by Mary Miller
“No, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m trying to get an idea of her size.”
“She’s a normal size, I guess, a normal-sized little girl. Her mother is quite health-conscious.” I handed the dress to the woman, sorry to see it go. I wished I could wear something new and colorful myself. I’d been wearing the same pair of khakis for weeks, and one of two shirts. I had a closet full of clothes but it didn’t matter because choices overwhelmed me. I vowed to clean out my closet, donate the whole lot to poor people.
I was still standing there like an idiot, but instead of giving me her usual sour face, the woman tilted her head and smiled. “You’ll find the right gift,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
“Do you know where I might find an Easy-Bake Oven?”
“You could try Walmart,” she said. “Or Target.”
“Aren’t there any toy stores anymore?”
“The Toys“R”Us closed about a year ago, but Walmart and Target have all that stuff now. That’s where I get my kids’ presents or I order them online, but that only works if you’ve planned ahead.”
“The party’s tomorrow. I have not planned ahead.”
“I didn’t think so,” she said, and she smiled again and gave me a little wink. The wink was spectacular. It sent a chill throughout my entire body and I would have paid her a lot of money to position herself in different areas of the store and wink at me all day long. I hoped she would do it one more time, wanted to ask her to do it, but I was afraid of women. I had been afraid of them my whole life. If I’d been a bully, if I’d mistreated or ignored them, judged them by their looks or weight, it had always and only been because of this.
“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate your help.”
“My pleasure.” She continued smiling at me. I wanted to ask her out on a date but figured that would be inappropriate. She was also young, how young I didn’t know. She was Mexican, too, though I had nothing against Mexicans.
“I appreciate you saying ‘my pleasure.’ So many young people nowadays say ‘no problem.’ ”
“I’ve noticed that, as well,” she said, scrunching up her nose.
“Back to the dress. . . . Do you think it would fit an average five-year-old, one that isn’t too short or too tall or too big-boned?”
“No,” she said, “but I’ll grab one in the right size.”
They wouldn’t wrap it because nobody wrapped gifts anymore, she told me, so I would have to figure that out on my own. After that I felt inspired. I could make decisions, would have no difficulty completing this task.
I passed a bookstore, stopped and went inside. I navigated back to the children’s section and asked another woman for help and we had an excellent time looking at books, talking about books. She asked about the books I’d loved as a child, and I thought about them and the nice feelings I’d had while reading them for the first time in a long time. I took all of her recommendations, spending over eighty-five dollars. I’d had no idea they were so expensive but handed her a wad of cash as if I spent money like this every day. And they really were beautiful—full of bright colors and dumb jokes, funny-looking animals and people. I wanted to buy Laurel everything, wanted to give her such perfect gifts that they would inspire her to live a great life, or at least set her on the right path. I wished I were rich for the sole purpose of having young women help me buy things for my granddaughter all day. I thought about Layla, how she’d let me hold her even though she didn’t like it, how her arms and legs would go stiff and she’d look tortured but one day she’d be so comfortable with me and love me so much she’d fall asleep in my arms, just like a baby, just like Maxine had. Just like Laurel might one day.
I considered getting her a puppy but they were cat people. I didn’t want her to be a cat person, though, particularly not so early on—it could ruin her life. I would get her a puppy. I couldn’t get her a puppy. I went back and forth as I drove to the pet store but all they had were cats.
“Where are the dogs?” I asked the woman.
“We don’t sell those anymore.”
“How come?”
“There’s a whole puppy-mill debate raging,” she said. “It’s complicated.”
“What’s that mean?”
She shrugged and told me she just worked there, didn’t know the ins and outs of puppy mills. “Well, this whole cat situation—and the proliferation of cat people—is getting out of hand,” I said, and the woman laughed so I told her about my granddaughter and how I needed to get a dog into the mix ASAP so she wouldn’t be doomed. The woman laughed some more and we chatted for a bit about dogs and cats. She was an older overweight lady but I acted as though she was very beautiful, or at least like I hadn’t noticed that she was old and overweight. Whatever I’d done it had worked and I decided to employ this tactic more often. She was a human being and I was a human being and we were all damaged and ugly and hurting, no matter what face we presented to the world. But if I made eye contact and smiled, said nice things, nearly anyone could be charmed.
I drove to another pet store and they didn’t have dogs, either, but said the humane society would be there the following weekend.
“Where can I get a dog today?” I asked.
She told me about a few places I might try, wrote down the names and addresses on a piece of paper.
After that I swung by the house to get Layla so she could ride along, figuring the weather was cool enough if I had to leave her in the car for a few minutes. She hung her head out the window, the wind whipping her face into a smile, while I told her what a good life she had and how lucky she was and then I stopped to get us some burgers to prove the point. We ate them while cruising along the beach and I didn’t feel like looking at dogs any longer. I’d gotten lucky with Layla but how often did that happen? The worst-case scenario would be to pick out a dog only for it to grow into an antisocial, food-aggressive animal. What if the damn thing bit Laurel? I’d heard plenty of stories and I didn’t want to be responsible for something like that. And then, just as quickly as I’d talked myself into it I had talked myself out of it. I was apparently going through some sort of midlife crisis but it was very late for that. It was a three-quarter-life crisis. They should write a book about that. All over the country, white men retired and then sat quietly in their houses until they shot themselves in the head or died of boredom. It was a goddamn epidemic.
I picked up a six-pack and cracked open a Miller Lite, considered cruising over to Alabama again, or perhaps the other way, into Louisiana, to show the dog New Orleans, but I was afraid to drive in New Orleans. There were all these one-way streets and too many cars on the road, but mostly there were a lot of black people, which was something we didn’t have much of on the Coast. We had white trash and white trash were predictable. They loved the rebel flag and big trucks and shirts apparently made their skin hurt; they chain-smoked cigarettes and loved Trump because he hated everyone who wasn’t like them, too. White trash were easy enough to avoid. I told the dog about New Orleans, about pralines and po’boys as we cruised the beach, driving back and forth but staying safely within Mississippi. There were times when I didn’t feel as though I could cross state lines, either, much like the people of Arkansas. We were all moving around but we weren’t going anywhere, or we weren’t going far enough.
- - -
THAT EVENING, Frank stopped by. He passed me the white box as he entered and I was glad I’d taken a nap because I’d had a nice buzz a few hours earlier. As much as I liked to be drunk, my preference was to do it in private.
“Your good buddy Marv around?”
“That’s funny.”
“What? Y’all seemed like good buddies.”
“I’ll just have my locks changed again, give him a reason to come by. See, you bring me food—that’s your purpose. If you came here without food I wouldn’t know what to do with you.” I opened the box: half of a sandwich and most of a loaded baked potato. “You didn’t eat much.”
“I’ve been tr
ying to eat half my meal in order to drop a few pounds. I cut it in half right when they bring it out.”
“I’ve never heard of any such thing.”
“I’m practicing restraint,” he said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Frank! Throwing zingers tonight.” I hoped it was over. I decided to sit and eat the sandwich right there. Then I picked up the potato with my hands. Ellen had liked to eat with her hands, as well—she’d liked quesadillas and corn dogs, in particular—and I’d joked that it was one of her defining features. I supposed it was one of mine, too. Something we had in common.
As I bit into the potato I looked at him and waggled my eyebrows. He laughed and shook his head, said there was something wrong with me. “You’re probably starving over there. You’re not even fat, Frank.”
“You haven’t seen me without my clothes on,” he said, which was a very gay thing to say and which I didn’t appreciate. I pictured him standing in front of a mirror examining the various naked parts of himself.
I licked my finger and hit a few buttons, turned it to Fox News so we’d have something to talk about if we were going to talk. Once the food was gone I was good and sober, perfectly sober. I placed the box on the floor so Layla could eat the scraps, lick the sour cream. She ate a pickle and I pointed this out to Frank but then she rejected it.
“The dog seems to have gotten used to you,” I said.
“She won’t come anywhere near me, and she’s giving me the sketchy eyeball right now. Look at her eyeballing me.”
“Well, at least she’s not growling,” I said. And then, “How come Claudia never stops by? I’d like to see her sometime.”
“Oh, you know how Claudia is—she prefers her books. Real people she doesn’t find all that interesting.”
“I should start reading if people in books are so interesting.”
“I think they’re the same in books, mostly, at least the ones she reads—frustrated, angry—but in a book she can close it when they start to bother her. It’s probably why she never wanted kids.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Frank had never said that much to me about his wife or their life together. I mumbled something about women, the difficulties of them, because I felt like I needed to say something. He looked tired and I wondered how his sleep situation was going. I felt sorry for him but he had his job and his painting and Chili’s, which was more than I had. He probably knew all the waitresses and bartenders by name. Hell, maybe he was sleeping with one of them, had put her up in a condo somewhere. Of course he wasn’t doing anything of the sort but I liked to imagine his secret life now that he seemed to have one. Dogs feared him. He and Claudia were clearly having some kind of problem. He had decided to cut his food in half for no reason whatsoever.
When Tucker Carlson came on, I fell asleep, or pretended to—I hated Tucker Carlson, his stupid tie, his stupid face—and Frank let himself out.
CHAPTER 19
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, I went to Target and browsed the toy aisles. There were only a few of them and it made me sad for all the children who didn’t know what a whole entire store devoted to them felt like, a trip undertaken solely for them as opposed to an afterthought while their mothers purchased sheets or some such.
I had a spring in my step, as I was wearing a clean pair of khakis and a shirt I hadn’t worn since I’d been employed. I’d shaved and used soap in the shower, too, lathering the different parts of my body instead of just standing under the water. I felt sober and decent, like an upstanding citizen once more. I would go to my granddaughter’s party with a shit-ton of presents and behave myself, return home to walk the dog and eat a nutritious dinner—a piece of fish, assorted green vegetables—and get into bed without consuming a six-pack of beer. I could do these things, I told myself. It was nothing. It was easy.
I stood in front of the display of Hatchimals and selected one: New Hatchimals from the Glittering Garden with twinkling wings and shimmering fur; rainbow eyes let you know your Hatchimal is ready to hatch. . . . I grabbed several in various sizes because I didn’t know what the hell they were and didn’t care. Maxine could return them if she wanted, or trade them in for others. After that I looked at gift bags, choosing the biggest one along with some tissue paper in rainbow colors, which would go nicely with the rainbow eyes, and then went to find an Easy-Bake Oven. It appeared basically unchanged, though it had a fancier name—The Ultimate Oven, Baking Star Edition. I hesitated because it seemed like too much, all of the cakes and icings, the ongoing expense of it, and an oven wasn’t a present for a young girl, anyhow. What was it telling her? That she should learn how to bake so she could stay home and make things for men? Maxine hadn’t baked the cakes for Ellen but for me, as if she’d known her job in life would be pleasing a man. I didn’t want my granddaughter to think that way, to think I thought of her that way. She was too young to understand but one day she would.
“Can I help you, sir?” a woman asked. Her eyes were kind. She had blue streaks in her hair the color of cotton candy. I wanted to touch it, see if it felt different from the rest of her blondish hair underneath. It wasn’t attractive but I figured that was the goal, to make herself less pretty, and it was working. There was also a tiny earring in her nose that I’d initially mistaken for a pimple.
“I’m trying to find my granddaughter a gift and think I’ve picked out too many things. I’m not sure. It seems like it might be too much.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got so far,” she said, taking the bag from my hand.
“I already got her a dress and some books, too.”
She squatted and pulled out the boxes of animals along with a light-up jump rope, a pack of glitter markers, some mermaid stickers, and a hair accessory/makeup combo kit. “I see she likes sparkly things.”
“Don’t all girls like sparkly things? And when they get older they like them even more.”
“Okaaay,” she said, ignoring my observation. “So this seems like a lot of different stuff. Let’s streamline a bit.” She pointed out that I had two Glittering Gardens when I only needed one because it hatched all of the animals. “You know what? How about you let me do this. How much do you want to spend?”
“I don’t know—sixty or seventy dollars. But I don’t want to look cheap. I can spend more.”
“This’ll only take a second,” she said, and I watched her backside until she was out of sight. Her hair was the swingy kind, or she did something with her head as she walked that made it swing. When she came back, she handed me a different bag with different tissue paper and much less stuff in it. Then she told me to take the price tags off and wrap each individual item.
“You’re very helpful,” I said. “Thank you.”
“I volunteer at an old folks’ home on weekends.”
Was she calling me old? I supposed I wasn’t young but I wasn’t old, either. I took the bag from her and went over to the grocery section, watched myself walk along in the freezer cases, which projected a clear image in the glass. Turned out I was old and also quite fat, fatter than I had ever been, which was unfortunate. I wasn’t going to cut my food in half, though. I wasn’t going to do anything so rash as that. I picked up some coffee and bologna and toilet paper and then set everything on the floor and went to get a cart.
I stopped at some point to eat a hot dog and managed to get ketchup on my pants. Then I purchased a bag of popcorn. I was stalling and knew I was stalling but I felt glued to the plastic chair. I didn’t want to see Ellen, didn’t want to be in the same room with her. I didn’t want to hear about her boyfriend, Rick, or imagine the two of them hiking or whatever the hell they liked to do when they weren’t screwing people out of money that wasn’t theirs. I hoped they got lost in the woods. Perhaps he’d even managed to get her in the water—she must have a nice pool at that luxury beachfront condo. Why had I agreed to go? I should’ve said I had plans and would bring Laurel’s present over another time. I shoveled the popcorn into my mouth, pieces
falling everywhere. Someone would have to clean up after me and I felt sorry about it but my sloppiness also guaranteed that that person would have a job tomorrow and the day after that. Slobs served a purpose. I wouldn’t be convinced we didn’t.
When the bag was empty, I pushed the cart out of the store without paying, not realizing I hadn’t paid until I was home and everything had been unloaded and put away. I would have to go back. I called instead and told the manager what I’d gotten and asked if I could mail him a check, but no, he didn’t like the sound of that at all, so I had to gather everything up and put it in the car and return to the store, haul it inside.
I was irritated at that point and said something I shouldn’t have said to the girl checking me out even though it wasn’t her fault. Then I went back home, put everything away again, and changed pants. I was exhausted and the party was well under way at that point but my stomach hurt so I sat on the toilet for a while, talking to Layla, apologizing to her even though I was a good dog owner. In order to back up my claim, I made a list of everything I’d done for her that day: taken her on two walks, cooked an egg and waited for it to cool before putting it on her bowl of expensive dry food made especially for dogs of her size and age, replaced yesterday’s water with fresh water. She had taken two poops and somewhere north of five pisses. I’d petted her in bed that morning and here I was on the toilet while she sniffed my pants, tried to get a few good licks on my legs as I moved them from side to side.
By the time I arrived at Maxine’s, the party was over.
Ellen answered the door.
“Hello, Lou,” she said. She looked fine—she looked good, even—a bit thinner and wearing a flowy shirt I didn’t recognize, but the same ole Ellen. “You brought your dog with you, I see. That’s strange.”
“Is it? Everyone loves dogs. Even Hitler loved dogs.”
She backed into the house, telling me I’d missed the party. Her lip all curled up in disgust. I wished I’d seen her sooner. If I’d had my doubts about the end of our marriage, I’d only needed to see her for a moment to be reminded. And why’d she have to be so nasty to me? There was no reason for her to be nasty anymore. I stopped myself from saying anything else, which was difficult, but I was going to be the bigger person.