by Allie Larkin
The actual details from the pool were swirled together with what happened to my father. Jumbled, as if everyone had watched me fail to save him on a big projection screen. I knew what wasn’t real and what was, but the thoughts wouldn’t stay separate. I did know for sure I scared Bark. That was real. It was horrible.
There were footsteps in the hall. The cadence of Nan’s walk. Heavy on her heels. I slunk down to pretend I was sleeping, movement making my eyes tear again.
She opened the door. I lay very still. She sat on the bed and leaned over me. She never believed my fake sleep.
“Are you okay?” she asked, brushing hair from my forehead.
“I’m fine,” I said, not turning toward her. Not moving at all. I kept my eyes closed so she wouldn’t see how puffy they were. “I’m sorry.”
I heard her breathing. Not saying anything for the longest time. It was unbearable.
“I see you differently now,” Nan said finally.
The rush of shame that flooded my system made my face hot, my limbs frozen.
Nan took a deep breath. “I used to be afraid of how fragile I thought you were. Bitsie always yelled at me, ‘Stop worrying a stiff breeze will blow that kid over! She’s tough!’ ” Nan said in her Bitsie voice, and I realized that what I’d thought she was saying was not where she was headed. “Bitsie always said you had a lion heart.”
It was strange that Bitsie had used those words for me before and it wasn’t just something she thought up when we were talking at the drugstore. They were her label for me. The blood stopped rushing to my face so quickly, pressure in my head fading enough to be bearable.
“I couldn’t see how you were tough,” Nan said. “I saw your panic. The way words could break you. But when I watched you swim across that pool to save Bark, I understood what Bitsie meant. I saw your lion heart in action. It’s not about the fact that you’re scared. You were terrified and you did it anyway. You thought Bark was drowning and you were determined to save him with all you had. The same way you saved my son.”
“I didn’t.” My voice barely worked. “I didn’t save my dad.”
“Oh, Kay,” Nan said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t save her son. Because I ruined her big day. I made her worry about me. “I’m so sorry.”
“Kay.” She lay on the bed, wrapping her arms around me. “No one could have done more for your father.” I felt her body shiver, and realized it was a sob. “Not a grown-up. Not a doctor. No one could have.”
I held my breath, trying to stem the tears.
Nan said, “I see it now. The way you are—the worry and fear—that’s the price you pay for that lion heart. You’re always on guard to save the ones you love, aren’t you?”
I reached for her hand and held it to my chest.
“We would all save you too,” she said. “Don’t forget that.”
* * *
Althea made us oatmeal and picked a pile of kumquats from the tree in her yard. She didn’t drink coffee, but she gave us steaming mugs of jasmine green tea, and slid a bottle of aspirin across the table before I even had to ask. None of us talked much. Polite words. The silence was kind. My head was too full.
“Well,” Nan said when we were done eating. “I have to meet Bitsie and Mo at the pool to clean up.”
“Okay,” I said, getting up to rinse my bowl in the sink.
“Not you,” Nan said. “If anyone deserves a day off after all of this.”
I didn’t want to go back to the scene of the crime, but I wanted to be busy. I always hated the days after a show ended under the best of circumstances. All that work, and time, and purpose, and then, nothing. The cleanup was a process for letting go of the ideas that had been turning in my mind for months. “I can—”
“Kay, no,” Nan said, smiling. “We’re strong. We’ll manage.”
“I think that dog of yours is probably waiting to see you,” Althea said, in a mom tone, the way you offer a consolation prize to the kid who doesn’t want to leave a playdate. But I did want to see Bark. I needed to know he was okay. I needed him to know I was too.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Bark was the only one home when I got to Nan’s. I opened the door. He let out a long, desperate whine when he saw me. I bent to pet him and he knocked me over, frantically licking my face. He sniffed at my hair. Pushed his head under my hand. Maybe he’d thought I wasn’t coming back for him. Maybe he thought he’d done something wrong.
“Oh, buddy. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Fat tears ran down my face. He shoved his head into my armpit.
“Barky,” I said, kissing his head. “I’m not going to do that again. I’m not going to leave you.”
When he was done inspecting, reasonably certain I had come home in one piece, he ran from the hallway and came prancing back with Murray dangling from his mouth. He looked at me and stepped toward the living room, and then looked back at me. A few more steps. Another look. Like he was trying to use Murray to lure me into following him.
Bark settled on the couch. I sat next to him, tugging at Murray’s leg as Bark tugged back. I felt forgiven. I knew there was more work, that it wasn’t as easy as Murray and kisses and a good scratch behind the ears. But he didn’t hate me. He wasn’t afraid of me.
“You’re a good boy,” I said. He watched me with his mismatched eyes, soulful and sweet. Then he shook Murray to get me to tug again.
When Bark was done playing, I searched for the remote and noticed Luca’s camera, hooked up to the TV. I got up and turned it on.
The footage was queued to the start of the show, but I went back further. This was the camera at surface level. Toward the beginning of the file, I found myself. No one was manning that camera when it happened, so I was spared a close-up view. I was a screaming figure at the side of the pool, but it was clear enough to see the terror in my eyes, even from a distance. I yelled at Mo. My voice sounded hollow, unfamiliar.
When I attempted to lift Bark out of the pool I was singular in focus. Fast. Strong. Even in the struggle. What had felt like ages only lasted forty-three seconds.
I rewound, and watched the moment when he jumped in. Forty-three seconds. Rewind. Watch again. Before I got to him, Bark was fine. Swimming to me. He wasn’t drowning. But when I got him out of the pool, his legs shook with fear.
I did that to him. I turned what was okay into something that wasn’t.
The front door opened, but I couldn’t stop watching. Horrified. Aching.
“Hey.” It was Luca.
I’d worried so much about what I would say to Luca on the way home, but the first thing that came out of my mouth was “You’re not going to use this, are you?”
“Of course not,” Luca said, kneeling on the floor next to me. “Of course not. I was going to delete it, but when I saw it—your fear was so primal—I thought maybe if you saw that, you’d be more kind to yourself. Mo said you were embarrassed. But what happened, it doesn’t look like something you could help.” He touched my arm. “Like when you tried to save me?”
I turned away. “You knew. You were the only person at school who knew what happened to my dad. And then you jumped in.” I felt a twinge in my bottom lip, and willed myself not to cry.
“But I didn’t die.”
“You could have.”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t even care. When I pulled you out, you didn’t even care.” I remembered that there’d been a pack of peppermint gum in the pocket of my puffy coat. When I walked home, hands in my wet pockets, the gum made my fingers sticky and my eyes stung when I wiped tears away.
“I was embarrassed,” Luca said softly. “I didn’t need saving.”
“You can say that for sure, because I saved you. You were so drunk. I thought you were dead. When they called for you, you didn’t call back. I thought you were dead.” I couldn’t shake the feeling of being trapped in wet down.
“I didn’t do it to scare you.” Luca’s voice was heavy an
d careful. “I felt like the other kids. For like five minutes, I felt like a normal kid.” He sniffed. Ran his hand along the stubble on his cheek. “I could help. I would do anything to help. But you can’t expect everyone to sit vigil for your fears, Katie.”
“That’s not—I don’t—” I thought about all the people dressed in black at my father’s funeral. No one else mourned him long enough. No one mourned me. I stopped being normal and no one ever mourned for me.
“So that’s why we ended?” Luca asked, rubbing at his forehead with his palm. “Because I jumped in the quarry?”
“I couldn’t stand how much I loved you.” My voice sounded hollow, like it had in the video.
“That’s stupid,” he said, a flash of anger in his eyes. “That’s so stupid. You loved me so much you had to marry someone else? I thought you didn’t love me. I always thought that was the problem.”
“I’m not good enough,” I said. I could almost smell wet feathers. “I wasn’t then. I’m not now.”
“Don’t.”
“What am I supposed to do, Luca? I just got divorced. I lost two babies. I wasn’t okay to begin with. I’m not going to suddenly be fine now.”
“Twice now,” Luca said quietly. “Twice now, we slept together, and I thought it was the beginning of something.”
“I’m sorry.” I wanted to cling to him for comfort, but that wasn’t fair. His hurt lived in the back of his eyes. Like mine. It could get worse, it could wane, but it would never go away. I didn’t want him to pay the price of me on top of everything else. “I’d love to believe you can come along and fix me, but you can’t. And I can’t get better by dragging you down.”
“I thought I got you back,” Luca said.
“I’m going to go,” I said, holding back sobs. “I don’t want to watch you leave.”
Luca sighed. Tears in his eyes. “If that’s the way you feel about me leaving, how . . .” His voice trailed off.
He hugged me, and I hugged him back, for a moment, then I pulled away.
I whispered, “I won’t be gone long!” to Bark, so softly that only he would hear it, and walked out the front door without stopping for my shoes.
I ran to Bitsie’s and hid in Bunny’s room, sewing scrap squares together to make a quilt. The rhythm of the sewing machine told me over and over that I’d made a mistake.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The front door opened. Before I could hide the quilt squares, I heard the jangle of dog tags. Bark nosed his way into the not-quite-closed door to Bunny’s room. He jumped up, paws on my lap to lick my face. I pressed my forehead to his, whispering, “Hi, Barky! What are you doing here?”
His whole body wagged.
“Hey, Kay,” Althea called, joining us a moment later. “I thought you might be here.”
Bark searched the room, smelling everything.
Althea pointed to the quilt pieces. “That’s beautiful!”
“It’s a surprise. For Bitsie.”
She touched a square of light gray gingham. “I remember this skirt,” she said with a sad smile. Then she pointed to a square of purple broadcloth. “And that. Bunny wore the heck out of that shirt.” She worked her jaw, like her muscles were talking her out of a good cry.
I remembered her husband Sam’s red flannel shirt. He wore it on cool Sunday mornings in the winter, and you could tell it was his favorite.
“I stopped by Nan’s to take Bark for a walk and thought you might want to join us for a lesson,” Althea said.
I worried if I left the safety of Bunny’s sewing room, I’d run into Luca. I’d see him. I’d cave. I’d ruin his life. “I don’t—”
“Luca left,” Althea said. “Right after I got there.”
I nodded. It was for the best, but that didn’t stop my heart from falling. I had to fight the urge to run outside and sprint top speed to catch him at a stop sign.
“His face looked kinda like yours,” Althea said, sympathy in her eyes.
She picked up a quilt square from the stack I hadn’t sewn yet. A Brunschwig & Fils leaf-patterned chintz. “I was so jealous of Bunny’s kitchen curtains.”
“She used to get every fabric catalog known to man,” I said. I’d spent so much time at the kitchen table with Bunny, over milk and pretzel-shaped butter cookies, dog-earing pages to mark the prints we liked best.
“You honor her well.”
I shook my head.
“The things she taught you are still with us,” Althea said. “That makes me feel good.” She studied my face carefully, like she wanted to read my reaction. “Can I ask a favor?”
I tried to keep my expression even, but I worried whatever she might ask would be beyond my capacity. One of the reasons I had a hard time asking for help was that I never felt like I had enough to offer in return.
“Can you teach me to sew? Bunny said she’d teach me, but we never made it happen.”
“I would love to!” I said, relieved for something I could give her with confidence.
“Can I teach you something?” Althea asked, shaking Bark’s leash.
“Alright,” I said, standing up. “But I’m much better at sewing than walking Bark.”
“Well, you’ve had practice sewing. Did you expect to wake up one day and you and Bark would magically be in step?”
I laughed. “It did feel a bit all or nothing.”
“It’s not going to happen all at once,” Althea said. “We’ll fix this a little bit every day.”
“The first time I tried to walk him, he was such a nervous wreck. So I got nervous and now . . .”
“He’s a dog, you can’t pull that well, he started it stuff.” She gave me the same kind of look I’m sure Cara and Sophia got if they tried to wheedle their way out of eating peas. “You’re the person. He’s a big heart with a tail. Bark doesn’t care what you were feeling yesterday.”
The first thing Althea taught me was that if Bark wanted something, we had to make him sit to tell us. “Nothing’s free anymore,” she said. “He has to ask for it.”
She held up his leash and he wagged his tail. “Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked. He jumped toward her. She stepped out of his range. “Ah! What do you do?” He looked at her. He looked at me. And then he sat. His tail wagged across the floor, making a whish-whish sound.
“When I try to get him to go, he runs away. Or he wants to go, but the first stiff breeze ruins everything.”
“When he can be the follower, he’s ready,” Althea said, clipping Bark’s leash to his collar. “He reads your nerves. If he feels like he has to be your protector, that’s when he’ll freak out.”
We stepped outside and I locked Bitsie’s front door. Bark looked to Althea for cues. She handed me the leash.
I took a deep breath.
Althea smiled. “With Jax, it felt like he was trying to fill Sam’s shoes. He was so crazy about protecting me. One day, when I was out with him, there was a dog across the street. Jax started to lose it, but I caught him before he could lunge, with about three inches of leash between my hand and his collar.” She pinched the spot on Bark’s leash where she wanted me to hold. “I held it tight and kept walking and something clicked for both of us. Holding his leash like that reminded me of holding Cara or Sophia’s hands when they were toddlers and they wanted to get into everything. You’re not messing around, but you’re on their side, you know? That’s the right mindset. Bark will read you.”
I had painfully little experience holding a toddler’s hand.
“Okay, I see that storm crossing your face,” Althea said, nudging my shoulder. “Push it away, like a cloud in the sky. You can have your feelings later. This is meditation. Find a mantra if it helps.”
I couldn’t think of a good mantra, so I cycled in my head, I know the way. I know the way. You don’t have to lead.
Bark’s posture changed immediately. He was subdued. Instead of rushing ahead of me or hiding behind me, he walked close to my thigh. He still surveyed our surroundings, but he was a
passenger on our walk, not the leader.
Althea walked beside us and we made it down the driveway. A car passing by barely garnered a look from Bark. I made eye contact with Althea and smiled. “Is it really this simple?”
“Well, you want to build up from here. Keep it short. Only walk him for as long as you can keep your head in that good place. Stop before you’re done. End on a high note.”
Halfway to Nan’s, my mind wandered to Luca leaving. Bark started tugging on the leash. I tried to get my brain back in line, but I couldn’t kick the sadness.
“Tomorrow,” Althea said, taking the leash from me, but keeping our pace, “I’ll stop by and walk you two to my house after work. We’ll have tea, and you can walk him back. The next day, maybe we’ll go to Mo’s.”
“I don’t want to be a burden,” I said.
“What’s this burden bullshit? That’s life, Katie. When Homer had dementia, you sat at his house with him after school. You drove him to appointments and listened to his stories. Did you feel burdened?”
I shook my head.
“You had a way to help and it felt good, right?” Her eyes welled up. “I never would have gotten past the worst of losing Sam without Jax. He kept my heart together. I would like to pass on what he taught me.”
I put my arm around her and gave a squeeze, the way Bunny always used to with me, shoulder to shoulder. “I’m so sorry I yelled at you when Bark was gone. And that it took so long to—I should have apologized a long time ago.”
“I’m going to tell you what I used to tell Sam. You’re not your anxiety. You are a person who has anxiety. I watched you take care of Homer, and I watched you helping Nan and sewing with Bunny and dancing with Sam and the way you make Bitsie laugh. I’m certainly not going to take an anxiety attack as the symbol of all you are as a person. And I don’t think you should either.”