Other People's Pets

by R. L. Maizes

  The kitchen walls, gray-white, appear soiled. She means to hang photographs in the new place but never has the energy. And which images would she choose? Ones of Zev, who’s gone? Surely not of Clem, though she has those pictures and sometimes looks at them.

  As she spreads peanut butter on wheat bread, she considers calling Elissa, but whether her mother is home or out with Chloe, she won’t pick up. La La bites into the sandwich, which has the texture of wet cement. If she were still with Clem, they’d be having a real dinner, salad and pasta with greens. Or they’d be splitting a bottle of wine in a restaurant, perhaps the place where they got engaged. La La fiddles with the engagement ring in her pocket.

  If only she had the kind of mother she could confide in about how much she misses Clem. As it is, all she has for Elissa are questions. Why did she leave? Why didn’t she take La La with her? Having abandoned her, Elissa could at least provide some answers.

  La La pulls up a map of Mesa, Arizona, on her phone. It’s a little over eight hundred miles away. If she drives through the night, she can arrive soon after the shelter opens. Animal shelters are busy on weekends, and her mother will likely be working. She’ll be forced to see La La and answer her questions.

  She tosses two peaches, the jar of peanut butter, and a spoon into a canvas bag. Sitting in her car, she enters the shelter address into the GPS app on her phone.

  Perhaps Elissa has a good reason for avoiding her calls, although La La can’t fathom what it might be. La La imagines everything will change as soon as Elissa sees her. Her mother will realize what a mistake it was to leave her. She’ll fold La La into her arms and apologize for all the years she’s been away. Leaning back, she’ll take La La’s face into her hands and caress her cheeks. If there’s another way for the meeting to go, La La doesn’t dwell on it. She lowers her foot onto the gas pedal. Pulling a peach from the canvas bag, she discovers she’s too nervous to eat.

  Traffic moves, though the roads are full. La La doesn’t bother to check whether she’s being followed. She hopes the bounty hunter tails her. The woman will waste a weekend and several tankfuls of gas only to find La La visiting her mother. Time and fuel the agent might otherwise spend looking for Zev. It would serve her right for refusing to believe La La doesn’t know where her father is.

  La La wills time to speed up, the night to pass. She selects one radio station after another, music and talk, all of it heightening her impatience, until she turns the radio off altogether. The endless hum of the road beneath her tires is like a lullaby, but the hope that Elissa will welcome her keeps La La going, that and the six-pack of Mountain Dew she picks up at a gas station.

  In the early hours of the morning, calm settles over the landscape. The road spools out, fingerlike trees beside it. The day seems to harbor a promise. When La La graduates, perhaps she’ll find a job in Mesa. Her mother could pull strings at the shelter, arrange a position for her there, so they can see each other every day. Under a pink sky, La La eats the two peaches, juices dripping down her chin.

  * * *

  Zev parks a few buildings away from the shelter, knowing he might have missed Elissa’s arrival. Mo made several messes that morning, delaying him, and he considered not coming at all, but he hoped Elissa would be late, too. He has a strange feeling his timing is right. And he has nothing else to do, Julia having gone to visit her son for the weekend.

  While he waits, he listens to a radio host interview a locksmith. He’d love to get a gig like that, which would be great advertising. Then again, being on the radio might not be the best idea for someone like him. As the segment ends, a woman in a car just like La La’s pulls into the shelter parking lot. It is La La. Fear prickles his scalp. He ducks down in his seat. His first thought is that she’s looking for him, but then he realizes she’s probably there for her mother and is unlikely to spot him in the unfamiliar car down the block. He sits up again. How did La La find Elissa? And why the hell did she bother when he told her not to? The woman’s not worth La La’s time. Not worth his time, either. Yet here he is. He wants more than anything to say hello to La La, but it’s too risky.

  A woman pulls in after La La. When she gets out of her car, Zev can’t help but notice she’s well-endowed. If she isn’t a waitress at Hooters, she should be. A brown ponytail brushes her back.

  Worried about how it will go when La La meets her mother, he decides to wait. He craves another look at his daughter in any case.

  * * *

  Just as La La predicted, would-be adopters crowd the shelter, their cars nearly filling the lot. In a corner of the building, a flap covers an opening, reminding La La of the book drop at the library where Zev occasionally took her when she was a child. CATS ONLY reads a sign next to it. Four feet away is a drop for dogs. La La has heard about these night boxes for people too embarrassed to surrender pets during the day. What lie explains the pet’s sudden disappearance to family and friends? An illness? A bout of aggression? The poor thing ran away? La La’s done many things, but she’s never quit on an animal.

  She hurries to the entrance, anticipation making up for her lack of sleep. Sweat trickles down her back. Once inside, La La clutches the edge of the counter. Trembling, she says, “I’m here to see Elissa Roberts.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the clerk asks. His cap reads WAG MORE—BARK LESS, and if she isn’t mistaken, he sniffs, trying to catch her scent.

  “I’m her daughter,” she mumbles.

  “What’s that?”

  “Her daughter!”

  His eyes widen. He picks up the phone and dials. “Your daughter’s here?” After a pause, he says, “One flight up at the end of the hall.”

  La La finds the office. When she enters, Elissa says, “Please shut the door.” It’s her mother, though a different woman than the one La La knew. Not just the gray hair or cheeks that fold like fabric, which she recognizes from the website photo. Elissa’s voice is flatter, too. Only a hint of the brittle edge remains. But perhaps it’s because her mother’s at work. La La waits for Elissa to say more, but she doesn’t. Her mother barely looks at her. A dog that is part pit bull lies on a bed in the corner of the room, panting nervously. La La’s breathing speeds up to match the animal’s. She understands at once that she will not get what she came for, neither answers nor love nor a future with her mother. Yet she has to try. “I miss you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elissa says, as she straightens a paper on the desk.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m not in a hurry.” Though her mother hasn’t invited her to, La La sits in a chair opposite the desk.

  “I didn’t want to be married to a thief.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to be a thief’s daughter. Did you ever think about that? You should have taken me.”

  “I wasn’t meant to be a mother.”

  “But you have a daughter now. Your telephone message—”

  “Come here, Chloe,” Elissa says.

  The pit bull raises her head. A dog. Of course. It makes so much sense. As Chloe waddles over to Elissa, La La feels pain in her knee. Perhaps the dog has the beginnings of arthritis.

  Her mother caresses Chloe’s head and feeds her a treat from a giant ceramic bowl on the desk. For a moment, it’s as if La La isn’t in the room at all. Is that what La La herself is like, ignoring people as she cares for pets? Even if it’s true, it’s not La La’s fault. What animals feel is amplified inside her, creating a din that crowds out people’s emotions. What excuse could her mother have? Unless—is it possible?—her mother has the same connection to animals that La La does. Considered in that light, so much of her childhood and her mother’s inability to love her take on a more reasonable cast. They’re alike! How can La La hold it against her?

  Her mother whispers something to Chloe, and the dog lays her head on Elissa’s lap.

  “Do you feel their pain, too?” La La says. Sunshine floods the room, the air a wavy living thing fill
ed with spinning dust motes. La La imagines the talks she’ll have with Elissa, comparing their talents. Perhaps her mother will teach her additional techniques, learned over a lifetime, for tuning in to a creature’s discomfort. How close they’ll become! She can forgive everything now that she understands.

  “Whose pain?” Elissa doesn’t look up.

  “All of them: dogs, cats, birds, squirrels. I’m the way I am because of you, right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  La La kneels in front of Chloe and manipulates her leg. “She’s hurting. Can’t you feel it? Probably early arthritis.”

  Elissa tightens her hold on Chloe. “How can you tell?”

  “The same way you can. Because you can sense what animals feel.”

  “I can’t—”

  “That’s why you were so cruel.”

  The phone rings. “I was unhappy,” Elissa says, over the phone’s insistent cries. “I felt trapped.”

  “Dad got arrested, and I had to take a leave from veterinary school. I left you messages.”

  “You’re in veterinary school?” For the first time, her mother looks at her with respect, and something, La La likes to imagine, like regret.

  “I was—I took a leave.”

  “Yes, that’s what you said.”

  “Why didn’t you call me back?”

  “After all these years, I didn’t know what to say.”

  “You could have said anything. I just wanted to hear your voice.” The distance between La La and her mother feels as vast as the mileage La La drove to get there. “Mo’s still alive,” La La says. “Or I think she is. Zev took her when he went on the run.”

  “Mo?”

  “The cat you left.”

  Elissa’s expression softens. “I knew you’d give her a good home.”

  So, she was a gift from Elissa. Mo, her first friend after Zev isolated her, her first patient. The animal that led her to Dr. Bergman, who helped La La understand who she was.

  Elissa gathers papers from her desk and stands.

  “Can’t we just talk?” La La pleads.

  “I’m no good at this. I wish I was. But I’m not. I’m sorry.” Elissa leashes Chloe and steps from the office, shutting the door behind her.

  La La rises, her eyes hot. A familiar absence all that’s left of her mother. She lifts the bowl of treats above her head and lets it fall to the linoleum floor, shards of ceramic mingling with Milk-Bones. Tearing a framed poster that says Kindness Is the Best Training from the wall, she spears it on a corner of the desk, glass showering her hands.

  As she stumbles through the hall, tears pool in her eyes. In the stairway, she gropes for the banister and makes her way down. What can she do but return home, as much an orphan as when she left.

  * * *

  Zev sees his daughter lurch from the building, tear slicks on her cheeks, shoulders heaving. What did Elissa say? He’d like to throttle her. No good can come of La La knowing where he is, yet he can’t bear to do nothing. Shoving the car door open, he runs toward her, calling her name. Shock registers in her eyes. When he embraces her, she hangs on, burying her face in his neck. Her suffering causes him anguish, but he relishes having her in his arms. He wasn’t sure he would ever hold her again.

  “She was the same,” La La wails. “She couldn’t wait to get away from me.”

  “I’m here,” he says, and strokes her back, trying not to think of the soup of fluids dampening his shirt. “It’s all right.”

  A dog at her side, Elissa exits the building, tripping on a landing she must walk every day. Unlike the other times Zev’s seen her, she looks uncertain of her direction and hesitates before continuing.

  La La’s back is to her mother. “Why did you marry her?” she cries.

  “I love her,” Zev says, though what he feels is closer to obsession. “I wish I didn’t.” His eyes meet Elissa’s. He shakes his head, warning her not to come closer. Odd that he should feel anything for Elissa, given how she treated him and La La and with a woman like Julia in his life. But Elissa married him, knowing who he was, and stayed with him at least for a while. Julia doesn’t even know his real name.

  Over La La’s shoulder, Zev sees the ponytailed woman exit the shelter. He’s blocking the sidewalk, but the woman can go around. Before he knows what’s happening, the woman skirts Elissa and points a gun at him and La La. From beneath her T-shirt, she extracts a silver shield that hangs around her neck.

  Elissa pulls Chloe to her. She backs up to the shelter door.

  “Step to the side, Louise,” shouts the bounty hunter. After turning to look, La La obeys. “Zev Fine, turn around and put your hands behind your back.” The agent handcuffs him. “On the ground,” she says, and he drops. She checks him for weapons, handling him roughly, taking the lockpicks and pen from his pockets.

  The sidewalk presses against his cheek, warm as an oven. He investigates the handcuffs with his fingers, but she’s smart enough to have used a hinged pair with a virtually unpickable Yale tumbler lock. And he hasn’t got a tool.

  Zev shouts an address at La La, adding: “Get Mo. And don’t forget to take her litter.”

  * * *

  A week later, back in Colorado, La La visits Zev in the Longview County Jail. It’s as grim as she feared it would be. The cement floor is cracked, and they’re surrounded by windowless cinderblock walls. Zev’s hair is unwashed. The torn zipper on his jumpsuit doesn’t close all the way, but Zev is so out of it he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s lost weight and his cheekbones protrude. The deputy tells her she has half an hour.

  “I got Mo,” she says. Zev nods. La La wishes she had something to hold, the copies of Scientific American and National Geographic she brought for him that jail officials wouldn’t let her bring inside. Anything to distract her. As it is, she doesn’t know what to do with her hands and sets them on the orange plastic table between them that bears scratches, but nothing else. “I brought your clothes back to my house.” He’ll figure out she took the other things, too, the important ones. Or at least she hopes he will. The keys and notebook are safe—she buried them next to a mountain path—but she can’t mention that in the jail where conversations might be recorded. She wonders if he’ll want them when he gets out. “A woman stopped by while I was packing your things.”

  Zev looks up. “What did she say?”

  “She asked if you were okay. I said you had some health problems and were coming to live with me.”

  “That’s terrible. She’ll think I’m old.”

  La La looks around. “Better than the alternative.” Quiet falls over the room. La La tells Zev about Nat moving back to Atlanta.

  “O’Bannon was here,” Zev says without elaborating. La La had her own conversation with the lawyer, so she knows he’s trying to negotiate a deal.

  Her father, who was always so full of energy, barely moves. Not even when she tells him she’ll be returning to school in the fall. He should be happy for her after nearly robbing her of her career. “At least look at me,” she says. When he does, she regrets asking, because his expression is blank, the affection she’s used to seeing gone.

  She traces a scratch on the table with her finger and wonders why she bothered coming at all. Her visit doesn’t seem to make any difference to him. His choices are what led to his being here, she reminds herself. She tries not to think of her role in his capture because then she’ll just be angry at herself, and what good would that do?

  “I miss Julia,” he says.

  “The woman who stopped by?”

  “I even miss Dee-Dee.”

  Why is he talking about strangers when he can’t seem to muster even a bit of care for her? La La studies the two rows of identical plastic tables and chairs and the beat-up vending machine. She leans back in her chair until it’s about to tip.

  “Stop that,” Zev says.

  She brings the chair forward. “I haven’t heard from Mom.”

  Zev examines the sleeve of
his jumpsuit, touching the frayed edge. “You shouldn’t have gone to see her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew where she was?”

  “So you could surprise her? Look where that got me.” The effort to talk seems to exhaust him. His shoulders drop, and he renews his survey of the floor.

  “How was I supposed to know you were spying on her?”

  “You didn’t know. But it was possible, right? That I would try to see her, too?” Zev rests his head in his hands. “I can’t stop going over it in my mind. The minute I saw that woman, I should have known she was a bounty hunter. That she was carrying. You can tell if you really look. She didn’t see me in the car. There was still a chance to get away. But I wanted to see you. I’ll pay for that mistake for the rest of my life.” He tugs at his hair and moans.

  “O’Bannon will work something out,” she says, but he doesn’t stop moaning. She turns from him, the smell of his acrid sweat following her.

  “Was it worth it?” he says after a while. “To see her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  With fifteen minutes left in the visit, La La takes off.

  * * *

  Though La La’s given up trying to reach her mother, she can’t help thinking about her, and when she does it spoils the taste of her food and distracts her in the clinic. “You said you’d be here half an hour ago,” she snaps at Clem when he brings the dogs over. “You’re making a mess!” she chastises Blue when he sloshes water out of the bowl. “I know how to tie a surgical knot,” she barks at Dr. Bergman when he gives her routine instructions. He regards her with compassion, and it makes her want to scream. She doesn’t want his pity.

  She imagines returning to the shelter and harming Elissa. It would be easy. The receptionist would let her through now that he knows she’s Elissa’s daughter. She could use a crowbar or a wrench. If she didn’t want to be discovered, she could follow Elissa home and attack her there. Why shouldn’t she? Certainly her mother deserves it. Perhaps she’ll steal Chloe, the one thing Elissa loves. La La relishes the thought of Elissa’s distress at finding the dog gone.