Where We Belong (29 page)

My mom was in the bathroom, and I heard her shriek. I thought she’d seen a mouse or a cockroach or something. But I was so happy in the new place. Nothing could ruin it. I just thought, Whatever. We’ll buy a mousetrap or some bug spray and still be happy.

But when she stuck her head out, she was beaming.

“It has a bathtub!”

“Most bathrooms do.”

“But the one at the Magnussons’ didn’t. And the one at the motel before that didn’t. I’m so tired of stall showers. I haven’t taken a hot bath in a year. And it’s huge. And deep. Looks like I can get every part of me under hot water that I don’t need for breathing.”

“Well, this is your big night, then.”

“I think we should order a pizza,” she said.

“We can afford a pizza?”

“Of course we can. We have…”

I braced myself for loudness. Literally winced.

“…
no rent
!”

She never said those two words in a normal voice, only screamed them. I was nearly used to it by then.

“Tell me what you want on it,” I said, “and I’ll call from the big house.”

“I think we should get pepperoni and mushrooms and double cheese. After all, this is a major celebration.”

“Sounds good to me. Come on, Rig.”

I walked to the door, opened it, stepped out onto the landing, and waited for Rigby to come through the door with me. She didn’t. I looked back and found her lying on the rug next to Sophie, giving me a look I could only call apologetic. Like she needed to stay with Sophie, because Sophie needed her to, and maybe I would understand.

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll go by myself.”

When I got back up to the apartment, my mom threw her arms around me. And not just for a quick second, either. She got me wrapped up and didn’t let go.

It was kind of disturbing.

“You really saved our collective ass,” she said.

Then I felt even more weirded out.

I wiggled loose. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? I’m giving credit where credit is due.”

“I don’t know. It just makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know why.”

She sighed.

I knew why. It was because every time I solved a problem that should really have been hers to solve, I figured she was that much more likely to dump the next one on me. That situation with her was like a stray cat. I really wanted that cat to go away. Fixing it a nice fish dinner and a bowl of milk was not the way to get what I wanted.

Then again, I’d tried leaving things unfixed. And that only left things unfixed.

“I can’t believe we killed that whole pizza,” my mom said.

“I believe it.”

“Sophie had two slices. Now that’s hard to believe.”

“We’ve all been hungry. She just didn’t have the words to say it.”

That stopped the conversation dead.

Actually, I hadn’t been hungry for days. I’d been gorging myself out of Paul’s refrigerator. But I hadn’t gotten used to having plenty to eat yet. I was still overcompensating. So the point still held.

“I guess Rigby and I are going back to the house. You take your hot bath. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I got up and crossed over to the door, suddenly wondering if Rigby would try to stick with Sophie again. I looked back at her. Rigby was in that same position on the rug, giving me that same look.

I made a mental note to bring her padded floor bed to the apartment. It might be bad for her arthritis to lie on the hardwood floor. And she never used the floor bed in the house, anyway. She always used half of Paul’s bed.

“Rigby. Seriously this time. We sleep in the big house. We’ve got to go.”

She rose to her feet, all long legs and a little bit of stiffness. I wondered if I should tell Paul about the stiffness. Or maybe just cut back on our walk mileage a little and see if that was enough.

She ambled over to the door, and me, in about four steps.

I opened the door.

Sophie opened her mouth. And screamed.

It was the first time we’d heard that horrible sound since leaving the city to come here. Since she lost her voice on the drive.

I looked at my mom, and she looked at me.

“Why is she doing that?” I asked, all panicked, shouting to be heard.

“I don’t know!”

“She can’t do that here! We’re not that far from the neighbors!”

A wild shrug. That was the only answer my mom seemed to have.

I walked back to where Sophie sat on the rug, and Rigby followed me. And of course, Sophie quieted right down.

I frowned and sat cross-legged on the rug beside them. Purposely not looking at my mom.

So this was one more stray cat I’d just fed, even though I never wanted it to come around again. I’d just taught Sophie that if I took Rigby away, and she shrieked, I’d bring the dog back. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t have Paul’s neighbors calling the police.

I sat there for a couple of minutes, nursing this heavy, sick feeling in my gut. For a few hours there, I’d been totally relaxed and thinking everything was going to be okay. And it obviously wasn’t going to be okay at all.

I wondered if the hoping was where I’d gone wrong.

I finally braved a look at my mom, who looked like she was having a hard time holding down all that pizza.

She put words to the sick thing in my gut. She said, “Shortest vacation in the history of the world.”

“Thought you were going to take a bath.”

“Maybe you’ll have to live here with the dog. Not in the big house.”

I didn’t say what I wanted to say.

What I wanted to say was “That’s the stupidest, most short-sighted idea you’ve ever had. Which is a tough contest to win. Because then when Paul gets home and wants his dog back, the whole thing will be over. We’ll be out looking for a new place again.”

What I actually said was, “I can’t. Paul might call, and then he won’t know where I am. Or how his dog is.”

Somehow, I’d have to train Sophie to wait patiently for the next time she’d see Rigby. Like she’d been doing nearly all along. But I had no idea why she’d done it so well for so long. Or why she’d stopped. So I had no idea where to start.

“So what are we going to do?” my mom asked.

Something inside me… sort of… snapped.

“And there it is again,” I said. My voice sounded hard. Even to me.

“Meaning what?”

“Every time things get bad, you ask me what
we’re
going to do. Which is like… in case you don’t get it—how that comes through—the message in there is real clear. You don’t know what to do, so you’re hoping I do.” Fortunately, I was not raising my voice. I was wondering if I could keep it that way. “I can’t take the pressure anymore. Look at all I’ve done to fix our situation. And then something goes wrong with Sophie, and I’m your go-to fixer again. I get it that sometimes you feel like I’m better at this than you are, but could you at least try? Could you… I don’t know… practice? Or something?”

A long silence, during which I didn’t brave a look at her face.

Then I did.

She was leaning with her back against the glass door. Arms crossed over her chest. Looking away from me, down at the hardwood floor at the edge of the big rug. Her face looked heavy and dark, like a storm cloud right before the thunder and lightning starts. But nothing happened. She just brooded there.

“Take your bath,” I said. “I’ll stay till Sophie goes to sleep.”

She just stayed frozen there for a long time. Like she hadn’t even heard. Then she broke loose suddenly and marched into the bathroom. Slammed the door. Hard.

I jumped. All three of us jumped.

I looked at Rigby and Sophie. Rigby looked back.

“Well, that was a major disaster,” I told her.

She reached out and snuffled my ear. It sounded funny, so I laughed. It felt good to laugh at a time like that, but weird, too. I guess I’d thought maybe I never would again.

It was after ten when I finally got inside the big house. The message machine was beeping.

I’d never learned how to play messages.

I squinted at the buttons for a while. It was probably Paul, but I was afraid I might accidentally erase it, and then it might turn out to be from someone else, and be important. So instead, I got Paul’s number from the list on the side of the fridge and called him.

“Did you call?” I asked.

“I did,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I was in the apartment with my mom and Sophie.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

“I thought maybe you’d be worried if I wasn’t home at night.”

“It occurred to me that you might be with your family.”

“Are you okay?”

A long silence.

“I probably shouldn’t call you and tell you my problems,” he said.

“I really don’t mind.”

I took the phone over to the couch and sat. Rigby lay down so close that one of her front paws draped over my foot.

“But you have a life. And problems of your own.”

“So? Everybody has a life. And problems. But they also have friends, and sometimes they listen to their friends’ problems. It’s normal. Well. Listen to me talk like I know what normal is. I’m not saying I’ve done it that way all my life or anything. But I’m pretty sure lots of people do.”

A little sound from him that could have been a laugh but came out as more of a light breath.

“What’s going on down there?” I asked.

“It’s just moving really fast.”

I got a clutch in my chest and gut, thinking I didn’t have much time to solve the Sophie problem. Then I felt guilty for only thinking of myself. But it wasn’t thinking, really, anyway. It was my gut. I guess my gut only knows me.

“How fast?”

“Kind of hard to say. Hard to know how much is the pain medication. Maybe part of it is that he’s still not fully recovered from the surgery.”

“Is he at home?”

“Yeah. He’s back. And we have hospice coming in to help us.”

Weird, maybe, but I wondered how it felt to him to use the word
us
for himself and Rachel. But it didn’t seem right to ask.

I looked out the window and saw the lights of houses clustered at the foot of the mountains, and it felt comforting, somehow. Like life is always going on somewhere. No matter what.

I said, “Can I ask a little favor?”

“Sure. I guess.”

“You’re staying right next door to my Aunt Violet’s house, right?”

“Yeah. Right where you met me.”

“When you get a chance, would you tell her where we are, and that we’re okay?”

“Sure. I could do that.”

“I think she probably feels guilty for putting us out.”

“Probably.”

“But… I’m sorry. You were talking about Dan. And I sort of changed the subject. You were saying it all seems to be going so fast.”

First nothing.

Then, “I keep thinking about a week or two back. He hadn’t been to the doctor’s yet, and nobody knew anything was wrong. Well, that’s not right. He must have known something. Or he wouldn’t have gone in. I guess he’d been having trouble for a while, but he probably thought it was excess stomach acid or an ulcer or something. And then he gets the news. Bang. He’s in for surgery, and then everything’s falling apart. It must be really fast-growing. Plus, it was late-stage and spreading to his lungs when they found it. But still, I expected things to go slower. It just seems strange that everything is falling apart so fast. It’s hard to understand.”