Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

handed me the leash and took his seat again. Remembering the biscuit, I put my hand lightly on his arm. “Dashiell must be hungry after all that running. Do you have something for him to eat?”
    Expecting Jackson to reach into his pocket and produce the biscuit Venus said she’d given him, I was surprised when he didn’t. I shouldn’t have been. The tiny miracles, the little windows of communication, action, or insight, touching moments when a very disabled person seems less disabled, never last. A moment later, or the next visit, it is as if they’d never occurred at all. If I came back tomorrow and tried the same thing with Jackson, he probably would not respond in the same way, which, in part, was why he was here.
    For me, the saddest part was that these lucid moments, as Venus called them, were never a sign of a cure, not in this population. Here there were no cures, so these incidents were only what they seemed to be—moments, nothing more.
    “Check your pockets,” I suggested, but Jackson sat there doing nothing, his eyes looking straight ahead, as mute as he’d been when I’d first sat down.
    I told Dashiell to find the biscuit. He began to sniff around, finding it in Jackson’s left pocket and carefully slipping it out with the sort of patience you wouldn’t imagine a dog could display. Jackson didn’t seem to notice, as if he hadn’t moved at all, as if he had never spoken to us, as if we weren’t there and had never been there.
    Venus was still in the doorway, all business now. She tilted her head toward David, who was standing in his usual spot by the sidelight, his head leaning slightly back, the way people do when they want to see something out of the bottom part of their bifocals, his arms stiff, only his fingers moving.
    Maybe there hadn’t been anything wrong. Maybe her tears were because something was right, because Jackson had had a little miracle.
    Or maybe they had to do with something that had happened moments earlier, when she was still in her office.
    As Venus had indicated David to me, with a nod of her head, I did the same with Dashiell. Standing next to her, just outside the dining room, I watched him meander over to David, stand at his side, then slowly sit on the hip closer to David, his legs sprawled straight out in front of him, leaning his weight ever so carefully against David’s leg.
    David’s nervous fingers began to tap at each other more slowly, and in a moment, they were still, the hands relaxed, just swaying at his side, like leaves in a breeze.
    “What happened before?” I whispered.
    “What do you mean?”
    Like Jackson, she had closed the door.
    But this time I wasn’t having any. I made little lines under my eye with my pointer and shrugged.
    “What was it you did there?”
    “Nothing much,” I said. “I admired his work, and Dashiell leaned in for some petting, but he wasn’t responding, so I thought I’d show him some of Dashiell’s work. It’s lively, like his paintings, and it gave me something to do. Then he said he wanted to try it. That’s all.”
    Venus turned away for a moment. When she looked back, her eyes were shining.
    “Rachel, that man hasn’t spoken since he’s been here. Not once. I may never let you go.”
    “It’s not me. It’s Dashiell. He can get to anyone.“
    „Everyone loved Lady. She was a cheerful, calming presence, rushing about all day on her own, making sure everyone was okay. But nothing like this ever happened. Your boy’s good. He gets inside.”
    “He was born for this.”
    Venus nodded, her eyes on David. “No heroics. Just hang out. You okay here?”
    “I’m fine.”
    But I wasn’t. I didn’t feel I’d been told the whole story here either.
    “Good. You know where I am if you need me.”
    She turned and walked back to her office, on the other side of the lobby. I watched her take the keys hanging from her belt and unlock the door. When it closed behind her, I heard the tumbler turn over again—Venus double-locking herself in.
    I decided to stay put for a moment and just watch— David standing there, Dashiell leaning on him, no one saying boo. Then, in this place where everything was odd, something unusual happened. David sat. He lowered himself to the floor, stretched his legs out, and sat on his right hip, leaning against Dashiell as Dashiell leaned against him.
    After a few minutes I joined them, sitting at Dashiell’s side, keeping him between me and David; if a dog could sometimes make a