The Wonder Bread Summer (25 page)

In Canada, before she made friends, Jessica was exceedingly lonely. To alleviate
her loneliness, she went to the Humane Society and adopted a black dog that she named Moses.
Moses was leggy and sleek, and had a hound’s yowl. Jessica loved Moses in spite of the fact
that he chewed the legs of the kitchen chairs and once gnawed through a seatbelt and a
headrest in the car. Moses was the fastest runner in Withrow Park in Toronto. Every time a
group of dog owners stood at the top of the hill for dog races, each owner throwing a ball for
their dog, Moses would win. (There are other dogs and dog owners who would disagree with this,
but this isn’t their bio page—whoever types it first gets the last word.) When Jessica had a
baby, she and her husband gave Moses to a man who ran every morning and wanted a running
partner in dog form. The other dog owners in the park thought it was creepy that Jessica and
her husband traded in the dog for a baby. Some of them gossiped about it. Jessica ignored the
gossip because she knew Moses would be happier with the running man than at home with Jessica
and the nursing baby.

While living in Baltimore with her second husband, David, Jessica thought it was
time for a new dog. Two friends (who had just given birth to triplets) gave her their giant,
horsey black lab named Jordan. Jessica’s younger daughter looked at Jordan and said in her
tiny baby voice, “You’re not Jordan, you’re Georgie.” Georgie was faithful and kind and let
the kid who named her ride on her back and slide across the hardwood floor while hanging on to
her tail. Georgie was old when the family adopted her, and very old when she died on her
favorite down sleeping bag in the middle of the living room where she had insisted on spending
her final days. Before Georgie died, Jessica wanted a transitional dog for Georgie to train.
She figured the new dog would behave as Georgie did, and Georgie was a perfectly polished
lady. David did not want a new dog, but on Hanukkah, David’s brother gave Jessica a small,
white toy poodle named Pippa. The whole family, including Georgie but not including David,
fell in love with her. David didn’t like her because he thought poodles were showy and
embarrassing. After Pippa’s first haircut, she and Jessica were frolicking on the front lawn
when David pulled up in the car. He glanced at the pink bows in Pippa’s hair and the puffy
shaved cotton balls of hair on her legs, and quickly backed up and drove away. Pippa has never
had a haircut like that since. When Georgie died, David grew to love Pippa like a daughter. Or
not quite a daughter. Maybe the way you’d love your best friend’s daughter.

One Christmas, Jessica’s mother’s dog—an overly muscled rottweiler-shepherd
mix—took a bite out of Pippa’s head and punctured her eye, which now looks like a foggy blue
marble. Pippa has become increasingly neurotic since losing the eye. The list of things she
won’t do has grown to this: Won’t walk up or down the stairs. Won’t walk past anything shiny
or reflective (like the kitchen trash can). Won’t walk over sewer grates. Won’t let strange
men pet her. Won’t let big dogs sniff her butt. Jessica doesn’t think the butt-sniff is much
of a loss, but she finds it terribly inconvenient to carry the dog up and down the steps.
Jessica hopes one day to get one of those old-lady chairs that ride the stairs. It would have
to be nonreflective and not resemble a sewer grate, a strange man, or a big dog, so that Pippa
would be willing to use it.

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About the book

Chinese Proverbs

I love Chinese proverbs because they can reveal monumental truths in the most economical and succinct way. It was great fun finding these proverbs for the character of Wai Po, who, I imagined, lived by most of them. Here are some of my favorites that didn’t make it into the book.

How to Live Your Life

Keeping company with the wicked is like living in a fish market: one becomes used to the foul odor.

Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

If the first words fail, ten thousand will not avail.

The wise person listens to his mind; the fool listens to the mob.

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.

Relationships/Love

Oh eggs, don’t fight with rocks!

Curse your wife at evening, sleep alone at night.

Do not employ handsome servants.

In bed be wife and husband; in the hall be each other’s honored guests.

He who strikes the first blow admits he’s lost the argument.

Do not hasten to rejoice at someone’s departure until you see his replacement.

Family/Children

It is easier to rule a nation than a child.

Govern a family as you would cook a small fish: very gently.

If you want your dinner, don’t insult the cook.

The house with an old grandparent harbors a jewel.

Parents who are afraid to put their foot down usually have children who step on their toes.

Work

Be the first to the field and the last to the couch.

The poor are those without talents; the weak are those without aspirations.

To rise high, conceal ambition.

A goal without a deadline is only a wish; a dream with a deadline becomes a goal.

If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.

To read more Chinese proverbs you can go to:

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Chinese_Proverb/

http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/chinaproverbs.html

http://www.sacu.org/proverbs.html

http://www.chinese-traditions-and-culture.com/chinese-proverbs.html

Read
on

An Excerpt from
Drinking Closer to Home

T
HE
YEAR
A
NNA
WAS
ELEVEN
, Portia was eight, and Emery was three, Louise decided she quit
being a housewife. Anna was playing Parcheesi with her sister on the family room floor when
Louise told them.

“Portia, Anna,” Louise said, and she began searching through the little piles of
papers, mail, phone books, and pencils that covered from end to end the white tile counter
that separated the kitchen from the family room.

“Yeah?” Portia asked. Anna looked at her freckle-faced sister, her white, hairless
flesh, her wispy brown hair that shone like corn silk. As much as she often hated her, she
could understand why her parents were always pawing at her with hugs and kisses: the girl was
like a pastry or a sweet. She looked edible.

Anna was as small as Portia. But she was all muscle and sinew, as if she were made
of telephone cables. No one ever wanted to pinch telephone cables. She rolled the dice and
ignored her mother.

“Come here,” Louise said. She continued to shift things around. Portia pushed her
doughy rump up and went to the counter. She moved aside an empty box that had held ten Hot
Wheels racing cars and handed her mother the pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes she was most
likely looking for.

“I quit.” Louise tapped out a cigarette, then lit it from the pack of matches she
kept tucked in the cellophane wrapper. She had grown her hair long at a time when mothers
didn’t have long hair. And she didn’t wear makeup—a habit that made her look fresher and more
alive than the other mothers. Anna hated it when Portia said that their mother looked like a
movie star—she hated that her sister couldn’t see the drop-out anarchist mentality their
mother conveyed through her hippie clothes. And it really drove Anna crazy when she witnessed
Louise opening the front door to the Fuller Brush Man or the Avon Lady and they asked Louise,
“Is your mother home?” What kind of a mother didn’t look like a mother?! One like Louise, Anna
supposed, who only wore wide, drapey bell-bottoms, cork platform shoes, and flowing silk
shirts with no bra. In her ears were always two gold hoops that hung almost to her shoulders.
Anna knew that people in other parts of town dressed like Louise. But no one in their
neighborhood did. They lived in a place of pantsuits, helmets of hair, waxy lipstick, sensible
sneakers. Anna didn’t know any mother who worked, or did art. At least her parents weren’t
divorced, Anna thought. The only person she knew who had divorced parents was Molly Linkle, a
girl who was so fat she wore bras that made her breasts look like cones and shopped in the
Ladies’ Department at Robinson’s.

“What do you mean you quit?” Portia climbed onto the orange stool. Anna wondered
when her sister would stop asking questions.

“Your turn,” Anna said. She looked toward her sister’s back and watched as her
mother pursed her lips and let out a slow stream of smoke.

“I quit being a housewife.” Louise shook her hair and smiled.

“Can you do that?” Portia asked.

Anna was going to pretend she wasn’t listening. There was something inside her
that often led her to believe that if she ignored certain things they would cease to exist.
She turned the Parcheesi board over and dumped the pieces on the rug.

“Of course I can. I just did. I quit!” Louise took another drag off her
cigarette.

“Anna!”

Anna knew Portia was staring at her but she refused to look up.

“Mom quit!”

“I heard,” Anna said. She could feel her face darkening, like a mercury
thermometer.

“Does Dad know?” Anna asked. She crossed her legs and glared at her mother.

“I told him last night.”

“What about Emery?” The idea that her mother wouldn’t have the same occupation as
her friends’ mothers enraged Anna. Who would have the nerve to give birth to children, move
them into a house, and then declare that she wasn’t going to take care of them? A
drug-addicted hippie, Anna decided, that’s who.

“You girls are in charge of Emery now.”