You Lucky Dog

by Julia London

  “Mind if I heat this up?” Victor asked, oblivious to the intruder. He’d already put the dish in the microwave. She wouldn’t be completely surprised if he tossed a salad next.

  “Carly! Why are there two basset hounds?” her mother called before appearing in the living area, sailing in with the dogs trotting on either side of her. She was dressed in tennis togs, which seemed an odd choice for a woman who didn’t play tennis. But that was typical of Carly’s mother—she liked to assume personae she didn’t actually inhabit in real life. And she always managed to get away with it.

  Evelyn Kennedy was a pretty and petite woman, with hair still a buttery shade of blond, and a figure that looked like she couldn’t possibly have given birth to three children more than twenty-five years ago. She had the same blue eyes as Carly, but that was where the similarities ended between mother and daughter, both in physical features and in personality. Carly was four inches taller and had a figure her mother had once said was good for childbearing. Carly also had big ambitions in life and didn’t care who knew—she was very direct in her approach to her goals. Her mother had ambitions, too, but took a more passive-aggressive route to achieving them.

  Her mother bent down to pet the dogs, then walked up to the kitchen bar and spread her hands wide, leaning forward. “Isn’t anyone going to introduce me to the nice young man in your kitchen?” she trilled.

  Oh no. Carly wanted to die—her mother had met Victor before. “Mom!” Carly said with a nervous giggle. “You remember Victor Allen. You met him, remember? He’s my fashion designer client.”

  “Oh!” Her mother laughed. “Is that who you are.”

  Victor closed the door to the microwave. “That’s okay, Ms. Kennedy. Fashion designers all look alike.” He turned around to get his fork.

  Carly took the opportunity to shoot her mother a dark look. Predictably, her mother didn’t see it. “Well, I’m not surprised I didn’t recognize you, Victor—your hair is many different colors and much bigger than the last time we met.”

  “That’s because I put some product in it to make it stand up,” Victor said. He pressed the start button to heat the lasagna. Carly’s mother looked at her, raised her eyebrows, and not so subtly jerked her chin in Victor’s direction, as if she was the one who was offended.

  “So!” Carly said brightly. “What brings you here, Mom?”

  “Do I need a reason to see my daughter? I wanted to make sure you were all right. I haven’t seen much of you lately, and, by the look of things, I arrived not a moment too soon. What has happened to your hair, sweetie?”

  “I haven’t dressed yet,” Carly said through gritted teeth. “And I never see you because you are hardly ever home, remember?”

  “You know, that’s true. I’ve been terribly busy these last few weeks. It’s amazing how emancipating divorce can be.”

  She wasn’t kidding—after forty years of marriage, Mom was sowing some major oats. As in, doing the walk of shame fairly regularly and bragging about it afterward to her friends and daughters.

  Evelyn Kennedy had announced one day to Carly, Mia, and their brother, Trace, that she was not going to wait for life to come to her, she was going to go find it. “I’ve watched the three of you grow into confident people who go after what they want. Well, I’m going to do the same.” And she’d begun in earnest, joining all kinds of meetup groups and getting involved with volunteer organizations. Her latest obsession was volunteering her time at the ACC. “That’s where you meet the hottest men,” she’d said to Carly at happy hour once. She’d waggled her brows before sipping her skinny margarita. “You should try it, sweetie.”

  The thought of taking advice from her mother about where to find a date and, even worse, the thought of checking out single men with her mother was enough to make Carly never want to date again.

  Obviously, the ACC was where her mother had gotten the idea of picking up a depressed basset hound and dumping it on one of her kids. Carly’s mother was famous for pulling shit like that when everyone was least expecting it, for deciding what was best for her children without consulting them. When her parents were married, her father provided the ballast. Without him, her mother was all over the place. How she could have thought Mia could handle an untrained basset hound was beyond Carly’s ability to imagine. Mia’s husband, Will, was in tech. He was Asian-American, spoke Mandarin fluently and flew to China at least once a month for his job, leaving her with three kids under the age of five for a week to two weeks at a time. It was hard enough for Mia with three small kids, and then here came Mom, all happy and excited to add a mopey basset hound to the mix.

  Her mother had actually gone through the entire adoption process, then had shown up at Mia’s house and presented the dog to the same three kids who had terrorized a cat so far into crazy town that the cat rarely came out of hiding.

  Predictably, Mia had lost her mind and had threatened to have a full nervous breakdown in the middle of the street so that her entire neighborhood would know how dysfunctional her family was. Carly had stepped in to save a nuclear fallout between her mother and sister. And the dog.

  Since then, her mother hadn’t seen much of her because Carly had the problem of Baxter, which meant that she had to rush home to let him out instead of stopping off to see her mother or father or anyone else at the end of her day. And what really annoyed Carly was that her mother seemed to think it was all perfectly fine now—no harm, no foul.

  One of the dogs had wandered over to get a good sniff of her mother’s bare leg. “Goodness, here is one of them again. Two basset hounds, Carly? I thought you were against dogs.” She leaned down to pet Hazel. “Aren’t you a cutie,” she said.

  “I’m not against dogs. I love dogs. I’m against irresponsible pet ownership. I don’t have time in my life to pay proper attention to a dog.”

  “Then why on earth did you get two?”

  “I wondered the same thing,” Victor said.

  Seriously, Carly was beginning to think that when she talked, the sound was disappearing into a void. “I didn’t get two. One, I rescued from my sister before something awful happened.” She paused to look meaningfully at her mother. “The other is the result of a mix-up with the dog walker, and somehow I got talked into dog-sitting while this guy flitted off to Chicago.”

  “I’ve always admired how helpful you are, sweetie. Well, I hope the rest of your week has gone well,” her mother said cheerfully.

  “That’s not . . .” Carly shook her head. There was no point—her mother wasn’t listening. She’d walked into Carly’s kitchen, crowding in next to Victor as he took his dish from the microwave. Her mother opened the refrigerator door and stared at the contents. She finally picked up a carton of blueberries and came back to her seat. “Well I’ve had the most delightful week,” she said, and popped a blueberry into her mouth.

  “Oh yeah?” Victor asked.

  Her mother cast a golden smile at both of them. “I may have met someone.” She waggled her brows.

  “Like, who?” Victor asked.

  “I’m not ready to say just yet. I don’t want to jinx it. Everything is very new, and we’re taking it slow to see if this is a thing or not.”

  Carly was confused. “But . . . but you weren’t taking it so slow a couple of days ago.” She was referring, of course, to the phone call with her mother where she’d proclaimed her joy at having been sexually liberated.

  “What?” Her mother looked thoughtful for a moment. “Oh, that was Bob,” she said with a flick of her wrist.

  Her mother had two boyfriends? It was inconceivable! What the hell was Carly doing wrong? “Mom! Are you dating two men at the same time?”

  Her mother laughed. “Well, look at you, keeping track of your dear old mother.”

  “I’m not keeping track, I’m confused.”

  “I told you, it’s called sexual liberation, my love,” her m
other cheerfully announced.

  “Hell, yeah,” Victor said, and held up his hand for a fist bump.

  Her mother completely missed the gesture and popped a berry into her mouth. “Your father and I couldn’t fulfill each other—”

  “Mom!”

  Her mother glanced up, saw Carly’s expression, and popped two more berries into her mouth. “Sorry. So what are you two doing this morning?”

  “I’m taking the red pieces out of my show,” Victor blithely announced.

  “Thinking about it,” Carly amended.

  “Doing it,” Victor countered.

  “Pieces of what?” her mother asked.

  “Pieces of fashion. Pieces of fashion from his big show in New York in a few weeks.”

  “Well, I have to admit, red is not my favorite color in a garment,” her mother opined.

  “Exactly,” Victor said, and looking at Carly, pointed his fork at her mother. “She understands.”

  “She doesn’t understand.”

  “What do I not understand?” her mother asked.

  “The red pieces are the big finale of his show, Mom. I’ve had photos made to tease them and lined up media who are interested in his work. Couture magazine wants to do an article about them! There is a lot of interest in his designs, the red pieces in particular, and everyone is waiting for the big reveal. Which I’ve arranged.”

  “Well, listen to you! That sounds so clever, honey.”

  Carly pressed her lips together at that backhanded compliment to keep from saying something she’d regret. “But we really need to work this out, Mom, so maybe you could come back later?”

  “Are you dismissing me?” she asked brightly. “That’s all right. I’m going over to the ACC to walk some dogs.”

  “You could walk these two,” Carly suggested.

  “No, thank you. I’m dressed for success and would prefer to be seen.” She laughed. “Don’t frown, sweetie. I read that is the number one cause of wrinkles around the lips. I never frown anymore. Goodbye, Victor! Don’t let her talk you into the red dresses!”

  “I won’t,” Victor promised as her mother walked to the front door.

  Carly heard the front door open.

  “Carly, you might want to get that shoe away from whichever dog it is!” her mother called as she went out the door.

  “What?” In her haste to rush into the hallway, Carly kicked a stool, and probably broke a toe, but she didn’t stop. Hazel was in the hallway with one of Carly’s good shoes between her paws. “No, no, no,” she cried, and lunged for the shoe. “Is one ruined pair not enough this morning?”

  Hazel looked terribly pleased with herself, thumping her tail against the floor. Carly looked at the mangled heel on the shoe and sighed wearily. She was going to have to figure out how to close the door on her overstuffed closet and lock it. She glanced up and noticed the front door standing open. “Baxter?” She looked around her. No Baxter. “Victor, is Baxter in there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Baxter!” She dashed outside just in time to see Baxter’s tail disappearing over the hill and headed for Conrad’s garden. She raced after him. Hazel raced after her.

  She did not reach Baxter in time to keep him from trampling through Conrad’s herb garden, but she managed to right some of the plants so it wasn’t obvious. She hoped. By the time she’d trotted Baxter and Hazel back to her house, and had put all of her shoes out of dogs’ reach, and had finished silently cursing her mother, who’d left the door open, and Victor, who had polished off the lasagna she’d made, Victor was ready to go.

  “Man, you need, like, some help,” Victor said as he walked out the door.

  “Wait, wait, wait, Victor! What about the red pieces? We should talk about this!”

  “Listen, Carly. I know you’re, like, totally into the red. But I’ve made up my mind.” He walked out the door and got in his car and with a nonchalant wave he drove away, as if he hadn’t just brought her carefully crafted publicity plan crashing to the ground.

  Carly had a very bad feeling about this. It felt like the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and she was the Titanic, sailing right into it. When she turned around to retreat into her house, she tripped over Hazel, who was standing right behind her. “Seriously?” she muttered, stepped around the dog, and went back inside with the dogs following her. She picked up her slobbered shoe and took a selfie with it. She texted it to Max. She thought the photo spoke for itself.

  Max did not answer. He was probably too busy taking a postcoital bubble bath with his girlfriend, that lucky bastard.

  Seven

  Max didn’t answer Carly’s texts or take on the responsibility for the fish oil debacle—which may or may not have been Hazel, let’s be honest, as there were two dogs in that house—because he was living his own personal shit show.

  The weekend in Chicago? The one that was supposed to be a joyous occasion for his brother that would eclipse all other memories? It turned out to be one of the hardest things Max had ever done. Oh, but his dad had warned him when Max had first floated the idea. He’d scratched his chin as he’d considered it, then had slowly begun to shake his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Son. I don’t think Jamie can handle all that excitement.”

  “Sure he can,” Max had said with all the confidence of a neuroscientist who thought he knew everything there was to know about anything. He studied brains for a living. He taught budding young scientists the intricate wonders of the central nervous system. He was an expert on neurodevelopmental disorders. He knew what medications Jamie took to manage the aggression and self-harm he sometimes exhibited; and he knew all the behavioral, sensory integrations, and occupational therapies that Jamie had been exposed to so that he could better navigate this world. He knew everything like a thirteen-year-old knew everything.

  “Look how well he’s been doing,” he’d pointed out to his father, as if his father might not have noticed.

  “Because he’s got a routine,” his dad had countered. “We do the same thing every day, and every day, he knows what to expect. But when we step out of that routine, he gets flustered. An airplane? A new city? I don’t know about that, Max.”

  “Dad.” Max had spoken with the patience and compassion a brilliant neuroscientist would have for an addled father, and had even put his hand on his father’s shoulder and squeezed it in a reassuring way. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Well, the verdict was in, and he did not know what he was doing.

  In the space of three days, he’d proved once again that all the study in the world could not substitute for actual experience in the field, in the lab, or in life. He wanted to kick his own ass for assuming that it could. Jamie wasn’t a lab subject, he was his brother, and Max had prepped for this weekend like it was a lab experiment. He had all the necessary ingredients in place, and all he had to do was set the wheels in motion, watch Jamie enjoy the event of a lifetime, and record the results. An event Max had designed with all his brain science.

  Stupid asshole.

  The trip had gotten off to a fairly good start, maybe better than Max had hoped, and he’d been smugly pleased with himself. He’d prepared for the flight, had a new copy of Dogster magazine just in case Jamie didn’t take to the flight well. But Jamie had been enthralled and had spent most of the flight with his face glued to the window, his unintelligible grunts a sign of his pleasure at what he was seeing.

  There was a small hiccup in Atlanta when they had to catch a connecting flight. Jamie had not understood the need for that. He’d tried to pull Max toward the exit. “Dog show,” he’d said impatiently, pointing at the exit sign. Max had finally convinced him by showing him the boarding passes, and they’d carried on to Chicago.

  But Chicago, with the cacophony of sounds and lights and the crush of people in the streets, was too much for Jamie. It began at the airport. When M
ax hailed a cab, Jamie refused to get in until Max lied and told him it was the only way to get to the dog show. At their hotel, Jamie kept putting his hands over his ears at the sounds of traffic and the grind of a garbage truck making its rounds.

  His first outburst had occurred on the street. Max had thought it would be a good idea to get something to eat. The concierge had suggested a diner down the street. So off they’d gone, crowding in with everyone else at a street corner, waiting for the light to turn green. The crowding had unsettled Jamie, and he’d begun to rock back and forth on his feet, one hand flapping. But when the light turned green, and the stream of people began to move across the street, brushing past Jamie, it had startled him so badly that he wouldn’t move. Max had tried to urge him on, but Jamie would not step off that curb. His reluctance prompted some jerk to yell at him, and that was it—Jamie began to melt down.

  Max was familiar with Jamie’s outbursts and was not alarmed. He knew what to do. But when a grown man—a big man at that—began to frantically flap his hands and make strange, loud noises that sounded like a distressed animal, mothers grabbed their children and men moved out of the way.

  Fortunately, they’d been close to the hotel and Max had steered Jamie back to their room and talked him through his panic, employing the skills Jamie had learned to calm himself. And then he ordered room service. They spent the evening cooped up in a hotel room, Jamie poring over his dog books, and Max staring out the window or flipping channels.

  But when Saturday dawned—as in, the sun was hardly up—Jamie shook Max awake. He was dressed. “Dog show,” he said.

  “Jesus, Jamie, it’s seven in the morning,” Max had complained. He’d rolled away from his brother and had tried to go back to sleep, but Jamie just walked to the other side of the bed and said, “Dog show,” and thrust a piece of paper into Max’s face. It was a schedule his dad had printed for Jamie, and Jamie had circled hounds and herding groups. The start time was ten.

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” Max said, and rolled the other way.