The Story of Us (5 page)

She looked straight out to the ocean. She looked like she was thinking important things. The direction of her life, maybe.

“When you’re old, you know things,” I said to her. But she didn’t turn to look at me. She kept looking ahead, sitting still with her own weighty thoughts, or else keeping watch for a seagull or a far-off boat or an unfamiliar one of her kind that might wish to do me harm.

The Bluff House got larger and larger again as we walked back, and when we were almost there, I could see people on the grass on the bluff, a bunch of people, and a dog running around. Cruiser, Dan Jax’s dog. I’d played with him a few times when we’d gone to Dan’s for dinner, but so far he and Jupiter had only watched each other through car windows. The idea of getting them together—it scared me. Cruiser was young and physical, with boisterous big-dog energy. He was strong. Three times Jupiter’s size, easy, with a thick neck and meaty haunches. His fur was a golden tan, with a splotch of white on his chest in the exact shape of the shield on Superman’s suit.

Cruiser was a little out of control. He sort of reminded me of Kenny Yakimoro, our old next-door neighbor. Ben and I used to spy on him through our fence because he was always doing thrilling things we’d never be allowed to do. Shooting cap guns or playing war with Nathan Washelli, using real-looking plastic rifles. Kenny wasn’t a bad kid, but he was always in trouble for running in the halls, or for getting carried away and knocking someone’s lunch tray over. The kind of guy you wanted on your kickball team because he gave it everything he had. That was Cruiser.

This—them, us, the families coming in over the week before the wedding—it was all Dan Jax’s idea. I guess I could see his thinking: If you want to introduce two dogs who are going to live together, you bring them to neutral territory first. You have them meet. You let them participate in mutual activities—a walk, say. A Frisbee toss. You let them hash it
out, and before you know it, they’ve figured out how to deal with each other.

Maybe I should just say right here that Jupiter wouldn’t fetch a Frisbee to save her life.

Maybe I should also say that Cruiser wouldn’t be my choice for Jupiter if I was playing dog matchmaker. I’d choose another old girl that might want to lie in a shady spot when it got warm. Not a big guy who’d tear up that lawn with his strong black toenails, sending bits of grass and dirt flying as he covered the places where he’d lifted his leg to mark his territory.

I could see two girls up on that grass too. We’d never met them before either. Dan Jax’s daughters, Hailey and Amy, eighteen and fifteen, lived in Vancouver, Canada. When our parents married each other (
if
our parents married each other), only I would be moving into the new house in Seattle. Ben would be away at school, and I’d be home until college started in the fall, or maybe later, depending on where I finally decided to go. Up in Vancouver, Amy and Hailey would be in the relationship sphere of distant cousins, I thought. Children of your parents’ friends, maybe. Those people you mostly just heard about, listening with one ear until some jealousy-inducing words flew past.
Harvard, fabulous job, moving into your old room.

I could feel, right there, my attitude edge into something craggy and unwelcoming. I’d had bad experiences with steps. The word “step”—it’s perfect, isn’t it, for those people linked to us through remarriage? You step toward, you step away, but if
you are “stepping,” you have never, will never, arrive. Thanks to Jon Jakes’s kids, Olivia and Scotty, who lived with us part-time at our old house, I didn’t believe families were meant to blend. Blend—it makes you think of smoothness and order, when it’s all more like that closet in Olivia’s room, with all the shit stuffed in and falling out. Blending was a great idea, yeah, but Olivia and Scotty didn’t care about school and ate junk food for breakfast, and on the weekends they’d stay in their pajamas in front of the TV until the day got dark again. We
did
care about school; we ate Cheerios, not Skittles, in the morning; and on the weekends we’d go to a baseball game of Ben’s and come home only to find them in the same place as when we’d left. You can use whatever words you want, but I knew they weren’t my brother and sister. I felt more connection to my cousins Zach and Kristina on my Dad’s side. We’d only met them once, but they had our same noses. You know your people. You recognize your tribe, same as a dog knows a dog is different than a cat.

Anyway, here’s what happened: Jon Jakes’s kids kept trying to
Parent Trap
their mom and dad back together, until my mother finally lost patience. She handed back her engagement ring at the Sea-Tac Airport, just before a romantic pre-wedding trip for two to Cabo San Lucas. After the Jakes trio was finally gone, Gram brought over these small bound packages of sage we were supposed to burn to get rid of the bad feelings in our house. She went around our rooms waving the smoking bundle in the air as Ben and I cracked jokes.
Put some juju
smoke in the laundry hamper, Gram. Ah-ha-ha-ha!
We didn’t need the sage, though. A week after they’d left, my mother was already back to singing loudly in the kitchen as she made her morning coffee, with Jupiter dancing happily around her feet.
Good morning, sunshines! You brighten my daaaay!
The bad feelings had taken their Skittles and gone home.

Amy and Hailey, though. They were Dan Jax’s daughters, and it was a new start for Mom, for all of us, or so went the talk I gave myself as I made my way up the boardwalk. My mother deserved my good attitude, and so did Dan Jax, and Amy and Hailey were probably great people who were nothing like Olivia and Scotty. Maybe I would even like them. They were Dan’s kids, so why not? I had a brief fantasy—Amy and Hailey and Natalie and me, having coffee someplace in Seattle, going to the film festival. Amy making us laugh so hard. Hailey staying over in my dorm room. The thing was—it could be great. A big family. It was a possibility. Even if my experience in these things told me that their alien planet was likely on a collision course with our alien planet.

“Well, Jupe, here we go.” She definitely noticed that dog up there. “Let’s do it, huh?”

I could see them up on the bluff standing on the grass too, my mother with her wavy gold hair falling below her shoulders, in her pastel sundress and bare feet, and Dan Jax, with his black hair combed back into a pony tail, wearing his jeans and denim shirt, and yeah, with those strong hands that came from his work as a contractor. The two of them looked like
salt and pepper, day and night, but they were so similar, it could get annoying. Still, I could see it even from there. She was being herself, something she never was with Jon Jakes, or Vic Dennis, or even my father. I wondered if that’s what love looked like. Is that what I felt with Janssen, those summer days when we lay on a blanket on the grass, just reading, toes entangled with toes? Or was being with Janssen something else? Like that time we’d driven out to see the hot-air balloons in Woodinville, maybe. When we’d stood on the ground and held hands and we watched one take off, lifting to join all the others up above. I was glad I wasn’t on that crazy thing. But I thought something else then too. What if you never felt what it was like to rise and rise into the sky?

Mom saw me and waved. Even from there, I could see how bright her smile was.

“My mother thinks two dogs is too many,” Amy said. Amy had long, shiny black hair parted in the middle, and so did her sister. They were both thin, with hungry hip bones jutting from tight clothes. Amy smiled, sugar-cereal sweet. She wore a pink T-shirt, and I had no reason to think it, but I did—pink could be cruel too. Hailey looked off into the distance as if even the ocean itself was irritating. One corner of her mouth curled up, as if she’d just stepped in something disgusting.

I was smiling, but inside my stupid head a siren started to blare, a mental fire truck rounding an internal corner. You
were supposed to pull over when you heard that. I wondered if Mom heard it too. I looked her way, but she was just laughing at something Dan said.

“He’s soooo cute,” Amy said. She was stroking Jupiter’s black head, but she was looking at Ben, whose hair was shoved up in the back from his nap. He’d straggled down to join us outside, and he’d greeted everyone and joked around, still wearing a pillow wrinkle on his face.

“She,” I said.

“He’s got the cutest ears,” Amy said.

“It’s
free
-zing out here,” Hailey said.

“Well, they’re doing okay so far,” Dan Jax said, gazing at the dogs. Cruiser was sniffing Jupiter’s butt, and she was handling it with a great deal of dignity.

“She’s not really used to other dogs,” Mom said. She was hovering a little, standing close enough to rescue Jupiter if she needed it. Cruiser was only three years old, and Jupiter was ready for retirement. He looked like he could snap her up in one rambunctious bite. Now he wanted to play. He got down on his front paws, barked loudly. But she was playing it cool. Or else, that beach walk tired her out.

“You guys want to walk them around a little together?” Dan said.

Ben took the leashes from Dan. “If they kill each other, it’s not my fault,” he said.

“They’ll do fine,” Dan said. He kissed the back of Mom’s neck. He was likely right—Cruiser was now busy investigating
an old cigarette butt, and Jupiter didn’t look capable of killing anyone, with her graying muzzle and that friendly white spot on her back.

“Come on,” Ben said to me.

We headed away from the group. The dogs ignored each other, doing their own thing at the end of their own leashes. I wouldn’t exactly call it bonding. Jupiter sat down, watched that big dog out of the corner of her eye, just in case. Cruiser kept his distance, but lifted his leg on every blade of grass. We were on the far slope of the lawn. The view up there was great. “It’s beautiful here,” I said. “Oh, wow. Hey, look—that house has a helicopter on the roof.”

Ben saw it too. “Cool,” he said.

“Well? What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t want a helicopter pad on my roof.”

I socked him. He knew what I meant. “High maintenance,” Ben said.

“We’ve got to give them a chance.”

“Yeah, we do. We
will
. Still, it is what it is,” he said. And it was true. You knew more often than you didn’t right away about people. One butt sniff, like Cruiser and Jupiter, and you understood pretty much what you needed to. Sometimes dogs didn’t even need a butt sniff to form an opinion. A certain guy could walk down our road, and Jupiter would bark her head off. Not everyone got that reaction. She just distrusted certain people for her own reasons, same as us.

“We can’t expect to love some strangers we’re thrown
together with,” I said. “Gavin and Oscar irritate the hell out of me, and I actually
chose
them.”

“I know. What can you expect? It’s like going into Starbucks and coming out with two new relatives.”

“Dan, though,” I said.

“Good guy.” There was efficiency to male language. Those two words were what guys said about other guys that they really respected. Guys they could count on, that were solid, whose word you trusted, who your mother better marry or you’d really question her sanity. The language for the other kind of men—even more efficient. Cut down to a single word they deserved. Asshole.

“Janssen?”

Ben looked at me like
my
sanity was in question. “Janssen
is
family.”

Gram and Aunt Bailey had arrived, and so there were ten of us having dinner in the dining room of Bluff House. Cruiser lay under the table near Dan, and Jupiter sat by my mother’s chair, staring at her with love eyes. Ted Rose had come home too. He was a large man, with gray curly hair and a gray beard, and with stories from their college days that were making Dan Jax slide his finger across his throat in a
Cut!
motion.

“Tell us the sordid details,” Gram said. She was twirling spaghetti around her fork. Some exuberant sauce had already speckled her blouse.

“We love sordid,” Aunt Bailey said. She was Gram’s younger sister. The two of them and a twenty-dollar bill could cause enough trouble to shut down a Target. They got kicked out of one once, trying on bathing suits.

“Nothing I’m proud of now,” Dan Jax said.

“Those twins …” Ted Rose chuckled.

“Daddy!” Hailey gasped.

“I thought you met Mom when you were eighteen,” Amy said.

“Who were those twins
we
knew?” Aunt Bailey elbowed Gram.

“Oh, baby,” Gram said. “Jerry was one.”

Aunt Bailey chuckled. “I remember Jerry. He had that belt buckle….”

“Those twins were hot, hot, hot!” Ted Rose sang, snapping his fingers, and Rebecca swatted him with a pot holder. I liked Ted Rose. He spoke with a large, warm voice, the way a bear would talk, if bears could talk. I noticed the friendly wrinkles around Rebecca’s eyes now too. Or maybe it was just that candlelight softened things.

“There’s one I haven’t heard,” Mom said. She was smiling.

Hailey sat on the other side of her father. She put her hand over Dan’s. “There’s probably a lot you don’t know about Daddy. You can ask us if you want to know.”

Gram kicked me under the table. Ben nudged my side. Mom’s smile got stuck there in position, same as the Bermuda Honda in second gear. I could tell what she was thinking, and I knew Ben could too, and he could tell what I was thinking, and Gram could tell what we all were thinking. All our thoughts were having their own conversation.