a wretched little dog,” said Jane. “I’ve seen him through the window yapping at customers. He acts like he’s about to eat their feet.”
I heard the front door. “Sam?”
“Yeah.” There was a thunk, probably his backpack dropping to the floor.
“Upstairs,” he said, not to me.
“Hold on,” I told Jane. I lifted myself up on my hands, still treating my ankle as if it had sustained a major injury. Over the couch, I could glimpse the front hall and a slice of person disappearing up the stairs. The tread was almost as heavy as Sam’s. Boots, I concluded. “Sam brought someone home.”
“I knew he’d make friends,” said Jane.
“I just said he brought someone home.”
Jane didn’t argue. “So you called the cops shits.”
I started to correct her, to point out that, in fact, I’d called them idiots, but then I wondered which was preferable—to have called them shits or idiots. Shits, I supposed. More general, less insulting professionally. So I let it stand. If “idiot” was lost as it traveled the grapevine, that was to my advantage. But would McKee forget? He might be someone who collected resentments. Did I care? Momentum was building. For every line of conversation with Jane, there were sixteen with myself.
“Are you going to sue?” she asked.
“Who? Claire? The cops? I’d really sue the cops. That would cement my popularity. Not to mention that I cover them, so if they refused to speak to me, I couldn’t work. Of course, they may not be speaking to me already. Besides, I have a butterfly bandage. Don’t I need at least one stitch to sue?”
“You could say you had attack-dog nightmares.”
“I’m—” I started to say “fine,” but finished the sentence with “okay.” “Okay” was not really a synonym for fine. It was less spunky.
I have always been worried that I am spunky. Like girl gymnasts. However clumsily they land, flying off that vault, they immediately snap up proudly, arms aloft; toes pivot into a perfect first position. Like them I’m small, only five-one, and although thin and agile, I am completely unathletic. I’ve always tried to counteract any spunky tendencies by being irritating—slightly grating, often provocative—to keep the cute adjectives at bay. I am resilient, however. Which is a very spunky thing to be. Like girl gymnasts. That’s how I ended up in Sakonnet Bay. Believing problems have solutions, which is dreadfully naive.
“How did you get to the hospital?” Jane asked.
This was the opening. The time to spill the secret, the time to turn raconteur. “One of the cops drove me, and I took a cab back to my car afterward.”
“You have to rest?”
“Just for a day.”
“Call if you need anything.”
“Thanks, I will.”
I hung up. I had told Jane nothing, and I had no idea why.
From my horizontal position, I called to Sam. I lay there bellowing. No response. His door must be closed.
As I was about to hobble upstairs, my editor phoned to ask what had happened, in a tone that indicated he already knew. Art was solicitous. In his weary, patient voice, he inquired how I was feeling, then announced that he wanted me to write up the incident and be photographed in front of Claire’s Collectibles with my ankle bandage showing. It would be the Sakonnet Times picture of the week.
I explained that I wasn’t inclined to write it, at least my part in it, but I could hear Art’s chair clanking.
The office desk chairs, all with swivel seats, had been purchased at a close-out sale. Whenever an employee shifted his or her weight, there was a loud noise and the seat tilted. Art’s passive-aggressive method of persuasion was to shift back and forth without saying anything until his victim agreed to whatever Art wanted.
“I’m not the story. Baby’s the story.” I did not want to be the picture of the week. Last week’s had been a basket of newborn rabbits with bows on their ears. He kept clanking, an effective gambit, even over the telephone. “How do you expect me to handle it, exactly?” I asked.
“What?”
“My rudeness to the police.”
“You mean that you told them to go fuck themselves?”
“What? I did not say that, who said I said that? That is a lie. My God, who said that?”
“Bernadette.”
“Bernadette, the intern? And you believed her? Where did she hear it?”
“At the Muffin Shop.”
“I said, ‘I don’t give a shit.’” I left it at that and he didn’t add or correct.
“You should set the record straight,” Art said mildly.
“I guess so.”
We hung up. Those two calls, Jane and Art, managed to undo the repair work on my state of mind. I tried to conjure up the Nicholas bedroom, the woman’s legs enticingly spread, her arm draped across the bed in a flamboyant gesture of surrender. The vision no longer worked its playful magic.
“Sam,” I shouted.
Still no answer.
I usually avoided his bedroom. Sam had left his clothes packed. He simply pulled something to wear out of a cardboard box every morning, and threw it back in that general direction every night. I should go up. Be introduced to his classmate. I was curious.
On the way, I stopped at the bookshelf. “Boron: a soft, brown, amorphous nonmetallic element.” That told me absolutely nothing. I shut the dictionary and tackled the stairs, swinging my injured limb from step to step like a peg leg.
“Sam?” I knocked.
He peeked out. His face was flushed. “What is it?”
“I wanted to say hi.”
He cracked the door a few more inches. His shirt was open and he began buttoning it. “What happened to you?” he asked.
“I was bitten by a dog.”
“You look different.”
“I do? Different how?”
That stumped him. Recognizing a change in his mom had been a leap; defining it took more observation that he usually committed to. “Are you wearing makeup?”
“I always wear makeup.”
“You’re brighter.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m exactly the same. Is someone here with you?”
He stepped aside and I saw a boy sitting on the bed.
