Then Alice makes a gesture. Even a dog knows that she doesn’t mean to get him to react to it, but he does, happy to show off his talent. Alice flips her right hand, palm up, and Buddy/Mack rises to his back legs and spins. He can tell by her expression that she is surprised. Humans reveal so much with their mouths. Buddy/Mack watches to see if she’ll try any other familiar gesture, and he isn’t disappointed. A quick hand to her brow, and Buddy/Mack, still on his back legs, maneuvers himself behind her, the back of his skull fitting neatly against her backside. She moves forward and he moves with her. She moves to the side and he keeps with her. He waits for another signal, then decides on his own that back-to-back is over and, still balanced on his hind legs, chooses to hip-hop back in front of Alice. She reaches for his front paws and he extends them to her. His muzzle is split in a wide grin. She’s dancing with him.

Now can we go?

Chapter 26

26

I’ve worked in a nursing home. I once thought about getting my certification as a nurse’s aide, but I never got around to it. I did learn how to change a bed with a patient in it. I learned about bedsores. I watched the CNAs as they fed, bathed, changed, and spoke in humiliating baby talk to the old people, treating them like unthinking imbeciles simply because age or disease had taken away their speech or their mobility. I’m not squeamish. A woman who has had to support herself and a child alone can’t afford the vapors when a good job pays up to seventeen dollars an hour.

I stand over my father and wait until he signals that he’ll take another spoonful of soup. He can feed himself, but he prefers being helped to having tomato stains on his pajamas.

“Ready for another spoonful?”

“No. I’m done. Take it away.”

I look down on his blanket-covered knees and try not to think how emaciated this disease has left him. Adele can stuff him with all the soup and protein drinks he can tolerate, but there is no reversing this decline. I take back my earlier assessment; this wait will not be long.

“Just one more.” I sound like I did when I was coaxing Tony to eat peas.

“I said no. I’m not hungry.” My father sounds like Tony when he wouldn’t eat those peas. Petulant. When did this grown man become petulant? I remember him as silent, accepting, probably cowed by the woman he replaced my mother with, but never petulant.

“Okay.” I pull the tea towel out from under his chin.

“Give me the remote.”

Fighting the temptation to make him say please, I hand him the clicker and leave the room.