She could tell the old woman worshipped that dog. That was what had made her so excited about this cross-stitch. She thought the woman would be just the kind who could appreciate a good pet homage.
Who was she kidding? She had been excited about the whole project, not just the cross-stitch. She’d really wanted to show the old woman that kindness ruled. A bit of a social experiment, maybe, but one that would be worth it in the end if she could just heal the heart of the woman who so hated her. It was about heart, right? It wasn’t about real hate. What was there to really hate about Bren Epperson?
She didn’t want to know Gary’s answer to that question right at the moment.
Oh God, Gary. She’d told him about the kiss. In a way she felt like maybe she’d been the drunk one last night, saying things she now regretted with such depth it felt like mourning. She would have to assure Gary that she’d taken care of it. That she’d shut it down and had no intention of meeting John in any hotel. She would even make it sound like it had never been even remotely appealing to her. She would omit the moans. Those had been involuntary; she couldn’t be held responsible for them.
But the best way to not think about Gary right at this moment was to think about the cross-stitch. Maybe she would just while away some time with the embroidery thread. Let Gary sleep it off and plug himself full of coffee. Then she would unlock the door and face him.
She sat up in bed, leaned over until she could reach the bag, and pulled it up into her lap. She had all the essentials right there—thread, pillowcase, pattern, sewing box with needles on the top shelf of Kelsey’s closet, left over from her Girl Scout days of sewing badges onto sashes.
In two hours, she had a snout, an eye, and most of a neck finished. She needed to pee and to shower. And probably to face Gary.
But when she went downstairs, Gary was nowhere to be found. Not even in the basement, where the band instruments stood like corpses in the dark. Odd that he wouldn’t be going over his music or practicing a guitar solo or doing something to prepare for the big gig tonight. Maybe he was out buying the celebratory bourbon.
Bren showered and dressed, feeling much more human now. When she got out, Gary still hadn’t come home, so she went upstairs and got the cross-stitch, then brought it downstairs to the living room, where she parked on the couch with a little daytime television. She had a blue dog collar to get started on—she didn’t want her dachshund to be naked.
An hour into the show, her hands had finally begun to cramp a little. She’d been at it for hours now, and had most of a dog to show for it. She heard a car pull into the driveway, the sun reflecting off it and dancing across the living room walls. Gary. Finally.
But the garage never opened, Gary never came in. Instead, there was the sound of shoes scuffing up the sidewalk and the stomp of someone trying to knock snow off of them on the front porch. At last, the doorbell rang.
“I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time,” Tammy Lynn said when Bren opened the door. “I asked Paula how to get ahold of you. Don’t be mad at her. I can be very persistent when I want to be. Just ask a chocolate cake.” She chuckled, but Bren noticed there was no force behind it.
“No, no, come on in. It’s so lovely to see you,” Bren said. Out of habit, Bren silently inventoried what embarrassments might be lying around the house—clutter, empty bourbon bottles, dirty panties hanging on the laundry room door. But that was the thing about being an empty nester. Most messes were easily cleaned up. Not much of anything went lying around for days. Had she not had the fight with Gary last night, she might have never known any revelry had happened in the kitchen at all. “I was just working on a cross-stitch.” She flapped the pillowcase around.
Tammy Lynn stomped on the porch again and then came inside, huffing and puffing the way everyone does when they leave the cold. She unwound herself from her coat and scarf.
“Look at you. You’ve lost weight,” Bren said.
Tammy Lynn waved her off. “Oh, goodness, far from it. But it’s nice of you to say. Janelle has us working double time. I’m just dying for a McRib, though.” She followed Bren into the living room. Bren picked up the remote and turned off the TV, which was in mid–Whoopi Goldberg rant. “Elwood is really struggling with it. Can you believe he actually suggested we just move away and not tell Janelle where we’re going?” She leaned in and wrinkled her nose. “And I think he was serious.”
“But it’s noticeable,” Bren said, with only a twinge of jealousy. Tammy Lynn was the kind of person you wanted to see succeed—the kind of person you saw yourself in if you looked hard enough, no matter who you were. “You must feel great.”
She nodded. “And I do. When I’m not jogging. Nothing feels great then. Which is why I’m here.”
They sat on the couch. Bren laid the cross-stitch on the coffee table.
“We jogged by the old classroom yesterday. Was so sad to see that sign on the door—Closed Until Further Notice. I feel so bad for Paula. But that old woman was out there, carrying her dog under her arm, just like always. Only she didn’t look so mean. She just looked kind of sad. And she saw me. I know she did, because she did a double take. But instead of yelling at me about the restraining order, she just turned around and kept walking. No coat, no scarf, no nothing. I was running and I had on a coat and scarf, and I wasn’t even sweating. It was that cold.”
Bren made the appropriate tsking noises and shook her head. The nerve of some people. Or the state of this society. Or whatever it was she was supposed to be getting out of this.
“Anyway,” Tammy Lynn said. She reached over and picked up the pillowcase, ran her forefinger over the thread. “I just got to thinking. Maybe we gave up too easily.”
“What do you mean?” Bren asked. “Paula had to shut the place down. She didn’t have the money to fight anymore.”
“No, I don’t mean that,” Tammy Lynn said. “Don’t get me wrong—I miss the class so much—but I mean we gave up on the gift project too easily.”
“There was a restraining order.”
“But she doesn’t know it was us leaving the gifts. She can’t prove anything anyway. Besides, I think she kind of wanted them. I think she liked it.”
“She gave them away,” Bren said. “If she liked it, she sure had a heck of a way of showing it.”
Tammy Lynn held up one finger. “That’s just it. I think she liked having them to give away. There’s something behind that, don’t you think? A woman doesn’t just wander around the city in no coat and then give one away to a sick kid.”
Bren hadn’t thought of it before, but Tammy Lynn had a point. She herself had been perplexed when she’d spotted the old woman giving away the gifts, all but freezing herself with no jacket. At the time Bren had chalked it up to the woman being strange and difficult and not worth trying to understand. But maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe there was more to the story.
“So you’re suggesting . . .”
Tammy Lynn was nodding so hard her big hair—which looked even bigger with her subtle weight loss—was bouncing around on her head like a bounce house. “That we finish the project. Why not? We all had plans. We can get together. We can do it here. Look—you’ve already started.” She picked up the cross-stitch and held it up for Bren.
Bren smiled, studying the adorable dachshund that had taken shape on the pillowcase. Tammy Lynn was right. What did they really have to lose?
“Okay, why not?”
Within an hour, everyone had arrived. Lulu and Teresa bottled spices and Aunt Cathy painted an ornament, Joan put in two huge pans of brownies, and Rebecca wrapped a pretty fountain pen in red and gold paper. Bren put the finishing touches on her cross-stitch, and Tammy Lynn assembled a recipe book with typewritten notecards.
By the end of the day, Gary still had not come home, but Bren didn’t worry about it. She knew he’d come back to get his instruments, at the very least. She could
talk to him then. She could try to save things.
And, besides, the Kitchen Classroom ladies were up to a total count of eighty-eight gifts. They stashed them under the Christmas tree. Boxes, small and large, wrapped and unwrapped, tied with ribbon and twine and sprigged with fake holly and plastic mistletoe. Bags in silvers and golds and with gay poinsettias and sparkling snowscapes painted on them, tissue paper springing from their tops in every color of the rainbow. Baskets and jars, filled with goodies, filled with cheer, filled with sweets and mixes and comforting things. Filled with the love and care of a stranger’s hand. Together they were an overflowing, overwhelming hill of holiday cheer. A stacked and tumbling statement of goodwill.
Bren’s heart swelled when she looked at them.
This.
This was what Christmas was all about.
CHAPTER THIRTY
It was time. She’d known it for far longer than she wanted to admit. To acknowledge that it had been time for a while now would be to acknowledge that she hadn’t done what was best for the dog, but only—selfishly, she knew—what was best for her.
But Chuy hadn’t been able to use his hind legs for two days now. They’d dragged behind him the few times he’d had the energy to try to move from his spot on the couch. He’d scooted along, never making a fuss, bless his furry little heart, but with eyes rolling around pathetically as if he were asking, Why can’t it just be over already?
Virginia Mash understood that question. She understood it very well. She’d understood it for a very long time.
Finally, she’d called a cab. “Take your time,” she’d said when they told her they’d get someone out to her as soon as they could. If she could blame it on a slow cab, maybe it wouldn’t be her fault that it had taken so long to get him to the vet.
But it was time, and she knew it. He knew it, too. He seemed to accept it.
Damn that dog, he still wagged his tail when she talked to him. Even if it was just a pathetic nudge—maybe a centimeter of movement—it was there just the same. And he knew that she understood what it meant. It was a thank-you. An offer of lifelong friendship. It was meant to console her over what she was going to have to do. It was an apology. Anyone in their right mind would probably think she was crazy for reading so many things into a barely wagged tail.
Those people didn’t know Chuy.
But she knew Chuy and she knew her daughter and she knew it was time.
When the cab came, she was watching through the painted-shut front window. She was already dressed in her lounge pants and flannel, boots tied. She watched, though, as the cabdriver got out of the car, looked around, perplexed, and then ducked back inside and laid on the horn.
She picked up Chuy, dog bed and all, and, leaving her cane by the door so she could hold him with two arms, made her way down the stairs.
“It’s about time,” she snapped when she got in the car. It smelled like onions and incense. “I don’t have all day to wait around for you to decide you want to come by.”
The man only gazed at her through the rearview mirror. “Where to?” he asked.
Cabdrivers were unflappable.
The words wanted to stick to the sides of her throat. They wanted to cling inside, hooking into her soft flesh. “Noah’s Ark Animal Clinic. On Third.”
He didn’t respond. Only nodded and put the car into gear. She grabbed the door handle with one hand as they started moving, if only to keep herself from jumping out, changing her mind.
Surely she could get another week with him. Maybe two. So he couldn’t walk. She could walk for him.
But she knew that was a ridiculous thought. She knew it was time.
They rode in silence, Chuy staring up at her the whole way. His expression was peaceful. Calm. Even happy. He seemed to sense what was about to happen. He seemed to welcome it. She absently rubbed her knuckle down the length of his head as they traveled the city.
Maybe he was accepting what was happening, but what about her? She supposed she would ultimately accept it, too. Seemed that was what life was mostly about—accepting the really shitty things that couldn’t be changed. But it was the time between acceptance and relief that was the hard part.
Noah’s Ark was a hole in the wall. A place beaten down and beaten out by those fancy doggy-day-care-type places, where young couples with way too much money sent their precious little furballs for overpriced activities that, Virginia Mash believed, were not meant to be engaged in by animals. She would never understand this busy generation, so scheduled and to-do’ed, even their dogs had lesson plans to live their days by. She imagined these people had calendars specifically for their “fur babies,” as they loved to call them. She imagined these people needed lives.
She loved Chuy, but she would be struck dead before she would step foot into one of those places.
Besides, she loved Dr. Kahn. He was gentle, even for such a big man with such big, clumsy-looking hands, and Chuy liked him. Wagged when he came into the room, even when he was there for shots. Even when he was there for the last shot of his life.
“Virginia,” Dr. Kahn said when he came into the room. “I was just thinking about Chuy the other day, wondering how he was getting along.” He flipped through a chart. Another thing Virginia loved about Dr. Kahn—no computer charts like those fancy places. He still used good old pencil on paper.
“He’s not getting along,” Virginia said, holding her chin up high to show him that she was not going to be emotional about this. The same pose she’d taken at Jamie’s graveside so many years ago. And the same one she’d struck at her husband’s graveside, too. The picture of stoicism. She had this under control. Control was power; you had to try to wrestle it out of every situation you found yourself in.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Let me take a look. Come here, Chu, old boy.”
But Chuy didn’t come to him, and when Virginia laid him down on the metal exam table, he didn’t even lift his head. His breathing had become quick and labored, and while he wagged faintly at the sound of his name, his eyes didn’t seem to be taking in much of anything. Still, Dr. Kahn checked him over, lifting his tail and pulling back his lips and squinting into his ears.
Finally, he gave Chuy a rub along the neck and let out a big sigh.
“I know what you’re going to say. That’s why I brought him here. Let’s just get it over with,” Virginia said. She tried for her sharp, snapping voice, but it broke at the end and she had to cut the word with short to take a breath.
Dr. Kahn nodded. “I’m so sorry, Virginia. I know what he means to you. You were good to take him in.”
“I had no other choice,” Virginia said. She found she had to look at the canine aging chart poster over his left shoulder while she talked. She took a deep breath, trying to stretch out the stomach muscles that had gone taut and sore. “But, yes, he’s been a good dog. Nothing lives forever.”
He continued to stroke Chuy’s head, his huge hands working so gently that Chuy barely even moved with the motion. Chuy closed his eyes. A drop of clear liquid fell from one nostril.
“I’ll give you a minute,” Dr. Kahn said, and he left.
Alone with Chuy, she could hear his breath, quick, ragged, labored. It seemed to rattle around the room in accusatory percussion: you should have brought me here sooner! But at the same time, he looked content.
She stepped forward and ran her hand down the length of his back. She didn’t want to be one of those schmaltzy types, someone who gave her dying dog a lengthy monologue of love and devotion before wobbling out of the office a sniveling, sopping mess. Besides, there was so much to say to Chuy, it was impossible to say it all. She knew because she’d spent the past several days trying.
The apartment’s going to be empty without you, she wanted to say. My walks are going to be lonely. Say hi to Ernie for me. Say hi to Jamie. Especially to Jamie. Tell them I’m sorry I wasn’t t
here for them more. You were a good old dog, Chuy. A great friend.
But instead, all she said was “Good-bye, old pal.” She continued petting him until Dr. Kahn came back.
“You can stay if you like,” he said. “Or you’re welcome to go. Some people like to remember them as they were living. Some like to be here with them until the very end. Either way is up to you.”
Once again, Virginia held her chin up. “I have a cab waiting for me,” she said. “I should go.”
When she got to the door, she ventured a look over her shoulder. Chuy opened his eyes and wagged his tail, big thumping wags. She wasn’t sure if he was wagging at her or if he was seeing someone on the other side. And she didn’t know which she was hoping it would be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Bren hadn’t spoken to Gary since the big fight the night before. He’d stayed gone all day, and even into the evening. He finally came in just as the ladies were leaving, the living room full of gifts for Virginia Mash.
“Where’ve you been?” Bren asked when he came through the door.
“Nowhere, really,” he said. He was still pouting. He passed her and went into the kitchen, heading immediately for the refrigerator and a beer.
Bren followed him hesitantly, leaning up against the doorframe between the two rooms. “Listen, Gary. We should talk. About last night. I wasn’t thinking when I said some things.”
He twisted the cap off the beer and took two long swigs. “It’s done,” he said, after a belch.
“No, I want to clear the air. I shouldn’t have insinuated that I would—”
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