The Truth of Me (3 page)

W
hen I wake in the morning, the room is full of light.

I get up and go into the kitchen. Maddy has left a pitcher of orange juice and a glass on the table for me. I pour a glassful, then walk to the kitchen door and look out. The door is open, and I can see Maddy sitting on a wooden bench by the garden. Ellie sits at her feet.

I stop drinking my juice and put the glass on the counter. I look again. Ellie sits, looking at Maddy.
Ellie is surrounded by squirrels
.

“Good girl, Ellie,” says Maddy softly.

I come out of the house, and Maddy hears me. She holds up her hand to stop me.

“Down, Ellie,” says Maddy in a kind voice.

Ellie lies down, her head on her paws. The squirrels scamper all around her, eating corn that Maddy has tossed there. One squirrel brushes against Ellie, but she doesn't move. Maddy leans down and feeds Ellie a snack.

I think about Lizzie saying that Maddy has “gifts.”

I look up and see Henry standing quietly at the edge of the stone walk.

We look at each other.

Henry smiles.

I smile, too.

“How did you do that?” I ask Maddy in the kitchen. “She doesn't like squirrels at all.”

“Well, some snacks,” says Maddy. “Ellie likes Henry's stew. She likes the snacks more than she hates squirrels.”

Ellie is prancing around proudly, as if she has done something special and heroic.

She has in a way.

“But I feed her snacks, and she always keeps chasing squirrels. Only squirrels,” I point out.

“Well, I am an alpha,” says Maddy.

“I'll say,” Henry says.

“What is that?” I ask.

“The boss,” says Henry.

“
Alpha
also means ‘confidence,'” says Maddy.

“I am the leader to Ellie because I am confident I can teach Ellie not to chase squirrels. And other things,” she says briskly.

Henry raises his eyebrows.

“She is right, of course,” he says. “Maddy is confident.”

“And Ellie likes to please people,” says Maddy.

“Can I learn that?” I ask.

“I don't know,” says Maddy.

“Yes,” says Henry almost at the same time.

Maddy looks surprised.

“I may know Kiddo better than you do in some ways,” Henry says to Maddy.

“Really?” says Maddy.

She looks at Henry, then at me.

“Do you two have secrets?”

“No,” says Henry. “Truths.”

“Truths?” asks Maddy.

I nod.

“Small truths,” I say.

Maddy lifts her shoulders.

“Well, then, we'll have a go at it,” she says.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“You'll see,” says Maddy mysteriously. “Now, who's cooking tonight?”

“What do you have in the pantry?” asks Henry.

“Cold cereal,” says Maddy.

“Oh, good grief,” says Henry. “I made spaghetti sauce this morning. I'll get it.”

Henry goes out the door.

“Did you make meatballs, too?” calls Maddy.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Henry calls back.

“Maddy?”

“What, Robbie?”

“You have chicken in the refrigerator,” I say.

“I know,” says Maddy, laughing. “I love Henry's spaghetti and meatballs.”

She takes down big blue plates from the cupboard and begins to set the table. She hands me the silverware.

“Henry can roast the chicken tomorrow,” Maddy whispers to me.

We look at each other over the table and begin to laugh. Ellie woofs at us happily and prances and dances, and we laugh more.

I watch Maddy make Ellie sit before she gives her a snack. I watch the way Maddy holds up her hand so Ellie will lie down.

Ellie likes following Maddy's commands.
She likes it
.

Maddy smiles at me, but she doesn't know what I'm thinking.

I tell her.

“I'm going to be an alpha, too,” I say.

I put three blue napkins down next to the blue plates.

I look at Maddy.

“I am.”

“
I
'm going to weed the garden today,” says Maddy. “What are you going to do?”

“Training,” I say. “I'm taking a walk with Ellie.”

“I see. Training Ellie or training yourself?”

“Both.”

Maddy nods.

She takes a big straw hat off the hook in the hallway and puts it on.

“Do I look like Mother Goose?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“Too thin.”

“I'm going to train Ellie off leash today,” I say.

“Good idea. That means she can be responsible on her own. Where are you going?”

“Henry's house.”

“Be sure to remind him to roast the chicken tonight,” she says as she goes out the doorway.

“Okay.”

I hold the leash, and Ellie knows it. She looks at me, waiting for me to put it on her.

“No,” I say. “No leash today.”

I go out the doorway. When I look back, Ellie is standing there, watching me.

“Come, Ellie,” I say.

Ellie comes.

Maddy is watching from the garden.

I walk down the road and Ellie walks next to me. She looks at me every so often. Every so often I tell her she's a good dog.

We walk past three houses, past a fence where there are cows. Ellie lifts her nose and sniffs the air that is their air.

“Good girl,” I say.

At the end of Henry's driveway is a small white sign that says
DR. HENRY BELL
. Ellie and I walk up the driveway until we get to Henry's house. There is a blue door.

“This is Henry's house,” I say, feeling strange telling her this. “Henry,” I repeat.

The blue door opens, and Henry is there.

I wonder if Ellie thinks this is magic and me saying his name has called him out.

“Hello, Kiddo,” says Henry. “Hello, Eleanor. Come in.”

Ellie wags her tail but looks up at me.

“Go ahead,” I say.

Ellie runs up to Henry.

We walk out of the sun into the cool of Henry's house. It is filled with books and a few paintings of boats on the sea. I walk to the back window and look out. There is a large pond there.

There is a red boat at the edge.

“Your sailboat,” I say to Henry.

“My canoe,” he says.

“I'm training Ellie today,” I tell Henry. “So I can be an alpha.”

“You're already an alpha, Kiddo,” says Henry.

“What do you mean?”

“In some ways you're more alpha than your mother and father,” says Henry. “Think about that.”

I think about it. I don't say anything for a moment, then I remember.

“Maddy asked me to tell you to roast a chicken tonight.”

Henry laughs.

“I saw that chicken yesterday,” he says.

I grin at him.

“You're kind of an alpha, too,” I say.

Ellie and I walk home together, no leash, Ellie close to me. Ellie doesn't chase dogs. She looks at a cat but doesn't bark or run after it. She sniffs the cows we passed before.

I lean down and kiss Ellie on her head.

I may be the very best alpha in the world.

Ellie's a good dog, too.

There's that.

It is still light when we eat Henry's roast chicken.

“So, you had a good day of training?” asks Maddy.

“I was very good,” I say.

I think a bit.

“The truth is,
Ellie
was good.”

Maddy nods.

“Someone taught her well when she was younger. But that doesn't mean that you aren't a good trainer, too.”

Maddy doesn't own a television, but she has a small radio that is turned on. Music plays softly.

Suddenly I look up.

“Schubert,” I say.

Maddy and Henry are silent.

“I know that music,” I say. “
Death and the Maiden
.”

I hear the sweet, sad violin. I drop my fork and get up and stand by the radio. The violin plays. The violin I know well. The violin I hear all through the days at home and into the night.

“My mother,” I say very softly. “She worked hard on that piece.”

Ellie comes over to stand by me. Maybe she remembers, too.

I stand there until the violin solo is finished and the quartet ends. There is applause.

The announcer's soft voice comes on, the continued sound of applause behind him.

“That was the Allegro Quartet playing Schubert's
Death and the Maiden
in London. Judith Sanders, first violin; David Chance, second violin; Robert Sanders, viola; and Marybeth Dickinson, cello.”

“My mother,” I say again.

Still no one speaks.

“She loves that violin,” I say in a whisper.

“You can hear it.”

Maddy gets up from the table and comes over to put her arms around me.

“She loves you, too, Robbie,” she says. “She just doesn't know you as well as she knows that violin.”

We stand there for a long time.

After a while Ellie leans against me.

E
very day Ellie and I walk together, no leash. We walk up and down roads we've never walked before.

Sometimes people talk to Ellie and pat her: people walking, people in their yards. Sometimes Ellie and other dogs walking sniff noses and wag their tails. Ellie loves the attention. She even meets an escaped chicken once, and though she might want to eat that chicken, she doesn't. She looks up at me and doesn't move.

We walk to Henry's house every day.

“Henry,” I say every time. “Henry.”

Ellie looks at me, I think, as if to say, “I know, I know!”

Sometimes we walk down to the pond when Henry's not there. Once we sit in the red canoe and watch the summer light come through the leaves of beech trees.

My mother and father are in France now, playing quartet concerts. They haven't written yet, but I can follow them through the music sections of the newspapers. At one concert David Chance gets special praise as the new second violinist. I wonder if my mother is pleased because she chose him. Maybe. Maybe not.

My friend Jack writes me a letter.

Jack's letter makes me laugh out loud. It makes me happy I'm spending the summer with Maddy.

And then one morning after Ellie and I come back from walking, Maddy has packed up food. She has packed up water. She has packed up a tent.

“What's happening?” I ask.

“It's time,” says Maddy.

“Time?”

“To go camping,” says Maddy.

Ellie sniffs the basket of food.

“You mean tonight?” I ask.

“Tonight.”

“Where?”

“Up the hill and into the woods,” says Maddy.

The woods
.

My nervous feeling comes back. I think about Maddy's stories about her wild-animal friends.

“Is Henry coming?” I ask.

I know the answer.

“Of course not. Henry doesn't like to camp,” says Maddy. “It's us. And Ellie.”

Maddy hands me my sweater.

“It gets kind of cool at night. Ready?”

I look at Ellie, who looks right back at me as if she knows all the things I don't know.

“Okay,” I say.

I pick up Ellie's leash, just in case.

Outside, Maddy puts the tent and sleeping bags and food basket in a big garden wagon with thick wheels.

“We can take turns pulling the wagon,” she says.

The phone rings.

“Answer that, would you, Robbie?”

I go inside and pick up the phone.

“Hello?”