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Chapter Twenty

Friday July 25, 2008

9:52am

Patricia kicked days three and four of the otherworldly vacation off with continental breakfast and a cigarette, and she capped each night with several rounds of rough sex. It was a routine she could get into.

But as she lit a smoke on the final morning of the trip, the mother shepherd gazed bitterly over the hotel's parking lot, the gray clouds which corroded the sky. She didn't want the trip to end. To return to Sandy. To work. To the girls. To Roger.

She sighed, flicked her cigarette butt onto the parking lot and turned to the quiet shepherd stood beside her.

"We'd better get going."

Tyson, his back 'gainst the Lexus, his arms crossed at his chest, remained silent.

It was a heavy silence which he carried, one Patricia had never seen on her son before the trip. Grim, forbidding--its intensity stirred a desire within her to be dragged back into the hotel room or thrown onto the backseat of the Lexus. She shivered at those wonderful thoughts, but her son only turned and quietly climbed into the car.

* * *

"Remember," said his mother, "we just drove here today."

"I know."

"Dad didn't come because of work--"

"Bella didn't want to come, and Nessa has summer school," grumbled Tyson. "I've got it, I know." His mother had already covered their cover story on the short drive from the hotel.

They stared at a red door, a cool breeze splaying over their necks. Old Glory fluttered from a red-brick pillar behind them.

"Come on, Dad," groaned Patricia, a sneaker impatiently beating the paved deck.

The deck belonged to a brick fossil in an old neighborhood, a stout American Foursquare which was perfectly engineered for Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas gatherings, but many holidays had come and gone since Tyson had last paid it a visit.

Two rings and as many minutes passed before the red door creaked ajar, revealing a beaming sliver of silver-tinted muzzle and a short, slight shepherd with a matte tan-and-black coat . "Patty!" croaked the elder canine, and his cloudy eyes shifted between his fellows on his porch. "Ty, my boy!"

Grandpa Wagner was the perennial spoiler, the grandparent beloved for his endearing spirit, spontaneous gift-giving and once-reliable attendance at the grandchildren's special events. He ushered his grandson and daughter into his home with a shaking paw.

The doorway opened straight into an old-timey living room: white walls slated with family photographs and bordered by dark-wooden trim, a cast iron radiator sprouting beneath the front windows. There was no computer, no television--just a simple coffee table midst a set of mismatched upholstery and the flakiness of stale air.

Three generations of purebred German Shepherd piled onto the leather sofa opposite a brick fireplace which lacked its familiar flames and stockings, and the shepherds began a game of catch-up last left off at Tyson's high school graduation.

Tyson said little. He felt distant, separate from the world of loving grandfathers and chatty mothers, buffered by a coat of the darkness he had indulged in over the last several days. How could he partake in their nostalgia? Delight in his mother's sarcasm? Look honestly into those cloudy eyes?

The reminiscing carried on when his mother discovered a set of family photo albums, and the smiling faces of aunts, uncles, cousins and family extending beyond Tyson's recognition shone from the open books on his mother's lap. He saw many pictures of his grandparents, happily together. He himself made plenty of appearances--a small pup covered in downy fur, a ten-year-old shortstop fielding a ground ball.

"There's my big stud again," said Patricia, claw tapping a photo of Tyson in his crimson graduation cap and gown, his face solemn and proud. "Such a handsome man."

"And on the way to another graduation," Grandpa Wagner remarked. "How many more years?"

"Three for my bachelor's," Tyson grunted.

"Did I tell you Tyson made the Dean's List again--both semesters," said Patricia, and her voice dropped to a side-spoken whisper. "Smart _and_great in bed."

"That a boy!" Grandpa Wagner exclaimed as Tyson glared away.

* * *

4:03pm

Thunder rumbled deep from the throat of moody clouds which lie in wait to the north of Maxine. The air thickened. The stars and stripes danced with rising fervor whilst the visiting shepherds made their departure.

"That was fun," Patricia said, waving back at the house before she climbed into the Lexus.

"Yeah."

"Should we book the hotel for another night?"

"Sure."

"I was kidding," sighed Patricia. Her Lexus's V8 echoed the distant thunder. "Ty."

Tyson looked over, his demeanor oppressively bleak.

"You need to lighten up. You're being a sore thumb."

"Just drive," replied the younger shepherd.

He wished he could lighten up.

It was an image from his grandfather's photo album which hung upon his imagination.

A photo of the black shepherd clad in ivory satin and lace--a long veil flowing down her neck, long hair spun into a glossy chignon and plucked with white butterfly pins. She was ageless, stunning. Beside her, clinging to one paw, presenting himself as serious as ever, her lawfully-wedded husband.

A dull resonance abraded at Tyson's insides in response to the image. If he had been unable to face his grandfather, how would he dare confront his father?

* * *

7:56pm

Streets painted with rain of the afternoon's storm,

Light pouring through open curtains above the garage,

Silhouetting a single, expectant figure

"Nessa's waiting for us," Patricia pointed, guiding the Lexus up the driveway with her other paw. "I bet you she won't even let us through the door."

"Probably," yawned Tyson. The long nights had caught him over the long drive home.

"And Bella will be out."

"That's a guarantee."

"And your father will be in his chair with a beer."

The SUV stopped short of the workbench at the back of the garage, and Patricia frowned as the garage door rolled shut. "We'll have to do that again." She reached a paw to her son's leg, her muzzle for his--

"Mom!" Anessa cried into the garage, and Patricia, black lips freezing an inch from her son's, grinned.

"That's one."

Anessa was upon them before they could leave the car. She mauled her mother with a hug, yipped a "Hi!" to her brother and scurried to the back of the Lexus to help them unload. Her hyperactive presence was overwhelming for Tyson. Her tail-wagging. Her toothy cheer. The enthusiasm in her voice as they climbed the stairs. She was so innocent. So naive. She would never be able to comprehend that which had happened the last several days--that the big brother she looked up to had fucked her mother. The woman who had birthed her. Raised her. The woman who walked up the stairs right alongside her, looking back with that self-assured face.

"-two."

"What?" said Tyson, snapping from his daze. "I didn't hear you."

"I said 'two down.' "

Patricia sighed at her son's bewildered stare. "Bella's out with her friends--just like I was saying in the car."

"Oh," grunted Tyson.

Patricia's ears canted, her dark eyes tightened and her voice took on a biting tone."Wake up," she snarled underbreath, "and get your act together."

Blackness violently hacked at the corners of Tyson's vision, poured frigidly down his neck, and as his mother turned away, carrying forth and up the stairs, Tyson drove a dark gaze through her slender back.

* * *

8:04pm

Roger had tried to keep up the week's productive start, but by its end he had been beaten deep into his recliner. The mounting work, the menial household chores--all he wanted was the cozy leather and a cold can of beer. And that's exactly how the father shepherd had been treating himself when Anessa, dutifully standing watch at the TV room's windows since their dinner, had sounded the alarm.

"Why don't you go help your mother," Roger had suggested, unsticking himself from the recliner with the groan of tired joints, padding to the window to catch a flash of brake-light glow on the dampened driveway. Now he listened keenly, hoping his wife would present herself in decent spirits, the sort rarely seen after her annual summer jaunt. Roger muted the White Sox game on the TV and sighed deeply as Patricia's and Anessa's voices grew nearer.

His wife appeared first, with a tired dip to her shoulders and a labored smile upon her muzzle. "Back."

"You okay, hon?" Roger carefully asked.

"Fine--tired."

Bafflingly, Patricia dragged her feet to him and placed a short kiss on his mouth, and, adding to Roger's surprise, through layers of shampoo and perfume, his nose singled out the scent of cigarette smoke. He nodded thoughtfully whilst his wife pulled away, then turned towards his son.

"Hey, Son. How was the trip?"

Tyson marched for the hall, sparing no regard, and, with an emphatic bang, sealed himself in his bedroom.

"What's his deal?" asked Roger, but his wife only shrugged.

* * *

He slammed the heels of his fists onto his knees, ripped at his ears, grabbed the first thing in reach and tore into it. He bit down, hard, 'til the matter shredded in his grasp. Only then did the rage slowly ebb, leaving him to gasp for breath, a severed corner of blanket dangling from the side of his muzzle. Eventually, Tyson discarded of the polyester scrap and aroused his face with the pads of his paws.Lighten up, he told himself, imagination in imitation of his mother's voice, and, after chanting his mantra, armoring himself in it, the young shepherd headed back to the TV room.

They were sitting there--relaxing, watching the baseball game Roger had left on. Tyson did what he could to maintain a collected facade in his family's presence, but whenever he looked to his father the gravity of guilt pulled his eyes to the floor, and whenever he looked to the black shepherd his body stirred with a small pulse of rage. She was so composed, so at ease--her poise, her speech said nothing of what had happened over their trip, and every time she smiled, Tyson felt stricken with a malicious urge. An urge to rearrange her face into that sloppy, slobbery mess.