Rose Connors - Temporary Sanity

Harry slaps him on the back and heads for the steep staircase that leads to his second-floor apartment. The Kydd starts packing his briefcase. I head up to my office to do the same.

The Kydd’s car is barely out of the driveway when the door between my office and Harry’s living space opens a crack. “Hey, Marty,” Harry whispers. “Come here a minute.”

I leave my desk and walk toward the door, but I can’t see him. He’s behind it. “Why are you whispering?”

He doesn’t answer.

I open the door and Harry whisks me inside, closing it behind us. I’m stunned.

Harry’s living room, normally something of a mess, is transformed. It’s uncluttered-tidy, even-lit only by the glowing logs in the fireplace. On the coffee table is an ice bucket, a fine Fumé Blanc perspiring in its cubes, and two long-stemmed wineglasses. An even longer-stemmed yellow rose (my favorite color) stands tall in a vase between them. The mellow sounds of a saxophone drift softly through the room.

“One hour,” Harry says, slipping both arms around my waist and pulling me close, beginning his signature version of a slow dance. “Let’s take one…goddamned…hour…for us.”

My mind jumps back to the image of Harry stuffing a fifty in the Kydd’s shirt pocket. I feel like a high school senior whose prom date just bought off the little brother. I look up into Harry’s hazel eyes and drape my arms over his shoulders. He pulls me even closer then, pressing his cheek against mine.

“You’re good,” I tell him. “You’re damn good.”

The chefs aren’t cooking tonight. They don’t have time, Luke said when I called. I’d hung up before I wondered what was keeping them so busy. Then I decided I’d better go home.

Cape Wok is decorated with tiny green lights and red tinsel garlands. The owners are happy to see me, as always, and they should be. I’ve put one of their daughters through college already. And there’s little doubt that I’ll educate the other one before my son reaches adulthood.

Our dinner is ready, small white boxes with tin handles packed in two brown paper bags, each one carefully stapled closed. The owners wave as I leave, wishing me a Merry Christmas and saying they hope to see me again soon. None of us has any real doubt that they will.

The spicy aromas of Szechuan shrimp, orange chicken, and fried rice fill the Thunderbird, then merge with the smell of burning wood when I pull into our driveway. Luke is at the kitchen counter when I come through the door, piling mounds of whipped cream on two mugs of steaming hot chocolate. He puts his nose in the air and sniffs, then closes his eyes as a satisfied smile spreads across his face.

“All right! Cape Wok!”

My stomach knots a little-a guilt spasm. In our house, Chinese takeout is comfort food.

There’s another smell, I realize, competing with the spices, the wood, and the chocolate. Again, it’s familiar, but it’s not Ragú. It’s something sweet. I can’t name it.

I park the bags on the table and then notice that it’s clean. In fact, the whole room is clean. Last night’s dishes have been washed and put away. The pots and pans are spotless, shiny even, hanging from their hooks over the gas range, and the counters have been wiped down. It’s nice to have a girl around the house.

The living room, though, is another story. The furniture’s been moved and the relocated couch holds two cardboard boxes, tissue paper and tree ornaments spilling over their sides. A wide red ribbon decorates the staircase banister, tiny white lights dancing around it. Bing Crosby croons in the corner.

The crèche sits on the coffee table, the nativity scene characters scattered around in no particular order. A cow stands alone in the center of the barn. The baby in his manger is somewhere out in the field, his mother unaccounted for. A handsaw is on the table too, three unshepherded lambs meandering across its blade.

And there’s a tree. That’s the other smell. In the middle of our living room, in front of the picture window, stands a tall, scrawny pitch pine, a Cape Cod native not normally selected for Christmas duty. Not even by Cape Cod natives.

I turn to face Luke, who followed me in from the kitchen. He’s beaming. He points one of the dripping mugs at the saw, the other at the scarecrow tree. “We chopped it down today,” he says, “just before dark. It’s a beauty, huh?”

Beauty ’s a stretch.

Luke hands one mug up to Maggie, who’s seated on the top rung of a ladder, crooning with Bing about a white Christmas and stringing unlit bulbs around the highest branches. He holds the other one out toward me, but I shake my head. Hot chocolate is not my drink of choice with Szechuan shrimp. Luke shrugs and inhales half of it in one swallow.

Maggie stops crooning long enough to take a gulp from her mug. She comes up with a whipped-cream mustache. “Check out your bedroom,” she says. “We’ve got a surprise for you.”

These days, surprises make me nervous. I head for the bedroom door with Luke on my heels, Maggie scrambling down the ladder to follow. There’s a faint glow in the darkened room, the kind thrown by the last embers burning in a fireplace.

My stomach knots again. I don’t have a fireplace.

Danny Boy’s bed, normally in Luke’s room, is here instead. A wicker oval lined with an old pad and worn blankets, it’s pressed against the wall beside my bed. And a night-light-one I haven’t seen since Luke was a toddler-is plugged in above it. A yellow, giddy dish dashes over the outlet with an equally enthusiastic spoon.

Danny Boy isn’t in his bed, though. He’s curled on the braided rug beside it, his eyes alert and focused on a small, dark-brown bundle inside. His tail thumps to greet us, but his steady gaze doesn’t move. The bundle lifts its head and opens moist, chocolate-colored eyes. A puppy.

Maggie bends and scoops up the small dog. “We found him in the woods,” she says. “Someone must have dropped him off at the edge of the highway, and he wandered into the woods, away from the traffic. He was scampering around from tree to tree, all alone, whimpering.”

“We couldn’t just leave him there,” Luke adds. “He’d have frozen.”

More likely he’d have been a coyote’s dinner. Better keep that thought to myself.

“We named him Charles,” Maggie says, scratching the puppy’s floppy ears.

Charles? A mental picture of the Prince of Wales pops into my head, uninvited.

“He looks like a Charles, don’t you think?” Maggie hands the prince’s namesake to me.

Charles looks up, as if awaiting my opinion of his christening. He drops his lower jaw, and his long tongue falls over one side of it. He looks like he’s smiling. And he’s far more charming than the prince.

“He does,” I agree. “He looks like a Charles.”

“Danny Boy has been taking care of him since we got home,” Maggie says, bending again to pat the old dog. “Like a mother hen.”

This news is somewhat surprising. “Maggie, Danny Boy is-well-he’s a boy.”

“I don’t care,” she says. “He’s been acting like a mother hen.”

Charles raises his face toward mine, his smile widening, confirming Maggie’s account of Danny Boy’s maternal attentions.

“Watch out,” Luke warns. “He’s got a wicked case of dog breath.”

“He’s a dog,” I tell him. “He’s supposed to have dog breath.”

“Anyway,” Maggie says, “we thought Charles should sleep with Danny Boy, but not upstairs. Charles can’t handle the steps yet.”

I examine the warm bundle in my arms. He has sizable paws. He’ll handle the steps in no time.

“So we moved them in here,” Maggie continues. “But it’s temporary. When I go home, Charles can live with Mom and me.”