Heaven

David and Monty wanted to get started on their celebratory drive up the spectacular California coast early in the morning. Very early. Ridiculously early.

“I don’t wanna get up at five o’clock!” Lala whined.

The four of them were relaxing in Geraldine and Monty’s apartment after having enjoyed a simple but elegant impromptu meal that Geraldine had whipped up from a box of risotto, a jar of capers, and a can of Kalamata olives that were just this side of their sell-by date.

Before the announcement of their departure time that sent Lala into a siren-like snit, Lala had cheerfully dubbed the dinner “so sinfully sodium-laden, I think I can hear my blood pressure rising.”

“Seeing the waves crashing as the sky brightens is going to be worth it,” David said, ignoring Lala’s protests by not looking away from the documentary about scaling the north face of the Grand Teton that he was watching with Monty.

“What is wrong with you boys?” Geraldine huffed. “When did you both become so rugged? I did not sign up for rugged, Monty.”

“Gerry,” Monty chuckled affectionately, also not taking his eyes off the television, “nothing rugged about early morning waves when you’re watching them from a Lexus.”

Lala and Geraldine slept soundly through the magnificent sight of dawn on the Pacific as Monty’s Lexus, driven by David, cruised up Highway 1.

Stephanie and Chuck and Trixie—who were so much like family that the distinction between de facto and de jure had been rendered irrelevant—were of course invited to join them on their trip, as was Thomas, also a member of the extended family. But Stephanie and Chuck had to stay home to host a visit from Stephanie’s parents, who lived in Michigan and found an excuse to visit their beloved first grandchild on an almost bi-weekly basis, and Thomas was going away to New Orleans for the week with his new girlfriend.

“Mazel Tov!” Geraldine said when Thomas shared his travel plans. “When do we meet her?”

“So happy for you!” Lala added. “When do we meet her?”

Lala’s dogs would be staying with Stephanie and Chuck because Trixie loved them, and Stephanie and Chuck, of course, knew exactly how to care for geriatric pets. Stephanie’s parents were volunteers for the Humane Society of Huron Valley in Ann Arbor and were, according to Stephanie, “maybe more excited about spending time with your dogs than they are about seeing Trixie for the second time this month. I’m being ironic, of course.”

“I don’t think that’s irony,” Lala said. “And I just love you, you earnest and adorable young gal.”

And then she hugged Stephanie and added, “You know, half the time I’m not really sure what constitutes irony anyway. Which, given how self-righteous I am about words and syntax and grammar and punctuation ’n’ stuff, might be ironic. Or not. I’m not entirely sure.”

 

By the time the Lexus got to Santa Barbara, and they stopped for lunch at a cute little bistro right on the beach, Lala was awake and crowing about charitable giving as she shoved big bites of a delicious veggie burger in her mouth.

“Why are you taking a picture of my profile while I’m eating?” she demanded of David.

“Because you look like a chipmunk storing up veggie burger for the winter,” David said from behind the safety of his iPhone.

“If you weren’t so adorable, I’d smack you right now,” Lala giggled. “I’m kidding, of course. This may be the best veggie burger I’ve ever had. OMIGOD, look at that Doge de Bordeaux!”

Lala jumped up and assaulted a young couple who were walking a dog, which could have functioned as a pony for toddlers, on the path skirting the beach. Monty poured Geraldine and David another glass of iced tea from a large carafe as they watched Lala bob her head and chat animatedly with the dog and his owners. Apparently her question of “Is he/she friendly?”—which was always Lala’s first query when she met a new dog to adore—had been answered in the affirmative, because they saw Lala fall down to her knees and proceed to rub her face in the cheerful beast’s endless jowls.

“I am COVERED in drool!” Lala cheerfully announced when she bounded back to the table. “Is this California coast HEAVEN, or what? Okay, okay, on to business.”

She pulled out her cell phone and started pounding on it with her index finger.

“Wait. Wait. I just need to find that notepad thingie. Got it. Okay, so we’ll donate as much as we’re spending on this luxurious celebratory weekend, yes?”

“Yup,” David said.

“Mmm hmm,” Geraldine echoed.

“Sure, of course,” Monty concluded.

“Charities?” Lala demanded. “I’ll go first. Compassion Without Borders for me. They help animals everywhere, and I love them.”

“Excellent,” David said. “This time around, I’m going with a foundation that helps the Chicago public schools.”

“I love you,” Lala drawled as she jabbed at her phone. “Auntie Geraldine?”

“The Nature Conservancy.”

“Lovely. Monty?”

“My favorite. Habitat for Humanity.”

Lala stood and waved her cell phone at the large crowd of tourists and smiled as she yelled.

“A village! It takes a village, people!”

 

They arrived at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur just as the sun was starting to set. Geraldine was awake for the impressive sight. Lala was also conscious and somewhat out of her mind.

“It’s so NIIIIIIICE!” she trilled, leaning out the window as the entrance to the insanely lush and environmentally conscious hotel loomed before them. Geraldine and Monty had loved the place when they honeymooned there, and this would be Lala and David’s first visit.

“Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Briller!” Lars, the dashing manager of the Post Ranch said as he opened the passenger side door to the Lexus. “We’re so happy to see you again.”

Monty’s last name had been Miller for all of his life until he married Geraldine after losing his first wife several years earlier. Geraldine, also widowed, had taken her first husband’s surname when she married. She had been born into a family named Kaplan and had become Geraldine Bronson. When they married, Geraldine and Monty decided to “mash our names together and create a new beginning, because that’s very sexy and bold, isn’t it?” as Geraldine explained to Lala. “I considered melding my first last name with Monty’s only last name, but then we would end up with Maplan or Killer, neither of which sounded very charming. I like Briller because it sounds like someone from Ireland is pronouncing Brillo. And I think that’s adorable, don’t you?”

Lars escorted his special guests to the Pacific Suite, a two-story edifice with a private suite on each floor that looked out on the ocean and was—as Lala would later describe to her many actual and adopted nieces and nephews who were caring for her in her rambunctious dotage during many a “Day-Long Happy Hour, because why should the party ever stop, huh, kids, huh?”—“a prime example of the reason the masses rise up to overthrow the aristocracy.”

Lars showed them the details of the suites and left them with a promise to bring his signature macadamia nut bread pudding to their table for dessert.

On the drive up, Lala had been enumerating all the things she planned to do in and around beautiful Big Sur, including going shopping in nearby Carmel, walking down the literary legend that is Cannery Row in Monterey, hiking at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, and ogling the real estate along 17-Mile Drive.

When the door closed behind wonderfully gracious Lars, Lala turned to her boyfriend and her adopted aunt and uncle.

“I am not leaving here. I shall never leave the Post Ranch Inn. My nieces and nephews, all of them, shall have to journey here to care for me, for I shall grow old here, and I shall die here.”

Not two days would pass before Lala came to deeply regret that last choice of verb.

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Geraldine said. She slipped her arm under her dear husband’s and clutched him close to her. “We’re gonna go off to our magnificent, thankfully sound-proofed suite and fuck. Fuck all over the many luxurious variations of all nine-hundred-and-seventy gorgeous square feet, until the last second we can, leaving just enough time to get cleaned up and make it to the incomparable Sierra Mar restaurant for our reservation. We’ll see you at dinner.”

Lala smiled at her aunt. She reflected on what a fun quartet they were. There was Geraldine with her entirely timeless elegance. Geraldine was lithe and striking, and she could easily put her chin on the top of her pixie adopted niece’s head and would, in fact, probably have to stoop a bit to get it there. And there was Monty, a strapping, adorable man with all the grace of a diplomat. And her David. So handsome. When Lala met him, he was sporting a modernized mullet, and still, she couldn’t resist him. Thankfully, the mullet had been replaced, at Lala’s very unsubtle urging (“No, seriously. That thing has got to go. I mean, like, now.”), by a short cut that was quite flattering.

And here I am, Lala thought. Still no grey hair. And still the most short-waisted woman on the planet. What can you do? Genetics. They’ll work for you, they’ll work against you. Look at us. The Fab Four. Living proof that sexy just gets better in your forties. And seventies. Yay!

And then, still smiling, she huffed at her aunt as Geraldine and Monty were walking out the door.

“Damn it, Auntie Geraldine, I was just going to say exactly that same fetching and saucy thing about fucking all over the place, and you beat me to it! You always get the jump on being a sexy, edgy woman in her prime. Next time I want a head start.”

 

The California wines at dinner were quite possibly the best Lala had ever tasted, and the bread pudding Lars had promised was indeed incredible.

“This delicious dessert might soak up some of this wonderful wine,” Lala mused as she hoisted yet another overflowing forkful. “I could end the evening on a relatively coherent note.”

“Dream on, cookie. That’ll never happen,” Geraldine chuckled. She grabbed what was left of Monty’s dessert and shoveled it into her mouth. “Monty, hurry up and finish, we need to have some boozy sex before we fall asleep.”

Despite her aunt’s pessimistic prediction, Lala felt remarkably lucid when she got back to her suite with David. They made out in their plush king-size bed until Lala said she was starting to lose feeling in her jaw, and David said maybe they should catch a few hours of sleep and then wake up and screw.

“I like the way you think, sexy animal doctor,” Lala purred.

They turned on their left sides and spooned, and it didn’t take more than a minute or two for Lala to hear the steady, rhythmic breathing and feel the delicate exhales that indicated her adorable live-in boyfriend had fallen asleep.

Jesus, Lala thought. That monsoon he is unleashing on my ear is going to drive me crazy.

Lala spent the next fifteen minutes turning onto her back, moving imperceptible degrees at a snail’s pace so that she wouldn’t risk waking dear David. And, once she was on her back, she spent an at least equal amount of time sliding herself upward so that she could ultimately be sort of sitting up against the headboard.

She looked down at David, who was still asleep. And whose breath was hitting her naked waist.

My skin is weirdly hypersensitive tonight, Lala thought. Seriously, I may have to sleep on the couch.

She stretched her neck and looked toward the sofa in the living area.

It does look very comfortable, Lala thought. And spacious. And inviting.

But Lala wasn’t quite ready to give up. She slowly inched the blanket up until it was between her skin and David’s lips.

I’m exhausted, Lala thought. What time is it? I think I can sleep semi sitting up.

Lala counted backward from three hundred with “Mississippi” between the numbers because that would approximate five minutes. And then she counted from one to three hundred in French with “Mont-Saint-Michel” between the numbers, having determined right after deux-cent-quatre-vingt-dix-sept that counting backward in French was just way too challenging after so much wonderful wine.

Well, Lala thought, whatever time it might actually be, and however exhausted I am, I don’t seem to be able to fall asleep. What to do, what to do. I know! Time for some deliciously diverting TV!

Lala scanned the room. The remote was on the nightstand next to David’s side of the bed.

Damn it, Lala thought. She paused. Smooth. Smooth and swift and subtle and seamless. God, I do love alliteration.

Before she could lose her resolve, she spun around, taking David with her in a move that turned them both toward their right and ended up with David on the opposite side of the bed to the one he had started out on, putting her on top of him, still spooning and within reaching distance of the remote. She froze. After another moment, she once again heard the soothing sound of David’s slumbering breath. Soothing now that it wasn’t falling on her.

Yay! Lala thought. She moved quietly and gently back to the other side of the bed and positioned herself against the headboard. She clicked on the television and then immediately clicked on Mute and Closed Captioning so she could read the screen rather than listen to it.

After a delightfully brief scroll through the channels that once again served to sustain Lala’s belief and hope that the universe was an ultimately merciful place, Lala found exactly what she was looking for. Say Yes to the Dress. Also known as Heaven on Lala’s Earth.

Uh oh, Lala thought. Hush.

She had quite suddenly noticed that the snack basket in the living area was yelling her name.

Be quiet, she thought. You’ll wake him!

Lala looked at David. He was entirely undisturbed by what had grown to be a cacophony from the bounty of treats.

Fine, Lala thought. You can sleep through that, you can sleep through anything.

Lala bounced off the bed and sprinted out of the sleeping area.

“Whre doon?” David mumbled, turning over on his back.

“Nothing!” Lala yelled. “Go back to sleep!”

She ran to the counter in the wet bar, scanned the large basket in a moment, and grabbed a can of Pringle’s potato chips, which she popped open on the way back to the bed. Lala slid back under the covers and commenced crunching.

“Whr makn smuch noise?” David grumbled, not opening his eyes.

“Go back to sleep!” Lala said as she scooted under the covers.

Lala tried, fairly unsuccessfully, to eat the delicious chips more quietly and focused once again on the screen.

Wow, Lala thought. Heaven.

The brides at Kleinfeld in Manhattan and the wedding dress consultants who were helping to make their matrimonial dreams come true did not, as they never, ever would or could, disappoint. This, Lala felt sure, was storytelling at its best. Relationships. Conflict. Reconciliation. Transformation. It was all there. In lace and satin and tulle, mermaid, ball gown, and sheath styles. All of it real and meaningful and entirely over-the-top.

Would you listen to that gal? Lala thought. Who refers to herself in the third person? “Desiree is the star of her wedding! Desiree will be the center of attention, because that is who Desiree is!” She’s talking about herself, for god’s sake! This third person stuff? It drives Lala crazy!

Lala read the dialogue between the next bride and the consultant. The consultant asked the bride to tell her about her fiancé. The bride gushed and said they had met in college and he was her best friend and she had the best fiancé in the world and she knew he would be the best husband in the world.

Nuh uh, Lala thought. Your fiancé may be quite spectacular. And he may end up being a superb husband. But he won’t be the best. I had the best.

Lala remembered her late husband Terrence proposing to her in Central Park in her beloved Island of Manhattan. She remembered shopping for the dress for her wedding to Terrence. She remembered losing him far too soon.

“Whre cryin’?” David muttered. He turned on his other side and wrapped his arm around Lala.

“I’m not,” Lala gulped. She grabbed her pillow and dabbed at her wet face with it. “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

Lala settled back on her damp pillow and shut her eyes. The television remained on.

I’ve got to get some sleep, Lala thought. Don’t think about Terrence. Don’t think about how precious and fragile life is. Don’t think about David breathing on me like he’s running a fucking marathon.

 

I may need to unbutton my pants, Lala thought.

“This complimentary gourmet breakfast buffet thing?” Lala said. She seized a mini almond cherry scone from the breadbasket and bit it in half. “It’s yet another reason why I never want to leave this place.”

Geraldine and Lala were alone at their table while Monty and David stood in a short line at the omelet station. The men were wearing their tennis whites, having gotten up for an early game after a quick room service breakfast of egg whites and steamed spinach. Geraldine and Lala had woken a bit later and had gone to a hot yoga class, with Lala complaining that she was “schvitzing like I’m literally standing under a shower, and I think that’s the correct use of literally in this context, no?” and Geraldine urgently hissing at her in a whisper to “shut up because we’re in YOGA class, for god’s sake!”

Lala and Geraldine had not eaten anything before their yoga class, as per the directions in the brochure in their suite, and Lala was now on a tear.

“Okay, I’m done with this current sweet cycle, so on to the savory. I think I’ll have another round of risotto. Doesn’t David look cute in his tennis whites? I think he looks like his name should be Sven. I think I’ll start calling him Sven.”

After brunch, they all retired to their suite to nap before enjoying a guided nature walk together on the seemingly endless grounds of the Post Ranch. Their guide was a strapping Swede named Sven, and Lala took that as a sign that she should never leave this place. They were joined on the walk by a young couple from Chicago. The husband was a journalist and the wife was an attorney. The man, Lala would later recall to one of her nieces and nephews who were taking care of her in her golden years, “had a voice that conjured what I imagine to be the sound those really big dinosaurs—I can’t remember what they’re called—make. And I mean that as a compliment.”

And after that, it was back to their suite for room service lunch and afternoon sex and yet another nap before they met at the heated lap pool that overlooked the ocean so that Lala and Geraldine could do their own version of an Olympic swim meet while David and Monty sunbathed, and then the four of them would soak in the heated Meditation Spa, also overlooking the ocean, before they would go back to their suite to get dressed for dinner.

“And it was in the Meditation Spa,” Lala would later recount to one of her nieces and nephews who were taking care of her, “that it all went to shit that day.”

And when, decades later, she would reflect on that god-awful day that had started with so much comfort and luxury and so many trips to the Happy Endings dessert bar at the complimentary gourmet breakfast buffet, Lala would have a hard time deciding which part was the worst.

“I vacillate,” she would admit to one of her nieces and nephews, at this point a different one because this particular story in their Auntie Lala’s repertoire was an especially winding one, and so they’d schedule shifts to listen to it.

The niece or nephew would try very hard to focus and to not let her or his eyes flutter anywhere near shut, because a betrayal like that would cause Auntie Lala to snap, “WHAT? I’m BORING you?”

“Not at all, Auntie Lala,” her niece or nephew would assure the grumpy-but-good-hearted-old-grande-dame. “You were saying?”

And at that point Lala would grandly swoop up her martini glass and loudly slurp up the remaining drops of vodka and olive juice. And if her nieces and nephews had scheduled it so that two of them were there at the same time for a visit on that particular Sunday “because, y’know, it’s easier to listen to those same stories that were perhaps interesting the first few times but are now bordering on psychological torture when you’ve at least got a fellow prisoner to roll your eyes at,” one would turn to the other while their aunt was gulping and whisper something amusing, and the other would silently giggle, and their aunt would grandly slam her martini glass on the table.

“I can HEAR you! And quit rolling your eyes! Okay, as I was saying, I’m not sure if the worst part was sitting in that fabulous Meditation Spa and suddenly noticing—it seemed the three of us noticed it at the same time—that Monty’s eyes had closed, and it wasn’t because he was luxuriating but because something was terribly wrong, and suddenly the three of us were lunging across the pool to get Monty out of the water before he went under. Or maybe the worst part was that interminable ride to the hospital through all those fucking endless roads in ‘glorious and majestic’ . . .”

And at this point, Lala would lift her ancient but still very shapely arms and grandly make air quotation marks around the compliments, having never in all those decades forgiven that particular section of her beloved California coast for causing so much terror that particular day.

“. . . Big Sur. Or the way my Auntie Geraldine looked when she saw her husband faint. Or sitting in that emergency room waiting for forever until a doctor who looked like Methuselah’s grandmother and ended up being quite possibly the kindest and most brilliant person I ever met, so listen to me being such a putz thinking about old people in that kind of negative way back then, when that doctor back then looked like a spring chicken compared to the way your beloved Auntie Lala looks now, WHY AREN’T YOU PICKING UP YOUR CUE FASTER?!”

And her niece or nephew would jerk her or his head back because she or he had understandably been finding it nearly impossible to stay awake, and would yell to compensate for the lack of enthusiasm implied by the transgression of almost falling asleep, and also because they had been so startled by Lala’s yelling at them while they were almost asleep, even though the same scenario with the trying not to sleep and the almost sleeping and the yelling and the missing cues had played itself out multiple times before.

“YOU LOOK GREAT, AUNTIE LALA! You look much younger than you are!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lala would chortle. “Anyway, as I was saying, there I am, silently being snotty about how old this wonderful doctor looked, and then she comes in and says that awful word. P.S. Sweetheart, I’m not a scientist, but I don’t think that martooni pitcher is gonna fill itself.”

 

David was at the cafeteria getting them all coffee when Dr. Celentano came back to the waiting room to find them. She sat down next to Geraldine and consulted the file she held.

“The good news is that he hasn’t had a stroke, and he hasn’t had a heart attack. The other news is that there’s something on his thyroid that I don’t like, so I rush ordered a biopsy.”

God, do I hate that fucking word, Lala thought.

“I know that’s a terrifying word,” Dr. Celentano said.

That’s what Terrence’s doctors said, Lala thought.

“Let’s try to think of it as a diagnostic tool and not as a conclusion in itself.”

Yup, that’s more-or-less what they said.

“And even if the results are not what we want to hear, thyroid cancer is among the most curable.”

Okay, that one we never heard. Because fucking stomach cancer. Decidedly not among the most curable of fucking cancers.

They rented a room at a Super 8 motel less than a mile away from the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula so that they could shower and so that, as Monty insisted, Geraldine could leave his side for a couple of hours and get a little sleep in an actual bed. Lars from the Post Ranch brought over his special bread pudding.

And then on the second day they heard the word that Lala and Terrence hadn’t heard.

It was late in the afternoon and they were all sitting around Monty’s bed. Dr. Celentano came in and, when she saw the four of them there, she smiled.

“Good. You’re all here. It’s benign. You can go home tomorrow. Is that Lars’s signature macadamia nut bread pudding? That stuff is incredible! Gimme a bite!”

The next morning, as she was signing the release forms, Dr. Celentano gave strict instructions for the drive back home to be leisurely.

“Seize the moment. Seize the day. Don’t drive like a crazy person. Stop and smell the sea air. None of us know how much time we’ve got on this planet, right, Montgomery? So all of you pretend you’re Italian like I am and add lots of mangia, vino, and amore. That’s all the Italian I know. Oh, wait, one more. La Dolce Vita. Yeah. You know, I did the typical immigrant child thing. My parents come from Sicily, they settle in New York, my mother doesn’t even speak English. My mother was illiterate, isn’t that a tragedy. She died when she was fifty-six. She looked older then than I do now, and I’ll be ninety-four on my next birthday.”

Wow, Lala thought. I would have guessed older, but I’m such a pill.

Dr. Celentano had plopped herself down on a chair while they waited for an orderly to come up with a wheelchair to get Monty out of the room and back to their car. “So my parents spoke to all of us in Sicilian, and we all answered in English because we wanted to be Americans. Such a shame, losing the language of my people. Oh, look, you’ve got Keith, he’s my favorite orderly. Hi, Keith. Okay, so I’ll call Montgomery’s regular doctor and fill him in, and, Geraldine and Lala and David, I’ll count on you all to get this nice young man in to see his physician right after you get home. Not urgent, but don’t dawdle. Lovely to meet you all. Arrivederci, Roma.”

And it was indeed, as ordered, a leisurely and very relaxing trip back to Los Angeles. Dr. Celentano had put no restrictions on Monty’s activities, so they stopped at a lovely winery at the southernmost edge of Big Sur, then stayed overnight at an adorable BnB right on the beach in Cambria. After that, they went to another charming winery just outside Santa Barbara in the adorable Danish village of Solvang, where they stayed overnight at the cozy Svendsgaard’s Danish Lodge, which made Lala monetarily fear that the name “Sven,” in a myriad of terrifying variations, would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Throughout the trip home, Lala did a wonderful job of being her usual chatty self. Her usual very chatty self. Her usual incredibly chatty self. She basically didn’t shut up for two days and two nights.

“Wow! Look at those waves! Monty, can you see those waves? Wow! Nice, huh? I love the ocean. Isn’t this nice? All of us together. Riding along the beautiful coast. Together. Alive. Nice. So. Waves. Fun.”

“What’s with the staccato delivery?” Geraldine demanded. “Are you okay?”

Uh oh, Lala thought. Subconscious cries for help escaping. Damn.

“I am GREAT!” Lala yelled.

“Good,” Geraldine said. “Let’s modulate our enthusiasm, shall we?”

And so whenever she saw that Monty was dozing off, as he should have and did while they were driving between scenic stops, Lala didn’t stop talking, she just lowered her voice to an indecipherable whisper.

“I do love the idea of all of us dressing up as the Beatles for Halloween this year, don’t you? If it’s okay with everyone else, I’d like to put dibs on Ringo. Is that okay with you both? Auntie Geraldine, don’t feel you have to answer for Monty. I can wait until he wakes up. Though I am eager to find out, so maybe you could give me your okay and then promise to persuade him if he’s not keen on the idea?”

And then Lala would wait for an answer, and when none was forthcoming from David, who was driving, and from Geraldine, who was in the backseat with Monty stretched out with his head on her lap, she spun around to stare inquiringly at her aunt.

“I couldn’t understand a word, dear,” Geraldine said. “David, did you get any of that?”

“I wasn’t listening,” David said.

And still Lala didn’t stop chatting. She couldn’t figure out any other way to maintain the perky energy that might prevent them from knowing that she couldn’t stop replaying the last months of Terrence’s life in her head. She didn’t want them to know that the images of IV drips and syringes and vomiting and wonderful hospice nurses, whose non-stop kindness only made it more difficult for her not to be constantly sobbing in front of Terrence as they upped the doses of his morphine to help keep him out of pain, were flooding her mind in a way that they hadn’t since the awful years immediately after Terrence died.

When they got back to Manhattan Beach, it was just before dinnertime. Lala asked David to please wait just a minute and she would come right back to help him with the bags.

“I’m not an invalid,” Monty insisted. “I’ll help him with the bags.”

“NO!” the three of them yelled.

Lala ran from the parking spots behind the fourplex and through the courtyard to Stephanie and Chuck’s place.

Got to see my puppies, she thought. Got to see them now. Must hug puppies. Now.

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Stephanie!” she crowed when Stephanie’s mom and dad opened the door.

I can’t remember their names, Lala thought. Damn it. I am such a putz.

Stephanie’s mom, Linda, was holding her granddaughter and was also balancing Yootza, Lala’s dachshund, in her arms. Yootza, who was normally a complete grouch, a quality that Lala found ceaselessly endearing, was snuggled up against Linda and Trixie. Lala thought she could hear him purring.

“Look, Yootzie,” Linda cooed. “Mama’s home!”

She gently handed the grey-faced little hound to Lala, and the moment that Trixie realized that her best buddy was being taken from her, she began to wail with wrenching, full-body sobs.

“Ohh,” Stephanie’s dad Leland said. He patted his granddaughter on the top of her head, which only seemed to add to Trixie’s distress.

Linda nodded at Lala and Yootza and smiled.

“Babies,” Linda sighed. “When they’re sad, they cry with their whole little souls.”

Yeah, Lala thought. I know how they feel.