What the Dog Ate (36 page)

She transferred all her scribbled
calculations into Mom’s computer to check her math. It added up. It all made
sense. Next she dashed out a “pro” list that filled an entire page. She made a
“con” list that was much shorter, but also much more frightening, so she
scratched it out.

Kona slept on the floor by the desk
while she worked. At one point he awoke just long enough to roll onto his back
and stretch. He fell back asleep, paws in the air, underbelly exposed.

Look at him.
Not a care. He could be content anywhere. And... so can I
.

She finally went to bed at two,
thinking she should sleep on it. When she woke Thursday morning, she was just
as excited about the idea. All day, in between taking care of Mom and running
to the drug store to get her new prescription filled, she would duck into the
guest bedroom and look at her calculations, her plans, her “pro” list.

This could
really work
.

~~~

Friday, after getting Mom’s
breakfast and helping her shower, she told Mom she had errands to run. Said
she’d stop at the grocery store; she wanted to get some frozen peaches and
pomegranate juice to try out a new smoothie flavor.

She took Mom’s car and drove around
different neighborhoods, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in Jacksonville.
She tried on locations like she’d once tried on occupations.

She saw a For Sale sign on a small,
brick house with ivory trim and flower boxes full of pink geraniums and
thought, We could live there. She passed a lush, green park where a woman was
walking a golden retriever.
Kona would love that park
.
Everywhere she drove, she thought:
That could be my gym; I
could go there for pizza; that’s where my business could be
.

At the grocery store, she thought,
This could be my Salvation Army Santa. As her handful of coins clattered into
his red bucket, Santa kept ringing his bell and smiled and thanked her.

It’d feel so
good to start over
. She walked into the chilly grocery store.
Somewhere closer to the family. Somewhere less expensive. This
really could actually work
.

Maggie stopped short with her cart.
There, next to the kumquats in Publix Super Market, she knew for certain: she
would quit her job, move to Jacksonville, and start a smoothie business.

Now she was too excited to shop.
She grabbed the peaches and pomegranate juice out of the cart, forgot about the
rest of the groceries, and raced home to tell Mom and Kona the news.

Mom didn’t seem to believe it at
first when Maggie outlined her plan. Maggie said, “I know we might make each
other crazy, but do you think I could live here? Until I find my own place?”

Mom smiled. “I know what you really
mean. What you really mean is, you know
I’ll
make
you
crazy, but, yes, if you can stand it, I’d love to have
you here, for as long as you need.”

Mom was smart. That was what she’d
meant.

“OK, then. You’re stuck with me.”
Maggie knew moving in temporarily with Mom was the right thing to do. Shay and
the kids could come and stay for a bit, take over while Maggie went back to San
Diego and got her things in order, but Shay couldn’t stay for an extended
period. And the doctor had said it would be at least four to six weeks, maybe
more, before Mom could drive again. Mom was going to need someone there with
her until at least mid-January.

Mom said she wanted to call Gram
and tell her the good news before taking a nap. Maggie got the phone for her,
then went into the other room and called Shay on her cell.

She told her sister everything,
going into great detail about her ideas for names, flavors, even how she wanted
to decorate the shop.

“It’ll be great! I can still use
all my accounting and business skills to run the place, and my wanna-be-creative
side to come up with the flavors and the décor, and I’ll be doing something I
can feel good about—providing healthy treats.” She talked non-stop another ten
minutes, then said, “Or is this totally crazy? Maybe I should sleep on it some
more. Run some more numbers? Do some more research?”

“I don’t think it’s at all crazy.
If you want the truth, I haven’t heard you this excited since... well,
honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you this excited before. I think you
should go for it. And I can’t wait for all of us to be back on the same coast
again. The kids’ll be excited too. This is so great. Now, when do you need me
to come down there so you can go home?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. Soon. I’ve got
a million things to do.” Maggie rattled off a list of things, until she came
to: “Ohmygosh, I’ve got to quit my job.” She told Shannon she better hang up
and call her soon-to-be-former boss right away. Get it over with. “I’ll call
you back and we’ll look at our calendars and figure this out.”

I’d better call Stephen before I
lose my nerve, she thought. But she knew it all felt right.
I don’t think I
will
lose my nerve
.

She sat cross-legged in the middle
of the bed with her cell, and dialed Stephen’s line.

“You mustn’t quit
now
,” he said in his lovely British accent, when she told
him. “Things have gone rather well this past week with Wal-Mart. We’re quite
close to signing with them.”

“Well, that’s great, Stephen. I’m
happy to hear that. I mean, I’m happy for
you
.”

“But I was going to ask you to go
full time when you get back. I’ve got big plans for this company, Maggie. I
want to take it public. You’ve got the experience with that. I need you; need
your help. And we’re all going to make scads of money.”

Scads of money. For a moment, Maggie
thought of her bank account, her IRA, her broker, her future retired self.
Scads of money sounded very good for all of them. Very good indeed. And the
absence of scads of money had been precisely at the heart of every item on her
“con” list.

Maybe I should
go back, go full time, maybe for like another year or two...

The thought flickered through her
head for a moment. Just long enough to crush the joy she’d been feeling moments
before; crush it like an apple in a cider mill. She recognized that feeling, that
soul-wrenching feeling. She thought of the inevitable stress, the never-ending SEC
deadlines, the long days (and nights) trapped in her office under the
fluorescent lights.
Buzz kill, your name is accounting
.

“No, Stephen.” She sat up
straighter, still cross-legged on the bed. “It’s tempting. And I’d really like
to help you out, but I can’t. I’ve got to do what’s right for me.”

He tried to convince her for
several more minutes, but finally gave up. She warned him that between her Mom
and the move, she wouldn’t be able to give much of a notice period, but said
she’d come in one day when she was in town next week and help out over email
until they found someone else.

She hung up. She’d done it. She
wasn’t going to be an accountant anymore. Well, except for keeping her
own
books, but that would be totally different. She wanted
to scream for joy, but knew Mom was trying to nap. She flattened herself on the
bed and kicked her legs into the mattress and shook her hair wildly back and
forth. She rolled over and let out a muffled, “Eeeeeeee” into her pillow.

Kona heard the commotion and jumped
up on the bed. She rolled back and lay smiling at him as he stood, looking down
at her. She held onto his big, square head and pulled herself up to kiss the
end of his nose.

“We’re going to be very happy here,
Buddy,” she said. “I just know it.”

His tail wagged, but he seemed to
look confused. She wondered if he was thinking, “But haven’t we always been
happy?”

She sat up and hugged him, then
decided to call Helen and Russell; break the news to them. This was the one
hiccup in her plan; the part she didn’t like.
I know
they’ll both be happy for me, but will they think I’m crazy? Try to talk me out
of it? God, I’m going to miss them.

She started to dial Helen’s number,
when she remembered that Helen had emailed the other day saying she’d be in Spain
until the weekend.

She was dialing Russell when
another call came in. She recognized Dave’s number. Maybe someone had made an
offer on the house.

“Hey,” she answered. “Do you have some
news about the house?”

“Um, yeah,” Dave said. “How’s your
mom?”

“She’s better; thanks for asking.
But let’s hear it. Do you have good news for me?”

“Well, I’m not sure you’ll think
it’s good, but... now promise you’ll think about this before saying anything.”

Oh God. What’s
coming?

He seemed to be waiting for her.

“OK, whatever, I promise.”

He rattled his news off as if it
were one crazy-long multi-syllabic word:
“Jess-and-I-have-been-thinking-and-we’d-like-to-buy-the-house.”

Maggie could feel the phrase, “No
way in hell” sliding up from her throat, pushing at her teeth. She’d hated the
thought of them in
her
house. She held the phone
away from her ear for a moment, but heard him continue on.

“You promised you’d think for a
sec. Look, we’d buy out your half. You can have the furniture if you want, or
we’ll buy that from you, too. Well, except the TV, cuz you said I could have
that.”

“Dave, are you—”

He interrupted. “I know you think
I’m insane or unfeeling or whatever, but when I came over here the other day, I
remembered how much I always liked this house. And the neighborhood’s great,
and it’s really close to work for both of us. The commute from her apartment’s
been killing both of us, and—”

“Dave, wait. I wasn’t going to say
‘are you insane?’ I was going to say: are you going to pay me market value?”
I don’t need to ask if you’re insane. You
are
insane. But whatever
.

Dave let out a huge sigh. “Really?”
He rushed on as if afraid she’s change her mind. “Yeah, we’ll work it out with
the realtor or the appraiser or whatever. And if you want to take the
furniture, that’s cool.”

“You can have the furniture.”
Especially that leather couch I never wanted, and our bed
.
She thought of the expensive memory foam mattress they’d bought a few years
back. She hoped the memories of her locked in that mattress would haunt them,
maybe every night for the first month or two... or six.
You’ll
be wishing we’d bought forgetful foam
.

When she hung up, she lay back
again. She couldn’t believe living in the house wasn’t going to be an issue for
either Dave or Jessica; but then she realized it didn’t matter any more. She
wanted, no, needed, to be rid of the place.

It actually is
ideal—for me anyway. For them, it’s nuts
. She sat up and shook her head,
while she dialed Russell’s number.

“Hey,” he said. “Got your email the
other day. Glad to hear your mom’s doing better. I knew those super smoothies
of yours would fix her up. But I was kinda surprised about that Brian news.”
She’d emailed a bare-bones mention that she and Brian had broken up. “I thought
you guys were tight. You sure seemed that way on Thanksgiving.”

“I don’t know. Things were OK still
on Thanksgiving, but then... I dunno.” She flushed with guilt again, thinking
about her desire to kiss Russell, hold him that night of the wedding, while she
was still technically dating Brian. She had to admit to herself now that that
brief moment with Russell, even if just a flicker brought on by too much
alcohol mixed liberally with depression about her divorce, had influenced her
thinking about Brian on the flight home the next day. It had been the start of
her questioning their relationship. The beginning of the end. “It just was
never going to work out between us. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“OK.” They were both silent a moment.
“So, since your mom’s doing better, are you coming home soon?”

“Yeah. I have to work it out with
my sis, but hopefully Monday or Tuesday.”

“Great, I’ve missed our rides. Give
me a call when you get in. Maybe we can do dinner.”

“There’s another reason I called. I
quit my job today. I finally thought of something else I want to do.”

“That’s great! Congratulations. I
know how much you’ve wanted to make a change.”

Then she told him exactly how big
of a change she had planned. She explained that she’d only be back in San Diego
about ten days or so. Just long enough to get her things together. She needed
to do some packing, ship whatever wouldn’t fit in her car, and then drive back
to Florida in time for Christmas.

“Whoa. You’re moving? To Florida?
Like, the other side of the country?”

“Yeah,
that
Florida.”

“But... What about... What about
the hurricanes in Florida?”

“What about the earthquakes in California?”

“OK, well, what about that horrid
humidity?”

“What about that horrible drought
and the fire danger?”

“Have you thought about the bugs in
Florida? The bugs in Florida are insanely huge.”

“What I’ve thought about is the
mortgage payments and the rents in California.
Those
are insanely huge. And, besides, Kona can kill the bugs for me.”

“Well, you’ve just got this all
figured out. I guess with your brother gone and Brian out of the picture,
you’ve got no ties here anymore. But, aren’t you going to miss... California?”

Maggie felt a little stab. Could
she do this? Could she leave her friends? Could she leave
him
?
Yes, she needed to. Financially, it made sense to move. And her mom and her
grandma needed her.

“Yes, of course I’m going to miss
California.” She felt a lump the size of Kona’s tennis ball in her throat. “And
I’m going to miss you... you guys. But I’ll come back for visits. And you can
come and visit me. You and, and Helen.” Maggie heard her Mom calling her. “I’ve
got to go, OK? We’ll talk when I get back.”