Bogart’s muzzle rummages inside the bag of food. “I have one more huge favor to ask.”
“Yes?” Kirby says, deepening his voice.
“Could you watch him?” My mom will freak if I walk into the clinic with another dog. “Pacos always at the shop, right?” Paco is a fluffy Pomeranian and very much Eve’s second child. He looks like a furry Russian hat with legs and two shiny black button eyes.
Kirby looks at Bogart, who removes his nose from the bag and crunches his food in slow motion while slobbering onto my jeans. “Fine.” Much like a Pekingese, Kirby can be profoundly stubborn, but his loyalty and friendship always shine through in the end. “I’m sure Paco and Bogart will have a blast sniffing each other’s balls.”
I laugh. “Pacos neutered, you know that, right?” “Just a figure of speech.” Bogart burps. Kirby plugs his nose. “My mom saves the orphans of the clothing world and you save dogs. You two were sisters in another life, I swear.”
Kirby’s mom and I are a lot alike. We both believe in second chances.
To a dog, the ultimate reprimand is its owner’s lack of response.
—Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog
When I get to work and walk through the reception area, Hudson, a squat Welsh corgi, charges my leg and begins humping my ankle at high-impact-cardio speed.
“Sorry, he’s been frisky lately,” says Mrs. Palmer. An owner will always defend her pet.
The phone rings. I reach down and grab Hudson’s little springlike legs, pry them off me, and lunge behind the reception desk. “Dr. Kaplan’s office,” I answer.
“Hi. I need to talk to you.” Mom is only fifteen feet away from me, in her office, but leaning her head out the door would be unprofessional. It’s important to be professional. I’ve heard this so many times that I’m convinced there is a country called Professional with its own formal lingo and food.
“Your first patient is here,” I tell her.
“I know. I let them in. Go ahead and tell Mrs. Palmer I’ll be with them shortly and come on back.”
Hudson is now snuggled like a thick sausage between the loaves of Mrs. Palmer’s arms. His triangular ears perk up as I walk toward him. Being a pushover, I scratch him under his chin. “She’ll be with you in a moment.”
Mom’s office is covered with the blue ribbons of the veterinary world: plaques, gold seals, and letters from thankful clients with tagalong pictures—hundreds of pictures of dogs. Wide-eyed toy breeds coyly posing for the camera in winter sweaters. Sporting breeds, all sinew and muscle, planted in fields sloping toward points of interest outside the eye of the camera.
Mom’s the vet. Dad, ten years her senior, is the behaviorist. They started a practice together after Mom completed vet school. Just dogs. Mom was in charge of administering vaccines, tending to wounds, and conducting routine checkups, but Dad shifted his focus from veterinarianism to psychoanalysis, conditioning dogs to listen and change their digging-holes-in-the-backyard ways. He was so good at it that people with money started calling. Soon enough, Dad was flying first class to New York and Miami to train and counsel their dogs. They call him the Dog Guru.
Mom swivels around in her tall chair behind her desk. Her long peppered gray hair is pulled back from her face with the only clip I’ve ever known her to have. She slides her glasses down the perfectly chiseled nose I did not inherit and motions me to sit on one of the vinyl chairs facing her desk. I plop down.
“How was the slumber party?” she asks.
“Fine,” I reply, knowing that Mom will push for details.
“What did you do?” Bingo.
“Played a zillion rounds of charades, talked, ate ice cream straight from the carton—you know, girl stuff,” I answer. Last spring was fashionably honest, so I quickly tally the lie that evolved from Maryann’s slumber party and deposit it into the empty spring account.
“Good.” Mom folds her hands on her desk. “Remember my friend Faith, my roommate from Tufts?”
“She was the lady with the ferret.” A snapshot of a woman standing in our old kitchen, holding a teakettle in one hand and a scrawny black ferret in the other, comes to mind.
“That’s her, yes. Good memory.” I lap up the warm, creamy praise. “She came to visit about eight years ago.” Mom clears her throat. “A few years before your father left.”
My dad left Mom, Grandma Livia, our three dogs, and me the Thanksgiving of my sixth-grade year. “Left” is an understatement. Dads never just leave. My Dad left us for Hollywood, an answering service, a publicist, and a booking agent. Worst of all, he left us for some woman whose poodle had a piddling problem. Can’t compete with that. He left big.
Now single, Dad devotes himself to spreading his gospel of dog internationally. He’s spent the past month in England conducting seminars. At the end of this month, he’s heading to Germany for his Sprechen Sie Hund? series. I see him only a handful of times throughout the year, and this summer I’ll have to rely on postcards and long-distance calls from hotel rooms to let me know that my dad is still out there, thinking of me.
Mom leans forward and unclasps her hands. “Do you remember Faith’s little boy?”
“He’s the kid who gave Troy chocolate! Of course I remember him.” Enter the vision of a freckled boy befriending my pug, Troy. Troy loved this kid. Followed him around. Slept in the guest room with him. And what did my sweet, teensy-muzzled, wrinkle-headed, curly-tailed Troy get in return from that stupid kid? An entire handful of poisonous chocolate chips! No one knew that the kid had given Troy the morsels until my poor pup started vomiting. Good thing Troy threw up all over Mom’s Persian rug, because had he not, he probably would have died. Mom practically force-fed Troy burnt toast. It took a good week for him to get back to normal.
“I told Faith that her son could work here this summer. You can help me familiarize him with the clinic.” There it is, so Mom-esque, short and to the point.
“But I have summer school from eight o’clock to noon every day, remember? I don’t think I’ll have time to babysit.”
“Natalie, he’s a year older than you. He just graduated from high school.”
“Oh.” Stupid, stupid, stupid. “He graduated at seventeen?”
“He skipped a grade in junior high.” Lucky. “His score on the SAT was in the top one percent of his class.” Great, another standard for me to live up to. “He was also granted early admission into Purdue. He’s postponing college for a semester so that he can accompany Faith on her Physicians for Humanitarianism mission to Africa this fall.”
My mother may have but one weakness: she worships all things scholarly. Anything that smells remotely academic gets inducted into the imaginary Hall of Fame erected in her head. I can only hope to click my heels and see it for myself someday.
One thing is clear: Boy Wonder’s ignorance of the dangers of giving a dog chocolate is completely overshadowed by his recent academic endeavors. “Why would he want to come here?” I ask.
“To work. He’s interested in veterinary science.”
“Aren’t there veterinarians where he lives?”
Mom’s eyes widen in offense. “What’s wrong with you?” she says, sounding disappointed. “It’s the least I can do for Faith. Her son wants some hands-on experience. In return, I get some extra help around here.” That is a low blow. I am a dedicated employee! Why would she need more help? “He’ll be staying with us,” Mom adds, as if this is an unexpected perk.
“Where?”
“In the room above the garage.”
Snap! I want to leap out of my chair and scream. Mom said I could start fixing up that room this summer. That it could be my space.
Once again, I bite my tongue, accept Mom’s decision like it’s a heaping spoonful of sticky red cough syrup that I’ve no choice but to swallow. I hate her right now and slump into my chair.
“Stop pouting.” Mom looks at her watch and stands up behind her desk. “Remember, you’re driving Grandma to rummy tonight. I’ll need
to stay here until Vernon gets back. He’s going to be gone all day.” Vernon is Mom’s assistant and lives on the premises, since we have dogs boarding in the clinic around the clock. “He’ll give me a ride home.” She leans over to kiss my forehead and smooth my hair.
Mom walks out the door and I feel as if a Chesapeake Bay retriever has dropped a load of disappointment into my lap. It’s so heavy, I can’t even stand up.
Just last month Mom wouldn’t let me attend Nina’s “Go Hollywood!” birthday extravaganza. Nina’s older brother Jeffrey drove her and Kirby two hours north to Hollywood in her grandparents’ motor home. Mom didn’t think it was “age appropriate.” I missed the walking tour of Sunset and Hollywood boulevards, getting lost in the Hollywood Hills while looking for Madonna’s former mansion, and all the inside jokes that accompany such a trip.
Kirby and Nina did take a picture of Lassie’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for me, but still, I missed out on forming a firsthand memory of the entire experience.
Suddenly, a retrospective collection of photo album sleeves full of missed opportunities starts flipping in front of me. There’re the “you’re too young to fly alone” lost trip to New York City to see Dad on tour, the “not enough adult chaperones” missed sixth-grade class trip to Sacramento, the “it’s too soon” veto of my driving alone thirty-two miles south to the ultimate dog beach with our three dogs the week I got my driver’s license.
Mom is always saying I should be grateful for what I have—the roof over my head and the food on the table. And I’m selfish, I know. But each time Mom puts her foot down, I lose something.
I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not what we have but what we lose that matters most.
Inherently pack animals, dogs require the company of others.
—Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog
After work, I throw Mom’s old Toyota Land Cruiser into reverse but remember that I’ve got Highway 101 behind me. A dramatic, lurching exit is impossible with the zoom of cars making their way along the hemline of the coast.
Beacon is a beach town, and its downtown is only about a quarter of a mile long, a blip of funky storefronts and cafés sandwiched between two bigger beach towns. Before the divorce, we lived inland, in a hollow tract house, host to hot, muggy summers.
When Dad left us for the “other” woman, the one with the peeing poodle, Mom hid herself in her bedroom for an entire three weeks. On the last day of her self-imposed confinement, she emerged a wild-haired, unshaven, robe-wearing cavewoman with an impulse. She threw open the door of her bedroom, marched into the den, where Grandma and I were watching Entertainment Tonight, stood on a stack of newspapers piled in front of us, and exclaimed, “We’re moving to the beach!” It was the first and last time I saw Mom exercise spontaneity and bad hygiene.
We moved only forty-five minutes from familiarity and friends, but it felt like we had landed on a different continent: fog replaced smog, coastline understudied for the brown hilltops we’d once known, and outdoor farmers’ markets took the place of poorly lit grocery stores with aisles displaying processed food. Oh, how I miss Cheez Whiz.
After we moved, it didn’t take long for Mom to assume the control panel Dad had once manned. Perhaps she regretted not having kept her husband on a shorter leash, because she tightened the one on me, conveniently forgetting the reward segment of Pavlov’s dog experiments.
An opening in the traffic allows me to join the pulse of cars and head toward Rescued Threads, a block away. I still have a half hour before I need to get Grandma.
I park along the street and rush toward the store through oncoming traffic.
From outside the shop, I see Kirby’s mom in the front window. She’s shoving the torso of a male mannequin into a Hawaiian shirt with a busy orange flower-and-pineapple pattern.
“Natalie!” Eve says as I walk into the shop. Carousels of color-coded clothes from decades past and present wait to be adopted. It’s the humane society of clothing.
Eve is heavily scarved and jeweled in bangles that clink as she slides a stiff mannequin arm through the remaining sleeve of the Hawaiian shirt. “Prop him up, will you? I want to run outside and see what he looks like in the window.” I put my arms out, not sure how to receive him. “Here, slide your hands up underneath his shirt in the back there.”
I huddle behind the mannequin and feel odd that I notice his bare mannequin shoulder blades. They are tight and muscular. How pathetic is it that I’m groping a plastic man?
“Okay, right there!” Eve rushes outside to take a look and runs back in. “All this cabana boy needs is a hat.” I’m a little disappointed that I have to relinquish him but feel somewhat relieved that I’ve found my backup boy should I need a date for prom next year.
Eve fits him with a straw hat and he’s the leading man of the window display until a better one comes along.
Bogart emerges from behind the cash register counter on the other side of the store and waddles over to me. Paco is close behind. Bogart looks bald next to Pacos long, poufy-haired body. “Oh, Natalie,” Eve says, “this guy is amazing. Paco is in heaven.” She reaches down and lifts Bogart, who sags like an old, heavy pillow in her arms. He licks her face and she lets him. “Who does he belong to?”
“Someone who doesn’t deserve him.” I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to do about Bogart. The top priority right now is for him to get some good tender lovin’ care. “Do you think you could watch him for a while longer?”
“Say no more.” Eve sets Bogart down. He and Paco disappear into a round rack of vintage dresses.
“Kirby and Nina are in the back. If you’d been here any sooner, I bet you could have stopped them. You’re the rational one.”
“What are they doing?” I ask.
“I haven’t seen the finished product, but go take a look.”
I walk to the back of the store and push my way through the heavy red velvet curtain, toward the blare of what sounds like a blow drier coming from the bathroom.
“It’s me!” I yell, pounding on the locked door.
“Just a sec!” Nina shouts back. I lean against the wall. I’ll wait. Nina might have abandoned me last night, but there was a time when she saved me.
I moved here the summer before seventh grade. During the first weeks of junior high, I got by on my own at school, avoiding any possible eye contact (a basic survival instinct of the shy and introverted).
PE became the hell pit of my day. There is no place to hide in PE. It’s the closest thing ever to being naked in public. Kirby was in my PE class. He was lanky and pimply, and he had the signature changing voice of boys his age. His black-rimmed glasses, perhaps cool in high school, set off a nerd alarm in junior high. He had to wear a thick black strap around his head in PE to keep the glasses from falling off. That caused him further disgrace and made him the target of the eighth-grade wedgie brigade.
Kirby was much more consumed with biting his nails than looking anyone in the eye.
We were the slowest runners on our Friday cross-country laps. One Friday, during a run, I tripped over a protruding tree root on the sidewalk and fell. Kirby stopped, helped me up, and asked if I was okay.
After that, we started eating lunch together in his spot: against the chain-link fence bordering the parking lot. He was obsessed with the Beatles and J.R.R. Tolkien books. I was obsessed with James Herriot novels and the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. I even told him my secret about belonging to the American Kennel Club under the pseudonym Nan Tuckers. Not even my mom knows that.
With each other we found the confidence to be ourselves without worrying about being judged or criticized. But in the larger world, Kirby kept biting his nails and I kept my head down.
Then Nina came along. Military kid hopping from town to town. She’d returned to the United States after her dad had been stationed in France for two years. Bold and resilient yet gentle and lovable, she held the essence of an Irish setter.
Nina wore pink
Converse high-tops in our PE class and actually made the PE uniform look cool. Sometimes during those Friday laps, she would sprint to the front of the pack because she could, but more often than not, she ran slowly with Kirby and me.
She forced us to eat lunch at a lunch table, made us read Jim Morrison lyrics, and taught us French endearments like “mon petit chou,” which means “my little cabbage.” She swears people say that.
Any clique at school would have allowed Nina in, but for some reason, she chose Kirby and me. Being in the front of a line or in clear view of others didn’t scare her. We were right there with her but always were— and still are—within the edges of her shadow.
“Are you ready?” Kirby asks from inside the bathroom, snapping me to attention.
I move away from the wall. “For what? I’ve got to tell you something and I don’t have much time.”
The door squeaks open to reveal Nina and Kirby standing side by side with hair the hue of a blue ribbon one might find on a winning science fair project (never my science fair project).
“ Ta-da!” Nina shouts. “What do you think?” She shakes her head, allowing her once auburn hair to dangle its blue below her shoulders. Kirby pokes his fingers through his straggly hair. “Are you in?” Nina asks.
“No way.”
Nina seems hurt. “Is this because of last night?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you holding back because you’re mad at me?”
“Of course not.” I want to tell her I don’t get how she could even think of Laney, Maryann, and those other girls as friends. But I would only sound jealous. And maybe I am.
“I thought we should branch out a little, Nat. And where did you disappear to, by the way?”
“The backyard. What? You weren’t part of the team that ornamented me with bras?”
“No.” She lets out a giggle.
“Yeah,” I say with a straight face, “hilarious.”
“Did you have any fun at all?” she asks.
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