After that.
It’s while she’s trying to manage the phone and the treat pouch and the leash that she takes her eye off the environment. (“Never, ever take your eyes off the environment.” —Hal Miller.) This means that Leo sees a small white fluffball about thirty feet away before Mae does, and by the time Mae clocks it Leo is deep into his reaction. Like, really deep.
He stiffens. He looks like he wants to murder Fluffball. He lunges, pulling so hard on the leash that it takes every ounce of Mae’s strength to hold him back; there is a split second when she thinks he might actually pull her over. People are staring. Children are backing away.
“Sheeee-it,” says a bystander.
Fluffball’s owner is a man a little younger than Calvin. He scoops up Fluffball and backs away, yelling, “You shouldn’t have a dog like that out in public!”
Mae’s face is flaming. Her heart is beating so fast she feels like she just hiked Gregory Canyon to the Amphitheater, one of Boulder’s hardest hikes. She starts to sayI’m just—but the man yells, “Security!” so loud that her voice is drowned out.
Mae blocks Leo’s sight line with her body and gets him back intothe car as swiftly as possible. He’s over the threshold now; all she can do is remove him from the situation and allow him to calm down.
Mae gets in the back seat with Leo, locks the doors, and puts up the windows except for a three-inch gap. Leo’s paws are scrabbling at the windows. He barks and whines until the other dog is completely out of his sight. His tongue is long, and his breathing is frantic. It takes a long time for it to become un-frantic. She waits, and when Leo’s breathing starts to slow she strokes him along his side until his tongue returns to his mouth, until his heartbeat slows. Finally, hers does too.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” she whispers. “That was my fault. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m the worst.” She feels terrible. She should never have trusted herself to take on a board-and-train. She’s not ready. She’s twenty-nine years old, and she’s not ready for anything. She has nothing to show for the seven years between college and now. No home, no money, no real job, no prospects. No partner. No mom.
She breathes in and out, but when she exhales what comes out is not a breath but a shuddering sob. Suddenly she’s ugly crying, and she can’t stop. Mae is wearing a tank top, so she doesn’t even have a sleeve with which to stem the flow of tears. She rummages on the floor, and under the driver’s seat she finds a napkin from In-N-Out Burger. It’s hard to tell if the napkin is actively dirty or merely crumpled, but it will have to do.
She blows her nose exuberantly. Theresa used to tell Mae she could summon the angels from the gates of heaven with how loudly she blew her nose, and remembering this almost makes her cry harder. It was a funny expression for somebody who never went to church.
When she leans with her back to the window, legs out across the back seat, spent, Leo puts his big, funny, square, offensive-to-some-but-not-to-her head in Mae’s lap. He’s spent too. She strokes his cheek and closes her eyes. Then she snaps them open becausein all the excitement she has forgotten to check the status of Kara’s flight on her phone.
The plane landed nineteen minutes ago.
She takes one more swipe at her face, removes Leo’s head from her lap, lays it on the seat of the car, and opens the car door just enough so that she can squeeze out and Leo can’t. She scans the crowd exiting the baggage claim area and sees a familiar woman wearing a blue flowered sundress and carrying a light blue shoulder bag. Kara! Kara has cut her dark blond hair since the wedding. It was longer and wavier then; now it falls to her shoulders, and it’s blown stick straight. Minimal makeup, clear skin, a familiar smile, with a space between her two front teeth that would have been corrected if she’d grown up like the Shipman girls.
Mae steps into Kara’s arms and they hug. It’s a long hug, a hug of friendship and comfort, and now Leo, at least, knows one of Mae’s secrets: She doesn’t hate Kara. She activelylikesKara. Kara likes her. Kara and Mae are friends.Don’t tell anyone, Leo.But also, tell everyone, because Mae is an adult, and she’s allowed to make her own decisions, separate from her sisters. She is allowed to choose her own friends.
“I’m so happy to see you, Mae,” Kara says. “Have you been crying?”
“I’m so happy to seeyou,” says Mae, ignoring the question. It’s not like Kara has never seen her cry before—Kara saw the Shipman family during the darkest of their days. She’s seen them all cry and snipe at each other and laugh maniacally and sit quietly, all energy drained from them—but there’s something humiliating about crying now, more than two years later, in the arrivals area of Terminal B. She tries to pull herself together and says, “Oh! Let me introduce you to Leo. Kara, Leo. Leo, Kara.” Leo, exhausted now, accepts this visitor amiably (good boy, Leo).
Kara hesitates.
“Is your door locked?” asks Mae. She presses the button on the key. It’s unlocked, but Kara is still standing there. “You’re not scared of dogs, are you?” Would she have had reason to know this? The last beloved Shipman family dog, Coco, had died when Mae was a junior in college, and she hadn’t been replaced, so there had been no dog around during Theresa’s illness. Is Kara one of those people who assumes all pit bulls are evil? Mae will have to set her straight on that. Kara will love Leo once she gets to know him! Wait until she sees him roll over and play dead; wait until she sees how he can spin on command. He can’t do those things yet, but Mae is going to teach him.
“Your father didn’t tell you?” asks Kara.
“Tell me what?”
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you. I’m allergic to dogs.”
“Ohhh,” says Mae. “No! No. Really?” How could her father have neglected this piece of information when he saw not one but two dogs in the house?
“Really and truly. I can take medicine, but... it’s not ideal.”
“Shit,” says Mae. “I’m so sorry. What do we do? Natalie’s dog is at the house.” She thinks of Cinnamon’s copious shedding. She found a golden tumbleweed in her sneaker just before she left; you could knit a sweater from what Natalie swept up from the sunroom yesterday.
Kara shrugs. “I’ll pick up some antihistamines and hope for the best. Should we put this in the trunk?” She indicates her bag.
“No,” says Mae. The trunk is where the rest of her life lives. “I’ll squeeze it in back with Leo.” She takes Kara’s bag from her and wedges it in the back footwell, under the pile of pillows and blankets.
Kara slides into the passenger seat and cracks the window. Mae hears her sisters’ voices in her head.If you’re allergic to dogs, don’t come!they would say.Go back to Lenox! Better yet, go back to Ohio!But Mae doesn’t want Kara to go back. She wants her right here.
They’re off! They pass Logan’s long-term parking options and thegiant white cross that sits atop Orient Heights; they pass budget hotels and strip malls galore. If there are few beaches as pretty as the ones you get on the Seacoast, thinks Mae, there are few drives as un-pretty as the route to get there from the airport. They are comfortably silent for the first part of the ride.
“How was the visit with your mom?” Mae asks as they merge onto Route 1.
