He remembered the unconvincing denials of his own childhood. Standing outside his grade school in the dead of winter, pretending—to anyone within earshot—that his mother had had car trouble, rather than admit the shameful truth, that she’d forgotten to pick him up again.
Why can’t mothers just do their jobs? he wondered.
“Sorry about that,” Spooner said, hanging up the phone finally. “You know how it is,” he added, smiling across the desk.
But Benjamin didn’t know how it was at all.
“We’re finally closing in on demolition,” Spooner told him, “and we’ve got to nail everything down.”
They’d been closing in on demolition for years.
“So what can I do for you, Blackman?” Spooner asked—like a military man, or a sixth-former at some posh English school. He called the women by their first names.
“It’s one of my students,” Benjamin said.
Spooner nodded briskly, but Benjamin saw the wattage of his eyes dimming slightly. “Okay,” his boss replied, landing hard on that second syllable.
Let’s get this over with, he meant.
“It’s Gracie Santiago,” Benjamin said.
Spooner looked back blankly.
“The third-grader in Alice Watson’s section,” he added, but there was still no light of recognition in Spooner’s eyes. “We met with the mother right after Christmas,” he said. “The fat girl who was being taunted on the playground.”
Spooner nodded vaguely, but Benjamin could see that he didn’t remember her at all. There were a thousand students at the school, he supposed, and the principal couldn’t be expected to remember every one of them.
Benjamin wondered if he tried even.
“I’ve been working with her for a month or so,” Benjamin reported. “It’s a clear case of neglect,” he said. “And I suspect it may be worse.”
Spooner didn’t look impressed.
Benjamin knew that Gracie’s case wasn’t near as dire as most of the ones that reached his desk. There were no emergency-room visits in her file, no suspicious bruising or signs of abuse. She was barely a case at all. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the playground incident, Benjamin would never have heard of her.
“For starters,” he said, “she refuses to admit the bullying.”
“So?” Spooner asked.
Benjamin might have known. He was all too familiar with his boss’s view that kids should toughen up. “I believe it points to more pervasive abuse,” he replied. “The girl’s used to being victimized.”
Spooner rolled his eyes.
Benjamin knew he’d better get to the heart of the matter.
“I’ve checked Gracie’s medical records,” he said. “She’s twenty pounds overweight, and there’s no medical reason for it. There’s nothing physically wrong with the girl.”
Spooner looked back at him, a little confused.
“So she eats too much,” he said. “That’s not a crime.”
“It’s more than that, Dick,” Benjamin replied. “The mother is allowing this to happen.” He told him about the box of gingersnaps in Gracie’s backpack, her pockets brimming with chocolate coins. “The mother is causing the obesity,” he said.
Spooner looked at him skeptically. “You want to accuse the mother of giving the girl a bad diet?” he asked. Benjamin heard the contempt dripping off him. “Come on, Blackman,” he said. “Half our students are—”
“I believe she’s doing it on purpose,” he announced, sitting up tall in the wobbly guest chair. Benjamin wondered if Spooner’s indifference was causing him to dig his heels in deeper than he meant to.
“What are you talking about?” Spooner spat back, squinting across the desk as if he had trouble seeing, his eyes filled up with disgust.
It didn’t matter to Benjamin though. He wasn’t going to give up.
“I’ve met with the mother twice already,” Benjamin said. “And I’ve never seen such a guilty-acting woman in my life. She’s responsible for this,” he said. “I know it.” Benjamin decided he was justified in digging in his heels as deeply as he needed to: in the very best light, Tina was ignoring her daughter’s interests, allowing her to get so fat.
“That’s ridiculous,” Spooner said. “Who wants a fat kid?”
“I know there’s something here, Dick.”
Benjamin was adamant about it. He’d convinced himself that the pretty young mother was acting out her anger on the little girl—probably furious with her, he thought, for stealing the attention away from herself. That’s why she plies the girl with sweets, he decided: to make Gracie as unappealing as she could.
Spooner rolled his eyes. “So what do you want from me?” he asked.
“I want to make a psychiatric referral,” Benjamin told him. “I need your sign-off.”
“It sounds like a waste of time,” Spooner said, huffing out a little breath.
Benjamin didn’t say another word, but he didn’t look away either. He held his ground.
The phone rang, and Spooner scrambled to pick it up.
Shit, Benjamin thought. He couldn’t let his boss slip away. “Dick?” he said, with an insistence that surprised him.
“Hang on a second,” Spooner said into the receiver. He looked back at Benjamin as if he were so much asbestos hiding in the walls of his tiny dining room.
“Okay, Blackman,” he said. “Just don’t let this get in the way of any real emergencies.”
Like your drapes? Benjamin thought.
AT THE VERY MOMENT OF WAKING, CASSY PLUCKED the miserable scene at her mother’s apartment from all the others at her dreamy disposal—like bobbing for just the wrong apple in a wooden barrel filled up with them.
It was too late for turning back.
She pictured last night’s dinner in painful detail. She could see it breaking up fast—once the name-calling began anyway. She watched Benjamin running for the door like a white-tailed deer, in just five or six leaping strides—as if it were hunting season still.
Calling her mother a felon had pretty well spoiled the evening.
Why am I so mean? Cassy wondered, turning over in bed.
“We all have our nights,” her father had told her as he walked her from the dining room into the foyer. He’d forgiven her already. Cassy appreciated his kindness, but she only had eyes for her mother.
She stared at Emma, and Emma stared right back.
She saw anger and hurt—in nearly equal measure—in the tight purse of her mother’s lips, and the softness of her cloudy eyes.
Cassy wanted to apologize right away.
Of course she did; it was the least she could do, but something inside her held her back. Cassy waited instead, wanting to see how her mother would respond.
Emma kept looking and looking, as if she’d never laid eyes on her before.
It’s a little late for that, Cassy thought.
She felt even more abandoned then, seething as her mother stared, as if she were a piece of gold jewelry. Was it precious to her, Cassy wondered, or merely paste? Her mother’s gaze gave no hint.
Emma reached out and took her daughter’s hand.
And still neither of them spoke. They let the moment pass.
Cassy pulled her hand away.
She might have relished the attention once—when she was twelve maybe, or thirteen: her mother’s eyes on her, at least, if not a soothing hand at the nape of her neck, or a kind word on her way out to school. She wouldn’t have minded the public squabbling even—not back then, not if it jolted her mother into something like attentiveness. Provocation had been one of the only weapons in the girl’s arsenal, after all. She’d dragged irrelevant boyfriends home, nearly begging to be caught in the act, trailing the evidence of misbehavior behind her like so many neon breadcrumbs in the forest. There were ziplock packets of powdery drugs and condoms wrapped in golden foil; there were glittering piles of shop-lifted jewelry, sprinkled like fairy dust all around her room.
But her mother neve
r said a word.
“We’ll talk later,” her mother said—as late as last night, when Cassy walked to the door.
Probably not, she thought, waiting for the elevator that would take her downstairs—but that’s okay too.
Cassy had almost stopped hoping for her mother to pay attention by then. She’d learned to make do with what was on hand instead: her anger, for starters. There was always plenty of that. She hoarded her mother’s failure to inquire, the relentlessness of her self-regard, as if they were faceted rubies in a black velvet case. Her anger was more than enough by then.
Cassy was accustomed to inattention.
It’s not the end of the world, she supposed, rousing herself in bed that morning. She could apologize later, at the office maybe. Or maybe not, she thought, smiling a little as she stretched out long.
She is a convicted felon, after all.
Cassy sat up and rested her head against the plush mohair headboard. She noticed a little fur hat down by her feet.
I don’t have a fur hat, she thought, watching—dumb-struck—as the thing sprang to life, turning into a tiny brown dog before her very eyes. But I don’t—she started—yet there it was: like a curly brown lamb shrunk down to size, no bigger than a furry shoe.
Its eyes glinted back at her.
The two of them sat frozen in place, sizing each other up. Then the little thing was on her in a flash, frisking onto her tired chest and licking her face with gusto.
Cassy screamed out.
Now she remembered—the featherweight of its little body, and the silky fur against her skin. She huddled at the edge of her bed, and the puppy scampered to a neutral corner, squeaking out a tiny bark. It was her impulse purchase from the night before.
Cassy had walked past the pet store on her way home from her mother’s—just in from the corner where the cab dropped her off. Le Petit Puppy, it was called, next door to the deli where she bought her milk. There were always a handful of dogs in the window—little white ones usually, tumbling in the bay that was strewn with ashy wood chips and three tons of confetti.
She could smell the filth right through the glass.
Cassy wasn’t a dog person.
There was just one puppy in the window last night—a little brown one with curly hair. Cute enough, she supposed, but she only stopped because the little thing was all alone, looking every bit as defeated as she felt. They might have been the only two puppies in the whole wide world that hadn’t been claimed after a weekend of brisk trade.
Cassy saw the confetti, but she knew the party was over.
It was nearly ten o’clock on Sunday night.
She walked into the shop and asked a sour-looking man behind the counter where the dogs slept at night. She had a hunch that everything would be fine if she could just lay her eyes on a comfy little dog bed, or a fluffy pillow at the back—a mother dog somewhere in the vicinity.
“What’s it to you?” he asked, scowling at her rudely.
He’s not very nice, she thought—with his scowling face and nasty disposition. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond to him either: what was it to her, in fact? The two of them stared each other down like quick-fingered gunslingers at the OK Corral, neither of them moving a muscle, but ready to draw in the blink of an eye.
The man behind the counter looked as if he’d said everything he was going to say.
“I’ll take it,” Cassy told him.
She’d never considered such a thing in all her life. I don’t want a dog, she thought—not two seconds after she’d offered to buy his.
“Suit yourself,” the man replied. He didn’t sound impressed.
The man retrieved the puppy from the window. Cassy didn’t know its age or sex; she didn’t even know its breed. The man put together a little “care package” for her—they came free with purchase at Le Petit Puppy. She didn’t know the first thing about dogs, but she wasn’t going to ask the man behind the counter a single question more: look where the first one had gotten her.
“That’ll be eight hundred dollars,” he said.
Cassy watched the puppy peering over the edge of the bed, its furry little face hungry for the floor. It stretched its skinny back legs long, a bony ballast to its head’s strong desire.
She recognized the warring impulse.
She cowered in a neutral corner, the bedcovers pulled up around her ears as if she needed protection from the little thing. She was impressed when it jumped off the bed finally, landing front legs first without a sound on the wooden floor. She watched it scamper out of the room.
Thank God, she thought, in pure relief, as if all her troubles had vanished with it, a poisonous wasp flown out the bedroom window.
It took her that long to realize that the puppy was on the loose.
She scrambled out of bed, chasing after the thing, peeking into the bathroom first, but the dog wasn’t there. She nearly stopped to pee, but didn’t, fearful that the little thing might have something similar in mind. Cassy ran through the foyer and into the living room, but the puppy was nowhere in sight. Just the kitchen to go, and she was heading straight for it when she heard the sound of water pouring beneath the dining room table.
“Oh, no,” she moaned.
She saw the puppy then, squatting a stream of urine across her leopard-skin rug. “Not the leopard!” she cried.
The dog looked up at her, its head cocked slightly. It finished its business and walked right off. It didn’t look sorry at all.
Cassy contemplated the yellow puddle, like a shallow bowl of consommé. It didn’t seem to sink into the rug. I guess that’s good, she thought, running to the kitchen for a roll of paper towels. She supposed it made a kind of sense. It was skin, after all—a leopard’s skin; a dog’s pee shouldn’t sink into it any more than a burst of rain on the African plains. Cassy fell to her hands and knees and began sponging up the urine with a magnificent wad of paper towels. She didn’t want a hint of the stuff seeping into her own skin. It was more than enough that the poor old leopard had been doused with it. She noticed that it didn’t leave a trace—no circle of darkness or moistness at all. She ran her palm over the soft leopard, combing her fingers through its stiff black mane.
That’s lucky, she thought.
But it was a strange kind of luck; she knew that too—the need for which might have been so easily avoided if she’d just left the damned dog in the store window where she’d found it.
Cassy got rid of the pee-soaked towels and came back to the living room with what remained of the roll tucked beneath her arm, just in case. She saw that the little dog had burrowed its way beneath the living room sofa, a chic Florence Knoll number in navy blue, just six inches or so off the floor.
It was awfully cute, she had to admit, smiling at the dog in spite of herself—a tiny camper beneath a blue pup tent. The puppy lay its head down on its two front paws and yawned wide.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad?
Then it began to gnaw on a sofa leg.
“No!” she screamed, throwing the roll of paper towels straight at its little brown head. She missed, and the dog squeaked out another bark, darting from its perch beneath the sofa and knocking into the small side table, upsetting the little blue teardrop that Cassy had only just placed there with care, the one she’d stolen from her hostess on Sunday afternoon.
The teardrop fell to the floor and shattered into pieces.
Serves me right, she thought, giving chase.
The little thing had a funny run: more up-and-down than she would have thought, and practically no forward momentum at all—more like a curly brown rabbit than any kind of dog.
It made it easy to catch, at least.
She scooped it up and placed it in the crook of her arm. It felt soft and warm there. She couldn’t help but bring her cheek down to its silken curls.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, trying to resist it—visualizing the puddle of pee on the dining room rug, and the smashed-up teardrop, and the gnawed sofa leg. She tri
ed to picture all the havoc it would wreak, but her visions were useless to her then. The dog felt like heaven in her arms, soothing even after her mad dash through the apartment.
And it wasn’t so much brown, she noticed, as cinnamon-colored—just the nicest shade of auburn. Russet, she thought, and once she’d named it, she knew she was done for.
Cassy carried the dog into the bathroom, for lack of any better plan. She placed it down at the bottom of the tub and sat herself on the toilet seat. She needed to collect her thoughts.
The dog’s ruddy fur looked even prettier against the shiny porcelain.
She felt exhausted.
The dog scratched all around the porcelain, trying to scamper up its shiny sides, but it never made it very far. The tub was too slippery and deep for that; the puppy kept tumbling down to the bottom again.
“Just relax,” she said, in a quiet voice.
They were her first kind words in a very long time.
Cassy tried to relax too, picking up the dog again and settling it snugly into her arms. She felt her body unwinding at the puppy’s perfect fit, her heartbeat slowing with its warm, soothing touch.
She supposed there were worse things than a little urine on her leopard-skin rug.
Chapter 7
MONDAY LUNCH:
Beef Lung and Anise Biscuits
EMMA SWANNED PAST THE DOORMAN ON HER WAY inside, a benevolent smile on her lips and a slightly distracted air—like the queen of a small European country. Her silver fur hung from her shoulders as she sailed quietly onward. She read the freestanding sign on its thin black pole: “All Visitors Must Be Announced.”
She walked straight past it.
Emma had no business in this place.
“Good morning, ma’am.” The doorman smiled, as if he’d seen her there ten thousand times. He probably has, she thought, nodding back at him, so regal, a fresh coat of lipstick lying heavy on her mouth. He’d have seen her on all those magazine covers when he sorted the mail, or on his television set every time he turned around. Just one of the advantages of being me, she thought, her tongue almost in cheek: she was free to walk into strange buildings with impunity.
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