Part 5
Ruth brought Patch out on the leash, and Gail held the rear door while he climbed into the car. She stood back while Ruth secured his traveling harness. Through the window she could see the folded ear and the dog’s nose testing the edge of the glass.
“Call me when you’re in,” Gail said.
Ruth touched her arm. “I will.”
Gail stayed outside until the taillights turned the corner. When she went back to the downstairs room, Jonah had taken off the headphones. He was pulling a loose piece of foam from one earpad.
“Are you mad?” he asked.
She sat in the chair beside his bed. “I wanted him to stay.”
“I know.”
“I’m not mad at you.”
He worked at the earpad until a piece came away in his fingers. Gail resisted reaching for the wastebasket; she let him put the scrap on the table. The empty dog bed remained beside him, its repaired edge turned toward the wall.
“I wanted him here too,” he said. “All week. And then everybody was waiting for me to be happy.”
Gail looked down at her hands. There was a new scrape beside her knuckle from carrying the platform, and a spot of glue she hadn’t cleaned away. She folded one hand over the other.
“I was watching you,” she said.
“You kept smiling.”
She nodded. There wasn’t anything she could add that would improve what he had said. When her phone buzzed with Ruth’s message, she asked whether he wanted to see it.
Ruth had sent a photograph of Patch standing beside her washing machine, where she kept the treats. Jonah enlarged it to inspect something on the floor. He said his aunt had dropped a whole sock behind the machine, then asked Gail to tell her before the dog found it.
They sent that message together. He didn’t ask for another picture or say he had made a mistake. Gail plugged his charger into the outlet beside the bed, handed him the end, and went to wash the dishes.
Later he called her back because he needed help getting comfortable. She followed the routine they had practiced and stayed until he said he was ready for the light to go out. In the dining room she cleared enough space for the small repair waiting by her machine, then found she was too tired to work.
She put a clean cloth over it and went to bed.
Four weeks later, the sewing machine was still on the dining table. Gail had learned to put the foot pedal on a shelf before meals because somebody always kicked it, and there was a faint rectangular mark on the cloth from the machine’s base. She took smaller jobs now. Some customers waited; some didn’t.
Jonah was home now, with outpatient appointments on the calendar, more strength than on that first overnight leave, and plenty still to recover. He used the wheelchair around the house and needed help with certain transfers, especially late in the day. The stairs remained for another time. Gail no longer wrote possible dates in the margins of his schedule.
During two later home visits, Ruth had brought Patch over briefly. Jonah had asked for the second visit himself. They kept his bed away from the wheels and let him leave the room when he wanted; once he spent most of the time in the kitchen while Jonah complained about a game on his phone.
That afternoon, Patch was due to come again. Gail finished pressing a pair of trousers before Ruth arrived and unplugged the iron. She had told Jonah his aunt could stay an hour, and that they would decide what happened afterward.
He was at the little table in his room, drawing something with too many legs. When Gail asked what it was, he said, “A horse. Obviously.” Then he put down the pencil and asked whether Patch’s food was coming too.
“Ruth can bring it. Do you want me to ask?”
“And his brush.”
She sent the message without adding a string of hearts. Jonah asked to see the reply, which said that Ruth had already put everything in the car but could take it back if he wanted. He read it twice and returned the phone.
When Patch came in, he sniffed the wheelchair and stepped around it to investigate the trash basket. Gail had moved it onto a shelf. Jonah called him a criminal, held out the ragged rabbit, and let the dog take it without starting a game of tug.
Patch carried it into the hall and lay down. A few minutes later Jonah asked Gail to move his bed out there, where he could see both the room and the kitchen. She did, although it wasn’t the place she would have chosen.
Ruth drank a glass of water standing at the sink. Before leaving, she asked Jonah whether she should take the food bag, and he said no. Then he asked her to show him the measure she used for supper.
Gail found a container light enough for his hands. Ruth marked the level on it, and Jonah tried scooping, spilling some kibble over the kitchen tray. Patch came to inspect the noise. They kept him back while Jonah finished, and Gail carried the bowl where he asked her to put it.
After Ruth left, the dog ate, drank, and wandered into the hall. He settled on the bed with his back toward Jonah’s room. Jonah watched him for a moment and then went back to the horse.
Gail carried a pair of her son’s sweatpants to the dining table. She asked whether she could finally shorten them, and he said yes, but not so much that they looked stupid. She held up the amount she meant to take off, waited for his nod, and marked it with chalk.
Patch began worrying the rabbit’s loose seam. Jonah called him over and traded it for another toy, then examined the tear. From the dining room Gail could hear him searching the little drawer she had brought downstairs.
“Mom, have you got thread that matches this?”
She brought him the brown spool and asked whether he wanted her to do the stitching. He said he only needed help threading the needle. Gail threaded it, laid it safely on the table, and waited while he picked it up.