Where We Belong

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  She sighed.

  I knew why. It was because every time I solved a problem that should really have been hers to solve, I figured she was that much more likely to dump the next one on me. That situation with her was like a stray cat. I really wanted that cat to go away. Fixing it a nice fish dinner and a bowl of milk was not the way to get what I wanted.

  Then again, I’d tried leaving things unfixed. And that only left things unfixed.

  “I can’t believe we killed that whole pizza,” my mom said.

  “I believe it.”

  “Sophie had two slices. Now that’s hard to believe.”

  “We’ve all been hungry. She just didn’t have the words to say it.”

  That stopped the conversation dead.

  Actually, I hadn’t been hungry for days. I’d been gorging myself out of Paul’s refrigerator. But I hadn’t gotten used to having plenty to eat yet. I was still overcompensating. So the point still held.

  “I guess Rigby and I are going back to the house. You take your hot bath. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I got up and crossed over to the door, suddenly wondering if Rigby would try to stick with Sophie again. I looked back at her. Rigby was in that same position on the rug, giving me that same look.

  I made a mental note to bring her padded floor bed to the apartment. It might be bad for her arthritis to lie on the hardwood floor. And she never used the floor bed in the house, anyway. She always used half of Paul’s bed.

  “Rigby. Seriously this time. We sleep in the big house. We’ve got to go.”

  She rose to her feet, all long legs and a little bit of stiffness. I wondered if I should tell Paul about the stiffness. Or maybe just cut back on our walk mileage a little and see if that was enough.

  She ambled over to the door, and me, in about four steps.

  I opened the door.

  Sophie opened her mouth. And screamed.

  It was the first time we’d heard that horrible sound since leaving the city to come here. Since she lost her voice on the drive.

  I looked at my mom, and she looked at me.

  “Why is she doing that?” I asked, all panicked, shouting to be heard.

  “I don’t know!”

  “She can’t do that here! We’re not that far from the neighbors!”

  A wild shrug. That was the only answer my mom seemed to have.

  I walked back to where Sophie sat on the rug, and Rigby followed me. And of course, Sophie quieted right down.

  I frowned and sat cross-legged on the rug beside them. Purposely not looking at my mom.

  So this was one more stray cat I’d just fed, even though I never wanted it to come around again. I’d just taught Sophie that if I took Rigby away, and she shrieked, I’d bring the dog back. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t have Paul’s neighbors calling the police.

  I sat there for a couple of minutes, nursing this heavy, sick feeling in my gut. For a few hours there, I’d been totally relaxed and thinking everything was going to be okay. And it obviously wasn’t going to be okay at all.

  I wondered if the hoping was where I’d gone wrong.

  I finally braved a look at my mom, who looked like she was having a hard time holding down all that pizza.

  She put words to the sick thing in my gut. She said, “Shortest vacation in the history of the world.”

  “Thought you were going to take a bath.”

  “Maybe you’ll have to live here with the dog. Not in the big house.”

  I didn’t say what I wanted to say.

  What I wanted to say was “That’s the stupidest, most short-sighted idea you’ve ever had. Which is a tough contest to win. Because then when Paul gets home and wants his dog back, the whole thing will be over. We’ll be out looking for a new place again.”

  What I actually said was, “I can’t. Paul might call, and then he won’t know where I am. Or how his dog is.”

  Somehow, I’d have to train Sophie to wait patiently for the next time she’d see Rigby. Like she’d been doing nearly all along. But I had no idea why she’d done it so well for so long. Or why she’d stopped. So I had no idea where to start.

  “So what are we going to do?” my mom asked.

  Something inside me… sort of… snapped.

  “And there it is again,” I said. My voice sounded hard. Even to me.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Every time things get bad, you ask me what we’re going to do. Which is like… in case you don’t get it—how that comes through—the message in there is real clear. You don’t know what to do, so you’re hoping I do.” Fortunately, I was not raising my voice. I was wondering if I could keep it that way. “I can’t take the pressure anymore. Look at all I’ve done to fix our situation. And then something goes wrong with Sophie, and I’m your go-to fixer again. I get it that sometimes you feel like I’m better at this than you are, but could you at least try? Could you… I don’t know… practice? Or something?”

  A long silence, during which I didn’t brave a look at her face.

  Then I did.

  She was leaning with her back against the glass door. Arms crossed over her chest. Looking away from me, down at the hardwood floor at the edge of the big rug. Her face looked heavy and dark, like a storm cloud right before the thunder and lightning starts. But nothing happened. She just brooded there.

  “Take your bath,” I said. “I’ll stay till Sophie goes to sleep.”

  She just stayed frozen there for a long time. Like she hadn’t even heard. Then she broke loose suddenly and marched into the bathroom. Slammed the door. Hard.

  I jumped. All three of us jumped.

  I looked at Rigby and Sophie. Rigby looked back.

  “Well, that was a major disaster,” I told her.

  She reached out and snuffled my ear. It sounded funny, so I laughed. It felt good to laugh at a time like that, but weird, too. I guess I’d thought maybe I never would again.

  It was after ten when I finally got inside the big house. The message machine was beeping.

  I’d never learned how to play messages.

  I squinted at the buttons for a while. It was probably Paul, but I was afraid I might accidentally erase it, and then it might turn out to be from someone else, and be important. So instead, I got Paul’s number from the list on the side of the fridge and called him.

  “Did you call?” I asked.

  “I did,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I was in the apartment with my mom and Sophie.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry.”

  “I thought maybe you’d be worried if I wasn’t home at night.”

  “It occurred to me that you might be with your family.”

  “Are you okay?”

  A long silence.

  “I probably shouldn’t call you and tell you my problems,” he said.

  “I really don’t mind.”

  I took the phone over to the couch and sat. Rigby lay down so close that one of her front paws draped over my foot.

  “But you have a life. And problems of your own.”

  “So? Everybody has a life. And problems. But they also have friends, and sometimes they listen to their friends’ problems. It’s normal. Well. Listen to me talk like I know what normal is. I’m not saying I’ve done it that way all my life or anything. But I’m pretty sure lots of people do.”

  A little sound from him that could have been a laugh but came out as more of a light breath.

  “What’s going on down there?” I asked.

  “It’s just moving really fast.”

  I got a clutch in my chest and gut, thinking I didn’t have much time to solve the Sophie problem. Then I felt guilty for only thinking of myself. But it wasn’t thinking, really, anyway. It was my gut. I guess my gut only knows me.

  “How fast?”

  “Kind of hard to say. Hard to know how much is the pain medication. Maybe part of it is that he’s still not fully recovered from the surgery.”

  �
��Is he at home?”

  “Yeah. He’s back. And we have hospice coming in to help us.”

  Weird, maybe, but I wondered how it felt to him to use the word us for himself and Rachel. But it didn’t seem right to ask.

  I looked out the window and saw the lights of houses clustered at the foot of the mountains, and it felt comforting, somehow. Like life is always going on somewhere. No matter what.

  I said, “Can I ask a little favor?”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  “You’re staying right next door to my Aunt Violet’s house, right?”

  “Yeah. Right where you met me.”

  “When you get a chance, would you tell her where we are, and that we’re okay?”

  “Sure. I could do that.”

  “I think she probably feels guilty for putting us out.”

  “Probably.”

  “But… I’m sorry. You were talking about Dan. And I sort of changed the subject. You were saying it all seems to be going so fast.”

  First nothing.

  Then, “I keep thinking about a week or two back. He hadn’t been to the doctor’s yet, and nobody knew anything was wrong. Well, that’s not right. He must have known something. Or he wouldn’t have gone in. I guess he’d been having trouble for a while, but he probably thought it was excess stomach acid or an ulcer or something. And then he gets the news. Bang. He’s in for surgery, and then everything’s falling apart. It must be really fast-growing. Plus, it was late-stage and spreading to his lungs when they found it. But still, I expected things to go slower. It just seems strange that everything is falling apart so fast. It’s hard to understand.”

  Silence. I focused on the little lights out the window.

  “How’s Rachel doing with all this?”

  For probably a full ten seconds, all I heard was his breathing. It seemed weird that I could hear it so clearly. Like he was breathing purposefully and carefully instead of naturally.

  “She’s beside herself,” he said. Then a long pause. Then, “And it’s really hard. You know. To…”

  I waited. For a long time. Wondering if I’d ever hear the end of that sentence. It wasn’t one I could just guess.

  “…watch her loving him so much.”

  His voice kind of broke up on the last words. But not really into crying, exactly. He just sort of crumbled.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time, and neither did I. I had no idea what to say to him, and it seemed like maybe he was never going to talk again.

  “It was so much easier when I only saw them for a few hours once or twice a month. I think I was in this insane denial. Like, yeah, they’d been married for decades, but it wasn’t all that serious. Like they just sort of existed in the same house, but… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. What was I thinking, coming down here? Watching her with him, day in and day out? Watching how hard it is for her to lose him? What was I thinking?”

  “I think you wanted to be there for both of them. I think you knew it would be hard, but you knew you’d regret it if you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t know it would be this hard.”

  In some small way, it broke some part of my heart. I guess I let my heart be close to his for a split second. And I felt the break. It was weird. Like nothing that had ever happened to me before. Then again, I usually kept plenty of distance between me and everybody else.

  I had no idea what to say.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “That was a lot more than I meant to tell you.”

  “It’s okay, though. I mean, it’s okay with me.”

  “I just need to go sit by myself and process this.”

  “You can call again.”

  “I think I have to now. It’s like when you don’t let yourself cry, but then you do. It’s one thing to open that floodgate. It’s another thing to get it shut again.”

  “Call anytime.”

  “Goodnight, Angie.”

  “Goodnight.”

  I went to bed. But I didn’t get to sleep until the wee small hours of the morning. And even then, I didn’t manage to sleep much.

  I woke up when I heard the doggie door flap open, then fall closed again. I thought it was Rigby going out to pee. So I just rolled over to see if I could go back to sleep. But I rolled right into Rigby. She was up on the bed with me. Her head was up, and she was looking toward the back room. She’d heard the flap, too.

  I told myself to get up and go see what it was. But I was frozen. I wondered if wild animals would come in through that thing. It was a big doggie door. It had to be. Or it would be of no use to Rigby. I’d worried about that once, when I first came here to stay. But I’d figured Rigby would defend the place.

  Now I wondered if it was fair to make her try.

  Before I could think it out any better than that, Sophie stuck her head into the bedroom.

  “Hem!” she squealed.

  I was on my feet before I even knew I was about to get up.

  “Sophie! No! You can’t be in here!”

  I grabbed her up, almost without thinking, and she gave my thigh a vicious kick. I half dropped her, half set her down. I grabbed her hand and tried to pull her toward the back door. She started that ear-splitting keen, sliding along the wood floor on her bare, braced feet.

  “Rigby,” I shouted. “Come on. Let’s go out.”

  Rigby jumped down off the bed, and the three of us walked down the hall to the back door together. Sophie quieted right down and walked right along. Of course. Of course she’d stop shrieking if I gave her what she wanted. Access to the dog. Which I’d just done a second time.

  I still felt half asleep, and I couldn’t get my brain to function. I knew I had a problem, and I was only making it worse. But I couldn’t think it out any more clearly than that. I had no idea how to solve it. That is, without letting her scream till she lost her voice. Which I couldn’t do while we were here at Paul’s house.

  She’d been so good about trusting she’d see Rigby again soon. I had no idea where that had gone. Or why. Or what to do about it.

  We stepped out the back door and onto the landing, and I looked up to the apartment and saw the door hanging wide open.

  “Come on,” I said. To both of them. “Let’s go have a talk with Mom.”

  My mom was fast asleep on the foldout couch.

  “What was that all about?” I asked. Nice and loud. It didn’t seem right for her to go back to sleep after causing a problem like that.

  She sat up. Looked around. Looked at me. Rubbed her eyes.

  “Close that door,” she said. “It’s cold.”

  I felt my jaw drop open.

  “Close the door? Close the door?”

  “What part of ‘close the door’ don’t you understand?”

  “I didn’t open the door. You did. And I just woke up with Sophie in the big house. Where’s she’s not allowed to be. Did she wake up fussing, and you just decided to sic her on me?”

  “Kiddo, you woke me up just now. I’ve been asleep all night.”

  “Well, then, who let Sophie out?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I didn’t entirely believe her. I couldn’t. Maybe she’d been half asleep.

  “I wonder if Sophie learned to open the door,” she said.

  “Impossible.”

  But it wasn’t impossible at all. That was just the problem. Sophie wasn’t stupid. She was different. But the differences didn’t involve lack of brain power. I wanted it to be impossible. That’s why I said it was. But that didn’t make it so.

  “Even if she did,” my mom said, “how did she get into the big house? Don’t you lock the doors when you go to sleep?”

  “She came in through the doggie door.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now I don’t know what to do. I want to go back in the house, but now she’s awake. So now she’ll scream.”

  “Leave the dog here.”

  “I ca
n’t keep doing that. It’s just training her to scream.”

  “Fine. Don’t keep doing it. But do it now. Then the van’ll come, and she’ll go off to school. And next time she sees the dog, it’ll be something different. Like you come get her and take her for a walk. Like in the old days. And you can tell her she’ll see Rigby tomorrow. Like in the old days. And then maybe we can get back into some kind of a normal pattern here.”

  I wasn’t the least bit sure that would work. But it felt good to hear a plan come from my mom. Whether it was a good plan or not, at least she was practicing.

  So I said, “Rigby, stay here with Sophie, okay?”

  And I walked out and left them there. And went back up the back stairs, and went back to bed.

  But I was too worried to get any sleep.

  Sophie got home at about a quarter after four. I was braced for just about anything. What I didn’t expect was to hear my mom yelling. All the way up the driveway.

  “Sophie, wait! Sophie, come back!”

  I winced, thinking of Paul’s neighbors. I wondered how long it would be before they complained to him. And how he would take it when they did.

  Then my mom’s yelling morphed into yelling to me.

  “Angie, look out! Block the doggie door or something!”

  I was sitting at the kitchen table, and I looked down at Rigby, who was already looking up into my face. Like she was wondering whether I had any explanations or instructions.

  “You want to go for a walk?” I asked her.

  She stood up and started wagging. Of course. What else would she do? That’s not a yes-or-no question for a dog. It’s a yes question.

  I stayed clear of that lethal tail on the way down the hall to the back bedroom. I grabbed her leash off the peg by the door. We stepped out onto the landing together just as Sophie hit the bottom of the stairs.

  “Wait there,” I told Sophie. “We’re coming down. We’re going for our walk.”

  She didn’t wait. She started up the stairs.

  I didn’t like my odds if I tried to reason with her, so instead I just led Rigby down the stairs, and when Sophie bumped into us, she had no choice but to turn and walk back down again.

  We all three walked down the driveway past my mom, who looked like a limp dish towel somebody needed to wring out.