Purple Hearts(72)

“Eh,” he said. “I don’t need it. You can pick me up here, thanks.” He tossed it on the car floor, out of sight.

“Okay, bye,” I called through the open window.

I watched him limp away, solo against the endless wall of trees. Suddenly, I remembered: I had forgotten to get him a plant.





Luke


For five days straight, Cassie dropped me off on the trails at River Place on her way to work, and Rita picked me up after. I started with fifteen minutes of exercises. If I could get through fifteen minutes and fifteen knee raises, I’d get through twenty the next day. If I could get through fifteen minutes, I could take out the trash.

If I could get through twenty minutes and twenty ankle curls, I could get through twenty-five, and I could go to the corner store a block away and get milk and eggs and bread.

If I could get through thirty, I could practice stepping in and out of the bathtub.

After last night’s training session, I’d asked Cassie to drop me off at a church down the street from her house for a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I’m not sure if she knew why I was there, or what the meeting was for. We didn’t talk about it.

Today, I was on forty. I hadn’t thought of a task equivalent to forty yet. I had at least worked up the strength to text Johnno that the severance was coming soon. He’d texted back, Cash this time, motherfucker, which was less threatening than usual. I could enjoy the sight of the riverbank for a half hour, I guessed. Dad used to take Jake and me here whenever he had to go to Austin to see his accountant.

Now Jake was holding my cane while I leaned on a tree, bending my leg at more than a 160-degree angle. I’d called him and asked him if he could spare a Saturday to help me train. He’d said yes, as long as he could yell at me like a drill sergeant.

To Jake, I’d learned, this mostly meant adding the word “maggot” to the end of what would otherwise be encouraging statements.

“Nice work, you maggot!” he growled.

I lifted again, straining to reach the height it would take for an able-bodied person to step over a shoebox. “I’m a regular Rocky Balboa.”

Jake walked up the path, searching the trees, and walked back.

“You see something?” I asked, lifting my foot through what felt like swamp mud. There’s no way Johnno would come here, right? I swallowed with a dry mouth.

“No, nothing,” Jake said, hiding a smile.

After I finished, we continued up the path. At my slow pace, I noticed the world more. The neon moss on the rocks. The white rock paths winding through the trees like train tracks. The golden retriever bounding down one of the stairways on a retractable leash.

The dog nuzzled my leg, leaping up and down on its forepaws. It ran a tight circle around me, then licked my hands. “Hey, boy,” I said. “Hey, there.”

“It’s a girl!” a voice called down the slope.

Cassie appeared at the top of the stone steps, and jogged down, her hair flying. Behind her was her pale friend with the ponytail, Nora.

I looked back and forth between Cassie and Jake. They kept giggling, and looking at me expectantly. “What’s up?”

The dog was in a triangle of delight, grinning up at each of us in turn with her big cinnamon-colored eyes, tongue dangling.

“Sorry, I meant to call you but I forgot my phone.”

“You? Forgetting your phone?”

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Luke, this is Mittens. She’s yours.”

“She’s mine?” I put a hand on her silky head. “How can she be mine?”

“A program,” Jake said. “Dogs for Vets.”

“You were in on this?” I pushed him on the arm.

“Jake!” Cassie said. “You were supposed to tell him we found her at the foot of an ancient shrine, ruling over a commune of inferior dogs.”

“She doesn’t seem like the queenly type,” Jake said, tilting his head. “Mittens is more the jester.”

Mittens was currently biting a large stick, whipping it like it was a dead animal, but she kept poking herself in the side.

“Or maybe the village idiot,” Nora said.

“It was Nora’s idea, actually.”

Nora gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Figured you could use some loosening up.”

“Thank you,” I said, catching her eyes. “And you’re okay with this?” I asked Cassie.

Cassie’s apartment was about to get a lot smaller. And smellier. I had never been much of an animal person. Not that I didn’t like dogs. My dad just never got Jake and me any pets because “we were animals enough.” And the stray dogs in Afghanistan were pretty much everyone’s dogs, not to mention they usually had dead rats hanging out of their mouths. I didn’t love the idea of caring for another being outside of myself, either, since caring for myself seemed hard enough.

But I guess that was the point.

Cassie bent down. “Oh, yes, I’m okay wit dis,” she said, rubbing Mittens’s ears. “Admit it—she’s so cute. Look at that cute little face, with the eyes and the nose and the face!”

I had never seen Cassie so affectionate. With anyone, or anything. Not when she was trying to be “wifely,” not on the phone to Toby, not even on the phone to her mother. I couldn’t help but laugh. Mittens leaped around my knees, as if to agree.