“I think that’s it,” Mom says.
I make a quick scan of the cart. “What about dog food?” I say.
“Again?” she says. “That dog eats like a horse.”
My temper flares right back up. She probably didn’t even put dog food on the list. It’s like she totally blanks on the fact we have Reggie. You can bet she never forgets her wine, though. I don’t have to remind her ten hundred times about that.
“No he doesn’t. He eats like a regular dog,” I say. “He just needs to eat every day, like you and me.”
“Can you please cut me a break with that smart mouth?” she says. “Now give me the cart. I’ll go stand at the registers while you grab a can of what we usually get. The lines are going to be murder, and you’ve still got to run and pull the clothes out of the dryers.”
I don’t get a can of the usual. Reggie’s stomach is fine now. The philodendron incident was a week ago. Instead I pick out the largest bag of dog food I can find. I make sure it’s the most expensive brand, with gourmet ingredients. I half drag, half carry the bag to the front of the store.
Oh great. Timmy Burns is standing right there in line in front of Mom. First Chaser Junior, then another spat with Mom, now this. Could my day get any worse?
Timmy’s with a man who must be his dad—they have the exact same red hair. They’re both loading groceries onto the conveyor belt: frozen pizzas, two-liter bottles of cola, giant bags of nacho chips, jelly donuts, popcorn, bubble gum.
“There you are,” Mom practically shouts. “I was about ready to send the dogs out after you.” If only aliens would abduct me NOW and transport me to their planet in another galaxy. All we’ve got in our cart is embarrassing stuff like toilet paper, Diet-Rite dinners, and nail polish remover.
“Shh,” I say.
“What on earth is that?” she says, pointing at the bag of dog food.
Timmy and his dad both turn to see what all the commotion is about.
“It’ll save us a trip,” I say. I can feel Timmy’s eyes boring a hole into my skull, but I refuse to look at him.
“And just where do you think we’re going to store it?” Mom says. “You know the size of our kitchen. There’s hardly enough room in there to change your mind.”
“Could you please stop shouting?” I say.
“For Pete’s sake,” Mom says. She turns to Mr. Burns and gives him a What are you going to do? shrug. He smiles back.
I will all three of them to spontaneously combust.
I hoist the bag onto my shoulder. I step out of line, teetering a little under its weight. I still haven’t made eye contact with Timmy.
“Now where are you going?” Mom says.
“To get a smaller one,” I say.
The bag splits open. To my horror, about ten hundred pounds of dog food cascades to the floor and ping-pongs all over the place.
“Nicky!” Mom gasps.
“Cleanup at register six!” echoes the loudspeaker across the whole store.
Timmy bursts into laughter.
I make a beeline straight for pet foods.
“Just get a can of what we usually get,” Mom calls after me. “We don’t even know how long that dog is staying!”
I take a detour up the sporting goods aisle. I locate the Swiss Army knives. Check. I move on to flashlights. Check. Rain ponchos next. Then a deck of cards . . .
I’m not getting just a can. I’m getting at least a six-pack, or maybe even a case. And I’ll be taking my sweet time about it too. Hopefully Timmy and his dad will be long gone by the time I get back. The only good news, I suppose, is that Timmy’s going to pulverize me into the ground Monday at lunch recess and put me, finally, out of my misery.
al hands me a Frisbee that’s been chewed up by some other dog. Mickey says Sal found it in a trash barrel while he was looking for the sports section to wipe dog poop off one of his bocce balls. It’s still perfectly good, Floyd says, except for the teeth marks.
“Thanks,” I say. I wonder about what kind of germs it has on it.
“Well?” Sal says.
“Well what?” I say.
“Well, why not give it a whirl?” he says.
“Oh,” I say. “OK.” I unhook Reggie’s leash and hand it to Sal. I look around for cops—they’ve got signs everywhere saying KEEP OFF THE GRASS and NO DOGS ALLOWED—and then I lead Reggie over to where the old guys play bocce anyway. I show him the Frisbee. I pretend to throw it in slow motion, so he gets the idea. His eyes dart from the Frisbee to my face. That big cartoon question mark appears over his head. I chuck it for real. It flies about three feet and then nose-dives into the grass. Reggie stares at it. I stare at it. The old guys stare at it.
“Try again,” Sal shouts.
I try again. It does exactly the same thing.
“It doesn’t work,” I shout back.
“Of course it works,” Floyd says. “It’s still perfectly good.”
“You’re just not doing it right,” Mickey says.
Wrong thing to say.
I go mental. I run up to the Frisbee and kick it, kick it really hard. You’re not doing it right. Basically, what Dr. Holkke tells me every time I sit in his office on Wednesday afternoons—just because I’d rather read stale Highlights than role-play or blab all my family business to a total stranger. I jump on the Frisbee and stamp it into the ground. You’re not doing it right. What Timmy Burns is telling me with his spitballs and threats and locker graffiti—just because I don’t know how to dress like a Townie or act like a Townie or play by his stupid Townie rules. I keep jumping on the Frisbee trying to get it to split in half. You’re not doing it right. Mom at the Supa-Sava this morning about that stupid bag of dog food. Hello, what about buying only one can at a time so she has to go back to the store every single day—is that doing it right? I don’t stop wailing on the Frisbee till I’m out of breath. You’re not doing it right. You’re not doing it right.
Reggie watches me the whole time with this sad, worried look on his face. Eventually I calm down. Eventually I head back to the bench for his leash.
“Well, that’s no way to behave,” Sal says.
“What do you know about it?” I shout. “Have you ever played Frisbee before, you old fart?”
We were supposed to go to Cape Cod on vacation this past Fourth of July. We were going to rent a cottage for a whole week, right on the beach, with a big deck and a barbecue grill. Dad promised me he would teach me how to throw a Frisbee. And how to sail. How to dig for clams. How to build a bonfire out of driftwood. Maybe even how to ride a horse. Stuff every other kid in Massachusetts already knows how to do. He promised me. It was all planned out. Instead he moved into a motel. Instead Mom put the house on the market. Instead I moved here Labor Day weekend.
I don’t say another word. I just hook Reggie up to his leash and leave the square without turning back. I’m halfway to Eden Street before my hands stop shaking. I know I should have apologized; those old guys weren’t being mean. It was actually pretty nice of Sal to think of me when he found the Frisbee, even if it was used. But sometimes you get sick of apologizing for everything all the time. Sometimes things just get to you after a while. Know what I mean?
hat’s weird. I’m halfway through my sandwich, and so far I haven’t gotten beat up. Maybe ducking out early on Friday actually did the trick. From where I’m sitting on the swing set, I keep one eye on the kickball game.
The other eye I keep on Rita. I have to admit, she hasn’t tried to come over here once to bother me. Instead she’s sitting on top of the monkey bars with this other weird-looking, tall girl I’ve never seen before who’s wearing an old-fashioned dress and some really thick glasses. Technically speaking, I owe Rita a thank-you for bailing me out of trouble at my locker. But now she doesn’t seem to want to talk to me any more than I want to talk to her.
Some kid pops a foul from one of Timmy Burns’s spin pitches. The ball skitters a couple of feet away from me. Here we go.
Timmy c
omes running over to get it. He doesn’t pulverize me, though. He just stands there staring.
“What?” I say.
“You. In the store the other day—with that big-ass bag of dog food.”
“Yeah,” I say. “So?”
“Hilarious. Thought I was going to piss my pants. Did you do it on purpose?”
Is he serious?
“Got a big-ass dog,” I say, shrugging. “German shepherd. Purebred. He goes eighty pounds.”
“That’s, like, more than you weigh,” Timmy says.
“He’s a guard dog,” I say. “Trained since birth to protect me.”
“Whatever.”
“You got a dog?” I say. I don’t know what else to say with him, like, standing there not beating me up.
“My mother’s afraid of them,” he says. “But she’s crazy. Your mom’s a babe, though.”
I can’t quite get my head around that piece of info.
“That your dad in the store with you?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says, rolling his eyes. “He had me for the weekend.”
The guys from Timmy’s team yell for him to hurry up, he can pick a fight with me later—recess is almost over and they’re winning.
“Hilarious,” he says again. He runs back to the mound chuckling to himself, and then starts to pitch again.
I take a bite of PB and J. My mouth is so dry I can barely swallow. I take a swig of juice to try and wash it down.
What was that all about?
eading one of my guide-dog books, waiting for Mom to get home from the Ambulance Chasers.
A babe? I don’t think so.
Reggie shoots me a worried look from where he’s parked at my feet. Lately I’ve only been taking him as far as the strip mall on his afternoon walk. I’m avoiding the monument since the Frisbee incident. I’m also avoiding the butcher shop because of the mailman. It’s called lying low, until there’s another break in the case.
Here’s something interesting: Guide dogs are trained to ignore any command that might place their blind master in danger. It’s called intelligent disobedience. When a dog doesn’t follow an order, the master knows that he should wait till the coast is clear. Unless the dog is naturally disobedient. Then the dog needs to have a career change.
Is it possible Reggie tried to be intelligently disobedient the day Old Alf stepped off the curb and got sideswiped by the bike messenger? Could Mrs. Strazzulo have just forgotten to tell me that crucial part of the mailman’s story—the part that would prove Reggie innocent of any alleged crime? Oh great. Now I have to go back to the North End tomorrow, to pump Mrs. Strazzulo for more information. I just hope she doesn’t make me buy more meat. She’s all about meat.
hear your nono’s house has a For Sale sign on it,” Mrs. Strazzulo says, handing me the usual greasy bundle of bones.
“It does?” I say, then catch myself.
“Mailman says he was delivering at Noyes Place this afternoon while some real-estate guy was putting up the sign. He didn’t see your nono around to ask, though.”
Noyes Place! Aha!
“I was at school,” I say. “My mom must have been at the doctor’s with Nono.”
“None of my business,” Mrs. Strazzulo says. “But that house sure needs a lot of work.”
Suddenly I put two and two together. Noyes Place. House that needs work. Reggie’s insistence on crossing to the other side of the street.
“So where’s he going?” Mrs. Strazzulo says.
Think quick, Nicky!
“Back to California with us,” I say.
“That’ll be nice for you,” she says. “When?”
“You got any pork chops today?” I say to get her off the subject. I don’t even like pork chops. It’s just the first thing that came to mind.
“How many you want? Four?” Mrs. Strazzulo says. “I’ve got some nice thick ones.”
“Just three today,” I say.
She makes out a slip and tucks it under the change drawer in the register. Then she wraps three chops in paper, puts them in a plastic bag, and hands them to me. “Let me know when I should tally up your nono’s bill,” she says. “He can send you over with a check before he moves out.”
I nod and tell her to have a nice night. It’s only when we’re rounding the corner onto Parmenter that I remember I totally forgot to ask Mrs. Strazzulo more details about what the mailman saw the day of Old Alf’s accident.
Jenny is out working in her little patch of garden, so we stop to say hello. She asks what I’ve got in the bag and I tell her pork chops for dinner. I ask her what she’s up to. She says she’s trying to pin what’s left of the former owner’s rosebushes to her newly painted iron fence, but it’s really a two-person job. Do I mind helping for a few minutes, since I’m such an old hand in the garden?
I don’t see how I have much choice—even though I’m dying to get over to Noyes Place—so I say sure. I park Reggie on the stoop while Jenny sticks the chops in her fridge. She brings back a pair of gloves for me. I hold thorny old vines in place while she ties them to the trellis with twine. Funny, I never did this for Mom back at the old house. I found any excuse not to help her out in the yard.
“Jenny?” I say.
“What, sugar?”
One of those S-and-a-vowel words. “How come you’re always alone out here?” I say. It just pops out of my mouth. I swear I wasn’t even thinking it.
“What do you mean?” she says.
“Don’t you have a husband or anything?”
Jenny laughs. “Nope. It’s just me.”
“Well, were you ever married?”
“Nope.”
“Aren’t you lonely?”
Jenny stops working to think my question over. I like that about her—that she takes me seriously, even though I’m only eleven and three-quarters.
“Sometimes. But everyone gets a little lonely sometimes, even when they’re married. Mostly I really like living on my own. I get to eat all my favorite foods. I get to watch whatever I want on TV. I get to let the laundry pile up if I feel like it till there’s nothing left to wear. Besides,” she says, “I’m learning how to play the cello. And I belong to a smart reading group. We do a lot of things together.”
“My mom says she likes being on her own,” I say. “But she’s not very good at it.”
“Lucky for her it’s only temporary,” Jenny says. “Right? I mean, your dad probably can’t wait for you guys to get back to California.”
He must be back from Vegas. Why hasn’t he called?
Suddenly I see my dad walking through the front door of our old house in Littleton, all smiles for a change and totally on time for dinner. It’s a Friday night and he’s landed a huge order of medical supplies for one of the children’s hospitals in Boston, and so his boss has given him a big, fat bonus, plus the whole day off tomorrow. In his hand he has a bouquet of roses for Mom. In his pocket, he has two tickets to the All-Star Wrestling Extravaganza at Boston Garden—one ticket for him, one for me.
“Pork chops are my dad’s favorite,” I say, out of the blue. “We used to have them once a week back home—in California.”
“Mine too,” she says. “Especially with a little applesauce on the side.”
“Gross,” I say. “My dad just likes them plain.”
“Will your dad be able to come to Boston for a visit, while you and your mom are looking after your grandpa?”
I consider telling Jenny the same story I just told Mrs. Strazzulo—that we’ve put Old Alfs house up for sale, and he’ll be moving back to California with us. It’s good to keep things consistent. But for some reason, I don’t feel up to feeding her one of my usual stories. I wish, suddenly, that I could just tell her the real deal about what I’m actually doing here in Boston.
“No,” I say. “My dad has a really stressful job.”
“You must miss him a lot,” Jenny says.
“What color will those roses be?” I say.
“I don’t kno
w,” she says. “They’d already come and gone by the time I moved in. We’ll have to wait till spring to find out.”
We work a while longer. I can smell her perfume. Or maybe it’s not perfume, but just the soap she uses. She smells clean and fresh, like she wears clean clothes every day and always washes her hair and never veges out in front of the TV.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes what?” Jenny says.
Did I really say that out loud? “My mom’s garden back home is a lot bigger than this one. We have a gigantic front yard. She grows roses, too, on a trellis. The two of you would like each other.”
Maybe when Reggie and I get back to Eden Street tonight, it’ll be a good night. Maybe I’ll find Mom in the kitchen again, humming and chopping, making up a big pot of macaroni and cheese. Maybe she’ll apologize about constantly forgetting to buy dog food at the Supa-Sava. Maybe she’ll say Reggie’s trial period is officially over and that he’s here to stay. Or maybe she’ll admit that she was wrong about moving to Boston, that she doesn’t want to stand on her own two feet after all. Maybe we’ll both raise our glasses of fruit punch and toast to a fresh new start back in Littleton.
“You should have your mom stop by and introduce herself,” Jenny says. “Tell her she’s welcome to putter around the yard here with me as much as she likes. The two of you could come over for lunch one Saturday.”
“I’ll ask her,” I say.
But of course I won’t. Just like I won’t actually bring the pork chops home. I’ll pretend I forgot them in Jenny’s fridge—she likes them. Or I’ll feed them all to Reggie on the way over the Charlestown Bridge.
But it would have been nice.
up, there’s a big new For Sale sign on the side of that spooky town house. So it’s an official breakthrough in the case. I now know without a shadow of a doubt where Old Alf lives—at least until he sells the place.
“This is your old home, isn’t it?” I say to Reggie. “This is where the accident happened.”
How I Got a Life and a Dog Page 9