CHAPTER FIFTEEN

GOT A PROBLEM? GET A DOG.

Holly grabbed my elbow and said, “Excuse us, Doctor, I need to talk to my friend here.”

Griff was no idiot. Likely he sized us up in seconds and knew to evacuate. He gave me a quick nod that held a tinge of worry. I hoped he saw the apology in my smile and not my shaky confidence about how to manage Holly.

“We are not taking that sponge of a dog with us.”

“Yes, Holly, we are.” This was something I could put my foot down about that had no long-term effect on anyone but me. I could see no gray areas for contention.

“No, Sammy, we are not.”

I stepped back and looked at Holly. Same perfect appearance despite camper living. A swath of fatigue under her eyes, two frown lines on her forehead, like two exclamation points punctuating her argument.

“Why could you possibly care if I adopt Moose? Furthermore, I’m not sure why you think you’re in charge of this.”

“Why do you think you can add another animal to this trip?”

“If Moose eases Peanut’s transition, then Moose is going with us.”

“When I agreed to leave Rosie and travel across country to get this dog—”

“Peanut,” I interrupted.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I agreed because you needed me, and Katie needed her dog.”

I bit my tongue. I did not want to impulsively protest this statement of need. I knew that was how we pitched it to get Holly out of the hospital, where she was irritating everyone from the housekeeping staff to the oncologists. But it rankled. Needed her, I internally scoffed. If I’d needed her, it had been when Jeff died or when Maddie was too sick to go to day care or the first time I ran myself ragged caring for Katie.

“Peanut. The dog’s name is Peanut.”

“Okay. Whatever, Sam.”

“Not whatever, Holly,” I said, my anger hot and fast. “The dog’s name is Peanut. He deserves to be called by his name.”

“I don’t understand you. Katie doesn’t have a child, so her dog can be a substitute. But you have Maddie. Dogs are not people. I should be home with Rosie, and we both should be at Katie’s side.” Holly leaned into me, her big head on her skinny body, like an authoritarian cake pop without the fun sprinkles.

“We are at Katie’s side right now,” I insisted. “We are comforting her by getting what she needs and bringing it to her. You don’t have to understand why she loves him, although you’d have to be made of stone to not see it.”

Holly pulled her head back as if she’d been hit. “I am not made of stone. If any of us are immovable objects, it’s you.”

“Me?” Stone! The unfairness! I wanted to shut up, pull out, stop this fight. I rooted in my memory for Louise’s list of safe phrases. Instead, all my loss and pain shoved my denial aside, and I said, “Why do you hate me?” It came out like a middle schooler on a playground who had stepped to an edge and both wanted to be reined back in and wanted to jump.

Holly’s blue eyes were the color of lightning when she opened her mouth and raised her pointy, pointy finger. “You act like I’m the hardest person in the world, but I would never do what you did. And here you are being so nice to a dog you don’t even know.”

For the thousandth time, I desperately racked my brain. “What? Holly, what did I do? You can’t possibly be talking about that night and Mike!”

“Ha!” Holly’s laugh was like a thunderclap. There was a flicker of old, lovey Holly in that storm behind her eyes. Something like the Sour Patch Kids candy, a sour, sweet flash.

My outrage dissipated. “This isn’t about that, is it?” I didn’t see her expression because we were interrupted. “Holly,” I said at the same time as a fuzzy-headed waif of a woman over Holly’s shoulder said:

“Excuse me. Um. Ladies. You need to quiet down. You’re inciting the girls.” She pointed to a trio of cats, each in their own private metal holding cells. A tabby, a tawny, and a tiger-striped kitty sat alert, their tails twitching. It was like being in a high school hallway, and the crowd was chanting Fight! Fight! Fight! It was the pause we needed.

“Girls?” Holly said when she saw the cats. “Oh.” But she looked alone, vulnerable. She touched her sternum, and there it was again. That dry-eyed catch in her throat. Holly looked dizzy, and I steadied her, my hand on her forearm.

“Nugget,” I said. My old name for her slipped out before I could stop it.

“It’s just. If you guys could step outside. That would be great,” said the animal urchin.

Holly pulled her arm from my touch. “I don’t want to get sucked into your vortex again.” Unsteadily at first but gaining momentum, she moved toward a side door, ignoring the Alarm Will Sound warning. She slammed through; the alarm sounded.

“She’s not supposed to go through that door,” the woman said, and I nodded.

“She does what she wants,” I said, and I noticed I was winded.

“I can see that.” The woman nodded. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said vaguely. My vortex? I was the last woman in America who had a vortex. I had a quagmire. I had a mushy middle. I did not have magnetism of any kind. Unless you considered my attraction to bedding.

The tiny woman and I stared at the glass door as it slid back into place and the alarm hushed. I sighed and the woman pulled a stool over to the room where Peanut and Moose were being held. “You can just watch these two if you want. It’s calming.”

“Thanks so much. And I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “You’d be surprised at how much that happens here. Couples come to volunteer, and they fall in love with a parrot or a pig, and the next thing you know, we have to call security.”

“My friend has never had a pet.”

The woman clamped her lips and shook her head. It was like I’d just said, Holly was born without a head .

“I think I will sit here for a while, if that’s all right.” My skin prickling with the electricity of our fight, I rubbed my arms. Who was at fault? Me, Holly, both of us? For years I’d avoided our loss, playing it off in unsatisfying ways: We were kids. I’d read her wrong. Holly was not who I thought she was. We grew apart. These were Band-Aids, and I needed that spray stuff that plugged foundation cracks. One squirt and it expanded to fill all the broken spaces.

I was surprised to see the woman still standing close. “I’m okay,” I said.

“Um. Sure.”

I turned my attention to the confinement area, where Peanut appeared extravagantly comfortable. I watched him reposition from sleeping on his stomach to lying on his back, his belly exposed, his paws lolling to the side. Moose resettled himself onto Peanut’s neck, looking more plush toy than mammal. The diminutive Moose gave me the side-eye, the forever-watchful caretaker assessing my presence.

The stress of confronting Holly had me thick and foggy, but later than usual. I usually shut down in the center of conflict, not respectful moments later.

I rested my temple on the window and watched Peanut’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall. It was hypnotic. I knew there was no fighting my sleep disorder, and I didn’t think anyone in the clinic would mind if I closed my eyes for a minute or two.

Instead of falling instantly to sleep, I tried to mine my memories. Holly and I had been the best of friends. It hadn’t just been youth and circumstance. We would not have these strong feelings if we hadn’t started from a place of intensity.

I only had fragments from those years, over a quarter century of them, beginning in that apartment we shared with the hollow doors and thin carpet. My twenty-plus-year-old relics, like still photos, flipped in my mind’s eye. Holly, Katie, and I were drinking coffee from travel mugs on the way to class, singing “I Will Always Love You,” the Whitney Houston version, Katie’s voice ear-splittingly out of tune. Holly’s earnest face. Me laughing so hard I couldn’t hold a note. Exam week, eating nothing all day and inhaling salty, oily popcorn at night, falling asleep on our notebooks. All that freedom . . . I sighed and felt myself drift off with the cool window soothing my temple.

I don’t know how long I slept like that, but pins and needles in my arm woke me. I was used to falling asleep in awkward positions and waking having to shake a limb, stretch my neck, even rub feeling back into fingers. This was the price of a sleep disorder. I laughed at people who needed the perfect Sleep Number mattress or their beloved childhood pillow to get a good rest. As long as I had a place to rest my head and an immovable object, I could catch some restorative z’s any day of the week.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.” Griff, the veterinarian, had returned.

If a sore neck was the price of a sleep disorder, then being discovered sleeping in awkward places by a variety of people was the side salad nobody wanted. I rubbed the numb spot on my head where I’d rested against the glass.

“Sorry,” I said, the automatic apology that rested on my tongue along with my neurons, just waiting for whomever would find me.

“No problem. I take naps in here, too, when there aren’t a ton of animals making a bunch of noise.”

“You do?”

He nodded. With my postsleep, clear-eyed assessment, I imagined him as a boy with a stick on a busy sidewalk moving a woolly bear caterpillar out of the way.

“I usually go to my office, sit in a chair, maybe shut the light off. But I admire a good napper.”

“I have a sleep disorder, and when I get stressed, it takes over. I think it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. It keeps me from getting into fights and saying anything I can’t take back.” I rubbed my eyes and added, “Not today, though. Which is weird.”

“A sleep disorder. That’s interesting.”

I looked at him. “More interesting than watching two friends fight about the value of animals?”

“Kind of. Yes.”

“Fair enough. I’ve had the disorder a long time. I find it very annoying but also sometimes a great escape.”

He took the hint and changed the subject.

“It sounds like you’ve had enough experience with Peanut’s medical needs that you won’t have any trouble. That’s good. Diabetes can be a challenge.”

“Does Moose have any other medical needs?” I said, just to prolong a conversation that wasn’t difficult.

“Not really. His skin is healing.”

Griff the veterinarian was not a looker per se, but he had something very appealing going on. He kept his head shaved in that way men did who knew the fight against balding was lost, but it made him look more masculine, not less. His strong jawline supported good cheekbones and warm eyes behind wire-rim glasses. He didn’t have Drew’s full lips or striking features, but he exuded maleness. I suspected he was an athlete, but I wasn’t sure why.

“I’d like to get on your schedule,” said Griff. “We’ll have to spend some time talking about how much insulin Peanut will need. How much an increase in activity will change his dosage. How to figure that out with a urine sample.”

I laughed. “I don’t have a schedule. We just got here. I’m not even sure where we’re sleeping now that Holly and I are in the middle of a full-fledged brawl instead of the usual cold war we maintain.”

“An odd choice for a traveling companion.”

“It’s such a long story.” I pinched the space between my eyes on the bridge of my nose. “Is there any place I can get a cup of coffee?”

He gestured for me to follow him and led me through the center of the clinic, talking about how important coffee was to the running of the sanctuary. When he stopped and filled me in on details, it seemed as if he was holding eye contact a fraction too long. Not too long in a yucky way. I noticed it because men never did this with me, and by never I meant negative-integer never.

I spent my days parenting in the way parenting was for this generation: too much chauffeuring, contributing to fundraisers, traveling to games, discussing AP classes and grade points. Too much of everything. But you couldn’t try to leave that treadmill, try to halt the hiring of a British soccer coach for eighth graders, or try dissuading your child from joining another club. You couldn’t try to smell the roses, gather enough energy to observe the gaze of a man, or the next thing you knew, your kid would get left behind and you, as the parent, would be more of an outsider than ever.

Who was I kidding? I’d loved being buried in Maddie’s life. If you were busy with your kid, you couldn’t look too deeply at anything. You couldn’t get into anything you couldn’t get out of.

Griff stopped and handed me a coffee mug that said, Got a problem? Get a dog.

“Listen. Thank you for everything. I’m just so grateful.”

He nodded and said, “Drink up. Then let’s get you a ride back to the visitors’ center with one of our staff. You can take a tour. See what we’re about. There are cabins near the entrance. They’re not always full. If you’re lucky, you can stay there. There’s also Kanab. Lots of hotels. Then we’ll talk about how to best get you two prepared for the rest of your journey.”

I nodded, so grateful again. “So three or four days?”

“Maybe . . .”

“Do not say another word,” I said, feeling another tide of anxiety. “Holly is going to kill us.”

While waiting for the volunteer transport to take me down the canyon, I hit Katie’s number and held the phone for a FaceTime call. She answered in seconds, and her friendly face came into view.

“Guess who I’m with!” I said, and I turned so Katie could see me and Peanut through the Plexiglas, in the small rectangle of the phone. “Don’t worry. He looks weird because they gave him a major haircut, but here he is! Peanut!”

“Hiiii!” Katie said, her face beaming. “Peanutty, hi, baby. Hi, hon!”

I looked over my shoulder, and Peanut lifted his planet-size head, dropped his tongue, and batted his tail in recognition of the love of his life. While Peanut looked the worse for wear, Katie appeared exhausted. Shades of purplish rings circled her eyes, and she looked somehow thinner than the few days before. I didn’t want her to see my concerned face, which I knew showed my pain, so I took myself out of the FaceTime image and let Peanut and Katie make eye contact.

“Who’s a good boy?” Noticing Moose, she said, “Are you making friends? Peanut-so-friendly. Did you make a friend?” She crooned and fussed, and I swung the phone back around to me.

“That’s Moose. He’s Peanut’s BFF. Both dogs have had a time of it.”

I explained where we were and how we’d gotten to Utah, knowing Drew had in some way filled her in on some of it. I left out distressing details and complicating factors like Summer, the Shaman Shamansky, and the mange diagnosis while adding details about Moose.

“Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. I’ve heard of that place. I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t think this would be so complicated.”

“It’s not, honey. The weather has been great, so driving is not a problem. We have Peanut. Should be just a few days more,” I said, fudging.

“And Holly?” She rubbed her eyes.

“Oh, you know. She’s fine. Bossy. The usual.” Pivoting the conversation, I said, “Drew said you went home. That’s good news!” Katie wore a sweatshirt that read, I’m sorry I’m late I didn’t want to come instead of a hospital gown. The gray fabric mimicked her pallor, and I wanted to walk with her to a window. See the sun brighten her skin.

“Yeah. You know how it is. I’m going in tomorrow. They’re starting me on a precautionary regimen of hydration and meds.”

“Precautionary meds? Because of the blood work?” I asked. She rubbed her face again, and I wished I were there to take her hand. “You look tired.” I wanted to sob and tell her I didn’t want her to have to go through this again. I visualized cancer as a yoke around her shoulders, one that I could throw off and dead lift into a ditch. Instead, I wrangled my fear and frustration and focused on this phone call, on Katie.

“Is Drew helpful?” I was ashamed that part of that question was for me. What did Katie think of him? What did Katie think of him for me?

“Oh, he’s great!” She looked me in the digital eye. “He texts me, had chicken soup delivered from Whole Foods. He says he keeps in touch with you. Said that you were a good friend to have.”

Friend, I thought. Friend Zone is what Maddie called it. If you were interested in someone romantically after years of wandering in a love desert, the Friend Zone is not the zone you wanted to be in.

I wanted to hear more about Drew. I wanted to sit cross-legged on her couch with a glass of wine and talk like we did in college about boys. But that’s not why I called. Also, what would I say? Drew and I didn’t know each other.

“You’re eating, then?” I said instead of Are you and Drew falling for each other?

Katie nodded, which usually meant she was eating but not enough to merit an audible and firm yes. “I’ll be better when you guys get here. Peanut can lie on my bed. You can pluck my eyebrows. It’ll all be good.”

“So you’re going to need the whole thing again?” I couldn’t bear to say chemotherapy, treatment, months of hospital visits, but I did feel a bit like I was rolling up my sleeves, planting my feet for a boxing match I’d fought before and won. A bell sounded twice in my brain, Round two .

“Gosh no, we don’t know that yet.” She brightened and sat up straight. “No. I just can’t wait to see you and Peanut. I feel better already knowing you are on the way.”

Another person might have felt relief, but I knew better. When Katie said, Gosh no, it could mean anything. So, I let myself teeter-totter between relief and dread. But what to say? What could I say that conveyed to Katie, I’m afraid, but I’m here and will always be here, without fully acknowledging other terrible options?

A woman with a volunteer T-shirt approached me and smiled. She pointed to the door. “Katie, my ride’s here. She’s bringing me to the admin desk for us to get a room here.”

“Okay. Love you!” She waved but didn’t sign off.

I met her eyes, and after a beat I said, “Go Badgers.”

“Go Badgers,” she said with that crooked grin, and it was a good thing she signed off because my eyes filled to the brim with tears.