An Unexpected Grace (13 page)

L
ila clicked on the Safari icon at the bottom of the computer screen and Googled the white pages directory. As she held her breath, she typed, “Yuri Makov, San Francisco, California.” She wanted his phone number so she could call his roommate, who'd been on the TV news two months before and might help her understand why Yuri had been angry. But Yuri wasn't listed. As that door closed in Lila's face, her heart drooped, like it wasn't wild about beating anymore.

Certainly, she wasn't as angry as Yuri had been, but she was mad. Resentment had been nesting in her soul since she'd met Reed's lover at the PhotoMat. When Yuri shot her, the resentment had multiplied like cancer cells and turned into anger. Her last conversation with Adam had added anger's cousin, annoyance. Staring at the computer screen, Lila brooded about his taking advantage and not caring if Grace disrupted her life. What was she supposed to do? Keep a dog she didn't want until it died a natural death? The more Lila thought about her phone conversation with Adam, the more hostile she felt.

Anyone could understand emotions sometimes piling up and taking you hostage. As Lila's anger filled her mind, it elbowed aside her decency, compassion, and pity for Grace. Lila's Crazy Aunt boomed into her thoughts, stomped on her Pleaser's toes, and took over.
For God's sake, cut the wimp act. Get rid of the dog. Do what you have to do.
Lila's Crazy Aunt curled her lip.

As Lila swallowed pomegranate green tea, she glanced out the window at a dead bay tree branch's jagged twigs. She told herself,
I will
not
be used. Not for another minute.

She got up, called the Humane Society, and wrote down directions to their shelter. She folded the paper and stuffed it in her pocket. The staff vetted anyone who wanted to adopt an animal. Grace would be safe. They'd find her a good home. Let someone besides Lila solve the problem.

 

Lila called Grace. Again she proved that dogs read minds, and she refused to come. She might not have known Lila's plan, but she must have sensed a new impetus in Lila's resolve to be dog-free and recognized that something unsavory was about to happen to her.

Lila went to the kitchen and jingled the keys to Cristina's station wagon to hint at the joys of riding in a car. Grace didn't move. By the door Lila rattled the dog biscuit box to lure her to the garage. Finally, she hauled herself to her feet, then slumped back to the floor and closed her eyes, which said,
What a drag. Car rides are not my thing. I want to stay right here.

Ignoring the ennui, Lila said with feigned enthusiasm, “Grace! Let's go!”

Their find-a-home walk around the neighborhood the week before must have alerted Grace that Lila could act as if pleasure lay ahead when it didn't, and Grace had honed her dishonesty radar. She got up, limped to her pillow in the living room, and curled up in her pumpkin position, ready to launch another production of
The Napping Dog
.

Lila followed. “Come on, Grace! Let's go have fun!” Jingle. Jingle.

Grace's look was as dark as a Yankee dog's trying to make a go of it at Andersonville. The smile that had lately curved up at the outer edges of her mouth now dropped to a bleak, straight, you-can't-fool-me line.

“Don't you want to go for a ride?” Lila raised her voice at “ride” as if it were the pinnacle of dreams at the Dog's Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Grace told her unambiguously and forthrightly that she did not want to go for a ride: She got to her feet and hobbled toward her hiding place under the bed. As she passed Lila, Grace's scowl informed her that she suspected Lila's motives. Her scowl back told Grace that her patience was frayed and she wanted this difficult trip behind her.

If Lila couldn't persuade Grace to come willingly, she would drag her to the car. “Come
on.
” Lila blocked her in the hall, forced her to turn around, and pushed her from behind toward the door. “You can't blame me. This is Adam Spencer's fault, not mine.”

Grace seemed not to care whose fault it was. Lila had to nag her into the garage. When Lila opened the back of the station wagon, Grace stared at the license plate and made no move to jump in.

Lila patted the carpeting to encourage her. “Here, Grace.”

Breath wasted. Deaf ears.

Thinking perhaps Grace's injured leg prevented her from jumping, Lila led her to the door behind the driver's seat, where she could step into the car. “Get in.”

Grace did not budge. She seemed to be infused with the spirit of Gandhi, and “passive resistance” was inscribed between the toes of her intransigent paws. When Lila pulled her bandana toward the backseat, she must have concluded that she had no choice but to comply. Nevertheless, she made it clear that she was not amused by the coercion. Giving Lila the cool, steady look of Queen Elizabeth sizing up a peon, Grace climbed into the backseat. With regal dignity, she might have set her scepter on her lap and smoothed her paw over her brocade train's seed pearls.

When Lila got behind the steering wheel and looked at Grace in the rearview mirror, she was watching the garage wall. Lila could tell Grace sensed misfortune coming. Guilt tapped Lila on the shoulder and said “ahem,” but her built-up anger—and her Crazy Aunt—knocked him to the garage floor. Lila started down the mountain.

 

Lila had not driven after breaking up with Reed because she didn't have a car, and she'd not driven after coming to Cristina's because of her cast. Now she could use her left arm well enough to get behind the wheel, but she had not factored in how stressful driving for the first time in many months would be. On the freeway, her forehead was damp, and perspiration trickled between her breasts.

Focused on a bus painted like a loaf of bread, Grace ignored Lila. Grace made clear that until her suspicions were proven unfounded, she was pulling up her drawbridge and withdrawing to her throne room.

If Lila hadn't been eager to deliver Grace to the Humane Society, she'd never have been willing to drive so soon. She owed Grace for indirectly nudging her to get behind the wheel and jump another hurdle toward a normal life. To be honest, Grace had helped her sometimes, Lila thought with an unexpected pang of regret at what she was about to do. But her Crazy Aunt pushed the regret out of the car.
Keep driving,
she growled.

Grace acted like her entire existence depended on the Bekins moving van in the next lane.

The Humane Society, a compound of concrete buildings half an hour north of Mill Valley, looked like a campus where important lessons could be learned. As Lila drove into the parking lot, a bronze sculpture of a mother bear and two cubs greeted her and Grace. Across the main building's front wall, mosaic deer, raccoons, and rabbits marched in profile like figures on an Egyptian frieze. In the windows of a smaller building next door, cats sleeping in baskets exuded peace. Yet from somewhere inside, frantic barks and howls seemed to zigzag through the roof.

Grace must have heard them. Dispensing with her regal stance, she panted and shifted her weight from her healthy to her injured leg so the front half of her was marching in place. She frowned at the building as if she were certain that frenzied dogs were throwing themselves at kennel walls to escape incarceration—and she emphatically did not want to join them. She whimpered and pawed the back of Lila's seat to convey this preference. Her entire demeanor urged,
Please! Let's get out of here!

Though Lila wanted to regain her power by standing up to Adam and getting free of Grace, her resistance made Lila wince. She assured herself that she'd gone extra miles to take care of Grace and find her a home, and not even Lila's Pleaser could expect her to have done more. She didn't need to feel bad about leaving Grace there. But she did. Very bad.

Lila turned around in her seat. Grace was huddling against the door. “Look, I'll tell you what. If nobody adopts you in a week, I'll come back and get you. Either way it'll work out fine,” she said. “Lots of nice people might come along. You might find a family with kids. It could be great! You'd be a lot happier living with them than with me.”

Grace did not seem impressed. Her face looked grim.

Lila got out of the car and opened the door for her. When Lila called Grace to jump out, she planted her legs in front of her like iron stakes and dug her toenails into the upholstery. “Grace, let's go inside.”

She sank to her stomach and stretched out her front legs in her sphinx imitation. Her anxious drool splotched the upholstery. When she gazed up at Lila, the whites below her pupils looked like beseeching commas on their backs.
Please, please, don't make me go in there.

“Everything's going to be okay,” Lila told herself as much as Grace.

Keep moving,
Lila's Crazy Aunt ordered.

As Lila nudged Grace to stand, yowls traveled from the building. Grace shrank back against the seat. Finally, she climbed out of the car and took a few leaden steps across the parking lot toward the sign that said A
DOPTION
C
ENTER
, pointing to the building with the sleeping cats. But she must have thought better of coming with Lila because she turned around and limped back toward the car. Lila tugged Grace's bandana. She tugged back.

Her tugs urged Lila to reconsider:
I've tried my best to get along and shower you with love. I'll do anything if you'll keep me. All I want in the world is to be with you. Oh, please.
Tug. Tug.

Lila felt like a wretch. She reminded herself that Adam had put her in this terrible position, but she still felt like a wretch. She disliked him more than ever.

Stop the sniveling,
her Crazy Aunt bellowed.

As Lila forced herself to lead Grace into the building, guilt, who'd recovered from being knocked to the floor, trailed them through the door and poked Lila's bottom with his cane. He said, “Tsk-tsk. You're taking out your anger on an innocent dog.” He pointed out that in the last couple of weeks Lila had not minded Grace; sometimes her company had been pleasant. “If you're truthful with yourself, you know you'll miss her.”

Who cares about truth?
Lila's Crazy Aunt snapped.

Lila gripped her purse's shoulder strap and herded Grace through a crowded reception area to a swarthy man with lambchop sideburns and shaggy eyebrows. He was cleaning off a counter covered with brochures. From the shoulders up, he looked like a Minotaur, but his spindly arms and legs were pure satyr. He should have been prancing on small hooves across a Greek urn.

“Hi! I'm Tony” was written on the name tag pinned to his maroon tee shirt. “Need some help?” he asked.

“I can't keep this dog.” Lila nodded down at Grace.

Tony stepped from behind the counter to get a closer look at her, and a frown of disapproval creased his forehead. Anyone could tell he thought Grace's poor appearance was Lila's fault. As if to help foster that impression, Grace gave him a desperate look and slouched more dismally than she ever had.

“Her name is Grace,” Lila said.

“How long have you had her?”

“About six weeks.”

“Where'd you get her?”

As a woman passed by with a sheltie on a red leash, Lila explained that someone had left Grace with her—but she discreetly omitted Adam's theft.

When Tony kneeled down and patted Grace's shoulder, she panted like she was about to keel over with neediness and he was her last hope. With all her heart, Grace begged him to love and protect her since Lila had become the Judas of the Western World.

“You're a sweet dog.” Tony stroked the feathery tufts above Grace's ears.

“You'll find her a good home?” Lila practically begged.

“We'll groom her and make her available to people looking for a dog,” Tony said.

“If nobody adopts her, I'll come and get her.”

“Sure. Lots of people say that. We never hear from them again.”

“I swear I'll come.”

Tony didn't answer as he fumbled with the knot on Grace's bandana. When he pulled it off, Lila gasped, along with half the people in the room.

Around Grace's neck was a ring of skin, speckled with gold fuzz. Clearly not long before, her neck had been shaved, and her fur was growing back—over a thick, blackish-red, perforated line that Lila could hardly bear to look at. Angry welts circled Grace's neck, and from the red welts on Lila's breast and arm, she knew a scar when she saw one. Grace's neck said that something terrible had cut into her, and she'd known pain like none Lila could imagine.

Tony shrank back and shook his head like he was trying to shake off the hideous sight of those welts. He dropped Grace's bandana to the floor. “Just a minute.” He reached for the phone on the counter and punched in a three-digit number. “Send Bill down here pronto.”