An Unexpected Grace (6 page)

L
ila wiped Cristina's kitchen counter around tote bags and boxes overflowing with cookies, paper towels, dog toys, games, and CDs. As she squeezed out the sponge at the sink, a box slammed on the garage's concrete floor. Cristina was out there packing the van and muttering to herself. Tomorrow she and Rosie would drive to Sacramento to pick up a cousin and travel with her to Washington.

At dinner Cristina had stabbed her fork into a green bean. “I'm a pathetic camp follower. If my boss hadn't agreed to let me telecommute, my career would be ruined because Greg wants to make tideland policy.”

“He'd never have taken the job if you and Rosie couldn't join him. You're giving him a gift,” Lila said.

“I don't want to go to D.C. It's not fair to disrupt my life. Rosie's, too.” Cristina got up, scraped wilted lettuce leaves off her plate into the garbage disposal, and disappeared into the garage.

Lila believed Cristina was not so opposed to leaving as she seemed. The stress of packing made her cross. And her grumpiness was a good sign, really, because it meant she believed Lila was healing. Since Lila had been shot, Cristina had held back anything that might cause distress. Seeing her be herself again, cranky or not, was a relief.

At the table, Rosie, in robin's-egg-blue coveralls, was humming “Three Blind Mice” and shoving her meatloaf around her green beans.

“Gerald would want you to finish dinner,” Lila coaxed. She'd set a place for Rosie's lion at the table and served him klipspringer flank with marinated crocodile scales and giraffe-tail pudding.

Rosie screwed up her face. A strand of dark hair, free from her ponytail, fell into her eyes. “Can't I feed my meatloaf to Gerald? He's still hungry.”

“He told me he's allergic to meatloaf. It makes him break out in a rash.”

Rosie looked so disappointed that Lila would have crossed the kitchen and kissed the top of her head if Grace weren't hunched under the table like a bird of prey, waiting for treats to fall to the floor. Though persnickety about her own food, her quest for Rosie's was relentless. At breakfast Grace hung around for Cheerios that Rosie dropped, and at lunch Grace waited for bits of sandwich, which she grabbed with a snap of teeth. Aware of the dog's location, Lila used the kitchen island as a barricade. Thank goodness someone would pick up that dog tonight and Lila would never have to worry about her again.

When Rosie rested her cheek on the table, Lila gave in. “Okay, you can go.”

Rosie clapped her hands and jumped down from the chair just as someone knocked at the front door. Involuntarily, Lila flinched—Dr. Lovell had been right that she was edgy. When she went to the entry hall, she expected to meet the unfortunate soul who would be Grace's new owner. But smiling and waving from behind the front door's panes was Adam Spencer, who seemed to have forgotten that Lila had said she didn't like dogs.

As she opened the door, he said, “Hi.” Obviously at home in Cristina's house, he stepped, uninvited, across the threshold.

“Hi,” Lila said. She noted his charcoal Dockers, light blue sweater, and damp hair, which he must have just washed. Wavy and thick, it was parted on the side and combed back from his face. He'd probably gotten cleaned up to sit with his Irish wolfhounds at an outdoor café, Lila thought. He was holding a cellophane bag of what looked like gingersnaps, tied with a raffia bow. Maybe he'd stopped to give them to Rosie for the long drive ahead.

She must have heard his voice because she ran to him and threw her skinny arms around his waist.

“How's my favorite kid?” He hoisted her up over his head, and she extended her arms and legs like a helicopter propeller. As he spun her around, she shrieked with delight and her ponytail danced. He let go and caught her mid-drop, and she shrieked even harder.

Grace appeared, whimpering at Adam as happily as she had the week before. He set Rosie down, and they fussed over Grace, who panted, her eyes half closed in ecstasy. Lila backed toward the kitchen so as not to be too close to her. When Christina called Rosie to winnow down her stuffed animals for the trip, she ran to the garage. Grace padded across the entry toward Lila.

As she was about to step farther away, Adam said, “I want to talk with you.”

“Me?” Lila said.

“I need to make sure you know how to take care of Grace.”

A gulp lodged in Lila's throat. “I assumed somebody was going to pick her up tonight.”

Adam's eyes narrowed as if he were confused. “Cristina didn't tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“I thought you agreed to keep Grace.”

Lila gritted her teeth. She knew how General Custer felt, having a perfectly acceptable day and suddenly out of nowhere getting trapped.

As her face clouded, Adam said, “We tried to find someone to take Grace. We called all our dog rescue friends, but nobody had any room.”

“Why can't
you
take her?” Lila's tone sounded like she was accusing him of mugging someone in a wheelchair.

“I'm still living next door to the man I stole her from.”

Do you rob banks in your spare time?
“You
stole
her?”

“Well, rescued. She was living with a sadist. He chained her to a tree.”

As cruel as that sounded, it was no excuse to railroad Lila. She shook her head in disbelief that her dearest friend would manipulate her into keeping that dog. She, who Cristina knew was afraid of Grace, who had just one good hand to defend herself, who was trying to put her life back together and had no energy to waste. No wonder Cristina had stayed in the garage, out of the way when Adam sprang the news.

On the other hand, though rushed to pack her own belongings, Cristina had persuaded Lila's landlord to let her break her lease and had moved her apartment's contents here. The hours of work had been one more example of Cristina's eighteen years of kindness to Lila. For Cristina, she should have been willing to take on not only a potentially vicious golden retriever, but even a radioactive goat. Just as Lila had concluded when she'd agreed to house-sit, she owed Cristina.

As Grace nosed Adam's hand to ask for more petting, Lila shook her head and told herself not to be resentful. She needed to be as gracious and helpful as Cristina had been the last couple of weeks. Lila said, “You've taken me by surprise. Cristina never asked me if keeping that dog would be okay.”

“She must have forgotten. She's bound to be distracted. She has a lot to do before she leaves tomorrow.” Adam looked maddeningly sincere. “I'm really sorry. I wish we had another solution. We'd never ask you to keep Grace if we had a choice, but we couldn't help how things worked out.”

“Well . . . So . . . ,” Lila said, apropos of nothing. She knew defeat when she was surrounded and there was no escape.

“Goldens are quick to get adopted. Grace'll only be here a few days.”

“That's what Cristina said when I came here last week.”

“You can't tell how people will respond to posters. Calls come in waves. Someone will be glad to have her.”

Adam fixed Lila with his eyes, which she noted were intensely blue. He was the kind of man you had to rally strength to argue with, and she hadn't gotten hers back.

“I've looked after Cristina's dogs here at least a dozen times. It's easy,” he said.

“I guess,” Lila said. But her enthusiasm would not have filled a gnat's shirt pocket. Her few days of dog-sitting stretched before her like a road through a jungle with pythons and leeches.

 

In the kitchen Grace settled, drooling full blast, at Adam's feet. He, apparently, thought nothing of dog drool. Lila shuddered to think what his Irish wolfhounds did to
his
floor. “Slimy” would be too charitable a word for it.

“How can anyone not love this wonderful girl,” Adam said.

“Easy. Look at her teeth,” Lila said.

“They scare you?”

“Well, yes, if you really want to know.”

Even if he didn't want to know, she felt compelled to justify her attitude. She told him about the dog who'd lunged at her when she was nine. “The fur on his back bristled like a stripe of nails,” she said.

“That doesn't sound so bad,” Adam said.

“It was when he
bit
me.”

“Was it a serious bite?”

“Five
stitches
. In the emergency room.”

“Could have been a lot worse.”

“It was horrible. Blood everywhere. I was just a girl.”

When no hint of sympathy appeared on Adam's face, he made clear whose side he was on. But, then, she already knew he cared more about dogs than people.

“It wasn't the dog's fault. He was telling you to leave him alone. You woke him up and startled him. If someone did that to you, you'd get just as upset,” Adam said. He set his cellophane bag on the counter as if his verdict about the loathsome mutt was final and the subject was closed.

Lila refused to relent. “The dog was out of control. It was terrifying.” He'd been as violent and unpredictable as Yuri Makov, but she didn't feel like explaining that to Adam.

“It's not fair to damn a whole species because of a single incident,” Adam said.

“Why not? Dogs can be dangerous.”

“Not if you treat them right.”

So they were back to him as judge and Lila as wayward underling. She was wasting her breath defending herself.

 

From his back pocket Adam got a piece of yellow legal-size paper, unfolded it and moved close to Lila so she could read it with him. As the clean smell of his shampoo drifted toward her, she saw “Dog-Sitting Duties” printed with a felt pen across the top. Below, he'd outlined with numbers and letters what the duties were.

No doubt he was an engineer, born with a calculator in his hand and an obsession about efficiency and organization. He would keep his Irish wolfhounds on a strict bathroom schedule and name them alphabetically—Alice, Bruno, Cooper, Daisy. He'd go to work with a row of mechanical pencils clipped to his shirt pocket.

Adam opened Cristina's walk-in pantry door and pointed out Grace's plastic kibble bin and cans of Nature's Best chicken in gravy. He explained that Lila should feed her two cups of kibble and three heaping spoonsful of chicken in the morning and evening. He partly filled a measuring cup with water and held it out to Lila. “Pour exactly three-fourths of a cup over her food and break up the chicken in the kibble. Too much water and she won't like it. It'll be too much like soup.”

In a drawer by the sink, Adam found a rectangular brush with steel bristles, which he swept along Grace's chest, leaving tiny trails in her fur. She leaned against his legs with her eyes half-closed again, as if she'd reached the Mount Everest of pleasure. “You don't want somebody coming over here to meet her and finding her unkempt,” Adam said, and then he moved on to Grace's exercise program to strengthen her hurt leg. “A walk three or four times a week ought to do it.”

“You said you'd find her a home in a few days,” Lila said.

“I'll do it as fast as I can.”

She exhaled the weary breath of someone who'd been mopping floors since dawn. “I can't handle that dog on walks. I've got an injured arm.” She held up her cast as if it were a courtroom exhibit.

Adam shrugged, like the cast wouldn't hinder her from Olympic backstroke competition. “Grace won't give you any trouble.”

“How can you presume it would be so easy for me?”

“All I'm presuming is she's a sweet dog. She'll do anything to please.”

Adam glanced at his list. “The most important thing is to keep Grace away from Marshall. He's the sicko she lived with over the hill about three miles from here. Grace belonged to his son. Marshall's wife left him and took the boy to Santa Barbara.”

“So why would Marshall care if you stole Grace?”

“Power. He's mad I got the best of him.” Adam untied the raffia bow of his cellophane bag and handed Lila a small cat-shaped cookie. “Want to give Grace a biscuit? See how gentle she is?”

The last thing Lila wanted was to get her hand near that dog's fangs, but she was too proud to refuse and stand there like a quivering violet. Pinching the cat's paws between her thumb and index finger's tips, she held out the biscuit toward Grace, who must have sensed that Lila was recoiling. Obviously offended, Grace gave her a disapproving look, as if she were foaming at the mouth with rabies Grace didn't want to catch. She turned her head away.

“You have to act like you're enthusiastic.” Adam took the biscuit and beamed at Grace. “Look what I've got!”

She whined and her face lit up. She chomped down on the cat, crunched it to rubble, and swallowed. Anyone could tell she was thrilled.

Adam stroked her floppy ears. For a man his size, his touch seemed gentle. “See. Nothing to fear.”

“You're never going to change me into a dog person. I want you to know that,” Lila said.

“Can't help but try. You don't know what you're missing.”

“Yes, I do.”
Bites. Bloody hands. Stitches.

O
n Cristina's street early in the morning, Lila fumbled with the buttons of Greg's flannel shirt to fasten them up to her chin. For two days she'd practiced with buttons, zippers, and snaps so she could dress herself when Cristina was gone.

The cold, damp air smelled of bay trees. Fog inching over Mount Tamalpais looked like gray fingers reaching out to clutch the Sleeping Lady's shoulders. On any other day, the pink banners festooning the sky would have lifted Lila's mood, but she felt sad as Cristina backed out of the garage. In minutes she and Rosie would be gone, and Lila's only company would be that dog.

When Lila had been packing lunch, Cristina came into the kitchen and squeezed her hands together in a guilty, worried way. “I'm sorry you have to take care of Grace for a few days,” she said. “The last thing I wanted was to bother you with her, I swear.”

Her apology was surprising because last night after Adam had left, Cristina and Lila tiptoed around the eggshell of Grace without mentioning her name. It was as if they had an unspoken agreement to part without strife. At breakfast Lila had stretched the truth and said the dog would be no problem.

Now in a cloud of exhaust, Cristina rolled down the van's window. Mascara on the lashes of only one eye signaled how frazzled she was. “I'll miss you. Greg's dumb job. I hate leaving you.”

“You'll be glad once you get on the road.” Lila's heart felt heavy, like it had gained a pound. She bent down and waved to Rosie, who was belted in a car seat in the back. “I'll draw Gerald some more animal friends.”

“He wants a giraffe.” Rosie waved, and crushed goldfish crackers in her hand flew into the front seats.

“Oh, God.” Looking stressed, Cristina brushed them to the floor. As she changed gears, the poodles, incarcerated in matching carriers next to Rosie, whined and pawed at their barred doors, searching for a way out.

“Don't forget Adam's on my contact list. You need anything, call him,” Cristina said. “He's a good person. You'll like him if you get to know him.”

“Possibly,” Lila said, as neutral as beige, “but he doesn't like me much.” To win his approval, she'd have to become a wolfhound zealot.

“I'm sure he likes you. He just broke up with a leech. He's about to be happy for the first time in years, but he doesn't know it yet. You and Adam could be friends.”

“We'll see.”

Lila reached out and squeezed Cristina's hand. As Lila watched the van's taillights travel down the hill, become red specks, and disappear, tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Loneliness engulfed her. That was how she'd felt four months before when she had learned the truth about Reed.

He was tall and blond and handsome in a craggy, weathered way. His skin was ruddy; his nose, sharp. When a friend had introduced him to Lila in the grocery store, she liked his faded jeans and blue work shirt—the same clothes she wore to paint—and his tan from working as a contractor on construction sites.

She wished she'd known. She wished she'd seen the train wreck waiting down her track. The pro bono carpentry Reed did for St. Anthony's Shelter, or the cups of tea he brought her, in bed with the German measles, were only a cover-up for future betrayal.

The tee shirt Lila found wadded up behind the passenger seat of his Ford pickup last September should have tipped her off. As she and Reed were driving to Berkeley for dinner with friends, she held up the shirt by the shoulders. “Whose is this?”

“Must be yours.”

“It's not mine.”

“Should be. You'd look great in it.” His stroking of her thigh had been like hot buttered rum on a cold winter night.

Lila told herself that the shirt must have been one of the many she bought for a quarter each at the Turnaround Shop to use as turpentine rags for her brushes. But she could not explain away the picture at the PhotoMat.

She was standing in line behind a woman whose Chanel Allure perfume wafted from her body in sultry waves. The skin on the back of her neck was porcelain white, and she swept her chestnut hair back from her face with gold barrettes, curved in the shape of satisfied smiles. When she got to the counter, she pulled a five-by-seven color photo from her purse and said she wanted an eight-by-ten for a silver frame she'd bought.

Curious, Lila looked over her shoulder at the photo. The woman was sitting behind Reed on his new motorcycle. Her arms were wrapped around him, and her siren-red polished nails spread out on his chest like two small fans of exclamation points. The siren of her nails matched her moist lips, which, like his, were parted in a smile that could have run New York City air conditioners for an entire summer.

Lila felt as if someone had jumped on her stomach with both feet. In two seconds, the photograph had broken her life into pieces; she could never crawl around on the floor, find them all, and glue them back together. Later, however, she realized that putting her life back together with Reed wasn't what she wanted anyway. For years she'd considered breaking up with him, as you'd work up the resolution to quit a bad habit, like smoking.

Her mismatch with Reed had gone on too long; their relationship was worn out, a fizzless Coke. Still, that rational conclusion could not cancel her anger at him and her shock that he'd found another woman without having the decency to break up with Lila first. And Reed had nicked her self-esteem. Perhaps something about her had not been enough. Was she not pretty enough? Pleasing enough? Easy enough to get along with? Had her father been right that she was too stubborn?

Cristina had said that what Reed did was about him, not Lila, and she was better off to have learned he was a weasel before marrying him and staring divorce in the face. But Lila's confidence was tarnished. After wasting five years with Reed, she was thirty-five without a partner. For all she knew, she'd missed out forever.

Her mother had always told her, “Look for character in a man.” On the subject of boyfriends, her father had kept up his crusade for independence. “Make sure you don't need a man,” he'd told Lila. “Nobody can make you happy but yourself. It's up to you to make your life the way you want it.”

 

To make her life the way she wanted it, Lila went to Cristina and Greg's bedroom, where she would be sleeping. She took Greg's navy terrycloth robe from the chrome hook behind the closet door and put it in his dresser drawer—one less reminder that she had no husband. She went into Rosie's bedroom and glanced one last time at the stained-glass turtle nightlight on her dresser, and she closed the door. Now Lila wouldn't pass by and see the turtle, or Rosie's angel collection, or the moon and stars Cristina had painted on the ceiling above Rosie's bed—and risk a wilting spirit because she had no child of her own.

To dispose of other signs that she missed having a family, Lila went downstairs to the mudroom and took Rosie's, Greg's, and Cristina's coats from the antique brass doorknobs attached to the wall for hooks. Lila folded the jackets and parkas and set them in a cabinet above the washing machine. She put the boots and gardening shoes lined up against the wall into the water-heater closet.

While downstairs, Lila checked that the door to the backyard was bolted and all windows that murderers could reach were locked. She reassured herself that the bolt and locks were sturdy and she had no reason to be afraid. When Grace shuffled to her water bowl upstairs in the kitchen, though, apprehension about the dog—and men with guns—rippled through Lila. To be sure of her safety, she checked the door and windows again.

 

Grace was lying by the front door in a dismal heap, like a large yam. She pressed her nose against a sidelight and bristled her eyebrows, looking puzzled, perhaps about why Lila was there after everyone else had gone. As Grace stared through the glass, her body tensed; she could have been waiting for a T-bone steak to fall to her paws like Rosie's Cheerios. Surely Grace was hoping Rosie, Adam, or Cristina would appear on the porch. The dog was waiting for someone she was attached to, to come home.

Grace's apprehension was sad to see, but for now she'd have to tough it out with her people gone, as Lila was doing. The dog was not the only one in the house who felt alone.

Wanting to stay as far from her as possible, Lila headed toward the kitchen. As she passed Grace, she closed her sad brown eyes and cut off Lila, who got the point: Since she'd been ignoring Grace, the dog was going to ignore her. Their playing field would be even, and the match would be Invisible Dog vs. Invisible Human.

Lila stopped at the kitchen door and looked back to check that Grace hadn't changed her mind and decided to sneak up behind her, brandishing her fangs. Grace was staring out the window and seemed miles away. She looked innocent huddled at the door, but the little-lamb act might be a ploy, and at any time Grace could turn savage. Her gimp leg was no guarantee she wouldn't charge.

Grace turned her head and glanced at Lila. The fur along Grace's spine was rumpled like spikes along a stegosaurus's back, and the usual wary glint was in her eyes. Lila was sure they said, as clear as a bugle blast,
I'm not the only potential savage in this house.
You
could turn vicious. I'm keeping tabs on you, you rampant rat fink.

Lila poured granola and milk into a china bowl and set it on the kitchen table. As she eased into a chair, her foot hit something round and squishy—Grace's tennis ball.

Lila got up and grabbed five paper towels off the roll hanging below the kitchen cabinet, the better to protect her hand. With the towels, she picked up the ball like it harbored typhoid. “Let's get one thing clear, Grace. No ghastly ball allowed in this house.”

Grace closed her eyes as if Lila did not exist.

With care, she threw the ball off the back porch into the ferns, where she hoped Grace would never find it. Back in the kitchen, as Lila crunched her granola, she had the feeling the dog was watching her, and she got a brief attack of the shivers.

 

Adam called when Lila was shivering. If he'd been sensitive, he'd have known she was anxious about Grace, and phoned to dispel her fears.

“Just checking on our dog,” he said.

Our
dog?! No lukewarm “how are you?” or a verbal nod of recognition that I exist?
“Grace is fine,” Lila said.

“Have you fed her yet?”

“Cristina did before she left.”

“Did Grace eat okay?”

“Her bowl's still full.”

“You've got to encourage her to eat. Does she seem upset because Cristina's gone?”

“Grace is always sad unless you're here.”

Adam chuckled. “A walk would make her feel better. She shouldn't be cooped up.”

Before Lila could remind him of her inability to walk the dog with just one hand, Adam ordered, “Get her to eat. That's the most important thing.” He said he was late for a meeting.

Feeling used, Lila hung up the phone.

 

With her foot, Lila nudged the kibble bowl across the kitchen floor and stopped at the open doorway to the entry, where Grace was lying on her stomach with her head raised and her front legs stretched out like a sphinx. Extra pounds would make her more appealing to adopters and remove her more quickly from the house.

“Eat your kibble and chicken!” Lila commanded in the tone of lion tamers ordering their charges to leap through burning hoops.

She may as well have mentioned the Dow Jones to a being from Uranus. When Grace yawned and looked out on the front porch, she said clearly that obedience was a foreign concept, and, further, she was not eager for breakfast. She studied oak grains in the threshold.

“Grace,” Lila said.

The dog continued observing the wood.

“Adam wants you to eat. We're talking about the Great Divide here. You gain some weight or you'll never get a home.”

Grace seemed to find the warning tedious. She hobbled to the living room, flopped down, and toward the wall pointed her nose, which looked like a licorice gumdrop colored pink on top.

“If you don't eat, no one will adopt you,” Lila warned again.

Grace stuck to her guns as a Uranian. She glanced at her food as if it were a personal affront.

Had Grace been more receptive, Lila might have encouraged her to eat by pointing out the starving dogs in Bangladesh and the dangers of anorexia. But Lila saved her breath. “All right. Whatever you want. I was trying to help.” She walked through the living room to Google Yuri Makov in the den.

Grace averted her eyes.

“Have it your way,” Lila said. “I'm not too thrilled about you, either.”