by Deb Caletti
“I can’t take this,” I said.
“Sure you can,” he said.
“This is nuts. I don’t even know your name. You don’t even know mine.”
“You don’t know who I am?” he laughed.
“Well, it says Becker on the mailbox.” Of course, there was no mailbox. They probably had their mail delivered to their doorstep on the back of some endangered animal or something.
“Travis,” he said.
“Ruby McQueen,” I said. I’ve always hated my name. It made you think of a rodeo cowgirl in some porn movie or, maybe worse, a Texas beauty queen runner-up. My parents had agreed on it for their own reasons. Before I was born, my mother was reading a lot of Southern literature, and my father, who was already dreaming of Nashville stardom, thought it would make a great stage name someday.
“Ruby, like the jewel,” Travis Becker said.
“Like the slippers. ‘There’s no place like home.’ I still can’t take this. Where did you get it, anyway? You just keep these around for girls you give rides to?”
“I was going to give it to someone. I changed my mind,” he said. “So shut up and lift up your hair. No, wait. A better idea. Close your eyes.” He took hold of my arm and bent it in front of me, then did the same with the other. I felt the cool slither of the gold chain drawing my wrists together and I opened my eyes to see the necklace looped twice around both of them, handcuff-style.
“Hey, it looks great,” he said.
“Very funny. Get it off.”
“You’re my prisoner.”
“Off,” I said.
“Give me a kiss first to say thank you.” He lurched forward and I turned my head; his mouth hit the side of mine. I changed my mind and let him kiss me. I’d been kissed before, just once by Sydney’s cousin, and by Ned Barrett in the seventh grade, behind the gym after the school holiday music concert. Ned Barrett had a locker next to mine for two years in a row and played the bass in the orchestra. He was lugging it back to the music room when, suddenly overcome with holiday cheer, I guess, he called me over. I thought he needed help with his bass, but he kissed me instead, the bass standing there like a nosy third person. But Travis Becker’s kiss was different. He knew what he was doing, that was for sure.
The kiss left me dazed, forgetting about Mrs. Becker or anything else, for that matter. “Now I’ll take it off,” Travis Becker said. He unfastened the necklace, slid it into the pocket of my jeans. “Don’t say no. Or we might not be friends anymore,” he said. “Anyway, it’s your prize for not screaming.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say thank you.”
“Thank you. For the ride too.”
I kept it right there in the pocket of my jeans as I walked home. I would reach my hand toward it, rub it between my fingers. To be honest, it did not have a nice feel. It was that flat kind of gold, so slithery and cold that it almost felt wet. It felt wrong in my pocket. I knew it didn’t belong there any more than I had belonged on Travis Becker’s motorcycle. But I reached my fingers down into my pocket and felt the slick links anyway. Touching it was my only proof that the afternoon had been real.
I like to assign human personalities to different dogs I see. Sydney’s dog is a tall, lanky golden retriever. He would be one of those amiable athletes, good at the hurdles but not too bright. My friend Sarah Elliott has an Airedale. He’s got this little beard and kind, knowing eyes. King Arthur, in The Once and Future King. Fowler, one of the librarians my mom works with, has this poodle that acts like some of the blond girls at school who are always putting on makeup behind their math books and who have apparently become mentally damaged by all that hair swinging, because they now think being called spoiled is a compliment. Fowler’s not the poodle type, but it followed him home one day after getting lost and wouldn’t leave, which shows that even poodles have their moments of humility.
My dog, Poe, though, he’s another thing altogether. He’s a Jack Russell terrier, but more than that, he’s a kindergarten boy with a hyperactivity disorder. Once he ate through my mother’s bedroom door, leaving a hole the size of a man’s head. Another time he knocked himself unconscious by tripping and falling down the porch steps after he ran full speed out the back door with a mouthful of my brother’s dirty socks. He thinks the vacuum cleaner is an intruder, which, admittedly, he has successfully wrestled to submission a few times. The handle has been chewed to a rough and gnarled state, and you’ve got to wrap a kitchen towel around it if you want to use it without hurting your hands. Last winter he went to get a drink from his water bowl that had frozen during the night and got his tongue stuck there. We are sure that Poe assumes his name is You Dumb-Ass Dog, as that’s what my mother is always calling him. He probably thinks it’s German for Dog of Great Intelligence.
When I arrived home, Poe was even more keyed up than usual. He was walking along the back of the couch like a circus performer, minus the tutu. He leaped down when he saw me and jumped up, his toenails scratching my legs. His excitement must have had something to do with the car that was in our driveway, the Ford Windstar with the Oregon plates.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked Chip Jr. He was sitting on the couch, his knees pulled up to his chin. He was watching TV. Chip Jr. hardly ever watched TV. He was usually in his room building something—card houses, the Taj Mahal out of LEGOs. I’m not kidding.
“In the kitchen.”
“Why aren’t you in there too?”
“I have to watch this.” I looked at the television. There was a lizard burying something. Close-up to a disgusting pile of what must have been its oblong, yellowish eggs. Of course, that might have been our TV. Our TV was old and decrepit and prone to turning everything to custard shades. It could fill the Winter Olympics with more yellow snow than any sicko eight-year-old boy could even imagine. Librarians, at least the one I lived with, did not put a premium on the latest technological equipment. Or appliances, for that matter. A pair of socks can get our washing machine off balance, making it shake so hard and loud you think it’s going to shimmy on down the hall.
“Why do you have to watch this?”
“Because it’s about lizards,” he said, as if that explained something. “Shit.” He was acting up, too.
“Shit shit,” I said.
“Shit-shit. A Chinese noodle dish. Shit-shit with chicken or pork,” Chip Jr. said to his knees.
“Slippers on a kitchen floor. An old lady’s. Shiiit, shiiit.”
He thought for a while. “Someone with a lisp asking you to take a seat,” he said. “Please do shit down.”
“Okay. I’m going in the kitchen,” I said. I pretended to put on protective gear, snapped on a helmet, knee pads. I saw a little smile start at the corner of Chip Jr.’s mouth, disappearing into a crinkle of his jeans, where his chin was tucked.
My father looked the same, only his hair was longer than usual. He’s the kind of man women fall all over, even if you don’t like to think of your father that way. That’s how handsome he is, and it’s the truth, like it or not. He has dark brown hair, long enough so that he occasionally has to comb it dramatically from his face with his fingers, permanent stubble, a strong nose, dark eyes that look like he just woke up or is lost in thought. Everyone says I look just like him (except for the stubble, I hope), and it’s true that I have his nearly black hair, worn long and straight, and his dark eyes. But I also have my mother’s lines and angles—too-pointy chin, long thin legs, wrists like a bird’s, if a bird had wrists. It was hot that day, nearly eighty, and my father wore a T-shirt, denim vest, and cowboy boots, which tells you right there that his vanity was greater than his need for comfort.
My mother was cooking something with wine and mushrooms. The smell rose full and lush from the stove and when she turned to me I could see that she had her lipstick on and that she’d been laughing. Her face was flushed from happiness and cooking steam, and she was wearing something I’d never seen before—a sundress with cherries on it, which fit snug
enough to make her seem curvy. Irritation snuck up along my insides. When it came to my father, my mother went from capable librarian who could find you the population of Uruguay in less than a minute to 1950’s housewife with apron and pot holder. It was a sci-fi transformation. Just tell him to get lost, I said to her once. That is your father you are talking about, Ruby, she had snapped. There are things you cannot understand. We have a history together. It’s not something you can just make go away. Said like she was throwing a bunch of unrelated items into a pot of soup. A carrot, a grapefruit, a kitchen sponge. Finally, she sighed. She resorted to the same old comeback she used whenever we questioned her authority. Remember, I’m the mother here, and I’m driving. The metaphorical Car of Life. The only problem is, my mother can’t drive in reverse to save her life. She once killed a juniper plant in our yard after backing up in a hurry. And as far as my father went, it seemed like she was always going in reverse.
“What’s with the minivan?” I said to him.
“A friend lent it to me. How about ‘hello’? Jesus, look at you. You’re beautiful. Give me a hug.”
His bristles scratched my cheek. When I was little he used to do that on purpose: rub his prickly cheek against mine until I squealed for him to stop. He smelled of some strong, woodsy men’s cologne. It was strange to be there in the kitchen with the real him. When you lived with someone in your mind, they became all sorts of things—villain, hero, taking different shapes like a ghost, in ways they could never do in real life. The real him just looked so much smaller, deflated by his humanness. The imagined him could move through doors and appear out of nowhere; the real him was someone who put on deodorant every morning and clipped his toenails.
My mother didn’t seem to find him diminished, though. Judging by the light that had suddenly filled her, his absence only made her imagine him with a strength that reality would not alter. She’d sketched in the details, applied the personal vision, same as reading a good book of fiction. She liked the version she’d created. No doubt if she saw the movie, she’d have hated it and claimed it not to be anywhere near what the author intended.
“The minivan. It’s got a baby seat in the back,” I said into his shoulder. “That can’t do much for your image.”
He ignored me. He reached down into the pocket of his jeans. It reminded me of what was inside my own pocket, the necklace there, and the thought of it gave me a surge of feeling, a jolt of something like power. “Look what I have for you,” he said.
He pulled his hand out, opened his closed palm as if revealing a treasure. In his hand lay six crystals, pointed at the ends like stubby pencils, but a beautiful color, a milky pink, translucent and delicate, a color you could feel a longing to possess. “They’re so pretty.”
“Rose quartz. Raw and unfinished, from the earth. Sleep with them under your pillow. They’re supposed to bring you harmony. Take them.” I was reluctant to reach out my palm to his so that he could spill the crystals into it. It was a bit like the White Witch in the Narnia books, with her Turkish Delight. One amazing, buttery bite and you would have no choice but to keep coming back for more. With my father, there always seemed to be two choices—only the extremes. You could be drawn in, climb inside his boat and ride a dream river while looking into the sun, the glare in your eyes keeping you from seeing the waterfall you were about to drop over; or you could stand at the side and watch other people get in, holding a map of the terrain in one hand and your protected heart in the other.
I took the crystals and thanked him. He told me he’d made a special trade with someone for them, someone who had found them in Brazil. I tried to keep one foot on the riverbank and pictured the crystals in a bin in the Gold Nugget Amusement Park General Store, next to the giant jawbreakers and fake arrowheads and pennies the size of a baby’s fingernail.
My father came up behind my mother, snitched a mushroom from the pan, and popped it in his mouth. She elbowed him. He took another, made moaning sounds of deliciousness, then put his hands on the curved waist of her cherry dress. “You shouldn’t be cooking. Let’s go out.”
“I’ve got everything right here,” she said.
“I want to treat you. I want to take out my family. I know a great Indian place. Downtown.”
“No, Chip, that’s okay,” my mother said. I could tell she meant it. I could tell she probably got off work early just to shop for all of the ingredients of the recipe, which had been researched with care in the cookbook aisle of the library earlier that day. She’d spent more than she could afford, too, judging by the array of unusual ingredients spread out on the counter, the bags from Renaud’s Gourmet, the bottle of wine.
He pretended to bite her neck. It was getting embarrassing in there. “Sweetheart, don’t tell me you lost the ability to be spontaneous,” he said.
She flinched at the remark. Then she turned off the stove. She grasped the handle of the pan and gave the mushrooms a firm shake. “We’ll have these for appetizers, then,” she said. She opened a cupboard door and got out a bowl, a pretty one, not the plastic one with the Froot Loops toucan on it, and tumbled the mushrooms into it. She was being sincere, even if she had to fake it. She was so far down the river that even if I held my hand up to block the glare of the sun, I would only see the tiny dot of her in the distance.
“Hey, C. J.!” my father yelled. Chip Jr. did not like to be called C. J. He was smart enough to associate people who use initials for names with owners of National Rifle Association bumper stickers. “Get your shoes on! We’re going out to dinner.”
My father went into the living room. He got this in reverse order, talking to Chip Jr. and then going into the living room. This was one of my father’s biggest problems: loving the drama of the illogical, the chaos of the spur of the moment. He didn’t seem to care that irresponsibility is spontaneity’s kid sister. Poe ran over with renewed glee, jumped on my father’s knees.
“Baby, yes. Oh, sweet baby,” my father crooned to him. I had the ugly thought that this was how he probably sounded when he talked to his girlfriends.
“Change of plan,” my mother said to Chip Jr. “Come on, we’re going out.”
“You went to Renaud’s,” Chip Jr. said. There was something close to accusation in his voice.
“So? It’ll keep. Get your shoes on.” Boy, she was cheery. Boy, we ate well when my father came around.
After a few minutes of bustling, we were at the door and ready to leave. Poe was still following Dad around as closely as dryer lint on black socks. My mother bent down and scooped him up, aiming for the back door.
“He’s coming, isn’t he?” my father said.
“Poe? In the car?” I said.
“We better leave him here,” my mother said, and she put him back down.
“Aw, no. He wants to come. I love this dog.” My father scratched Poe under the chin. “I gave you guys this dog.”
“And life hasn’t been the same since,” my mother said. Dumped the dog on us and left again, she should have said.
“I came to see all of you. Even my dog.” He picked Poe up. The dog had not had this many ups and downs since that glorious and devastating day on the back porch steps. “Come on, Poe, let’s go for a ride.”
“Chip,” my mother warned. But he was already heading outside.
“You’ll be sorry,” Chip Jr. said.
There was more yellow food in the Indian restaurant than on our television during the fast-food commercials. I admit, though, it was delicious, steamy and spicy and full of inexact flavors. The hypnotic snake charmer music was soothing in a weird way, and better yet, wasn’t something my father could sing along to. We had taken my mother’s car at Dad’s request since his was running low on gas, and it had been an easy trip. Poe had been a perfect gentleman on the ride, sitting upright between my parents as if he were on his way to Sunday church services. We all started to relax. My mother’s eyes were glowy in the red candlelight. My father took her hand, rubbed her arm, put his hand under her chin. C
hip Jr. read the wine list out loud.
My father was singing something to us all when we went outside; my mother’s arm was hooked under my father’s and she was smiling. When we got to the car she dropped his arm, reached for the door handle. Then she screamed.
“Uh oh,” Chip Jr. said in brilliant understatement.
It looked like there’d been a blizzard inside that car. Poe had chewed a hole in both the front seat and back, and the interior was filled with drifts and mounds of yellowish fluff. It was everywhere; on the floor, the seats, the dashboard. Some had stuck to the roof, as if he’d somehow managed to toss merry handfuls of the stuff in the air. The scream didn’t wake Poe, who was curled up in a snug ball on top of a mound of foam, snoozing peaceful dog dreams of mayhem and devastation.
“You dumb-ass dog!” my mother yelled at him when she opened the door.
“Bad dog,” my father said without much conviction. “Well, I guess he is a puppy after all.”
“He’ll be two in a few months!” my mother said. She looked like she was about to cry.
“Time flies,” my father said.
“I told you you’d be sorry,” Chip Jr. said.
“Look at him,” my father said. Poe lifted his head at all the commotion and looked around sleepily. He had bits of yellow fluff in the hair under his chin. “Hey, nice beard, Bud.” For my mother’s benefit, I tried not to laugh, but it did look pretty funny. She was swooping foam off of the seats with wide arcs, human-snow-shovel-style.
My mother, in the passenger’s seat, bit her lip the whole ride home. Repairing the upholstery would later prove to be too expensive, so she would instead drape woven Indian blankets over the holes in the seats. This covered up the surface problem but didn’t do a thing to help the bigger issue of the exposed springs, which occasionally rose up to jab you painfully when you least expected it.
“What’s this?” my father said, feeling around the seat beside him, one hand on the wheel as he drove. He held up a small black object. “Dog even chewed off the radio dial!” He shook his head in disbelief, then he tossed the knob up in the air and caught it in his palm again, as if it were a lucky penny.
