Tony suggested that if Mae gave up her bedroom and shared his they could rent out the one she was in, thereby reducing Mae’s share of the rent even further. It made financial sense, and she was lonely, so she said yes.
Six more months went by like this. Tony gave her her next tattoo and the next one after that, and after that. He gave her an extravagant vine that curled around her right arm (for free), and he rubbed the healing ointment on it every night in a way that could only be described as erotic. But he wasemotional, fickle, confusing, leading Mae into loud, dramatic fights over the silliest things, and this made her feel like they were characters in a Tennessee Williams play.
“Fine!” Tony screamed at her one night, over something she can no longer remember. “Go, then!”
“Iwill!” she screamed back, feeling like a stranger to herself (what had happened to being the chill one?). She had nowhere to go, so she drove her Subaru around the block and returned to Tony’s. She wanted her own room back, but she couldn’t afford to pay for it. What strange bedfellows hath the rental market wrought, she thought grimly.
From dog walks Mae progressed to accompanying Hal to clients’ homes for private training sessions. She hung in the background and watched Hal take the owners of new puppies through the basic commands:sit, stay, heel, come.
At the tattoo parlor she rang up customers and presented them with a clipboard of waivers to sign. She checked IDs. Wherever she went she was always an apprentice, never a bride. She was no longer putting her degree in environmental science to excellent use, or any use whatsoever. She was flailing, she knew this, but she didn’t know how to un-flail.
At night she scrolled through TikTok and Instagram, sometimes watching videos or reels of Natalie on the dairy farm, in muck boots and mascara. She wanted to talk to her more often than she did, but there was the difference in time zones, and she knew (from those same videos and reels) that Natalie and Austin had a strict nine thirty bedtime because their mornings started so early. She imagined Natalie in along white nightgown with elastic at the wrists, like something Emily Dickinson would wear, though she knew that in fact Natalie wore a ragged Wesleyan Cardinals T-shirt and a pair of short-shorts to bed.
After a time Hal let her move on from observing to actually taking part in the training sessions. It turned out that Mae had a knack! She had a knack for working with the most troublesome dogs, the ones with reactivity or fear-based aggression; the ones who needed not just a few basic training sessions but hours of one-on-one attention so they could live comfortably in the world.
She might have gone on like this forever, balanced on the knife’s edge between debt and solvency, if she hadn’t gotten that box in the mail a month ago and lost all of her money. She asked Tony if she could pay him the next month’s rent a little later. “You know I’m good for it,” she said, although the truth was she wasn’t.
Tony said no. She packed up her half of the bedroom, made two trips to a storage unit she couldn’t afford, and began the no-fixed-address portion of her young adulthood. A situation that would once have seemed inconceivable was now her reality. Hal offered her the chance to take on Leo for the board-and-train session right before she got the email from Calvin, and that’s when she picked up Leo and set off east. Family bonding time sounded lovely. And also, so did a soft place to land.
Jordan and Natalie have turned the garage storeroom inside out and somehow this seems significant, like they’ve turned out their own emotions, leaving them sitting in three piles. Keep, donate, trash. But it’s hard to know which emotion to put in which pile.
Jordan puts the Natalie situation in the mental container of things she doesn’t know what to do with, along with Bernadette on Memorial Day, along with Samantha Braddock. She goes into thehouse to wash her hands and face, and she returns to the garage just as Mae’s car comes down the driveway. The garage door is open, and part of her wants to close it, to shield herself and Natalie from what’s coming next. If they can’t see Kara approaching their mother’s house, maybe it isn’t actually happening.
“Ready for this?” she asks Natalie.
Natalie shakes her head but doesn’t say anything. Natalie is angry with Jordan, it’s clear. Natalie wants her to say,Do these three things, Natalie, and all of your troubles will vanish.But the situation feels bigger than that. Austin’s comments don’t seem so much like a joke to Jordan as a deeper statement about Natalie and Austin’s marriage, and how is Jordan supposed to solve a problem with her sister’s marriage? If there is a problem? Austin and his pack of brothers alternatively fascinate and mystify Jordan, but she’s never had any reason to think anything but the best of him. This comment, though.
“How are we going to play it?” Jordan asks Natalie. For certain situations in life there is a basic rulebook, but Jordan has never read the one about what to do when your father’s new wife, who was once his first wife’s hospice nurse, comes to see the first wife’s family home the same week the home is going on the market.
Natalie adjusts her ponytail and sighs. Jordan thinks if she waits a minute without saying anything Natalie might answer. “Cordial but cold,” Natalie says finally.
Jordan tries not to sound too eager. “Like, arctic cold?”
Natalie thinks about this and adjusts. “Cool.”
“Copy that.” Then: “Is she going to hug us?”
Natalie turns to her. “Isshe? I hope not. What do we do if she wants to?”
“Present with straitjacket arms,” Jordan advises. “Very effective.” She folds her arms across the front of her body, between her chest and her pelvis, to demonstrate.
There’s still tension, and Natalie’s smile is reluctant, but it’s there. Mae’s Subaru tries to find a space in the crowded driveway behind Calvin’s and Natalie’s vehicles. Mae parks at a slant, somehow blocking both cars in at once. Natalie is holding the baby monitor, and just then they hear Caspian making the first waking-up-from-a-nap noises.
“Shoot,” says Natalie. “Rotten timing! I’d better go up.”
“No,” hisses Jordan. “Don’t leave me here alone.”
“Duty calls.”
“He’s not crying! He sounds quite happy up there.”
“Sorry not sorry,” says Natalie, and just like that she’s gone.
Karma really is a bitch, Jordan thinks.
An exorbitant amount of car activity follows: Mae emerges first. Then she opens the door for Leo but instructs him to wait.
“This is part of his training,” she calls to Jordan. “It’s a safety thing, and I’m working on his impulse control.”
