Taking It (6 page)

I woke up very early the next morning. My dreams had been terrible, each one frantic—late for classes, late for a play I was starring in, late for airplanes that were already on the runway. I dreamed I was in a pool, unable to reach the surface.

I made the bed the way they make them in motels, tucked in all around, tight. I put on my fuchsia sweatpants. They have deep front pockets and are baggy, loose in a way that makes you feel naked inside the fabric. I bound my hair back with a rubber band, the band pulling at my hair and hurting a little.

I laced up the running shoes while I sat on the front porch. It was so early the newspapers were being delivered, a green van rolling slowly up the street, rolled-up newspapers firing out of the van as it made its way, a paper hitting a front door with a
thwack
. An Asian man on the passenger's side saw me or I probably would have had to duck. The paper slapped the steps at my feet, and I let it lie.

There were sow bugs. They rolled up when I touched them, and tickled my fingers with their tiny legs. My mother had chosen the welcome mat at Payless Hardware years ago, black rubber spikes for taking mud off the shoes, the word
welcome
in red.

Running makes me cough.

It also makes me sweat, and I hate that. After a short time I was walking, the morning sunlight on the dewy grass. Sometimes another jogger would huff by on the other side of the street, and sometimes there would be someone doing exer-walking, an out-of-shape person striding along with weights in his hands.

Some people don't seem to realize the battle is hopeless, they are just out of shape and they might as well quit. Ted says we can be whatever we want to be, but I can't see it. I don't believe in plastic surgery, either, and I think that when you get old, keeping yourself pretty by going to the surgeon is like athletes taking drugs so they can jump hurdles.

But it was nice to be away from the house, and away from my father, who was probably up by now, watching the news and making his breakfast Power Shake: milk and banana and vitamin powder.

A few early risers leaned on walls and telephone poles on Solano Avenue, caffeine addicts outside the coffee places there, and they looked bad. They were baggy-eyed and their hair was messed up, the women looking worse than the men, puffy and tired-looking.

The redwood tree in the parking lot of Andronico's grocery store was full of birds, as usual, but as usual I couldn't see any. I could only hear them, and maybe once in a while there would be a flutter, a bird looking for a new perch.

The morning was cool and cloudy, the way it often is in the summer. A couple of the men gave me one of their looks, but I gave them each a look right back that pretty much took the light out of their eyes. I did manage to run a little bit when I looped back to Colusa and made it back to Capistrano.

I stopped there, wanting to cry out. A deer was bounding down the middle of the street.

Deer are supposed to be quiet creatures, but this one made a sound, each hoof crisp on the asphalt. The deer curved its front legs, arching them prettily, and for a moment the animal didn't seem in a hurry, jogging beautifully down the middle of Capistrano Street, heading in the wrong direction, down into the neighborhood, away from the hills.

The deer was running gingerly because it was uncertain. There were houses and parked cars everywhere, and a dog was gaining on it.

It was a dark dog, trailing a leash, its tongue out. I could hardly recognize the animal in its intensity.

It was Lincoln. I called out his name but he didn't glance at me as he passed. He did make a long, exhaled sniff without slowing, a minimal
hello
, a friend too rapt to stop.

I had never seen a dog chase a deer, but I had a clear sense of what would happen next.

The dog would corner the deer. Lincoln would trap the deer against a wall and tear it up. I don't know where the thought came from but it was there, as though my genes knew more about this than my own memory—the big dog would tear the deer to pieces.

I screamed. This was not a Hollywood, fright-night scream. This was a huntress's command. The sound of my voice did seem to slow Lincoln for an instant. I could see him stiffen, hearing me. A flash of apology passed through him. Then he rounded the corner and vanished.

Maybe the deer would fight back. Maybe he would hook Lincoln with one of the antlers. That was a painful thought, too, and I was sprinting hard, around the corner and up, following the two animals.

I lost them. Somewhere in the maze of gardens and garages the dog and the deer were running, and I was frantic, calling out the dog's name.

Until there was nothing to do but give up and walk back, feeling beaten. A woman crept down her front steps in a pink bathrobe, her hand holding on to the rail beside the steps. She wore hair rollers, her hair up under a kerchief. A man watered his lawn, careful so only a little water darkened the redwood chips bordering the grass.

People really don't see much, don't care much about the things that happen. Maybe it's hard enough for them to get up out of bed every morning, another day.

There was Lincoln, coming back down Capistrano, just like the first time, but wet with his own saliva, now, panting. I hurried after the dog, but this time when I called breathlessly Lincoln slowed, and turned to look as I snatched at the leash and caught it.

Lincoln jumped up and down, breathing hard. My hand slipped and I had to hang on tight. I got a better grip, Lincoln testing my strength, experimenting with the power of the leash.

I gave the leather strap a few good turns around my wrist. Lincoln gave a half-spoken yowl, telling me to let him go. The leash was taut, the dog begging me, good-humored, but feinting, lunging.

12

Maureen's father was getting on his bicycle when I panted up the front lawn with Lincoln.

It's an old bike, but Mr. Dean rides it every morning to the campus in Berkeley, a black-and-white three speed that creaks. He stood there with one leg up on the bike and closed his eyes and opened them. “Thank God,” he said.

Lincoln had his tail between his legs.

“Anna, I was in a panic. I can't run, not like you. I was going off on my bike to look.” He gave a little laugh. “Maureen's off looking for Lincoln at Indian Rock. Once he went up there and ran around making a nuisance. Lincoln, where were you?”

Lincoln hung his head, wagging his tail experimentally. I told Mr. Dean about the deer.

“Oh, that's not good at all, not at all,” said Mr. Dean. He gave a little laugh. “It's my fault. It's my fault, Lincoln,” he said to the dog. “One day I was going to go to Petland and get one of those big chains, the stainless steel ones. I took a look at one of those, and I said, ‘Lincoln doesn't need a chain like that, not a dignified dog like Lincoln.'”

Maureen sprinted down the street, and when she reached us, bent over, her hands on her knees. “I can't breathe,” she said finally. “I'm going to die.”

“Lincoln almost did a terrible thing,” said Mr. Dean. He made his laugh, a small karate chop of a chuckle. “He almost caught a deer. Isn't that right, Lincoln? A deer for breakfast.” He spoke to the dog in a normal speaking voice, not in a little cute voice, the way some people talk to animals.

Lincoln looked at me, sniffed the lawn, not meeting Mr. Dean's eyes. I thought the dog was exaggerating his feeling of shame a little, but a person or an animal can exaggerate and still be sincere.

“It shows how little we know.” He made his laugh again. Mr. Dean's laugh has nothing to do with anything seeming funny. It's a nervous sound he makes in the middle of his sentences. Mr. Dean talks like a very nervous man being questioned by the police and trying to carry it off. He might tell you terrible news and still make his little laugh: An earthquake—
heh
—has destroyed Los Angeles.

Mr. Dean found a rope under the house, a big gray rope like something you might use to tie up a bull. The rope had been under the house awhile and was dirty with dead moths and what looked like daddy longlegs legs. Mr. Dean worked the big rope through the loop in the choke collar and tied Lincoln to a tree.

“Is that what we need, Lincoln?” said Mr. Dean. “A whale rope?” He gave Lincoln his orange dish full of water, and Lincoln gave us all a kind look, as though the dog understood our limitations.

Mrs. Dean was in Spokane on business, and Mr. Dean and Maureen heated some Sara Lee cherry strudel. We sat there in the dining room. Maureen looked pink-cheeked from her run, and everyone was happy, now that Lincoln was back safe. Mr. Dean told a story about a dog he used to know that would slink away whenever you put your hands up to your eyes like you were holding binoculars.

“Or like this,” said Mr. Dean, curving his forefingers, like someone pretending to wear glasses. “The poor dog would hate it when people did that. He hid behind the couch.”

“We had a parakeet who would fall off his perch when I wore a baseball cap,” said Maureen.

“Birds panic,” said Mr. Dean. Mr. Dean wears the same suit every day, a gray business suit with a vest. He was wearing it today, with a bow tie, the bicycle clips he uses on his pantlegs beside his coffee cup.

I couldn't believe that Maureen could be sitting here talking to her father so cheerfully. Maybe they hadn't discussed the shattered vase. Maybe Mr. Dean didn't know about it, and I even turned to look at the bare space on the shelf, wondering if Maureen had sneaked another art object into its place. She hadn't.

Sometimes I am so sure I know what a person or an animal is feeling. Other times I can't tell what people are thinking, as though they have taken a sudden off-ramp and I'm rolling along alone, no one else in sight.

Walking past a row of clay objects, I thought I might start breaking them one by one, starting with the blue frog.

13

There are very few pets in Petland, just a few yellow-green parakeets sitting in their cages with their black eyes looking around at nothing. There are sacks of songbird seed and great bunches of millet, and pigs' ears in a big basket,
Smoke-flavored
—
dogs love 'em
.

Maureen hefted a bright chain and let it fall to the counter. We were the first customers of the day. The cash register had to be unlocked with a little key on one of those coiled plastic springs people wear to keep lucky charms and keys right at their hip. There was only one clerk, and she didn't even bother to glance my way. A shop like this would be easy, if you wanted to steal catnip mice.

“You told him,” I said.

“Yeah, I told him,” said Maureen, counting out some money.

Maureen didn't take a bag. She wrapped the chain around her arm like a gladiator.

“What did he say?” I asked when we were outside.

“He said it was an accident.”

The chain slipped from her arm, glittering, and fell to the sidewalk. She picked it up.

“I'm going to pay him back for it,” she said.

I thought about this. “How much did it cost?” I asked, but Maureen just looked at me with a smile that meant: I didn't get the point.

When Maureen is happy, she makes everyone around her happy. She swung the new dog chain and danced a little as we made our way up Colusa. Maureen is one of those people who can hear music in their heads, listening to songs they remember without even humming, even dancing to those tunes if she feels like it. For some reason I was suddenly sick of her.

“You don't even know how to walk,” I said.

“Shut up.” Nice, too happy to take me seriously.

“Look at you, all over the sidewalk.” Maureen prefers guys who are just as unformed as she is, baggy, worn-out clothes and vague habits, people who can sleep all day and then jump up and down with excitement because a team on television just scored.

She stopped doing arabesques up the sidewalk, although she rolled her eyes at me like she was doing me a huge favor.

“When you walk,” I said, “you shouldn't let all your weight go down on one foot, and then take another step and let all your weight down on that foot. That's not walking. That's lumbering.”

“At least I don't mince.”

“You walk like a cavewoman,” I said. “It's embarrassing.”

My jogging clothes were loose and comfortable. I just walked along, showing Maureen how to stay centered.

My father was on the phone, pacing up and down in front of the aquarium. CNN was on with the sound off, someone getting out of a car, not talking, heading into a courthouse.

Dad tossed the phone onto the sofa when he was done with it, and hitched at his pants, looking at me, and then looking up at the ceiling. He was wearing a summer-weight suit, butterscotch yellow. His shoes were London tan, and his tie was toast brown, everything more or less matching, colors that made him look tired.

“We have a week,” he said, staying where he was.

“Six days,” I said. “They leave for Canada in forty-five minutes.”

I love details. You can say you'd like to scream, or you can say you'd like to hit high C above the treble clef. Mother and Adler were on flight 709 out of SFO.

He said, “Your mother's very concerned. So am I.”

“What are they going to do up there, feed bears? Mother doesn't even like the beach because sand gets in her shoes.”

“They have a nice hotel up there, Lake Louise. Very comfortable, very pretty. Your mother and I went there when we'd been married maybe a year.” He didn't want to talk about that. “You went jogging?”

“Something different,” I said.

“I want you to do something with your time,” he said.

I could almost feel sorry for him, a man women liked, having trouble talking to his own daughter. “Such as?”

“Something safe.”

“Something that won't get your name in the news,” I said. I regretted saying it. He blinked and walked over to the aquarium.