Chapter 14 - Rocky
Louis came into the garage one evening while I was cleaning tools.
He stood beside the workbench.
Then said:
“Rocky’s bowl was my idea.”
“I know.”
“Carla filmed because I told her.”
I looked at him.
“I know that too.”
“I thought everybody would laugh.”
“They did.”
He winced.
“I didn’t think you’d take it like that.”
“How was I supposed to take it?”
“A roast.”
“At my seventieth birthday.”
“Families roast each other.”
“Using your dead mother’s dog bowl.”
Silence.
That was the piece he had avoided.
Rocky belonged to Ruth in a way the rest of us did not.
When chemotherapy made her sick, Rocky lay beside the bathroom door.
When she could no longer climb stairs, he slept downstairs.
The night she died, he spent six hours beside her empty recliner.
Louis knew.
He had scratched the dog’s name into that bowl as a teenager.
He sat on a garage stool.
“I didn’t think about Mom.”
“I did.”
“I’m sorry.”
First apology.
Specific.
Not enough for everything.
Enough for the bowl.
Then Louis said:
“I was mad.”
“At me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you told June I wasn’t working.”
I stared.
“I told June your business was slow.”
“She told Jason. Jason asked if I needed a job.”
“So?”
“So everybody thinks I’m living off you.”
I almost laughed at the symmetry.
“You were.”
He stood.
“So were you.”
“No.”
“You had us doing everything.”
“Everything?”
He stopped.
Again, the truth was mixed.
May you like
We had each built a story where the other depended more.
The bowl turned competition into cruelty.
