The Story of Us

by Deb Caletti

  “It will.”

  And then we both looked down at the same time. Jupiter was squatting on her shaky little back legs right there in the hall. A puddle was spreading out from under her.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “We weren’t paying attention,” Mom said to her. “It was our fault.”

  Mom was right. You could tell Jupiter couldn’t help it. She looked embarrassed. She never peed inside.

  “Shared bathroom, down the hall. I’ll get the paper towels,” I said.

  When I returned, Ben was back out again. “It’s okay, Jupe.” He scruffed her little black head. “Cricket used to puke after long car rides.”

  “Oh, God, you did,” Mom said. She took the paper towels from me, started cleaning up.

  “You guys obviously have memory failure,” I said.

  “Crystal clear,” Mom said. “Kinda hard to forget.”

  “So? You used to suck on rocks,” I said to Ben.

  Mom chuckled. “That was kind of strange.”

  “You called us by the dog’s name,” Ben said to Mom.

  “Still do,” I said.

  “Old age,” she said.

  Ben tossed our bags into our rooms.

  “Rock sucking in early childhood leads to success in later life, huh, Beetle? I got the best room.”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” I said.

  He was right, I saw, but I didn’t mind. Things could get off track, but there we still were, the three and a half of us. We’d been through a lot. And we’d always been okay so far.

  Rebecca Rose might not have been able to deal directly with life without a protective barrier of marijuana haze, but the rooms of her inn were beautiful. Ben’s was bigger, sure, but mine had a sloped ceiling and a side dormer window that made it feel like a snug attic space. There were white plank floors, soft throw rugs, linen drapes blowing gently from the ocean breeze coming in. And the view—the windows opened out to the wide, wide sea. I could have stayed in that room for a long while.

  Score a point for Dan Jax. Score another point for Dan Jax. He’d already made plenty of points with us, because he was a good guy. Maybe even a great guy. Probably Mom’s first one. I love my father, but it’s a complicated love. He can be great, really great, and then he’s suddenly a storm slowly building, a storm that finally tosses lawn furniture and garbage cans, knocks trees down onto roofs. Dan was a regular, calm sky. You kept looking up there, and, yeah, it was still blue and still blue. I said a silent prayer to whoever was in charge of these things, love things, that nothing bad would happen and that my mother would actually marry Dan Jax. There was no reason, really, that she wouldn’t, right? I mean, the other guys were assholes. Still, past assholes could make a person feel skittish. You had to be careful. It could all suddenly be different than you thought it was. A big possible mistake could be hidden anywhere, ready to blow up everything, same as stepping on a land mine.

  I was the dog-loving girl, so I had Jupiter and her bowls and stuff in my room, which I didn’t mind, even though her bed smelled and she snored like an old man. She was lying on her bed right then, her small chin on Rabbit. I lay on my bed for a while too, and then I got up. Jupiter only lifted her head, I noticed. Used to be, you’d make a move and so would she. If you went downstairs, she went too. If you went outside, she’d be right behind you. She followed you as dutifully as a Secret Service agent. But lately she didn’t mind just waiting until you got back.

  “Anyone want to go to the beach?” I called down the hall. I knocked on the bedroom doors on either side of me.

  “Shut up. Jesus,” Ben said. His voice was groggy, muffled by a pillow. Taking a nap already, I guess, and he hated to be woken up.

  Mom poked her head out. “Wanna be here when Dan and his daughters arrive.”

  “Okay. Jupiter? You and me. Want to go for a walk?” She thumped her tail on her pillow. I grabbed her leash, and she rose, stretched, wagged her tail.

  “They should be here soon,” Mom said. “Did I tell you Grandpa was coming tonight? He’s bringing a friend.” I raised my eyebrows. “No, a friend-friend. Golfing guy or something. Gram’s coming too, later, with Aunt Bailey. I told them they’d better behave.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “When those two get together …”

  “Watch out,” I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have opened my stupid mouth, but I couldn’t help it. “Hey, Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You can’t like them better than us,” I said. She knew who I meant. I was only half joking.

  “Impossible,” she said.

  Something tomato-saucey was cooking downstairs, but I didn’t see Rebecca Rose or anyone else. Jupiter wasn’t great on her leash, and she was twisting and pulling toward the dining room, smelling that cat, probably. In one of my dog books, I once read that a beagle is something like one hundred million times better at smelling than we are. A hundred million times. They can track human feet even when the trail is four days old and the person was wearing shoes. They can smell forty feet below ground. Jupiter’s whole world was smell. A hundred million smells of information. She didn’t just smell cat. She smelled CAT. She could probably smell what that cat was thinking.

  We headed down the boardwalk to the beach. The boardwalk was steeply sloped and looked like it could be rickety (image: me breaking my neck; no wedding), so I held the railing with one hand until I realized it was pretty sturdy. The sun was out, but it was windy down there, and the beach grass was whipping around. I was really giving Jupiter a treat, because before us was an endless ocean of smell—seaweed and salt air, deep water and dead things on the beach. Her nose was down to the ground. She was pulling to the right. There was probably a decaying beached sea lion two towns over. I took my shoes off, let her lead. We picked our way over the driftwood and the layer of creepy stuff and broken shells to the hard sand where it was easy to walk. Oh, that beach felt great, peaceful, and I hadn’t felt peaceful in months. We walked a long ways—when I looked back, the Bluff House was tiny.

  “Look how far we’ve gone,” I said to Jupiter.

  I suppose even if you were computer geeks like Gavin and Oscar, who were not prone to dreaming or philosophizing (unless it was about the release date of some video game, Horizon Gate Six, say), a walk on the beach would still get you wondering about the direction of your life, your purpose, the big questions. Beaches, music, and car rides—they could all bring on a sudden bout of deep, dreamy thoughts. See, I was seeing the beach and the houses, and I was thinking about how to describe it all to Janssen. I was talking to him in my head. I realized it, and then my heart clutched up. My chest had this aching pain, thinking what it might mean not to talk to him anymore. Because that’s what breaking up meant.

  The realization hit me with all its power and simplicity. You couldn’t break up and still stay together, could you? You couldn’t break up and still call each other every night and tell each other how the day went. He would go on with his own life, and I wouldn’t even know what happened. How could you not know the way the story would end up, when it was a story you’d been following for so many years? I wouldn’t know if Janssen was happy, or miserable, or if he needed me. Or if he still loved Taco Time (beef soft taco meal, number three, with a root beer). I wouldn’t know about his friends, or how he managed that economics class he was dreading next quarter. His mom had had breast cancer last year. It could return. She could die, and I wouldn’t even know.

  What was I doing? Crashing and burning my own life. I wasn’t leaving Janssen at the Sea-Tac Airport, but what was the difference?

  If I left Janssen, I wouldn’t know what was going on with him, but someone else would know. That was the other piece, wasn’t it? Maybe he’d do the Godfather film fest again with that person. Maybe he’d teach her how to swim the butterfly too. It could be one of those ideas you play with in your head, to see how it feels. You’d imagine his hands on her under the water…. You could pretend that you, too, were alone and free. Bu
t you could take it too far, let it scroll out a day or a week past someone’s tolerance and you’d mess it up forever. Especially when your mother was maybe finally getting married, and you were moving, and home as you knew it would be gone. It was an avalanche of change, so much snow barreling down right at you that parts of you were saying, Screw it. Go ahead and bury me.

  Maybe I’d messed it up forever already, after what I’d done. Maybe it was already too late.

  Why would you leave someone you love? Natalie had said to me. Even she was getting frustrated. What is wrong with you? You usually have it so together. I counted on her to understand me, but she couldn’t understand this. She poked me with the straw from her drink. You’re going to lose Janssen, and it’s going to be your own stupid fault.

  And I would say to her, How do I know what love really is? And she would say back, You’re nuts, you know that? It’s been right there in front of you all these years.

  Oscar and Gavin were getting tired of my questions too. I could tell. They’d change the subject. You’ll figure it out, Crick. Hey, did I tell you about this clock I got? All the numbers are replaced with equivalent equations…. Other people’s confusion could get old. I guess it was a little like the time Janssen broke his leg skiing. You’re caring and giving, but sometimes you just want the person to walk already.

  Jupiter and I were tromping along, when I guess she just had enough. At least, she plopped right down and decided to go no farther.

  “Okay,” I said. “Can we at least sit by those rocks?”

  Nothing doing. You could tell when she had her mind made up.

  “Well, fine, then.” I picked her up, carried her over, and sat down on the sand with my back against a large flat boulder. Jupiter sat next to me. She liked to sit real close. I put my arm around her.

  “Good dog,” I said. “How’d you get to be so sweet, huh?”

  She looked straight out to the ocean. She looked like she was thinking important things. The direction of her life, maybe.

  “When you’re old, you know things,” I said to her. But she didn’t turn to look at me. She kept looking ahead, sitting still with her own weighty thoughts, or else keeping watch for a seagull or a far-off boat or an unfamiliar one of her kind that might wish to do me harm.

  The Bluff House got larger and larger again as we walked back, and when we were almost there, I could see people on the grass on the bluff, a bunch of people, and a dog running around. Cruiser, Dan Jax’s dog. I’d played with him a few times when we’d gone to Dan’s for dinner, but so far he and Jupiter had only watched each other through car windows. The idea of getting them together—it scared me. Cruiser was young and physical, with boisterous big-dog energy. He was strong. Three times Jupiter’s size, easy, with a thick neck and meaty haunches. His fur was a golden tan, with a splotch of white on his chest in the exact shape of the shield on Superman’s suit.

  Cruiser was a little out of control. He sort of reminded me of Kenny Yakimoro, our old next-door neighbor. Ben and I used to spy on him through our fence because he was always doing thrilling things we’d never be allowed to do. Shooting cap guns or playing war with Nathan Washelli, using real-looking plastic rifles. Kenny wasn’t a bad kid, but he was always in trouble for running in the halls, or for getting carried away and knocking someone’s lunch tray over. The kind of guy you wanted on your kickball team because he gave it everything he had. That was Cruiser.

  This—them, us, the families coming in over the week before the wedding—it was all Dan Jax’s idea. I guess I could see his thinking: If you want to introduce two dogs who are going to live together, you bring them to neutral territory first. You have them meet. You let them participate in mutual activities—a walk, say. A Frisbee toss. You let them hash it out, and before you know it, they’ve figured out how to deal with each other.

  Maybe I should just say right here that Jupiter wouldn’t fetch a Frisbee to save her life.

  Maybe I should also say that Cruiser wouldn’t be my choice for Jupiter if I was playing dog matchmaker. I’d choose another old girl that might want to lie in a shady spot when it got warm. Not a big guy who’d tear up that lawn with his strong black toenails, sending bits of grass and dirt flying as he covered the places where he’d lifted his leg to mark his territory.

  I could see two girls up on that grass too. We’d never met them before either. Dan Jax’s daughters, Hailey and Amy, eighteen and fifteen, lived in Vancouver, Canada. When our parents married each other (if our parents married each other), only I would be moving into the new house in Seattle. Ben would be away at school, and I’d be home until college started in the fall, or maybe later, depending on where I finally decided to go. Up in Vancouver, Amy and Hailey would be in the relationship sphere of distant cousins, I thought. Children of your parents’ friends, maybe. Those people you mostly just heard about, listening with one ear until some jealousy-inducing words flew past. Harvard, fabulous job, moving into your old room.

  I could feel, right there, my attitude edge into something craggy and unwelcoming. I’d had bad experiences with steps. The word “step”—it’s perfect, isn’t it, for those people linked to us through remarriage? You step toward, you step away, but if you are “stepping,” you have never, will never, arrive. Thanks to Jon Jakes’s kids, Olivia and Scotty, who lived with us part-time at our old house, I didn’t believe families were meant to blend. Blend—it makes you think of smoothness and order, when it’s all more like that closet in Olivia’s room, with all the shit stuffed in and falling out. Blending was a great idea, yeah, but Olivia and Scotty didn’t care about school and ate junk food for breakfast, and on the weekends they’d stay in their pajamas in front of the TV until the day got dark again. We did care about school; we ate Cheerios, not Skittles, in the morning; and on the weekends we’d go to a baseball game of Ben’s and come home only to find them in the same place as when we’d left. You can use whatever words you want, but I knew they weren’t my brother and sister. I felt more connection to my cousins Zach and Kristina on my Dad’s side. We’d only met them once, but they had our same noses. You know your people. You recognize your tribe, same as a dog knows a dog is different than a cat.

  Anyway, here’s what happened: Jon Jakes’s kids kept trying to Parent Trap their mom and dad back together, until my mother finally lost patience. She handed back her engagement ring at the Sea-Tac Airport, just before a romantic pre-wedding trip for two to Cabo San Lucas. After the Jakes trio was finally gone, Gram brought over these small bound packages of sage we were supposed to burn to get rid of the bad feelings in our house. She went around our rooms waving the smoking bundle in the air as Ben and I cracked jokes. Put some juju smoke in the laundry hamper, Gram. Ah-ha-ha-ha! We didn’t need the sage, though. A week after they’d left, my mother was already back to singing loudly in the kitchen as she made her morning coffee, with Jupiter dancing happily around her feet. Good morning, sunshines! You brighten my daaaay! The bad feelings had taken their Skittles and gone home.

  Amy and Hailey, though. They were Dan Jax’s daughters, and it was a new start for Mom, for all of us, or so went the talk I gave myself as I made my way up the boardwalk. My mother deserved my good attitude, and so did Dan Jax, and Amy and Hailey were probably great people who were nothing like Olivia and Scotty. Maybe I would even like them. They were Dan’s kids, so why not? I had a brief fantasy—Amy and Hailey and Natalie and me, having coffee someplace in Seattle, going to the film festival. Amy making us laugh so hard. Hailey staying over in my dorm room. The thing was—it could be great. A big family. It was a possibility. Even if my experience in these things told me that their alien planet was likely on a collision course with our alien planet.

  “Well, Jupe, here we go.” She definitely noticed that dog up there. “Let’s do it, huh?”

  I could see them up on the bluff standing on the grass too, my mother with her wavy gold hair falling below her shoulders, in her pastel sundress and bare feet, and Dan Jax, with his black hair c
ombed back into a pony tail, wearing his jeans and denim shirt, and yeah, with those strong hands that came from his work as a contractor. The two of them looked like salt and pepper, day and night, but they were so similar, it could get annoying. Still, I could see it even from there. She was being herself, something she never was with Jon Jakes, or Vic Dennis, or even my father. I wondered if that’s what love looked like. Is that what I felt with Janssen, those summer days when we lay on a blanket on the grass, just reading, toes entangled with toes? Or was being with Janssen something else? Like that time we’d driven out to see the hot-air balloons in Woodinville, maybe. When we’d stood on the ground and held hands and we watched one take off, lifting to join all the others up above. I was glad I wasn’t on that crazy thing. But I thought something else then too. What if you never felt what it was like to rise and rise into the sky?

  Mom saw me and waved. Even from there, I could see how bright her smile was.

  “My mother thinks two dogs is too many,” Amy said. Amy had long, shiny black hair parted in the middle, and so did her sister. They were both thin, with hungry hip bones jutting from tight clothes. Amy smiled, sugar-cereal sweet. She wore a pink T-shirt, and I had no reason to think it, but I did—pink could be cruel too. Hailey looked off into the distance as if even the ocean itself was irritating. One corner of her mouth curled up, as if she’d just stepped in something disgusting.

  I was smiling, but inside my stupid head a siren started to blare, a mental fire truck rounding an internal corner. You were supposed to pull over when you heard that. I wondered if Mom heard it too. I looked her way, but she was just laughing at something Dan said.

  “He’s soooo cute,” Amy said. She was stroking Jupiter’s black head, but she was looking at Ben, whose hair was shoved up in the back from his nap. He’d straggled down to join us outside, and he’d greeted everyone and joked around, still wearing a pillow wrinkle on his face.