‘Your dog,’ I say. ‘You’ve been here for a night and a day. You shouldn’t leave a dog alone all that time. It’s not right.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ he says. ‘Linda Moreno is taking care of Champ.’ He sees my look of puzzlement. ‘The woman with the Chihuahua.’
‘I thought she was gone,’ I say. ‘I saw flyers on the telephone poles. They had her face on them.’
‘Went on an Atlantic cruise,’ he says. ‘With a younger man.Didn’t want her daughter to know. The daughter got worried. But she’s back now. Got a nice tan, too.’
‘That’s good,’ I say. I felt a spurt of happiness. I’d been worried about the Chihuahua lady. It was good someone was doing ok.
‘See you tomorrow,’ he says, though I won’t, of course. Then he is gone. He never seems to use an unnecessary word.
The dark comes, or the closest you get to dark in the city. I don’t turn on the lamp by my bed. I watch the lights from the parking lot make yellow squares across the ceiling. When the nurse comes in she shocks me awake in a blaze of white neon. She gives me water, and the name of the hospital is printed on the plastic cup she puts to my lips. I’m not so good with names, and I’m dazed with sleep and painkillers, so it takes me a moment, before I realise – this is her hospital. Mommy worked here, was fired from here for the things she did to the children. It is one of those strange circles in time. But I can’t tell whether I’m at the beginning or the end. The nurse goes, leaving me in the dark again. It comes to me, for the first time, perhaps, that my mother is really dead.
‘It turns out you can’t kill me,’ I say to Lauren. ‘And I can’t kill you. So we have to find another way of doing things.’
I feel for her, try to take her hand. But she’s not there. She’s sleeping, or shutting me out, or maybe just quiet. There’s no way to tell whether she hears me or not.
I think about the Chihuahua lady. I hope she had a good vacation with her young boyfriend. I hope she’s relaxing in her nice yellow house with the green trim.
I turn the cup in my hand. The name of the hospital revolves. Mommy’s place. But she isn’t here. She is at home, waiting for me in the cupboard under the sink.
Something is teasing, tugging at my brain. Something about the Chihuahua lady and her trip to Mexico. I shake my head. That is not right. The Chihuahua lady went on a cruise, not to Mexico.She was in Mexico the first time. The familiar tug in my mind, of having forgotten something. But it is gone.
The orange-haired man appears as I am being discharged. I have to look twice to check, but yes, it is him. I am very surprised and weirdly shy. We told him so much, the other night. I feel sort of naked.
‘I thought you might need a ride,’ he says.
I smell the forest as we approach. It is such a relief to see my street, the dented sign, trees crowding the horizon.
But I don’t want the man to see my sad house; the plywood over the windows, the dusty dark rooms where I live alone with all my others. I want him to go. Instead he helps me out of the car and indoors. He does it quickly and efficiently, not asking me to acknowledge it.
Even when we’re inside, he still hovers in the hall, not seeming to notice the cobwebs and the brokenness of it all. So now I have to offer him something. The refrigerator yields the sour stench of old milk. I feel a twinge of despair.
‘Beer,’ he suggests, looking at the contents.
‘Sure,’ I say, feeling immediately more cheerful. I take a look in the cupboards. ‘I bet you’ve never had a pickle with peanut butter.’
‘You would win that bet,’ he says.
We sit in the broken lawn chairs out back. It is a beautiful day. Dandelion clocks dance in the low sun. The trees whisper in the slight breeze. I turn my face up to it. For a moment I feel almost normal – sitting in my yard in the late summer heat, just like anyone might, having a beer with a friend.
‘Hospital,’ he says. ‘You must have missed being outside. You like the woods.’
‘I did,’ I say.
‘Hey,’ he says, but not to me. The tabby cat steps out of the undergrowth. She looks even thinner than usual. ‘What’s up?’ She slides and curves around the rusty chair legs. He puts some peanut butter on the ground for her and she licks it, purring. ‘Poor girl,’ he says. ‘She belonged to someone, once. They took her claws out then they abandoned her. People.’ The cat lies down at his feet. The sun shows up the dust in her fur.
I try to think of a question a normal person would ask. ‘What’s it like, being a park ranger?’
‘It’s good,’ he says. ‘I always wanted to work outdoors, ever since I was a kid. I grew up in the city.’ I can’t imagine him among tall buildings, on busy sidewalks. He seems designed for great distances and solitude.
‘You and I have talked before,’ he says. ‘At the bar we say hi sometimes.’
‘Oh,’ I say. I am too embarrassed to tell him that I don’t remember much about the times at the bar. I think Little Teddy took over towards the end. He’s not good at talking to grown-ups. Or maybe I was just drunk. ‘I picked that bar to take women to,’ I say. ‘How dumb is that?’ I tell him about my date with the woman in blue.
‘But you kept going there, on your own. Even after you realised what kind of place it was.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yeah, to drink.’
