My friend Boy is very upset, and I try to make him feel better with shoulder bumps and shoving my toys in his face, but he is inconsolable. His person is absent. His person was in a strange place with strange smells and stranger people and then he wasn’t and that is the part that Boy is having the hardest time with. Where did they take his person? Boy also knows that his person is sick. Not the sick of having eaten carrion unadvisedly, but sick from something deep within. Boy’s person, for the size of him, is very fragile.
With Boy preferring to sit on his own porch, I have gone back to my person, my Ruby. I let her know that Boy will not leave the yard, that he won’t leave the steps until his person, Bull, returns. He may not even eat, which is troubling for me, although when Ruby sets down a dish of kibble in front of him, he does pick at it and reminds me that it is his dinner, not mine. No big deal. I prefer my kibble to his anyway. He laps at the big bowl of water and he does allow me to share in that with him. For a short time, the three of us, Boy, Ruby, and I, sit on the back steps and say nothing to one another. But Ruby’s right hand comforts Boy with ear scratches, and her left hand admires me with broad strokes. As surely as she hears mine, I hear her thoughts and I worry that this staying put is temporary. Ruby has this constant hum of wanting to be in motion that I have tried hard to neutralize with demonstrations of immobility, especially after a long walk when immobility is so pleasant.
“Boy, do you want to go in the house?” Ruby stands up, dusts her backside, and opens the screen door for the dog. She really doesn’t want to leave him outside all night, but she’s ready to pack it in for the day. The dog casts her a baleful look then slips past her into the house. She shuts only the screen door, if he needs to get out, she’ll hear him. She really doesn’t think Bull’s tumbledown place is much of a security risk.
She and Doug have played a little back and forth with messages. He’d had meetings after school, and tonight is his bowling league, so he’ll give her a call later if that’s okay. She texted back, any time is fine, and then wished she hadn’t. She’s beat. All this worrying about someone is such hard work.
Ruby’s laptop is open on the pop-up table. Bumping the table wakens the screen and the unopened email from Family History Labs, still dark with “unread” status. She sits on the bench seat, not yet unfolded for sleeping. She sits forward, feet on the floor, hands hovering. Click. A cheery welcoming paragraph, and a request to enter her ID and password. Miraculously, Ruby remembers both, which doesn’t always happen, and taps the information into the login screen.
What appears before her now is a lovely pie chart, pretty colors in varying percentages, but mostly of a lovely green hue that identifies Ruby’s ethnicity as primarily Scottish, Irish, an infusion of French, and a healthy dollop of Welsh. Jones. A quintessentially Welsh surname. So, maybe that really is her name, Mary Jones. Another segment of the pie indicates a flavor of Scandinavia. Ruby knows enough history to figure this has something to do with the Vikings raiding the English shores. It’s like looking at history through her own lens. Really, there is nothing surprising here. “So, where does the fortune-telling gene come in?” The Hitchhiker looks at Ruby, decides that the human speech isn’t meant for her and closes her eyes. It would have been nice to see a line of pink, say, or gold to indicate this special trait.
Ruby’s phone chimes with an incoming call, Doug. She fills him in quickly with how her plans for the day have been scuttled.
“Almost sounds to me like divine providence.”
“How so?”
“Being in the right place, knowing what to do. Being curious about that other psychic enough to seek out Bull on a day when he really needed you.”
“I think it was just plain old bad karma.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You had a feeling and you followed up on it. And if your escape plans have been delayed, that’s maybe all right.”
“Doug, you have no idea how trapped I feel.”
“Why is that, Ruby? You are as free a person as I’ve ever known. A will o’ the wisp of a person.”
“What you’re saying is that I am one of the few people in the world who has no responsibilities. No connections. No roots.”
Doug doesn’t answer right away, one of the things she has noticed about him, he thinks before speaking. She supposes it’s part of his training as a psychologist. Let the patient do the talking. Interject little if nothing to turn the conversation. She decides to turn the conversation herself. “I got the DNA results.”
“And?”
“Nothing particularly exotic, mostly what you’d expect. Heavily British Isles with a bit of cross Channel mixing. A soupçon of Welsh and Viking.” She clicks on one of the pie segments; it expands to zoom in on a more select section of northern Britain. “If there had been a bit of Spanish or Middle Eastern, I might think that’s where the mystic in me originated, but it kind of looks like that’s not the case.”
“I’m pretty sure there are plenty of solidly British fortune-tellers. After all, tea is solidly British and only the British wrap their teapots in blankets.” He’s teasing, of course, but it does remind Ruby of the broken teapot. Maybe she should have been protecting it with a quilted tea cozy against the depredation of Cynthia’s bony hips.
“So now I have to buy into the database. I know what I am, but not who else might be out there with the same genetic material. What if no one related to me has ever gotten the test?” She knows she sounds a little defeatist, a little petulant, but Ruby is a bit disappointed that all of this waiting has really answered nothing.
Doug counters, “Oh, I don’t know. Seems to me that getting your DNA test done is becoming all the rage. In the thousands of possibilities coming from your genes, surely you’ll find one.”
“I only want to find one.” Her mother. That’s what all this has been about. Finding her mother.
It’s getting late and Ruby has had enough of the topic. It seems only polite to ask after Doug’s day, but he sounds done in too.
“School was fine, only one meeting. Bowling was fine, I didn’t embarrass myself. Will you leave tomorrow?”
“I wish I knew.”
“That seems like an odd thing for a psychic to say.”
“You’re right. I’m going to pull out my tarot cards right now.”
“Call me if you do. Or don’t. Either way.”
“I will.” And maybe I won’t, she thinks.
Ruby has left the van’s windows open and in the middle of the night she feels the breeze ramp up, a tinge of fall in it. She pulls up her extra blanket. The Hitchhiker stirs, sits up, listens. Ruby hears Bull’s screen door being pushed open, the dry squeal of a hinge, and a sharp slam. Boy has let himself out of the house. She slides out from under the covers and opens the sliding door. Boy clambers in, jumps uninvited onto her bed, and flops down. “Hey, move over.” He’s three times the size, maybe more, of her usual bedtime companion, who has now planted herself on Ruby’s other side. Boxed in by canines, Ruby no longer needs the extra blanket.
Maybe it’s the extra weight of the big yellow dog, maybe it’s the circumstances, but Ruby dreams vividly of being boxed in. She literalizes her current sense of entrapment with a dream of walls closing in. This is a dream that she has had before, always in the wee hours of the morning, and, upon waking, she has made her decision to leave. It has happened so many times in the past that she is surprised when she wakes up this time and the decision to go has been neutralized. She feels calm, unhurried. And then she understands that she is not really awake. Ruby’s dream self has emerged from the box and is standing at the crest of a gentle hill. In the distance is a figure, familiar in its etherealness, its facelessness. Ruby the dreamer cannot tell if the figure is advancing toward her or if it is moving away.
Ruby awakens abruptly. Someone has distinctly said: Find me, find you but there is no one there besides the dogs who are both sound asleep.
My prey eludes me. I dash and grab, shake and growl. Vermin, fuzzy, I will gut you. I am a mighty hunter. I lose my grip and it moves through the air, but I am fast, as fast any anyone and I pounce, grab, and shake. Growl. It resists and I tug and yank and growl. I dig my hind legs into the dirt and pull for all I am worth, and suddenly my prey is in my mouth, so I shake and growl. Chomp down until it squeals in agony. I am so satisfied until it leaps off the ground and up into the air, arcing as Ruby tosses my stuffed fox into the basket. We are making our house back into a ride.
As her “mother” dreams do, this one has lingered long past the point it should have dissolved into the mists of dreamworld. Find me. Find you. Who is being sought, who is looking? As soon as it is a decent hour on a school day to call, Ruby calls Sabine, who has just dropped the kids off at school and is on her way to work. “I’ve got ten minutes, Ruby, so let’s have the interesting stuff first.”
Ruby quickly gives her daughter the results of her DNA test.
“What about cousins, aren’t those things supposed to reveal that?”
“Yes. But I haven’t bought into the database yet.”
“Well, do it. This is only part of the story.”
“There’s something else I’d like you to think about.” Ruby outlines her dream, still vivid, still puzzling. At least to her.
“Basic stuff, you’re searching for your origins. Your mother. Your dreams just suggest that you should keep on. Ergo, buy into the database.”
“But what about the words: the ‘find me, find you’?”
Sabine considers the question. “Because if you find her, you have found yourself.”
“That seems like a simplistic interpretation.”
“Jeez, Mom, it was a dream. It is simplistic.” Sabine laughs.
“So, what would you tell a paying customer who’d come to you with such a dream?”
“Oh, I’d dress it up in woo-woo, of course. It’s what’s expected.” Sabine rarely uses her gifts, preferring to keep that part of her under wraps. The one thing Sabine is that Ruby is not, is a medium. Sabine sees ghosts. That’s a much more intense kind of psychic talent. One that Ruby is glad not to have, one she assumes Sabine inherited from Madame Celestine, who often took on the role of medium, passing along messages from the dead at the behest of paying customers. Ruby hadn’t believed Celestine’s shtick until her own daughter developed the sixth sense.
Sabine has arrived at work, selling advertising for the local weekly. “Gotta run.”
“Sabine, do you think anyone related to us has bothered with a DNA test?”
“Just do it. Even if it turns out that we have no curious living relatives.”
Ruby has prepped the van for travel. All the loose objects, for instance, the half dozen squeaky toys scattered around, have been stowed. The bed put back into its bench seat configuration and the table put away. The cupboards are latched, the chemical toilet covered in its day wear. The Hitchhiker has assumed her shotgun position. It is only Boy who remains uncertain. His anxiety is palpable in the way he keeps yawning, the way his tail is down and tucked. The way that his eyes have been following Ruby as she’s performed her tasks. He’s standing in the middle of the yard, halfway between her van and the house.
Polly called this morning to fill Ruby in on Bull’s status. Although there are more tests that the medical people want to perform, the initial diagnosis is an infection, most likely in his gallbladder. This almost sounds like good news. You can recover from gallbladder surgery. Antibiotics can perform miracle cures. Polly mentions hepatitis and it no longer sounds quite so encouraging.
“Cooper says that he’ll be in the hospital for a while longer. A week or so. Depending on how tough the infection is. Where it is. If that’s what it is.”
“What about the dog? What about Boy? Will Bull’s son come and stay here?”
“No. It’s an easier drive to Worcester from where he lives. He’s going to go every day after work.”
“Oh.” Thwarted once again, she thinks but doesn’t say.
Polly must have heard the dismay in her voice. “Boy can stay at the shelter, guest of the town. Don’t worry about the dog if you’re set to go. There’s no need for you to wait around. He’ll be fine with me.”
The heavy weight of being thwarted is lifted. “Polly, that’s great. Thank you. I know that Bull will be happy to know he’s with you.”
So that’s that. Ruby opens the sliding door of the van. “Okay, Boy. Hop in.” A quick run to the shelter and merrily, merrily, off to Maine they go.
Boy doesn’t move. The dog backs away, ears pinned against the side of his head, his humped posture is stiff, unyielding. He gives her a sideways look and Ruby, even without touching him, knows that he’s beside himself with fear.
“Oh, sweetie, you’re just going to go visit Auntie Polly. She’ll give you treats and belly rubs.” Ruby approaches the dog, who goes even deeper into a cowering crouch. She gently places her hands on his head, hoping to communicate what she’s thinking.
“No. No go. No go. I want my person now. If I go, he won’t find me.”
“He’s sick, Boy. He needs to know that you are safe with Polly.”
“Safe with you.”
“I can’t.”
“Safe with you. Please stay.”
All of this comes through her fingertips and into her mind like a thick white sheet of dread. Her sense of smell is clouded with the perfume of fear—rank and foul flavored. Sour. Bile rises up in her throat. She lets go of the dog.
The Hitchhiker approaches with caution. A fearful dog is a dangerous dog. Just the tip of her white tail moves, her head is low, and she licks her chops acknowledging Boy’s apprehensions. Slowly she presses herself against his hunched body, rests her chin on his neck. She looks up at Ruby and the thoughts in her head are loud and clear. “We can’t leave him.”
In tears, Ruby drops to the ground and both dogs climb into her lap, acknowledging with gratitude her capitulation.
The table is opened up and her laptop is booted up. Ruby types a quick email to Joe Benini to let him know that she has been unavoidably delayed but not why. Will maybe be able to catch up in a few days, a week at most. Let me know where you are or will be. She is only aware of the qualifying “maybe” as she hits Send. She’s hardly ever this dithering. Ruby has always prided herself on her quick decision-making skills, her strength of resolve in the face of difficulties. Yet, ever since accidentally landing on the shore of this lakeside town, she’s been reduced to hesitancy. To dithering. To caring about other people and their doggoned dogs.
Even though it’s during school hours, Ruby texts Doug to let him know she’s hanging around a bit more. Does the same for Sabine, with the addition of saying that, now that she seems to not be in a hurry, she’s buying the second level of the Family History Lab’s services and should shortly have the database available to her account. The website suggests setting up a family tree. Ha-ha. Ruby fiddles around and decides that she can work backward from Molly and Tom, Sabine, to herself.
This little exercise reminds her of the year that Sabine, maybe fourth grade, possibly fifth, had been assigned to do a family tree. Considering that the neighborhood where they had ended up was hardly an example of suburban family stability, half the kids had stepparents; talk about a teacher being tone deaf. So, she and Sabine had created what Ruby laughingly called their artificial tree. Sabine was appalled at first, but then got into the fun of making up names, choosing outrageous combinations like Mariella Frizzella—great-grandmother—and Dibley Dubious—great-grandfather on the other side. Aurora Boreallian, a distant relative on her mother’s side. They’d never had quite so much fun doing homework. Even if Sabine was given a B for the drawing and a C for content, they couldn’t prove a thing.
Ruby closes out that screen and notices that she now has a View All DNA Matches button on the dashboard. Oh boy.
Boy, trusting in Ruby’s word, happily climbs into the van so that they can go get a few groceries. How the dog knows that she won’t just drop him off at the shelter, she doesn’t know, except that it is possible that the Hitchhiker has made him that promise in their language and will hold her to it. Ruby just doesn’t have it in her to break her word to this damaged, fragile dog. Through the cloud of his anxiety, as she has done before, Ruby caught a glimpse of the trauma that had turned a happy-go-lucky youngster into an emotional wreck. Cynthia Mann’s ex. The drunken brutality of anger. Buried in there, the scent of pond and duck.
Ruby lets Boy sit in between the front seats, while the Hitchhiker assumes her usual position. Every time she shifts gears, she pats his head. He’s a little slobbery around the mouth, but Ruby looks at that as a good thing, he’s relaxed now. Now she’s the one with anxiety. The Makers Faire is still going on, but she hasn’t signed up for a spot. She could set up her van and do busking in the park, but the weather is predicted to be lousy this week. Already the clouds are thickening up and the taste of rain is in the air. The fact is, she needs to earn a few bucks right now. As wormy as it makes her feel, she hasn’t been able to pay Bull back, having to use the few dollars she’s managed to raise for her own subsistence. Despite his insistence that the money was a gift, she really wants to pay him back. Although, Ruby now thinks, maybe this business of taking care of Boy will be a fair trade. Ease her mind from this overwhelming sense of obligation. Obligation, like attachment, a state of being she avoids.
She’s so judicious about using a credit card, but she’s stormed that barricade in paying for the DNA match button. And she’s about to use it in the Country Market. She needs, among other things, dog food.