by Kelly Harms
MIA
The first sign that something was wrong with Mike was the peeing. He wasn’t peeing, specifically. He was still wolfing down his food every morning like I’d never fed him before and going outside after, and I didn’t pay too much attention to what happened when we went outside after a meal, except that I picked up what needed to be picked up.
Over time, though, I noticed he wasn’t keeping the food down. Sometimes he ate too fast and barfed his breakfast up, but then he’d slow down for a few weeks after that. A little later on, though, he was back to eating and puking again, and that was when I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him pee. I offered him some water, and he drank a tiny bit, and I watched him like a hawk for a day, offering and offering, but he didn’t pee. I knew right away something was wrong. His teeth and gums looked fine, and his ears were clean and healthy. His eyes were clear. His tail was wagging. I tried to tell myself it was fine. Maybe a UTI. I put some apple cider vinegar in a peanut butter Kong. He ate it but threw it up.
I offered him extra food, and he didn’t eat it. His tummy felt full and hard. I canceled all my classes and pulled him up to the sofa and spent the entire day by his side, rubbing him gently, talking to him in a brave voice, trying to cover up the scent of my fear by putting a cut of beef in a pot of water on the stove and cooking it on low all day. I told him he was fine and I wasn’t concerned and I’d take good care of him and we’d have an appointment with the vet as soon as they could get us in.
I took him in the very next morning. The vet’s face was solemn. It was the very early stages of HSA, cancer of the blood vessels. It was in his spleen but hadn’t moved to his lungs. Mike knew it was bad news. He tried to cheer me up. It only made me more frightened.
In a panic, I threw money at the problem. He would have a splenectomy and a small rest, and then he would have to start chemo. I meticulously managed his pain, knowing he would try to hide it from me. For two weeks after the surgery, I wouldn’t leave him alone. Mom flew in without being asked. She watched him while I taught classes I couldn’t afford to miss—the studio was in the process of being sold, and I had obligations. She fed me because I wasn’t eating.
She flew home after Mike had recovered from surgery. Though he was clearly feeling better, I still brought him everywhere I went and stopped going anyplace he couldn’t go. I started reading veterinary journals about canine cancers. I called a professor at the University of Minnesota who had published about a new variety of chemo. It was so promising. Because the dose was much less aggressive than it would have been in a human, the side effects were mild and manageable. Mike’s three-month x-rays were good. He passed the four-month mark—the longest most dogs survive with HSA—stronger than ever. My vet never once brought up euthanasia.
I remember that four-month mark very vividly. Mike and I celebrated. I took him on a wagon walk to an off-leash park during the quietest, coolest part of the morning. We played the world’s most cautious game of fetch. Mike went about marking interesting spots with tiny sprays of pee, and each one was a cause for rejoicing. We sat under the shade of a big tree near a playground, and I read a cheerful book out loud and fed him dried bits of turkey liver. I told him he was now a cancer survivor and that it was no surprise, considering all the things he had already survived in this strange world.
He wagged, as though surviving was the very point.
I am walking into the yoga studio to teach my first live class since Mike died when my mom manages to call me.
Considering that neither she nor I uses cellular technology at the moment, that’s quite a feat. But the woman at the front desk is on the phone when I sit down opposite her to take off my shoes, and by the time one sandal is off, she’s looking from me to the phone.
“Mia Bell?” she asks.
“That’s right,” I say warmly. “Are you Nicola? I’m excited to teach here today!”
“You have a phone call,” she says, not so warmly. “Can you call them back on your own phone? I’ve got to keep this line empty for reservations.”
I smile weakly. “I don’t have a phone,” I say.
She gives me side-eye that would make a honey badger shy away. Namaste to you too, lady. I take the phone from her hands, almost by force. “Hello?”
“Darling,” says my mother. “I’m at home. Aunt JoLynn will be here at any minute.”
“Ok . . . ,” I say.
“There’s someone who called me asking for you, and he said it’s very urgent. He was really trying to exert his self-appointed masculine authority on me. I hope this person is not planning to try that crap on you.”
“Mort Matthews?” I ask.
“That’s the one,” she says. “He wants you to call back immediately. He must have said immediately four times. On the off chance that he’s not a total blowhard, I figured I’d better call you.”
I pause. Morty Matthews is a business manager. I hire him to do all my sponsorship contracts so I don’t look like the bad guy, and he barks at everyone, male or female. He’s probably wondering where the hell I’ve gone. Too bad for him. I’m not ready to come back. “What did he say?”
“He said you know what you did and you could be in breach,” she says. “The sponsors are complaining.”
Nicola the Zen master clears her throat pointedly at me. “Let them complain,” I say. “The contracts give me a month window for posting. I haven’t broken any deals yet.”
“Good for you!” says my mom. “To hell with the man!” She pauses a moment. “Can I call him back and say that?”
“You could, but I’d have to pay by the hour for it,” I say. “I’ve got to go anyway. My class,” I explain.
“I wish I could be there,” she says. “But it’s so hard to reschedule things with Aunt JoLynn. She’s all go go go.”
“There will be other classes,” I say, realizing even as I speak that I want to do more classes. If I can.
“Oh! Good,” Mom says excitedly. “Next time I will bring my bells. Oh! And I could brew up some chakra-balancing tea.”
I imagine showing up as a sub at a new studio with my own urn full of tea. It’ll make an impression. “We’ll sort it out later, Mom—see ya tonight.”
Nicola holds her arm out for the phone grumpily. I hand it to her and hear my mom still talking on the line. Nicola punches the talk button with relish. Immediately the phone rings again, but it’s studio business, so I take off my other shoe and head to a small staff room pointed out to me with a sharp finger.
The back of the staff room is a meditation area. I pull the curtain to close it off from the rest of the room and sit cross-legged on a rolled-up woven blanket, rump higher than knees. I’ve done yoga every healthy day of my adult life, but I still have nerves today. I haven’t advertised this class on my feed or sent an announcement to my twenty-thousand-yogi-strong email list, and the owner of the studio doesn’t know who the heck I am beyond being the daughter of one of her customers. Maybe no one will come. Maybe people will prefer their regular teacher and leave on the third surya namaskara A. You can disappoint people with a class that’s too easy or a class that’s too hard or one that starts too easy and gets too hard. But you can’t know what’s too hard or too easy until you look at the miserable, bored, or panting faces of your students. And I haven’t taught a class in a long time. A year, now that I think of it. I haven’t done sixty full minutes of yoga in weeks. I might not be able to actually do my own class.
I sigh. I’m going to be that teacher that takes people through cat and cow and then just walks through the room in a creepy heel-toe way in an effort to be unobtrusive, only to call a cue and make the person in front of her jump. I’m going to see people looking pointedly up at the platform and thinking, Um, if I can do it, why can’t you? and then I’m going to have to go demonstrate something and say the cues on out breaths so no one knows I’m panting.
I close my eyes, rest my hands in a peaceful asana, and start following my breath.
> Crap. Morty. When I get home tonight, I do have to call him, make sure nothing really is in breach. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on what was in my pipeline, but the honeymoon stuff is gonna need to happen soon. Maybe that’s where he’s upset. But that’s not even scheduled for another month.
Follow the breath.
I guess I can take my honeymoon by myself when I’m ready to start posting again.
Return to the breath.
When am I going to start posting again? How am I going to explain the absence of Tucker in the photos, if I do take the honeymoon? Should I just get a lawyer and cancel the honeymoon contract? The sponsors haven’t paid me anything yet. I was looking forward to going to Paris, of course, but I was also looking forward to getting married, and that feeling has faded fast enough.
Breathing. Let the thoughts drift away down the river of my mind. In. Out.
I could cancel the contract and travel on my own dime. I could cancel the contract, go on my own dime, and switch to a flip phone. I could cancel all the contracts, switch to a flip phone with an international SIM card, go to Paris on my own dime, and bring Dewey and Azalea. We could spend the rest of the summer visiting French farms, tasting cheeses and wines, and learning about chicken rearing au Français. I could bring Mom too. She hasn’t traveled much in her semiretirement. She could eat all kinds of unusual foods: snails and frogs and offal up the wazoo. She could dig around in the earth and fill her gut biome with all kinds of nice French germs.
And then what? I’d have to come home eventually. What would I do? Go back to the beginning and be a substitute yoga teacher for people like Nicola indefinitely? That’s not what I want. I like being an entrepreneur. I like having enough money to pay my bills. But I haven’t been happy for a long, long time. Not since my preclass meditations were accompanied by a drooly, peanut butter–breathed bulldog snoring half in and half out of my lap. That was the best feeling in the world.
That feeling is never coming back. That feeling isn’t a choice anymore.
Are my choices really only Pictey or nothing?
Breathe, Mia.
Breathe.
Breathe.
PAIGE
“He’s weeping every day?” says Jessica, making a sour face.
I have brought Jessica ever so slightly up to speed on the situation between Mia and Tucker. I would say we are going about thirty miles per hour, where the truth is cruising by at sixty-five and blaring its horn at me in frustration.
“Apparently so,” I tell her. She knows that Tucker jilted Mia. She knows that Mia lied about the wedding. She knows that I lied about Mia’s wedding, too, but she thinks it’s because it was my job to lie about it. She does not know that I have no job at the moment or that I was put on leave by my company because of her suicide attempt, which upset me because of my own past suicide attempt. She doesn’t know that I stalked her internet idol out of misplaced anger or that I hacked into said idol’s Pictey account and am now impersonating her without her knowledge.
These are certainly details that can wait for some less pressing moment. Maybe when we both have more access to psychiatric care.
At this juncture, our work is to find Mia before Tucker does. Or find Tucker before he finds Mia. Or somehow otherwise step out in front of this untidy situation I’ve created, vacuum it all up with a metaphorical Dustbuster, and dispose of it carefully before returning to the valley and Pictey and normal life. I need to delete all the fraudulent posts permanently, cover my tracks more thoroughly, and then set to the business of getting Jessica admitted to the rehab center early before I screw up something truly important—my sister’s emotional safety.
“Also,” I say aloud, “we need to find Tim.”
At that, Tim pops out from behind a copse of pines. “Pardon me, ladies,” he says bashfully. “Conflict makes me uncomfortable.”
“What else would it make you?” I ask him. “I would be concerned if it made you happy. Please saddle me up in this bike and then switch my gears for me, will you? We need to be quickly escorted to our car so we can get to this place.” I show him a map of our destination, the geo tag for the photo of Mia and her mother. It is my best guess as to how to intercept this situation.
“Well, sure,” he says. “It would be my pleasure. But I don’t think you’ll need to use the gears much if you turn around. It’s all downhill from here.”
Oh, how true that is.
We cycle, much faster this time, back to town where we first picked up our bikes. Tim continues to make nice conversation the whole way, saying interesting things about the geology of the area that I would normally be quite fascinated by, if I weren’t busy trying to think my way out of this hole I’ve dug. Jessica, on the other hand, is not interested. At some point while I am trying to keep up with their speeds without falling off my bike, she tells Tim, “Your knowledge of rocks is probably fascinating, but I think my sister has created an internet war, and if we don’t get to lightning-fast Wi-Fi soon, there may be casualties.”
“Understood. Though, just to warn you, lightning-fast Wi-Fi is not really the name of the game in Copperidge,” he warns her. “And where you want to go, there’s not even cell service.”
I look up from the trail. “Oh no?”
Tim shakes his head. “That whole side of Mount Wyler is a dead zone. Look.” Concerningly, Tim lets go of both handlebars and takes his phone out of a pouch on the crossbar. While cycling at what feels like breakneck speed to me, he shows me a map of the area, with colors ranging from light pink to dark red illustrating the availability of cellular service. The area where I think Mia’s mother lives is white, as in, there is next to none.
“Oh dear,” I say, trying not to crash my bike. There are so many obstacles involved in locating Mia and keeping her away from Tucker in the next five hours, not least that there is no way to communicate with her and that we have no idea exactly where she’s staying, nor if she’s even still in the county. Then there is the fact that once we do find her, we have to somehow persuade her to leave. If Tucker finds her, we are doomed.
“What about the airport?” I ask Tim.
“The airport?” he repeats.
“The local airport. Where people would fly in, if they flew here.”
He shakes his head. “Madame,” he says, and I wonder if that’s what he calls every woman he meets. “There are some small runways for light planes. But large commercial flights aren’t coming in and out of the actual Rocky Mountains, as I’m sure you understand. Most people would fly into Denver and then drive up here.” He pauses. “Well, there’s a regional airport in Eagle County. Maybe your friend’s paramour would fly there, on a connecting flight from Denver. It runs two shuttles per day. Ten a.m. and nine p.m.”
I look at Jessica. “He said he’d be here by dinner.”
“Yes,” says Tim. “I heard that. And he’s going to her mother’s house, which I’m guessing is the destination you showed me?”
“I believe it is,” I say. “You have excellent hearing,” I add.
“I can also lip-read,” he says. “I like spying on people.”
Jessica shakes her head. “Tim. Don’t say that to people you barely know,” she scolds.
“Why not?” I ask. “Everyone enjoys spying in some form or other, and he’s doing the courtesy of telling us not to try to tell secrets when he can see us.”
Tim smiles, puts his phone away, and regains the handlebars. I note that at no point did his bicycle waver. “Paige takes my meaning,” he says. “But Jessica, I appreciate your feedback as well. If it ever comes up in casual conversation again, and I sincerely doubt it will, I will say that I’m interested in people.”
“It’s the same thing,” I say.
“It really isn’t,” says Jessica. “But thank you, Tim. I think that’s an excellent course correction.”
“Speaking of course correction, I’m wondering whether it might not be better to intercept this Tucker fellow,” Tim says. “Rather than your em
ployer. As I understand it, the post that prompted his change of heart is one you probably shouldn’t have put up in the first place. It may be detrimental to your career prospects to explain to your employer what you’ve put out for public consumption on her behalf.”
I look skyward for just a moment. There really will be no explaining what I’ve done when the time comes. I am embarrassed that I didn’t foresee all the possible negative outcomes while in the fit of pique that started this misadventure. I suppose I thought—hoped?—Mia had quit her feed for good, considering how she was letting it die. And that Tucker was long gone, having ended their engagement just days before the wedding.
“What would we say to Tucker, though?” asks Jessica. “‘Just kidding, Mia didn’t post that; it wasn’t a sign’?” She shakes her head. “Maybe they are meant to get back together, and this is how it happens.”
“Excellent point,” says Tim. “Perhaps we should turn the bikes around, continue on to Vail, and enjoy the rest of the day knowing you’ve had a part in the reunification of two lovers.”
“I’m afraid that seems unlikely,” I point out. “No matter what we’ve posted, quite by accident, I might add, as a result of an interesting screen-lock flaw I intend to investigate further down the line—”
“You pants posted it,” interrupts Jessica. “That’s not a screen-lock flaw.”
“Well, whatever the case,” I go on. “The fact remains that Mia isn’t the one who came to the conclusion that she should ‘push’ her followers or whatever it is I did with that post that so appealed to her ex-fiancé. Mia is still Mia. She’s still the vapid shopaholic with the New Age bent who preaches to people about self-acceptance while avoiding any foods that might change her body fat percentage from three to four. She’s still the woman who posts twenty times a day about the contents of her breakfast plate, makeup bag, and coffee cup.”
Jessica shakes her head. “No, she isn’t,” she says. “She quit.”