Where We Belong (2 page)

I was lying on this white plastic lounge chair, with the sun beating down on me, on grass that was all marked up with yellow spots from everywhere the dog had peed. The dog was gone, too. She’d died two weeks before Uncle Charlie, which was part of Aunt Violet’s extra-fragile state. I used to like that dog. Her name was Beulah, and she was a fat basset hound with arthritis. She was drooly but nice.

Sophie never liked Beulah. Sophie never liked any dogs. Or cats, either. In fact, you had to watch her every minute with them, because she would try to kick or punch them, even if they hadn’t done anything to her. One dog she saw outside a supermarket she tried to bite, and the dog was too nice to defend himself, and I had to step in and save the day, and then it was me who got bitten.

I looked up to see why Sophie was being so quiet. She was crouched on her belly up against the chain-link fence at one end of Aunt Violet’s yard. She actually looked like a dog, the way she was lying in the grass. Like the way a dog will fold up into a sphinx position. She had her chin on the backs of her hands like they were her paws. Her nose was tucked right up to the chain-link fence. On the other side of the links was just about the biggest dog ever. This all-black Great Dane with cropped ears standing up, pointy. I think they shouldn’t do that to dogs, but that’s beside the point for this part of things. If I had to guess, I’d say he was maybe close to two hundred pounds. He was lying in exactly the same position as Sophie. His nose was about four inches from hers. It was the only part of him that wasn’t black. His muzzle was gray.

I sat up. “Hmmm,” I said out loud, even though there was nobody but me around to hear me. Then I called out, “Sophie, you come away from him,” because I thought maybe she was lulling that poor dog into a false sense of security.

But… like I mentioned before, I don’t even know if she heard or not. Or heard but plain didn’t care. Or couldn’t care, I guess I should say.

I ran things around in my head for a minute or two. She couldn’t reach through the fence—anyway, not very far. That dog wasn’t tied up or anything. Surely he knew how to duck. And he outweighed her three or four times over. Did I really want to take my life in my hands by going to get her? I could always have used the extreme emergency method, which was sneaking up behind and throwing a blanket over her like a net, but I tried to keep that plan in my back pocket as much as I could. Besides, I usually got kicked up just as bad.

I decided that big old dog could take care of himself. Only because of the fence, though. Without that fence, I wouldn’t have bet much on his chances.

Every now and then, I looked up to see how it was going.

“Don’t you dare hurt him,” I said. Maybe four times.

But nothing ever moved.

I thought again about brushing her hair, but I couldn’t bring myself to mess up a good thing. It would’ve been easier if my mom had cut it short, like mine, but she loved Sophie’s hair, and I didn’t blame her. It was a color like mahogany, this rich brown with red highlights that came out in the sun. And in natural ringlet curls. She was a beautiful girl, more than I ever would be. My mom was always talking about her hair, and those gorgeous green eyes, like she didn’t get it that I was here, too. She talked about those green eyes less, though, now that Sophie hadn’t made eye contact with us for years.

I sighed and tried to make all that go away.

After a while, I heard Sophie shrieking that special horrible siren wail of hers. Our mom calls it keening, but I’ve heard other people keening, and I’ve got to tell you, this is worse. I sat up to see that the dog had wandered away from the fence to get a drink out of his water bowl. He raised his head up and looked at me, and I looked back. He had water streaming down from the corners of his mouth.

I reached to get my earplugs out of my pocket.

I don’t want to sound cold, just putting in earplugs and letting her wail. It sounds like I don’t care that she’s wailing. But it’s not that. I care plenty. There’s just nothing I can do. Nothing. Nothing anybody can do. Except preserve their own sanity by whatever means possible.

Aunt Violet burst out the back door.

“You have to make her stop,” she said. She sounded even more desperate, like she was on her last nerve. Like she could explode at any time, and flutter down to the spotty grass in a bunch of dry bits and pieces. “I can’t take it,” she said. “I’m not strong. I told your mom I’m not strong. I’m not myself without Charlie. I don’t have a lot of…”

While she searched for a word for what she didn’t have a lot of, I looked at her eyebrows. I was always sneaking peeks at them when I thought I could get away with it. She didn’t seem to have any eyebrow hairs of her own, so she drew them on in this weird color of light brown, and too high in the middle. It made her look like everything in the world was a shock to her system. Not that her eyebrows mattered at a time like that. Just that, when things get bad, my brain goes away. Sometimes.

Just as I opened my mouth to break the bad news, which she damn well should have known already—that I can’t stop Sophie once she gets going, that nothing can stop Sophie once she gets going—the dog came wandering back to the fence. I saw him out of the corner of my eye.

Sophie’s cry wound down the way a siren does, getting lower and slower and then gone.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Aunt Violet said. “Thank goodness she stopped.” Aunt Vi turned her eyes to me, her drawn-on eyebrows scrunched down as far as they could scrunch but still looking a little too high. “Did you take offense at something when we were talking before?”

She asked it like she’d had all this time to think and still couldn’t imagine what it might have been.

My face got hot again.

“I just felt like it was a little bit thoughtless of you,” I said, and then my face burned like crazy, because it was a brave thing to say. I had to work hard not to cry.

Aunt Vi’s head rocked back. “Now what on earth did I say?” Like she already knew I was wrong, and it couldn’t have been anything, really.

“That I don’t know how it feels when somebody dies.”

She just stared at me blank-faced for a minute. Not a real whole minute, but maybe for the count of three. Then her eyes went wide, and her hand came up to her mouth. And she charged at me. It scared the crap out of me. I thought she was about to attack me, and I wanted to run, or yell. Or something. Or anything. But it all happened too fast.

Next thing I knew, she was smothering me in this bear hug, and I was all pressed up to her big belly, which was softer than I thought a person should be. She actually had hold of the back of my head and was pulling it in close, against her big bosom, and I could hardly breathe.

“Oh, honey,” she said, bending over, close to my ear. “I’m so sorry. I forgot. I forgot about—”

Don’t say it, I thought.

“—your dad. Oh, and such an awful way to go, too. And so sudden. You’re right, that was very thoughtless of me. See, I told you I’m not myself.”

She pulled my head back away from her soft self, holding me by both temples. I pulled in enough air for ten breaths.

“Do you forgive me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Just parroting the words. Not forgiving and not not forgiving. Not even really thinking what that would mean.

“Oh, dear,” she said, without telling me oh dear about what.

She swooped back into the house, slamming the door behind her with a great bang. I looked back at Sophie. She and the dog had folded up into the mirror position again.

I breathed. Even though this wasn’t going to buy us much time.

See, that’s always the thing. While you’re breathing and being all happy that the whole house didn’t come falling down, you know there’s another card drop coming right up. It’s not about gaining much. It’s just about gaining. It’s always about not losing everything in the exact moment you’re in.

I got up and wandered over to the fence, the longish grass feeling funny and tickly between my toes. I was thinking maybe I should offer to cut the grass for Aunt Violet. Make myself as useful as possible.

I stood over Sophie.

“What’s up with this, Sophie?” I asked her. “You don’t even like dogs.”

“Hem,” she said.

Which is really… I don’t know how to say it. A word from Sophie is like…mark this day on your calendar.

“I’ll be damned.”

Then it hit me that this was the quietest, best day I’d had with Sophie in years. Why in God’s name was I trying to talk her out of it?

Whatever “it” was.

My best day lasted until twenty-five after five, and then I had to pay double for the peace and quiet. I happened to know the time because I went into the kitchen to check, because I was thinking it was about time for my mom to be home. I didn’t know if it was good news or bad news that it was taking her so long.

Just as I was coming back out, the dog suddenly stood up. He stayed close to the fence, but he was looking out toward the street. Sophie stood up, too.

I couldn’t hear anything, but I could definitely sense that my vacation was about to be over. I’m not sure how much vacation I’d thought I could expect, or why.

Then I heard a car door slam. It sounded far away. But the dog started wagging that huge, strong tail. He was still right up by the fence, right near Sophie, so his tail slapped the chain links hard on every wag, and the whole fence rang like an out-of-tune bell. Sophie started jumping up and down. Which I thought was interesting. I mean, clearly, she was imitating the dog, so I half expected her to wag her butt around or something. Instead, she jumped up and down like she was all excited, which made me think it was the inside of the dog she was imitating. Which seemed a little bit like knowing what somebody else was feeling, which I think is like what the doctors kept calling
empathy
. Which I think we all thought was something Sophie couldn’t do.

A minute or so later, the side door opened on the house next door, and a man stood in the open doorway. He seemed shocked to see me. Which was weird in a way, because I was in Aunt Violet’s yard, not his, and I couldn’t figure out why he was looking at me like he’d suddenly found me in his living room. Our eyes locked for a minute, and then I looked away.

He was an old guy. Not old like bent-over old. He was tall and kind of reedy thin, and he looked like he was in good enough shape and all. But his hair was mostly gray, and he had a hint of five o’clock shadow, just enough that I could see his beard would be white if he ever let it grow out. He was wearing a nice gray suit, with a light blue dress shirt and a striped dark blue tie, but it was loosened. The top button of his shirt was undone, and the tie was pulled out. To give him more room to breathe, I guess.

He stared at me for another minute, and then he looked at his dog. He got this puzzled look on his face, and I could tell, just from that look, that it was weird for his dog to still be over by the fence. The dog was slapping his tail against the fence like crazy now, but I could see that wasn’t enough.

“Rigby,” the man said.

He didn’t yell it or even call it out, really. He just said it, like you’d say any word in a sentence.

That broke the spell, and the dog ran to the man and sat in front of him, tail swinging. And he raised his face up almost pretty close to the man’s face, because he was honestly big enough to do that.

And, of course, by this time, Sophie’s siren had gone off.

The guy looked around, but not really at us. I don’t think he’d even noticed Sophie yet. If he had, he didn’t let on. I don’t think he imagined that a sound like that could come out of a small person. Most people don’t. He looked around some more, like he was about to see an ambulance or a fire truck coming up the street. He even looked up, like it might be something overhead, but I have no idea what. Then he looked down, and his eyes locked on Sophie.

Wait.

I could see his face twist up a little. Like he could stand the noise better if it was coming from a what, not a who. People are like that. They figure a machine or a siren doesn’t know any better, can’t help the sound it makes. Once they know it’s Sophie, they want it to stop.

The moment dragged out. Just long enough to make my face feel cold. Then he turned on his heel and went back into the house, Rigby following with his tail still swinging. The door slammed shut.

I got up and went inside the house, leaving Sophie alone for just a minute, to get Aunt Vi ready for what we were all about to go through. It was actually pretty okay to leave Sophie, because she wasn’t going to be doing anything except exactly what she was doing already. For just about… ever.

I found Aunt Vi in bed, a feather pillow over her ears.

I touched her shoulder, and she jumped a mile. Then she sat up straight and looked at me with this look of utter misery on her face, and I felt bad for her. I did. I would have taken Sophie and gone away and left her alone if we had one other place in the world we could go.

I took two earplugs out of my shirt pocket and held them out to her.

“They work,” I said. “Really. Not like there’s no noise at all, but they make it sound so far away, it hardly matters. You have to knead them around in your fingers till they’re soft and then make them back into a bullet and press them in till it seals. You’ll be surprised.”