Down with the Shipmans

Chapter 2

Interstitial

Mae Shipman stands on a secluded patch of grass outside a La Quinta in South Bend, Indiana, almost exactly halfway between

Boulder, Colorado, and her final destination: Rye, New Hampshire. The temperature is ninety-one degrees. The humidity, at

eighty-three percent, is nearly thick enough to see. The air is chewy. It is the fifth of July, afternoon.

Many of Mae’s belongings are in her car, a twelve-year-old Subaru parked in La Quinta’s lot. Her sister Jordan paid for the

motel room. The Subaru bears the scars of hard, unlucky living. Just like I do, she thinks dramatically, but not inaccurately.

The rest of what she owns is in a storage unit in Boulder that is costing her $139 a month, which is $139 per month more than

she can afford. She imagines that one day in the near future her storage unit will be adopted by one of those people who scavenge

through other people’s abandoned detritus in hopes of finding a treasure. There should be a reality show about this, and she

thinks there probably is. Storage Scavengers. Locker Luck. Vacant Vultures.

She’s trying to coax some bathroom activity from Leo, a ten-month-old pit bull mix. Mixed with what? Who knows. Ninety-nine

percent of rescue dogs, in Mae’s experience, are pit bull mixed with something. This alarms a lot of people, but it doesn’t

alarm Mae.

Mae and Leo drove from just before noon the previous day until four in the morning, which is why she asked for, and received, a late checkout time, though she had to weigh the sleep time against the allure of the free breakfast. She and Leo had slept face-to-face on the same pillow, breathing each other’s air.

She’d been too tired to get the crate out of the car.

“What happens in South Bend stays in South Bend,” she’d told him, and he seemed to understand. You are not supposed to allow

a dog you are training into the bed. Leo is her first official board-and-train client. His new owner is an overworked computer

programmer who’s also named Leo.

“Sorry?” she’d said when her boss, Hal, had called to ask her if she was interested in meeting Leo. “This guy named his dog

after himself?” (Hello, Narcissus!)

“No, no.” Hal laughed. “Leo the dog came with the name from the rescue organization. It was pure coincidence! Leo the human

felt bad changing it, since Leo the dog has already been through so much. He’s a good guy, Leo the human, just too busy to

give Leo the dog the initial training he needs. You know how it is.”

Mae does, indeed, know how it is. The board-and-train is one of Hal’s premium offerings; he charges $975 for a week. For her

time with Leo, Mae will receive five hundred of those dollars. Passing on this offer was not an option.

This gig is a big deal for Mae, who will turn thirty next year. Thirty! When Mae was a little girl running along the wide

stretch of New Hampshire’s Jenness Beach, where this road trip will take her, trying, as ever, to keep up with her two older

sisters, she would have considered thirty impossibly old. Well, at least they lived a good long life! she would have thought

upon hearing about the passing of someone beginning their fourth decade on Earth. What more could they hope for?

Her father, Calvin Shipman, had sent an email to his three daughters a few days ago, asking that they make haste to New Hampshire (he actually used the phrase “make haste”), and that they arrive on Sunday, when the last of the renters would be gone.

He’d also used the phrase “family bonding.” Perhaps to soften the imperative, perhaps because he didn’t have his readers on and couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, he’d added to his email a string of nonsensical emojis: a frog, a birthday hat, a “rolling on the floor laughing” face.

A poop (he probably thought it was a mountain; Calvin loved to hike).

Can’t, Mae had replied immediately. Need to work. She’d already committed to Leo. She is part of the gig economy! The new world order! She is an overeducated Gen Zer with

holes in her ears (seven) and holes in her résumé. Holes in her heart, sometimes, especially now.

Technically she is a millennial, like her sisters, but she’s right on the cusp, and she feels very Gen Z. The gig economy

doesn’t allow for paid time off, not for sickness, not for a mental health day, and certainly not for a thirty-hour drive

to New Hampshire.

If her mother, Theresa, had been alive, she would have been horrified to think of Mae traversing two-thirds of the country

alone (sorry, Leo, that’s not fair, not really alone) and staying in a La Quinta, where she easily could have been murdered

in the middle of the night, especially if the murderer knew enough to bribe Leo with a scatter of freeze-dried salmon. Leo

will do almost anything for freeze-dried salmon.

Her father had replied all: I’m afraid it’s not optional.

No emojis this time, not even the poop one. That’s how Mae knew it was serious. That’s why Mae began to make haste.

It has been just over twenty-six months since their mother’s death, and communication has fallen quite silent since their

father’s mourning period ended abruptly and he married Kara, their mother’s hospice nurse.

Do we have to go. This came from Natalie, the middle, about their father’s recent petition. It’s a rly bad time for me. The Shipman sisters maintain their own group chat, and this is where Natalie’s text landed.

This was a typical reaction for Natalie; she and her husband are the queen and king of a social media empire, and they run

a dairy farm, and it’s always a bad time to do anything other than run the empire and the farm and raise their three children.

The New York Magazine article is coming out, the next text elaborated. I’m going to get busier.

He hasn’t asked us for anything for a long time, answered Jordan, the eldest, who usually has final say in matters of familial dissent. We need to go.

Fine, texted Natalie in a huff. (You couldn’t hear a huff in a text, but it was implied.)

Jordan had then side-texted Mae to see if she needed money for a flight. Jordan is seven years Mae’s senior and makes buckets

of money in her job in crisis communications, managing the secret and sometimes sordid mistakes of New York’s finest; she’s

also single and childless, so she’s usually flush.

But, there was Leo.

Have to drive. Have to bring this guy. Mae had texted a photo of Leo the dog that she’d taken when she’d met with Leo the human for the initial assessment. In the

photo Leo has his lips pulled back from his teeth in a way that makes it look like he’s smiling, although he may well have

been snarling. I wouldn’t say no to a little cash for hotel tho.

Here, now, outside the South Bend La Quinta, Leo lifts his leg and unleashes the impressively voluminous contents of his bladder

on an already dying shrub along the far edge of the parking lot. He looks expectantly at Mae, who reaches into her treat pouch

and produces a reward. Good boy, Leo.

From across the parking lot a small boy approaches. He’s maybe five—she’s gauging his age, as she gauges the ages of all children, by comparing him with her sister Natalie’s older daughter, Evangeline, who is almost six.

“I’m going to pet your dog,” the boy announces, drawing closer.

Small children are one of Leo’s triggers. Leo has come from the mean streets somewhere in Tennessee, and there’s no telling

what painful puppyhood memories are lodged inside his tangerine-size brain. One of them, Mae suspects, has to do with a cruel

child.

“Sorry, we’re working!” Mae says brightly, as she learned to do in her own training. “We can’t say hi right now!” Usually

this is enough to make a person turn back, if the obvious pit bull part of Leo’s DNA hasn’t done the trick. (People are so

prejudiced against pit bulls! Many pits are very easygoing! Not Leo, but many others!) But the boy proceeds apace, hand outstretched.

Leo curls a lip. This is the first warning sign.

“I’m going to pet it,” the boy insists. He has dark brown hair with a side part and navy-blue sneakers. He really is very

determined.

Leo growls. Second warning.

“Nice doggy,” says the boy.

Leo lunges.

“Move back!” Mae shouts to the boy. She keeps her grip on the leash, which is attached to Leo’s harness, and braces herself.

Mae is the smallest of the Shipman sisters and the second fittest (Jordan wins). Mae rock climbs and hikes and has been living

at altitude for three years now. Last year, she ran a half-marathon to raise money for pancreatic cancer research.

The boy moves back, but not as far as Mae would like.

Does this child have an adult with him? Yes, and here she comes, striding across the parking lot, all bleached-blond hair and quivering rage.

She’s holding a cell phone and a set of car keys; she’s wearing a short pleated skirt that makes her look like a tennis player just off the court, but there are no courts at La Quinta. No doubt it’s a fashion thing.

“Did this lady yell at you, Matthew?” she demands of the boy.

By this time Mae has pulled an emergency sow’s ear (not a euphemism, unfortunately) out of her treat pouch and tossed it for

Leo, who gives it his full attention and no longer cares about the boy.

Mae grits her teeth and says, “You should teach Matthew to ask before petting a dog he doesn’t know.” Matthew nods respectfully

and his brown saucer eyes land on Mae’s. Lesson learned! She feels momentarily accomplished.

“You don’t have to be rude about it,” says the mom, and now Mae feels chastised.

“I’m not being rude. I’m being careful.”

“That dog should be put down.”

Leo turns from his treat to look sharply at Mae. Dogs understand more than we give them credit for. She gives him a smile

she hopes comes off as reassuring.

Out of the corner of her eye she spies a man near her car, looking in the windows. She sprints over, holding the leash tightly,

away from Matthew and his angry mother. Leo, excited by the change in pace, unbothered by the humidity, sprints too. She has

so many things in that car. Did she lock it when she got Leo’s food out? She can’t remember. It doesn’t matter—the sight of

Leo running toward him at full speed is enough to move the man along. Mae fills Leo’s water bowl, watches as he gulps it,

pictures his bladder filling up again, wonders how long they can make it before he has to stop again. A ten-month-old dog

has the bladder control of a college girl in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day.

“Ready, boy?” she says, when Leo is loaded into the back seat.

Leo seems to indicate with a tip of his head that he’s ready.

“Because we’ve got miles to go before we sleep.”