by Sarah Dooley
“No! Of course I don’t want you to! I want you to be quiet a minute while I think!”
Adam’s got the door half open already. “Let you all have a minute alone,” he says, and heads toward the phone booth. I watch him flip through the pages, but I can’t tell whether he’s searching for vets or just stalling. Zany’s staring after him, too, but I don’t think she’s really watching him.
“What a mess,” Zany says, blowing out through her lips.
“It’s not my fault.” I’m quick to defend myself.
“God! I wasn’t saying it was.”
“But you think it is.”
“No, shut up. Would you quit trying to pick a fight?”
“I’m not fighting. I’m just—” I huff a sigh. “Zany, maybe you really should have left me at home. All I’ve done is mess things up.”
“Is that what you call that place?” Zany asks. “Home?” Too late, I realize I’ve messed up one more thing.
But I don’t have anything else to call it. “Yeah. I mean, I live there. My stuff’s there.”
“Your stuff’s there. What about your family?”
I suck in a breath and it comes out sounding like I’m crying, even though I’m not, exactly. “Zany, my family lives in a gross apartment with no room for me. And I live with somebody else. There’s nothing I want to use the word home for.” I huff another sigh. “Only it’s hard to stop using words.”
“Okay,” she says after a minute.
Adam opens his door then, so we don’t say anything else. He doesn’t comment on the changed mood in the truck, even though I figure he’s got to be able to tell.
“Did you find any vets?” Zany asks.
“There’s an emergency clinic stays open twenty-four hours, according to their ad,” he says, and hands Zany a sheet torn from the yellow pages.
The vet clinic turns out to be a small two-story building with a sign on the door urging patrons to call upstairs in case of emergency. There’s no phone number, but Zany explains that they don’t actually mean call. They mean I should climb the narrow metal staircase and knock on the door up top.
I hate being the one who has to do things. When we go out, Mrs. Madison always does the talking. Before that, back with my family, I always had a whole crowd of people who could do the talking for me. It’s not that I’m shy. I just don’t see the point in being the one to place an order with a waitress, ask for directions, or tell the librarian I need to renew my books when there are other, much more loudmouthed people around.
But this is my grandmother’s dog and I’m the one who brought him. Tucking him into my robe, I hurry up the stairs. It looks like an apartment, like maybe the vet lives above her little clinic. She has a sticker on her window that says IN CASE OF FIRE, with a list of names of pets to rescue, all named for things out of the sky: Cloudy. Starry. Sunshine. Through the little window in the door, I can see a green microwave clock glowing in a kitchen. It says 12:41 and I groan. We’re supposed to be more than halfway to Asheville by now. I’m pretty sure we haven’t even made it a fourth of the way.
It’s hard to knock with an injured poodle in your arms. I end up bumping the door awkwardly with my knee. “Hey . . . Hello in there? My dog needs help! Hello?”
The apartment stays dark and silent and I’m pretty sure nobody’s home. Maybe the vet got called out on another emergency. Maybe somebody else’s dog got hit by a car tonight, or maybe the people in that three-car accident had a dog with them and it got hurt.
Then I hear creaking inside the apartment, and I take a step back and cradle Haberdashery so tightly, he gives a little squeak.
I hear locks sliding and then the door swings open and I’m looking into the blinking face of a skinny old woman with gray hair down past her butt. Cats are circling her ankles like moths circle a candle. Occasionally, without glancing down, she stomps her foot in front of one of them to keep it from escaping. She’s wearing a lumpy robe with cat hair all over it, pockets bulging with who knows what, like maybe sardines or something.
“What have we here?” she says.
I’m too scared to speak, so I shove the poodle at her.
“Sweet boy,” the vet croons at my grandmother’s dog, gathering him into her arms, and then I feel at ease enough to speak, because she doesn’t sound nearly as stern as she looks, although her cats are hissing and growling at Haberdashery. I have trouble believing they’ve got names like Cloudy and Sunshine.
“He got hit by a car,” I say. Then I add, hopefully, “But it was going real slow.”
She peers past me at the yellow truck waiting in the parking lot. “You got parents with you, young lady?”
“Just my sister and—and her boyfriend.” I’m sure if I say we’ve accepted a ride from a dead-mother thief who got caught red-handed, she’ll call the police. “We were coming back from a late movie and the poodle got out and there was a car—” It’s all jumbled and I hope she chalks it up to me being worried and sleepy, not to me telling a whopper of a lie.
“Well.” The vet shakes her head slowly. “He doesn’t look too bad off, really. Meet me downstairs. I’m going to get some clothes on.” She eases the dog back into my arms.
I hurry back down the steps, glad to put some distance between me and those evil-looking cats. I see Zany leaning out the passenger window.
“What’s going on?” she mouths.
“She’s coming downstairs,” I whisper, like maybe if she hears me, she’ll change her mind.
The vet unlocks the clinic from the inside and I carry Haberdashery through the doors. She switches on lights here and there as she leads me down a long hallway. I’ve never seen a vet’s office after dark, and it looks spooky. I think about the animals who might have died here and wonder if cats and dogs have ghosts.
“I’m Dr. Tarnish,” the vet says, opening the door to an exam room. “Put him on the table there. What did you say your name was?”
“Dr. Tarnish? What kind of a name is that?”
“The kind of name that belongs to a vet who’ll get up in the middle of the night to see to your dog.” She fixes me with a stare and does not forget her question. “Your name, young lady?”
“Ophelia.” It doesn’t occur to me to lie, and I skip my nickname because people look at me strangely when I say “Fella,” since I’m a girl and all.
“Pretty name.”
“My Mama Shannon gave it to me after one of her favorite songs.” It’s been a long time since me and Mama Shannon danced around together, singing my namesake song. My heart hurts.
“And the dog?”
“Haberdashery.”
Her eyebrows disappear under her gray bangs. “Well, that’s a new one!”
“My grandmother keeps him all clipped and proper and sometimes she puts a bow tie on him, so my grandfather used to call him Haberdashery because that’s a fancy clothes store for men and he looked like a well-dressed gentleman. The poodle, I mean, not my grandfather. From what I remember, he had crazy hair and always wore flannel.” Weirdly, talking about the Madisons makes me miss my grandmother, even though I saw her earlier this evening. I don’t miss her the way I do Mama Lacy or Mama Shannon or even Zany. I miss her different. But I do miss her, and it surprises me. I thought I hated her, but can you miss people you hate?
“I see.” Dr. Tarnish is peering into Haberdashery’s eyes with a light, feeling his legs, squeezing his stomach. She turns on some clippers and buzzes a spot of hair off his leg, then dabs on red medicine and wraps the paw in gauze.
“Good as new,” she says, patting the dog and giving me a smile.
It can’t be that simple. But Haberdashery, dazed though he is, doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, and his breathing seems normal.
“Really? You mean he didn’t break anything? ’Cause he didn’t get up for a few minutes and I thought maybe he broke someth
ing.” I can hear my own voice shaking. The idea of coming home with a broken poodle is frightening.
“Probably stunned him, is all.” She picks him up gently and looks him in the eye. “Now you stay out of trouble, old fellow,” she says, and hands him to me. I tuck him against my now-bloody pink robe and I see Dr. Tarnish looking.
“Odd thing to wear to the movies,” she comments.
“Well, it was a late movie,” I remind her. “I’m going to go put him in the car. Um, how much . . . I mean . . .”
“Receptionist doesn’t come in till nine. Leave your parents’ information and I’ll have him contact you with the bill.”
I have no idea what information I’m supposed to leave. If I write down Mrs. Madison’s phone number, or Mama Shannon’s for that matter, will Dr. Tarnish call one of them right now? But she said the receptionist wouldn’t be in until nine, so it’ll probably be at least that late before a call is made. I glance out toward the truck while I’m stalling, and I’m distracted by Zany, who is waving from the window.
“Here’s the form,” the doctor says. “You don’t have to fill it all out. Just leave your parents’ name, phone number, and address. When James contacts you, he can put your parents’ information in the computer.”
Zany and Adam are both going nuts outside in the truck. I see arms waving. I scribble down Mama Shannon’s information. She’s really my parent, after all. “Yes, ma’am. I mean, doctor. I mean—I mean, thank you.”
I jog toward the truck because I can’t imagine what’s going on, but I can tell it’s not good. By the time I reach it, Zany’s got the door open, and she pulls me and Haberdashery inside. Adam barely waits for the door to close before he hits the gas.
“What’s going—oof!” The truck peels out of the parking lot so quickly I fall against the door, Zany smushing me from the middle.
“You’re missing,” Zany says, and turns up the radio.
chapter
9
“. . . was reported missing shortly after midnight by her custodial grandmother. Ophelia Madison-Culvert is four feet nine inches tall and was last seen wearing a pink satin bathrobe.”
It’s incredibly weird to hear myself talked about on the radio.
“Not the best outfit to run away in,” Adam says, eyeing my robe.
“She’s pretty bad at running away in general,” Zany says.
“Am not! I’m just doing what you tell me!”
Zany starts listing the ways in which I’ve failed already tonight. “You brought the stupid dog. You didn’t lock the car at the rest stop. You didn’t roll up the window so the dog couldn’t get out on the interstate. You gave the dog my sweater. You have absolutely been a treat this trip, Ophelia!”
“Shut up, you haven’t done so great, either! You’re the one who left your purse on the hood of the car. You’re the one who forgot the camera and put us way behind! You’re the one who wanted to go on this stupid trip in the first place! You’re the one who stole Mama Lacy off the mantel!” I see Adam look at her and then back at the road.
“Do not blame this on me,” Zany says in this voice like she knows there’s a chance it’s her fault. “I couldn’t have known what would happen. Shoot, I still don’t know what’s going to happen.”
This is the point in the argument where we would ordinarily storm off in opposite directions, but we’re cooped up in the cab of a truck. Her hand reaches over once in a while to stroke the poodle. Mine reaches toward her now and then to touch the urn.
I figure Zany’s mad enough that she’s got to let off steam somehow, because she whips around quickly to fix her gaze on Adam. “And you.”
“What?”
“What do you mean, what? Stealing my mother’s ashes? Stealing our gas money, which you still haven’t given back, by the way.”
“We’re using my gas,” Adam says.
“That’s not the point. The point is—the point is—”
“The point is you stole from us,” I offer. “We were already having what Mama Lacy calls ‘an impossible go,’ and then you stole from us and made it even worse.”
“And look where it got me,” Adam says. “Way off course and way off schedule. I ought to have driven right on past you in that traffic jam.”
“She didn’t give you much choice, if I remember,” I say.
“Well, it don’t matter. I’ve got to make up time.” The truck moves a little faster as he says it. “I need to get there.”
“Get where? Where’s so important you got to get to that you’d rob two kids at a rest stop when they’re just looking for their dog?”
Adam wraps and rewraps his fingers around the steering wheel. He’s quiet for more than half a mile before he answers.
“My dad,” he says in this awful voice I recognize. I see him glance over at the urn.
Zany asks, quiet, “What’s the matter with your dad?”
Adam changes lanes and accelerates. I already know what he’s about to say, because the air in the truck disappears to make room for the word.
“Cancer,” he says, soft as rain. In school I learned about onomatopoeia, words that sound like what they are. Crash. Splash. Pop. Sizzle. I think cancer is one of those words. Something that sounds soft and simple, but it latches on and grows, and when somebody says it once, everybody starts saying it again and again, a cancer of vocabulary, a word that won’t stop growing.
I don’t say anything, but after a minute I reach over and take the urn from Zany. It’s warm from her grip. I hold it against my chest, careful not to bump Haberdashery, and I rock it gently, trying to do for Mama Lacy what she used to do for me.
“Where’s your dad?” Zany asks.
“Wytheville,” he says. “I can take you that far, but then I’ll have to stop. You need to find another way from there.”
I close my eyes and try to picture the map, which is still sticking out of the glove box of our car back on the shoulder of I-77. I’m not sure exactly where Wytheville is, but I know it’s a long way from Asheville. I think maybe this will be when Zany decides we should go back to the car. It would be cool by now. It would be safe to drive again—to drive right back home to West Virginia and forget this night ever happened.
But the thought doesn’t seem to cross Zany’s mind.
“That’s what we’re good at,” she says, quiet, reaching to take the urn back from me. “Finding another way.” She sounds so sad, I don’t answer. I don’t know where she gets that, though. I thought what we were good at was losing things, not finding them.
chapter
10
“It’s Sunday,” Zany announces after a while. I glance at the clock and she’s right. It’s close to one in the morning, so it’s Sunday, and it’s February 29, a day that only comes once every four years. Everything was so different last time it was February 29.
Sundays are the hardest days since Mama Lacy died. I go to church with Mama Shannon and Zany and there’s the loneliness of the empty seat next to us. No one’s ever filled Mama Lacy’s seat and everybody talks at us, but nobody really talks with us. They mean well, they just don’t know us. We only went to church in the first place because Mama Lacy wanted us to, and it took us a few churches to settle on one, and mostly the one we settled on, we picked because it was busy and we didn’t have to really know anybody. We get squeezes and hair pats and handshakes and kisses, everybody tripping over themselves to be sure everyone can tell those people are welcomed in this church—that that family isn’t being excluded because of their preferences. Their words these days are all the same: “Take care, now.” “Take care of each other.” “Take care of you.” A reminder, over and over again, that our best caretaker is gone.
I don’t like to listen to the “she’s with Jesus” stuff, either. Maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t like to think about Mama Lacy being with Jesus, who I’ve never met, when she ought
to be with me, her daughter. Somehow I can’t picture her in a white robe and angel wings when she’s supposed to wear denim skirts and dress flats.
So I tune out the take cares and I tune out the Jesus stuff, and that doesn’t leave a whole lot of church to care about. Mostly I study Mama Shannon’s face, which only looks familiar in certain light. I don’t think it’s fair that the one day of the week we get to spend together, we spend in a place where we can’t talk.
Me and Mama Shannon used to talk a lot. She liked to get up early and so did I, and that meant lots of early-morning conversations while Zany and Mama Lacy were still sleeping. She would let me sip her coffee, which didn’t taste good at first, but I wanted to make her proud, so I kept trying. I would ask her the questions that had been on my mind that week, like, “Can bugs see germs, since they’re both so little?” And, “Why can’t we get another cat?” And, “What if Mama Lacy doesn’t get better?” And she would ask me the questions that had been on her mind that week, like, “What should I do with my hair?” And, “How many cats do you think one family needs?” And, “Should we go back to Asheville?” And, “What if Mama Lacy doesn’t get better?” She never talked to me like I was a kid. We were just two Madison-Culvert women chatting over coffee.
Now we haven’t talked in six months.
Not about anything. When Mama Shannon picks me up from Mrs. Madison’s, she quizzes me on whether I’m fed and sleeping and passing my classes, and then she goes quiet, not the sad, about-to-cry quiet of the first few weeks after Mama Lacy, but more of an awkward silence, like she’s not sure what to say. Usually, she ends up mumbling about whatever’s around us. “When did they close the dollar store?” “Fancy cars they’ve got on this street.” “Funny-looking dog.” Sometimes I remember our conversations and our questions for each other, and I think, This. This is what happens if Mama Lacy doesn’t get better. We all come apart.
When we get back to Mrs. Madison’s after church each week, I always ask Mama Shannon to come in and she always says no. She never so much as looks at the house, knuckles white on the steering wheel, eyes on me or on the road. Zany does, though. Sometimes I catch her staring. I can’t tell whether it’s at the long, paved driveway or the wrought-iron patio railings or the little frosted windows on each side of the door, but she stares. Sometimes I can see the bitterness and longing all mixed up on her face before she and Mama Shannon drive away. Zany’s eyes are so expressive. You can see so much in them, frowns and tears and smiles, even though the feelings hardly ever reach the rest of her face these days.
