An Unexpected Grace

by Kristin von Kreisler

  The eager paw landed on Lila’s arm. Tea spilled on the floor, just where Grace had chewed the brush.

  No point fretting over spilled tea. Lila got a paper towel and mopped it up. “Oh, well.”

  Grace’s dog tag arrived in the mail. After Lila fed her a celebratory hot dog, she worked the tiny heart’s metal loop onto Grace’s collar and gently buckled it around her neck, which had healed so new fur almost completely covered the scars. Grace must have liked the tag because she panted and smiled. As she shifted her weight, the heart made a pleasant clink against her collar’s buckle.

  From then on, the clink reminded Lila of her and Grace’s connection to each other. Adam or Marshall couldn’t think of claiming Grace if Lila’s name was on the tag. It formally announced that she and Grace were a family, and no one could change that. Their commitment to each other was official in the Book of Life.

  23

  At the computer Lila looked up the white pages and typed in “Makov” and “Monterey, California.” When a window appeared on the screen with “zero results,” she felt like a steamroller had squashed her heart. “Dammit,” she told Grace. “Yuri’s cousin must have a different last name, or his mother isn’t listed. Maybe she doesn’t have a phone.”

  Grace was lying on her stomach, her chin resting on the floor. Her eyes were riveted on ants parading single file across a baseboard. To her, they were like a movie so compelling you forget your popcorn and sit on the edge of your seat. Grace seemed like she’d give those ants an Academy Award. She could have been an entomologist.

  Losing hope in her search for Yuri’s mother, Lila went back to the white pages and typed “Makov” in “California” without mentioning a specific city. When six Makovs appeared on the screen, she yelped. Two of the Makovs were in Los Angeles, but four were in the Bay Area, not far from Monterey or her. She jotted down their names, phone numbers, and addresses in San Francisco, Vallejo, Carmel, and Daly City. She grabbed the phone and called Vladimir Makov on Pine Street in Carmel, which was closest to Monterey.

  When a woman answered, Lila stammered; she’d called on impulse without thinking what to say. She considered hanging up, figuring out the best approach, and calling back. But she was so excited at the prospect for answers that she blurted out, “Are you related to Yuri Makov?”

  “Excuse me?” The woman had no Russian accent. She seemed American, born and bred.

  “I’m looking for Yuri Makov’s relatives. I was hoping you were one of them.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “No. Maybe my husband does.”

  “Did,” Lila corrected. “Yuri Makov died a few months ago.”

  “Are you settling his estate or something?”

  “No. It’s hard to explain.” Lila wished she’d hung up when the woman answered. She regretted becoming as spontaneous as Grace. “Would you ask your husband if he knew Yuri?”

  “He’s not here,” she said. “Are you from some collection agency? We’re not responsible for anybody’s bills.”

  “Yuri Makov shot me.”

  “Oh, my.” The woman sounded like a toe meeting a piranha.

  “He went postal in my office.”

  “We don’t know anything about that, hon. Good luck.”

  Click.

  “Dammit, Grace! Dammit!”

  Grace took her eyes off the ants, glanced at Lila, and went back to watching their parade. Bugs were all that could have kept Grace from coming to Lila when she’d spoken with distress. But ants were Grace’s favorite insects after beetles.

  Lila pressed her lips together in frustration. Think, Lila, think. Use your brain. Eager to call the other Makovs, she plotted her strategy: Right up front, she’d throw herself at their mercy and say she was one of the people Yuri had shot; surely they’d learned in the newspaper or on TV about his going postal, Lila would add. She’d recount how hard it had been and how far she had to go to heal. “I’m trying to find out about Yuri. Understanding what happened will help me recover,” she’d say. Then they’d shower her with information.

  Lila called Janet Makov in Daly City, then R. S. Makov in San Francisco. Neither answered, and Lila didn’t leave a message. She tried Boris Makov in Vallejo. His “hello” sounded barrel-chested, as if he had Luciano Pavarotti’s lungs. She poured out her story quickly to get to the heart of her call.

  Boris interrupted, “So what do you want from me?”

  “I’m trying to find Yuri Makov’s relatives. I want to talk with them about him.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Do you have family who might know him?”

  “I don’t have any family. It’s just me.”

  “Do you know any other Makovs?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well, uh . . . thanks.”

  Lila set down the phone and told Grace, “This isn’t going very well.”

  Lila’s heart practically dragged behind her as she went to the kitchen, where from a National Geographic photo she’d been painting an African granary door. Carved into the wood was the face of an apoplectic desperado with fat scarlet lips and bulging ochre eyes. He could have scared the most courageous grain-thieving rat, and he looked annoyed enough to spit. Lila knew how he felt. She sat at the table and picked up her paintbrush.

  When someone knocked on the front door, Grace got up from her place at Lila’s feet and, yowling, limped into the entry. But suddenly her yowls changed to joyful whimpers. Besides Lila, Adam was the only person who could draw such a welcome from her. With trepidation, Lila went to the door.

  Through the windows, Adam was grinning at Grace. His light-brown hair, slightly shaggy at the neck, suggested he’d been too busy for a haircut; his confident posture said he didn’t worry about such incidentals. When he clapped his hands together, Grace whined with shining eyes. “Hey, girl! I’ve missed you!” he called through the glass.

  Lila, the “damned flake,” opened the door.

  “Hello, Lila,” he said, polite and formal.

  At least he hadn’t said her name as if a rare tropical disease were running loose in it. “Hello, Adam,” she said, polite and formal back.

  Grace reared up on her hind legs and rested her front paws on his chest like she was trying to hug him. As he rubbed her ears, she licked his face and cried so everyone on the entire mountain must have known she was thrilled about something. Pressing her hands together, Lila felt left out and jealous.

  “If you’ve come to make sure I haven’t given Grace away, you can see she’s here,” Lila said.

  “I didn’t come for that. I came to get her. I told you I would in a month.”

  A threatened sparrow fluttered in Lila’s chest. Though she’d been waiting for Adam to demand Grace back, she was no more prepared for him than she’d been for Vladimir Makov’s wife. Again, Lila quickly searched her brain for how to handle an unexpected situation. “You came to get her?” she stalled, as bland as rice.

  “I’ve finished my fence. I’ve bought organic dog food and a great new bed for her.” Adam helped Grace land on all four paws from her hugging position, and she leaned against his legs. “You’re going to love it with me, girl. I’ve got great sunny spots in the grass for you. You can watch people through the gate and hang out with the squirrels.”

  Lila hooded her eyes and bristled her porcupine quills. Pushing her Pleaser off the porch, she said flatly and with all the control she had, “It’s amazing. When I wanted you to take Grace, you wouldn’t do it. Now that I’d never give her to you in a million years, you show up for her.”

  “What are you talking about . . . never give her to me?”

  “She’s mine.”

  Adam looked at Lila like she needed a muzzle. “You told me you didn’t want Grace. You said you didn’t like dogs. God knows you tried to give her to everybody you met . . .”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve changed my mind.”

  He rolled his eyes toward the porch’s ceiling. “I haven
’t changed my mind. Because of you, I just rushed around to build a fence. I haven’t unpacked my boxes yet. It wasn’t easy hurrying like that. I did it because of you.”

  “I didn’t mean to cause you trouble.”

  “You have.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lila gathered her defenses, which she needed to stand up to him. “You could get another dog.”

  “So could you.” He said it like he was entitled to Grace; he was the lord of her manor, and Lila was her peon.

  “Grace is happy with me. I’ve taken good care of her.” To prove it, Lila lifted Grace’s collar and pushed back a patch of fur so Adam could see that the Vitamin E cream had calmed her scars. Lila pointed out that Grace had gained weight on her special premium kibble and she wasn’t slouching anymore. Lila showed him that the formerly crusty spots on Grace’s back were healing.

  “That’s all well and good, but Grace needs a bath.” Adam worked a loose curl from her haunch and held it out to Lila. “You’re not brushing her, either. You don’t know how to care for a dog.”

  “Grooming’s not everything. Love counts for a lot.” Lila flipped up the tiny metal heart on Grace’s collar so he could see. “Her ID tag has my phone number on it, and possession’s ninety-nine percent of the law.”

  The outside edges of Adam’s eyes slanted down, hard and intense, so they looked compelling and stubborn at the same time. “I care about Grace.”

  “So do I.”

  Exhaling a loud and hostile breath, he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and looked toward the forest as if he were deciding how to handle Lila. When he shook his head, he let her know that he wished he could throw her in an alligator’s path. On the street, the mailman shut the box with an aggressive scrape of metal. In the Gravenstein apple tree, a crow cawed as if some insignificant peanut of a finch had stolen the seed he’d planned to eat for lunch, and he was mad.

  “Look, Grace is what matters,” Lila said.

  “I agree.”

  So at least we agree about something. “I’ve tried to do everything right for her. She’s happy here. Surely you see that.”

  “Except you haven’t bathed or groomed her.”

  “She’s not going around like a waif.”

  “She needs a bath. You have to keep her clean so her skin will finish healing,” he said.

  “So I’ll bathe her, okay?”

  “What about your arm?”

  “I’ll take her to a groomer.” Even though I can’t afford it.

  By shaking his head, Adam let Lila know he didn’t believe her. “I’ll be back in a few days. If she’s not clean, she’s coming home with me. Do you understand?”

  “You don’t have to talk like I’m a three-year-old,” Lila snapped, gathering her power.

  Her Pleaser pressed the back of her hand against her forehead and swooned in a vapor.

  As Betsy was working her magic on Lila’s arm, she told her about Adam.

  “It’s not doing you any good to get agitated,” Betsy said.

  “I can’t help it. I’m scared he’ll steal her. That’s how he got her in the first place.”

  “You’ll know where to go to get her back.” Betsy pulled Lila’s arm straighter than it had been since Yuri shot her.

  Before Betsy covered her with the Navajo blanket and left her to meditate, as usual, she stepped out of her black suede clogs and sat, cross-legged, on the floor beside Grace. Betsy’s silky, purple-paisley skirt circled her like a mandala. As she patted Grace’s head, tiny gold whales bobbed at Betsy’s earlobes.

  At the end of Lila’s last appointments, Betsy had worked on Grace’s leg to get her walking like a normal dog. Now Betsy gently kneaded it again, and Grace rested her head in Betsy’s lap and surrendered to the pleasure of massage. Grace’s look of ecstasy announced that she’d added Betsy to her personal pantheon. Grace had become a hedonist.

  “I get mad every time I think of that horrible man hurting Grace,” Lila said. “There’s evil everywhere. The world is an awful place.”

  “That’s not true!” Betsy’s forehead furrowed in ridges, like tiny ocean waves where her earrings’ whales could swim. “Sure, there’s evil, but the world isn’t awful. It’s sacred.”

  “The tree Grace was chained to wasn’t sacred. Neither was the office I got shot in.” To round out her picture of how awful life could be, Lila returned to Adam’s threat to take Grace back to his unsacred house.

  “Lila.” Betsy often said her name before making a pronouncement. “You know better than anybody that life isn’t fair. We all take turns at injustice. You can’t control that. But everything evolves to good in the end, and the Great Spirit stands by us as we go through tough things.”

  “I’m not sure everything evolves to good,” Lila said, stubborn.

  Betsy’s fingers played softly on Grace’s leg as if it were an angel’s flute. “They do if you wait long enough. I’ll bet good comes to you from being shot.”

  “Not a chance,” Lila said. “I can’t deny what my brain tells me.”

  Betsy smiled and exposed the gap between her front teeth. As she stretched Grace’s injured leg, Betsy’s whales sparkled. “Lila, your brain can only get you so far. It’s not the only place to look for answers. You’ve got to let loose and think with your heart.”

  After Betsy left the treatment room, Grace and Lila lay in the quiet for a while until Grace got up and bowed and stretched. She came to Lila and nuzzled her hand to ask for a pet, and Lila obliged. Then Grace waved her plumed tail like she was flagging down a limo to take her to pick up her twenty-million-dollar Lotto prize.

  As she pranced around, smiling, her limp seemed less severe than before, and her leg was hardly wobbling. If she’d had an audience, she’d have been kicking her cancan skirt and winking at men in the front row. Wahooo! proclaimed each swish of her tail.

  Grace’s prancing announced that all she wanted in the world, besides Adam and Lila, was to shed her afflictions. And since Betsy’s treatment must have brought new relief from stiffness and pain, Grace now seemed sure that robust health was just over the next hill, and the Great Spirit would never let her down.

  Standing on her hind legs, she rested her front paws on the treatment table and encouraged Lila out from under the blanket into the glorious afternoon. The world champion of thinking with her heart, Grace acted like being bereft was ancient history, and she zoomed toward exuberance.

  Lila guessed Grace wanted her to be exuberant too. She said, “Okay, I’m getting up.”

  Lila snapped Grace’s leash on her collar and led her out of Betsy’s office. On the street, Lila looked around for armed maniacs and for the brute she imagined Marshall was. Ahead of her and Grace, an elderly couple held hands and licked ice cream cones, and a Japanese tourist aimed his camera at a woman who was sitting on a curb, studying a map. Outside the Bus Depot Café, a street fiddler sawed away beside his violin case, open for coins. His bluegrass drifted across the town square.

  Lila hurried Grace across the street and headed down a narrow road, where she doubted Marshall would go. Four boys were building a cardboard fort on the creek bank while a cocker spaniel splashed around them. Grace paused to watch, then to sniff a path; she whimpered like she expected Bambi to bound out of the woods. Lila slowly led her up a flight of stairs through the trees. Since Grace had run off the raccoon on the deck two weeks before, Lila felt safe. Grace was her fierce protector.

  Halfway up the stairs, they came to an iron gate flanked by two stone ducks embedded in concrete and wearing bandanas, floppy hats, and tacky rhinestone-studded sunglasses. Lila laughed at the whimsy. “Look, Grace!”

  The warm afternoon must have brought out her itches. She seemed interested only in nibbling her paw.

  “I’m going to do a painting of this gate.”

  Focused only on scratching, Grace raked her hind paw’s nails through her fur as if she intended to claw off her side. The miserable expression on her face shouted that she wished she could wriggl
e out of her skin and rush to Pet Stop for flea shampoo and a back scratcher.

  Lila could not deny Grace a bath for another minute. No matter how leery Lila was of Adam Spencer, she had to iron out the wrinkles between them and ask for his help. She had to act on her love for Grace and think with her heart.

  Lila bent down, hugged Grace, and lightly ran her hand along Grace’s side to show that a gentle scratch could be as good as a fierce one. Lila promised her, “We’ll get you right.”

  24

  “Ready for your morning ablutions, girl?” Adam asked.

  Grace wagged her tail with an ecstatic swish that could have blasted off the floor the imaginary sultan she fanned with her plume.

  “Hello to you, too,” Adam said to Lila. He stepped into the entry in jeans and a navy sweatshirt. Slung over his shoulder was an olive-green duffel bag.

  He looked at the doorways leading to other parts of the house. “So where do you want to bathe Grace?”

  “The master bath,” Lila said.

  “Fine.” He took long strides into the kitchen, then stopped in front of Lila’s last four paintings, lined up against the wainscoting. “Cristina told me you were a painter.”

  “I’m doing a series of gates and doors.”

  He bent down and studied Lila’s painting of a garden gate with a decoupage print of Our Lady of Guadalupe tacked to the wood. Then he quickly passed by the apoplectic-desperado granary door and the door with the dolphin knocker, and stopped to examine a door Lila had just finished. It had a curved wrought-iron handle, as graceful as a swan’s neck, below a brass handprint, palm forward like a policeman telling you to stop.

  “The hand’s supposed to keep away evil spirits,” Lila said.

  “If you opened the door and showed what’s inside, the painting would be more interesting.”

  Adam’s criticism smarted.

  He stooped down for a closer look at the three other paintings. “Same goes for these. People want to know what’s going on behind the door.”