Marie-Helene Bertino: Safe as Houses

…

“Read this for me.” Great-Aunt Sonya squints and hands me a can.

“$3.95.”

“Ah.” She hurls it back to the shelf.

“How ’bout this one?” She hands me a can of peaches.

“$2.50.”

“Better,” she says. “For what?”

“Peaches.”

She makes an angry spitting sound. “I hate peaches.”

“Go try down there.” My mother points. “I saw a sign saying two for one.”

Great-Aunt Sonya scuffles down the aisle and my mother turns to face me.

“You still haven’t picked it up? They are going to give it away.”

“I don’t really need a ham.”

My mother makes a motion like she is waving off flies.

“Sam, it’s a free ham.” She says this like she has said the names of several things I am not interested in — college education, marriage, career position. “Go and pick it up before they give it to someone else.”

Great-Aunt Sonya returns with more cans. “Why aren’t you wearing a coat?”

“It must be in the car,” I say.

She turns to my mom. “Why doesn’t she have a coat?”

My mom shrugs and shakes her head.

“Here, hold these.” Great-Aunt Sonya hands me the cans and tries to shake herself out of the arms of her coat. “You’ll take mine.”

“No.” I turn to my mom. “Please tell her no.”

Aunt Sonya insists. “Tell her to take my coat. She can’t walk around with no coat on.”

My mother’s eyes have red in them. “Take it.”

Great-Aunt Sonya cannot shake herself out of her coat. Her sweater is being pulled off in the struggle, revealing the small knot of her shoulder. She pulls while my mother pushes. The thought of taking her coat is more than I can handle. I drop one of the cans and bend to pick it up.

Finally, the coat is off. As my mother hands it to me, she whispers, “She wants you to take the coat so take the coat.”

“I have to run an errand.” I give Great-Aunt Sonya a quick kiss.

My mom panics. “On Christmas Eve? What errand?”

“I’ll meet you back at the house.”

Great-Aunt Sonya waves at me. As I reach the end of the aisle I hear her say, “I’ll bet she is going to meet a boy.”

…

This Christmas, I have done the unthinkable. Out of insurance money I have written a check for four hundred dollars and have received in exchange an earnest-looking dachshund. The dog has small inconsequential feet and a long brown torso. I bring it to my father’s apartment on Christmas Eve afternoon.

He is already tense and complains about his sweater scratching the back of his neck as he answers the door.

The dog takes one look at the apartment and begins hurtling itself against the walls and doorjambs.

My father holds up his cup of coffee as the dog runs laps around our ankles. “What is that?”

“For someone who reads so much about dogs, you sure don’t know too much. It’s a dog.”

“What is it doing here?”

“Running around.”

His television is on.

“I told you I didn’t want a dog. Don’t you listen?”

“I guess not.”

“You get that from your mother. Sure as hell don’t get it from me. There are no dropouts on my side of the family.”

The dog ceases its assault on my father’s apartment. The look it gives me is clear: Get a load of this guy .

My father scratches at his neck. “I can’t believe you brought this thing into my house. You have no head. Where is your head? You’re just like your mother. Stupid. Where did all my smarts go? Where did they go?”

“Don’t know,” I say.

“Something must have translated.”

The dog stabs at its paw with a soft-looking tongue. I cannot think of why I brought it. I want to make a bed where it can sleep. I want to watch it eat. My father glares at the dog with such acute hatred it makes me tired.

“I’m pretty sure any anger I have comes from you, if it makes you feel any better,” I say.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look, I’ll just take the dog back.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says again.

He clenches his fist into a hard knot and places it in front of my face, shows it to me. I am not thinking. I open my mouth. He winds up and strikes. White for a moment. Then I taste tin blood.

“You can’t help what your parents give you. You hear that?”

“Speaking of,” I am slurring as I slip into my coat. “I have to run.”

“I oughtta pop you in the mouth for bringing this thing here.” His anger has blurred events in his mind; he thinks he hasn’t hit me yet. “You hear me? I should smash you in the face.”

I fix him in my stare so tight he can’t move.

“You’re such a bad driver,” I say. “You’d probably miss.”

…

I make sure I lean over the stretchy-necked microphone.

“I’m here to claim my free ham.”

“Jesus.” The woman behind the counter is startled out of her magazine. “Do you have photo ID?”

“I think you’ll find everything in order.” I hand her my passport.

Her eyes narrow at the sight of a tanner me smiling into the camera. “I remember you.”

She disappears into the back to, I assume, gather my ham’s suitcase.

The sun slides down the oversized windows, dying. If you believed the sky, you would think it was warm outside, but it is cold. It is cold as balls.

Through the windows, I see a girl in a pink coat on a mechanical car pumping her fists and laughing. The man standing next to her is also pumping his fists. It is the same pair from the fire. I see them everywhere. They are so excited about the mechanical car that I feel my head coming apart. My head is coming apart. It will fall off in chunks like wood in fire. The ham lady will emerge and scramble for the phone. Managers will scurry down the aisle from the half-moon room above the cashiers and they will clutch themselves.

I look at my reflection for validation and am surprised at what I see: a small girl in her Great-Aunt Sonya’s coat whose head is decidedly intact. I touch my ears, my hair.

The ham lady returns with a vacuum-sealed mass of pink flesh that looks like it couldn’t do a decent grand jeté.

“This is it?” I am the kind of person who worries about the feelings of a puny dead pig so I soften my tone, but I am not happy. “Why didn’t you just give this to the runner-up?”

“What runner-up?” She punches in a few keys of the cash register. “You’re the only one who entered.”

There is a wordless moment in which we exchange control and she ends up looking smug.

“Oh well.” I lean over again. “I claim this free ham.”

She slides the microphone away from me. “Anything else?”

I look out the oversized windows, over the heads of the man and his daughter, to a point beyond my sight where a dachshund is no doubt chewing the interior of my car. “One more thing.”

I plead with her, I beg, but the ham lady wants to shoulder the ten-pound bag of dog food and will not take no for an answer. They hurt me, these small, brutal kindnesses. She holds the dog food and I hold the ham as we move toward my car. The parking lot is quiet. The sun has died, throwing up a feeble wrist of orange.

The dachshund jumps up in the window and startles the ham lady. “What is that?”

For the second time that day I say, “It’s a dog.”

“What’s its name?”

“Stanley,” I say and then realize, Stanley . Stanley because I don’t know anyone named Stanley. Because it doesn’t mean rise from the ashes, or anything, in Latin.

The ham lady holds the ham so I can reach my keys. A sweet smell hits us as I open the door.

“Eee-oo,” she says. “What is that?”

I heave the dog food in. “It’s fire.”