An Unexpected Grace (19 page)

“You were a Boy Scout?”

“On my honor.” Adam sat back down and rested his elbows on his knees. “When I lecture about sundials, I hand out a page of maxims.”

“Like what?”

“Time and tide wait for no man.”

“I've heard that before.”

“Okay, try ‘Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.' ”

Lila leaned down and patted Grace's golden haunch. “Time can change things; that's for sure.”

 

Lila and Adam walked home slowly because Grace was worn out. Panting and looking wilted, she plodded along, dragged her paws, and occasionally scraped her toenails on the asphalt. Though she no longer wore her cow costume, Adam gently encouraged her, “Git along, little dogie,” and he told her that she and Taurus, the bull in the sky, could get together and produce golden stars. He told Lila about the Hyades, which form Taurus's face, and the Pleiades, which shine from his shoulder.

At the front door, patches of sunlight on the porch looked like Holstein markings. As Lila turned the key in the lock, she said, “I can wash Grace's cow costume before I give it back.”

“Don't bother. It's just a little rumpled. Keep it in case we need to disguise her again.”

He had a future in mind, Lila thought with a tingle. A car drove by with its radio's bass too loud, so the music had a heartbeat thump.

“I enjoyed our lunch,” she said.

“I did too,” Adam said. “I asked you out today, so now it's your turn. Call me if you want to get together.”

Errrch. Call
you
?! Stick out my neck that far?
Calling him would be so different from accepting his invitation.

For the rest of the afternoon Grace sat at the front door, staring through the glass like she wanted Adam to come back. Lila didn't know what she wanted anymore.

A
t the kitchen table after breakfast, Lila turned the pages of
Columbine: The Story of a Rampage
. Grace, on her early morning patrol, was rustling through ferns and lecturing blue jays behind the house. Ever since Adam had taken her to the dog park, she wanted to roam the yard and explore the blackberry patches, the creek bed, and anything that cast a shadow or snapped a twig. Adam would have been pleased at her new confidence and spirit of adventure.

In the past month, he'd often come to Lila's mind. She'd remembered the Peruvian nuns, Grace's cow costume, and his gentleness helping her from the shower. But those pluses had not been enough to cancel the threatening minus of calling him and suggesting they get together. Whenever she considered it, self-preservation won over risk, and she snapped her clamshell shut.

There were better things to do than brood about making the next move toward Adam when she wasn't sure she was up to a relationship with any man. Lately, she'd painted a dentist's office door with a fleur-de-lis-shaped peephole, a Victorian house's door with a lace curtain over the oval window, and a Safeway door with posters for lost dogs taped to the glass. Each week she and Grace had gone to see Betsy, and nearly every day Lila had taken Grace to the dog park, where she retrieved her tennis ball and strengthened her leg.

In the past few weeks, Lila had also finished calling the Bay Area Makovs, and then she contacted all the California ones listed on whitepages.com. Finding no one who knew Yuri, she Googled “Makov” and pored through thousands of citations. Makov was a common name, and the Makovs were a varied lot. Louis Makov had written books on the police, of all things. Jonni Makov was a punk drummer in a Czech rock band, and Pavel Makov was president of a Peoria bank. Lubov Makov, an engineer, had published
The Microwave Anisotropy Probe Control System
. Arthur Makov was a quarterback for the Texas Aggies. Sergei Makov was a Russian bishop, and on Facebook, Helge Makov's spaghetti straps slid off her teenage shoulders, exposing tops of breasts that looked like ski jumps.

None of those Makovs got Lila closer to Yuri, however, and her frustration drove her to the library, where she checked out the Columbine book. She wondered if the same malicious urge that drove Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to shoot up a school might have driven Yuri Makov to go postal. But now as she finished the book's first chapter, she had more questions than answers.

In a year Harris and Klebold had built a hundred bombs, which they intended to detonate at Columbine High School; then they would shoot surviving students as they ran for their lives. Lila wondered if Yuri had carefully planned what he was going to do, or if one morning he'd tossed off his covers, climbed out of bed, and in a flash of evil decided to kill people. Or maybe in all those months as he'd quietly vacuumed and dusted Weatherby offices, he'd been suppressing a volcano and waiting for the right morning to let the lava flow. Lila wished she could climb into his brain and discern: spontaneity or premeditation ?

Harris and Klebold had shot themselves, just as Yuri had. Lila tried to put herself in his place as he lifted the gun to his temple and curled his finger around the trigger. Was he sweating? Icy? Hesitant? Remorseful? Afraid? Relieved that he was free to move on? Did he just shoot himself in a crazed reflex without thought or feeling?

Lila wanted Yuri to have begged God for forgiveness at the end, but, more likely, suicide had been a way to shield himself from facing consequences, a cowardly act to avoid his victims' and their families' hate. He may have thought dying by his own hand was better than an executioner strapping him to a table and injecting him with a lethal drug, and he might have wanted his death over with sooner rather than later, and on his own terms. Or he could have seen it like stepping off a cliff into an abyss. How could Lila know?

She wasn't much closer to knowing Yuri's motive, either. The chapter made clear that Harris and Klebold had sought revenge against other students' slights and snubs. “I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things,” Harris, described as a cold-blooded psychopath, had written in his journal. Depression and anxiety were said to have driven Klebold, who had once referred to himself as a “god of sadness.”

A study in the book concluded that most school shooters had feelings like Harris's and Klebold's. The students were depressed or coping with losses and failures, and seventy-one percent felt bullied, persecuted, or shunned. To fight back, the students killed out of rage, just as Dr. Leibowitz had claimed on TV that people going postal did. So Lila was back full circle to anger—and its relative, depression, which was said to be anger turned inward.

She stared out the window at Grace, thrashing through a patch of vinca, and at an English laurel, which deer had eaten back to naked stems. But Lila hardly saw Grace or the bush because she was mentally standing up to Yuri and trying to get back her power.
What were you doing?
she demanded of him. Without averting her eyes, she stared him down.

Imagining his face, she couldn't see anger. Not in his dark eyes or set jaw. Not in his look of concentration as he brushed a feather duster over bookshelves and computers. Not even in his aloofness, which may have been a defense against being looked down on as an immigrant and janitor. Maybe he'd dressed better than other Weatherby employees to tell them he was better than they were.

Had he used indifference to hide feeling hurt or alone? Who in the office might have snubbed him as students had snubbed Harris and Klebold?

Suddenly, Lila pictured who. Yuri might have thought she had. Her stomach felt like it had been thrown from a skyscraper window.

One evening Yuri had been grooming a schefflera in the lobby near the desk of Emily, whom he later killed. She'd left for the day, as had nearly everyone in the office. Lila had stayed because Cristina was going to drive her home after working late.

Lila walked by Yuri, who, as usual, might have just stepped out of a Macy's catalogue on his way to a casual dinner, in corduroy slacks, a V-necked sweater, and a shirt with a button-down collar. Though he seemed absorbed in his snipping, he looked up as Lila passed, and he beamed. He seemed like he'd purposely waited for her—a benign spider hoping for a friendly fly.

“Hello!” he said.

“Hi.” Lila pressed the elevator button.

In the longest second in recorded history, silence crawled between them with an arm and leg tied behind its back.

Wanting no one to feel awkward, Lila's Pleaser jumped in. “You're doing a good job with that plant.”

Yuri held out a schefflera branch as if he were about to lead it to a dance floor. “Grow . . . good.”

“Yes. You're helping it.” Anyone could tell he was sensitive to greenery. “Uh, you enjoy working with plants?”

“Enjoy?” He cocked his head the way Grace did when she was trying to understand.

“You know, you like.”

“You.”

Surely he couldn't have been saying he liked Lila. Oh, God. She chose to think he meant “you” to be a question—as in “Do
you
like working with plants?”

“Well, I do like plants a lot. I grew tomatoes every summer when I was a little girl,” she said.

Yuri's lips turned up in a smile that was too eager and needy, and it felt oppressive. He seemed to want more from Lila than even her Pleaser might be willing to give.

Still, her Pleaser wanted all exchanges to go smoothly, so she smiled back, though the smile was wan.

“I . . . happy. You here.” He pointed at the floor.

He probably wanted Lila to say,
Well, golly, I'm really glad you're here too. What a nice way to finish the afternoon.
She managed only, “Uh, well . . .”

Just then the elevator arrived with an off-pitch bong, and, thank goodness, she could leave.

“Good-bye,” she said.

“Good-bye,” he said, but now his smile looked rained on.

Lila practically hurled her body into the elevator to escape the awkwardness. Before the doors closed, she wouldn't let her Pleaser turn around and wave an insincere good-bye. Perhaps in Yuri's mind Lila had snubbed him—and maybe she unintentionally had. But, oh, how she wished she'd handled that uncomfortable situation better. What are you supposed to do when someone is being nice but you get a creepy feeling about it?

Last week Lila had told Betsy that the only way she'd get over being shot was to know why it had happened. The only way out of trouble was through it, she'd said, and you got through it by understanding it and going on from there.

“Do you have to understand? Does it really matter?” Betsy asked.

“It does to me. I've been doing everything I can think of to find out.”

“That keeps you tied to the man who shot you,” Betsy said.

Lila hadn't liked the sound of that. She pushed its camel's nose out from under her mental tent back into the sandstorm. But the camel pushed his nose back.

 

Grace shuffled up the steps outside the kitchen and yipped to let Lila know she wanted in. Grace's usual energetic climb had seemed slow, and through the French door's glass, her face looked troubled.

Lila set
Columbine
aside, got up, and opened the door. “Whatsamatter, Grace?”

When Grace looked up, the whites below her pupils formed the beseeching crescent moons she'd presented in her early, ul-traneedy days. The fur on her right front paw was dark and wet.

“Been jumping up to drink out of the birdbath again?” Lila asked as Grace limped inside.

Lila turned to close the door behind her. Fuzzy-edged red smears marked the stairs from the yard. As Grace walked across the kitchen floor, she left bloody paw prints like the muddy ones she'd left when Lila had first known her. Lila's knees started knocking together.

L
ila grabbed her purse and Grace's leash and hurried to the door. For Grace's sake, Lila tried to act like all was well and blood was no worry. But her stomach was tied in a hitch knot. She was trembling when she told Grace to come. As she hobbled a couple of steps, pain showed in her eyes. To spare her, Lila would have gladly taken the pain, quadrupled.

Even if Lila's arm had not been injured, she could not have carried Grace. So Lila slowly coaxed her through the kitchen to the garage. Each time Grace put weight on her right paw, she flinched. Still, she kept going because Lila asked her to. “You're such a good, brave dog,” Lila said.

When they got to the Volvo, Lila covered the front passenger seat with blankets. She urged Grace to put her front paws on the seat so Lila could push her from behind. But lifting her hurt paw must have asked too much. Grace stood there, staring ahead with glazed eyes. Lila gently nudged her to make sure she understood what she should do, but she whimpered and did not move.

Lila's left arm was too weak to lift even part of Grace. Lila had to get help. Slowly she and Grace made their way back into the house.

 

“Adam? It's Lila.” She gripped the telephone receiver.

“It's been a while.”

“I'm sorry. I really am.”

He paused, like he was letting that sink in. “What's up?”

“Grace cut her paw. She needs to go to the vet. I can't lift her into the car.”

“I'll be right there.”

Tears came to Lila's eyes. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.”

 

Adam brought a royal blue hand towel, which he gently wrapped around Grace's paw. He picked her up from her kitchen bed as if she were made of Baccarat crystal, and he carried her outside. Lila followed them up the path to his silver Honda and opened the door to the backseat. He set Grace down and closed the door behind her.

When Lila slid in the back on the other side, Adam said, “Hold the towel around her paw and press on the wound.”

Lila pressed, and she kissed Grace's widow's peak. As Adam sped down the hill, Grace whined and licked Lila's hand like she was trying to comfort
her
. Lila blinked back tears.

Adam glanced at her in his rearview mirror. “We'll be there in a few minutes.”

“Nobody ever told me how terrible it would be to see Grace suffer,” Lila said, her voice cracking.

 

Dr. Armand Hightower was not so high as his name would have led you to expect. He was short, pudgy, round, and bald—a croquet ball of a veterinarian, whom Alice in Wonderland's Queen of Hearts might have whacked through hoops. But behind his aviator glasses, there was compassion in his eyes.

Stooped over Grace's paw, he pushed apart her bloody fur and probed, then dabbed the spot with gauze. “She's got a nasty cut.”

Lila wrapped her arms around herself to keep her heart from pounding through her chest and bounding off like a wounded deer. “I don't know what happened. I let Grace out like I always do,” Lila said. “I thought the yard was safe. I wish I'd checked for something that could cut her.”

Under the fluorescent lights, everything in the room seemed jittery, including the doorknobs and stainless steel towel dispenser. The leopard in a photo on the wall was frowning.

When Adam wrapped his arm around Lila's shoulder, she avoided looking up into his eyes because she expected to see judgment toward her for failing to keep Grace safe. But, to Lila's surprise, he smoothed her tee shirt with his hand and showed no sign of blaming her. Grateful, she leaned against him like she was a horse outside in a blizzard, and he was a warm barn wall.

 

When Dr. Hightower was about to carry Grace to surgery, Lila asked, “Will she be all right?”

“Once we clean the cut and stitch her up, she should be fine,” he said.

“You'll be good to her?” Lila asked.

“Don't worry.” Dr. Hightower glanced at Adam and smiled.

“You're sure?” Lila asked. “She's had a terrible life.”

“Come on, Lila. Let's go sit in the waiting room,” Adam said.

She kissed Grace's widow's peak again and hugged her. “We'll be right here, Grace. I promise.”

 

You could tell that Dr. Hightower wanted his waiting room to be a happy place where everybody's needs were met. On a table in one corner were children's games, building blocks, and Dr. Seuss books; in another corner, a tin of shortbread cookies, a jar of dog biscuits, and a pot of coffee. On the walls were posters of robust dogs and cats who gave clients hope that their own pets could be healthy. Sitting in chairs were teddy bears to clutch, as needed. Lila grabbed a fuzzy white one.

“Want some coffee?” Adam asked.

“No, thanks.”

“A cookie?”

“No.”

“How about a dog biscuit? You should eat something to keep up your strength.”

Despite her worry, Lila smiled at him.

 

Lila and Adam sat side by side in molded plastic chairs. He stretched out his legs in front of him and crossed his ankles. When he reached over and took her hand, she was glad instead of wary, as she'd have expected. Reassurance seemed to be residing in his epidermis. Though strong from hauling apple crates, his hand was gentle.

“So tell me. Did your phone line snap in two or something ?” he asked.

“No.”

“So why the month's silence?”

“I don't know. I didn't feel right calling you.”

He chuckled. “You wanted to be pursued?”

“No.”

“Then what? Something to do with your ex-boyfriend?”

“Probably. At least partly,” Lila said. “It's been a crazy time.”

“You need to get over it.”

“Easier said than done.”

“How about trying?”

 

Adam rubbed his thumb over the top of Lila's hand. “There's this lady who seemed to blame herself about a dog's cut paw. She wished she'd gotten on her hands and knees and combed every inch of half an acre before letting her dog out this morning.”

“I wish she had,” Lila said.

“Seems a little excessive to me. Too much to expect of herself, don't you think?”

“She feels guilty.”

“Guilt's a waste of time.” Adam twirled a button on his shirt. “Feeling like something's your fault is a way to fool yourself into thinking you're in control. Problem is we're not in control of much in this world. Most of what happens is beyond us.”

“I wish that were true.”

“It is,” Adam said.

“I'm not so sure.”

“Is letting loose of things a problem for you?”

“You could say that.”

 

As the waiting dragged on, Adam got up, poured himself a cup of coffee, and shuffled through magazines by the receptionist's desk. When he came back to the sofa, he handed Lila a
People
; on the cover famous couples were gazing with longing at each other.

“Here's something to distract you,” he said.

“Thanks.” Lila set the magazine in her lap.

After he studied the table of contents of a
Sports Illustrated
, he looked at her unopened
People
. “You're not reading.”

“I can't. I'm too worried.”

“I can't, either. I was just pretending.” He closed his magazine.

“Thanks for caring,” Lila said.

“Couldn't help but.”

“I appreciate it. Really.”

Adam checked his watch and put his wrist in front of Lila so she could also see the time. Though they'd been there less than an hour, it felt like three days. As he got up and paced the room, his loafers' heels tapped the tile floor. He stopped and studied a poster of a black Lab with a chartreuse tennis ball in its mouth like the one Grace carried around. But the Lab's was new, and Grace would have nothing to do with any ball except hers, which housed more germs than a New Delhi gutter.

When Adam came back, Lila whispered, “You should get another dog.”

“I will eventually.”

“The right time will come.”

“It does. For everything.” Adam settled back down beside her.

 

Another fifteen minutes inched by like a slug on Thorazine. Lila counted how many times Adam checked his watch: eleven. He may have counted how many times she rubbed her forehead—until the number needed commas. But rubbing her forehead didn't stop the worry.

A woman in tennis togs came into the clinic with her basset hound. A man chewing an unlit cigar dragged in his German shepherd mutt. When an elderly couple struggled from the parking lot with three cat carriers, Adam got up and opened the door for them. They whispered apologies to no one in particular as the waiting room filled with hostile squawks and yowls.

Lila barely heard them because she was picturing Grace conked out on an operating table with an anesthesia mask over her muzzle, or lying, woozy, in a recovery cage. Grace's fur would be matted with blood, and her paw would be throbbing. If she were conscious, she could be worrying that Lila and Adam had left her at the clinic forever. Lila ached to get her home.

Finally, Dr. Hightower walked Grace into the waiting room, and Adam and Lila rushed to her.

Her right paw and lower leg were wrapped in elastic white tape, and her eyes were glassy. Still, she swished her tail and emphatically said,
Thank God you're here! Please, please, take me home!

Lila got on her knees and wrapped her arms around Grace, careful not to jostle her. Lila squeezed her as tightly as she dared as Grace squeaked and licked Lila's face.

“Good girl,” she said.

I love you,
said Grace's whimpers.

As Adam stroked her head, she pressed it against his hand.
Home! Home!
begged her nuzzles.

Lila thanked Dr. Hightower. Three times. He gave Adam antibiotics, pain medication, a printout of care instructions, and the bill. Dr. Hightower asked that Adam and Lila bring Grace back for a checkup on Monday. When Dr. Hightower returned to an exam room, Adam went to the receptionist and handed her a credit card

“Hey, wait a minute.” Lila leapt up and tore across the room.

“I can pay,” Adam said.

“You can not.”

“The bill is bigger than you think. You don't have a job.”

“I don't care how much the bill is for. Grace is mine.”

“Is this going to put you into debt?”

“No. And I'm not your ex-girlfriend.”

“I was just trying to help.”

“I don't need it.”

Adam's lips turned up slightly, the beginning of a smile.

 

Lila and Adam settled Grace in her pumpkin position on the kitchen pillow. Her face looked droopy, and her bandaged paw stuck out like a short white cane. But she seemed as if she'd soon get back to her old self. As Lila broiled her a chicken breast, relief welled up inside her and made her giddy.

Adam seemed relieved too. He changed Grace's water and set the bowl next to her so she could drink without getting up. When her chicken was done, he cut it into pieces and showed Lila how to sneak in pills so Grace would swallow them and never know the difference.

As he walked to the front door, he said, “I don't want to distress you again by suggesting you call me. But if Grace needs anything, you know where I am.”

“I do.”

“No broken phone lines.”

“None,” Lila said. “And thanks. You've been our saving grace.”

Adam put his hand on the doorknob, as if he were about to leave. Then he turned around and brushed Lila's lips with a quick kiss. It told her that whatever was between them was not going to be platonic, and she'd just washed up on the beach of a relationship.

As he walked up the path to the street, Lila's Horny Guttersnipe tap-danced around the entry and hummed, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

“I don't care what you want,” Lila told her. “I'm not getting involved with any man. He's just a friend.”

Lila's Horny Guttersnipe winked.
Tee-hee!

 

While Grace was sleeping off her anesthetic, Lila tiptoed out of the house to walk downtown for more chicken. When she came to the stone ducks at the gate's entrance, they still wore sunglasses, but now they also sported ratty wigs like you'd buy at a party store. Delighting in the absurdity of tangled, brunette locks on ducks, Lila rummaged through her purse and found a wadded pink ribbon from a floral arrangement someone had sent her in the hospital. She tied the ribbon around the neck of one of the ducks and stood back to admire her contribution.