Chester and Gus Read online

  I move off my bed. She piles my bowls, puts some food in a bag.

  “I’d like Gus to come down and say goodbye before you go—”

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” Penny says. Instead of seeming less nervous, she seems more nervous now. She’s looking at the door, pressing her hand to her head.

  “This won’t take long, I promise.”

  Sara goes into the TV room to get Gus.

  Even though we’re alone in the room, Penny still won’t look at me. In her heart she must know that this isn’t a good idea. I go close and nudge her hand. It’s me, I try to say. If you watch me with this family, you’ll see—this is where I belong.

  She pets me a little, but won’t look in my eyes.

  Sara walks back in with Gus beside her. “Okay, Gus. Chester’s going away with his old friend Penny for a little while. We’re all going to miss him, so we have to say goodbye before he goes. Can you say ‘Goodbye, Chester’?”

  Tell her no! I say to Gus. Tell her Chester doesn’t want to go.

  He hears me. I see it in the way his expression changes.

  His whole face turns.

  Say no! I repeat it slowly: Tell her Chester doesn’t want to go.

  His body starts to rock. He goes up on his toes. I inhale but don’t smell a seizure coming. This is my chance.

  He opens his mouth. “Nis,” he says softly. So softly, even Sara doesn’t hear.

  Louder! I say.

  “Time for us to get going,” Penny says. Gus makes her more nervous, I can tell. I think Penny’s afraid that maybe she’s like Gus in some ways.

  Penny clips on my leash—Gus doesn’t say anything. She moves us toward the door.

  “Wait!” Sara says.

  I turn around and go back to Sara as far as the leash will let me. “Don’t you need his vest? You can’t practice in public places without it, right?”

  “Oh yes,” Penny says. “Thank you. That was silly of me.”

  Sara pulls it off the hook in the mudroom where it usually hangs.

  A minute later, we’re gone. Penny jogs me out to the car and opens the front passenger side where I always used to ride. I thought I missed it, but now I’m not so sure.

  I don’t want to leave Gus.

  I don’t want to wonder what’s happening back here and have no way to know.

  In the car, Penny starts talking the minute we’ve pulled out of the driveway. “She didn’t mention your reading program once! Not once! You’re lived there for—what, four months?—and this whole entire time, the only thing she’s thought about is herself and her family. Gus this, Gus that, the whole time I was there. Oh, it makes me so angry! Is she trying to say she didn’t have time to work with you for twenty minutes a day on your reading? That was all I asked for. What a waste.”

  It’s not a waste to think about Gus. That’s my job. She’s been helping me do my job.

  “I’ll tell you something, Chess. The first thing we’re going to do when we get home is work on the flash cards and test your vocabulary. I want to see how much you’ve regressed living with those people.”

  I don’t know what “regressed” means. It’s not a word in my vocabulary. No, I try to tell her. We promised to work on seizure-response skills. I only have a week to learn them, remember?

  She doesn’t answer me, of course. Even if she could hear me I don’t think she would. She’s not good at back-and-forth conversations like this.

  Penny’s House

  PENNY’S HOUSE LOOKS THE SAME, BUT feels different.

  It’s sadder this time. And lonelier.

  The TV is too loud. Even Penny’s voice seems louder. Right after we walk in the door, she throws my vest in the corner and pulls out the old word flash cards. Even though I haven’t worked on them this whole time, I try to remember what they say so we can move on and she can teach me the jobs I’ll need to know.

  “Yes!” she says, when I get my fourth word right. “You’ve retained it all, you amazing dog! I can’t wait to tell my new friends! I’ve joined an online group for people doing serious research on canine-human communication. They all agree teaching your dog to read is the most practical first step in talking to your dog.”

  Really? I look at her. My heart feels heavy.

  “There’s one woman who’s posted videos of her dog reading twenty-six different commands. Some people have accused her of doing off-camera cuing, but I believe her. I look at how quickly you’ve learned these words and I know some dogs are just extraordinarily smart. Some people have never met a dog like that, so they’re skeptics. But I’m not.”

  The more Penny talks about this, the more scared I feel. I wonder when she’s going to teach me what I need to know about responding to seizures. She hasn’t mentioned it once since we left Gus’s house.

  I feel hopeful for a few minutes when she says, “Now we’re going to take a break from reading to do something else.”

  Great, I say, and start toward the closet where she put my vest.

  “We’re going to work on getting you to point to the cards I say. I’m going to lay down two cards and get you to touch one of them with your nose. Like this, see?” She touches one of the cards with her own nose.

  I think about Gus with his home teachers, touching their flash cards.

  He touched a lot of them and never told them anything. I wonder if I could learn to read enough words to say to Penny: Take me back. Gus needs me.

  I don’t think Penny will teach me those words because she doesn’t want to hear them.

  She lays out two cards. They look different on the floor. I can’t tell what they say. “Chester, point to ‘down,’ please.”

  They both look like ‘down.’ I don’t know what to do, so I lie down.

  “No, Chester. Sit, please.”

  I sit again.

  “Point to ‘down,’” she says, and does something she’s never done before. She puts her hand on the back of my head and pushes my nose toward one of the cards.

  “Yes!” she says when my nose hits the card, hard enough to hurt. “You pointed to ‘down’!”

  She lets my head go and switches the cards. “Okay, can you point to ‘down’ now?”

  Her eyes go from me to the card she wants me to choose. It’s easy to tell which one it is. I don’t want to point to it, though.

  My nose hurts from what she just did. I’m not reading and I don’t want to learn tricks where I pretend like I am. I don’t see how that will help Gus.

  “Do it by yourself, Chester. I know you can. Point to ‘down.’”

  I look at her, not at the cards. I tell her with my eyes: Don’t make me do this. I want her to understand: We’re both better than this. She raised me to believe that serving my person was the most important thing I could do with my life. “I’m not your person,” she told me many times. “You’ll know who your person is the minute you meet them—that’s how it usually works.” I must have looked worried, because after she said that, she reached over and hugged me. “Oh, Chester, I promise it’ll happen for you. You’re my smartest, best dog yet. Everyone will love you.” Now I’ve learned: I don’t need everyone to love me; I just need one person and I’ve found him. She doesn’t understand that Gus is my person. He has been since the first time he saw me and screamed and I thought, I can help this boy be less afraid.

  I have helped him, I think. He is less afraid. He’s talking a little more. He’s told his mom and dad he wants to go back to school, but he can’t go if I’m not with him, and Penny isn’t teaching me what I’ll need to know for that.

  “Point to ‘down,’ Chester,” she says again.

  I don’t move. I hold my head back so she can’t push it again.

  “Chester. Are you listening to me?”

  I do something I’ve never done in one of our training sessions before. I turn around. “Chester?”

  I walk away. My heart is beating hard. I’ve never disobeyed a command in my life.

  “CHESTER!” Penny gasp
s. “What are you doing?”

  I think about her father’s heart attack. I don’t want her to have one. I look over my shoulder to see if her face is red or sweaty, two heart attack signs I learned from a commercial. Except for her expression, which is horrified, Penny’s face looks fine. I keep walking.

  “CHESTER, STOP!”

  I don’t.

  I go over to the door and sit down beside my vest that lies on the floor. If I wait here all day without moving, maybe she’ll understand what I’m trying to tell her, I think. But she doesn’t.

  She thinks I’ve lost all my training in the time I spent living with Gus and his family. “I don’t understand,” she keeps saying.

  For the rest of the day we go outside and work on the old basic commands that I learned when I first came to her house. I guess she wants to see if I remember them. I sit. I stay. I heel.

  What about the new things I need to learn? I ask her. What about the emergency alert buttons and fetching medications? Teach me those, I beg her. Like you promised Sara.

  But in the two hours we work outside, I don’t learn anything that will help me with Gus.

  Tower Puzzles

  I’VE BEEN WITH PENNY FOR TWO days now and she hasn’t taught me anything about responding to a seizure. Instead, she’s setting up towers and mazes made out of cardboard boxes. She says they’ll help me increase the flexibility of my thinking.

  “Once the neurological pathways become flexible, your brain is more capable of joint communication. Remember, Chess, look to me for help. I’ll cue you on how to open the doors and get the treat. That’s how you’ll get to be a more interactive thinker.”

  I don’t want to be interactive! I tell her. I want to go home to Gus!

  This morning, she’s set up a circular cardboard tower with three doors. Each door has a string attached to it. Judging by the way she looks at the strings, I’m pretty sure I’m meant to pull one of them.

  “So here’s the point, Chester. Monkeys can learn that if you pull the right string, a door will flap open with your treat. Some canine experts think that dogs’ weakest area is problem solving. They say you have to be taught everything by rote because you don’t understand cause and effect. I don’t think they’re right. I think you can figure this out if you’ve got enough motivation. That’s why I’ve got your favorite treat ready to go—” She pops open a Tupperware, releasing a wonderful smell I remember: beef brisket. My nose lifts. My mouth waters. I used to work long afternoons for Penny’s beef brisket.

  Those are happy memories. Those were the days when she still talked about the important jobs I’d do for my person. I try to imagine what she’ll tell Sara when she takes me back and I can’t do any of the things Sara asked me to learn.

  Suddenly, a terrible thought occurs to me: She’s not worried about what she’ll say to Sara because she’s not planning to take me back.

  I look around the living room where Penny and I have always spent most of our time. I have everything I need here. My bed, my food dishes. As she puts the brisket treat into the cardboard tower, I look in the pantry and my stomach does a turn: She’s got two shelves of dog food cans and a full container of kibble. Why did she buy so much dog food if she expects me to stay for only a week?

  My heart begins to race. Dogs might have a hard time learning cause and effect, but we don’t have any trouble understanding food and what it means: Penny’s planning to keep me here with her. She doesn’t think working with Gus is as important as me learning to read and talk by pointing to cards.

  Realizing this makes me so nervous I don’t know what to do. Maybe I can sit by the door and refuse to do anything or go anywhere except back in her car. Maybe if I concentrate on these reading lessons I can learn the only words I want now: “Take. Me. Home.”

  Gus can’t go back to school without me. I have to be there with him. Not only to press his button and move him away from stairs if he has a seizure, but to steer him away from Ed and toward other people like Mama and Amelia.

  After a morning of working on flash cards and the string-draped castle, which I’ll never understand, we take a break for lunch in our old favorite spot, on the sofa in front of the TV.

  I used to love sitting here, finding out about people and the world outside this house by the TV shows we watched. I learned all about criminals and the detectives who catch them. I learned that it’s people you don’t expect who turn out to be criminals. Like Penny, who is stealing me and committing a crime and eating lunch as if everything is normal.

  “Come on up on the sofa, Chester. You know that’s okay.” She pats the seat beside her. “Did those people not let you up on their furniture? Were they like that?” She rolls her eyes as if this is just another reason not to like them.

  I don’t get up on the sofa.

  I sit nearby but I don’t look at Penny.

  “What’s wrong, Chess? You’re in such a mood this morning. Aren’t you happy to be back home?”

  I look at her and look away.

  “I don’t understand you. Remember when you didn’t want to go with those people at all? When I had to force you and tell you everything would be okay?”

  Wait a minute, I think. I do remember that, but how does she? I move closer and try to catch her eye. Could you hear what I was thinking back then? I ask. I wait for an answer.

  Nothing.

  I move to another spot, where she can see my face. I want to learn my job for Gus, I say. I want to go back and be with him.

  I watch her face carefully. I don’t think she hears my voice, but there’s a thought in her head that she doesn’t like. She looks down and shakes her head.

  I move closer so my face is under hers. You shouldn’t keep Chester here. It’s not right. It makes you a criminal.

  I’m trying to sound like her own brain talking to her. I’m not sure if it’s working. She shakes her head again and picks up the TV remote to raise the volume.

  Penny’s Mom

  “WE HAVE TO GO SEE MY mother this afternoon,” Penny tells me the next morning. “I don’t want to go any more than you do, but we don’t really have a choice, I’m afraid.”

  This is interesting, I think. We’ve been to visit her mother a few times before. She’s very old and lives in a nursing home where they take care of people who have problems remembering important things, like their daughter’s name. Whenever we go, Penny has to start the visit by saying, “I’m Penny, your youngest, remember?” Sometimes she has to remind her again while we’re there. “I’m not Olivia, Mom. I’m Penny. Olivia is my sister and she lives in Florida now.”

  I always like visiting Penny’s mother because most of the people who live there are in wheelchairs and are happy to pet any dog who walks by. I know these visits are harder for Penny, though. Usually she cries on the drive home and sometimes she even cries while we’re there.

  Once, driving home, she told me, “That woman we just visited wasn’t my mother. That isn’t the woman I grew up with.” At first I was confused and then I understood: She was her mother, she’d just changed a lot. “She doesn’t understand anything. She can barely talk! That’s not the mom I remember!”

  I never met the mom she remembered, but the woman I met understood a lot more than Penny thought. I could tell by her face and the way she looked me right in the eyes. I knew what she was trying to ask me: Does she always talk this much? Is it annoying to you, too?

  Now I wonder if she might have been saying those things and I didn’t understand back then that some people can hear me and I can hear them. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up. In the last three days, Penny hasn’t once mentioned Gus or his family.

  Twice, I’ve heard Sara’s voice leaving messages on the answering machine.

  At night I’ve been lying awake on my old bed that still smells like their house, trying to think of ways to get back home, to Gus and Sara and Marc.

  Running away isn’t a good option. It takes a few different highways and a long time to drive here. H
ighways are roads where cars drive faster than anyone can run. Even with my nose, I’m too far away to find them by smell.

  I’ve thought about sneaking out with one of the few visitors who come to Penny’s house—the mailman who comes every day maybe, or the garbage collector. But I’m pretty sure if they found me in their truck, they’d bring me back here.

  As smart as Penny thinks I am, I can’t think of an answer for this.

  But visiting her mother has possibilities. It means we’ll be in public again. It’s a small chance, but maybe I’ll see Sara or Marc or Gus. If I do I’ll run to them and I won’t leave their side. I know this is a very small chance, though.

  Maybe I’ll see Ms. Winger or Mr. McGregor, who will say, “That dog belongs back at our school.”

  Maybe they will scare Penny the way people with regular jobs and families seem to.

  We hardly talk at all on the drive over. She’s nervous about seeing her mother, I can tell. She looks like she’s about to start crying just thinking about it, which makes me feel bad.

  The hallways are lined with older people in wheelchairs on their way to their activities. The last time we came, I was an activity, part of a pet-visiting day with two other dogs and a cat who shed white fur onto every lap she sat in. Maybe Penny is remembering this too because as she opens the door she says, “I hope we don’t see Snowball today.”

  Penny’s mother looks the same as I remember. She’s wearing clothes but lying on top of a made-up bed. Two pink slippers sit on the floor beside her. When we walk in, she opens her eyes. She looks at Penny first and then at me. I’m the one she recognizes first.

  “You’re back!” she says. She can’t remember my name, I can tell, but she remembers me.

  “That’s right, Mom,” Penny says, smiling. “You remember Chester? I’ve got him back now. He’s living with me again. Isn’t that great!”

  Her mother stares right at me. This is my chance. I don’t belong with Penny, I say. I belong to another family. I need to get back to them.

  Her head turns a little. I think she hears me, but she’s trying to figure out where the voice is coming from. Can you tell Penny to take me back to Gus’s house?