Chapter 1: The Inactivist 1. The Inactivist
IT’S STILL DARK OUT WHEN my dad wakes me up.

Things are supposed to go a certain way, and this is not that way. He’s a commercial fisher, and so should be out of the house for several hours already by the time I wake up. When I get myself up, which I’m perfectly capable of doing.

“Louis,” he says, leaning way down close and misting me with coffee and bran muffin and fig and orange breath. Fortunately, I love my father and his relatively healthy diet. Later, he smells different. Fisherfolk, yeah?

“I need you, son.”

This, along with the darkness, and the absence of my mother from the house, is a bit unsettling.

My dad doesn’t need me, or anybody else, really. At least he’s never said so before. He’s very seafaring that way. It soothes me, his unneediness.

It’s technically not true, anyway. He doesn’t need me; somebody else does. But Dad needs that somebody else, so there you have it.

“I’m short a man today,” he says, “and Old Man Dan is the only guy around who knows what he’s doing and is also available to give me an honest day’s work.”

Old Man Dan is Mr. Evans. He’s one of those guys you hear about who have millions of “fish stories” about the one that got away and the biggest thing that ever swam the sea. Old Man Dan retired from actual fishing without retiring any of the fish stories, or the scent. They say he’s got a thing called trimethylaminuria. They also say he reeks. Kind of guy my dad avoids in the street or the supermarket aisle on account of those stories more than the smell, so he must be in serious need of Dan’s assistance on this occasion if he’s prepared to listen to that stuff all day.

“Okay, can I ask why you’re telling me this, Dad?” I ask, without really wanting to ask it.

“Because Dan says he can only go out on the boat today if he can get somebody to look after Amos.”

Oh no.

Amos. Dan’s multi-breed mongrel, who seems less like a real dog and more like a cross between a portly dingo and a badger. Everybody but Dan refers to him as Anus, because of the smell, which reaches you about twenty-four hours before you’re anywhere near him.

“Oh, Dad…”

“Please, Louis. The poor thing can’t be alone for more than a few hours at a time, ever since Dan’s wife passed away. You understand, of course….”

Ah, Dad. I mean, I don’t think he did it on purpose, but he did it. He can hardly be unaware that his wife, my mother, is in the hospital, as she has been for too many days the past year. He cannot be unaware, but he also cannot have meant to use that as a point of leverage in this conversation.

His fractured face tells me as much. He caught himself off-balance just as badly as he did me.

“I’ll do it, Dad,” I say, brushing past him both impatiently and affectionately as I climb out of bed. He squeezes my arm, I squeeze his, and we both look away.

When I come out of the shower and make my way sluggishly to the kitchen table, it’s still not quite sunrise. My little sister, Faye, is eating a bowl of cereal by the dim, warm glow of the stovetop light. It’s a scene I’m not used to, and one I find unexpectedly pleasant. Faye can be a bit harsh under the full glare of day.

I’m thirteen, and Faye is eleven months younger. Irish twins, they call it, but we might as well be the regular kind. She’s as old as me in every other way, if not older. There’s a family legend that—because Faye was not exactly a planned baby—Dad wanted to name her Daisy. As in, whoops-a-daisy.

“Oh, for cryin’…,” Faye exclaims, letting her spoon fall out of her hand and clatter around the tabletop. She’s not really that shocked to see me at this hour, but it’s still a pretty good show.

I explain the situation to her, how Dad needs a fisher, and that fisher needs a dog sitter.

“Anus?” she asks, incredulous, but not really. “Well, I don’t know what you showered for, because that’s just soap and water down the drain.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad,” I say, because why not just let her swing away.

“Not that bad, Louis? Old Man Dan still smells like chum after all these years, and he remains only the second-raunchiest creature in that house. And you’re going over there? You know that’s what killed Old Lady Dan the Fishwife, don’t you? She died of stench. It was in the obituary. I read it.”

Always good value for money, my sister.

I shrug. It should be noted that I shrug a lot. It’s my official state gesture.

“I’m getting paid,” I say. “And Dad needs me to help him out. Those are two sound reasons. Throw in kindness to animals and we’re well into bonus territory.”

Felt like I was doing pretty well, for a homeschooled debater.

“Oh, you’re heading into bogus territory, all right,” she says. “Seriously bogus. And I love Dad, and animals, as much as you do. But you know what Ma would have to say about that other thing.”

I forgot that I wasn’t even the best debater in the house.

“She’d say I should do it for free,” I moan. “But Ma would have everybody do everything for free, and that’s why we’re poor.”

“Oh, we’re not poor, Louis; we’re just normal.”

“Yeah, well, poor is not gonna be my normal, I’ll tell you that.”

“Fine,” Faye says. “Tell me that if you need to tell me that. I need to tell you that Ma is expecting to see you today. So, while you’re walking the dog and grubbing the money, you also need to make time for a visit to your mother.”

“I can do that.”

“Yeah, you can do that.”

“Yeah, Faye, that’s what I said.”

“Right, I was just helping. Sometimes you need help, to, y’know, do things.”

This is all so wrong. Not inaccurate, but wrong.

“Come on, Faye. Not when it comes to Ma.”

Ma is a great many great things. Foremost among them is probably activist. She’s renowned for it. If there’s a cause that needs activizing, she’s there, and always has been. To the detriment, one might say, of her personal health and well-being. She cares, about everything, more than a rational person should. In my opinion.

By contrast, I have a nickname, and it was first bestowed upon me by that very same activist Ma.

The Inactivist.

Kind of comical, and true enough, if not exactly flattering. I don’t much like getting involved.

“Would you have gone to see her today if I hadn’t reminded you?”

“Of course I would have. But, anyway, wasn’t today supposed to be your day?”

“Ha!” Faye says, pointing through the air between us sharply enough to nearly hurt my chest. Like she bagged me there. Which, possibly, she did.

“What, ‘ha’?” I say. “Today was definitely supposed to be your day.”

“What, because they’re all my day? Because I’m the girl?”

My choices here, as I see them, are limited and not good. An honest answer to that does me no favors. Pausing too long while I come up with something better presents its own problems. It’s like verbal waterboarding, trying to argue with Faye.

I aim for her not inconsiderable heart as a viable option to battling her intellectually, which is no option at all.

“Faye, I don’t like the hospital. It scares me.”

She slows down, out of kindness. I’d sort of prefer it if she sped up.

“I know, Louis. And I understand. But, too bad. And anyway, it’s not a hospital, so stop calling it that.”

She’s half-right, which is about 50 percent less right than she usually is. Ma is staying at a place they call the Knoll. But the Knoll is on the grounds of, and functionally a part of, a whole hospital. It’s an inpatient program that lasts four weeks. She’s done this thing before. Later, if she still needs them, there are outpatient programs that also last four weeks. She won’t need them, though. I’m an optimist. Dad says I am pathologically optimistic. Meaning, I tend to believe that things are gonna work out, on their own, without any help from me, the way they should. Because they will, that’s why.

Ma is in the Knoll as a direct result of the fact that she cares too much. About everything.

That’s an insufficient explanation, probably.

She works at a shelter called A Woman’s Place. Doesn’t just work the place. Lives it. One of their managers. Often a night manager, which can be hard going. She’s a stellar person, a soldier. The single best person I’ve ever met, as a matter of fact. All the pain of A Woman’s Place—and that is a world of pain—is her pain.

She’s an inspiration to me. In a way she would never want to be.

Meaning, I’m determined that what happened to her will never happen to me.

The more streamlined story is, she was breaking up a fight at the shelter one night. In the course of things, she slipped and destroyed her knee. Shredded her ACL and MCL. Such is the esteem in which my mother is held in A Woman’s Place that everyone on the scene—including the two combatants—dropped everything in order to care for her on the spot.

That care took her eventually to City Medical Center. And to surgery. And to lots of rehab and physical therapy.

And pain. Lots and lots of pain.

And painkillers.

Which isn’t an altogether accurate word, is it? Pain doesn’t die. I have seen pain, and I have never seen it die.

So the pain got to my ma. And the painkillers got to the pain. Then the painkillers got to Ma.

But it wasn’t just the knee, was it?

Dad, who has a way with words for a fisherdude, put it this way: Pain got to Ma. But the pain of pain got to her more. Everybody’s pain got to her.

She cares too much, is what he meant. Like I said.

She broke, is what happened.

The job did it to her. Then being off the job double-did it to her. She couldn’t stand being off the job—not helping out. Helping everybody but her.

“Please, Faye?” I say because I’m out of anything more convincing. “Can’t you do today?”

“I did yesterday,” she says.

“Yeah, but you could do today, right?”

“Right. I could. But I’m not going to.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want you to.”

“Aw, that’s just—”

“And because Ma wants you to.”

Rats. And rats and rats again.

“She didn’t actually say that. Did she actually say that?”

“She actually said that, Louis. She wants to see you. And for you to see her. She knows you’re afraid.”

“And she wants to see me anyway.”

“Duh, Louis,” she says, and with those three syllables wraps up the discussion.

Duh, Louis. She wants to see me because I’m afraid. Not only because of that, but for sure it’s partly because of that.

There’s an empty planter affixed to the wall outside Old Man Dan’s door. The chipped alabaster face of the planter looks like Helen of Troy or possibly Troy of Troy, since it’s just one of those vaguely classical, scuffed-up sculptures. Inside the otherwise empty head are, as promised, one key and one envelope.

The envelope contains cash. My day’s pay. I am to feed Amos and then take him for a long walk. He can be left alone for just a few hours, after which I am to return, give him a snack, and walk him again. I can spend as much extra time as I like, playing with him and entertaining him inside the house or out, this morning or this afternoon. As my rate of pay has already been established and deposited into my pocket, that extra-time scenario seems unlikely.

I take the key and insert it into the lock.

It’s as if the turning of the key itself unleashes a tornado of soft-boiled garbage from within the house.

It’s a very, very stenchy place. Old Man Dan is a nice guy and all, but his home should be condemned. I’m ready to back straight out again when Amos comes practically cartwheeling toward me from the doorway at the far end of the kitchen. Bless his matted soul, in his excitement he can’t get any purchase on the linoleum floor covering, and his long nails clatter against it as if coins are raining down from the ceiling.

“Okay, okay, okay,” I tell him anxiously, dropping to my knees to hold him down from launching himself at me again and again. “Okay, boy,” I say, wrapping my hands around his rib cage and comforting him as much as possible. His heart is thundering like a full field of horses at the Kentucky Derby. He makes a desperation sound that’s half bear cub, half goose. He rams his head into me repeatedly like he badly wants me to leave, but pants and slobbers as if he’ll kill himself if I do.

There are a great many cute dogs out there. It’s probably kindest if nobody tells Amos about them.

He’s asymmetrical all over, and his fur is the color and texture of steel wool. He has multiple leakages—and I’ll say no more about those. His head looks like he built it himself out of spare parts. His tail makes chewing-gum-snapping noises when he wags it, and he can’t seem to not wag it.

He’ll smell better one month after he dies than he does right this minute. And now that he’s jumped all over me, so will I.

There’s a bag of dry dog food on the counter next to the sink and a can of the wet stuff next to that. I gather that I’m supposed to provide the boy a mix of the two, and so I start by tipping some of the noisy nuggets out of the bag and into the stainless-steel bowl. Then I pop open the can of wet.

Oh my. Oh me oh my. This explains a lot. The odor that leaps up to bite me as soon as the can is breached is precisely the same sad something that clings to Amos all over.

He smells exactly like his food. And it’s clearly not the higher-shelf, pampered-pooch brand. If he wasn’t right in front of me, I’d swear the goop was made of Amos anus.

With some effort I mix the foods together, and it’s such a struggle for my senses that I briefly consider not giving it to him. It feels like some sort of war crime to subject him to this muck, but then I turn toward him. He’s sitting in classic good-boy style, looking as if his entire skeleton will leap at me out of his mouth if I don’t put that bowl down in front of his pulsating snout within the next five seconds.

So I do, and by the time I straighten all the way back up, there is little sign that I, in fact, fed him anything at all. He continues licking away at the bowl as if his favorite flavor is actually cold metal and he just ate the food to get it out of the way. Fair enough, I guess.

I was told that it’s imperative to get Amos out-of-doors immediately, right after feeding him. But since my own biological needs must be met in-of-doors, I quickly slip into the bathroom first.

I can’t be more than two minutes in there when I get the reality of what immediately means in the world of Amos.

When we used to have a garage and Dad would do his own car repairs, there was often spillage of dirty motor oil out there. The cleanup would include mixing sawdust with the manky old thick oil.

So, visually, Amos’s gift is very familiar to me. And since it smells exactly the same as everything else about him, so is the odor.

I’m getting accustomed to such things more quickly than I might have anticipated.

There’s a river walk not far from the house, and Amos seems comfortable and happy heading that way. Out in the fresher air he becomes quite tolerable. There’s a bounce to his uneven steps that indicates a simple good humor about the world around us. He sniffs tree trunks and beer bottles and other dogs all with the same sprightly snuffle before moving on to the next thing. He never tugs too hard on the leash, lingers too long over the odd nasty poop, or attempts to eat anything that may tip the balance of his delicate constitution. He bumbles along with enough happy-to-be-here that I find myself caught up in his positive approach to just walking. And so we walk. And walk, and walk some more.

It’s a splashy sunny morning, the air tastes like cream soda, I don’t have any pressing schoolwork to get to, and to be fair, both Amos and I could seriously use the exercise.

But none of this is why we’re on the conveyor belt to nowhere.

Truth is, I don’t want to visit my ma.

I want to want to visit her, but it’s hard. I don’t have a history of doing things that are hard, and anytime I have done one, it was probably because I had my ma at my back, urging me on. She’s great and scary like that.

And now she’s the one who needs the urging. She needs to get better. She needs help. She needs, among other things, me. And I’m struggling to even get myself there.

As I’m wrestling with this, and striding more purposefully away from everything—my home, Amos’s home, the hospital—the sun gets stronger, the river flows freer, every reason to be out walking becomes clearer. The dog and I both get it.

Until Amos stops in the middle of the footpath. Just stops. I look all around to see what, if anything, has spooked him. There’s nothing, as far as I can tell.

“What, boy?” I ask, and I can’t believe I’m already one of those doinky people who ask dogs questions.

But, in his way, he answers. He looks up at me for a few concentrated seconds. Then he spins like a pickled four-legged top and heads back the way we came.

“What?” I say. “You wanna go home?”

I’m apparently not done asking him stupid questions, but he is, apparently, done answering them.

We walk briskly and directly, back to Amos’s house. And then past it.

“Um, guy,” I say, “here we are.” It’s the first time I have to actually give him a bit of a yank on the chain. It’s almost like he didn’t want to go home in the first place.

He could be chugging toward my house, which, I don’t know how he knows where that is. Or he could be headed beyond. One thing’s for sure—wherever he’s headed, I’m likewise headed.

Amos is muscular.

After a short period of stupidity, I stop fighting Amos and follow to wherever he thinks I should go.

We’ve passed his house.

And then my house.

We continue on for the next several blocks toward the place I know now is the place.

Ma’s place. Amos fairly drags me all the way to where Ma is, where I don’t want to be.

He plunks himself down on the sidewalk in front of the Place. The Knoll. Stares up at me.

“No,” I snap.

I know he’s thinking, Yes. I know he is. I also know Ma is staring down at me from her window. I know she is. Between the judgy bookends of the two of them, I’m beginning to feel shame. And by beginning, I don’t mean for the first time today. I mean possibly for the first time ever.

I have no qualms about leaving Amos tied to a sapling on the front lawn of the Knoll. Because who’s gonna steal him? And also, it gives me a completely reasonable reason for not staying too long.

What? Stop looking at me like that.

Anyway, Amos is perfectly fine with it. He sits serenely by the tree, in excellent view of the window where Ma is staying. She can meet him from afar, which is the distance you want to meet him from.

The woman at the front desk says she’s been expecting me, which is quite something, since I wasn’t expecting me. She points me the way, to the elevator and to Ma, both of which I know already, but she’s way nice and it’s time well spent. Suddenly I get the thought that I should spend a bit more of it checking up on Amos. But he’s already onto me, and my time-killing delay tactics will not impress him one little bit. Plus, it will mean a twice-walk of shame when he just sends me right back with a steamy stare. I do not wish to become accustomed to shame.

So, I go to the elevator.

It’s only four floors. I’m young. I should probably walk. The elevator seems to agree and snaps at my behind just as I pass through the doors. It speeds me against gravity, dangerously fast for a contraption inside a medical facility. Before I know it—no, exactly as soon as I know it—the jerk elevator jerks to a stop and flashes its flash doors open to the fourth floor.

Where Ma stands, right there, as open as those doors to me.

Before anybody can say anything, I charge out and fairly slam into my mother.

I bury myself in her and cry like a soaking sponge all over her. She holds me there. She holds me.

Holds me hard. Like I’ll never get away. Like a mother holds a kid.

“Why are you crying?” she asks me real quiet-like, to maybe save me a little bit of the embarrassment as she bundles me down the hall toward her room.

“Because I’m not,” I sniff sloppily at her.

She laughs.

That’s good. She was supposed to laugh. I could almost always get her to laugh before.

Makes me want to weep. With happiness this time, though the difference might not be that obvious. But she’d be able to tell.

When we complete the snuffle shuffle and she closes the door to her room behind us, she starts talking before I’m really ready to talk.

“Lemme show you,” I cut her off, and pull her by the hand to the window. “That’s Amos,” I say, gesturing to the currently very well-behaved dog below.

“You got a dog?” she asks.

“No. It’s Old Man Dan’s dog.”

“You mean Old Man Dan, the only person who smells more like fish than your father does?”

“That’s the guy.”

“So, what does his dog smell like?”

“He aspires to rotting fish.”

She leans up close to the window. “Well, he looks rather sweet from here.”

“He is sweet. But ‘from here’ is his best angle.”

She goes quiet. She stares out, down at Amos, but farther than that too, as if she can see a few fathoms beneath the ground beneath the dog. She stares for too long. “Maybe we’ll get a dog,” she says with less enthusiasm than any of the billions of people who have ever said that before.

“That would be great,” I say, trying to make up for it with my overenthusiasm.

“So, why do you have him?” Ma asks as she leaves the window to go sit on her bed.

There’s a slippery vinyl chair near her, and I take that.

“Because I’m getting paid for it,” I say, and regret it before I can even think why.

She pauses. Leans back against the headboard, crosses her legs at the ankles and her hands in her lap. It’s gonna be bad.

“Why are you taking money from a poor, lonely old man to take his dog for a walk?”

Ma’s like a big version of Faye. If you don’t push back right away, she’ll have you.

“Because the poor, lonely old man needed me to care for his dog so that he could get paid to do a full day’s fishing for Dad.”

“Oh, Louis. You know how sly your father can be. He’s probably paying Dan in fish heads. You give him back his money right away.”

I don’t want to upset my mother right at this moment, truly I don’t. But this is the very mother who—way more than Dad ever did—taught me to stick up for myself in all situations.

“No,” I say.

She crosses her ankles the other way on top of the crisply made bed.

“No, you say?”

“No, I say,” I say.

“And is that all you say?”

I guess it’d better not be.

“Ma, I’m getting a fair wage, for a fair day’s effort. I’ve heard you say a zillion times that that is all people can ask for in such a world as this. Sounds like you, doesn’t it?”

She unfolds her hands and starts patting her thighs gently and rhythmically. It’s a thing she does.

“A zillion is an overestimate, don’t you think?”

I sit upright in my slippy uncomfortable chair. I mimic her thigh patting.

“Actually, I would call my estimate conservative, Mother.”

She giggles, like a kid. That’s another thing she does. Ma is a very serious person, but she loves to be teased. To be seen and known and recognized, and to be called out for it. Loves it.

Just as quickly, her face drops, and seriousness returns. She looks away from me, toward the window. It’s turning into a frosty white-gray day, and from this angle, looking out the window is looking at nothing.

“When you coming home, Ma?” I ask, probably sooner than either of us is ready for it.

“I’m missed, am I?” she asks dryly.

“Of course you are,” I say. “The place is a dump, and the standard of the food is appalling.”

I have managed it again, the making her laugh. The house was never spotless when Ma was there. In fact, it’s almost certainly cleaner with her not there. She’s kind of sloppy, truth be told. And as for the meals…

“I eat better here,” she says with a weak smile. The laughter, even the smile, requires a lot more effort than usual. A poorly tuned engine that just about turns over, then keeps spluttering out.

“A couple more weeks, is it?” I prompt.

As if I’d asked something else, she quickly responds, “Dogs come here.”

“What?”

“Dogs. They let dogs come in sometimes. People have brought them in. I petted a couple of them. Felt good. I enjoyed it. Dogs are wonderful, as it turns out.”

“Oh,” I say, happy to have something. “Amos. Almost forgot.” I walk to the window again, and my heart inflates a couple of sizes at the sight of him. I didn’t expect him to take off or anything, but all the same. There he is. I look back toward Ma but point out the window. “Amos,” I say vaguely.

“Amos,” she repeats vaguely.

“I probably shouldn’t leave him,” I say.

“Probably shouldn’t,” she says.

“I can stay a few more minutes,” I say, like the wonderful guy I am not.

“Comfort dogs. That’s what they call them. And it’s true, they’re really comfortable.”

“I also have schoolwork,” I say. “As you know. Faye is a taskmaster. Does she really need to be in charge, Ma?”

“She’s not actually in charge, Louis,” she says with a tut. “But yes, she really does.”

Her phone rings. Because, you’ll see.

“Hiya, sweetheart,” Ma says to the rotten little gadget. That is not a reference to the phone, incidentally.

“Yes,” she says, “he’s here.”

“No, I’m not,” I hiss urgently. “I mean, I was here, like she told me to be, but I’m not now. Tell her that. Tell her both of those things.”

Why should I be this scared of someone who does not weigh ninety pounds?

“He’s not here, Faye.” She sounds like she’s reading an eye chart. “He was here, like you told him to be. But he’s not now.”

I make the slog from the window back to the bedside chair and hold out my hand. “Thank you, secretary,” I say. “I’ll take this call.”

“Good,” Ma says. “I like it better when you get along.”

“Why didn’t you just call me directly, Faye?” I ask.

“What, you would have answered?” she quanswers. That’s a word she herself made up, for answering a question with a question.

“I don’t have to quanswer that,” I say.

“Okay, right, fine,” she says. “I really just wanted to be sure you made it by there, but honestly, you do need to get home and do some coursework.”

“Right,” I say. “Fine,” I say.

I don’t like this, at all, that I’m taking directions from my little sister, and not my mother, and especially… not my mother.

“Ma,” I blurt, dropping her phone on the bed next to her, “why can’t you come home? Like, now? Like, right now? I can take you home. I can walk you right home, me and Amos together, and you’ll be safe, and comfortable, and whatever. You seem fine and healthy, Ma. You look great, and fine and healthy, and I don’t understand why—”

Faye, or anyway the flat little electronic version of her, is howling from her spot there on the bed, and I’m pretty sure I can hear my name coming up out of her in that small, powerless voice and something like, “…and you stop that right this minute or I swear I’m gonna…”

And she will, too. Whatever she’s threatening to gonna do to me, she will, and successfully.

I should talk to her.

“You should talk to her,” Ma says.

I talk to her.

“Louis,” she hisses insistently, “you have to leave her alone. She’s there for a reason, because she needs to be there and because they’re making her better. The fact that you don’t understand—as you don’t understand many things—is not really important here.”

With my obviously limited powers of understanding, I shouldn’t really be able to get what she’s saying. But I do get it. I know, inside, that Ma needs to be where she is for now. I also know that I’m struggling with it and that I feel helpless, powerless, everything-less when Ma is away.

I wish I could do something. Even though I famously don’t much like doing things.

“You’re right, Faye,” I say.

“I am?” she says.

That felt pretty good, catching her off guard like that.

“Yeah. In fact, I’m coming home right now. Looking forward to seeing you, too.”

“Oh, right,” she says, “now you’re just being—”

She’s right, I am. I hang up on her to underscore that point.

Faye greets me, nose-to-nose, at the kitchen door when I get there. As if she knew I brought company.

“I smelled him blocks away,” she says. “Anus is not coming in here, Louis.”

“Well,” I say, “he is. He has to. Don’t you care about our mother?”

“What? Yeah. What?”

“It’s for comfort. For Ma. Turns out they allow comfort dogs there at the Knoll. And Ma would like one. And Amos isn’t getting through the front door without a thorough bathing. And that, dear sister, is a two-person job. As I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Faye is so uncharacteristically quiet. It’s delicious, watching the whole hands-on-hips, sighing-at-the-ceiling, waving-us-in-like-a-traffic-cop surrender.

“Boy, do we love our mother,” Faye says, with her hands cupped defensively over her nose and mouth.

“Boy, do we,” I say.