once again.
“Is that a service animal?” I asked.
“This is my friend,” the man said.
“Service animals only,” I said.
“Service… animal,” he said. “Service animal, yes,” the man added. “In training,” he said. “May I use the facilities?” The man was now rising. “We’ve had an accident. In my coat.”
The man stood before me, awaiting directions, awaiting permission to go. The puppy’s eyes opened. It stretched and yawned.
“Bathroom’s down the hallway,” I said.
* * *
I’d kick the man out when he returned—that’s how I planned it, at least—but then came the knock on the office door. Charity had bad news for me.
“Oh, Christ,” she said.
She led me to the handicapped bathroom and gestured to me to go in. I expected to find the usual mess: feces, vomit, trash. Once, I found shit—a coiled turd—dropped on the lip of the sink. Once, I found a toupee in the toilet, floating like a dead jellyfish. Paraphernalia of every sort, it goes without saying, of course. And I once found a half-eaten rotisserie chicken perched on the toilet’s tank. But this was something I’d never seen. The puppy was left on the floor. It huffed and sniffed and wobbled toward us.
“Good luck,” Charity said.
* * *
And so I drove home on New Year’s Day with a puppy asleep on my lap, one year sober, one year removed from the incident which still haunted me, would haunt me forever, would kill me someday, I would wager, if I had to bet. Some memories can rise up and kill you. Some memories plague you to the end.
It was one year ago I came home on New Year’s and my wife clubbed me on my ear. She exploded at me from behind the front door and knocked me down to one knee. The shot’s impact I recall as a sound I can’t really put into words, though I hear it often, in most quiet moments, the sound will come back to me.
Did I deserve it? I didn’t think so. I didn’t yet know what I’d done. I drank to a blackout the evening before and couldn’t remember a thing. Looking back now, I deserved that and worse. But I’ll get to all that soon enough.
I already knew I had to quit, and had tried to quit several times. When Rusty was born, the cliches became real: I knew I had to change. I couldn’t become what my father was. I wouldn’t put Rusty through that.
So I tried all the tired out strategies: beer only, nights only, everything. Never drank alone, never drank before sunset, never drank after the 8 o’clock news. For a while I was drinking only shots, with two pints of water between each. The shots I took like medicine, it was a pleasureless chore, and I was hoping intensive hydration would offset the nausea and shakes, but instead I only wet the bed, a foreshadowing of what was to come.
So this was my final hurrah. New Year’s Eve, and I hadn’t been out since the night Rusty was born, not on my own, not without Lavender, not like I used to, that is. I met up with Bill, a friend of my father’s, at the Shit Hole, where they used to drink. The bar was officially named something else, but it was the Shit Hole to them. The soles of my shoes stuck to the floor and the place smelled strongly of bleach, and young people danced, shifting tables and chairs, because it was New Year’s Eve, while the old regulars watched from the corners where the tables and chairs piled up.
Bill’s first toast was to my father. “A sad, sad man,” said Bill. “The only man possibly sadder than me. May he rest in peace.” And we drank. “And to you, and Rusty,” Bill added next. “Your old man would be proud. Maybe not happy, but he would be proud.” And then we drank again. Bill’s hat read “VIETNAM VETERAN: U.S. AIR FORCE,” and his thick, square corrective lenses magnified his eyes. His sweatpants were stained, his cardigan frayed. On his shoulder rested his cane.
“Youth is wasted,” Bill commented, and I couldn’t help but agree. The dancers would soon be old and sidelined, and soon we would be dead. But for now they were drinking and laughing until the evening slipped away, evening after evening, week after week, year after year after year.
A transcendent sadness lurked in my guts and the drinks fought to keep it at bay. Bill asked to see photographs of Rusty. “Handsome boy,” Bill said. “What’s wrong with him?” And I tried to explain the disorder he had, the odds against the mutation.
“One in a million,” I said.
As the evening wore on, Bill’s crew arrived—also my late father’s crew—and each one asked me about Rusty’s health, asked to see photos of him. “One in a million,” I repeated, over and over again. Drinks appeared without my request, and disappeared as a matter of course. Before too long, the crew was wasted. Then they began to sing.
No future in flying/unless you like dying/so cheer up my lads/fuck ‘em all!
And soon the young dancers were singing, too, they chanted the words with the crew, and these stubborn old men were among the young dancers, with walkers and wheelchairs and canes, and a girl with eyelashes which beckoned to me pressed in my palm one white pill, and I thought I could take just one more white pill because this would be the Last Time. I knew from the start this would be the Last Time. This was the Final Hurrah. And I knew there were things I had to forget, there were things I deserved to forget, I deserved to look into this girl’s eyes, which saw me as I’d never once been.
* * *
My memory skips out from there. I don’t recall how I got from the Hole to the top of our town’s steepest hill, or where we got the shopping cart, or who told me to climb in. My last memory stands on its own, no lead in, no resolution, behind me a crowd of the old and the young gathered to cheer me along, chanting our song, heaving me forward, terminal velocity achieved, the cold, sharp wind pulling tears from my eyes, as the cart shook my soft, soaked brain.
* * *
I’ve cooked with a hangover most days of my life, and that New Year’s was one of the worst, but you never know how these things will play out. Have you ever been in the zone? Five hundred orders came in that day. Not once did I have to think.
But when I came home, exhausted and smug, Lavender lay in wait. She ambushed me, she was angry and drunk, she clocked the side of my face. I never hit her, not really, not like that, but I wrestled her to the floor, and when she calmed down, when I calmed down, when we both reached the point of exhaustion, she found the scared little boy in my soul, and said, “what is wrong with you.”
The way she said it, it wasn’t a question, or rather, not a question for me. She knew I didn’t have any answers. She knew there was no one who did.
* * *
Because Rusty’s health was compromised, we bought many special machines. Our baby monitor recorded video and sent it to our phones. That’s how Lavender witnessed my crime. I’ll never forget that tape.
I entered the room without hesitation and positioned myself at his crib. Yes, Rusty started to cry. I had no reaction to this. And Lavender thought I was comforting him, when she saw that I stood by his crib, when she looked, sleepy-eyed, at her phone’s little screen. Then she went back to sleep.
When I finished I reached with an unsteady hand and groped around in the dark. I was reaching for the toilet’s handle. I try to remember that. I thought I was in the bathroom, that’s all. I had no idea where I was. I didn’t mean to do what I’d done. There was nothing more to it than that.
* * *
Sometimes, driving home, I fantasize about Lavender punishing me. She’s crouching again beside our front door, waiting to clobber my face, and this time I take it, I don’t fight back, I accept what’s coming to me. Then she tells me it’s over, and leaves, and I watch her take Rusty away.
Those are the dreams that flew through my head as I drove toward my wife and son. The ocean stretched out like a scream to my right. The puppy slept in my lap. I pressed the puppy’s ribs with my palm and measured his tiny breaths. I remembered Rusty in the incubator. I’d never been so afraid. Afraid he would die? Afraid he would live? Who knows? I still can’t say.
* * *
I came home to Lavender down on the floor, feeding Rusty his beets. He looked like a zombie, my son, my boy, his mouth all covered in blood, his helmet supporting his head and his neck, an unconcerned look on his face. He couldn’t walk, although he was two, and he couldn’t sit up or speak. He had a small chair with a table attached. He struck the table with a fist.
Then Rusty noticed the puppy in my arms. He reached his small hand out and squeezed. A smile came to his blood stained face.
“A puppy,” Lav said.
I hadn’t considered just what I would say when I brought the puppy home. I guess I thought I’d tell Lavender what happened. But the story drifted away. I watched a new story appear in its place. It happened before I could speak.
Lavender reached for the beer she had perched on the counter above her head. She gulped from the bottle.
“A puppy,” she said. “You got us a puppy. A dog.”
And I gave her the puppy, dropped it into her lap. She cradled its head in her arm. She held it just the way she held Rusty, that night in the hospital, those vanishing minutes before the bad news, before something about him was wrong.
My first date with Lav, we went to the city. We took the highway up the coast. We stood at the stage, nursing our beers. I thought I might marry her. A tall man with long hair slipped in between us and cut off Lav’s line of sight. He greeted a friend. Lav looked at me. She looked at the tall man’s back. She pulled the gum she chewed from her mouth and wrapped it in the man’s ponytail. She did it gently, so he wouldn’t notice, with a surgeon’s delicate touch.
And she held the dog gently, she rubbed his belly, she tickled under his chin. Lavender couldn’t help smiling, too, holding the squirming thing. My son was smiling, my wife was smiling. I saw her smile in his. Somehow I took pride in how their smiles matched. I forgot everything then.
Rusty reached over to touch the puppy.
“What’s that?” Lavender said. She switched to the voice she used with Rusty. “Look what your daddy brought you.”
* * *
One week later, the zombie returned, now escorted by a man, a heavy set man in a department store suit, with a watch, eyeglasses, thin socks.
“This is my brother,” said the heavy set man, indicating the zombie with a nod. “I’m terribly sorry to trouble you, but my brother insisted we come. He’s insisting he left his dog here before. My brother is not always well. Did you find his puppy? He was only a puppy. Did you maybe find something like that?”
The zombie was wearing a new puffy jacket, and jeans, and a thick, wool cap. He didn’t speak, and didn’t look up, then looked everywhere but at me. He positioned himself behind his brother, just off his brother’s hip, a too shy child, afraid to step out, afraid to reveal himself.
“We’re trying to help him,” the brother explained. “We’re trying to help him again.”
* * *
My alarm went off. It was still dark. I sat up, rubbing my back. The facts of my nightmare drifted away. I was stranded, groping for them. The shapes in the room resolved and I remembered why I was here, here in this room, with this pain in my back. Each morning started this way.
Now that Lavender slept next to Rusty, the baby monitor was left off. I cracked the door. Lavender snored. The puppy slept at her feet.
I had no idea what I would say when she noticed the puppy was gone. I supposed I’d have to tell her the truth. I pushed all that from my head. I was good at pushing things out of my head. I shut the door silently.
Lavender named the puppy Tums because that’s the first thing he ate. She’d dropped the chalk tablets on the dusty floor and failed to pick them up. Later, he puked up a pastel substance that looked like some gourmet foam. Rusty stuck his hand in the mess before we could get to it, then ate the foam, then fed his hand to the puppy, who licked it clean.
“Da,” proclaimed Rusty, which might have meant Dad, or dog, or nothing at all.
* * *
I took the puppy out by the dumpsters, where the zombie planned to meet me. With one hand I fingered my cigarette, with the other I cradled the dog, and just as the zombie limped into view, my phone began to ring. I wished I could ignore the call. I still didn’t know what to say. But I’d promised Lav I’d always answer.
“Morning,” I said. I’d slipped the puppy into my pocket so I could pick up the phone.
“I’m sorry,” Lavender sobbed.
I didn’t understand. I watched the zombie stoop to scavenge a butt from behind my parked car. My wife explained that she couldn’t remember what happened the evening before. She always stayed up later than me. “I drank too much,” she explained. “I sometimes take something to help me sleep. More and more often I do. More and more often, since Rusty and all. I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “What’s wrong with me? There’s something wrong. There was no way for me to tell you.” A sense of relief shot up through my feet and released through the holes in my ears. It felt like the first breath I’d ever taken. Lavender went on.
“When I woke up this morning the puppy was gone. Maybe I took him to pee? And left him out there? Oh God,” she said. “I can’t remember at all. But I can’t find him. I searched everywhere. And I can’t find him. He’s gone.”
The zombie rose to his feet. My wife was crying. I couldn’t believe it. In my pocket, the puppy kicked.
