A Dog's Journey Read online

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. Sleep tonight, okay? And call me anytime if you can’t sleep; I’m happy to talk,” Trent said.

  “You don’t have to come here every day, Trent.”

  “I know that.”

  We went back to Trent’s house. Over the next several days Annie still came to take me for walks with Harvey and Jazzy and Zen, but now, when Trent returned home in the evening, I could faintly pick out CJ’s scent on his hands among all the other odd smells.

  We went back to the little room a day or two later and CJ was still taking a nap in the same bed. She smelled a little better, though, and was sitting up when Trent let me out of the soft crate.

  “Max!” she called happily. I bounded into her arms and she hugged me. There was no longer a leash on her arm and the beeping noise had stopped. “Close the door, Trent; I don’t want Max getting in trouble.”

  While CJ and Trent talked, I curled up in a ball under her arm, staking claim to the spot on the bed so that if Trent left he wouldn’t try to take me with him. I was dozing off when I heard the door open and a woman say, “Oh my God!” from the doorway. I instantly recognized the voice.

  Gloria.

  She swept into the room, carrying flowers that she pushed at Trent as she went to CJ’s bedside. Gloria smelled of those flowers, plus so many other sweet scents it made my eyes water.

  “You look awful,” Gloria said.

  “Nice to see you, too, Gloria.”

  “Are they feeding you? What is this place?”

  “This is a hospital,” CJ said. “You remember Trent.”

  “Hello, Miss Mahoney,” Trent said.

  “Well, of course I know it’s a hospital; that’s not what I meant. Hello, Trent.” Gloria pushed her face at Trent and then turned back to CJ. “I have never been so worried in my life. The shock of it nearly killed me!”

  “Sorry about that,” CJ said.

  “Honey, you think I haven’t had bad times, myself? Yet I have always found the strength to go on. You’re only a failure if you see yourself as a failure; I’ve told you that. For this to happen … I nearly fainted. I came the second I heard.”

  “Well, ten days,” Trent said.

  Gloria looked at him. “Sorry?”

  “I called you ten days ago. So it wasn’t exactly the second you heard.”

  “Well … there was no point for me to come while she was in a coma,” Gloria said with a frown.

  “Of course,” Trent said.

  “She does have a point,” CJ said. She and Trent grinned at each other.

  “I can’t stand hospitals. Absolutely hate them,” Gloria said.

  “You are unique in that,” CJ said. “Most people love them.” This time Trent laughed.

  “So, Trent. Do you suppose a mother could talk to her daughter?” Gloria asked coldly.

  “Sure.” Trent pushed himself off the wall.

  “Take your dog, too,” Gloria told him. I looked at CJ when I heard the word “dog.”

  “It’s my dog. His name is Max,” CJ said.

  “Call me if you need anything,” Trent said as he walked out the door.

  Gloria went over and sat in the lone chair. “Well, this place is certainly depressing. So is Trent back in the picture?”

  “No. Trent was never ‘in the picture,’ Gloria. He’s my best friend.”

  “All right, call it whatever. His mother, who naturally couldn’t wait to phone me the second she heard my daughter had taken pills with anti-freeze, says that he’s a vice president of his bank. Don’t believe him when he acts like that’s a big deal—at banks, they hand out titles to everybody; it’s how they avoid paying them a decent salary.”

  “He’s an investment banker and he is very successful,” CJ responded testily.

  “Speaking of investments, I have pretty important news.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Carl is going to propose.”

  “Carl.”

  “I told you about Carl. He made a fortune selling coin thingies, what you put a quarter in for machines like dryers at the Laundromat. He has a home in Florida with a sixty-four-foot sailboat! He also has an apartment in Vancouver and owns part of a hotel in Vail where we can go whenever we want. Vail! I’ve always wanted to go to Vail but have never met the right person. They say Vail is like Aspen only without all the locals to ruin it.”

  “So you’re getting married?”

  “Yes. He’s going to propose next month; we’re going to the Caribbean. That’s where he proposed to both his wives. So, you know, two and two together. Want to see his picture?”

  “Sure.”

  I looked up, yawning, as Gloria handed over something. CJ squealed with laughter. “This is Carl? Is he a Civil War veteran?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “He’s like a thousand years old.”

  “He is not; he’s very distinguished. I’ll ask you not to be rude. He’s going to be your stepfather.”

  “Oh lord. How many times have I heard that? What about the one who paid off the mortgage, who you made me call ‘Dad’?”

  “Most men are unreliable. Carl’s different.”

  “Because he’s ancient?”

  “No, because he is still friends with his ex-wives. That says something.”

  “Sure does.” CJ put her hand on my head and I became drowsy with the warm feeling of pure love. Soon I was asleep. I woke up, though, when I heard and felt anger in CJ.

  “What do you mean you won’t discuss it?” CJ asked Gloria.

  “That family was horrible to me. We won’t have anything to do with them.”

  “But that’s not fair to me. I’m related to them by blood. I want to know them, who I come from.”

  “I raised you all by myself without help.”

  I felt a rising sense of sadness in CJ, but she was still angry. “I remember so little from when my dad took me there when I was a kid. I remember … I remember there was a horse. And my aunts, and grandma. It’s all I have, just fragments from when I was like six years old.”

  “That’s how it should be.”

  “You don’t get to decide that!”

  “Now listen.” Gloria stood up and she was angry, too. “You are no longer in high school and I won’t have you behaving like a spoiled child. You’re going to be living under my roof, with my rules. Understand?”

  “No, she won’t,” Trent said quietly from the doorway.

  They both turned to look at him as he came in.

  “This is not your concern, Trent,” Gloria said.

  “It is my concern. CJ doesn’t need this right now. She’s supposed to avoid stress. And she’s not going home with you. Her acting career is here.”

  “Oh … I don’t think I’m ever going to be an actress,” CJ said.

  “Exactly,” Gloria said.

  “Then you’ll be something. You can do whatever you want. You’re not helpless, CJ. You get to decide you have the power,” Trent said emphatically.

  “What are you talking about?” Gloria asked coldly.

  “You believe me, don’t you, CJ?” Trent demanded.

  “I … I can’t stay, Trent. I can’t afford—”

  “I have more than enough room at my place—you can move into the spare bedroom until you’re back on your feet.”

  “What about Liesl?”

  “Oh. Liesl.” He laughed. “We broke up again. I think this one’s going to stick, because I’m not begging her to take me back. I realized finally that what she likes is the drama of breaking up and getting back and breaking up.… It’s like an addiction.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “The night before you … dropped off Max.”

  I wagged.

  “I feel awful you’ve been dealing with that and I never asked,” CJ said.

  “It’s okay; you’ve been a little distracted,” Trent said with a wry grin.

  “Can we please get back to the subject?” Gloria demanded. />
  “Meaning, what you want to talk about?” CJ responded.

  “No, that’s not what I mean at all. I mean that we’re leaving Wednesday. Arrangements have already been made,” Gloria said firmly.

  “You need to be with someone who believes in you. Me, I believe in you. I’ve always believed in you,” Trent said.

  I could feel Gloria’s anger getting worse. “No one is going to accuse me of not ‘believing in my daughter.’ I supported this whole ridiculous move to New York, didn’t I?”

  “Supported it!” CJ replied.

  “You’re not good for her, Gloria. She needs to heal. You’re the last person who could help her with that,” Trent said.

  “I am her mother,” Gloria said icily.

  “Well, yes, you gave birth to her, that much is true. But she’s a grown-up. Once a child grows up, your work is done.”

  “CJ?” Gloria said. I looked at Gloria, who was staring at CJ, and then at Trent, who was looking at Gloria, and then finally at CJ, who was looking back and forth between them. Gloria put her hands on her hips.

  “You’ve never thanked me. All the sacrifices I’ve made,” she said bitterly. She turned to stalk out, pausing in the doorway to glare at her daughter. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and we’re leaving the day after, as scheduled. There’s nothing more to be said.” She glared at Trent. “By anybody.”

  I wagged because Gloria was leaving. I always felt a little less stressed with her gone.

  When Trent and I went back to his home that night, I wondered if this was the new routine: we’d sleep at his place, then go to CJ’s new room with the slick floors. CJ seemed to prefer to live in smaller and smaller places.

  Trent tossed a rubber toy for me that bounced crazily across the kitchen, and I chased it and brought it back to him and he laughed and told me I was a good dog.

  Later, as he was bending over to scoop some delicious wet food on top of the dry food in my dish, I caught a metallic, unmistakable odor on his breath. I was surprised, but I did what I was trained to do a long time ago.

  I signaled.

  TWENTY-SIX

  A few days after the visit from Gloria, CJ came to live at Trent’s place. She put her things in a different room from Trent’s and some of her clothes still had Sneakers’ smell on them. The new living arrangements seemed to fatigue her, as she spent an awful lot of time in her bed and was sad and weak and in pain for most of it. I tried to cheer her up by delivering her chew toys, which Trent kept bringing home in little bags, but other than holding them slackly in her hand for me to tug on, CJ wasn’t interested much in playing.

  Trent would come home at least once during the day to let me out. “It’s no problem; I’m right around the corner.”

  “Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel up to taking Max for a walk,” CJ said.

  “Take your time,” Trent said.

  They liked to play a game where Trent would sit by her and wrap her arm in a sweater like mine and then squeeze a little ball. I would hear an odd hiss, and CJ and Trent would hold still. “Good, BP is still good,” Trent would usually say. When it came off, her sweater made the same ripping sound as mine.

  I was not allowed to play with that ball because it was apparently Trent’s favorite.

  It was Trent who fed me, and I learned that to earn a meal I had to signal when I smelled the odd metallic odor on his breath, which was most times.

  “Aren’t you going to pray, Max?” he would ask me sometimes. I would signal, and then he would say, “Good boy, Max,” and reward me with dinner.

  “Max prays before he eats dinner,” Trent told CJ. I was scampering around the room, burning energy, but I froze when I heard my name mentioned with the word “dinner.” I’d already eaten but would not have objected if Trent wanted to give me a treat.

  “What do you mean?” CJ asked, laughing.

  “I swear. He bows his head down and clasps his hands together, like he’s saying grace. It’s really cute.”

  “I’ve never seen him do that,” CJ said.

  “Pray, Max!” Trent called to me. I could tell I was supposed to be doing something, so I sat and barked. They both laughed, but they didn’t give me a treat, so apparently I had done it wrong.

  When CJ finally got up out of bed to go to the couch, she went very, very slowly, pushing a thing that looked a little like a chair in front of her that she held on to very tightly. The chair-thing had tennis balls on it, yet she didn’t throw them for me to chase. I scampered around at her feet, delighted to see her up, but she was breathing loudly and didn’t seem happy.

  Trent, though, was very pleased when he walked in the door. “You made it to the couch!” he greeted her, smiling.

  “Yeah, only took me an hour.”

  “That’s really great, CJ.”

  “Sure it is.” CJ looked away with a sigh. I jumped up on the couch and nuzzled her hand to help her feel better.

  Every day after that CJ would get out of that bed to move around the apartment, always pushing the thing with tennis balls. Then one day we started taking walks outside. The snow was melting the first time we she did this, so the car tires were making loud ripping noises on the pavement and everywhere I could hear dripping and splashing. We only went a few feet down the sidewalk, the tennis balls on CJ’s chair-thing getting wet. A few days later, it had snowed again and we only went a few steps before we turned around. The day after that, the sun was out and it was warm and the snow was melting and under it I could smell new grass.

  Our house had an outside room called a balcony. Trent put a box lined with rough carpet out there and called me to it. “This is where you can go to the bathroom, okay, Max? It’s your own special porta-potty.”

  The rough carpet was softer than the cement floor of the balcony. I loved to lie on it when it was breezy and open my nose to the intoxicating mix of smells from the loud streets below. Sometimes I’d smell Mrs. Warren, the lady who often came out onto the balcony next to ours. “Hello, Max,” she would say to me, and I’d wag.

  “You’re not supposed to lie in it, Max,” Trent told me when he came out to see me there. CJ laughed with delight. I didn’t know what was going on but resolved that if it made my girl so happy I’d lie on the rough carpet as often as possible.

  As the days turned warmer, CJ would take her chair-thing and walk farther and farther, always going very slowly. On none of these walks did we stop to pick up Katie or any other dogs.

  I became familiar with our route and looked forward to stopping at a bed of nose-level flowers along the way. There was some male dog I had never before met who had always marked the plants, and I sniffed very carefully before raising my leg in the same area.

  “Max loves to stop here and smell the flowers,” CJ told Trent one time when they were both walking me.

  “Good dog, Max. Stop and smell the roses,” Trent said. I heard that I was a good dog but was much more focused on the scent of that other dog.

  Some days were better than others for CJ. On one of her bad days she was lying in bed when I heard fumbling at the front door, so I raced up to it, barking. When it opened, I was astounded to smell who was with Trent.

  Duke!

  Duke bounded into the room, full of manic energy. I raised up on my back legs and took his head in my front paws and licked at his lips, truly glad to see him. His big tongue came out and slapped against my face over and over and he was moaning and shaking, so happy was he to be with me. He dropped onto his back so I could climb on him, and we wrestled and squirmed joyously together.

  “Come on back, guys,” Trent said. We went to CJ’s room and she sat up in bed.

  “Duke!” she called out.

  Duke was so excited to see her that he jumped right up on her bed. CJ gasped with pain. “Hey!” Trent yelled.

  The lamp next to CJ fell to the floor and there was a flash and then the room was darker. Duke, panting, leaped around, crashing into things, then launched himself back on the bed. “Get off, Duke!” CJ said,
and she was angry.

  Snarling, I bit at Duke’s heels, and he shrank to the floor, his ears back.

  What my girl needed, I realized at that moment, was calm and stillness. When Duke jumped on her it hurt her and his boisterous behavior made her and Trent mad.

  To be a good dog in this house meant being less loud and active. CJ needed quiet.

  With Duke finally more under control, CJ pulled his head to her and scratched his ears. “Okay, Trent, how did you pull this off?” she asked.

  “Not hard to track Barry down. I just called him at his office and explained what I wanted. He wasn’t going to say no,” Trent said.

  CJ stopped scratching Duke and looked at Trent. “You mean, he wasn’t going to say no to you.”

  “Right. Well…”

  “Oh, Duke, I am so, so happy to see you,” CJ crooned.

  I jumped up on the bed but did so nimbly and crept up to where Duke was getting all the love. I knew CJ would want me there, too. I was the most important dog in the situation.

  After Duke left, CJ and Trent had dinner at the table instead of back in her bedroom. I liked it better when she ate in bed because she often would hand me little morsels, but they seemed happier sitting with just their legs within reach of my nose, for some reason. I sat patiently under the table, on patrol for falling food.

  “Maybe dialysis wouldn’t be that bad,” Trent said.

  “Oh God, Trent.”

  “I’m just saying, if it has to happen, we’ll deal with it.”

  “If it happens to me, we will deal with it?” CJ said sharply.

  For a few moments there was nothing but the sound of their forks on their plates.

  “I’m sorry,” CJ said softly. “I do appreciate everything you’re doing for me. God, that was so Gloria of me.”

  “No, you’ve been through a lot, you’re in pain, and dialysis is scary. It makes sense for you to get pissed for me to suggest it would somehow be my experience, too. But what I really meant is that I’ll support you every way I can, no matter what it takes. That’s all.”

  “Thank you, Trent. I don’t deserve a friend like you,” CJ replied.

  When they were done eating, Trent put food in my bowl. I loved the plinking sound of dinner landing in my metal bowl, and danced circles waiting for him to put it down.