Last Chance for Paris

by Sylvia McNicoll

  A tiny, discreet tattoo; even my grandmother had advised my mother to “Pick your battles and don’t fuss over the small stuff.”

  The scab is healing nicely, despite my mother’s warnings about infections and brain diseases that dirt on the needle or lead in the ink might cause.

  The strawberry that broke the camel’s back, that’s what Mom called it. “You’re supposed to be eighteen to get a tattoo! How did you talk your way around that?”

  “I borrowed Imelda’s ID.” Imelda is my boyfriend’s sister, of course, and Mom hates Zane, my boyfriend, anyway.

  Me, I fell in love when I first heard his name, starting with a zee just like mine. “My mother called me that because she was ‘inZane’ to have me at her age,” he’d explained to me.

  “Ha! My parents named me Zanna because, after thirty-six hours of labor, my mother yelled ‘HoZanna’ when I finally came out.” We were psychically linked, something Mom obviously couldn’t understand since she’d thought nothing of separating me from my twin brother so long ago.

  “Zane has absolute control over her,” I overheard my mother tell my father on the phone. “You take her this summer. I’ve had enough.” But sending me to Last Chance Pass had nothing to do with Zane, if you think about it. All she had to do was take me to Paris and I wouldn’t have seen him again. What kind of mother gives up and throws away her children, anyway? One at a time: first Martin and then me. I yank my sock up over the offending fruit.

  The smell of something cooking wafts up. Delicious. I inhale deeply and my stomach growls again. They don’t care that I didn’t help unpack, they don’t care that I’m not joining them. They’re a practiced team, those two. What’s the use? I head down the stairs again.

  “There’s meat in this stew,” I complain as I lift the lid from the pot.

  “You can pick it out,” Martin suggests from the bar stool on the other side of the counter. “The gravy only has artificial beef flavorings, trust me. I checked.”

  “Did you buy any hummus?” I ask Dad, sitting beside him. He shakes his head. I open the bread box in the cupboard. “Could you not find any whole-grain bread?” I stare at the thick white Italian loaf.

  “Any tofu?”

  “ ’Fraid not. I did pick up a surprise for you. Third cupboard from the left.”

  I fling open the doors and pick up a jar of something that looks like…

  “Pea butter,” Dad tells me. “It tastes, smells, and looks exactly like peanut butter. A Canadian invention for people who have allergies.”

  “But Dad, Zanna doesn’t have allergies, she’s just vegetarian.”

  “Peas are vegetables,” Dad answers.

  I open the jar and squint at the contents. From down below, I hear a whimper. My stomach shocks me with its new tones of protest. I grab a knife and saw off a couple of thick slices of bread. Then I spread the pea butter on one of them and pat the other slice on top.

  I bite into my sandwich and savor the close-to-peanut-butter-taste. A whimper, a growl, a snarl, a yip, and a yowl. It’s not coming from me this time. I touch my stomach just in case and feel no vibrations at all. More whimpers. I look at my brother.

  He shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. Dad jumps down from his kitchen stool. “There’s an animal under this house.”

  CHAPTER 2

  MY BROTHER shoots out the door. By the time I catch up, he’s shimmying, belly in the dirt, under some cracked boards in the closed-in area under the balcony.

  “Dad, Dad! It’s a dog and he’s hurt.” Only Martin’s legs hang out from under the boards.

  “Careful!” Dad warns. “What if it has rabies? Injured animals bite!”

  Aouuw! As if in protest, the animal howls, long and mournful.

  “What should I do then, Dad? He’s stuck but he’s struggling and making it worse.”

  “Put your jacket over his head and pull him out.” A few moments pass and we hear low growling.

  My brother’s legs shimmy backwards till his hips appear again. The dog yips and yaps, the sounds more muffled now. Then Martin stops. “Dad, I’m stuck!”

  Dad leaps to his assistance, cracking back the wood above Martin’s hips. Martin pulls out slowly. The dog struggles in his arms, his head tossing underneath Martin’s jacket. Martin takes it off and the animal pants, looking almost happy.

  “Why, he’s just an overgrown puppy,” Dad says.

  I squint at it sideways. What a weird-looking creature. A husky pup? He has black and brown markings on most of his body, and a white mask forms the top of a heart around his strange yellow eyes. They seem catlike with curiosity, and fierce. But then his oversize paws and donkey ears give him a puppy-dog awkwardness. His legs dangle over my brother’s arms, long and bony just like Martin’s.

  “We better bandage up that cut,” Dad says, gesturing to the red gash on the pup’s left front leg.

  “Bring him into the house.”

  As we head to the steps, I notice a padlock on the door cut into the honey-colored boards beneath the balcony. “Look, we could have walked in to get him.”

  “So that’s what this last one is for.” Dad holds up the smallest key on his chain. “We’ll have to check it out. Maybe we’ll find more tools.”

  A motor scooter would be good, I think, watching him hesitate.

  “Dad, let’s go!” Martin calls, and we follow him into the house.

  In the bathroom, the puppy struggles to get away. I watch from the hall. “Hold his head under your arm, away from me.” When Dad dabs antiseptic on the cut, the pup yelps, high-pitched, in pain. Dad wraps some gauze around the wound and tapes it in place. “Make sure he doesn’t chew at that. You can set him down now.”

  The overgrown puppy makes a successful break for it as Martin lowers him. We head into the living area to see what he’s up to. He lopes around the small space, yapping at us and stopping every once in a while to sniff and duck away. Something spooks him and he leaps onto a couch, knocking over a moose-shaped table lamp. The ceramic antlers shatter on the floor.

  “Heel, sit, stop!” Dad calls, setting the lamp back upright. The moose head now appears to be female. The puppy jumps down and attacks my sneaker.

  “Ouch, get off!” His teeth sink through.

  “What should we call him?” Martin asks.

  I gather up ceramic antler bits from the floor. “We can’t possibly keep him!” I shake my foot free of the puppy again. “Look, he’s made holes in my Paluzzis already.” I stomp my foot. “Shoo!”

  “C’mon, Zanna, we always wanted a dog.”

  “When we were little, sure.” I remember begging in stereo, Martin on one side and me on the other, when the tenants’ dog next door had puppies. Me: “Please, Mom, we’ll walk him.” Martin: “We’ll feed him.” Both of us: “We’ll never ask for anything else for as long as we live.”

  Mom said no. “The apartment is too small. We travel too much. Dogs are too much work.” A long list of “too’s,” all of which still apply.

  The puppy growls, yellow eyes still hypnotized by my Paluzzis, ears up antennae-style. “Besides, he must belong to somebody.”

  “What do you think, Dad?” Martin asks.

  Dad shakes his head. “He’s big, but he’s young. No collar or tag. It seems more likely some dog had a litter out here and left this guy behind.”

  I think of Mom again, probably sipping a cappuccino in a little café right next door to the Eiffel Tower. “Paris,” I sigh.

  They turn to look at me: Dad, Martin, and the oversize puppy.

  I didn’t mean to say that out loud and I don’t want them to know I was thinking about Mom, who would never let us keep an animal. “We should call him Paris.”

  At that moment, the puppy jumps toward my sneakers again.

  “It’s like he already knows his name,” Martin says.

  “He sure does love Zanna.” Dad smiles. “Paris it is.”

  “He loves my designer sneakers, is what he does.” I throw up my hands.
“Look at this place. It’s too small for this animal. Besides, we have to at least try to find his owner,” I sputter.

  “That’s right,” Dad agrees. “If we find an owner, Paris has to go back.” He’s using that special tone, just humoring me. He doesn’t think Paris has an owner.

  Martin and the dog grin. So does Dad. I’m the odd woman out. Even the husky puppy is very obviously a male. A sinking feeling inside tells me the sneaker-chewer is here to stay.

  “We should go back to town and check with the animal-shelter people. There may be someone looking for him right now.” That way I can also see if Zane’s e-mailed me back yet.

  “What animal shelter?” Dad frowns. “Why don’t you clear up the dishes and give Paris the lunch leftovers, Zanna? Martin, let’s go check out the tools under the house.”

  Floppy paws once again grab hold of my sneaker, claws dig in. “Hey, why do I get stuck in the kitchen?”

  I shake my leg to loosen Paris’s teeth from my shoe. He yips, encouraged by the game.

  “We did all the unpacking,” Martin answers, and the two of them troop out the door.

  “How would you like to have a Canadian invention to eat?” I ask Paris.

  The puppy glances up from chewing my lace, head tilting, ears and eyes sharpening.

  “Do you want the most yummy-tasting sandwich in the world? Huh? Do you, boy?”

  The puppy’s tail is wagging like crazy now, moving his whole butt from side to side.

  “Then let’s go.” Paris chases after my heels into the kitchen. I rip off a piece of my pea butter sandwich and throw it to him. He catches it in his mouth, and in an instant something on his face changes. His grin drops at the same time as he hacks and spits out the bit of bread.

  “Well, that’s all I get to eat around here.” I finish my slice. He’s slumped down on the floor, yellow eyes not blinking at me.

  That can’t be all, they say.

  “Hey, I’m not the one who should be feeding you anyway. Otherwise you’ll have to settle for bean sprouts or tofu. No way am I touching meat.”

  Paris lets out a disappointed yowl. His eyes beg for something else.

  “Okay, fine. This one time.” I grab the pot of stew from the stove and slam it down on the floor for him.

  Paris glances up, mouth opening into his favorite toothy smile. Then, in about ten seconds flat, he scoffs it all up. I give him a bowl of water and listen to happy lapping sounds. Suddenly, Paris stops drinking and growls as he races for the door. I hear pounding across the porch and head into the living room. Dad and Martin fill up the vista at the front.

  They’re carrying a wooden pole between them.

  “Martin saw this under the porch,” Dad tells me as they continue through the house and up the ladder to the loft. “And he had a great idea.”

  “Goody,” I answer, not understanding the grand find. I step into the living area to watch from the ground. Martin holds the pole, while Dad marks off something with a pencil. Then he begins drilling. Beside me, Paris leans his head back and howls.

  “We need to go dog-food shopping,” I shout at Dad. As good a reason as any to head back into town and check my e-mail. I’m craving my Internet fix.

  The drilling stops for a second. “Give us half an hour here, Zanna. Why don’t you go outside with the dog? Oh, by the way, on my bed there’s a present from your mother. She wanted you to open it when we got here.”

  The drilling and howling start again. I grab Paris and haul him up. Whoa, he’s a heavy pup. “We don’t want a stupid present from the stupid woman who doesn’t want us, do we?” I scratch roughly between his ears and Paris scrunches his eyes closed in agreement. Still, after a moment I can’t pretend I’m not interested. Nobody’s looking anyway, and the bedroom is only a few steps away.

  There it sits. A large, brown-wrapped parcel. The puppy jumps on the bed to sniff it. “No, Paris. Food’s not Mom’s style.” I lift it. Heavy. What could Mom possibly think she could buy to make up for all this? Paris jumps down and sniffs at a corner, lifting his leg. “No! Bad puppy!” I scoop him again and rush him out the front door, down the steps. Will he be okay by himself ? “Don’t go anywhere!” I tell Paris and run back to get the brown package.

  Thing is, Mom buys great guilt presents. The Paluzzi sneakers were from when she took off for New York, leaving me at home with chicken pox and her mother. I got a cell phone when she missed my grade eight graduation ceremony. When I got rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy (after she told me to go to school, that I’d feel better later), she bought me a new CD player that flashed colored lights to the beat of the music. All of which, sneakers excepting, I left behind in order to travel to Last Chance. This present had better be good to make up for that. When I get back outside, I sit on a rocking chair and rip open the parcel.

  It’s wooden, a piece of spindly furniture of some sort. I pull open a small drawer and find tubes of paint. I understand. It’s an easel. Under the tubes of paint is a piece of paper. Instructions on how to make it stand up? No, it’s a note with a picture of a Monet painting at the top. I clench my teeth together tightly as I read my mother’s words.

  Zanna. You don’t believe me now but sometimes it takes a change of place for a person to see her life differently. You and I are so much alike. I think we both need another space right now. I hope you can make sense of your new world with these paints. I look forward to seeing what you come up with next time we meet.

  Love, Mom

  I stare at the painting. It’s one Mom and I saw at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, together. Soft, purple boats sailing against fiery orange skies with gentle pinks and purple stripes. I read the tiny print to recall the name. Sunset on the Seine.

  I’m angry with Mom all over again. She’s looking at a scene like this right now. I’ll bet she sees her life differently all right, surrounded by hundreds of years of culture. Here I am, stuck in the middle of the wilderness. I stare out at the lake, which has changed to a steely color. The mountains skulk in the background, charcoaling the sky; the peaks smolder in a pale mist. My world looks as angry as I feel. Where am I supposed to even get canvas if I do decide to paint? I pitch the easel to the porch and stand up in time to see Paris leap at something.

  “Paris, what are you after?”

  A huge grasshopper jumps away from his paws and Paris pounces again. When the grasshopper springs, Paris makes a lucky snap for it with his muzzle.

  “Ew, let it go!” I tell him but he’s already happily chewing. I dash to grab his muzzle but he runs away.

  “Come and check it out!” Dad suddenly yells from the balcony at the front.

  I give up on Paris and head up the steps. As I slide back the big glass door, I see what Martin and Dad have been working on. The purple curtain with blue and red poppies divides the loft in two. They’ve mounted it on the pole they dug out from under the porch.

  “We can get something different when we go into town for more supplies,” Dad says. “But the concept, do you like it?”

  My brother grins from his side of the poppies; this is his big idea, after all.

  Not exactly a Sunset on the Seine. Still, the clashing colors lend the first touch of sincerity to the cabin. “I like it, Dad. Poppies and all. But we have to go into town right now. The dog is so hungry he’s eating bugs.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE SKY changes quickly in Last Chance. By the time we’re back in town again, the mountains have no tops anymore, only smoke clouds. Without the alpine backdrop, the town appears even more dingy and desolate, the grizzly sculptures at the gate like fossilized animals instead of art. With a dark brown log exterior and the traditional brown-and-yellow sign-age, the Park Information Office looks like a frontier fort guarding the other two shops in the strip mall.

  “Let’s hit the hardware store first,” Dad suggests as he sets the hand brake in the truck. Martin agrees. The hardware store and the grocery shop are the other two buildings in the strip.
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  Paris scrambles on top of me to be the first one out. He’d been the first in the car too, and still wears the yellow rope looped around his neck from when Dad tried to haul him out.

  “I want to check my e-mail. You guys go ahead,” I tell them.

  “Great,” Martin says, but then the two of them take off, leaving me with the dog. Can I leave him behind? He may rough up the insides of the truck, but who would ever notice?

  By the time I climb out, though, Paris has squeezed around me and, stubbornly resisting the pull of the rope, lands on the sidewalk. “Fine. Just behave,” I warn him as we push through the Park Office door.

  It’s a dark, wood-paneled room with bare antlers hanging over the entrance. To the left is a counter with a couple of desks behind it. The two uniformed guys sitting at them don’t really pay that much attention to me until a large, gray-muzzled black Lab lifts himself from the younger guy’s feet and woofs at us. The Lab didn’t bark at us when we were here getting directions. In fact, I thought he might have been stuffed or made out of wood, like everything else around here.

  I make sure Paris stays to my right so the Lab doesn’t see him.

  “Shh, Quincy, just a city girl.” The ranger looks about Zane’s age. Taller though; broader shoulders, deeper voice. The Lab collapses back down into a heap.

  Hey, what does he mean, “just a city girl”? “Hi, I’m going to use the Internet, if it’s okay?” I call. The guy waves me on.

  Paris enjoys sniffing along the baseboard, slowing down the walk to the computers, which sit on a center aisle of desks at the back. The whole right wall is a glassed-in display of stuffed wild animals, and by “stuffed” I mean the dead, glassy-eyed ones, not the fluffy toy filled-with-only-new-white-material kind. A black bear stands frozen on her hind legs alongside her cub. A beaver has his orange teeth locked on a branch for eternity. A small field mouse sits stiffly in the earth and an elk, just like the one in our lake, stoops to get a drink that will last forever. Caught in mid-snarl, a wolf wrinkles up his muzzle to bare some pretty scary teeth. Looks like he’s eyeing the cute little bunny, also frozen in time, behind a bush. Not much difference between that wolf and somebody’s dog—maybe the wolf’s a bit bigger and broader across the chest, although Paris is pretty big that way too.