“I’ve got a couple of them, why?”
“I mean…your aunt’s husband?”
A quick shake of her head. “Mabel isn’t married, she never was. I don’t think men interest her much.”
“Whatta you mean?”
She mussed my hair. “It’s a little hard to explain, sweetie pie. She has friends who stay over sometimes. I don’t think she gets lonely. She’s got me to talk to and all of the Its for company. Speaking of the Its, want to help me clean up a little? I do this every night after she leaves for work.”
“Is it safe? Mabel seemed awful worried about-”
“Mabel worries about everything. We’ve had some trouble in this neighborhood-some break-ins, a couple of shootings a few blocks over, you know-so she thinks every time she leaves me alone that all these monsters are going to knock down the door and attack me. She even has a gun in one of her dresser drawers-like she’s Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harriet or something. There’s not going to be any trouble. C’mon, give me a hand.”
We spent the next hour picking up-and scraping out-all the poop from the carpeting, then Beth let the dogs out in the backyard by twos and threes so they could relieve themselves as nature intended. (During all the years I knew Beth and spent time over there, that house was always filled with dogs; if one died or got sick and had to be put to sleep, it was quickly replaced by another. Beth and I eventually began to refer to her house as “Doggyship Down.”)
I sprayed the pee stains with this foamy stuff Beth took out of the bathroom; she told me to let it set until it dried, then we sprinkled baking soda all around and Beth ran the vacuum cleaner.
Once finished, the carpeting looked a little better and the stench wasn’t as strong as it had been.
“That’s only because you’re getting used to the smell,” Beth said. “Live with it long enough, and it doesn’t seem that bad.”
I wondered how she kept the smell off her clothes; not once during her visits to me did I ever smell the dogs on her, so I asked her how she managed to do that.
“Every week I take five outfits from my closet, wash them at the coin laundry or have them drycleaned, then hang ’em up in my locker at school. I get there about a half-hour before school starts and change in the girls’ restroom. In the mornings, after my shower, I can usually get out of here before the smell sinks into me.” Another shrug. “No biggie, really. I like to look and smell clean when I’m at school or going to the movies or something. If I go out, I do it after school on Friday so I don’t have to come back here first. Don’t worry yourself, the system’s worked fine for a while now.”
I nodded as if I were mature enough to understand. She was a wonderful mystery to me.
“Why do you have so many dogs, anyway?”
“Because nobody else wants them. A couple we adopted from the Humane Society, but most of them are strays Mabel or I have found. Just can’t turn away a animal in need, I guess. It doesn’t seem right that nobody wants to keep them, care for them, have ’em there in the middle of the night to snuggle with when you wake up and feel lonely… .”
I thought she was going to say something else but she didn’t. We had a couple of brownies, talked a little more about nothing terribly important, and then it was time for me to go.
We were a few blocks from my house when Beth pulled the U-boat over to the curb and put it in park. “Listen, I want to tell you something, okay? Something that’s just between us, right?” She was a long way past serious; she seemed almost scared. “Right?”
I nodded my head.
“This is gonna sound weird, okay, but…I never had any friends when I was your age, I never got to do any of those things that kids your age get to do, right? I always felt mad about that, about missing out on things. Hell, I’m not even sure if I know what kids your age like doing ’cause I never did it.”
“Could you please not…not say that?”
“Say what?”
“‘Kids your age.’ ”
She shook her head and smiled. “But you are still a kid; you’re not even ten yet.”
“I know, but…” I looked down at my hands, which I couldn’t feel.
“Okay, I guess you deserve that. If I live to be twice the age I am now I doubt that I’m ever gonna know what it feels like to get shot, so you ought to be entitled to age points for that. Deal-I don’t call or refer to you as ‘kid’ anymore.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I wanna know what it is you like to do, I guess. Will you show me that? Will you teach me how to have fun like a person of your age has fun?”
“You might think it’s stupid.”
She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. “Bet’cha I don’t.”
And she didn’t.
Over the next year and a half I taught her (in no particular order): how to build a fort from boxes, blankets, chairs, and umbrellas; how to climb a tree; the fine art of thumb wrestling; how to make a kite from scratch; how to tell if Godzilla was going to be a good monster or bad monster before he even made his first appearance in the movie (not as easy as it sounds); the proper way to build and paint the Aurora monster models; why Steppenwolf kicked Three Dog Night’s ass; how Mr. Terrific was just as cool as Captain Nice but The Green Hornet was by far the coolest of them all; why the Bazooka Joe comics sucked monkeys but the bubble gum could be rechewed at least three times before it lost its flavor; and, probably the most valuable tidbit of wisdom I tossed her way, how, if you sat or stood in the proper position and had the right muscle control, you could make a fart last up to thirty seconds and not dump in your pants (eating popcorn at least twenty minutes before attempting this difficult stratagem is immensely beneficial to a successful outcome).
Whenever we were together, which was often, Beth had a childhood, and I had the woman against whom all others would be measured and come up lacking.
But for that night, it was her kiss lingering on my cheek as I walked toward my front door and my father’s putting his hand on my shoulder for the first time in an eternity (“How you holding up there, son? Ever tell you about when I got shot during the war?”) that made me feel that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t such a worthless little kid, after all.
I spent the next seven years becoming an honorary member of Beth’s and Mabel’s family. By the time Beth turned twenty-four she had grown into her shopworn beauty and grace with all the poise I’d come to expect from her. In the years since the hospital we had shared every secret, every dream, every sadness, pettiness, fear, hope, want, triumph, and failure of both childhood and adolescence; I knew her better than anyone, and she, in turn knew more about me than any person ever had or ever would. There had been so much between us, so many shared moments and experiences: our first trip (the first of many) to King’s Island where she took me on my very first roller coaster ride, then didn’t laugh her head off or make fun of me when I threw up as soon as we climbed out of the car; a terrible afternoon a few weeks after I’d gotten my driver’s license when I drove her over to Columbus to get an abortion because her boyfriend at the time (all her boyfriends were so physically interchangeable to me they became faceless over the years) had dumped her and quickly skipped town after she told him she was pregnant; the day she picked me up at four in the afternoon on my fifteenth birthday and drove all the way to Cincinnati so I could see my first circus; an Emerson, Lake amp; Palmer concert where we were nearly trampled to death after the crowd-who’d been standing in near-blizzard conditions for over three hours-rushed the doors when they were finally opened; all the times I helped her to take one of the dogs to the vet, times when I stood beside her after the animal had been given the Last Injection and she needed to say good-bye-then, later, her infectious near-giddiness when the dead pet was replaced by a new one; and, most of all, a certain picnic in Moundbuilders Park on my seventeenth birthday when Beth asked me if I had a girlfriend. When I said no, she leaned in and gave me the sweetest, longest, most tender kiss against which all others would forever be compared and come up lacking, then shyly handed me a birthday card inscribed: Just wait until you’re legal!
I read the inscription twice before clearing my throat and saying, “Um, I, uh…is this a joke?”
She put her thumb and index finger under my chin, lifting my head so she could look straight into my eyes. Whenever she did this, it meant Something Serious was about to happen or be said. “Can I ask you something?”
“You mean besides that?”
