Time to Fly

by Laurie Halse Anderson

  “Zoe, why don’t you hold Shirley while I show Lauren the technique,” Mom suggests.

  The puppy gives my cheek a quick lick—sweet puppy breath!—as I settle her in the crook of my left arm. I rest my other hand on her fat, fuzzy tummy to hold her steady. Shirley looks up at me with her trusting brown eyes, and I can’t help but smile down at her. I think I’m in love. Lucky Lauren.

  Mom selects a paw and brings the clippers to the nail. “Just be careful not to clip off too much,” she instructs Lauren, who watches closely. “This pink part down here is called the quick. You don’t want to clip it, or it will bleed and hurt her. Right now her nails aren’t very long, so it’s a little tricky. But each time you clip them, the quick will recede and be easier to avoid. Here, you try it.”

  To my knowledge, they don’t teach you how to trim a dog’s toenails in acting school. It’s obvious my mother knows what she’s doing.

  Lauren carefully follows Mom’s example. Then Mom takes a steel file from the drawer and shows her how to file the pup’s nails smooth. “Great job, Lauren. Just don’t put any polish on those nails!” Mom says with a wink when they’re done.

  Gran returns, and I set Shirley on the table for her examination. “Your puppy’s in great shape,” Gran pronounces. “And she’s obviously got a superb temperament. Just give her good care, consistent training, and lots of love.”

  “Oh, I will,” Lauren says as she snuggles Shirley into her arms, clearly thrilled and relieved. Shirley licks her cheek.

  As we wash our hands in preparation for the next patient, I prepare to eat crow. “OK, I guess you do know a bit about animals,” I murmur to Mom. “I had no idea.” I’m impressed and oddly pleased, but I also can’t help feeling a bit annoyed. It’s as if there’s a whole side of Mom, an animal side, that she’s held back from me all these years.

  “Why do you think I was so good at playing a nurse on the soap opera?” she says lightly, handing me a towel. “My mother is a doctor!”

  Gran chuckles. She’s more relaxed around Mom than I expected. Although she’s never criticized Mom to me, I sense that she didn’t exactly approve of Mom leaving me to go off to Lala-land. All their phone calls over the past year started out friendly, but then Gran would begin to look serious and turn away, and finally she’d carry the phone into another room. Before I moved in with Gran, I don’t think she and Mom ever talked on the phone, at least not that I saw. I’ve never quite known what came between them, but the way Gran’s always so tight-lipped about Mom’s career, I get the feeling that Gran didn’t want her daughter to become an actress.

  Gran steps out to fetch her next client and returns with a tall woman carrying an Abyssinian cat. As Mom steadies the slender brownish gold cat on the table and scratches its neck soothingly, Gran peers into its large ears with a light scope.

  “Looks like Abby has ear mites,” Gran says to the woman. “Zoe, would you please get the ear mite medication from the cabinet?”

  As Gran puts drops in the cat’s ear, the conversation turns to parrots. “My daughter lives on Telegraph Hill, in San Francisco,” the woman is saying. “She told me there’s an entire population of parrots living there wild. That surprised me alright—I thought parrots could only live wild in the tropics.”

  Gran hands the ear ointment back to me. “Apparently they’re very adaptable,” she replies.

  Adaptable—that’s the perfect word for Mom. Look how well she’s adapted to life in California. And now she walks into this clinic, where she hasn’t set foot in twenty years, and makes herself right at home.

  I guess maybe the word could apply to me, too. When I first arrived at Gran’s, I thought I’d never get used to it, but I did.

  After a few more patients, the waiting room is finally empty, and Mom and I collapse on the waiting room couch for a breather. It occurs to me that Mom might be thirsty after her long trip. “Lemonade?” I offer.

  “Oh, Zoe, that would be wonderful.”

  I pop next door to the kitchen and return a moment later with two glasses.

  “Thank you, darling—this is just what I needed.” She takes a drink and then gives a contented sigh. “My, but that puppy was sweet. You know, I’d forgotten how nice it feels to work with animals.”

  My mother never ceases to amaze me. “Mom, I always thought you didn’t like animals.”

  She raises her eyebrows at me, just the way Gran does. “Whatever made you think that?”

  “Well, we could never have a pet in New York, even though I wanted one and they were allowed in our building.”

  Mom nods and swirls the ice in her glass. Finally she says quietly, “Well, I was always so busy, and Ethel had enough to do without cleaning up after a pet, and—” She pauses, takes another drink, and then looks at me. “Animals die, Zoe. Sooner or later, they die. I couldn’t—I didn’t want you to feel that pain, that loss.” She smiles at me, but the smile seems sad.

  That afternoon Mom takes me and Maggie and David to the Ambler Bowl-a-Rama.

  The guy at the desk recognizes Mom from her soap and makes a big fuss. Turns out they went to high school together, and he’s thrilled when she lets him take a snapshot of the two of them standing in front of the lanes. “I’m gonna blow it up, frame it, and display it on the wall!” he declares. “Then the next time you come, you can sign it for me!”

  Mom actually blushes, but she looks flattered by the attention.

  “I bet they never had a TV star in here before,” Maggie says as we head for our lane.

  “Hey, I wasn’t exactly a star,” Mom says. “And besides, I’m off duty tonight. I’m just plain old Rose Hopkins, hometown girl.”

  When we get our rental shoes, it turns out Mom and I now wear the same size. Cool—that means I can start borrowing her shoes. She has a great collection.

  “I didn’t know you liked to bowl,” I say as we lace up our bowling shoes.

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” she says with a playful smile.

  I realize it’s true. I also sense that something about our relationship has changed. It’s not just that I’m almost as tall as she is and wear the same size shoes. It’s as if we’ve reached a new level in the way we relate to each other. We’re still mother and daughter, of course, but now it’s almost like we’re friends, too—or could be if we weren’t so far apart all the time. Suddenly I long to learn all those things about her that I don’t know, such as the fact that she can clip a dog’s toenails and calm a nervous cat. And I realize I want her to get to know me, too.

  David comes over with a huge plate of nachos and a cardboard tray of sodas from the snack bar. “It’s on the house!” he announces, impressed.

  “Ah, one of the perks of fame!” Mom says dramatically, pulling off a big wad of chips and gooey cheese from the plate. Nachos are one of my secret weaknesses. Who knew they were Mom’s, too?

  As Maggie writes our names on the score sheet, Mom snares a swirly blue bowling ball. “Prepare to get creamed,” she announces. She stares down the lane, takes a few steps, and rolls the ball.

  Crash! A strike on her first roll.

  “Whoa!” Maggie exclaims. I’m so unathletic that Maggie probably never guessed my mother might have athletic skills. A competitive gleam shines in my cousin’s eyes. “How’d you do that, Aunt Rose?”

  Mom grins. “I used to bowl in a league when I lived here. If you think Ambler’s small now, you should have seen it when I was a kid. There was nothing else to do in the winter besides bowl!”

  We play several games, switching partners each time, because everybody wants to be on Mom’s team. When Maggie pairs up with Mom against David and me, they hammer us so badly that David and I simply devote our turns to inventing crazy new styles of rolling the ball while Maggie and Mom laugh hysterically at us. It makes me feel good to see that the other kids like my mother.

  That evening after dinner, Gran turns to me. “Zoe, why don’t you and Rose take Sneakers for a walk? Maggie and I w
ill clean up.”

  I glance out the window. There are dark clouds in the distance. “It looks like it might rain.”

  “So take an umbrella. Sneakers needs the exercise. And I’m sure Rose would enjoy seeing the old neighborhood.” She gives me a pointed, don’t-argue-about-it look.

  OK, I get it—this is where Mom and I are supposed to have some time alone together.

  I go to get the leash.

  “Sneakers! Cool it!” The walk is more like a drag—as in Sneakers dragging me down the street, acting up, and ignoring my commands.

  I want Mom to see how special he is and love him as much as I do. He would pick this moment to misbehave.

  But Mom doesn’t seem to notice. She’s talking a mile a minute about the new house, how I’ve grown, her job, my hair, the new school, her agent. Mom’s always been the chatty type—she can charm anybody with her sparkling conversation—but she’s setting a new world record for words per minute.

  It couldn’t be that she’s nervous now that we’re alone together, could it?

  I, on the other hand, haven’t said a word for ten minutes. Does she notice? After all, back in Manhattan she used to take me everywhere, so I met actors, producers, restaurant chefs, all kinds of VIPS, and I’ve learned how to talk to just about anybody. Yet now I feel tongue-tied around my own mother.

  “…And it’s wonderful being so near the ocean,” Mom is telling me. She sighs happily. “I know it’s taken a long time, but everything has finally fallen into place the way I’d hoped. I can’t wait for you to see the house. Maybe next weekend we can go shopping and pick out furniture for your room—”

  “You’re coming back here next weekend?” Wow—this is a surprise.

  “No…I meant go shopping in Los Angeles,” Mom says slowly.

  I stop and frown, puzzled. “I’m going out there for a visit?”

  Mom bites her lip. “I didn’t explain myself very well, did I. What I mean to say is, I want you to fly back to California with me now, for good. I’ve waited so long for this moment. Now that we’ve got a house to move into, I just can’t wait another minute to start our new life together.” She beams at me and takes my hand.

  I feel like a deer caught in a car’s headlights. I thought I was surprised when she showed up this morning, but now I’m—stunned.

  Mom keeps beaming at me. I want to share her joy and excitement, but somehow I can’t. Still, I have to say something. “Now? Gosh, Mom, I—um—I guess I didn’t realize it would be so—soon. I mean, it’s a big move, and school’s not out yet, and…” Suddenly, all the reasons not to go start pounding through my head: Maggie doesn’t want me to leave. I don’t want to leave her—or Gran. Besides, I still have to catch E.T. and find him a home, and get the parrot-protection program going, and…

  The leash jerks, and Sneakers yanks me off the path to chase a chipmunk. It’s his favorite game. He’s never actually caught one; I think he just loves the chase. The chipmunk zips up a tree, and Sneaker stands upright against the trunk, pawing the tree and barking, as though he wanted to follow the chipmunk right up into the branches.

  I wonder if Los Angeles has chipmunks. Otherwise, what will Sneakers chase—cars?

  I finally convince him to give it up, and we rejoin Mom on the sidewalk. “Is there a quarantine for new dogs there?” I ask.

  My mother looks puzzled. “Where?”

  “In California.”

  “I—I’m not sure what you mean, Zoe.” Mom’s voice sounds oddly strained.

  “What I mean is, will Sneakers have to spend some time in quarantine before he can move in with us? Some places do that, you know.”

  A cloud moves across the sun, and Mom shivers. “Zoe, it’s not as if California’s a different country. Though I do have to say, it’s quite a bit warmer than here,” she says lightly. “Listen, honey—”

  Uh-oh. That’s how she always starts bad news. I cut her off. “Sneakers will be coming too, won’t he?”

  “Now, Zoe—”

  “Why not?” I demand, before she even gets the word no out.

  There’s a long pause.

  “I just don’t think it would be a good idea right now,” she says quietly.

  I look at Sneakers prancing ahead of us, his ears flopping. A lump swells in my throat. “Why?”

  “Well, things will be rather unsettled for a while. Moving, getting you into a new school …and my schedule will be very demanding.” She pauses again, searching for words, then says firmly, “Dogs need consistency. They need a routine. They need someone who’s going to be there for them and take care of them every day.”

  Sounds like she’s quoting Gran.

  I watch Sneakers rushing from side to side, as if every new smell is something to chase. “Sneakers needs me,” I say hotly. “He was a homeless, half-dead, starving stray, and I took him in and brought him back to life. I’m his routine. I’m his home—his family.”

  “Zoe, dear, I think he would miss Gran and Maggie and the other animals—”

  Oh, and I won’t?

  “—and that nice big backyard—”

  “You said our house has a nice backyard!”

  “It does, honey, but it’s small, and it’s not fenced. Wilshire Boulevard is a very busy street— the cars go so fast, and…” Her voice seems to quiver, then trails off.

  “Those are just lame excuses!” I retort. “You’re thinking only about what’s convenient for you. As usually, you’re not even considering how I feel!”

  “Zoe!” Mom exclaims, trying to put on a scolding-mom voice. But it’s bad casting. She’s uneasy in the role. She’s never been that kind of mom.

  “You just don’t get it!” I practically shout at her. “I love Sneakers! I don’t know what I would have done without him this past year. Sometimes I was so homesick. Sneakers was always there for me—when you weren’t!”

  Mom looks as though I’ve slapped her. “How can you say that?” she whispers.

  “Easily! You’re the one who hasn’t been around for almost a year. I have my own life here now, Mom, with Gran and Maggie—and Sneakers. You can’t just waltz in whenever it’s convenient for you and start changing my life around!”

  Mom freezes, and I can tell I’ve hurt her. But I don’t care. Now maybe she understands how badly she hurt me when she went away.

  “That’s enough, Zoe,” she says quietly. “Like it or not, I’m your mother, and it’s my job to make decisions for us.”

  “Your job?!” I scowl and turn away from her, so angry I’m afraid of what I might say next. Is it just my imagination, or is the sky getting darker by the second?

  She hesitates, then rests her hands lightly on my shoulders. “Sweetie, I know I’ve been busy. I know I should have called you more often. But with the three-hour time difference, by the time I’d finally get home in the evening, it was usually much too late to call.” Her voice is so wistful, it almost makes me feel guilty for being mean to her. “Oh Zoe, I’ve worked so hard for this—this job, and this house—but it means nothing to me if you’re not there to share it with me. I want you to come home.”

  I’ve waited so long to hear those words, yet now, instead of making me happy, they’re just making me upset and confused. I grip Sneakers’s leash, blinking hard and willing myself not to cry.

  She doesn’t even know me anymore. She’ll never understand how important Sneakers and everybody at Dr. Mac’s Place are to me. And besides, who knows how long her job will last? If her series is cancelled, then where will we go?

  “I’m not leaving Sneakers,” I announce. “And I’m not leaving the clinic, either.”

  “Zoe, be reasonable—”

  “No, Mom! Go have your wonderful career in Hollywood if you want. But I’m not going anywhere.”

  Sneakers is delighted when I bolt for home. It looks like it’s about to storm, anyway.

  Mom doesn’t run after me. And I don’t look back.

  Chapter Seven

  I wake up early, before
my alarm goes off. In my dream, thousands of people were squawking at me, telling me where to go and what to do.

  I blink my eyes and get a wet tongue in the face. “Morning, Sneak.”

  He gives me that little whine, the one that tells me it’s time to go. The rapid wag of the tail means now—as in five minutes ago.

  I roll out of bed, slide my feet into the leopard-print slippers Mom gave me for Christmas, and follow Sneakers downstairs. Out the backdoor window, I see that Mom and Gran are already awake and outside on the deck. Mom, up for sunrise? And why isn’t Gran tending to her patients? I pad through the kitchen and peek out. They’re sitting in the newly scoured deck chairs, sipping steaming mugs of coffee.

  I open the door a crack, and Sneakers slips out and bounds onto the deck. He races to the tree, does his thing, then makes a sharp U-turn to run toward Mom, his tail wagging with interest in this still-new person.

  “Sneakers!” I call him back. We are still mad at her. In fact, we aren’t even talking to her.

  Sneakers looks over at Mr. Cowan’s yard and barks. He’s answered by scolding squawks and shrieks. The parrots are back! I guess that explains the squawking in my dream—and why Mom and Gran are outside at dawn.

  I open the door wider and peek out. The parrots have taken over Mr. Cowan’s yard, clustered at the feeders and perched on his deck railing eating oranges. I send them some telepathy: Hey, guess who cut up those oranges for you! Me, Zoe. I’m your friend!

  Padding across the yard in my slippers, I lean over the fence and scan the birds, searching for E.T. I want him to get some of the oranges.

  The birds ignore me. They’re too busy eating. Wait a minute—there’s a little green one with a blue head, right on Mr. Cowan’s deck railing. “Phone home,” I say softly, hoping that I don’t scare them away—and that the blue-headed one will answer.

  The other birds keep eating and don’t react, but the one parrot swivels his little blue head toward me and blinks. It’s got to be E.T.!