“No, ma’am. Nellie. Are they? Allowed?”
“If they’re polite dogs.”
“She’s the most polite dog ever.”
“Bring her in, then.”
I took about ten steps, and then all three of us were standing on the rug in front of her counter. Well, actually, that’s not right. I was standing. Sophie and Rigby were sitting.
Nellie stood up and leaned over the counter. I could smell her hair. It smelled like fruit. Like some kind of shampoo with coconut or mangoes or both.
“And who’s this?”
“This is Sophie.”
“Oh, this is the Sophie you were telling me about. Is Sophie your little sister?”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, yes, Nellie. Or actually… I guess… just yes. I don’t know why I keep doing that.”
“Me, neither. Hello, Sophie.”
“Um. Don’t take this personally. But she won’t say anything. She doesn’t even say hello to me.”
“Does she say anything? Ever?”
“She says him. But it sounds sort of like she’s saying hem. It’s what she calls the dog. She really loves the dog.”
“That makes sense.”
“Except it’s a girl dog.”
“And that’s the only word? Ever?”
“Well, not ever. When she was little, she started to talk. Kind of late. Like three. And not much. Just a few words. And then we kept waiting for her to talk more, but instead, she started talking less. And then she stopped making eye contact. And then she didn’t want to be touched…”
I trailed off, suddenly wondering what the hell I was doing. I’d been so grateful that Nellie hadn’t asked me about Sophie. And now here she was, pulling the truth out of me when I wasn’t even looking. Or maybe I was doing it to myself.
I think she could tell I wanted to change the subject.
“Licorice?” she asked.
She held out a big plastic tub of black licorice twists. I was happy for the distraction.
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Does Sophie like licorice?”
“Sophie loves licorice.”
I took a piece for Sophie first. Sophie reached her arm up, wanting, impatient, but she didn’t move out of her sit. Because Rigby didn’t.
I handed her the licorice, and she immediately handed it off to the dog.
“No! Don’t give it to—”
I tried to dive for it, but it was too late. I even opened Rigby’s mouth and looked in. It was already gone. She must’ve practically swallowed it whole. And then there I was, sticking my face in the mouth of this dog I barely knew, and her teeth were unbelievably huge, and I felt like a lion tamer, but with a lot less experience. But she just wagged her tail at me.
“Damn it, Sophie. I don’t know if the dog is supposed to have that.”
“I don’t think it’ll hurt her,” Nellie said.
Which was perfectly good thinking if it had been my dog. But Rigby wasn’t my dog. I was responsible for her. But there was nothing I could do now. Except tell Paul the truth.
I changed the subject fast.
“So, you seriously have this inventory you want somebody to help you with? What do you need to do?”
Nellie put her face into her hands and sighed.
“I’m embarrassed to tell you. Because I don’t want you to know how stupid I am. I want you to think I’m a better businesswoman than this.”
That seemed weird but also incredibly cool. That she would want to put her best foot forward for me. Not just the other way around. But I didn’t say so. I didn’t say anything.
“You know I sell both new and used. And when I buy from a distributor, I have a record of that. And when I send returns, I have a record. But then I started offering a twenty percent discount for customers who sell back their books. But, like an idiot, I didn’t set up a record-keeping system for those books. So now it’s hard to find if I have a book or not.”
“But you keep them in alphabetical order by author, right?”
“I do. And then the customers come in and browse and put them back out of alphabetical order. And by now, I’ve probably spent a hundred hours re-alphabetizing, trying to save myself maybe ten hours of inventory work. Thing is, it’ll take two people. I need somebody to read off the titles while I sit at the computer. Cathy says she will, but she doesn’t really have the hours. If you could at least get me started…”
“If you really need the help. I didn’t think you really needed the help.”
“I really need the help. You have no idea.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Aren’t you closed on Sundays?”
“Yes, and that’s the point. No customers. No ringing phones. How about eleven? Eleven to three.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “I’m saved.” She looked down at Rigby. “I love your dog. What a sweetheart.”
“She’s actually not mine. I’m just walking her for my neighbor.”
“Oh. I thought… Because you said Sophie was so attached to her…”
We both looked down at Sophie, waiting in absolute silence, with absolute patience, on the rug.
“Yeah. It’s weird. It’s kind of a weird situation. Sophie is in love with the dog next door.”
“Hmm,” she said. “How does that work?”
I thought again about Paul Inverness and his news.
“That’s what we’re waiting to find out,” I said.
Sophie made it all the way to the park and back on her own steam. But then, when we got home, I realized this was the tricky bit, right at the end. I couldn’t put her in the yard and then walk away with the dog. She’d bring down the whole neighborhood again. I’d have to take her to Paul’s door with me. Even though I wasn’t sure if she would scream when he took the dog back inside. She hadn’t been screaming anymore when Rigby went into the house, but that was from across the fence. Now that she was used to being right beside the dog…
It was time to see how much of a monster I’d just created.
We all three stepped up onto his porch, and I knocked.
The door swung wide, and Paul looked down at all three of us. Rigby wagged hard, whipping Sophie with her tail, but Sophie didn’t make a sound. Didn’t even flinch.
Without a word, he reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. Peered in and pulled out two five-dollar bills.
“I have to tell you something,” I said.
His head came up fast.
“Rigby got a piece of licorice. I really hope that’s not bad for her. It was an accident. I promise I’ll be more careful next time. If you let there be a next time. But I understand if you don’t trust me with her now.”
I waited. It felt like a long wait. I wanted to look at his face, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Actually… I trust you more now.”
My eyes came up to his, and then I quick looked away again.
“How? Why?”
“Because you told me. You didn’t have to tell me. Now I know you’ll tell me the truth even if you don’t have to. Even if I would never know.”
“I hope it’s not bad for her. Is it bad for her?”
“She’ll be fine.”
He handed me the two bills, took the leash, and led his dog inside. Then he closed the door.
I winced, and waited.
Nothing.
I looked down at Sophie. She was still in the same sit. In the same spot.
What would she do when I walked home? Would she try to stay on the neighbor’s porch forever? Would we have to wrap her up and drag her, kicking and screaming, home?
I took three or four steps, then looked back. Sophie was rambling after me. Not quite as fast as she had when Rigby was with me. Not quite as anxious to catch up. But she was following.
I opened Aunt Vi’s gate, and she tumbled past me into the yard and took her usual spot by the fence. Crouched down in the grass and waited for the ne
xt time she’d see Hem.
My mom was in the kitchen, her face over a steaming cup of tea. Like it was a facial, not a drink. Her head snapped up when she saw me there.
“It’s fine,” I said. “It went fine.”
“Where is she?”
“Right where she always is.”
I watched all the tension drain out of her face. Well, not all of it. The extra tension. I watched her slip all the way back down to baseline tension. Which was bad enough.
Instead of looking relieved without it, she just looked tired.
“So… tomorrow…” she began. Like a question when you don’t dare ask it.
“She can come with me again tomorrow.”
“Really?”
“Sure. She was fine. She was good.”
“Oh, my God. That would be great.”
She took a big gulp of tea, and then seemed to drift away in her head. Like she was following that great thing to Great Thing Land.
“Where’s Aunt Vi?”
“Napping.”
“She does that a lot.”
“Well…” she said. And then her face twisted into something like a smile. “She hasn’t been the same since Charlie died.”
This little snort of a laugh burst out of me. My mom quick put a finger to her lips to stop me. I sat down at the table, and we looked at each other, and then the laugh burst out again—out of both of us—and we had to swallow the noise of it.
Oh, I know. It sounds terrible. It wasn’t funny that Charlie died. We didn’t mean it like that. It was just that Vi said that so much. It was just funny to hear somebody else say it. Well, no, it wasn’t. It probably wasn’t funny at all. I think it was just our way of letting off a little of that tension.
My mom looked at me, and she had a look on her face I hadn’t seen for a long time.
“I feel hopeful,” she said. “I don’t even remember the last time I felt hopeful.”
I thought, I can’t tell her. I just can’t. I have to let her have the hope for a little while longer.
I got up from the table and went into my room. Well. Everybody’s room. And I sat on the bed. And I thought, No, that’s wrong. That doesn’t work. Then she’s just stuck in that place she calls a fool’s paradise. And that’s not the same as hope. That’s pathetic.
I went back to the kitchen, my heart feeling like it was down somewhere in my large intestine. I sat down at the table with her, and she picked up on the bad news right away.
“What? What is it? Just say it. Hurry.”
“He’s moving.”
I could hear her swallow.
“The guy with the dog?”
“Yes.”
“He’s moving?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“In four weeks.”
A long silence. Long, long, long. And ugly. Like if you took our whole lives for the past few years and strained out everything we wished had never happened, what you’d have left over in the strainer would feel just like that silence. Really that bad.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
I said, “You ask me that a lot.”
I didn’t say, “I wish you would stop.” I didn’t say, “You’re forty. I’m fourteen. If you can’t figure it out, it’s hardly fair to hand it off to me.” But I’m sure a little of what I didn’t say came through all the same.
“The Bell Jar,” I called out. “Sylvia Plath.”
“I have a copy of The Bell Jar?”
Nellie’s voice sounded soft and far away. I peeked around the end of the shelf for about the hundredth time. She wasn’t smiling, and I was trying to figure out how to get her to. But it’s hard to make book titles sound funny.
“You do.”
“Are you sure?”
“I have my hand on it.”
“I honestly didn’t know that.”
“I honestly think that’s why we’re doing this.”
Bingo. She smiled. And looked up and caught me looking. I disappeared behind the shelf again.
“You know, we’re never going to make it through four hours of this,” she said.
“I’ll make it.”
“I won’t. I’ll die of boredom.”
“How long have we been doing it?”
“An hour and fifty minutes.”
“I don’t think that’s long enough.”
“I’m dying of boredom.”
“Well,” I said. “I don’t want you to die.”
“I’m ordering a pizza.”
I stepped out from behind the stacks and looked at her straight on. She already had the phone at her ear.
“And then we finish?”
“How about two more hours next Sunday? Wait.” She held a finger up in my direction. “Hi. A large… yes, delivered… Nellie’s Books… Wait. I know what I want on it, but I have to see what my friend wants… Yes, I’ll hold. Angie. What do you like on your pizza?”
“Um. I don’t know. Anything, I guess.”
“Okay. Anchovies, pineapple, and jalapeno peppers it is.”
Then she looked at my face and burst out laughing. I wondered what she’d just seen there. I could only imagine.
“I’m kidding. I’m a vegetarian. So I’m having mushrooms, green peppers, and olives. You want pepperoni on your half?”
“No, I’ll have it the way you’re having it. But if we finish next Sunday, won’t they be out of order again by then?”
“We can’t finish today, anyway. It’s a lot more than four hours’ work. I’ll just have to put them—hello? Yes. Mushroom, bell pepper, and olive. Large, yeah. And make it double cheese. Okay, thanks.” She flipped the phone closed. “Twenty minutes.”
“Should we work till it gets here?”
“No way.”
“You’ll die of boredom.”
“Correct.”
Then I knew why Nellie hadn’t done the inventory in all this time. How I’d saved her by saying I’d show up and call out the titles. Because, left on her own, she would never do it. She would just keep on knowing she should. She didn’t want to do the inventory at all. She just wanted it to be done. Those are two very different things.
I started feeling like if it was ever going to get done, I had to be the one pushing it. And suddenly, it seemed very important that it get done.
She reached under the counter and pulled out my big book on the Himalayas. Held it out with the cover facing me, like she had the first time. It melted me. Just like before.
“Sit,” she said. “Read.”
I took it in my hands. And yes, my hands shook a little this time, too. But it wasn’t just the book, or the picture on the book. Well, I don’t know what it was. A lot of different things, I think.
I slipped off my shoes and sat cross-legged, like last time. But I left the book closed and just stared at the cover. All of a sudden, I was in Tibet, but not by myself. All of a sudden, it was Nellie, too, walking alongside the row of prayer wheels, and reaching her hand out to spin them around. Always spinning to the left, never to the right. And I was walking behind her. Also spinning. And it was like a different country than it had been before, when I was alone. Alone is a whole different thing. This time, when I saw Annapurna rising up in the distance, spindrifts of snow blowing off its peak, I put my hand on her shoulder to get her attention and pointed. As if to say, “You have to see this, too, Nellie, but I’m too overcome with the sight to speak.” And then she squeezed my hand… which was still on her shoulder… because Annapurna was so beautiful. Because it was too beautiful for words.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
It jolted me so hard, the book almost ended up on the floor. I’d forgotten she was there. Well, there in the bookstore. I’d been so busy thinking of her there in Tibet.
My heart pounded until it felt like it was about to break loose. I wanted to ask, “How personal?”
“Um. I don’t know. I guess.”
“Are you being abused at home?”
>
“Abused? What do you mean? Abused how?”
“Hit?”
“No. I don’t get hit. Why did you ask that?”
“It didn’t escape my eagle-like powers of observation that the first time you came in here, you had a fat lip. With just a butterfly bandage on it. When it probably could have used a couple of stitches.”
My heart slowed down. Some.
“It healed, though,” I said. I touched the scar. It wasn’t really healed healed. Just scabbed over. “And my tooth was loose, but now it’s tightening up on its own. No, I’m not being abused at home. Sophie did that. But not on purpose.”
“Oh. Sophie.”
“Yeah. And that’s completely different. Right?”
“Well. It is and it isn’t. It’s still just as bad a situation for you. It still hurts.”
I looked down at the book. Opened it up. Turned pages I hadn’t read. Looked at pages I didn’t see.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t, really. I hated moments like this. And yet, underneath all that hating, I liked the fact that she wanted to protect me. It was almost like… it was almost as good as Nellie giving my hand a squeeze.
“How are things at the new school?” she asked.
I had moved the book off onto the rug, pretty far away. So I wouldn’t get any grease from the melted cheese on it. I was still staring at the cover.
“Mff,” I said, because my mouth was full.
“Sorry.”
I chewed and swallowed as fast as I could, but it was hot.
“Sort of surprisingly okay.”
“Kids aren’t giving you a hard time?”
“No. Why would they?”
“I don’t know. They always did with me. My dad was in the military, and we moved around a lot, so I was always the new kid. And the other kids were hard on me. Maybe it was just me.”
“Maybe they were smaller schools,” I said. “This is such a big school. I swear to God, nobody even knows I’m there. I mean, the teachers have me on their attendance sheets and all. But it’s like… it’s like everybody looks right through me.”
Then I went quiet, and decided Nellie had made me do that thing again, where I tell her more than I meant to say. I bit off about a quarter of my slice of pizza in one bite.
Where We Belong Page 7