The Story Sisters

AFTER EIGHT MONTHS there was an open house to find the dogs new homes. It was held outside in the yard, where the setting seemed more like a park than a prison. What I really want to do, Elv had written to her grandmother, is take him home with me. You can’t imagine how smart a dog can be. He senses what I feel before I do. He knows what I think. Natalia had written back that Claire’s dog and the cat Elv had rescued from the river had a strange alliance. When they thought no one was at home, they sat together on the couch by the window, peering out at the courtyard. As soon as the key turned in the door, they jumped off the couch so that no one would see their attachment. Dogs and cats had their secrets too.

People came to watch the inmates put the dogs through their paces. Elv wanted to show off how clever Pollo was, but she also wanted him to fail. Some of the younger dogs refused to obey commands, and one German shepherd barked the entire time, but Pollo never took his eyes off Elv. The better he was, the more brokenhearted she became. It was spring and the air was soft. That made things worse. It was a bad time for Elv. The audience applauded as though they were watching a real dog show. “Fuck,” Elv said to herself. Something else she would love and lose. Pollo looked at her, bewildered. She wanted to pluck him up, run like hell, jump into the back of one of the townspeople’s cars. Get us out of here, she would plead. Get us to Lorry. But she didn’t even know where he was. She hadn’t heard from him in a month. At this point she probably would just stand outside the prison door, unsure of which way to go.

After the presentation, inmates and visitors had cookies and lemonade. Elv figured Pollo was so ugly no one would want him. She’d already plotted how she could present his case to Adrian. He could be a useful therapy dog with the inmates, then when Elv got out, she’d take him with her. But to her distress, a guest came over right away. He crouched down and petted Pollo as if he was a regular dog, one that hadn’t had his legs broken with a baseball bat, hadn’t experienced the treachery of men.

Pollo tolerated the guy petting his head, keeping one eye fixed on Elv.

“Nice dog,” he said. “Hey, poochie.”

“You don’t want him,” Elv said.

“His scars give him character.” The man stood and shook Elv’s hand. He owned a used record store in Ossining. He thought it would be fun to have a dog hanging out with him all day, plus it would be a great deterrent against robberies.

“Want to live with me?” he asked Pollo. “I’ll order us a pepperoni pizza. And we’ll hang out on the couch.”

Adrian Bean had come up behind them. “He’d love it. We’ll go over the training rules with you. No sitting on the furniture. No table scraps.”

“No pizza? Not even the crusts? What kind of life is that?”

Adrian laughed and ignored Elv’s reproachful glances. “We want him to stay the well-behaved gentleman that he is. Right, Missy?” she said to Elv.

The record store owner went with Adrian to fill out all the paperwork, then came back, leash in hand. “I want to thank you for doing such a great job training him,” he said to Elv. “Right, Raleigh?” he said to Pollo. When Elv gave him a look, he went on to explain. “I thought he deserved a better name, so I’m naming him after my grandfather. They kind of look alike.”

Elv laughed in spite of herself.

“Don’t worry. Raleigh’s going to love being at the store. He’ll be my buddy.”

After the leash was clipped on, the dog continued to watch Elv. He didn’t move.

“Go with him,” she told Pollo.

He kept staring.

“Go on,” Elv said. She looked away. “Go.”

Pollo did as he was told. That’s what she’d trained him to do. Elv went back to her cell. She was sick to her stomach, too anxious to sit still. She picked a fight with Miracle and they didn’t speak for weeks, until Elv at last apologized.

“You got attached to that stupid dog,” Miracle said with understanding. “That’s your whole problem, Missy. You get attached to things.” She had heard Elv crying over Lorry in the night. “The dog took the place of your man and now you’re back to square one. Brokenhearted.”

Elv decided she wasn’t going to participate in the training program again. She hadn’t even thought she had a heart anymore, but it kept getting broken. She asked to be reassigned to the laundry. But Adrian entered her as a candidate for the next training program without consulting her. Elv went to the first session to tell Adrian to mind her own business, then she saw the dog that was supposed to be hers. Once again, it was the ugliest. A standard poodle that had been scalded with boiling water, tied up in a dark room for months.

“I don’t know about this one,” Adrian told her. “In all honesty, it might be better to put it out of its misery.”

The poodle was hiding under a chair, shaking. Its teeth were chattering.

Elv sat on the chair where the poodle was hiding. She didn’t know why she was allowed to be alive. Maybe that was her fate, to know she wasn’t worthy of anything and yet be given another chance. “Fine,” she said to Adrian. “I’ll stay.”

IT WAS RAINING on the day of her release, a bleak November. More than three years had passed and she hadn’t seen him—she hadn’t even heard from him this past year—but when she spied him it was as if she had seen him the day before. He was outside waiting in the rain. He didn’t have an umbrella or that black hat he used to wear. “Hey, baby,” he called just when she feared he might not recognize her. Elv felt embarrassed over what she must look like and what she had become. When you worked in the laundry, they made you cut your hair to chin length so it wouldn’t get caught in the pressing machines, and hers was still growing out. She was wearing the dumpy clothes they’d given her, a skirt and blouse made of some miserable wrinkly fabric and a lightweight coat. He came to kiss her and didn’t stop. He told her he’d tried to get over her, but it had been impossible. All he had to do was think about the first time he’d seen her, the look on her face, the tall grass, her hair flying out behind her and he fell for her all over again.