The Dog Year Page 7

  It could not be easily fixed, her lack of lusciousness. She was not a makeover waiting to happen. She’d been reinventing herself with marginal results since she’d become aware of her aesthetic failings, way back in third grade. It had been a harsh lesson doled out by the one hearing-impaired boy in her grade. Jeffery Wonager looked at her and signed “Ugly You.” There were a few signs everyone in their class knew: stupid, fat, boring, ugly. Even then, considering the multiple possibilities, Lucy knew there were worse things than being ugly—but not many.

  Her brother had been there, of course, defending her even then. He’d shouted, “Jeffery Want-a-girl, you big loser!” forgetting the insult fell on truly deaf ears.

  People had gotten the message though: Mess with Lucy and you’ll get Charles on your case. Charles, the only gay fourth grader in the history of Ulysses S. Grant Elementary School. It wasn’t much of a threat, but in the homophobic town they’d grown up in, there was a collective, unspoken fear that gave Charles a lot of power: If he’d consider being gay in a small Wisconsin town, who knew what other impossible acts he might be capable of.

  A small cache of silver rings sat in an accessible glass display case at the end of the counter where the college girl on duty stood gazing at herself in the reflection of a shiny watering can. Lucy touched the rings, glanced at their inexpensive price tags, slipped several onto her finger.

  Lucy worked tirelessly on her appearance. She bought expensive clothes and spent a fortune on facials and beautiful haircuts to tame her freckles and kinky red hair. She’d had braces in high school, teeth whitening in medical school, and a mouth guard for preservation during residency. She bleached and plucked and waxed every last errant hair on her body; not that anyone since Richard ever saw what she had going on south of her chin. But she was a like a loyal marine in the beauty battle, even if it didn’t exactly result in winning the beauty war.

  The shop girl finally noticed Lucy, with one hand in the silver rings, the other holding a florid bouquet of mums, autumn roses, and amber daisies. As Lucy handed everything over to the girl to be rung up, she silently calculated the price. There was the sale price to be factored in, the 10 percent discount she would receive as a frequent shopper, and the additional buy-one-get-the-second-one-half-off discount. She quoted the total to the college girl at the register before the electronic wand was even lifted from the counter.

  “Whoa,” the girl said.

  “If you think that was fast, you should see me at euchre. I crush ’em at the nursing home. We play for teeth.” The young woman laughed. She may not have been a mathematics whiz, but at least she had a sense of humor.

  In addition to being a skilled surgeon, Lucy knew a thing or two about people. She knew that they didn’t notice Brillo Pad hair and close-set eyes if they were having a good time. The other thing they didn’t notice was the act of slipping a smallish silver ring into the outside pocket of a purse while ostensibly rummaging for a Visa card. A moment of magic. Lucy knew she had the ultimate disguise: She was a smart, funny, well-dressed woman, not a common criminal. Everyone knew thieves were male and came with either a skateboard, a piercing, or a gun in tow. But her? No way.

  Back at home, she unfolded her brochure to examine the meetings schedule for her town’s chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, and with a blank expression on her face, examined the ring on her finger.

  “No way,” she said to herself.

  8

  Everybody’s Got a Job to Do

  The interesting thing about surgeons is this: They have gone to the head of the class their whole lives; skipping grades, taking AP classes, testing out of math and English, and generally leap-frogging into a future peopled with other adults who rule the school. Sure, they’re working for it, but since they’re so successful, they don’t have to manage as much loss as do regular mortals. The individuals who don’t win every spelling bee and merit scholarship learn about disappointment. They acquire a coping skill or two. They try yoga, self-talk, read The Little Engine That Could. And when they get up after a blow, they graduate to Dealing and Life 201 and so on. But not surgeons. Not people like Lucy Peterman. So while she may have been a postgrad when it came to memorizing cranial nerves, she was still in kindergarten when it came to coping.

  “I changed my mind, Charlie. I don’t want to go to the cemetery today.”

  “This was a good idea, Luce. We’re almost there.”

  “The counselor didn’t say I had to go immediately, she just said soon.” Lucy gripped the door handle of her brother’s sedan. “I said I’d never go back. I know other people visit, but I don’t need to. I know he’s dead.”

  Charles pulled under the archway of St. Ann’s Cemetery. “If you do this for me, I’ll stop bugging you about moving back into your room.”

  “What am I supposed to do here? Talk to him? Pray?”

  “I don’t know. Go to his grave. Then maybe you can eventually go into your bedroom, and after that, pack up the stuff you stole. It’s a process.”

  Unfailingly practical Charles. You’d think that Lucy the brain, the med school grad, was the grounded, practical planner, but no. She was more the romantic dreamer. The one who wanted to go to school to learn how to save the world, one breast at a time. But once Charles dealt with the truth of being gay, he’s had to create his own blueprint of what the American Dream would look like for him. He majored in computers, saved for adoption in case it factored into future plans, and saved for retirement.

  Now he stayed in the Volvo and waited while Lucy slogged across the bumpy ground of the cemetery. She noted the forever-bloom of plastic chrysanthemums in their plastic holders, tilting as if they were exhausted by the work of continually honoring the dead. She imagined them saying, “Enough already, can’t I just lie down?”

  She straightened a particularly lazy wreath that was missing most of its synthetic blooms. She gave off a little grunt, shoving the spike farther into the ground. “Everybody’s got a job to do,” she muttered to the wreath. “This is yours.”

  Taking a left at an obelisk that should have been marking a famous Kennedy instead of the very un-famous Orcus Farmer, Lucy saw the hydrangea tree she’d planted in the spring. It had bloomed splendidly then, but now it sported beige paper tears for the winds of fall to scatter in sadness across Richard’s grave.

  Richard Lubers. Lubers was the reason Lucy hadn’t taken his name in marriage. Lucy Lubers was more than even she could stand, even for loyalty. Nineteen seventy to two thousand thirteen. He’d been clear in his funeral planning that the only other thing he’d wanted on his headstone was the proclamation I LOVE LUCY.

  “Ricky, you got a lotta ’splainin’ to do,” she said to the grave as she stood there, unsmiling and quiet. There had been so many things he’d prepared for in the event of his death. Insurance, estate planning, even funeral decisions. It’s as if he’d known his days were numbered, as if he’d known that people—that she—would need direction, and soon. More likely though, it was just his way of thinking ahead and forever caring for her. He was that kind of man. A one-in-a-million man.

  They’d met in residency. Richard, an only child, raised by a single mother who then died of breast cancer, was as committed to caring for women as any man could be without a uterus of his own. Earnest, careful, and completely devoid of subterfuge, Richard didn’t know how to flirt, woo, or flatter. He would have made a terrible spy, but he made a wonderful partner. “You have got to get a hobby,” she used to say to him. He would respond, “You, my love, are a full-time job.” This really wasn’t true because all of Lucy’s bristles were smoothed like spackle on drywall when he was around. But now he wasn’t around anymore, and Lucy’s life had a Richard-shaped hole in it that she needed to figure out some way to fill.

  She brushed off the rugged top of his headstone and traced the writing on its face with her finger. LOVE. She looked around. The only other person in sight was
the groundkeeper. When they’d arrived, he’d been on the far side of the cemetery on a riding mower loud enough to double as a rocket ship. Now Lucy saw him steadily making his way over to where she sat as she tried to conjure up the feeling of Richard’s hand on the back of her neck, his lips on her ear. The mower was a kind of grief-seeking missile finding the quickest path to her side around all the headstones and monoliths in its path. Trying to think reverent thoughts amid the irreverent sounds of a rabid grass clipper made Lucy, even in her sorrow, laugh at the absurdity.

  “All right already,” she said to no one in particular. “I’ll get out of here and spend time among the living, for Christ’s sake.”

  * * *

  Back at the car she plopped herself into the passenger seat. “There. Check that off the list.”

  Her brother buckled his seat belt. “What’s with the grass guy?”

  “I know; what was that about? It might have been some weird ownership thing.” She deepened her voice to sound like a radio announcer. “‘This is grounds keeping time, mourning time is after work or at night.’ Or else it was Richard in his usual no-nonsense fashion telling me to get the hell out of here.”

  “A little harsh on both accounts; but not bad advice, overall.”

  She glanced at her brother. “I wish I could remember the accident.”

  “Why? The witnesses kind of filled in the blanks, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah. Deep shoulder, overcorrection, ditch, roll, death, miscarriage.”

  Charles lowered his eyes, giving a respectful moment of silence for his sister’s loss. “Shit, Lucy.”

  “I keep thinking if I say it like that, I’ll believe it. Get over it.”

  “I would think it was a blessing, not remembering.”

  “I want to know what we were talking about. His last words.”

  “If I know Richard, it was probably, ‘Fuck!’”

  Lucy laughed and then laughed again harder. “That would be so Richard. Mild-mannered, bespectacled Richard. Never a harsh word until there is, and then it’s a doozy.” She gulped, making a sound somewhere between humor and sorrow. “I only remember one thing: him reaching across me, arm out, like Dad used to do if he stopped too fast and we were in the front seat.”

  “He was something, no question.” The groundkeeper made another pass around the graves directly in front of them, his tractor’s engine roaring in great crescendos with each row mowed.

  “I’ll figure it out, Charles. This grief thing. I’ll figure it out.”

  “It’s not a puzzle, Luce. There’s not going to be a final exam. Think of it as an art project. A time to create something new.”

  “That’s not how I see it. If you lose an arm, you don’t grow a new one. You tie off your shirt sleeve and clean your house with the other one. You figure it out.”

  “Coming from a reconstructive surgeon, that’s a pretty brutal assessment. You do see my difficulties with your belief system, right? Listen to your therapist: You’ve got to let people in.”

  Lucy laughed. “What do I need other people for? Other people wouldn’t make me laugh when I want to knife a groundkeeper. I don’t want any other people getting all up in my business.”

  Charles took his sister’s hand. “You still need to meet new people. Promise me you’ll try.”

  She smiled at him. “Okay. Maybe only for a minute. But I’ll try.”

  9

  Happy Ain’t Just a Town in Texas

  When Charles dropped Lucy off, he gave her a salute. “Good work today; carry on.” Lucy flipped him a two-fingered sideways gang sign and walked into her house, down the hall, and into the spare bedroom. She’d made a decision at the cemetery. No more helpless Lucy. No more get-some-therapy boohooing from people who didn’t think she could get it together on her own. It was time to show everyone that she could go into a store without binging on chocolate, offending perfectly nice people, or stealing a stockpile of bandages or jewelry that meant nothing to her. She had to prove she could do this and do it without help.

  From her closet, she chose a small leather clutch purse in case she had the urge to shove a toaster into a side pocket. This purse would say, Get real, don’t even think about it!

  She’d decided to head for Walmart, the ultimate quick-and-dirty shopping exercise.

  In her car, she turned right onto Main Street, past the strip mall with Fur Flying, a family-owned barber shop/pet- grooming business; Tattoos and Tea, a little Victorian shop of horrors; and a dress store creatively named The Dress Shop. She hated Walmart almost as much as she hated her own hypocrisy. How can the shopper hate her shop? The addict despise the dealer? She had no answer for this, just the typical snooty rationalization of the rest of the population: Alcohol is not a drug; Walmart is not shopping.

  Lucy entered the store through silent, obliging electronic doors. Within ten feet of the entrance, she cringed at a rack of waistless maternity wear. Or were they possibly mother-of-the-bride dresses? They’d be perfect for a labor-and-delivery cruise ship event. Adjacent to the dresses were T-shirts emblazoned with rhinestone sayings. UNDER THIS SHIRT I’M BUTT NAKED read one, in a tasteful peach color, size XXL.

  Without a shopping list, Lucy marched head up, shoulders back, through the aisles, clenching her teeth with crime-free determination. Standing in front of dozens of rows of toiletries, Lucy saw a grocery cart bearing a little girl who looked the personification of Cindy Lou Who from How the Grinch Stole Christmas: lopsided pigtails, two-inch eyelashes, valentine lips. The girl’s eyes were closed while she rubbed a pink packaged pacifier over her face and neck. The rapture expressed in her face would embarrass any adult caught in a similar situation—say, a grown man rubbing his new Mercedes car keys across his five o’clock shadow. On this girl, it just looked like devotion, bliss, and the prop for a good afternoon. As Lucy watched, Cindy Lou’s eyes popped open. Staring, she appraised Lucy from head to toe and then reached out and offered her the pacifier, smiling with a little crease in her forehead as if to say, Here, you look like you could use this more than I.

  Cindy Lou’s mother stood with her back to Lucy, studying her grocery list. Then she tugged at the cart and moved deeper down the aisle. The child continued to proffer her pacifier until the cart rounded the corner and disappeared. Touched, Lucy’s mind wandered back to her miscarriage, like a tongue searching out a rough spot on a tooth. She thought of the stack of supplies she’d purchased once her pregnancy had been confirmed. The baby-wipes warmer, the bright red rattle, the pacifiers. A knot unraveled at her navel and she braced herself on the cold metal shelves right there in the store, shelves holding shower gel, plastic scrubbies on a rope, bath oil. She spotted Richard’s favorite brand of soap and lifted the package to her nose, inhaling its scent. Her husband’s scent. It filled her sinuses and flicked on every switch in the house that was her brain, illuminating every room, every memory. There, behind her eyes, Richard stepping out of the shower. Richard embracing her from behind. Richard making love to her, while she felt—finally—beautiful.

  Someone coughed and Lucy opened her eyes, looked around. No one. She slipped the bar of soap into her tiny purse and strolled to the end of the aisle. Lifting her hand she sniffed again and walked toward the exit, stopping to touch a sweater as if to say, I’m in no hurry to leave. I could stay all day. Between Lucy and the exit were the security sensors that announced larceny as if it were an overdue library book, a gentle beeping that was less a call-to-arms and more a sociable Yoo-hoo. She had never set it off herself, but she’d witnessed the confusion of the innocent people who did. They collectively stopped and looked around for the handcuffs. Employees, assuming that true larceny would lead to frantic running and not gentle acquiescence, waved at the people with a jolly head wag. It happens all the time. No worries.

  Without hesitation, she stepped between the white and blue security gates. That was the key, keep moving. No
alarm followed her and the electric exit doors opened. She moved into the large vestibule before the second set of doors; freedom was seconds away.

  “Lucy Peterman, valedictorian. How are you?”

  Lucy started. Near the red plastic toy car where fifty cents got you a ride with a clown frozen in a rictus of fun stood the policeman she’d gone to high school with. The one who knew where she lived.

  Her mouth popped open. “I. What? Do you work here?”

  He tilted his head indicating his casual attire: ratty jeans, paint-splattered, too-small navy sweatshirt. “No, I am not a cop for Walmart.”

  “Oh.” She smiled politely and turned to go.

  “Did you find what you needed?”

  “Yes.” Over her shoulder, she flashed him a thin smile.

  “No bag.”

  “What?”

  “You aren’t carrying a bag.”

  Lucy’s face colored. “What’s it to you? No bag. Whatever.”

  “You’re not out the door yet.” His gaze held her. A knot on a shoelace: stubborn. “Possibly you left something in the soap aisle. Your keys, maybe?”

  A feeling of cold water trickled down her spine. She turned and held his stare for an impolite minute. Lucy inched her car keys into her jacket pocket and, looking away, walked an exaggerated arc around him and back into the store. Forgetting any socially appropriate speed or etiquette, she entered the soap aisle, yanked the bar of soap out of her purse, and shoved it onto the shelf. Righteous now, she stalked back to the exit doors and said, “Are you going to arrest me?”

  He shrugged. “No harm done, as far as I can see.” She rubbed her eyes and the exit doors opened. Time to go. “I’m Mark Troutman,” he said, and he held his hand out for her to shake. “Wanna get some coffee?”

  She snubbed the hand he offered. “I suppose I have to, right? Look, I know I should be grateful or something, but I just don’t want to do this.”