Jane of Austin

by Hillary Manton Lodge

  “Oh?”

  “They’re good. Very good, actually.”

  I nodded.

  Jane cleared her throat. “I’ll let you carry on. I just thought you could use a bit of tea.”

  “It’s very good. Thank you.” I looked down at the mug and back at its giver. “Jane?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t…advertise my night swims.”

  “Didn’t think so. Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning to gossip about it over sweet tea with Nina and Mariah.”

  I gave her a crooked smile. “Thanks. I know it’ll be hard for you to hold back.”

  Her own mouth twitched. “Very.”

  “I’ll take this with me, if you don’t mind,” I said, raising the mug.

  “Not at all. I didn’t expect you to chug it.” She opened her mouth and closed it before trying again. “I hope you get some sleep.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Good night, Jane.”

  I walked back to the house then, clutching my towel with one hand and the tea with the other.

  “How many nights per week are you waking from dreams?” my therapist asked during our session the following week.

  I did a quick tally in my head—not of nights with swims, but of nights that I woke to discover I’d slept through the night. “Four or so,” I answered.

  “That is a massive sleep deficit.”

  Her statement made me think about Jane’s comment about the cold. Likewise, lack of sleep wasn’t a thing that I worried about.

  “I’ve lived with worse.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” Beverly said. “I have a thought for you, and I don’t want you to give me an answer right away. I think you should consider a therapy dog.”

  “I’m getting around just fine,” I told her. “It’s not like I can’t cross the street.”

  “Hear me out. First, swimming as you have been, at night? Without anyone nearby? A little dangerous.”

  “I used to swim competitively,” I said. “Open water, that kind of thing. It was a while ago, but I don’t think Ian’s lap pool poses a threat.”

  “Secondly, I think you could benefit emotionally from a support animal.”

  That I couldn’t speak to. Because I wasn’t emotionally disconnected enough to think I was truly emotionally stable.

  “So you think I need a golden retriever?” I asked, finally.

  “If you’d like a golden, I’m sure you could get one. The retrievers do make excellent therapy animals. But I had another, specific dog in mind that could be a good match.”

  Beverly reached over then for a manila folder that had been waiting at the corner of her desk. Leaning forward, she passed it to me. “This is Dash.”

  I opened the folder to see a sheaf of papers, photos paper-clipped to the top. “Dash, huh?”

  The papers said he was a Great Dane—that much was obvious from the pictures—specifically a blue merle mantle. I flipped through the photos.

  Dash had giant long legs, and an expression that seemed both alert and vaguely perplexed all at once. He sat in the middle of someone’s yard, and I suspected that whoever held the camera also had a treat.

  My brows furrowed as I got a closer look.

  I looked up at Beverly and back at the photo before tossing the folder onto the low table between us. A deep breath, a moment to fight the anger welling up inside.

  “You think I need a three-legged therapy dog.”

  “Dash had an accident,” Beverly explained. “He’s a service dog trained to work with people with physical disabilities.”

  “I can fetch and carry for myself. I don’t need a horse dog.”

  Beverly continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “After Dash’s accident, he wasn’t able to perform the duties his handler required of him.”

  Her words sunk in. “Oh.”

  “His handler has a new service animal, but Dash needs a place. The service organization is looking to adopt him out as an emotional support animal, to a dedicated owner who might benefit from his additional training. And if not benefit, exactly—respect it, and allow him to be useful. He’s too well trained to go to just anyone and too young to retire.”

  “Like me.”

  Beverly measured her words. “There are similarities. You would understand him better than most any other placement that might be found.”

  “He’s not in danger of being euthanized, is he?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. But his breeder and past handler are invested in Dash finding the right owner.”

  I stood, tucking the folder under my arm. “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  I drove from the therapy office to my father’s house. A twist of the key let me inside. I closed the door behind me and took it in. The workers were gone. It was clean.

  Clean and quiet.

  I walked to the dining room table, pulled out a chair, and sat, then spread Dash’s dossier in front of me. There were training notes, notes about temperament, about his tasks for his handler. The handler—whose personal information had been redacted, government-style—apparently had MS and needed Dash to retrieve items, to turn on and turn off lights, and to be a support when moving from a wheelchair and back.

  After the accident, which Dash sustained while moving his handler to safety, he didn’t have the stability he needed to act as a support for his handler. The handler had tried to keep going, but after two falls realized she needed a four-legged companion.

  Which left Dash, trained for one purpose, out of a job.

  A mess of feelings raged within my chest. Anger at Beverly, that she would present me with such a situation—a dog that served as a perfect mirror for my own existence.

  But beside the anger? Compassion. Sadness. A desire to help.

  I looked at the photo again. He looked kinda dopey, to be honest. But I knew just enough about service dogs to know that he’d been trained within an inch of his life.

  At least, I thought, I wouldn’t have to worry about him peeing on Mariah’s hardwood floors.

  I looked around the house. It really was quiet. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d become to the noise in Ian’s home. Despite its size, there was always the sound of a child playing or Nina laughing, one of Ian’s dogs or Ian himself. There was activity. But here?

  Maybe Beverly was right. I couldn’t stay at Ian’s forever, and if I had to stay here?

  Might as well do it with a three-legged dog.

  I called Beverly’s office the next morning and left a message with the front desk about my willingness to arrange a meeting with Dash.

  One of the photographs was small, only two by three inches. I fitted it carefully into my billfold. My leg felt stiff after the previous day’s driving, so I walked from my house to Roy’s.

  I found Roy in the back, scrubbing out the firebox of his smoker.

  “Who’s there?” he called when he heard the gate close behind me. “Oh. Callum, good. Grab that wire brush there and give me a hand.”

  I did as I was told, pulling up a lawn chair to get a better angle.

  “I’m going to be moving back to my dad’s place soon,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “My therapist wants me to get a dog.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Roy said. “You should do that.”

  “This particular dog has three legs.”

  “Does it eat and poop like a normal dog?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Use your whole arm to scrub. Didn’t they teach you anything in the marines?”

  “Not enough, I guess.” I scrubbed the walls of the firebox more. “Too bad this thing doesn’t have an oven’s self-cleaning setting.”

  Roy grunted. “It’d warp the metal at those temperatures.”

  “I guess I don’t know as much about smokers as I should.”

  “You want to learn?”

  “Probably should,” I said, “seeing as how I own a chain of barbecue restaurants.”

  Roy gave a
nod of assent. “Well, then. Let’s get started. The key to a good brisket is a long cook time at a controlled temperature, and to do that you’ve got to understand the physics of smoke…”

  18

  So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one’s own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter.

  —ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

  Jane

  “Chad put together a new list of spaces for us to look at,” Celia said early one morning while I was waiting for the kettle to heat.

  “Finally! Good! When can we look?”

  “Does tomorrow work for you?”

  “To look at spaces? I will make time. I’m running out of room here,” I said, pointing at the canisters and tins of tea and herbs stacked up on some new shelves I’d put in. Even with the shelves and two IKEA carts, stock and orders being prepped for shipment had taken over the dining area and threatened to creep still farther. “And I can’t use the kitchen at Sean’s place forever.”

  The next morning, we stopped at Torchy’s Tacos on Berkman and East 51st Street for sustenance. We ate on the edge of Bartholomew Park before meeting with Chad.

  The first space was right next to a UPS store, which I admired very much for practicality’s sake, but doubted it would lend itself to any kind of locational romanticism.

  Chad unlocked the door and let us in.

  If I could have envisioned a space nearly the opposite of our space in San Francisco, it would have been this place. I stood near the doorway and closed my eyes. I needed to see, just for an instant, our original Valencia Street Tea row house, with the aged hardwood floor and molding around the ceiling. The light coming in through the tall paned windows in the front, the vintage sconces on the walls.

  This place? I opened my eyes.

  It was what you’d expect to be located next to a UPS store. The tile floors were…unappealing. The walls were painted a shade of beige that I’d thought had died in the early aughts. I looked up and with a cringe took in the drop ceiling.

  “This is a great location,” said Chad, and after that I tuned out everything he had to say.

  How could we possibly set up shop in a place like that? It would take thousands of dollars to get it to be not awful; to reach a state of loveliness would take even more money. Sure, we could put the vintage bar in here, but the bar deserved better than to go on those floors. We’d have to repaint, retile—but who knew how many teacups would be broken on tile? At least with the hardwood back home sometimes they bounced.

  “We could try laying down carpets,” Celia suggested, as if she had read my mind.

  “We could,” I said, and it was true. We could. I just didn’t want to.

  “And we could paint.” She turned to Chad. “We could paint, right?”

  He nodded.

  I looked the place over. Paint, tile, light fixtures—we’d have to remove the drop-panel ceiling and fluorescent lights.

  Okay, light fixtures. Pendent lights. Maybe wood paneling? It would help, but again, the price tag. Mirrors to expand the space…the list in my head went on. “I think it would take a lot of money to get it to how we’d want it.”

  “It won’t be like what we had,” Celia said. “But I think it could be okay.”

  She sounded so hopeful about it that I felt myself start to lose the tenuous hold I’d had on my emotions.

  The space wasn’t like what we had. It was so, so much worse, from the location to the flooring.

  I walked outside, and Celia followed me. “I know it’s a change, Jane, but—”

  “It’s bad, Celia. It’s a bad space. I think it would be bad for business.” Once I started talking, I couldn’t stop. “I hate the interior, I hate the area, and while I’m at it, I hate Austin.”

  “It’s not that bad—”

  “I think it is.”

  “It’s just another change. We’re good at change.”

  But this was different. Every other change we’d faced together, in agreement. When Dad wanted to take Margot with him, out of the country, Celia and I agreed that it wouldn’t be in Margot’s best interests, and we’d worked together toward a solution.

  But this? We weren’t working together; we were tugging at each other with competing visions of what life should look like. Suddenly Celia wanted a space in a strip mall and friendship with Lyndsay Stahl and no contact with Teddy Foster.

  The person I’d always known best was turning into a person I didn’t understand.

  Could we survive Austin? I didn’t know. My sister, my favorite person in the world, had become a person I barely recognized. And now she was giving me hopeful glances over a space in a strip mall.

  Was this the price? Was this what I’d have to do for us to be okay? Pretend to be happy about a completely impractical space?

  I took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to change her mind out here. All I could do was try to hold her off and pray something better came up. “Let’s keep looking,” I said to Celia and Chad, who’d followed us outside. “We’ll keep this place in mind. You’re right,” I said to Celia, digging deep for something positive to say. “The location by the park is…it’s good.”

  We said little when we finally returned to the casita. I put the kettle on and brewed myself a bracingly strong cup of Irish breakfast tea. I took my tea and a couple of shortbread cookies and then shoved around tins and bags until I had a place for my teacup at the breakfast table.

  A new home for Valencia Tea Company? Thinking over the day’s events, looking over the chaos now, it felt even further away.

  But no amount of feeling angsty would change anything. Resolved, I finished my tea and set to work.

  19

  If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.

  —JAPANESE PROVERB

  Jane

  “So, you’ve been looking at places to open a new tea store?”

  “Tea salon,” I corrected Sean while restraining a smile.

  “Tea salon,” he echoed, his voice set at a comedic pitch.

  “And yes, we looked. I don’t know.” I sighed. “There are spaces available, but the foot traffic is bad, or it’s too close to a Starbucks, or just plain terrible. There was a space, you know, at Hyde Park that we missed out on. I just…” I shook my head. “Maybe we can make one of the other spaces work. We might have to.”

  “How long would it take to open?”

  I leaned back against the sofa at his aunt’s place. “Hard to say. It would depend on where we land, on the permits, on how long it takes to get it looking right. Now that Margot’s settled into school and ballet, I need to talk Celia into getting a booth at the farmers’ market.” I cleared my throat. “I mean, I could do it myself, but Celia’s better with people than I am. Anyway, if we could start building a local clientele, that would be a good thing.”

  He reached for my hand and toyed with my fingers. “How important is it for you to stay here?”

  My spine straightened. “What?”

  “The guys and I are talking about going on tour.” Sean laced his fingers through mine. “We’ve been registered to perform at South by Southwest for months, so we’re locked into that, but we might road-trip in between.”

  “Oh,” I said, unable to hide the disappointment from my voice

  He lifted my chin with the ends of his callused fingers. “Hey. Don’t look like that.”

  “Like what?” I asked, trying and failing to sound chipper.

  “Look. I was asking because I thought…I thought you might want to come too.”

  My eyes widened. “With you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “On the tour?”

  He leaned forward, drawing me into a languid kiss. “Yes.” Another kiss. “We should be touring, but I hate the idea of being away from you that long.”

  “Me too.”

  “So you’ll come?”

  I winced, biting my lip. “Maybe? I do
n’t know. Margot’s getting settled in…”

  “It’s just a few months. Margot’s a big girl.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Margot’s sixteen and moving across the country has thrown her for a loop. She hasn’t had the most stable life, not with how things shook out with our parents.”

  “Come on. You’re her sister, not her parent.”

  “I’m her legal guardian, actually. Celia and I share guardianship.” I took a deep breath. This was new territory with Sean. “Look, it’s a nice idea, but the timing is tricky, and I don’t have the money to travel like that.”

  “You’re tagging along. It wouldn’t be expensive at all.”

  “Food, travel, hotels alone…”

  “We’ll work it out.”

  I squeezed his hand. “I don’t want you to have to pay my way. And anyway, the timing…”

  “What if we were married?” he asked.

  My heart thudded in shock. “What?”

  “Would you mind me paying if we were married?”

  “I…I mean…,” I stuttered, failing at the task of trying to formulate a reply.

  “Just think about it, okay?”

  “Which part?” Because the tour bit seemed like less of a deal in comparison to the idea of marriage.

  Had I imagined it? Had I misheard him?

  But before I could attempt, say, a follow-up question, we were kissing again, his fingers entangled in my hair, and I happily allowed myself to become fully distracted from the topic at hand.

  In bed that night, my thoughts returned to Sean’s proposal. Me, a roadie? I snorted and rolled over onto my stomach, trying to picture myself in a band T-shirt, nose ring, and ironic tattoo.

  Or Almost Famous-style, heart-shaped sunglasses.

  That would be a solid no, times four. But still, I hated the alternative. I hated the idea of months apart. Especially now, when things between me and Celia were so weird.

  As much as I wanted to get away from it all, leave with Sean, I knew the truth. I couldn’t leave my sisters yet, no matter how much they drove me crazy. Sean and I would be fine. We’d talk, we’d text, and when he got home, we’d pick up exactly where we left off.