Mom’s mouth loosens. She reels back a bit in disbelief, and then her mouth wrenches into tightness again. “This has nothing to do with your father, Natalie!” I don’t believe her. “I don’t want you and Carver alone together.” She cuts the air with her flat hand. “You are grounded.” Here it comes: for life. “You’ll come straight home after work every day.”
Tears come back in full force. “For how long?”
“Don’t ask.” Mom turns toward the door.
“I can see why Dad cheated on you!” I shout. Mom stands frozen, her hand on the doorknob, her back facing me, and I keep going because I know it will hurt. “You forced him into a corner, just like you’re forcing me. The only way out is to lie. Or to leave.”
Mom doesn’t turn around, doesn’t even lash back. Enough time passes that I could apologize to her for what I’ve just said. But I won’t. When she realizes this, she walks out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind her.
The pitch of the bark, not the bark itself, conveys the message.
—Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog
That morning I wait until the last possible moment to leave my room, anticipating a firing squad on the other side of my door.
I finally make my way down the staircase. I don’t even go around to the back to check on the dogs. I just beeline toward the door, skipping breakfast and a kiss from Grandma out of sheer and utter fear of my own mother.
I’m just thankful right now to the foggy heavens above for summer school.
I hurry past my driveway but slow down enough to look longingly at the room above the garage. The shades are drawn. I’m already worried about facing my mom again, but should she ask Carver to leave, it will be more impossible.
Winning the title of First One to the Stop Sign, I slump against the splintering wood and wait.
“What’s wrong?” Nina asks when she arrives a few minutes later. “Did your mom find out about Laney?”
“No, much worse.”
She joins me on the concrete. “Tell.” And I do.
“Whoa, Nattie,” she says after I give her a summary. “First of all, very brave of you—your going up there and confronting Carver about the weed.”
“Yeah, but look where it got me. My mom is freaking out, and I’m going to be grounded so long, I’ll probably sprout roots.”
“But there’s something to be said for your going to him for the truth.”
When Kirby arrives, Nina gives him a shortened version. In the spirit of my mother, he says, “I told you I didn’t trust him.”
“Ugh!” I walk a quick pace ahead of Nina and Kirby. They jog behind, trying to keep up.
Kirby pleads. “Sorry! Just trying to make you feel better.” I turn to face him. He almost falls backward. “I’ll stop. Immediately.”
“Thank you.” I slow down so that we’re walking together on the sidewalk.
“Wow, though,” Kirby says. “You on restriction? It’s sort of like Snow White being charged with possession of crack.”
“I guess I’m not as angelic as you think.”
Kirby starts up again. “Hmm. What are you hiding there, Natalie? Is there something else I should know about you and Carver? Tell us what really happened between you two last night.”
Feeling like a provoked pit bull terrier, I lash back at Kirby. “Why are you being such a jackass? You just told me you were going to stop with all of this!”
Nina gently slides between us. “Settle down, you two. Kirb, give the girl a break, huh?” He throws up his hands in defeat. Smart move, considering the lengths a pit bull will go to to protect herself.
Laney and Maryann are not in class when we arrive. Three seats in a row are free. Nina points and says, “Tic, tac, toe.”
Mr. Klinefelter walks into the room and steps up to his podium. “Good morning. Today we are going to double back a bit on our time line. Hence, I ask you, what could be more beautiful than the Bill of Rights?” Mr. Klinefelter leads into his lecture on the Bill of Rights. Toward the end, he asks if we have any questions. Kirby raises his hand. “I’m listening to all these rights, Mr. Klinefelter, and what I don’t understand is why people our age, under eighteen, don’t get to enjoy a lot of them.”
Bingo! I’m expected to act like an adult, be responsible, but any idea I have that doesn’t meet Mom’s approval warrants lecture and, now, restriction. I’m living under a different set of rights. The truth: until we are eighteen, we live under the constitution drafted by our parents.
“Elaborate, Kirby, please,” says Mr. Klinefelter.
“Take freedom of speech. We can’t go around saying what we want. I’ve seen more than one person thrown out of a classroom for cursing, yet we’re told we have freedom of speech? We don’t.”
“There!” says Mr. Klinefelter, stabbing the air with his flicked-up thumb. “An excellent point, young man. Even with the freedom of speech in place, people used to get arrested for using profanity within earshot of women and children.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make sense,” says Kirby. “Don’t we have the right to say what we want?”
“We’re looking at two different issues here. First, because those under eighteen aren’t of ‘legal’ age, there are loopholes. Second, it’s important to remember that your rights end where another person’s begin. You may have the right to say something profane, but I have the right not to hear it. And there’s the rub.”
Rub, indeed.
“Test tomorrow on the first five chapters!” We groan, because, well, we can’t curse about it.
My phone starts barking no more than a minute after we’re released from class. “You’d better walk directly to work right now.” Mom.
I follow her instructions, walking to work with fingers crossed in hopes that Carver is still employed.
When I get to the clinic that afternoon, Hamlet, a young and hyper Dalmatian, waits in the reception area with his owner, Mr. Stoop.
Some names just don’t seem to fit. Dogs are victims of their owners’ propensities. Mr. Stoop probably decided a long time ago that he would someday get a dog and call him Hamlet. (No matter that Shakespeare’s Hamlet was a depressed stoic.) This black-spotted blur of energy, who is pouncing up to slurp my face, is no Hamlet.
I check in with Mom, as she has dictated I do. After today’s class, I’ve resolved that I live under a dictatorship. Once Mom and Vernon are in the exam room with Hamlet, I rush to the back, hoping to find Carver.
I can’t see him when I enter the corridor of the kennel run, but I am relieved to hear him. His tone is low and sweet. He says, “That’s a good boy.” When I find him in the kennel with Simon, I consider that my mom probably locked him in there as punishment. I wouldn’t put it past her. But to my amazement, Simon, who earlier in the week thrashed at Carver with a nip, has his head in Carver’s lap.
“How in the world have you tamed this dog?” I ask, standing behind the chain-link gate.
“The last couple of days, he’s allowed me to get closer. Of course, this helps.” Carver pulls some jerky bits from his pocket and allows Simon to eat out of his cupped hand. Dad would shudder and click his training clicker at Carver. According to the Dog Guru, a dog should behave for you, not for food.
“Well, I’m impressed. You’re not feeding him chocolate.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” He walks out of Simon’s kennel and over to me. Simon whines at the edge of his gate. “It’s okay, boy.”
Carver faces me and holds my hands in his. He kisses me, a small delicious peck but a bold move, considering that this is Mom’s territory and we’re not supposed to be alone together.
“I apologized to your mom again. She said to keep it professional and what’s done is done. That I need to focus on work, not you.” He clears his throat. “She asked me to call my mom and tell her about last night.”
“Sounds like her. I’m surprised you’re still here.” I tighten my grip on his hands to let him know I’m happy about his being here. Mo
m is giving him a second chance, which makes me feel bad for thumping her so hard with the comment about Dad. Not bad enough to apologize, though.
“Well, I got an earful from my mom.”
“What did she say?” I ask.
“That I am a guest. I need to respect your space.” Carver touches his nose to the tip of my nose.
“Is your mom going to make you come home?” Pixie becomes an anchor on my heart.
“No, my mom knows we didn’t do anything. She just told me to be more sensitive to your mom’s limits.”
I pull back from him, but our hands stay locked together. “So what part of my mother’s brain is missing? If your mom is cool about it, why can’t mine be?”
“My mom has always been a friend, I guess. Your mom is more of a—” He hesitates.
“What? Control freak? Warden?”
“No, she’s just more protective of you.”
“Speaking of which, I’d better get back up to the front.” If she sees us talking, alone, I may be forced to wear a chastity belt.
“Come here for a second,” Carver says. He brings me in closer. Perhaps the smell of Science Diet Adult Chicken and Rice Recipe emanating from stainless steel pet bowls, the gray cinder block walls, and the slobbering sound of dog aren’t the most romantic sensory details, but it doesn’t matter. This is romantic. This feels right and good. We kiss, letting our tongues play a quick game of footsies. “We’ll figure something out,” he says. And I believe him.
Products such as dog strollers are entrapments, not necessities.
—Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog
Restriction has one thing going for it: test prep. There’s plenty of time to study when you are caged inside the house.
Friday, test day, has something going for it, too: there is no cooperative group.
The rest of the weekend is marked by the monotony of staring at my bedroom walls. The dogs have never been so important to me. I’ve even noticed them being distant from Mom, like they are taking sides.
One thing is clear, though. Restriction is counterproductive. It does not make a person reconsider her actions. I am not feeling guilt like I have the past couple of weeks when I was knitting my white lies. No, with each passing moment of restriction, I am concocting blueprints of escape routes and offenses that will free me. I may as well wad them up and toss them in the garbage, because I lack the intestinal fortitude (aka guts) to execute my plans.
And another thing: distance really makes the heart grow fonder. I miss Carver. At work we have devised a circuit of communication by leaving notes for each other in the kibble bin.
Sunday is the worst, because there is no work or school to keep me busy. By Sunday night, Carver has given up waiting for me. Around eight p.m., he leaves his room and scuttles down the steps and into the world without me. He gets home by ten-thirty that night, and I go to bed wondering where he went.
Walking to school on Monday, I vicariously live through Nina and Kirby as they recount a Saturday-night jaunt to La Paloma Theatre for a viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“I saw Carver last night,” says Nina, avoiding a crack in the sidewalk.
“Where?” I ask.
“Peter Pole played a gig at Quimby’s. He went with us.”
Kirby doesn’t say a word. “Us?” I say. “As in you and Laney?”
“And Maryann,” Nina adds. “I know what you’re thinking, Natalie. You have nothing to worry about. Carver played it cool and mentioned at one point he wished you were there.”
“No way,” mutters Kirby.
I look at him. “‘No way’ what?”
“Guys don’t say that,” he responds.
Nina and I stop. Kirby walks ahead a few steps and then spins around when he notices he’s alone.
“So you think I’m lying?” Nina says, prickling up. He’d better watch it. There’re two of us and one of him.
“No, it’s just that he’s trying to prove something. Like he has to say that, so you’ll report back to Natalie with reassuring news.”
I place my hands on my hips. “What’s wrong with that?”
“It doesn’t seem genuine. If you had a good relationship, you’d trust him,” says Kirby.
“I didn’t say I don’t trust him,” I snap.
“Kirby, do not put matters of the heart on your resume. You clearly don’t get this stuff,” says Nina. “Let’s keep walking.”
During cooperative group we are supposed to be compiling pros and cons of state versus federal regulation of commerce, an offshoot of Mr. Klinefelter’s lecture on Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824. Richard asks me to take notes for our position on pros and asks Laney to record the cons. “I saw Carver last night,” she says.
My nerves start to rumble. She is bullying me. “Good,” I reply.
“Let’s just start with what we know.” Richard ignores Laney’s side conversation. “With the invention of the steamboat in 1807—”
Laney interrupts. “Why weren’t you there?”
“I’m on restriction.”
“Can you two discuss this some other time?” asks Richard.
“Let ’em talk,” says Allison, looking from me to Laney. Richard shakes his head but quickly joins Allison as a spectator of the conversation between Laney and me.
“Why are you on restriction?” Laney asks.
How dare she! She should be nice to me. Does she not remember that she puked in my toilet?
And it’s on the tip of my tongue: that I’m on restriction because Carver and I were found in bed together, that we’re crazy about each other, that we will run away together to San Francisco, where he will reveal his tattoo. We will run a halfway house for abused dogs and live happily ever after.
But I don’t say anything. Instead, I crown myself with a tiara of cowardice.
After class, Carver is waiting on a concrete bench in the quad area. The sun overhead glazes his honey blond hair. He sits cross-legged, the hems of his faded jeans frayed, his smile made even more perfect by that tilted eyetooth of his.
Pixie, who seems to be wearing ice skates today, does a triple toe loop jump. I run over to Carver. “What are you doing here?”
He takes my hands, gives them a squeeze, and pulls me so close that I am forced to arch my back to avoid tumbling on top of him. “I’m taking my lunch break. I wanted to know if you’d like to join me for a field trip tomorrow.”
“How? I have school and then work.” I touch the tip of his nose. “Oh yeah, I’m grounded, too, remember?” My phone starts barking. Mom is insane! I pull back from him. “My mom is calling. Just a sec,” I say to Carver.
“I’m on my way,” I grunt into the phone.
“Good,” Mom grunts back.
I hang up and get back to Carver. “Walk with me?”
“That was my plan. I’ll veer off to grab some lunch before we get there.”
I wave good-bye to Nina and Kirby, who are watching me from the vending machines.
Carver entwines his fingers with mine. We cross through the parking lot, toward the sidewalk. “You were saying something about a field trip?”
“Would you be willing to miss school tomorrow?” Carver asks.
“Yes,” I say, even though I’m not sure how I’m going to forge an excuse note.
“Good.” He squeezes my hand again. “I have tomorrow morning off.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I asked your mom.”
“That’s original.” Now I get it: ask the woman directly instead of using the trapdoor of seasonal lies! Except I’ve tried that before. I’m surprised that Mom hasn’t tightened her stranglehold on Carver, especially since he’s riding on the fumes of a second chance.
“I told her I wanted to go to the botanical gardens.”
“So where are we actually going?” The ice skates Pixie is wearing start to cut a nervous hole into my stomach.
“To the botanical gardens.” He looks at me as if this should be obvious. “I want y
ou to come with me.” This makes it easier to say yes. I am not ditching school so that we can rent a hotel room and have hot, steamy sex. No, I am skipping class so that I can commune with nature (and Carver) at the botanical gardens. Don’t degrees of wrongdoing matter in this world?
Our plan goes from seed to bloom. Tomorrow morning, Tuesday, I will walk toward school. Carver will intercept me at Clove Street, and we will then walk the one-point-something miles to the botanical gardens. They open at eight-thirty a.m., and we’ll stay till eleven-thirty a.m. Afterward, we’ll both walk toward work but fork off from each other before we get there so as not to raise any suspicion.
At work I snag a few pieces of Mom’s letterhead for the absence note I will give to the attendance office when I return to school on Wednesday. For once I’m thankful that I can hardly decipher Mom’s handwriting, because as far as forging a note goes, this shouldn’t be too hard.
I’m so excited I can hardly breathe.
Hardly breathing may not be an ideal breathing pattern.
Monday night I’m hammered with an epidemic of second thoughts. What if Mom finds out? What if Mr. Klinefelter kicks me out of class for ditching? My excitement has turned to fear, but I try to relax my breathing and keep my eye on the first-place prize of this outing: Carver.
When I walk toward the corner on Tuesday morning, my worry resurfaces like the dry patch on Pip’s back. No matter how much salve we rub on him or how many omega-3 tablets he ingests, the red and irritated bald spot keeps returning. But I push myself forward, ignoring thoughts of reform school or military school for daughters who lie to their mothers.
I meet Nina and Kirby at the corner and am about to tell them I won’t be joining them when the huge bug-covered grille of my mom’s car halts at our stop sign. Mom must be going back home for something. She opens the window. “I’ll give you kids a ride. Jump in.”
No!
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