Earnest (23 page)

C
HAPTER
46

B
y the time Jeff drove Anna home, it was nearly ten o'clock. As usual on their island at night, they rarely passed another car, and nothing was open but Thrifty Market and Sawyer's. Peace seemed to float like feathers through the air. Marauding raccoons were the closest anybody got to crime. Jeff turned onto the condo's street, a couple of blocks from city hall.

If the city council were still meeting, Anna could get there for the vote. But it was not so important to her as it had been hours before. Though she still wanted to save the house, tonight her worry for Earnest had tempered her zeal.The fight still crouched in her shadows, waiting to spring—but she was not sure she'd welcome it again.

“I wonder if Dr. Nilsen is stitching up Earnest's worst cut,” she said.

“He'd get to it right away,” Jeff said.

“I hope Earnest's diaphragm isn't ruptured.”

“We'll know tomorrow. I imagine they'd repair it at the same time they set his leg.”

“It hurts to think about.” Anna mentally begged Earnest's pain medication to do its job. “Do you think he'll be all right?”

“Dr. Nilsen said he would.”

“I mean in the long run. What if he limps forever?”

“We'll have to wait and see.”

Anna didn't want to wait. She wanted Earnest to be chasing gulls on the beach or charging after his stick that very minute. She didn't want months of watching to see if his hobbles turned into normal steps. She rubbed her thumb over stitches in the Honda's upholstery and thought about the stitches that would be in Earnest's leg.

“I keep telling myself that Earnest ran into the street of his own accord,” Anna said. “But we were fighting, and he was worried, and he wanted to get to you. I feel like it's our fault he got hurt.”

Jeff's exhale sounded weary. He pulled up in front of the condo and turned off the ignition and lights. “Anna, we have plenty to beat ourselves up about. I've been doing it too. But Earnest would be the first to forgive us. You know how he is. He lets things go in two seconds.”

“I know.” Earnest rid himself of grudges like he shook off water droplets after swims. Anyone could tell that he did not believe in sitting on slights till they hatched into resentments. Anna thought,
Earnest lets things go—like maybe I should too.

In the few hours since she and Jeff had finally been honest with each other, she'd admitted to herself that she'd judged him too harshly. He'd meant well with Cedar Place. And though she hadn't exactly liked being called “blind” and “stubborn,” he might be right about her clinging to the past. She'd have to think about it.

Meanwhile, she was so tired of being mad at Jeff. The anger had dragged them both down too long. Maybe slates never got wiped completely clean, but it was time to shed her bad feelings. The question was: How? As usual when Anna needed guidance, her thoughts went to Grammy, though Jeff might accuse her again of clinging to the past.

Once Anna's third-grade teacher had planned a field trip to the Seattle Zoo. Anna would see elephants and polar bears and a two-headed snake! Tigers would roar, and monkeys would swing from ropes. A Komodo dragon would flick its forked tongue. For weeks Anna talked of little else, and she hardly slept the night before. But the next morning she woke with fever and a sore throat—and blazing disappointment.

Grammy wrapped her up in an afghan of crocheted hearts, and put her, inconsolable, to bed. “When something terrible happens, it's an opportunity. It's your job to turn it into something good,” Grammy said.

That afternoon she brought Anna paper, colored pencils, homemade cinnamon rolls, and tea, which Grammy sometimes spiked at night with rum. Together, she and Anna drew red-and-black-striped pterodactyls and green fire-spitting winged serpents. They invented their own mythical creatures—a lion with a crow's beak, an elephant with fins. Anna would never have met these fantastic beings at the zoo, Grammy pointed out. Anna's unfortunate classmates would never know them.

Just as Grammy had turned disappointment into a memorable afternoon, maybe Anna was supposed to transform her anger at Jeff into something good. Maybe that something should be forgiving him.

Anna could never kiss Jeff and make up like people did in movies. Too much water had flowed under their bridge, and nobody knew yet about the house's future. Still, she could follow Earnest's example of letting go of grudges. She could hand back her anger to the god of war and move on.

Anna tugged at her parka's sleeve to have something to do with her hands. “Jeff, I'm tired of fighting.”

He turned his silhouette so they were face-to-face. “Me too.”

“I'm sorry about all the misunderstanding.”

“No need to be sorry. I can see how you felt the way you did,” he said.

“I was too quick to judge.”

“So was I. I'm sorry too,” Jeff said.

His words were balm. “Well, we've got that straight,” Anna said.

For the first time in months, Jeff smiled—wholehearted and sincere. Anna smiled back the same.

“We should be there tomorrow when they set Earnest's leg,” she said.

“I'll call Dr. Nilsen in the morning and find out what time.”

“Maybe we can see him for a minute before they give him anesthetic.”

On the quietest of tiptoes, peace returned to Jeff and Anna.

 

When the phone rang near midnight, Anna's eyes sprang open, though she hadn't been asleep. Her stomach hurtled to the floor. She did not want to answer because Dr. Nilsen's night technician might be calling to say that Earnest had taken a turn for the worse. Or Jeff might already have heard the news and want her to rush to tell Earnest good-bye.

Quivery, Anna rolled on her back and reached for the receiver.

“How's Earnest?” Joy asked.

“Oh, it's you. Thank goodness,” Anna said.

“Always nice to be appreciated.”

“I was scared you were someone from Dr. Nilsen's clinic.”

“I figured Earnest was there.” A tenor crooned on Joy's radio.

“Earnest has a broken leg,” Anna said.

“That poor boy. Smoke inhalation and now this. He's had a hell of a last few months,” Joy said. “News traveled fast tonight. You wouldn't believe how many people asked about him at the meeting.”

The meeting.
Anna, Joy, and Lauren could have won a victory, or the council could have ended the women's last stand with a tomahawk to their gizzards. Part of Anna wanted to know which, but another part wasn't ready to hear. She dreaded more conflict when her psychological well was dry.

“The meeting went on and on. I just got home a little while ago,” Joy said. “You should have seen the fireworks at city hall. Standing room only. Reporters. People stomping around. It was quite a scene.”

“I'm sorry I missed it.”

“You didn't miss the vote. The council postponed their decision so they could deliberate more in a private session. I don't know when they'll meet, but Mrs. Scroogemore can't tear down the house yet. We've thwarted her at least for a while,” Joy said.

“That's good.”

“I vote we keep a few things in our shops and hang on till everything's decided. She'd never pay a sheriff to serve us an eviction notice.”

“Okay.” Anna meant to sound resolute, but her word came out anemic.

Joy paused, as if the anemia were registering on her. “What's the matter?”

“It's been a long night.”

“That poor dog,” Joy said again. “We can talk tomorrow.”

“I'll be late. A surgeon's setting Earnest's leg in the morning.” Anna rested the back of her wrist on her forehead.

“Jeff going to be with you?”

“Yes. We're actually getting along.”

Joy chuckled. “Wonders never cease.”

“I'll tell you about it tomorrow,” Anna said.

“Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”

Anna didn't sleep. There were too many unknowns—too many feelings to process and things to worry about. Missing the comfort of Earnest's snores and his body pressed against her, she lay there for hours, blinking in the dark.

C
HAPTER
47

“I
'll pay the bill,” Jeff offered.

“I can do it,” Anna said.

“No, really. I'll do it.”
Here we go again, falling all over ourselves to get along.
Anna had reactivated Jeff's urge to provide. He wasn't sure how that had happened, but he wanted to look after her.

“Why don't we split the bill?” Anna handed her credit card to Dr. Nilsen's Saturday receptionist.

“You're sure you've got enough money?” Jeff asked.

“We agreed to share Earnest's expenses, remember?”

Jeff did not want to remember. He never again wanted to think of the mediation, when Mad Dog Horowitz had infuriated him, and he and Anna had agreed to divide the costs of Earnest's care. Fortunately, Jeff's skin no longer prickled with disgust at thoughts about that day. It seemed like long ago. Back when the big bang happened or dinosaurs ruled the earth.

 

Jeff looped a beach towel around Earnest's middle and shored him up to keep weight off his leg. Anna coaxed him along the gravel path toward Vincent, waiting in the parking lot with plenty of sprawling room for Earnest in the backseat. Ecstatic to be free from the clinic, he hobbled along in his dreaded plastic cone, and he stopped to sniff messages left by Dr. Nilsen's other patients. Some were so interesting that Earnest acted like he wanted to inhale the gravel.

Jeff and Anna carefully hoisted him into Vincent. Though the day was cool, Jeff left the window partly open because Earnest liked to sniff the wind. He liked it to blow back his triangle ears as he half-closed his eyes in ecstasy.

Jeff thought,
We have a lot to make up to him
.

 

Jeff had never had a problem with the exterior stairs to his apartment. Usually, he bolted up them two at a time. Today, however, he studied them through Earnest's eyes, and scaling them looked more forbidding than clumping across Mount Everest's ice fields with broken crampons and a backpack of bricks.

“This isn't going to work. Even if I hold up Earnest with a beach towel, he could never climb those stairs on a broken leg,” Jeff said.

“But it's Saturday. You get Earnest for the weekend,” Anna said.

“It's impossible. He has to go out three or four times a day.”

“Maybe he should stay in the condo,” Anna said. “It'd be easy for us to get him to the backyard.”

She said “us.”
Did she mean she wanted Jeff to care for Earnest
with
her? It sounded like it. And sharing the load would be better than each of them tending Earnest alone.

“Good idea,” Jeff said.

From the backseat, Earnest watched them intently. The puzzled ridges in his forehead asked,
What's the deal? What's going on between you
now
?

Jeff might have answered,
More than I ever imagined.
He headed toward the condo.

Jeff glanced around the condo. It looked like the home of a disorderly chimp. Plants were lined up on all the windowsills and counters and in the kitchen corners. Cardboard boxes, their contents spilling from the top, were piled on each other and strewn through every room.

These former contents of Plant Parenthood were stark reminders that Anna had begun dismantling her shop and that her grandmother's house was poised for destruction, depending on the city council's vote. But Jeff chose not to mention the mess because he didn't want to ruin his and Anna's détente. She seemed to have made the same decision, because she did not mention the mess, either.

But the house's future was out there, waiting, a shark's fin circling their boat. Also waiting was another blowup between Jeff and Anna. It was just a matter of time.

 

In the condo's living room, Earnest plopped down on his bed as if he were king of a small nation, such as Liechtenstein, and Anna and Jeff were peons whose sole purpose was to attend to his slightest whim. If he'd had a signet ring, he'd have presented it for kisses. If he'd spoken words, for his dinner he'd have requested vichyssoise, savory Parmesan puffs, pheasant under glass, roasted venison with blushing pears, and people-cracker blackberry crumble.

Earnest did not complain about his confinement. With dignity, he visually surveyed his palace and waited patiently for his pills, disguised in hot dogs or Brie. He graciously accepted cows' hooves. With the finest cooperation, he allowed Anna to work the beach towel under him, and Jeff to carry him to the backyard. Outside, with majesty, he raised his leg.

When evening came, Jeff went to Say Cheese and brought back a pizza, which he and Anna ate at the kitchen table. They laughed—and caved—when Earnest's eyes commanded bites. After dinner, by mutual agreement, Anna got a comforter and pillow, and they made Jeff a bed on the sofa (which he chose not to point out was too short). By mutual agreement, Jeff, because he was stronger, would usher Earnest out alone at night for bathroom breaks. Also by mutual agreement, till Earnest was able to walk without support, Anna would stay with him on weekday mornings, and Jeff on weekday afternoons.

Later, Jeff felt odd sleeping on what used to be his and Anna's sofa in what had once been his and Anna's condo. It was like leaving his house wearing two left shoes. But as he listened to Anna's breathing from the bedroom, he looked out at the silver crescent moon, in the shape of an occupied hammock, and he decided that sleeping here again so close to her and Earnest also felt, well, really good.

 

In the morning Anna pulled mysterious containers from the refrigerator and shuffled around the kitchen in her fuzzy pink slippers and fleece robe. One by one, she cracked five eggs and dropped them in a glass bowl. She added milk and whisked them around, then poured them into a skillet and snipped in chives from a pot on the deck.

Jeff and Anna used to make their Sunday breakfast together, but now he sat, cross-legged on the floor. His role fell somewhere between a guest and Earnest's personal attendant. “I never had to get up once last night. Earnest didn't stir,” Jeff said.

“He's still pretty drugged.” Anna sprinkled salt and pepper on the eggs.

“I think he was being considerate. He didn't want to wake us.”

“Typical. Doesn't surprise me.” Anna put two slices of bread into the toaster and pushed down its lever. “You want jam?”

“Yes, thanks,” Jeff said. “You're making the same breakfast we always had on Sunday morning.”

“Habit, I guess.”

“Do you have eggs and toast on Sundays by yourself?” Jeff asked.

“No. Too much trouble. Oatmeal's usually it.”

A small chafing-dish flame warmed Jeff's heart. Because she was making him a special breakfast? Because she'd not carried on their Sunday ritual after he'd gone? Either way, he was glad.

“Here you go.” Anna set their breakfast plates on the blue straw placemats that she and Jeff had bought at Hall's Imports.

He got up, pulled out what had been her usual chair, and helped her sit. Then he took what had been his usual place across the table. He pinched off his usual corner of toast and handed it to Earnest, who took it with his usual snap of teeth.
Nothing's changed. Well, nothing and everything.

“Remember the day we adopted Earnest? How he tried so hard to get us to bring him home?” Jeff asked.

“He was adorable.”

“Still is. He picked us out as much as we did him,” Jeff said.

“Remember the Fourth of July when we were waiting on the curb for the parade, and he was sleeping behind us in his flasher position?” Anna asked.

“Yes, and people thought he was panhandling and left a dollar on his stomach,” Jeff said.

“If he'd been wearing his plastic cone, they'd have felt sorrier for him and given him a five.” Anna laughed with Jeff.

An A-plus observer of human emotion, Earnest watched. Far back inside his cone, the corners of his mouth turned up in Labrador retriever mirth.

Jeff scooted back his chair. “I'm going to get more coffee,” he said before he remembered that he was in
her
place and the coffee wasn't theirs. “Sorry. May I have another cup?”

“You know where the pot is.”

He set his cup on the few inches of counter space not taken up by plants. He poured. “Want some too?”

“Please.”

When he leaned down to pick up Anna's cup, he rested his hand on her shoulder.