She handed it to Lila. “Yuri. Moscow.”
“This was his?”
She nodded. “I make for him. As boy.”
Lila felt like she was holding a leper’s shroud. She quickly gave it back to Mrs. Makov.
She set it in her lap and gazed at it with loving eyes. Without a word, she let Lila know that no one could chip through her defense, and Lila would find no insight in this house.
She had come to a final dead end, and it tore into her heart. As she sat there, frozen, the metal chair’s slat dug into her spine. Finally, Lila got to her feet, said good-bye, and walked out of the room. Mrs. Makov was weeping on her bed.
Outside, fog cooled Lila’s face. Her temples throbbed. Her body ached from having been so tense. More than simply crushed with disappointment, she felt stunned. How do you respond when you reach the end of the line and there’s no hope? And when acceptance seems too much to ask of yourself? Grief pressed down on Lila’s chest and made it hard for her to breathe. The possibility of guilt made it harder.
It’s over. Give up. You’ve failed. The thoughts felt like hammer blows.
She was rummaging through her purse for the car keys when a battered green Volkswagen stopped in front of the house. A galumphing Great Dane of a woman, wearing the same black hairnet and blue uniform as Mrs. Makov, climbed out of the car and walked toward Lila.
“Are you Lila?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Olga’s cousin Marina. She said you were coming. I wanted to see you, but I couldn’t get off work till now.” Her smile was friendly, but the stress lines in her face suggested that meeting Lila was not easy for her. Marina’s accent only vaguely hinted of Russian and suggested she’d lived a long time in the U.S.
She shifted a heavy canvas bag from one shoulder to the other. “If it helps you any, we’re really sorry. That’s all we can say. It’s been awful for everyone.”
“I know,” Lila said. And after meeting Mrs. Makov, she knew more than ever how awful. “I came here to find out why Yuri shot us. Mrs. Makov wouldn’t tell me.”
“She couldn’t. She has no idea. Nobody really knows,” Marina said. “Yuri was having a hard time. Harder than he expected when he came here. I think he was overwhelmed.”
“From being in a new culture? Learning English?”
“That and a million other things,” Marina said. “You may not believe me, but he was sensitive. Once I saw him cry over a Shostakovich CD because the music was beautiful. He wanted a son to name Ilya after the painter Repin. Yuri was gentle.”
“But violent.”
“Well, yes, that, too . . .” Marina looked off into the distance like she was still trying to reconcile the opposites, yet knew she never would. “Olga’s never going to get over it. Tanya comes over here every day and cries.”
“Tanya?”
“She and Yuri knew each other since they were kids. A year ago she got a visa to join him here. They were saving money to get married.”
30
As Lila started back along the artichoke fields and traveled up the coast, wind blasted the car and whipped the ocean into whitecaps. She was seething. She kept repeating: Number one, Yuri Makov had been a fraud. Number two, she’d been a fool. Number three, if he hadn’t shot himself, she’d want to kill him for her months of questioning whether she’d made him mad enough to shoot people.
Narrowing her eyes in anger, she pictured him and Reed out in the whitecapped ocean, in the same disloyal boat. Testosterone dripped from their sails’ halyards, and their bow was pointed—the better to penetrate the waves. Written on the stern was the boat’s name: Cheater. In the cabin, beds were ready for trysts. After admiring their reflections in the water, the men adjusted the mainsheet and sailed on to satisfy themselves.
Joe Arruzzi had been right that shit happened. All the time. With maniacs like David Carpenter or Eric Harris, you could almost understand how the shit evolved from cruel parents or insensitive students. You could even see how someone as disturbed as Patrick Sherrill could build up rage from what he saw as persecution at his job. But Yuri was different. He had a mother who adored him and a girlfriend who was eager to marry him. He was educated and interested in the arts. He would have had a successful future in the U.S. if he’d worked for it. In time, he could have had a good life, like his forum name on NICOclub.com.
So why had he chosen violence? If Lila tracked down every person he’d ever met, she’d surely get a different reason from each one. He’d be like the elephant that the blind men touched in different places and concluded it was a flapping ear or a spindly tail. Lila had thought she might have hurt or angered Yuri. Agnes Spitzmeier thought he was mad she’d fired him. His landlord might have felt Yuri was working too hard at a job he didn’t like, and his cousin Marina might say he felt overwhelmed in the U.S. and he resented not earning enough to get married.
Maybe all the irritations added up, and Yuri was miserable and mad. So what? Plenty of people had irritations like his, but they didn’t go out and shoot people. Somehow they coped. He should have.
Cristina’s voice came to Lila’s mind: “Yuri was nuts!”
In her head, she heard Adam say, “You’re trying to make what some lunatic did seem rational.”
They’d understood Yuri better than she had. They’d seen he was a psychopath—and certainly not the spurned, gentle soul her Pleaser might have inadvertently led on. You peel off a layer of an onion, and you’ve got an onion underneath—and from Yuri’s surface to his core, he’d been an unfaithful sneak, a predator.
Lila would never know what had made him that way. His shooting people would never make sense. She saw it plainly now while she slowed in the traffic and crept along the freeway south of Santa Cruz.
When the traffic thinned, she was free to pick up speed. She continued north and put more distance between Olga and Marina Makov and herself, and the miles calmed her anger. By San Jose it had turned from fire engine red to tangerine. By Millbrae, it was salmon pink; by San Francisco, a sickly, urine yellow. By the time Lila crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, relief elbowed the anger out of the way, and she felt like she’d opened up her chest and let extra-black buzzards fly out.
It was pointless to think about Yuri anymore, not with her mind or her heart. Adam had been right that sometimes bad things happened to good people—and to good dogs, like Grace. Sometimes bad things happened for no discernible reason and through no fault of your own. You didn’t ask for them, and you couldn’t control them. Betsy would say you had to accept them, but accepting wasn’t the same as forgetting they’d happened.
Last week after discussing Yuri, Betsy had covered Lila with the Navajo blanket and said, “There’s plenty we can never forget, but we can forgive who’s hurt us.”
Lila had said, “Even if I understood why Yuri shot everybody, I can never forgive him.”
“Oh, yes, you can,” Betsy had said. “You’re thinking of forgiveness as kissing and making up like you learn in Sunday school, but I’m talking about something different.” She’d adjusted the blinds so the room got shadowy. “My kind of forgiving means looking for freedom.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Well, you don’t have to do a whole lot. You just set down your grievance and let go the best you can. Then you wait for the Great Spirit to send you the grace of healing.”
Though Lila still didn’t see how she could forgive Yuri even in Betsy’s way, she guessed she was willing at least to ask the Great Spirit to heal her. Since her search for answers had prolonged the pain and gained nothing, she could at least try to set down the misery and anger Yuri had caused her.
Okay, Lila told herself. I know I’ll never forget what he did. But hereby, as of this minute, on Freeway 101, I will do my best to let it go. Mount Tamalpais was a witness, as were the clouds and sun and egrets wading through the tidelands in the distance. Maybe nothing would change; maybe Lila would keep carrying her grudge till the day she died. But she was open to
whatever the Great Spirit wanted. She would try to forgive and move on.
Grace, who would be waiting on Adam’s porch, was the model of Betsy’s forgiveness, Lila believed. Grace might never have forgotten Marshall’s cruelty, but she’d put it down somewhere and walked away. She accepted whatever happened as if she knew far better than Lila did that you can’t always explain abuse and dwelling on it is a waste of time. Here Lila had thought that to heal, she’d have to figure out why Yuri shot her, but Grace was what had been healing her all along.
Lila parked in Adam’s driveway and hurried through his gate, past the flourishing tomato plants and the zucchini, which would soon be hiding huge broods under their leaf skirts. As she made her way along the brick path that curved around to the back of the house, all she could think of was how much she wanted to hug Grace.
Soon she would be dancing around Lila’s feet and wagging her whole back end the way she always welcomed Lila, who could hardly wait to bury her face in Grace’s golden fur. Lila would tell Grace how much she’d missed her. Lila would thank her for seeing her through the most troubled time she’d ever had, and for showing her what was important and how she should live.
At the back steps to Adam’s porch, Lila stopped as if someone had turned a switch and paralyzed her legs. The screen door’s lower half was ripped; a giant plus sign had been cut through it. Though Adam’s foot could have torn it, Lila knew better. She also knew that if Grace had been in the yard, she’d have run to her.
Lila didn’t want to get to the top of the steps and learn the truth. She wanted Grace to be waiting on the porch more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. But when she reached the top step and looked, Grace was gone. Lila couldn’t breathe. Her hands began to tremble. She knew how a house felt when a flood washed away its foundation.
31
Lila opened the screen door. The only sign of Grace was the dent in the pillow, where she’d been curled up waiting for Lila. Next to it was a white ceramic water bowl and Grace’s pig’s ear, as good as new. She had never touched her favorite treat; all day she had worried.
Adrenaline propelled Lila to Adam’s kitchen window to see whether he’d left Grace in the house. But if she’d been inside, she’d have whined to get out to Lila. Grace wasn’t in the kitchen. The house was silent.
Lila hurried to the yard and searched around each tree and bush, even though she knew Grace would have come if she’d been outside. Then Lila ran to Adam’s only other gate, next to the compost heap at the bottom of his property. The gate was clawed—and open. Even in her pink sock, Grace had gouged the wood and fought to disengage the latch.
Shouting “Grace! Grace!” Lila tore through the gate to the forest behind Adam’s house. She ran in zigzags to check every fern, bush, and log. When she didn’t find Grace, Lila hurried, panting, to the street, where the mailman was driving by. She waved and yelled, “Stop! Stop!”
He pulled over to the curb. Resting his palm on a knobby knee extending from his Bermuda shorts, he looked down at Lila from his truck’s high seat, and his expression said that he’d like to offer her a Valium.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’ve lost my dog. A golden.”
“Haven’t seen him.”
“Her,” Lila corrected. “Grace. She has a pink bandage on her paw. And an ID tag with my phone number.”
“I’ll keep a lookout,” he promised. “You sure you’re all right?”
His concern distressed Lila more. She felt as if her frenzy were spilling out of her all over the street. How could Adam have let this happen? How could she have trusted him with Grace? After he’d accused Lila of being irresponsible, he’d turned out to be the world’s greatest deadbeat in the responsibility department. He’d not protected what was most precious to her.
Lila could never forgive him or the Great Spirit for allowing Grace to get lost. Lila had been right: No matter what Betsy said, the world was awful. Lila clenched her fists in fury, but anger wasn’t going to help her find Grace.
Still, as Lila called and called, anger at Adam almost choked her. She walked up and down every road near his house and yelled for Grace till her throat was raspy. Lila sneaked into yards, pushed back bushes, and checked behind garbage-can enclosures and under cars. She knocked on doors and stopped strangers on the street to ask if they’d seen Grace.
Sometimes they asked if Lila needed a glass of water. Or they took her phone number and promised to call if Grace showed up. Each time someone said, “I haven’t seen her,” Lila grew more frantic.
In case Grace had managed to hobble up the hill on her hurt paw, Lila went home to look for her. As Lila parked in front of the house, she mentally got on her knees and begged Grace to be waiting for her at the door. If Grace were able, Lila knew she’d be sitting on the doormat.
As Lila walked down the path to the house, she willed Grace to greet her with welcoming squeaks and with tail swishes exuberant enough to revive the imaginary sultan from a dead faint on the floor. Lila willed Grace to gobble down her supper and settle on her pillow for a production of The Napping Dog.
But all the willing in the world couldn’t change the silence that was waiting on the porch. Lila could not force Grace’s presence. As Lila got out her key to unlock the door, she thought the house looked as bleak as a person who’d lost her best friend. Just as Lila had.
Lila checked the voice mail, but no one had called to report finding Grace. Unable to think of supper, Lila stared out the kitchen window and pictured a silver cord connecting her heart to Grace’s. One yank from her, and Lila would fly to her; a tug from Lila would bring Grace home. Lila went to the porch and looked out on the street just in case her tug had worked. But Grace wasn’t there, and Lila’s frenzy slowly quieted to desolation.
As afternoon faded to dusk, she went around the neighborhood and called Grace again, then walked down the hill toward the creek. Evening shadows darkened the forest, and fog crept over Mount Tamalpais and ushered in cold. She imagined Grace shivering and looking for a warm place to spend the night, or nosing through a garbage can for food to stop her stomach’s growling. Then Lila’s mental pictures grew more disturbing. She saw Grace, hit by a car and dying beside a road in dusty, sharp-edged gravel. Or captured by Marshall and beaten and starved and rechained to her tree. Or trapped in a dog dealer’s van, about to be turned over to a medical research lab, where Grace would be locked in a small cage before experiments that Lila pressed her hands against her temples to keep from imagining.
By ten o’clock, Lila walked back to Adam’s house. Though she was still angry and would never trust him again, he was the only person she could turn to. For Grace’s sake, Lila had to seek his help and try her best to be civil.
Just back from giving a Milky Way lecture, he was eating a tuna sandwich at his kitchen table and listening to a CD of Dvoák’s New World Symphony. Clearly, he’d assumed that Grace was home safe with Lila and their plan had worked without a hitch.
“She’s lost. I can’t find her,” Lila said. “I love her more than anything on earth, and you didn’t keep her safe.”
Adam blanched and hurried to the back porch to see the ripped screen for himself. He grabbed a flashlight, and he and Lila rushed down to the gate by the compost heap.
As he shone the light on Grace’s claw scratches in the wood, he said, “I can’t believe it. She was Houdini.” He opened and closed the gate to check the latch, which was as high as his shoulder and seemed impossible for even a large dog like Grace to reach. The latch worked fine.
Shaking his head with dismay, he said, “I sure under estimated how desperate Grace would be to find you.”
“Yes, you did. I never should have left her here.”
Adam lowered the light to the ground.
He might have chosen not to respond in order to defuse Lila’s distress and avoid a fight. But she was still upset. At least he’d not been too proud to admit he’d been wrong. Still, thinking of Grace searching for her
while she searched for Grace hurt all the way to Lila’s bone marrow.
Lila kept a cool distance from Adam as they designed a poster on his computer: Across the top was LOST DOG in bold, black letters. Below, REWARD in red. Adam and Lila gave their names and phone numbers, and his address for the last place Grace had been seen. A description included her pink sock and her green collar with its red ID heart.
To get a photo, Lila called Cristina from the kitchen and asked if she could e-mail the picture from her poster to find Grace a home.
“I’ll do it right this minute,” Cristina said. “Oh, my God. That poor beastie.”
Cristina sounded sleepy. Lila was sorry to have wakened her, but Grace was too important.
“Adam shouldn’t have suggested we leave her on the porch,” Lila said. What did she care if he heard her? He knew how she felt.
“Don’t be mad at him. It’s not his fault,” Cristina said. “These things happen.”
Right. Just like good people get shot.
After Lila had finally let go of some buzzards of anger, a new flock had flapped into her heart. Along with guilt. Though she blamed Adam, she also blamed herself for trusting him. The buck stopped with her. Once again, something terrible could be her fault.
“You have to call me the second you know anything, good or bad, okay?” Cristina asked.
Please, don’t let it be bad. “I will,” Lila said.
“Leave food in front of the house. Grace might come back when you’re not there.”
“All right.”
“Check with the Humane Society. Oh, this just breaks my heart. Of all the animals . . .”
After Cristina e-mailed the photo, Grace’s sweet forehead frowned from Adam’s computer screen. Except when Lila had left her that morning, for months Grace had not looked so troubled as she did in that picture. She’d become happy as her life had grown secure and she and Lila had learned to love each other. And now . . . just looking at Grace made Lila feel like she was being sucked into a black hole.
An Unexpected Grace Page 20
