Private Investigations

“Jesus Christ, Maeve, you’re twenty-three. You wanna stop with those things?”

I rolled my eyes and crunched another butterscotch between my teeth.

“You’re like an old lady,” Stan grumbled. “Only difference is the lack of dentures.” He pushed the brim of his hat up to rub his forehead. “Alright, let’s get going.” His sour breath curdled to white in the air. It was the ugliest stage of winter, when ice and sludge replaced the pristine, peaceful blankets of snow, and everything came with its own uniquely depressing hue of gray.

Stan turned to leave, but I didn’t follow, so he stopped a few yards away and stamped his feet impatiently in the frozen grass. They did their best to keep the plots around the graves clear, but some lead-gray muck had crept in, and a layer of crack-rock gray salt had crusted itself over mama’s headstone like mold.

I scuffed at the crust with the toe of my boot, revealing the words engraved on it:

“Louise Rierdan

1961 - 2010

Survived by her four loving children.”

I couldn’t stop the dark little smile that twitched up the corners of my mouth. This was, of course, mama’s last little slight to me, her fifth child. Even death couldn’t smother her infinite pettiness. I’m sure she and God were having a good laugh about that, somewhere.

Finally, I turned to follow Stan. We’d had to stop off to see mama after the dead guy’s funeral. Stan came and saw her anytime he was in the area, for a rough total of maybe once a year. I came once every few weeks because, in mama’s words, I couldn’t let a dead thing lie. Sometimes I would bring flowers, but usually I would just bring my problems, and ask mama why she couldn’t have been this good a listener in life. It just so happens that we get along much better since her death.

When I was eight, I had a dog. His name was Buckley, and he was my best friend, being that I was the only one of my siblings who was not a twin. If you’re wondering how that happens, that a family has two sets of twins and then a me, don’t bother. I’ve been asking myself that for years, and have yet to discover a satisfactory answer.

Stan was one half of the dynamic duo that comprised Stan and Rudy. Rudy was currently finishing up a short sentence for illegal gambling. The other two were off gallivanting around God knows where. Calvin and Corinne were joined at the hip, traveling the globe, and “giving up everything to wanderlust.” Part of this meant being unable to help pay for or attend mama’s funeral.

To summarize, we’ve got one who lives a block down the street but barely visits her grave, one in jail, and two who couldn’t be bothered to show up to her funeral; yet I’m the one mama omitted from her headstone.

Now, the dog. Buckley was what I got in place of a twin. I liked him much better actually because he was never grumpy like Stan, getting me in trouble like Rudy, crying over nothing like Corinne, or too busy to play like Calvin. So I thought I got a pretty good deal, all in all. The only catch was that Buckley sometimes wasn’t allowed in public places, and he wasn’t toilet-trained like my siblings.

Buckley was a hundred pounds before my parents knew what hit them. The adoption people told them he was a German Shepherd mix, but the other part of the mix must have been bear or whale or Boeing 747, because he was bigger than I was by the time he was two years old. Calvin was bigger than Corinne, though, so I didn’t really question this, as I was eight.

One condition of Buck’s excessive largeness was that he had to be tied up when I came to visit the store, owned by mama and Dr. Rierdan (who in fact held a PhD in the tuba, but never-you-mind that because he’d earned that doctorate fair and square, and that made him a doctor, if you please).

I stopped by the store every day after school, taking advantage of the free candy and plying my mom with worldly questions about what I’d learned in school that day, such as whether pink mild really came from pink cows, or if it was true that you could get pregnant from going into a public swimming pool. My mother, being very alive and quite busy, was not as good a listener, and would say, “I don’t know Maevey; yeah, that’s probably right.” Then she’d busy herself with a customer and say, “Go ask your father.”

Dr. Rierdan, holed up in his office in the back of the store, would in turn say, “No, and I don’t know why you asked your mother first. That’s all wrong.”

“Well, what’s the truth then?” I’d ask, my sticky fingers sliding another Jolly Rancher between my blue stained lips.

“The truth?” He’d rub his chin as if in deep thought about where indeed pink milk came from. When he didn’t know the answer to a question, or didn’t know how to explain the answer to a child like myself, he’d often start to get flustered and say, “I think you’ll have to ask Buckley on that one.”

This was my cue to leave, so I’d go outside, untie Buckley, and say, “I hope it wasn’t too bad, out here buddy; say, do you know anything about public swimming pools getting people pregnant?”

Buckley would cock his head to the side, as though, much like my father, he was thinking deeply about this. Then he would issue a bark, I’d say, “I didn’t think so, that’s okay,” and we’d head off to our next destination.

One evening, after a particularly long-winded explanation by Dr. Rierdan about the statistical implausibility of me falling through a sewer grate (the man knew, as any intelligent man would, that anyone can be comforted with statistics), I went outside to get Buckley.

Later, when I got home from looking for him, my mother would demand to know where I had been all night. Stan had called her at five to say I had never come home. She and Dr. Rierdan had closed up the store early and come home. They had my siblings spread out across the neighborhood looking for me, and had nearly called the police. She would yell all of this, her face contorting and spittle shooting from her mouth like fireballs from the Roman Candles they’d bought us that summer, and I would not process a word of it.

“Well young lady, what do you have to say for yourself?” asked my father when she was through.

My response was to collapse on the ground at their feet, sobs racking my body.

Mama’s rage dissolved when, through the sobs, I managed to choke out what had happened. That I’d come outside, and Buckley had been gone. That someone took him, leash and all. There was no trace that he’d ever existed. Poor Buckley, my best friend and confidante, he wouldn’t hurt a flea. For the most part, he was everybody’s best friend. I’d seen him angry only once, when Rudy had shoved me down one day, and Buckley nearly tore off his arm protecting me. But if just anybody approached on the street, Buckley would bound over, tail wagging and tongue hanging out, waiting for them to marvel at what a good boy he was and give him a belly rub.

Dr. Rierdan asked why I hadn’t turned around and come back into the store to get them when I saw that Buckley was gone. I answered, honestly, that it hadn’t even crossed my mind. When I realized he was missing, I panicked, and all I could think about was finding him. I sprinted down the street, back up, and around the block looking. I thought maybe he’d just gotten off his leash. I screamed his name until I was hoarse, and everyone just looked at me askew and kept walking, wanting desperately for the weird little girl to be someone else’s problem.

After Buckley went missing, the twins’ were a bit nicer to me - I suspect at my parents’ instruction. Stan gruffly informed me that I was silly to waste my tears on Butch or Baxter or whatever, as he was just a stupid animal; but one day I found a little wooden dog sitting on my pillow, carved with a quiet intricacy and intention that only Stan and his favorite Boy Scouts pocket knife could manage. Rudy taught me the beauty of acting without thinking; he showed me how to pick locks, sneak out of the house, and all the freedom of breaking the rules. Corinne told me about which boy she was talking to that week, and I learned why she cried so much over them all, because this one or that might be her soulmate, and love was a wonderful and heartbreaking thing. Calvin wasn’t too busy for me anymore; he would take a minute here or there to show me what new project he was working on: this week he was becoming a yogi, and this week he was learning guitar, because there were so many awesome things to do that he could hardly just pick one.

None of them could replace Buckley, but in their own way, they each gave me something I needed at the time. It was years before I found Buckley’s leash hidden in mama’s sock drawer. She’d been returning from a delivery and he’d bounded over to greet her. He had just enough length in his leash to get under her tires, and she’d hit him before he’d known what was coming.