Wishbone, page 27
“Since when do you cook?”
She smiled. “This is the new me. What d’you say?”
I looked at her skeptically.
She looked at me with a hopeful smile. She’d lost a tooth. “I’m trying, here, Meggy. Cut me some slack would you?”
Slack. Right. I sighed. “How’s Saturday?”
I FINISHED THE week focused on the shelter. After Karen lit her fire, the construction pace picked up and it began to look like a shelter. She’d also been amassing volunteers and hiring in a frenzy. She asked me to lead a tour of the new building before the walls were closed in. It was part bonding experience and part learning how buildings work. I talked about my goals for the pet retraining and foster care program. Afterward, we went to a park for lunch and to brainstorm fund-raising ideas.
That part of the job mystified me. When Caitlin suggested a dog wash, I was ready to roll my eyes, but Karen latched right onto it and immediately assigned a committee to organize it. Stick to your strengths, Myers.
On the personal front, Gina had landed safely back in Seattle. She e-mailed a weather report: cool and rainy. I wondered if she missed the heat and humidity. Jeff and I were giving each other space for now.
Slowly, the holes in my life were wearing at the edges, smoothing and softening. Work on the shelter wove new patches that needed tending and for which I was grateful.
BY SATURDAY, AND My Dinner with Rosie, her room was a sty—dirty clothes, rancid takeout food containers, smoke filling the space. I tried to air her out on the drive back to J.P. by discreetly opening my window, but she complained about the cold air giving her a headache. She was still sober, though, so I couldn’t complain. Not all addictions can be kicked at once. I reminded her about my no-smoking policy. She sneered at me but didn’t say anything.
I hesitated a moment before letting her into my apartment, remembering what happened last time. Under no circumstances was she staying more than a few hours.
“It’s smaller than I remember,” she said.
I shook my head and tossed my keys on the table by the door. Let’s get this over with. I motioned to the kitchen area and took a chicken out of the refrigerator. She eyed my tiny stove.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Show me what I have to work with and sit back to watch the master,” she said then chuckled.
Besides the chicken, I’d bought some potatoes and frozen beans. She nodded approvingly and set to work.
I sat at my table and watched an alien take over my mother while she prepared the bird.
“Got a roasting pan?” she asked.
Oops. I had no idea. There was no point in checking the cabinets, so I looked in the drawer under the oven. Bingo. Must have come with the stove.
“How about oil?”
That I had. For popcorn. I don’t go in for that microwave crap. I got the bottle out of the cabinet. She smeared some on the bird. “Any garlic?”
Nope. She turned on the oven then set the bird in the pan.
“How come you never did this for me before?” I asked.
“I did. But your grandmother, she was the real cook.”
Once the bird was in the oven, she started in on the potatoes, washing, peeling, cutting them up, and tossing them in a pot.
“We’ll start these once the bird is closer to done.” She wiped her hands and sat at the table. “Surprised?”
Damn right. Unexpectedly, tears formed. I blinked to fight them back.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. Anger was a more familiar feeling.
“Doing what?”
“Being all domestic, when you never were before. Don’t you know this just makes me feel worse for all I missed out on?”
“Geez, you’re hard to please. I thought this was what you wanted.”
“I wanted this twenty years ago.”
She clasped her hands on the table and leaned toward me. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to not take a drink? I’m dying right now. If this isn’t worth it, then there’s no reason for me to stay sober.”
“So it’ll be my fault if you don’t make it this time?”
“Why do you always need to blame me?”
“Why do you always blame someone else?”
A door slammed somewhere in the building. Late afternoon sun slanted dusty beams across my floor. She was right, my apartment was smaller than I remembered.
“Let’s talk about something else,” she said. “What’s new with you?”
“You mean since the last time I saw you or do you need an update of the last ten years? How much do you remember of anything I’ve told you?”
“I remember you’re a smart mouth and a queer. Anything else I should know?”
I made a face, then told her about the shelter, which I already knew she didn’t care about. “Oh, and I learned to swim this summer.”
She leaned back. “Huh. Aren’t you a little old for that?”
Why did I have to be so much like her? “You’re never too old for that.”
“I need a smoke.”
So much for my life. “You can go outside.”
She trundled down the stairs. I stayed in the kitchen, half afraid she wouldn’t come back, half afraid she would. I couldn’t relax and enjoy this Happy Days moment we were having. I braced for the blow, the turn of events that always happens.
After a half hour, my bell rang. She trundled back upstairs, smelling only of cigarettes, thankfully. She checked the oven then filled the pot of potatoes with water and set it to boil.
“How about some music? Then we don’t have to talk,” she said. “Got any Cyndi Lauper?” She hummed “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
“Sorry.”
“Phil Collins? I loved No Jacket Required.”
“How about Pink?”
“What’s that?”
“A woman. Pop. You’ll like her.” I put M!ssundaztood on the CD player. See what my mother thought of “Family Portrait.”
SHE HAD ME set the table, and while she was annoyed I didn’t have any flour so she could make gravy, the meal tasted really good, which just made me sadder. I put on the TV for a distraction and while we ate, I watched my mother, straining for the dispassionate gaze of a stranger.
There were two roads before me. One, I could encourage her progress, but it was too soon to know if it would continue. I couldn’t get my hopes up. They’d been dashed too many times by her lies and drinking. Or I could sit with her and eat a meal in relative peace.
She made occasional comments to the TV, like how weather forecasters were all morons.
“I could do better,” she said, waving a chicken leg in the air. She sniggered at the commercials for drugs to treat erectile dysfunction.
I smiled and even joined in. “Whatever happened to Bob Dole?”
“Beats me,” she said.
Then she picked at the remains of the chicken and held up the wishbone. “Make a wish, Meggy.”
I stared at the tiny bone, one arm of which she dangled before me, shaking it, to make me grab it and pull. What would I wish for? I tried to wave her away. “No thanks.”
“Come on. Give it a pull.”
“I never get my wish.”
“Maybe I’ll get mine.”
Small bits of cooked flesh clung to the bone, like shreds of hope, protein for the soul.
“I can’t think of anything to wish for,” I lied.
I wished my mother would stay sober, get a job, be a mother for more than an afternoon. I wished I could enjoy this small victory of hers. One afternoon sober, with her daughter. I wished I could be more compassionate. I wished Gina hadn’t left, that Jeff didn’t hate me. I wished I knew that Violet was okay. My life dangled before me, unfulfilled wishes.
Rosie scowled. “Wish for a million bucks.”
She cackled a laugh that turned into a cough. Then she dropped the bone back on the plate and reached for her glass.
“Sure would love something stronger than water,” she murmured before drinking it down.
THE NEXT DAY, when I finished off the chicken, I picked up that little bone. As a kid, I’d wished for lots of things, but they never came true, so I stopped wishing for anything. I dropped it in the garbage with the rest of the carcass. It was a clavicle, nothing to do with magic or wishes.
Chapter 25
THE DOG WASH was a hit. Beforehand, Karen had appeared on a local cable channel and did so well, the producer offered her a steady gig promoting the shelter, adoption, and the services Sam offered—reduced-cost checkups and microchips.
I lost count of the dogs we washed, but in addition to the five bucks each we charged, a local car wash made a donation in exchange for a banner. Danny’s Sub Shop donated snacks, and the town cable channel shot video for Karen’s new show. The publicity, she said, would pay off for weeks after.
Sam brought Stanley and I gave him his bath myself. He quickly became the unofficial mascot of the shelter as kids swarmed around him and women, and men, swarmed around Sam because of him. Charisma runs in that family.
I’d only interacted with Sam on a professional basis since our bonding over the terrier. She wasn’t pushing the friendship thing but relations had definitely warmed.
By the end of the dog wash, we were both soaked. She invited me to go for a walk with Stanley around Jamaica Pond, “to dry off,” she said.
She kept the conversation light, steering clear of anything personal, mostly observing things around us. It was a gorgeous late summer day, hot but not muggy. There were lots of families, joggers and walkers, and, of course, dogs.
“Why is it always big dogs with slow walkers and little guys struggling to keep up with the joggers?” she asked.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.
A woman ran by us with a small white mop panting on the end of a leash. I laughed.
Stanley lifted his leg at every tree, long after he’d run out of pee. Squirrels teased him just off the path.
“They seem to know the length of a leash,” Sam said.
I chuckled. This was easy, being with Sam. Talk about shared interests. For dinner, we walked over to J.P. Licks and I waited outside with Stanley while Sam went in and got us ice cream. I discovered he was a total chick magnet. Every woman who passed by stopped to coo and pet him. How Sam was still single was beyond me.
We sat at an outside table, dyke spotting—all too easy in this neighborhood—and “accidentally” dropping bits of ice cream for Stanley. She practically had to carry him back to her car, he was so tired.
“That was nice,” she said. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure,” I said. And I meant it.
KAREN EXCELLED AT the Tom Sawyer thing—getting us to put sweat equity into the shelter. She worked there every Saturday once the walls were closed in. We were down to the finish work—painting, cleaning, minor carpentry. Big things remained, like installing cabinets, cages, and finishing the kennels, but there was plenty we could do.
On a rainy, late September Saturday, close to a dozen of us met at the shelter for a day of elbow greasing. Karen barked out orders and did a good job of spreading everyone around so we weren’t bumping into each other.
I stupidly volunteered to put together the shelves in the storage room. How can something that looks so simple be so complicated? There were eight billion small nuts and bolts and braces and brackets of various lengths. Did the bracket go on the inside or the outside of the whatchamacalit? Count the holes carefully so the shelf is level. By the third unit, I was ready to kill the inventor.
“Shit!” I dropped another nut and crawled on my knees in search of it.
“Need a break?”
I spun around. Sam was leaning against the jam, smiling mischievously.
“I need to break something.”
“Pizza’s here. You look like you could use a blood sugar boost.”
I tossed the small bracket that had been driving me crazy into the pile of parts. Sam looked cute in jeans and a scrub top spattered with paint. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Sistine Chapel ceiling,” she said.
I stood and shook out my cramped legs. “This I gotta see.”
I followed her down our new hallway to the lobby. The wall to the left was filled with windows that looked into the kennel area for healthy dogs. Back across from the storage room I’d been in, we had separate rooms for quarantine and isolation. There was a luxury of space that made me want to pinch myself.
A half-dozen pizza boxes were opened on the front desk. A background of chatter echoed off the bare walls. Men, women, and teens sat in the few chairs and on the floor.
I grabbed a plate, a couple slices, a bottle of water, and sat against the wall, stretching my legs out. Sam did the same beside me. I looked up at the ceiling. White puffy clouds scudded across a pale blue sky.
“Holy cow, you did that?”
“Mmm,” she said through a mouthful of pizza.
A woman sat down on the other side of Sam.
“Where’s my boyfriend?” she asked in a teasing tone. Clearly she knew Sam well.
Sam laughed. “Paint and Stanley don’t mix. He’ll be back.” She put a hand lightly on my leg. It startled me. “Have you met?”
She introduced Tanya. Didn’t say whether she was a client or friend. Maybe both. Then the hand was gone.
They chatted. I stared at my leg as if her imprint might remain.
BACK IN THE storeroom for the afternoon, I wrestled the last shelves to completion. At some point, Karen stopped in and said folks were leaving, but I wanted to finish. No way was I coming back for more of this. My fingers were raw, my back cramped, legs stiff.
I pushed the last unit into place with a satisfying grunt. Now able to focus on something other than my frustration, I heard music filtering through the building. I followed it out to the lobby. Dusk dimmed the front windows. Everyone had gone home except Sam. She was lost in a world of paint and music, swaying slightly to Tina Turner while she focused on the window trim. She dipped her brush, wiggled her hips, and did a quick dance shuffle. She didn’t hear me, I didn’t want to startle her, so I watched. Another pang of regret passed through me.
She bent to refill her bucket from the paint can and spotted me. I feebly tried to make it look like I’d just arrived, but her expression said she wasn’t buying it.
“You spying on me?” she said, but in a teasing tone. She gestured toward the windows along the front wall. “What do you think?”
The deep blue on the trim complemented the ceiling and brought the room to life. “Very nice. Michelangelo had better watch out.”
“Damn right,” she said. “So why don’t you join me?”
“You don’t want to quit? It’s getting late.” Through the rain-streaked windows, headlights flashed by on Route 9, spray from a puddle repeatedly soaking our driveway.
“I want to finish off this color. If you help, it will go faster.” She pointed to the clean brushes on the floor by the paint can.
I started painting, but she tut tutted me. “You have to dance too.”
I did a really bad Michael Jackson moon walk that made her laugh, then settled for tapping my toe. I’d painted plenty of windows with Ed, after I’d broken them, so I was pretty good.
Sam noticed. “Damn. If I’d known, I’d have made you do this and I’d have taken on the shelves.”
I shrugged. “One of my many hidden talents.”
“Look at that, you don’t even have to scrape yours.” She’d left stripes on the glass where she hadn’t been able to control the brush.
“You that messy in surgery?” I teased. She gave me a solid hip check.
Just as we finished the last window, ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” came on the CD player.
“That’s it,” Sam said with finality, like something had been building and she couldn’t keep it in anymore.
She grabbed my brush and set it and hers down. With a quick, formal bow, she took my hand in hers, put her other on my waist, and before I could think about steps, launched me in a polka around the lobby, like Deborah Kerr in The King and I. I’d never danced like this but it didn’t matter. Sam knew. As we soared and spun, her hair floated out and whipped across her face, her cheeks reddening, her smile widening. She changed direction, I followed without tripping, and she threw her head back and let out a whoop. Headlights flashed by, then the counter, then a row of chairs. Clouds swirled overhead.
