Dog Bite - Page 17

My mind raced on the way home. What if she brings some junkie? What if she’s dirty and dangerous? What if they hurt Bella? I punched the Chevy faster and cut the turn onto the 12 South through the Abbey’s dormant rose bushes and flew towards home, gaining speed, and all the while terrified. But if I’m honest, there was a part of me that hoped she was okay. Maybe she was better. Maybe she came home. Maybe she’d be mom again. The thought turned sour. I drove mad. Fuck her. And I pulled into our gravel lot in a skidded cloud of fear, and I was out of the truck, throwing it in park in one desperate stumble. The front door was open. I called for Bella.

Heather’s there. She’s there in the kitchen.

I grip the door frame. Her hair first, from behind. It’s her. She’s home. She’s here. I see Bella eating pancakes at three years old, bluelillies she cries, bluelillies, and I see when we first bring Sophie home in that tiny little car seat and the time we finish the downstairs bathroom ourselves and the toilet leaks onto the floor boards and I see Dom in his yellow vest down at the recycling plant, those cold steel bars closing in, and I see the dog at the bus stop, and tubes for tying off a vein and burnt foil and little bags stamped with stars and missing money and missing nights and I could, I could. I couldn’t. I don’t do anything. But I stare.

Heather’s rifling through kitchen drawers as if she’s a bear up by Cat Creek in late fall and some hunter had left food in his fifth wheel. She clangs forks and knives and tosses the one drawer full of receipts and old batteries and whatever else, and then she’s down below the sink pulling out reusable grocery bags. She mutters to herself. I almost ask her what she’s doing, but nothing comes out when I notice Bella standing there. She’s in front of the TV. It’s still playing some reality dating show with the volume muted. Bella isn’t crying exactly. No, she’s alert and concerned. Eyes to her mother.

“Heather,” I say and step to her. “What are you doing here? Heather, stop.”

I come up behind her, and she spooks like she thought she was alone. She turns from a drawer where we keep the pots and pans and tops that never seem to fit any of them. She’s making a racket, clanging and banging, then freezes. An immediate silence screams. She looks up at me. I’m not even there.

She goes right back to it.

“Heather, please,” I say. “What do you need? You’re scaring Bella.”

“Mom,” Bella says. She squeaked it out, and I knew it must be so hard for her. To see her mom like this. “Mommy, stop,” Bella says again. She’s crying now. I’m so proud of her. She’s standing there, and she’s worried for her mother.

I drop to one knee and grab Heather’s wrist, and she pulls away in fear, and I wrench harder and stand. She comes with me, and her feet give out, and she slips, but I hold her up. I start to drag her to the front door, and she looks back at Bella, who has stopped crying and takes a few steps this way. I tell Heather she has to go. I tell her to think of her daughters. I get so mad at her that I struggle not to say more, not to do more. Thank God, Bella is here. Heather kind of straightens up and moves toward the open door under her own free will when she turns back, her pupils pop into a deep black, not unlike the starless void Mt. Blanca sucks from the sky at dusk. She looks at Bella.

“It’s here,” Heather says. “It’s here somewhere.”

She leaves.

It’s quiet again. I close the door and hug Bella, and hold on like she might make this right. I tell her how sorry I am, like it’s my fault. It is my fault. It’s our fault, her mother and me. It’s nobody’s fault. It doesn’t matter now, and I hold her and repeat I’m sorry. And Bella says it’s okay. She says that everything is going to be okay.

We hear a dog bark.

I moved to the front door. It’s got three-quarter tempered glass.

Heather is running through the field. The dog closing in.