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a relaxed position, just chilling, he gets rewarded. Chilling is harder than it sounds for a reactive dog! But it’s an important
step in his training, so he can one day live comfortably in the world with Human Leo. She imagines them hanging out on Pearl
Street on a busy Saturday, one Leo drinking a latte, the other lying next to him, watching the world go by. No, that’s not
right. Leo doesn’t read like a latte guy. An iced Americano, or a nitro brew.
Mae didn’t answer Tony’s text, and he hasn’t texted again, but she knows that he will. The money she owes Tony is another worry to add to her collection of worries, all of which she has folded up neatly and tucked away so she can concentrate on Leo.
She enlists Scarlett and Evangeline to help practice. Cinnamon and Natalie are upstairs getting Caspian up from his nap, so
it’s a good chance to work Leo in a controlled environment. She instructs them to walk past Leo, not too close, but close
enough that he notices them.
“Pretend you’re just out for a casual stroll,” she says. “Just minding your own business, maybe having a chat.”
Scarlett and Evangeline take this very seriously. Scarlett says, “How are you?” to Evangeline, and Evangeline gives a formal
little bow and says, “Fine, thank you, how are you?” It’s all quite civilized, very period-drama-with-parasols. Any minute
now they may link arms and talk about which suitors they have their eyes on.
“Good job,” Mae tells them. Leo watches them carefully, then, looking back at Mae to make sure there’s no threat, relaxes
onto one hip. “Good boy,” she tells Leo. “That’s perfect.”
She’s about to ask them to take another round when Calvin comes in. He’s wearing his work jeans, which he’s had probably since
Mae sprouted her first tooth. They have dots and stripes of paint of all different colors, artifacts from every house project
he’s undertaken. He’s probably been doing something to prepare for the open house on Sunday, but this Mae, the Mae who still
cannot believe he’s going to sell the house, will not dignify the situation by asking him what that was.
“Spackling,” he says anyway. Mae nods crisply at him, as if to say whatever you are doing to my mother’s house you’re about to sell is of no concern to me, and continues working with Leo.
Calvin takes off his glasses, puts them on the coffee table, and rubs his eyes. He says, “Hello, ladies,” to his granddaughters, and Leo rolls his eyes toward Calvin. “You’re okay, Leo,” says Mae. Leo has a harder time with men than with little girls. This is not uncommon for rescue dogs.
“Hello,” say Scarlett and Evangeline pleasantly. Scarlett, still in character, full-on curtsies.
“Good boy, Leo. Scarlett and Evangeline, again, please. Stage right.” They look at her blankly. She points. “Start over there.”
They cross the room once more. If Mae were speaking to her father, she might ask him to take a video that she could send to
Hal to show Leo’s progress. Leo is already calmer even since yesterday! Imagine how much he’ll improve by the end of the week.
Evangeline and Scarlett cross the room again, and from the entryway comes a voice: “Yooo-hoooo! Anybody home?”
Leo starts, then growls, and Mae puts a hand on his side to let him know all is well.
“That’s Nikoletta,” says Calvin, rising. “She has some papers for me to sign.” He calls, “In the sunroom! Come on in!”
Mae has a thought: If Leo bit the Realtor, would that cause her to give up the listing? (She’s kidding! Mostly!) Natalie comes
in just then, carrying Caspian, who is sleepy-eyed, his hair adorably mussed, and holding a sippy cup. At the same time the
woman from yesterday comes from the entryway. She’s carrying a manila folder and a cell phone.
“Ah, Nikoletta, hello! These are two of my daughters.”
“We met,” says Mae icily. Under false pretenses, she adds in her mind.
“Oh, right! You’ve met Mae. This is Natalie. And her children, Scarlett, Evangeline, and Caspian.”
“Hello! What an adorable little boy!” Nikoletta exclaims, looking at Caspian. He grins and offers her his sippy cup.
“He wants you to have some milk,” explains Scarlett.
“How nice!” says Nikoletta. “And I certainly would, but I’m vegan.”
“What’s vegan?” asks Evangeline.
Mae watches Natalie tense. She says, “Vegans are people who don’t eat any animal products.” Mae can see her sister working out how far to take this instructional moment.
“Are we vegans?” Scarlett asks her mother.
“No, honey.”
“Milk is an animal product,” Mae explains.
Evangeline asks, “Why don’t they drink it?”
Mae can see the Realtor warming to the topic. It’s like they’re on a roller coaster that is at the top of the hill and about
to plunge down, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. “Well, people can be vegan for lots of different reasons,” explains
Nikoletta. “For me, it’s because I believe animals have the right to their own uncomplicated existence, that they aren’t ours
to exploit for our own use.”
Scarlett asks, “What’s exploit?”
Mae clears her throat and asks, “Did you have some papers for Dad to sign?”
“We can talk about this later,” says Natalie in an unnaturally tight voice.
“Oh, I don’t mind!” says Nikoletta. Blithe would be a good, solid word to describe her tone. “I raised two children myself! Every moment deserves to be a teachable moment.”
Natalie says, “Maybe not every—” But here goes Nikoletta, full steam ahead, sliding onto the couch so that she’s closer to
the girls’ level: “Exploiting means using something or someone else for our own good.”
“Girls, why don’t you come help me in the kitchen.” Mae hears the way the stridency in Natalie’s voice shoots right to the
core of Leo’s anxiety. She watches his body tense.
Nikoletta holds up one finger to indicate she’s almost done. “So a lot of vegans, myself included, don’t think it’s right
to nourish our own bodies with something another mammal produces to feed her own offspring.” The blank look from the girls
again, then, “Her own babies.”
Natalie cries, “Thank you! Girls, come on now!” The girls don’t move.
Leo is over his threshold now. He grabs the closest thing he can find. Mae will congratulate him later, in private, because
he self-regulates by focusing on an inanimate object in his environment rather than on a human or an animal. If this had been
a stuffed toy, it would have been a perfect reaction. But as it is, he finds Calvin’s glasses, which he bites swiftly and
cleanly. They all hear the crunch.
“Resource guarding is common among dogs who missed the window for proper socialization as puppies,” Mae is saying when Jordan
comes into the very crowded sunroom. Natalie, all three kids, Mae, Leo, Calvin, and a woman Jordan has never seen before wearing
ballet flats and a nervous smile. “Trade, Leo,” Mae says optimistically, holding out a treat. Leo turns his head away and
growls. To the room she says, “He’s just learning this one. He’s supposed to drop whatever he has with the understanding that
what I have is better.”
“I don’t care about his socialization as much as I care about my glasses,” says Calvin.
“Your glasses?” says Jordan.
“Leo took them,” explains Natalie.
“Right off of Dad’s face?”
“No,” says Calvin, exasperated. “They were on the table.”
“Got ’em!” says Mae triumphantly. She holds up the glasses. “Do you think you can wear these, Dad?” The left lens is cracked
and one arm is hanging off at a rakish angle. The other arm has been amputated.
The unfamiliar woman turns to Jordan and says, “I’m Nikoletta, the Realtor in charge of the home sale.” She offers her hand and Jordan takes it, but she can feel Natalie watching her, gauging her level of friendliness.
“Dad, I’m so sorry,” says Mae. “Where’s your backup pair?”
“They must be in Lenox.”
“I could call Kara and ask,” Mae suggests. “If there’s a backup pair, she can bring them.”
“But she’s not coming from Lenox—remember? She’s coming from Cincinnati,” says Calvin.
For a moment they are stymied by this fact, and Mae looks at Natalie, and then Natalie looks at Jordan, and then Jordan looks
back at Mae then down at her watch. “I’ll call your home optician and see if they can email me the prescription before they
close or first thing tomorrow. I’m sure there’s a place in Portsmouth that can make a pair in a day. You might not have your
choice of frames, and you might have to muddle through tomorrow. But you’ve muddled before. You can muddle again.”
“I have muddled before,” Calvin agrees. “Thank you, Jordan.”
Mae realizes it first. “But if you don’t have your glasses—”
“What?”
“Then you can’t drive. And if you can’t drive, you can’t pick up Kara at Logan.”
“Not it,” says Natalie so softly that only her sisters hear, and Jordan echoes her, equally softly, “Not it.” It’s an old
game of theirs: not it for the middle seat, not it for unloading the always-needing-to-be-unloaded dishwasher, not it for
cleaning up the dog waste from the yard, back when they had a family dog. Mae, so much younger, always trying to play catch-up,
never quick enough, got stuck with whatever “it” was more often than not.
“I’ll do it,” says Mae.
“You will?”
“Of course. It will be good for Leo to come along. I’m supposed to be exposing him to as many different environments as I can. I can walk him back and forth outside the arrivals area.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Thank you, Mae,” says Calvin.
“Who’s the favorite daughter now?” Mae asks.
Nikoletta looks back and forth. “You’re all so funny!” she says uncertainly.
Natalie and Scarlett are looking at what may just be Natalie’s favorite photo of all time. It’s back hanging where it’s always
hung, in the sunroom, in a natural woven frame. Pottery Barn, circa whenever. It’s the three Shipman girls, on the sand, facing
the house, their backs to the ocean. Her mother must have taken the photo—except for the first day of school pose by the rhododendron,
Theresa took all the photos. As a result, she was in far fewer than she should have been.
It’s summer 2007. Fourth of July, the girls are holding unlit sparklers. Natalie knows she was fifteen because that was the
summer she’d used her birthday money from the spring to buy a bikini, which she’d done with gusto, choosing a one-shouldered
ruffled tie-dyed number that she’d now certainly caution herself (or anyone else) against. But how happy she’d been in it.
Natalie does some quick math. Yes, this was the summer of Simone! This was the summer Jordan got in trouble for staying out
all night after a party at Simone’s house; the battery on her flip phone (a flip phone!) had died, and she hadn’t called.
“We thought you were dead!” Natalie remembers her father bellowing, and even her mother, who usually saved her disciplining for the classroom, had raised
her voice.
“Well, I’m not,” Jordan had snarled, eighteen, exhausted, stomping her way up to her bedroom, where she’d slept the rest of the day.
Mae is deliciously eleven, spindly legs, concave chest in her bright orange one-piece. (How Mae had loved that suit, even though orange was then, and would be forevermore, a terrible color on her.)
“Look at my butterfly clips!” Natalie tells Scarlett, pointing at her hair in the photo.
“Oooooh,” says Scarlett appreciatively.
Natalie was in love, too, that summer, with an older man (sixteen) who had been visiting his grandparents for a week. Sean?
Mark? She can’t remember, but she does remember that he promised to call her once he got back to Michigan or wherever he was
from and she never heard from him.
Talk about a cruel summer.
In the photo, Natalie is wearing the bikini, and Jordan, who had been flirting with a hair crimper that summer, with mixed
results, is in shorts and a Cinnamon Rainbows T-shirt. She’s looking slightly off to the left with a sly smile. Natalie is
grinning straight at the camera, and Mae is jumping, both feet off the ground, like a kid in a commercial who’s just been
told she’s going on a surprise trip to Disney World. Natalie puts her fingertips on the photo, touching each of the girls
in turn. Take me back, she wants to say. Just for a day, take me back. She doesn’t even realize she’s crying until Scarlett says, “Are you crying, Mommy?”
“A little bit.”
“What are you sad about?”
“I guess time passing. But that’s what time does. It passes.”