Dedication
To all the dogs my family has rescued over the years
only to find that they actually saved us.
As ever, to Megan and Peter,
who have a magical way with all manner of creatures
in need of understanding.
And with the most heartfelt thanks
to my favorite teacher, Dr. Ed Wilson,
who taught me to have faith in the sublime in this world.
Epigraph
What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?
—Mary Oliver
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prelude
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Coda
Author’s Note
About the Author
Books by L. M. Elliott
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prelude
I WAS BORN IN TEMPEST SEASON—in the month of March, when the world has trouble deciding what season it wants to be. Round here in Virginia that means temperatures can swing thirty degrees in a single day. We duck and cover through freak hail storms and wild downpours that explode into being all of a sudden when a hopeful spring breeze stumbles up against leftover winter air that’s curled up comfortable and happy against the Blue Ridge Mountains. I swear it makes the cold air mad. BAM—there’s pushback lightning and thunder, swirling clouds and gales that blow your hair every which way, like the ears of a dog hanging out the window of a car racing along Route 50.
Snowflakes can mingle in tiny cyclones with pink blossoms that winds tear off the branches of flailing fruit trees. Creeks rage into tidal waves of brown terrified water that can knock down high banks of spring bluebells that had just started to rejoice into life. The world is all cacophony, aggravation, and I-can’t-figure-out-what-I’m-thinking tantrums.
Sort of the way I feel all the time.
According to my family, I’ve always been like that, coming into the world during one of those March weather-ragers—thrashing and crying, a seismic surge of sound and sass and questions. Mama calls me the storm child, and she doesn’t mean it in a nice way. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like me. Too much noise. Too much angst. Just . . . too much. I suppose I get her point. I can’t remember a time that winds and waves weren’t churning me up inside. But I just don’t see the point in being all calm and cool about things. Seems like a whole lot of boring, still pond water to me, no matter how beautiful those glassy reflections are.
That’s the way my sister is: smooth, polished to an appealing sheen of perfect pretty. Nothing disquieting or annoying about her. In public anyway.
Everyone says to me, “Why can’t you be more like Gloria? Gloria would never break the window.” (That was a total accident, by the way. I’d just heard about David and Goliath in Sunday school and was testing out whether a slingshot and stone could really take down a giant. I wasn’t aiming for Gloria’s window, I swear.) “Gloria would never kick a hole in a door.” (My arms were full of books. And nobody would open that stupid door for me!) “Gloria would never walk around with ketchup stains on her shorts.” (Honestly, when I eat with my family, things just seem to jump out of my hands.) “Gloria would never pout about a lovely pink ribbon being put in her hair.” (It was the size of a baseball mitt, okay?)
Gloria won the Miss Apple Blossom Outstanding Teen contest when she was fifteen. During high school, she starred in all the plays that featured a blond Barbie-doll type character. People started talking about how she was sure to be discovered one day—like Marilyn Monroe was when a photographer just happened to walk into the munitions factory where she was working the assembly line and spotted her. “Child, you are the spitting image of her,” the church ladies would coo at Gloria on Sundays.
Now Gloria’s nineteen years old, and there’s a chance she’ll be chosen as one of the Shenandoah Festival princesses for this year’s parade. If that happens Gloria will be really famous around here, just from sitting and smiling, waving that cupped-hand homecoming-queen salute and floating down Washington Street on a cart decorated with sheets of plastic flowers. I can hear all the church ladies: “When those Hollywood scouts see her in the parade, they’ll snap Gloria up. She’s going places, for sure.” Then they’ll probably turn to me and say the type of thing they tossed at me when I snitched cookies from the rectory hall before the service, knocking over pitchers of apple juice onto the church’s tablecloths in the process: “Try to be a little like your sister, Ariel. If you don’t settle down, the Rapture might pass you over and leave you in H-E-double hockey sticks.” (That’s HELL, in case you don’t speak church lady.)
Yep, that’s me—the storm child. Sometimes I worry they might be right. When squalls roar up, spilling zigzag, blue-black shadows across our pastures, ripping up trees and toppling them onto power lines to make sparks fly, it does seem like the devil is trying to take over God’s good work. And I kinda like listening to the winds and watching lightning crackle across the horizon like gigantic electrified snakes.
But here’s the honest truth—I like the afterward just as much. I love that miracle when a peephole of sunlight breaks through all those angry clouds and then spreads slowly, dissolving the dark into a luminous, heavenly blue. You can smell the earth greening up. And the singing of birds when they’ve ventured out from their hunkered-down hiding spots, singing in joy at being saved from annihilation—well, they sound like a chorus of angels to me.
I wish people could see that I’d really rather not go to Hell, because when everyone expects you to become a screwup, it’s hard to avoid becoming one. Almost like I’d disappoint them if I turned out well.
I suspect that’s what led me to my trouble. Although I have to admit the idea did just come to me. Nobody told me to do it.
It all began after one of those wild, cymbal-crashing March thunderstorms that took out a bunch of trees just for fun during the night. That and a phone call during breakfast.
One
MY APPLE STRUDEL POP-TART HAD JUST jumped out of the toaster when Gloria’s phone danced with Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” I used to love that feisty musical life-advice until I heard the song a thousand times a week from my sister’s pink glitter cell phone. She hadn’t seemed to notice that I recently made my ringtone the refrain from another Taylor song: “Why you gotta be so mean?”
Gloria answered. “Yes, ma’am, this is me.” She mouthed silently at Mama: It’s them. Mama eased out of her chair and crept toward Gloria to hold her hand. I swear she stopped breathing. Ever heard the term helicopter mom? Well, with Gloria, Mama is like an entire air force fighter squadron.
Chewing on her lower lip, Gloria listened for a long minute. Then she smiled and nodded at Mama.
Mama went berserk. She started jumping up and down, tears spurting out of her eyes, and flapping Gloria’s arm up and down. Gloria managed to thank the person who’d called and hang up before she started bouncing, too. Around the kitchen they hippity-hopped, squealing—no thuds, no lurching, that perfect spinning-top gyration that only ballerinas and pretty girls can pull off.
And they are pretty, those two. Traffic-stopping beautiful. They both have turquoise-blue eyes, pronounced apple-round high cheekbones, and honey-colored hair that curls
gently to frame their faces. They even stand at the same height, petite and slender, just the right size to tuck up under a man’s arm. Like twins born twenty-five years apart, I swear.
My hair, on the other hand, is frizzled and mud-colored, my eyes murky hazel, my nose long, my face thin and ending in a chin that juts out like I’m looking for a fight. I am gawky and gangly, a head taller than all my eighth-grade classmates, no matter how much I slouch to hide it. I figure the night I was born the lightning scared the bejeebees out of my mother and the family beauty out of me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
They stopped and looked at me like I was an idiot. They do that a lot. I have to admit the insult of their acting like I’m dumb as a slug has lately been turning me a little snarky with them in return.
“For pity’s sake, Ariel. Gloria’s been worried sick waiting for this phone call.”
“Why? Who was it?” I paused. “Was it . . . was it Hollywood?” I whispered, parroting the church ladies. I know, being sarcastic like that isn’t nice.
“No. The committee,” they answered in unison. They do that a lot, too—speaking the same words at the same time.
“What committee?”
“The Apple Blossom Festival Committee.” This was said slowly with dramatic emphasis on each word. I’m surprised they didn’t add “duuuuh” at the end.
With that, Mama was done with me.
Of course, she’d been done with me for a long time, really. Ever since it’d become pretty obvious that my ugly-duckling phase may be a permanent thing. I think my existence embarrasses Mama. Like if that legendary artist Michelangelo had once flubbed a piece of sculpture so badly that each time he produced something Gloria-gorgeous—like his famous seventeen-foot-tall David—people still pointed at the boo-boo statue and undercut his best achievement with saying, “Well, yes, but don’t forget about that hunk of junk over there. . . .” Which would be me for Mama.
Mama turned to my father. “Ed!” She half gasped in her excitement.
Daddy remained lost in the Washington Post op-ed page. He still reads a print newspaper front to back, every day.
“Edward!” She tried stern.
Nothing.
Mama went for her tried-and-true, singsongy whine, “Ed-dieee.”
Daddy looked up from his newspaper. “Yes, sweetheart?”
Mama sighed. She pulled the paper out of his hands and plopped down on his lap. Now, a forty-five-year-old woman sitting on a guy like he’s a Santa Claus seems pretty infantile and weird to me. It also wrinkles the heck out of Daddy’s crisply ironed khakis. But Daddy blinked behind his horn-rimmed glasses to refocus and smiled up at Mama—that dreamy grin he always gets when gazing at her.
“Gloria has been picked to be one of the Apple Blossom Festival princesses. She’ll be riding on the main float in the parade.”
“Ah, just like you, sweetheart.”
“Yes! Just like me!” She kissed him on his nose and straightened his bow tie.
He said something gooey and kissed her back before she jumped up and started dancing again with Gloria.
For a second, I thought I might upchuck my Pop-Tart. Their PDA just gets to me sometimes. I wondered fleetingly if I could aim well enough to spew Mama with vomit. Then I looked over at Daddy, hoping he’d say a little something nice to me like, “That’ll be you, Ariel, in a few years.” As if. He just went back to his coffee and headlines, engulfed in his morning fog of thought and news.
I’d already given up on Mama. And on Gloria. But Daddy? I keep thinking there’s hope for Daddy and me. Ever since my brother, George, left for Afghanistan, my having a decent relationship with Daddy has felt even more important.
I should probably tell you a few things about my daddy. He’s a public defender, the lawyer who stands up in court and argues the rights of people who’ve been accused of crimes and don’t have enough money to hire a lawyer. So the state gives them one—like my daddy. Yeah, I know a parent being a cop or a prosecutor—the people who make sure the bad guys are caught and go to jail—is easier for a daughter to brag on. But I’m proud of him just the same because Daddy’s an “ideals” man. Even when he’s defending some tool who robbed a 7-Eleven, Daddy’s standing on principle, safeguarding our constitutional rights.
What makes our country great, according to Daddy, is the fact that all of us—rich or poor—have “inalienable” rights. Every life matters the same in the U.S. of A., he says. That means all of us have the right to be heard in court without prejudice: presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt—and without any shenanigans going on during an arrest. There’s due process, rules of law that must be followed. That protects us from things like racial profiling—police stopping and arresting someone because they assume a guy’s trouble just because he’s a person of color or an immigrant—and from people in power deciding they don’t like us or our opinions and making up ways to lock us up and shut us up.
Mama had paused now in her hippity-hoppity celebration gyration to let Gloria text her bazillion friends. “I’m in!” Gloria said aloud as her thumbs speed-tapped her message over and over.
With each responding chime she squealed.
Mama too. “What about Liza Lee’s daughter?” she whispered.
Gloria texted. A long, long, loooooonnnng pause. Gloria made an OMG face that could launch a thousand memes. NO, she mouthed. Then she texted furiously, answers ping-ponging back.
Mama smirked. “Serves that conceited cow right. Hear that, Eddie? That stuck-up snob whose family has been pushing people around forever just because her ancestors have been here since the Revolution—her daughter is not a princess.” Noticing Daddy wasn’t paying attention, Mama broke off her gloating attack on Liza Lee, putting her hands on her hips. “Eddie.”
Daddy turned the page of his newspaper and read on.
You’ve probably figured out that my daddy is in his own head a lot. (He was a philosophy major at the University of Virginia—that should tell you everything!) As a teenager, he was also a serious protester during the tail end of the Vietnam War. If you’re good at math and know some history, you’re also probably calculating right now that Daddy is kind of old. You’re right—he’s in his sixties! (But don’t worry, he jogs and eats kale chips like a fiend.)
Mama is his second wife.
At our annual Christmas parade of horses and riders, I’ve heard plenty of pearl-clad women whisper that Daddy is still “a handsome devil.” The next thing they whisper is, “Such a pity.” It took me a long time to discover what the “pity” was that they were referring to. It’s my mama. Now, Mama and I have never gotten along. We have nothing in common—I mean, I love books and she loves Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. But I still think the gossip about her and Daddy is mean.
For one thing, calling her “white trash” is pretty darn antiquated and snotty. But by tradition and topography, this area has a split personality, with the Blue Ridge being the spine dividing the ribs. In a lot of ways, we’re like March weather: stark hot-and-cold differences bump up against each other all the time, making for some pretty outrageous friction and name-calling. We’re talking serious self-identity crisis stuff.
East of the mountains, huge old-Virginia horse estates still carpet most of Fauquier and parts of Loudoun counties, green and lush and genteel. Long-time residents speak in commonwealth drawls, attend historic fieldstone Episcopal churches, and know how to post a horse’s trot. Daddy comes from that elite, country-gentry stratosphere.
Just over the mountains past the Shenandoah River, the land turns rocky as it rolls toward the West Virginia border. Fields spit out boulders like the wads of chewing tobacco some people there kersplat. That’s Mama’s territory. Here and there in the crooks of the hills are shanties and trailer parks. Voices turn twangy. Churches might sport lit-up neon crosses and signs with catchy warnings like: Know God, be saved. No God, be damned.
Hayfields and horse pastures give way to an ocean of c
orn and the real glory of the place, apple orchards. Of course, you get your hands dirty picking apples in a way you don’t when asking your stable-manager to saddle up your thoroughbred for the hunt.
I live toward the east, in a big ole brick house with fireplaces in every room that my daddy’s great-great-grandfather built in 1800-something. But I am definitely a mixed breed. To me there’s nothing as beautiful as the low mountains to the west, frosted pink in the spring with apple tree blossoms and the constant winds rattling them.
Those famous cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC—they don’t even come close. I’ve seen them. They’re only an hour’s drive from here. Do they even grow cherries people can eat? Sure, they symbolize diplomacy and international peace since Japan gave them to us. But here’s the difference: ever bitten into an apple that you’ve picked straight off a branch? Crunch into peel that’s still slightly warm from the sun and had that sweet juice baptize your face? It’ll change your life.
That’s what the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival and parade have been celebrating since 1924. The blooming of the orchards, the promise of apples to come, the gifts of this earth, the joy of life. And that’s where Daddy laid eyes on Mama for the first time. I suspect that’s why the Festival is so all-fire important to Mama.
Daddy’s first wife—George’s mother, a “women’s lib” lawyer—had died from cancer. George was only two years old at the time. Daddy, devastated, was seen carrying him everywhere, like a teddy bear, almost. Even into court.
Then came Mama. She floated down Winchester’s streets in her billowing pink dress, an exquisite, vibrant, twenty-one-year-old Festival princess. I think maybe, after all the sadness of his wife’s sickness, someone so pretty and fresh and full of life was as irresistible to him as a Shenandoah apple to a starving man. Six months later, Daddy married Mama. His mother keeled over dead the very next day.
A few years after, Mama produced Gloria. George was five years old. I arrived four years after that, when Daddy was already fifty. He calls me their “quelle belle surprise.” (Mama always snorts at that and says, “Yes, Ariel’s a surprise, that’s for sure.”)
Storm Dog Page 1