Page 46 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
He nearly has to wrestle the paper out of Nathaniel’s hands to bring it up to Susan.
“What does it mean that I’m not surprised?” Susan asks after Patrick’s told her.
Patrick’s afraid it means that they both see the good in the world dissolving like sugar in tea. Once, Susan told him that an earthquake felt like her whole building was shaking itself apart. That’s how this year feels, like the world itself is shaking in its foundations, and it’s anybody’s guess what will be left when the shaking stops.
He isn’t going to say any of that, so he goes around the apartment, picking up stray coffee mugs and hair brushes and guitar picks and putting them where they belong.
“Now who’s going to be the Democratic candidate for president?” Susan asks when Patrick finishes puttering and sits on the sofa.
Patrick hadn’t even thought that far, but now that Susan mentions it, this can’t end well. It feels tawdry to measure the loss of a person in practical terms, but Kennedy’s campaign was promising in a way that not much is this year. It had been nice to be hopeful. Robert Kennedy felt like the only way this war wouldever end. Every day there are more dead bodies. And every day more people change their minds. Peace talks are happening. But Patrick can’t make himself believe that anybody in Washington cares enough to make it stop. They have their own agenda, and it doesn’t involve peace.
Nathaniel comes in then, shouldering open the door while somehow holding three cups of coffee. He glances between Susan and Patrick and cracks a tiny little one-sided smile before distributing the mugs. Then he scoops Eleanor out of her crib.
“You’re in my place,” he tells Patrick, because he truly believes there are assigned seats in Susan’s living room. He proceeds to wedge himself between Patrick and the armrest. There’s nothing for Patrick to do but put his arm around Nathaniel’s shoulders, and to keep it there.
* * *
In the middle of June, right before the school year ends, the Valdez kids come in carrying a package of filth that turns out to be a dog.
“We found him on the way home from school. He was in that vacant lot on Seventh Avenue,” Iris says. “Where the diner used to be.”
“Absolutely not,” says Mrs. Valdez, looking at her kids’ faces and guessing their agenda. “Not a chance.”
“Not it,” says Susan.
“What are you going to name him, Patrick?” Nathaniel asks.
Patrick sighs and goes out to get a leash and some dog food.
Nathaniel and Hector give the dog a bath in Patrick’s own bathtub, with Patrick’s own shampoo, after which it’s easy enough to identify it as the type of breed that’s basically fifty pounds of hair and ears in a roughly canine configuration.
“Standard American Shaggy Dog,” Susan says.
“Bookstores have cats,” Patrick says to nobody in particular after putting down a bowl of kibble. “Not dogs.”
The consensus is to name the dog Walt, because they’re all fucking comedians.
“People will think I’ve named him after Disney,” Patrick grumbles.
“You’re named after the poet Patrick has a crush on,” Nathaniel whispers to the dog.
There’s a part of Patrick that’s annoyed by all this. You can’t just foist a dog on someone. It’s the same part of him that’s annoyed when he opens a dresser drawer to reveal zero clean shirts because Susan and Nathaniel have stolen them all, or when he goes to make lunch only to find that Susan’s eaten the last of the leftover dumplings. Sometimes, the sound of Nathaniel and Susan going on and on andonabout some new and fascinating way to tune a guitar makes him want to tell both of them to can it. He lived by himself for ten years. He’s used to being alone. He’s used to keeping the perimeters of his life clear and well-guarded.
But there’s something superseding the annoyance, something fond and dumb and a little embarrassing. Susan grew up with dogs. Iris and Hector have spent years trying to badger their parents into getting a dog. Patrick likes that he made them happy in the same way that he likes finding Susan’s coffee cups in his apartment and his own books on Susan’s counter—the same way he likes seeing Susan and Nathaniel on his furniture, in his clothes.
He knows, too, that if he’d put his foot down and said absolutely not, he did not want a dog, Susan would have taken Walt herself. He hadn’t, and so she didn’t.
That night, Walt jumps onto Patrick’s bed and falls asleep. His fur is matted in places, but he doesn’t seem to have any fleas,so Patrick supposes he can stay there. When Patrick pets his back, his ribs feel too close to the surface.
Nathaniel appears in the doorway, backlit by the hall light so he’s nothing more than a familiar silhouette.
“I don’t even like dogs,” Patrick complains half-heartedly as he combs his fingers through the dog’s fur.
“Neither do I,” Nathaniel says. “But everybody else does.” Walt shifts in his sleep, resting his chin on Patrick’s ankle. “I was about to put on the news, if you think you can extract yourself.”
On the sofa, Patrick can’t focus on the Channel 2 news. Nathaniel is a few inches away, wearing a t-shirt that used to be Patrick’s. The building still echoes with the sound of everyone shrieking and laughing about the dog. But the television is a reminder of everything that exists outside the walls of this building. Some people were convicted of encouraging draft resistance, and Patrick feels like he’s in a pot that’s coming to a boil.
“Isn’t that the man who wrote the baby book Viv wanted us to read?” Patrick asks. How many Spocks can there be, after all. “And he’s going to jail?”
