All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

by Janelle Brown

  Margaret buys a cup of coffee at the bar and turns to survey the room, looking for a woman sitting by herself. But the only person in the room is a teenage girl with a round face, her hair yanked back into a wispy ponytail. She is wearing a black pencil skirt and button-front white blouse with a high round collar and—could it be? Yes. Pearls. She has a folder in front of her, squared neatly to the edge of the marble-topped table. The folder says, in block letters, “Happy Tails.” Margaret’s heart sinks.

  She goes to stand in front of the girl. The girl looks up at her, confused.

  “Are you Carly?” Margaret asks.

  “Yes? Are you…Margaret?” She smiles, revealing braces.

  Margaret nods, reluctantly. She looks around to see if anyone is staring at them.

  “Wow,” Carly says, taking her in. “I don’t usually get people applying who aren’t, you know, my age or something.”

  “How old are you?” asks Margaret.

  “Fifteen,” says Carly.

  “You’re very professional for a fifteen-year-old,” says Margaret, trying to swallow her humiliation, trying to ignore the fact that her presence here at all is a sign of how dismal her own professional life has become. Silently, she reminds herself: Quick cash!

  Carly smiles. “Thanks! I’m an entrepreneur,” she says. “I’ve been building this business for three years. I’ve got twenty-two different clients and enough money to buy myself a car when I turn sixteen. I figure I’m getting a jump start on my MBA.”

  Margaret manages a smile. Carly reminds her just a little bit of herself at this age. Not that Margaret was such a budding capitalist, but she recognizes the intensity and purpose and total self-righteousness that comes with youthful agenda. Her father would love this girl, Margaret thinks. He’d always hoped she’d be an MBA. She sighs, sits down across from Carly, and takes a slug of coffee. “So what is the job?”

  Carly sits up straight and shuffles her papers in an official manner. “You would be a dog walker.”

  “Dog walker?” Margaret’s hand jolts involuntarily, splashing coffee.

  “It’s a very lucrative, high-growth industry.”

  “Well, Carly, that’s very nice, but…” She starts to stand up. She thinks of Bart in Us Weekly, of Josephine and Alexis being feted at Sundance and Claire putting on a solo show at the Gagosian in London.

  “It’s twenty-five dollars per hour per dog,” continues Carly. “All cash. Plus tips. I’m leaving town for summer camp and need someone to cover my route for the next six weeks. The clients pay thirty dollars per dog, and I take a five-dollar fee off the top.”

  Margaret hesitates. She does some mental math. If she walks, say, ten dogs a day—which doesn’t seem unreasonable—that would be $250 a day, or $1,250 a week, or $5,000 a month. Quick cash! It’s not quick enough—she would have to walk, what, four thousand dogs to pay off her credit card bills entirely? Still, in one week she could have enough to pay down the balance on a card or two. It will be a fairly easy job to hide from her family; she’ll just say that she’s going for a walk and no one will be the wiser. And does she really have any better options at this point? (Internally, she answers her own rhetorical question: Yes, you could just ask your parents for the money and then No, this way you will at least retain a little bit of your pride, even if you lose your dignity.)

  She sits back down. “Okay,” says Margaret. “I’ll do it.”

  “Well, I actually have three applicants so I can’t give you the job just like that,” says Carly. She pulls a sheet of paper from her folder and pushes it across the table to Margaret. “Why don’t you fill this out, and we’ll have you do a trial run tomorrow to see if you’re a fit.”

  Margaret looks down at the paper. It is a universal application. “You need to know my Social Security number and college major?”

  Carly reaches across the table and crosses the education section out with a black marker. “Most of my applicants leave the college part blank.”

  Margaret picks up the application and begins filling it out with a ballpoint pen. Name. Address. Relevant experience. She pushes it back at Carly, who studies it carefully.

  “You went to Millard Fillmore High too? Wow, you graduated, like, ten years ago. Okay, and you live on Hyacinth…. Wait a second—are you Lizzie Miller’s sister?” Carly looks up in astonishment at Margaret, who nods reluctantly. “Wow. That’s so…weird.”

  “And don’t I know it,” says Margaret. “Why don’t you just tell me what I’m going to do for this test run.”

  Carly smiles vaguely and hands Margaret a sheaf of papers—profiles of four dogs and a map of Santa Rita drawn over in pink highlighter. “So, here’s your route. And here are profiles of your dogs. You’ll pick up the dogs in the order which I have listed. Mostly you’ll just open the gate and grab the dog and go. Everyone leaves their gates unlocked. And then you just walk the dogs—I’ve marked the route on the map—and drop them off. I assume you know how to handle dogs?”

  “Yes,” says Margaret, remembering the shih tzu her family had owned when she was very young. She doesn’t remember ever taking Bitsy for walks—the dog mostly puttered around the garden, systematically eating her mother’s flower beds, until it died of stomach cancer from ingesting too much fertilizer. “I’m very good with animals,” she lies.

  Carly stands up and puts the completed application in her folder, closing it with a snap. She proffers a hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you,” she says. “I’ll call you tomorrow to check in after your walk. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” says Margaret, and she can’t quite stop the wry note that creeps into her voice.

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” says Carly, clasping her hands before her chest in an offering of true sincerity.

  on the way home, margaret drives past her old high school, Millard Fillmore High, a sprawling brick monolith with all the charm of a maximum-security prison, despite the multicultural mural of smiling Afro-Asian-Hispanic-Caucasian kids that has been daubed on the side of the gymnasium. Discarded Big Mac wrappers and abandoned term papers have blown up against the chain-link fence and flap idly in the breeze. The fields where she used to wheeze her way through gym laps are being replanted for the fall, and yellow tape marks off the fledgling turf like a crime site.

  A group of cheerleaders are practicing on a grass patch on the edge of the parking lot, and she pulls over for a moment to watch them. The girls are working on some kind of elaborate routine in which, with the assistance of a pair of besweatered male yell leaders, they launch each other high in the air and turn a quick somersault before landing safely in their teammates’ arms. It takes Margaret’s breath away. She wonders what it feels like to jump that high, to trust that someone below will catch you as you come back down.

  In high school, her own aptitude had mostly been for cerebral activities: the academic triathlon, Future Democrats of America, the Viola Society, the Fillmore High Bugle—she’d been an executive officer of all those clubs at one point or another. She’d had to tack on a whole extra page to her college applications. It was no wonder the yearbook had elected her “Most Likely to Change the World” she had always thought she would, even if she was a shoo-in for the title because of her position as the yearbook editor. At high school graduation, it was Margaret who had given the class commencement speech, entitled “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything” after a Bauhaus song that, at the time, seemed to encapsulate perfectly the vast scope of the opportunity before them. Now it just sounds dreadfully naïve.

  The cheerleaders are doing backflips now, flinging pom-pommed hands over their heads in victory. Watching them, Margaret feels terribly sad. She thinks of Carly Anderson, full of ambition, so sure of her path in life, and wonders where she herself got so lost en route. She wants, for just a minute, to run into the cheerleaders’ midst and grab a pom-pom and get someone to teach her how to do a flip. Instead, she digs for a paper napkin in the side pocket of her car and bl
ows her nose in it, scrubs at her eyes. Before she starts the car again, she rests her head on the steering wheel for a minute to compose herself. And then she turns the key and coughs her way up the road toward home.

  margaret sets her alarm for eight-thirty the following morning, but she’s awake and out of bed before it rings. Thinking of the money coming her way at last, she feels—what is it? A glimmer of hope? Optimism that the worst is over? She brushes her teeth vigorously, making sure to get even the molars she usually ignores. On her way out of the bathroom, she bumps into Lizzie, in her Speedo with goggles hanging around her neck, getting ready to go to swim camp.

  “What are you doing up so early?” Lizzie asks.

  “Going for a walk,” Margaret says.

  “Really? Can I come?”

  “No!” exclaims Margaret, alarmed. Lizzie’s face falls. Margaret tries to soothe her: “I need a little alone time, Lizzie. You know, to think?”

  Lizzie just stands there, though, looking at her. “Margaret, is everything not okay in L.A.? Is that why you’re here? Is that why you haven’t gone home yet?”

  Startled, Margaret considers her sister. How did she know? Should she tell her? But Lizzie’s eyes shine with adoration and concern, and Margaret feels reluctant to burst her bubble with the news that her sister’s life is a flop. “Don’t be silly,” she says. “I’m here because you said you needed me, remember?”

  “Right,” says Lizzie. “But you would tell me if things weren’t good with, like, Bart? Or something? I mean, you trust me, right?”

  “Of course!” Margaret tugs gently at her sister’s earlobe, feeling only a tiny bit guilty at her deception, then runs down the stairs. At the bottom, she pauses to consider the FedEx package that’s been sitting on the table in the front hallway for over a week now. Curiosity gets the better of Margaret, and, after glancing over her shoulder toward the kitchen, where she hears her mother cooking, she picks the package up.

  It is addressed to Janice Miller, with the return address at the famous San Francisco law firm Sarmin, Anderson, Baretta, and Roth. It’s obvious that these are divorce papers of some sort. Margaret hesitates, then puts the packet back down. It’s her mother’s problem, not hers, she reminds herself. Janice has already made it quite clear that she doesn’t need any help. Especially not from Margaret. Anyway, Margaret can certainly sympathize with a reluctance to acknowledge bad news (RESTRICTED NO. flashes in Margaret’s head).

  She finds her mother preparing breakfast in the kitchen. The table is already set with fresh orange juice and a plate of cantaloupe cut open like a flower. Janice, with a cookbook propped in front of her, is tossing oats and grains into the Cuisinart and grinding the mixture into mulch. The food processor groans and gyrates to a halt.

  “Well, look who’s up!” Janice says. She glances up at the kitchen clock. “Has the earth moved? Or did my clock stop?”

  “Good morning,” says Margaret, feeling generous enough not to take the bait. “What are you making?”

  “Muesli. Very healthy and good for the colon. Would you like some? I got the recipe from Gourmet.”

  Margaret shakes her head. “I’m going out.”

  “Out!” repeats Janice. She opens the top of the Cuisinart and prods at the hamster food with a spatula. “That’s a nice change. Where are you going?”

  “She’s going for a walk,” says Lizzie, from behind Margaret.

  Janice blinks. “I didn’t know you…walked.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, you’ve never been much for exercise.”

  “I’m practically a fitness nut these days, Mom,” Margaret lies, though she is pleased to realize that even her mother’s usual nit-picking hasn’t popped her fizzy mood.

  Janice shakes a cup of raisins into the Cuisinart. She pauses to take in Margaret’s outfit. “You’re going to go for a walk in flip flops? Those don’t look very sturdy.” Margaret gazes down at the blue plastic sandals on her feet, one of the few pairs of shoes she didn’t sell back in Los Angeles. She shrugs, picks up a glass of orange juice, and drinks it in a gulp, invigorated by the shot of vitamin C. She grins wordlessly at her mother, who watches her skeptically. “Well, whatever you want to do, but I think they look uncomfortable,” Janice murmurs, and hits the “On” button on the Cuisinart. Margaret opens the kitchen door and leaves.

  The first stop on Margaret’s route is two blocks away: a beagle named Skipper, owned by a family named Fincher that lives in a two-story Cape Cod. The beagle is waiting at the wooden fence when Margaret walks up the driveway, its tail wagging. She pushes open the gate and looks around for an owner. No one is there, but the leash hangs by the back door. Skipper bathes Margaret’s bare toes with a rough warm tongue while she hooks the leash to his collar. Amused by the dog’s indiscriminate affection, she scratches him behind the ears and sets off down the road.

  As she walks, she keeps her head down, just in case one of her mother’s friends might drive by and recognize her and rat her out. The morning sun filters through the oak trees, though, and the streets at this hour are quiet, so, eventually, she lifts her face toward the sky. The squirrels chatter in the trees and run along the electric lines. The sound of her flip-flops slapping against the asphalt is extraordinarily loud. Skipper trots along, stopping to splash some urine against the occasional mailbox. A few cars cruise by as she walks and their drivers even wave at her, as if she ought to know them. Margaret finds herself waving back. She thinks to herself that this isn’t such a terrible way to pay off her debts.

  Stop number two is four blocks away at the Brunschilds’—

  Margaret vaguely remembers Dr. Brunschild, the family GP, as always smelling like mentholated cough drops—where Margaret picks up a geriatric dachshund named Mr. Pibb. Stop three, a few houses down, is a hundred-pound bloodhound named Dusty, a gentle red monster of a dog with ears the size of dish towels who snuffles along with his nose pressed to the ground, as if snorting up an endlessly long line of cocaine.

  The final stop is a schnauzer called Sadie, owned by a family named Gossett. Margaret goes around to the side of an older Spanish ranch house with a buckling driveway, to where the dog, sensing her presence, is flinging itself against a wrought-iron fence. Margaret unlatches the gate and steps into the backyard. “Yipyipyip,” barks the dog, at an eardrum-shattering pitch.

  Sadie is a little salt-and-pepper beast wearing a pink leather collar. Margaret takes an immediate dislike to her. Sadie does not seem particularly pleased to see Margaret either, and barks shrilly as Margaret tries to snap the matching pink leather leash to her collar while still holding the leashes of the three other dogs in her left hand. As she fumbles by the gate, a face appears in the kitchen window of the house, and a pale white hand shoots up in a half wave. Margaret tries to hurry, but the woman pushes the back door open and approaches across the lawn.

  “Where’s Carly? Is she already at camp? Are you her replacement?”

  Margaret struggles with the collar, which refuses to latch. A foot away from her face, Dusty lifts a leg and releases a long stream of urine against the gate. Mr. Pibb farts audibly. “YIP. YIP. YIPYIPYIPYIP,” complains Sadie. “I’m Margaret,” she calls from her crouched position by the dog. “I’m subbing for Carly today.”

  She attaches the leash and stands up. By the time she is upright, the woman is standing right in front of her, wiping her hands on a towel. She wears beige linen trousers that skim over her thighs, and gold hoops in sagging earlobes. “Noreen Gossett,” she says, offering a damp hand, which Margaret, loaded down with leashes, can’t accept. Margaret dips her chin instead in what she hopes is a friendly nod. The dogs swarm around her feet.

  “I’ll have her back in an hour,” she says.

  Noreen examines Margaret, her gaze lingering on the limp dress, the plastic blue flip-flops. “Wait, aren’t you…are you Margaret Miller? Janice’s daughter?”

  Margaret’s heart sinks. “Yes,” she says reluctantly. Dusty is snuffling
in Noreen’s flower beds. He selects a particularly comely blue pansy and gobbles it down. Margaret yanks his leash as hard as she can. He doesn’t budge.

  “I’m a friend of your mother’s,” Noreen Gossett says, one eye on the offended pansy bed, one eye frankly assessing Margaret. “I recognize you from the photos in the living room. You’re walking dogs these days? Your mother told me you were working for…what was it, Vogue? A women’s magazine, right? Am I wrong?”

  “Actually, it’s called…” Margaret begins, then stops, deflated. “Right. Vogue. I’m on vacation, just helping Carly out.”

  “How is your mother anyway? I haven’t heard from her since the IPO. And, well, we’ve been wondering…. Such an unfortunate turn of events. Is she just devastated?”

  Margaret, edging toward the gate, finds herself annoyed by this woman’s nosy solicitousness. “Well, you should probably call and ask her yourself,” she says.

  Noreen Gossett purses her lips. Sadie turns and nips at Margaret’s ankle. “YIPYIPYIP!” she barks. Margaret yelps and looks down at the broken pink skin on her foot. “I don’t think Sadie likes you very much,” observes Noreen. “She adores Carly. Carly always brings treats. You didn’t happen to bring those liver cookies, did you?”

  “Sorry,” says Margaret. The beagle starts licking her toes again, and she pushes him aside with her foot. “I ate them all myself already.”

  Noreen Gossett, unblinking, follows her to the gate. “Well,” she says. “Take good care of my princess. Keep her away from the oleander around the corner. It’s poisonous, you know. And don’t make her walk too fast, just because the other dogs are larger. She’s old and has stiff joints.”

  Margaret smiles thinly and waggles her only free pinkie, as the dogs yank her down the driveway to the street.

  Walking four dogs, she discovers, is infinitely more difficult than walking one. The dogs proceed at an uneven gait, and Margaret lurches between them. Sadie does not appear to be on good terms with Mr. Pibb or Skipper and yips at them whenever they get too close. She transfers Sadie to her right hand with Dusty, hoping that the enormous bloodhound will intimidate the schnauzer into submission. Her flip-flops smack against the asphalt. A blister quickly forms where the plastic strap rubs her big toe, rendering her mother’s warning depressingly prescient.