The Story of Us (6 page)

“Thank you,” my mother said through her frozen smile. “I
may have to take you up on that.” She slipped Jupiter a bit of carrot under the table, and Jupiter rolled it around her mouth and then spit it out on the rug. Apparently it wasn’t to her liking.

“So tell us. How’d you two meet?” Ted Rose asked.

Dan and Mom laughed. Looked at each other. “A horse …,” Mom said.

“Cricket’s boyfriend, Janssen …,” Dan said.

“You have a boyfriend?” Hailey asked. I nodded, and she raised her eyebrows in interest, but Mom and Dan Jax were on a roll. They loved their story of how they met.

“They live up the road,” Mom said.

“They needed new stables. A
pregnant
horse.”

“It was a big, complicated job. He had to keep coming back.”

“Not as complicated as I made it once I saw her out there mowing this huge lawn.”

“Ben usually cut it, but he was away at school.”

“Every time I passed, another piece of it was finished, like a damn quilt.”

They were laughing. Everyone was, because they looked so happy, and because candles were flickering in the large glass windows that faced out to the sea, and because there was good food and garlic bread and the sweet, warm smells of melting wax, and probably a wedding.

“All I want to know—” Rebecca Rose said.

“Is what happened to the horse!” Ted Rose shouted and
everyone laughed more as Rebecca Rose refilled the wine-glasses.

“We love that horse!” Gram said. “We should send that goddamn horse a present.” Gram felt the same as I did. She loved Dan. She wanted this to go right.

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” Dan said.

“Ha,” Mom said, and ruffled his hair.

Amy pushed back her chair. She got up, whispered something to Dan. Her chin was down, eyes up. His eyebrows lowered in concern. He pushed back his own chair. Put his hand on Amy’s cheek.

“You’re not warm,” he said.

“Da-deee,” she whined.

“Not feeling well,” Dan told the group, and there were mumbles of concern.

“Attention deficit?” Gram whispered to me. I gave her leg a pinch under the table.

“We’re just going to go upstairs,” Dan said. His eyes met Mom’s. Now
they
both had a silent conversation that I’m sure we all heard. Her eyes said,
What’s this?
His seemed to say,
I know, but what am I supposed to do?
He took Amy’s arm. Ben looked at me, rolled his eyes.

Hailey got up next. “I’d better go too.”

One thing about Cruiser—if something was happening, he wanted to be a part of it. Sometimes maybe his manners weren’t so great, but his enthusiasm was 100 percent. He didn’t want to be a bad dog; he was just wholehearted. People were
getting up; he got up. People were moving; he was moving. He raced over to Gram, put his huge paws on her lap, knocking her knife off the table.

“Whoa. Big boy,” she said. His head was suddenly even with hers. For a second they looked like odd dinner companions.

“Cruiser, down!” Dan Jax said.

But Cruiser was sniffing Gram’s neck, and his tail was thwacking Aunt Bailey’s chair. “He likes my Jean Naté,” Gram said as she tried to put her hand to his chest and shove. Aunt Bailey grabbed his collar and yanked, and now Jupiter was up and barking and heading his way. Cruiser was back on four legs, but Jupiter’s hair had risen up along her back in an alarming ridge, like some angry dog Mohawk. She growled. Then she snapped at Cruiser and nipped him sharply on his huge butt.

Cruiser yelped, and so did Mom. “Oh, my God!”

“Jupiter!” I said. I’d
never
seen her do anything like that before. I told you, Jupiter was sweet down to her bones. But she seemed to mean business now, boy. Cruiser was backing off. He was actually, literally,
walking backward
from the crazy old lady who just bit him.

“Poor thing!” Amy said. “Dad, did you see that? Cruiser, come here, baby.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mom said. “She’s
never
…” She was up now. She was dragging Jupiter over to her side of the table. Jupiter’s toenails were sliding on the floor, but her expression was calm.
We took care of that nonsense,
she seemed to say.

“It’s okay. They’re working it out,” Dan said. “That’s what dogs do.” He didn’t look so sure, though.

“Let’s
go
,” Amy said.

“I’ll be right back,” Dan said.

The three and a half of them left. Mom sat down again. “What a terrible idea, bringing the dogs.” She looked like she might cry. The table had gotten quiet. You could hear the ice clink against Aunt Bailey’s water glass when she dared to take a sip. Ted Rose cleared his throat.

“Too much excitement, maybe,” Aunt Bailey said.

“They’ll get used to living together,” Gram said.

The possibility of a great lie, a huge lie, settled over us all. The awkwardness in the room snuck into my body and sat cruelly in the pit of my stomach. Ben tore off bits of his white paper napkin and made a napkin snow pile. I studied the wine bottle near my plate.
Lockwood Vineyard, 2007 Monterey Merlot. Our location in warm southern Monterey County is ideal for producing rich and flavorful merlot with remarkable balance …

Finally Rebecca Rose clapped her hands. “Dessert!” She disappeared into the kitchen. A few seconds later a drift of burning weed snuck into the dining room.

“I smell pot,” Gram said loudly.

Rebecca Rose came back a while later, with homemade pie and a container of ice cream. She talked to Ben about his design classes, and Aunt Bailey showed me murky pictures on her cell
phone, from her trip to the Oregon Caves with her reading group. Ted asked Mom questions about her books. We were pretending the bad moment had passed, but I could see Mom looking toward the doorway hoping for Dan Jax’s return, and I could see Rebecca Rose watching her. Even Rebecca Rose understood she should be worried about what might happen here, and she likely didn’t even know about Jon Jakes getting ditched at Sea-Tac, or Vic Dennis, fiancé number two, that rich loudmouth that Mom left standing by the baggage claim, waiting for her to pick him up after his business trip to Chicago. I always wondered how long he stood there, how long it took for him to realize she was never coming, the baggage carousel going round and round with only one lost bag, maybe, or some stupid set of golf clubs that should have been in Florida.

Now it looked like Dan Jax was the one not coming back. We ate our dessert, and Aunt Bailey had another glass of wine and started laughing too loud. There was a pounding on the front door then. A rush of activity brought in Grandpa Shine, overloaded with bags. A young Japanese man stood at his side, smiling shyly.

“Look who the cat dragged in,” Gram said.

Suitcases were dropped, and introductions made. The young guy was Keiji Takagi,
Goes by George!
Grandpa Shine’s golf caddy, or something. I didn’t get the full story. Grandpa Shine wore his white cowboy hat and his red golf shirt. He pointed both fingers at me, gun-style. “You!” he said. “Goddamn it, Munchkin, look at you!” You had to love Grandpa Shine. We hugged, and then
the hugs started all around. Ted Rose brought more chairs in.

“That boy is better than another bimbo,” Gram said, and sniffed.

“Rise above it, Marian,” Aunt Bailey said.

“You planning on playing
golf
while you’re here?” Gram said. It was said in the same tone as one might say,
You planning on watching pornography while you’re here?
Or,
You plan on visiting a handful of prostitutes while you’re here?
Then again, twenty-five years ago Grandpa Shine ran off with the petite blond golf pro who’d been giving him lessons. Lurid sex and golf would likely be forever linked in Gram’s mind.

“Whenever I can, whenever I can.”

“You look great, Dad,” Mom said.

“Damn it, I feel great,” he said. He slapped one hand on the table and made the silverware jump. “And look at this.” He gestured around the table. “
Look
at this. All my favorite people in one place. Here to celebrate
the future
.”

Were his eyes actually getting misty? He’d been in the insurance business for years, now retired. He’d grown up on a ranch, and he could lift a chair with one hand. Grandpa Arthur Shine was not the type to cry, and definitely not the type to get poetic about life. Gram opened her mouth and shut it again. She narrowed her eyes.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Grandpa Shine said.

“Indeed,” Ted Rose said.

“Bet you anything he’s getting some,” Gram whispered.

I could hear Dan Jax and Mom murmuring in the next room. Not an argument exactly—they never argued, far as I knew. Intensity. Urgency. Mom’s words felt fast, insistent.

There was a knock at my door.

“Cricket!”

Ben. His own voice was urgent. I scrambled out of bed. Jupiter was exhausted after all of the day’s events; she didn’t move from her little comma-curled self on her bed. Her chin was tucked in snug, and her snoring sounded the way our vacuum did before it finally burned out.

“I think they’re fighting,” I told him. “Not
fighting
, but sort of fighting.”

“You’ll never believe what I saw.”

“What?”

“He was hugging him.”

“Who was hugging who?”

We were standing there in the hall. Everyone’s door was closed. I could hear Mom and Dan’s murmuring even better from out there. If Ben would shut up, I might be able to hear their actual words.

“Grandpa Shine.”

“What?” I was having trouble taking it all in. Ben’s hair was all crazy, and he was in his boxers and a T-shirt. He looked like he’d just fled from a burning building.

“I got up to pee. I saw them going up the stairs to their rooms. Grandpa Shine was hugging that guy…. It was weird. Really, really weird.”

“Big deal. Grandpa Shine hugs a lot of people. So what,” I said.

“It was a different kind of hug.”

“A different kind of hug?” I snickered.

“Yeah. It was
meaningful
. Stop laughing! I know what I saw.”

“Jeez, Ben. Meaningful? It was nothing.”

“It didn’t seem like nothing. It seemed like something.”

We heard footsteps on the stairs. That’s when I first saw him. A guy, appearing on the landing. A guy Ben’s age, I’d guess. It had to be Ash, Ted and Rebecca’s son. Somehow I hadn’t pictured
this
. Black hair buzzed short, full mouth, and dark, dark eyes. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, a vest. These arms—large, built muscles. Some ad for jeans—that kind of sexy.

Ash paused. He looked straight at me.

“Well,” he said.

That was all. Just,
Well
. I might have said something. I thought …
Yeah
. I don’t know if I said it out loud. He kept walking up to the next floor. I watched the back of him. Oh, man. God. I think my heart must have escaped my chest. At least, it felt like it was pounding madly enough to leap out, rebelling, becoming the sort of heart it had never been before, a sorority girl heart, say, set loose in Daytona Beach during spring break. Not my heart, not the devoted and steady one I knew.

“Cricket,” Ben said. He was watching me. “I can’t believe you.”

“What?”

“Jesus.”

I could hear my mother’s voice from behind the shut door. It sounded almost as if she were pleading. And then two clear words from Dan Jax—
Daisy, wait.

Ben looked from me to my mother’s door to the stairs.

He shook his head, exasperated. A hint of disgust too. “You guys are all losing it,” he said.

Janssen—

I like this game. Famous Dogs—ha. Your list was great. But you forgot Scooby-Doo! We love him! Okay. Now my turn.

Five Amazing Dog Facts:

       1. One in three Americans lives with dogs. Best guess is that there are fifty-five million dogs in our country. We have more dogs than babies.

       2. 81 percent of people give birthday or
holiday presents to their dogs.

       3. 33 percent talk to their dogs on the phone or on the answering machine when they are away.

       4. 70 percent sign their dog’s name on greeting cards.

       5. 33 percent have confided a deep secret to a dog.

Aren’t you glad I brought my laptop, so that I could find out these things for you? Think about it. Fifty-five million dogs. Less people than that live in Spain, and just a few more live in Italy. (I looked that up too.) Dogs could have their own country. Instead of all those little separate selves we used to like to watch at Green Lake—the Cocos and Sophies and Butches and Mollies and Bos; the short, narrow dogs; the tall, thin ones; the dogs with tiny legs trotting so fast to keep up with some woman in a jogging suit—they could all be together with their own kind, ruling their own land. I think I love that idea. They could have a monarchy. Pedigrees and all that—plus, monarchies have the wacky hats-with-feathers vibe that would mesh well with goofy dog personalities. If they ruled themselves, poodles wouldn’t have to get those haircuts.