Becoming Chloe Read online

  “Not really.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Nothing. He’s not doing anything. He just doesn’t feel good.”

  “Well, he’s an old dog, Chlo.”

  “He was old when I met him,” she says. “Today he doesn’t feel good.”

  Otis is asleep, and I have to shake him to wake him up. Even though it’s only a little after seven.

  “Oh, did I fall asleep?”

  “Otis,” I say. “I think there’s a problem with Bruno.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  This is a hard one to field. The kind that only Chloe could put her finger on. But after going out to check on Bruno, I agree. He’s not himself at all.

  “I’m not sure, Otis. But I think you need to look at him.”

  “I can’t walk all the way out there.”

  “I could bring him in. If he could just come in this one time.”

  “Well, sure,” Otis says. “If you think it’s serious.” He’s caught the mood of concern from me now. It has him awake and he’s worried. “You think it’s serious, huh?”

  “Yeah, I think so, Otis. I think he’s . . .”

  And then I can’t bring myself to say it. Which is funny, because I faced death every day for years. I came within an inch of it, right before I left this town, and I recently returned to the scene of the crime. I might have even dealt it out to somebody else. But right now, tonight, I can’t make myself say the word.

  “I think he’s in trouble,” I say.

  * * *

  When I get back out to Bruno’s run, it’s dark and still pouring rain. At first I can’t find him. At first I think he’s just up and disappeared. Like someone or something beamed him out of here. But I do find him in time. But of course by the time I find him I’m cold and soaked to the skin.

  He’s managed to crawl into the narrow space between his doghouse and the fence. And there’s no getting in there after him. I have to move the doghouse aside. I have to pull it into the center of the run. It’s been at the end of the run for a long time. It was comfortable there. It had dug a rut for itself. Now I’m cold, wet, and out of breath.

  “Bruno,” I say. His head doesn’t even come up.

  As I take hold of his collar it occurs to me that he might bite. Even though he hasn’t bitten me for a long time. Instead he just turns his big eyes up to me. Opens his eyes to the rain. Gives me this look, like, Do I have to, Jordan? I’m tired. Couldn’t I just stay here?

  I encourage him to take a couple of steps. He does. Two. Exactly. Then he goes into a sprawl, each leg pointing a different direction, like Bambi on the ice. Except when Bambi did it, it was cute. I give up and carry him.

  Chloe is standing at the front door to Otis’s house, holding the door open for me.

  “Get a blanket,” I say.

  She goes to find one. I stand in the entryway holding Bruno. We’re both dripping buckets of water onto the mat. Muscles in my back are straining. My arms are beginning to tremble.

  “Hurry up, okay, Chlo?”

  I can’t bring myself to set him down on the carpet because he’s covered with mud.

  “I don’t even know where Otis keeps blankets. Where do you keep blankets, Otis?”

  “Hall closet,” Otis calls. After a moment I hear the rhythmic scuffling of his walker.

  Chloe comes running back with a blanket and throws it down like a nest on the carpet. “I’m putting it here by the fire, Jordy. You’ll have to light a fire.”

  I set Bruno on the blanket. Just for a second my back screams louder than it did when I was holding him. Why didn’t somebody put that dog on a diet?

  We look up, and Otis is shuffling across the carpet. His face doesn’t look like his face. It looks like the face of someone else, someone softer and more open. It takes him a minute or two just to cross the living room. Bruno watches his progress without even raising his head.

  “Oh,” Otis says. “Oh. Oh, Bruno. He is in bad shape, isn’t he?”

  “Light a fire, Jordy,” Chloe says.

  “Should I take him to the vet, Otis?”

  “No, don’t,” Otis says. “He’s dying. Vet hasn’t got a cure for that yet.”

  “No, don’t,” Chloe says. “He wants to be at home, Jordy. He wants you to light a fire.”

  Otis and I are having a moment. We’re sitting on the couch together, have been for hours. Watching Chloe and the dog.

  They’re on the other side of the room, by the fireplace. Every now and then I’ve been getting up to feed more wood into the fire. Chloe didn’t raise her head the last time. Maybe she’s gone to sleep. We know Bruno is sleeping. We can hear him snore all the way over here.

  Chloe dried him off with towels. Put another blanket over him. Me, I had to run around to our apartment in the rain to dry off and put on warm clothes. Then again, this isn’t my last night on the planet. She’s lying with him the way she sleeps with me every night. Draped over him like she’s looking for the doorway into his skin. I watch rain stream down the windows in the dark. It gives me a feeling that the whole world is taking a moment to be sad.

  Otis says, “Nobody ever loved my dog before but me.” He says it quietly. It’s a moment between us, one not designed to reach all the way to Chloe, who has better things to do anyway. “Nobody ever even liked my dog before but me.”

  “I like Bruno,” I say.

  Otis looks over at my face, a serious taking-in. It occurs to me briefly that Otis’s last night on the planet might not be a long way off, either. “I guess you might,” he says. “Yeah. I guess by now you do. He’s not the most likable dog who ever lived.”

  “He grows on you.”

  “I was wrong about you. You turned out to be all right after all. When I first met you, I had my doubts.”

  “Both of us?”

  “No, you. I always liked her. Granted, she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. Now, I can say that, because you know I love the girl.”

  “She’s funny,” I say. “Lots of things she can’t do as well as we could. But then other things she does better.”

  “Like what?” Otis asks. He’s sleepy. He’s a little boy past his bedtime. He yawns.

  “Music. Art. Other things. She’s the one who knew Bruno was sick.”

  “Not sick,” Otis says. “Dying. Call it what it is.”

  Just as he finishes that sentence we hear one last loud, strange snore; then the snoring stops. Stays stopped. Chloe picks up her head. Her face is all lit up, beaming. She’s looking at a spot in the corner of the room, high, near the ceiling.

  “Wow,” she says. “Bruno,” she says. “Good dog.”

  I look over at Otis and he’s watching her closely. Intensely, like he sees something he never saw before. I guess I could be wrong. If I’m right, he never says what it is he sees.

  In the morning, before anyone else is awake, I bring the wheelbarrow around to the front porch. Then I go into the living room and lift Bruno for the last time.

  “What are you going to do with him?” Chloe asks. I don’t know she’s awake until she asks that.

  “I’m going to bury him in the backyard.”

  “Is that what Otis said he wanted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s what Bruno said he wanted, too.”

  While I’m digging, Chloe squats with her back against the fence, drawing something with her markers. She still has that same pad and markers. When I give Chloe something as a present, she doesn’t lose it, and she’s slow to use it up. It’s like she saves it for special occasions.

  The rain’s let up for a time, but it’s left the ground soft. I also think there’s more on the way, but it was nice enough to give us this break. Give us a chance to bury our dead.

  Chloe says, “Jordy? What does it mean to die?”

  “I don’t really know,” I say. “I know what it means for the people who don’t die. It means we never get to see that person again. But I don’t know what it means for t
he one who dies. That’s not very much to know, I guess.”

  “It’s okay, Jordy. You did fine. Is Otis going to die?”

  “We’re all going to die, Chloe.”

  “Is Otis going to die soon?”

  “Yeah, probably. Pretty soon.”

  “Are you going to die soon?”

  I miss one shovel motion, the way a heart will miss one beat worrying about something else. I wonder if that heartbeat ever gets made up again. If we ever get that back.

  “No. Why would I die?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking, what would I do if you did?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise?”

  “Nobody can really promise that, Chlo. But there’s no reason why I should die any sooner than you do.”

  “Good,” she says. “Good. I would hate it if you died sooner than me. I would hate that.” Then she draws in silence for a while.

  I look at her face and try to put my finger on something. Something that’s there, but never was before. One of those things Chloe has always been missing, yet a trace of it is hanging around somewhere. But I’m not even sure what it is.

  When the hole is about three feet deep, I tip Bruno into it. Then I get down there with him and arrange him a little so he looks more comfortable. So I don’t have to picture him doing a bad Bambi imitation for all of eternity.

  I’m about to throw the first shovelful of dirt onto him when Chloe yells, “Wait!”

  She’s done with her drawing now, but she takes the scissors and begins cutting. She ends up with a big round disc of paper with a little eye hook on top, like a dog tag. She lets it flutter down and land on Bruno’s side.

  “Okay, now,” she says.

  I look down and see she’s made Bruno a giant dog tag that says GOOD DOG, with the word BRUNO written in vertically, twice. The two O’s in the words BRUNO are shared with the first O in GOOD and the O in DOG. It occurs to me that I never would have known Bruno was a good dog if Chloe hadn’t told me.

  As I shovel dirt onto it, I actually notice a lump in my throat. I haven’t cried for so long. I can’t even remember the last time. Maybe I’m regaining my ability to feel things. Which I absolutely refuse to do until someone can guarantee me it won’t be retroactive.

  “Jordy,” Chloe says. “You’re crying. That’s so nice.”

  In the middle of the night I wake up and Chloe is not draped all over me. Not in the bed beside me. I crane my neck to look in the bathroom, but the door is open and I can see she’s not there. The rain has come back. I can hear it pounding on the roof. I’m so sleepy, and I’m really hoping this won’t get too complicated. Then again, it’s Chloe.

  I look out the back window and there she is, squatting by the grave in the pouring rain, her knees doubled up under her wet nightshirt, her hair plastered down all around her head. If I leave her out there, she’ll freeze. If I go out and get her, I’ll freeze.

  I go out and get her.

  I put one hand on her shoulder. “Chlo—”

  She jumps up and grabs me. The way I’d expect her to grab on if she was about to fall off a twenty-story building. Then again, maybe she is, and I’m just too blind to know it.

  “I’m scared, Jordy.”

  “I know. I can tell. It’s okay. Are you scared of me dying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you scared I’ll leave you?”

  “I don’t think you’d do that.”

  “What are you scared of?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does it feel like? Tell me what it feels like, Chlo.”

  She never answers.

  The rain is running into my eyes, and the cold is setting up a slight tremble right in the center of me. Once upon a time that would’ve been the only way I could find the center of me. But tonight I’m unfortunately aware of its location.

  She’s shaking a little bit again, even though it’s not cold in here. This is definitely not about cold. Something rattled her deeply, and I can’t get in to know what, because I can’t get deeply into Chloe. Nobody can. As far as I know. I didn’t even know Chloe had a deep place to get into.

  I lie with her while she goes to sleep. She seems to have exhausted herself with that sudden burst of terror. Terror. Chloe. Chloe’s never scared of anything.

  But anyway, she’s going off to sleep now, and it seems to be over.

  It has to have been Bruno’s death. What else could it be? The worst is over now. New York is just a bad memory, Bruno is buried, Chloe and I are slightly battered but still here.

  We’re safe and warm, we’re together, we’re still here.

  Whenever I see something raise its head for the first time and then settle again, I never like to think it’s the tip of an iceberg. I always like to figure it’s a one-time thing that’ll never be seen or heard from again.

  I wake in the middle of the night to find Chloe sitting up on the edge of the bed. Caught in the act of not sleeping. She has her back to me, but the minute I wake up, she turns to look, as if she can hear my eyes open. Or maybe she’s been looking at me a lot. I don’t know.

  “When Otis dies,” she says, “we’re going to need a whole new plan.”

  I’m surprised. I didn’t know Chloe even thought about plans. I thought she left all the planning up to me.

  In the morning she’s sort of okay and sort of not. She’s not shaking, not outwardly scared, but there’s something. Some little shadow behind her eyes where there used to be clear skies every day. We lie together for a long time, and I’m half wondering if Otis is okay. But I’m half wondering if Chloe is okay, too, so I put off checking on Otis. Poor Otis. Just lost his best friend. I wonder if that’ll make him less likely to stick around, like the husbands and wives that die within a few months of each other.

  As if she were hearing me think, Chloe says, “When Otis dies, where will we live?”

  “I don’t know, Chlo.”

  “Who gets the house when he dies? Maybe they won’t let us live here. Maybe they’ll sell the house and the person who buys it’ll have a big family and want the whole house.”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, Chlo.”

  “What bridge?”

  “Not a real bridge. It’s an expression. It means don’t worry about a problem until it comes.”

  I realize briefly why I never used that phrase with Chloe before. Because, as far as I can remember, this is the first time she ever crossed a bridge we hadn’t yet come to.

  I go up front after a while to check on Otis. When he sees me coming he grabs a tissue and wipes at his face, roughly, like he can still make it look like something more manly than crying.

  “Thanks for giving him a good proper burial,” he says.

  “No problem, Otis. He deserved it.”

  Then we sit quietly for a moment, and I’m not sure what to say. I’ll get up and make his breakfast soon, but in the meantime it feels like something more needs saying.

  Otis nods a moment. His eyes are puffy and swollen. “I know you think I’m a stupid old man, but I know what’s what. And I’m not sure she’s so stupid.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

  “You act like you buy it.”

  “I act like it’s the truth most of the time. Because most of the time it’s the truth. But when she wants to be smart she just is.”

  “Which means she just is. All the time.”

  We sit quietly for a minute. I’m wondering if I should say more.

  “There was a doctor in New York,” I say, “who thought it might be like a defense for her. He barely knew her, so I couldn’t figure out why he said that. It sounded like a weird thing for him to say out of nowhere at the time. But he still could have been right.”

  “She had a hard life?”

  “Very.”

  “For example . . . ?”

  “I really don’t know what happened before I met her. Except that it was bad.” I know it involved
a lot of rape, but I can’t bring myself to say that out loud to Otis. “What’s beginning to worry me . . .” Then I decide not to finish that thought.

  “What?” Otis says.

  “Nothing. What do you want for breakfast?”

  “What’s beginning to worry you?”

  “Nothing. How about oatmeal with walnuts?”

  “Spill it out, boy.”

  Shit. “Okay. I asked the doctor if it was something she might get over. You know, if somebody cared enough to give her a better life and make her feel secure. He didn’t know. And I didn’t know if I was willing to try. But now that we’re together, and she’s getting more secure, I worry that . . .” I haven’t even formed this into words yet in my head, and now I’m getting ready to do it out loud. No turning back. “What if all that simpleminded stuff starts falling away and then she just has no defenses?”

  While nobody is answering I listen to his bedside clock ticking. How he can even sleep with such an enormous ticking, I’ll never know.

  After a time Otis says, “Oatmeal with walnuts’ll be just fine.”

  I get up to go make it for him. Just as I’m leaving the room, he says, “You can’t just keep her unhappy.”

  I stop with one hand on the door frame. “I know.”

  “So there’s no way to go but forward. Cross that bridge when you come to it.”

  Good advice, I think.

  FOUR

  * * *

  DEFENSELESS

  I make Otis his supper at five p.m. sharp, just the way he likes it. Grilled cheese sandwich, carrot sticks, creamed corn, chocolate pudding cup. If that sounds cruel, I should note that this is Otis’s idea of the perfect meal. I leave Chloe to handle the dinner dishes, and I go off to work.

  Chloe and Otis babysit each other while I wait tables. Maybe I’m making too much out of too little, but the more time goes on, the more I feel like I can’t trust Chloe to be alone. I mean, I never really left her alone much, because she might wander off or do something stupid. But she’s been different lately, switching suddenly into these out-of-nowhere moods that feel very frightened or very dark. So now I’m thinking she might do something really stupid. But I can’t put my finger on why I think that. I just feel better when she and Otis have each other.