The Good, the Bad & the Beagle (16 page)

*   *   *

At dinner she pushed her food around. “Eat something,” her mother said. Mrs. Morgan spooned rice on her daughter’s plate.

“Please try,” her father said.

“It will make you feel better,” her mother said. “I mean, of course it isn’t going to literally make you feel better…”

“What your mother means, dear, is that you have to eat because grieving takes a lot of energy and you have to keep up your strength.”

“I think that is what
you
meant, Marvin,” her mother snapped. “I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself and enjoy doing so, in fact. Must you constantly interpret for me?”

“Marion, I’m sorry, I simply was trying—”

“Marvin, you are aware that I function each and every day without you there, by my side, interpreting and helping and explaining?”

Her parents bickered until they seemed to remember Veronica was there. Then they spoke at once, apologizing over each other.

“You poor, poor girl,” her father said.

“Tomorrow will be a month since he’s been gone,” her mother said. “That is a milestone. We care so much about all you’re feeling.”

“We care so much, darling.”

Veronica was glad they cared. If only they could make her feel better.

The Mourner’s Kaddish

Teachers didn’t seem to care how much time she spent in the bathroom. They almost acted as if they thought it was a good idea. She sat on the toilet lid with her feet up so no one could see her. Voices she didn’t recognize joked during math. After lunch she heard the unmistakable voice of one she did.

“My grandmother died and I didn’t even cry,” Sarah-Lisa said.

Veronica squeezed her knees tight and froze.

“Why is she crying all the time about an animal? My grandmother was a person and my mother told me not to cry. She said it would make people feel sorry for me.”

Mr. and Mrs. Morgan told her to expect this kind of reaction from people, but it was still hurtful. “We live in a culture unable to process grief,” her parents warned. “People respond by shutting down or by running away, as though death were something contagious. You really will learn from this experience, Veronica. It will make you wiser.” Whatever there was to learn from heartache wasn’t anything worth knowing. She would rather stay dumb.

“You were very brave, Sarah-Lisa, when your grandmother died. Very brave,” Athena said. She and Sarah-Lisa must have been standing in front of the mirror combing their hair and applying lip gloss and checking their teeth. Someone else entered the bathroom. Veronica recognized Darcy’s shoes under the door. Becky’s shoes followed a moment later.

“Are you talking about Veronica?” Becky asked. “She sure is a sad sack. Was it her grandmother?”

“It was her dog. And I don’t see what the big deal is, at all,” Sarah-Lisa said. “Plus, what she did to Melody was awful!”

“What did she do to Melody?”

“She made Melody put her name on the Impressionist project,” Sarah-Lisa declared.

“Poor Melody,” Becky said.

“Yeah, that wasn’t so nice,” Darcy said.

There it was. No one wanted her. Fine with her because she had nothing to say to anyone unless it was on the subject of misery. Her knowledge on that subject was unprecedented. She could wipe the floor with all of them. Soon she’d be reading her way through lunch like Sylvie. Too bad they couldn’t be loners together.

Shiva

It seemed perfectly natural to take a kitchen knife and cut her Randolf blouse that night. So she did.

“What are you doing!” her mother yelled, letting the dishwasher slam shut.

“I am sitting shiva, for Cadbury,” Veronica said. She pulled at the little incision she’d made. It created a long rip. She put the knife back in the drawer and admired her newly torn blouse.

Veronica’s grandfather had died when she was five. Her grandmother had ripped her dress to symbolize her torn heart. Her grandmother sat in a hard wooden chair to symbolize her pain. The mirrors in her grandmother’s house were covered too, symbolizing the uselessness of vanity in the face of tragedy. For seven days Veronica watched her grandmother wear the same torn dress and sit on the same hard chair. According to her mother, she didn’t brush her hair or shower the whole time. Morning and evening ten men gathered in the living room to form a minyan. They wore black coats, and their bodies rocked as their voices rhythmically whispered the mourner’s kaddish:
Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’may rabah
. The women were allowed to join in and say Amen. Veronica had no idea what the words meant, but by the second day the prayer held her like a womb.

She had been fascinated by how her grandmother gave herself to her grief. She was also deeply moved by the community of men and women who showed up every day. The women brought food and sat with her grandmother telling stories. Sometimes they made her grandmother laugh. Sometimes they cried with her. Sometimes they just sat there and didn’t say a thing.

When her parents sat shiva for her grandmother it lasted only three days. The only mirror in the house that was covered was the one in the front hall. And her mother said the prayer alone. There was no minyan of ten men. Veronica felt gypped. No one sat for days telling stories and very few brought homemade food.

She had never known what the prayer meant, but when the words tumbled out of her mouth this evening, her body understood them.
Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’may rabah …
Her grandmother had clung to those words as though her life depended on them and Veronica did the same.
Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom alaynu, v’al kol yisra’el, v’imru amen.

*   *   *

She kept her own company in her shiva. She gathered her books on her way to bed. She passed her mother, who was sitting on the couch sorting mail.

“Veronica,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I want you to take a shower. You have to take care of yourself. Daddy and I are worried.”

There was no wooden furniture in the living room or Veronica would have sat down.

“Something came for you,” her mother said. She handed Veronica a square red envelope.

She recognized Sarah-Lisa’s slanty handwriting immediately.

“Well then, open it,” her mother said. Veronica slid her finger under the flap and pulled out a pink card. There must have been a mistake. It was an invitation to Sarah-Lisa’s Valentine’s Day party.

She didn’t understand why she had been invited to Sarah-Lisa’s Valentine’s Day party and then she remembered something Melody had said early on. Randolf was inclusive. Everyone was invited to everything.

“What is it, honey?”

“An invitation.”

*   *   *

The next day after school, Mary handed Veronica more mail. This time a package. Under the brown paper were many layers of bubble wrap and tape. Whatever it was had been wrapped like something very precious. She peeled back the last layer and opened the cardboard box and in a nest of white tissue paper discovered the wooden box that contained Cadbury’s ashes. She held it next to her heart. She didn’t ever want to let it out of her hands.

“Yeah, but I think it’s best if you put it down somewhere,” Mary said. “You will be upset if you drop it and it spills.”

Veronica decided to put the ashes on her nightstand next to Cadbury’s collar. Mary approved.

“This came too,” Mary said. She handed Veronica another package, much smaller and even more carefully wrapped than the first. This one required scissors. When everything was peeled away, Veronica discovered a sculpted silver rose wrapped around a small glass vial.

There was a note from Esme.

Dear Veronica,

I want you to know that you were the very best owner Cadbury could ever have had. I know your time together was too short but you couldn’t have made him feel more loved had he lived to be a hundred. I bought you this necklace so you could put some of his ashes inside if you want to. That way he can be close to your heart at all times. I am sorry for your loss, Veronica. It is gigantic. Maybe this story will help. It helped me.

Yours,

Esme

On a separate page Esme had enclosed:

When a special animal dies, that animal goes to a place that is covered with meadows and dotted with pretty flowers. Animals run and play all day. They always have enough food and water and every animal that was old, ill, injured, or maimed is restored to optimal health. This place is called Rainbow Bridge and it is wonderful. The animals have a nearly perfect life in Rainbow Bridge except that they miss someone who had to be left behind. One day an animal looks into the distance with bright eyes. He stops running. His ears prick. He leaves the group he was playing with and flies over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster. You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together. You look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never replaced in your heart. You reunite knowing you will never be separated again.

The necklace came with a funnel and a tiny scoop. Veronica went right to work. Moments later, Cadbury was inside the necklace, around her neck. He was close to her heart. She put the box back on the table by her bed.

She did shower. But she wore her torn uniform and her necklace to school the next day.

To Care or Not to Care

Wearing a torn blouse was against uniform regulations, but since she was persona non grata, Veronica didn’t think anyone would notice. She felt good in the wooden chair. Every room except the science lab, which had stools, had hard-backed wooden chairs. It was a mourner’s delight.

“Veronica,” Sarah-Lisa said, “you should run home at lunch and put on a new shirt. It’s, like, ripped.”

“It’s torn on purpose,” Veronica said. “I’m sitting shiva for my dog.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Sarah-Lisa said.

“I am in a period of mourning.”

Sarah-Lisa looked at Veronica like she was speaking in tongues. Veronica pressed her back against the slats of her wooden chair feeling almost saintly, like a monk wearing a hair shirt.

Later, in art, Sylvie and Veronica were at the sink, washing paintbrushes. The water was warm and the soap felt soft against the bristles. Sylvie noticed Veronica’s necklace.

“It’s filled with ashes,” Veronica told her.

“Nice,” Sylvie said with a genuine smile. Veronica had expected Sylvie to flinch. But she didn’t.

*   *   *

At lunch, Athena put her tray down next to Veronica’s. Athena pushed her school lunch around while Veronica unpacked her cheddar cheese sandwich. Her mother had also put in a Tupperware of peeled pomegranate. The seeds glistened like jewels. Veronica ate a handful.

“I’ve never seen a necklace like that,” Athena said. Veronica moved closer and let Athena hold it. “Is it an antique?” she asked.

“No. It comes from a crematorium,” Sylvie said, piping in from out of nowhere as she so often did.

Veronica held the vial up to the light.

Melody and Sarah-Lisa walked over. Since Veronica’s outing as the person who was mean to Melody, Sarah-Lisa had taken Melody on like a charity case. Maybe all the A Team’s social atoms could rebond, allowing Athena and Veronica to attach while Sarah-Lisa and Melody could form a new and separate chemical chain.

“What’s a crematorium?” Sarah-Lisa asked.

“It’s where the remains of dead bodies are burned,” Athena said.

How did Athena know things like that? She wasn’t one of those people whose heads were filled with useless facts so she could show off. She was just a person with too much life experience.

“My dog, the one that died, that you met, is in there. Some of him.”

“Oh my gosh,” Melody gasped.

Veronica couldn’t tell if Melody was scared or fascinated by the necklace, or both.

“Her dog’s ashes are in there?” Sarah-Lisa asked incredulously.

“Yes, they are,” Veronica said. She looked right at Sarah-Lisa.

“Let me see that,” Sarah-Lisa said. But she wouldn’t look at Veronica. She looked at the necklace. She put the vial in her hand. “There is no way her dog is in there.”

“He is,” Veronica declared. Disturbing Sarah-Lisa with this information filled Veronica with a joyous sensation. “I mean, not all of him, but some of him,” Veronica added for good measure.

“It’s touching,” Athena said.

“It’s not touching,” Sarah-Lisa said, but she was still holding the necklace in her hand. “It’s disgusting.”

“It is sort of disgusting,” Melody said, moving closer to Sarah-Lisa.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t sit here with dead dog matter. Not during lunch,” Sarah-Lisa said, and let go of the necklace. She picked up her tray and left. Melody followed.

“I think it’s interesting. To care that much,” Athena said. She smiled at Veronica before walking away to join Sarah-Lisa and Melody. Veronica watched them go, wondering if she would ever feel comfortable with them again.

“It’s not interesting to care that much,” Sylvie said to Veronica when everyone was gone. “It’s necessary.”

*   *   *

Athena was waiting at Veronica’s locker after French. She was standing so close, Veronica could practically count her eyelashes.

“Athena?” Veronica asked.

“Yes,” Athena said.

Veronica wanted to ask what she’d always wanted to ask: Why aren’t we best friends? But she sensed Sarah-Lisa coming around the corner any second and that was the answer to her question anyway. They weren’t best friends because Sarah-Lisa got there first.

“You should really come to Sarah-Lisa’s Valentine’s party. You haven’t come to one yet,” Athena said. “Sometimes parties cheer people up.”

“Maybe,” Veronica said.

“There are always strawberries the size of human fists there. And a chocolate fountain. You should really come.”

Sarah-Lisa rounded the lockers and Veronica felt like she and Athena had been caught. Doing what? Talking? Sarah-Lisa always made Veronica feel bad about something.