The First Time

by Joy Fielding

  “Go ahead, pick one.” Her mother was motioning excitedly toward the litter of eight new puppies crawling all over each other inside the large cardboard box on Grandma Viv’s kitchen floor. Mattie had this huge loopy grin across her face, and there were tears in her eyes, the kind of tears you got when you were doing something you knew was going to make someone really happy. Even her father’s face had that dumb smile plastered across it. And Kim could feel the same stupid expression tugging at her own lips. Her grandmother, smiling discreetly beside the old avocado-colored stove at the far end of the small green-and-white kitchen, with at least six other dogs circling her thick ankles, was the only person in the room who still looked like a human being, and not like some goofy sort of alien.

  “Is this a joke?” Kim asked warily, afraid to approach the wriggling cardboard box.

  “Which one do you want?” her mother asked.

  “I can’t believe this. You’re letting me have a puppy?”

  “Happy birthday, Kimmy,” her father said.

  “Happy birthday,” her mother echoed.

  “It’s not my birthday till next week.” Kim backed away from the box. Was there some reason they were celebrating her birthday a week early? Was there some new problem with her mother?

  “It’s all right, Kim,” her mother told her, once again invading the deepest recesses of her daughter’s mind without her permission. “We just wanted it to be a surprise. We were afraid if we waited until next week—”

  “I don’t know which one to choose,” Kim squealed, throwing herself toward the box before her mother had a chance to finish her explanation and lifting one small white bundle after another into her hands. “They’re all so cute. Aren’t they the cutest things you ever saw in your life?” She held one puppy out at arm’s length, watched his little legs dangle between her fingers, small button eyes the color of rich dark chocolate. Teddy’s eyes, Kim thought, returning the puppy to the box, selecting another whose eyes were still half closed.

  “What kind of dogs are they?” Mattie asked. Kim noticed that Mattie carefully avoided direct eye contact with her mother.

  “Peekapoos,” Grandma Viv announced, straightening already proud shoulders and patting her short, graying brown hair. “Half poodle, half Pekingese. Smarter than both those breeds combined.”

  “I want this one,” Kim said, kissing the top of the puppy’s white coat over and over again. The puppy lifted its tiny head and licked the underside of Kim’s mouth.

  “Don’t let him lick your lips,” Mattie cautioned.

  Kim ignored her mother, continued to let the tiny puppy lick her mouth, felt his tongue, eager and wet, ferret its way between her lips.

  “Kim …,” her father said.

  “For heaven’s sake, you two, it’s all right. Their mouths are cleaner than ours.” Grandma Viv dismissed their concerns with an impatient wave of her hand. “What are you going to call him, Kimmy?”

  “I don’t know. What’s a good name?” Kim’s eyes darted back and forth between her grandmother, her father, and her mother, afraid to stop too long on anyone. So they were finally letting her have a dog. Why? Her mother had always hated dogs. She’d even gone so far as pretending she was allergic to them the summer Kim brought home a stray from the pound, insisting they give the dog to Grandma Viv. Kim had gone every week to visit him, but it wasn’t the same as having a dog in your own home, one who followed you around from room to room and curled up against your feet in bed. Why the sudden change of heart? Why now, when the last thing her mother needed was a small untrained puppy underfoot?

  It was official, Kim understood in that moment, fighting back a sudden shortness of breath. Her mother was dying.

  “What do you think would be a good name, Mom?” Kim pushed the words around the blockage at the back of her throat.

  “He’s your baby,” Mattie said. “You choose.”

  “It’s a big decision.”

  “Yes, it is,” her mother agreed.

  “How about George?”

  “George?” Mattie and Jake asked in unison.

  “I love it,” said Grandma Viv. “George is the perfect name for him.”

  “George and Martha,” Kim said, smiling at her mother. “They go together.”

  “I never understood why your mother hated the name Martha so much,” Grandma Viv grumbled. “I always thought it was such a lovely name. You don’t see Martha Stewart calling herself Mattie, do you? Who wants some tea?” she asked in the same breath.

  “Tea sounds great,” Jake said.

  “Tea would be nice,” Mattie agreed.

  Kim watched her mother watching her mother out of the corner of her eye, trying to see Grandma Viv the way her mother did. They didn’t look a lot alike. Her grandmother was shorter and stockier than her mother, and her short dark brown hair was curly and increasingly riddled with gray. Her features were coarser than her only child’s, her nose broader and flatter, her jaw squarer, her eyes green as opposed to blue. Mattie had always insisted she looked exactly like her father, although there were no pictures of him anywhere to verify her claim. Unlike her mother, her grandmother never wore makeup, although her cheeks glowed bright red whenever she was angry or upset, blotches that rarely stained Mattie’s perfect complexion. Still, Kim could see traces of her grandmother in the proud pull of her mother’s shoulders, in the way both women held their heads, in the way each relied on her hands to express thoughts too difficult to stand on their own.

  “What happened between you and Grandma Viv?” Kim used to ask.

  “Nothing happened,” her mother would reply.

  “Then how come you never visit her? Why doesn’t she ever come to our house for dinner?”

  “It’s a long story, Kim. There are no easy answers. Why don’t you ask your grandmother?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “She said to ask you.”

  Her mother had a strange look in her eyes, Kim thought now, as if she’d stumbled into the wrong house and wasn’t sure how to extricate herself politely, which was probably exactly the way she was feeling. How long had it been since she’d been inside Grandma Viv’s house anyway? How old had she been when she walked out the front door for the last time? Probably not much older than her father had been when he left home, Kim decided. It was strange, she thought, kissing the top of her new puppy’s soft head. Her parents were more alike than she’d realized.

  “Did you see the article about Jake in Chicago magazine?” Mattie asked her mother, in an obvious attempt to rekindle the conversation.

  “No, I didn’t.” Grandma Viv walked to the sink, began pouring cold water into a kettle. “Did you bring a copy with you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have one in my purse.” Mattie reached for her brown leather bag on the kitchen table.

  “Tell me you didn’t,” Jake demurred.

  Was he actually blushing? Kim rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

  “I did.” Mattie giggled proudly, opening her handbag, pulling out the magazine, about to hand it to her mother when it shot out of her hands and flew across the room, sending the dogs around her mother’s feet running for cover, loudly barking their consternation.

  “Well, you don’t have to throw it at me,” Grandma Viv said testily. “That’s okay, babies,” she said to the assorted canines slowly creeping back into the room.

  Kim saw that her mother’s face had turned ashen, and that her eyes were frozen wide with horror.

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Are you all right?” Jake asked.

  “Of course she’s all right.” Grandma Viv reached down to pick the magazine off the floor. “She was always a bit clumsy. Nice picture of you, Jake. The cover, no less.”

  “Apparently the article’s very complimentary,” Kim said, watching the color return to her mother’s face, purposely using her mother’s word, the same word her father claimed to have used earlier. All in the family, she
thought, fighting the urge to gag, taking several deep breaths.

  “Are you all right, sweetie?” her mother asked.

  She doesn’t miss a thing, Kim thought, watching as her grandmother lowered the kettle to the stove and extricated a large white birthday cake from a box on the kitchen counter, all in one fluid motion.

  “Why does everyone keep asking if everyone is all right?” Grandma Viv asked, depositing the cake in the middle of the kitchen table. “I noticed no one has asked me how I’m feeling.”

  “Aren’t you feeling okay, Grandma Viv?”

  “I’m fine, dear. Thanks for asking. So, who wants a rose?”

  “I do,” Kim and her mother said in unison.

  They all sat down at the round Formica table, the tiny puppy sleeping in Kim’s lap, Grandma Viv lifting a restless black terrier to hers, trying to get him to settle down.

  “Do you think you could get the dog away from the cake?” Mattie asked her mother, although it was clearly more demand than request.

  “He’s nowhere near the cake.” Small red blotches appeared magically on Grandma Viv’s cheeks as she lowered the dog to the floor and jumped to her feet. “I seem to have forgotten the candles.” Her grandmother began noisily opening and closing the kitchen drawers. “I know I have some around here somewhere.”

  “It’s all right, Grandma Viv. I don’t need candles.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course you need candles. What’s a birthday cake without candles?”

  “Kimmy,” her father said, “can you put George down while we eat?”

  “George is staying on my lap,” Kim snapped. “And don’t call me Kimmy.”

  “Found them,” her grandmother proclaimed triumphantly, returning to the table and arranging the candles on the cake in four neat little rows. “Sixteen candles,” she said, smiling at her only grandchild as she deposited an extra candle in the middle of a soft pink rose. “And one for good luck.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Mom, can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Of course, Martha.”

  Mattie inhaled a deep breath of air, letting it out slowly, trying to force a smile onto her lips. She’s called you Martha all her life, Mattie reminded herself. It’s too late to expect her to change now.

  Her mother stared at Mattie expectantly from her seat at the kitchen table, two small dogs currently in her lap, five larger ones at her feet. Beside her, Jake sat reading the Chicago Sun-Times, occasionally glancing over at Mattie, smiling his support. Kim sat cross-legged on the floor beside the cardboard box of tiny puppies, cradling George in her arms, rocking him back and forth like a newborn baby. The only grandchild I’ll ever see, Mattie thought wistfully, stepping into the doorway between the kitchen and the L-shaped living-dining area. “In the living room, if you don’t mind.” Mattie watched the puzzled look that settled on her mother’s face as she lowered the dogs in her lap to the floor and rose to her feet.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Jake asked, as he’d asked several times earlier.

  The last thing Mattie saw before she left the kitchen were Kim’s eyes following her from the room. Be careful, the eyes warned. Mattie nodded silently, although she wasn’t sure for whom the warning was intended, and backed out of the door.

  The living room looked essentially the same as it always had: pale green walls and matching wall-to-wall carpeting, an unimaginative cluster of furniture that was decidedly more utilitarian than decorative, a series of muted Audubon prints on the walls. Mattie selected a relatively clean spot in the middle of the straight-backed mint green sofa by the front window, pretending not to notice the fine layer of dog hair that covered the velvet surface like a blanket. Mattie sat with her hands folded in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankles, her back arched and stiff, trying to connect with as little of the sofa as possible.

  “I vacuumed right after you called,” her mother said pointedly, plopping down into the green-and-white-striped corduroy chair to Mattie’s left, tilting her head to one side like one of her dogs, waiting for Mattie to speak.

  “The place looks nice,” Mattie said, as a small brown dog with incongruously large and scraggly ears jumped onto the sofa beside her. Mattie had no idea what breed of dog it was. Probably her mother didn’t either, she thought, quickly lowering the mutt to the floor, shooing him away with the toe of her shoe. Ever since she could remember, she’d been fighting with dogs for her mother’s attention. The dogs always won.

  “Come here, Dumpling,” her mother instructed the dog, scooping him into her arms and laying him across her lap like a napkin. “Martha doesn’t like dogs,” she apologized, kissing the top of his head and deftly removing a gob of mucus from his eye. Immediately several more dogs flocked to her side, arranging themselves around her feet, like so many slippers. They all stared at Mattie accusingly.

  “It’s not that I don’t like them,” Mattie began, then stopped, lifting her eyes from her canine accusers to stare blankly at the wall ahead. I don’t have to defend myself to a bunch of dogs, she thought. “At any rate, what I like isn’t important. What’s important today is what Kim likes, and Kim is certainly thrilled with George, even if he’s too young to take home just yet. And for that, I thank you.”

  Her mother shrugged, squirmed in her seat, her cheeks acquiring a sudden faint blush. “You should thank Daisy for giving birth so close to Kim’s birthday.”

  “I’ll send her a thank-you note,” Mattie said, then wished she hadn’t. What was the point in being sarcastic? Especially now. Besides, her mother was much too literal for sarcasm. “Have you found homes for the other puppies yet?” she asked quickly, remembering how surprised her mother had been when she’d called several weeks earlier to ask if she might have any puppies available.

  “Not yet. I wanted Kim to have first pick of the litter. But it’s never a problem finding people to take them. I might even keep one or two myself.”

  “Isn’t there some sort of city ordinance about having so many dogs?”

  “Is that what you brought me in here to talk about?” her mother asked, not bothering to disguise her irritation. Again she tilted her head to one side, waiting.

  “No, of course not,” Mattie said, then stopped, unable to proceed. How do you tell your mother you’re dying? she wondered—even a mother who’s barely acknowledged your existence while you were alive? “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Well, go ahead. Spit it out. It’s not like you to be shy.”

  How would you know? Mattie wondered, but didn’t ask. “You remember that actor from one of those soap operas you watch, The Guiding Light, I think it was—”

  “I never watch Guiding Light,” her mother corrected. “Only General Hospital and Days of Our Lives. Oh, and sometimes The Young and the Restless, although I can’t stand the way they drag their story lines on forever.”

  “There was an actor on one of the soaps—he died a little while ago of something called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” Mattie said, barely waiting for the end of her mother’s sentence. “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” she qualified.

  Her mother’s eyes remained infuriatingly unresponsive, so that Mattie wasn’t sure if her mother had any idea where she was going with this.

  “Oh yes, I remember him. Roger Zaslow, no, Michael Zaslow, I think his name was. And you’re right—he was on Guiding Light. It used to be The Guiding Light, but they changed it. Never understood why, exactly. They said they wanted to make the show more modern, bring it up-to-date. I don’t see how dropping an article—”

  “Mom—”

  “I read about him in People magazine,” her mother continued, one word running into the next. “They fired him. Said what good was an actor who couldn’t say his lines, or something like that, according to People magazine anyway. He was very bitter about it, I read. Can’t say I blame him. Terrible disease,” she muttered, looking away, biting down on her lower lip, refusing to acknowledge the obvious, to ask why they were talking
about this.

  “I’m sick, Mom,” Mattie said, answering the unasked, unwanted question. She watched as her mother stiffened in her chair, her eyes beginning to glaze over, the way they always did when she was confronted with unpleasant news. She’d barely begun, and already her mother was retreating, Mattie realized, leaning forward on the sofa, forcing her mother’s eyes to hers. “You remember when I was in the hospital after my car accident?”

  Her mother reacted with an almost imperceptible nod of her head.

  “Well, the hospital ran some tests, and they discovered I have the same condition as that actor from Guiding Light.”

  Mattie heard a slight gasp catch in her mother’s throat, although her face remained immobile. “The doctors say they’re very close to finding a cure, and hopefully—” Mattie stopped, cleared her throat, started again. “Realistically,” she said, “I have maybe a couple of years. Confidentially,” she added, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I don’t think it’ll be that long. New things are happening every day. It’s like the disease is starting to pick up the pace.”

  “I don’t understand,” her mother said, staring past Mattie to the window overlooking the street, her long fingers purposefully stroking the dog on her lap. “You seem perfectly fine.”

  “Right now, I’m still functional. My arms and legs are working okay, for the most part, but that will change. The magazine that flew out of my hand before—things like that have been happening more and more often. Pretty soon I’ll lose the ability to walk, and I won’t be able to do anything with my hands. I won’t be able to speak. Well, you know the rest.” Mattie tried to read the look on her mother’s face, but her expression had altered very little since she first sat down. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m not all right,” her mother said, her voice low. “My daughter has just informed me she’s dying. Did you really think I’d be all right?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I knew it was something,” her mother said, eyes staring resolutely into space. “I mean, why the sudden change of heart about letting Kim have a dog? And when was the last time you called and said you wanted to come over? Never. So I knew something was up. I thought maybe you were going to tell me that you were moving to New York or California, now that Jake is such a big shot, or that he was leaving you for another woman. The usual. You know. Something. Something else. Not this. Not this.”