Please Ignore Vera Dietz(29)
Author: A.S. King

“So you’re not depressed or anything?”

“No.”

“Do you see Charlie much?”

“Sure,” I said, sipping a glass of orange juice and wiping the sleep from my eye. “I think he has a girlfriend. I don’t want to be in the way.”

“A girlfriend?”

“I guess,” I said. “I mean, isn’t this when normal kids do things like that?”

He squinted at me, concerned. “And what about you?”

I laughed. “Not me. After what happened to you and Mom—uh, you know. No boyfriends for me.”

He rested his chin in his hand. I could see the guilty thoughts tumbling down his wrinkled forehead. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Boys only want one thing, Dad. And that’s just boring.”

“For now.”

“What?”

“It’s boring for now,” he said. “One day you’ll think it’s great, I promise you.”

Who changed the channel? What was with this wishy-washy crap? Wasn’t this the same guy who’d been telling me to avoid my destiny my whole life?

“Yeah, well, I can’t see that happening while I’m still in high school. All the boys there are dicks.”

“Vera.”

“Sorry. I meant jerks. All the boys there are jerks.”

On Mondays at the adoption center, new animals arrived that the vet had spayed or neutered over the weekend, and it was my job to make sure that they recovered and to keep their paperwork up to date. On Fridays, we had to ready new animals for the procedure and get them organized for pick-up at five. In July, the day after my all-boys-are-dicks conversation with Dad, there was a long-haired Afghan hound who’d been found in the park, covered in dried mud/feces/who-knows-what. He was scheduled for surgery on Sunday. One of the younger volunteers washed him (twice) and then gave him to me to brush.

It took over two hours to comb out the knots, little by little, without hurting him. He sat still and quiet for the most part, but yipped when I accidentally caught his skin with the metal teeth. I was instantly reminded of my mother, who would comb my hair every morning while staring into space, never stopping to apologize when she pulled too hard or made me cry. She did so many things with that vacant look on her face—as if she was daydreaming of living somewhere else.

Most days I didn’t think about my mother. She’d been gone three years, and a large part of me was happy about that. The older I got, the more I realized she’d never really been all there to begin with. The older I got, the more I realized that my happy-Mom memories were often fabrications invented to make me feel better about her being chronically unhappy.

Oddly, by midsummer, these sad realizations about my mother translated into a sort of talent. It started with a bet one day when a couple adopted a beagle I just knew they would return. Beagles are energetic, and these people looked like the type who liked constant calm.

When they left, I turned to Mrs. Parker and said, “I give them two days, tops.” The next day, right before closing, they returned the dog and asked if we had anything older or more docile.

From then on, when people came to adopt, Mrs. Parker would walk them through the paperwork and then she’d refer them to me.

I liked this new interaction with people—asking seemingly innocent questions about how much they loved their furniture or wall-to-wall carpeting. I liked how Mrs. Parker trusted my judgment (she called me her secret weapon), and though it was sad to see an animal returned to us, I was elated when my few hunches turned out to be right.

In late August, we got a box full of rescued Shih Tzu puppies. They were crawling with fleas and covered in scars and cuts and scrapes from being kept in a tiny gerbil cage. One of their siblings had died from being suffocated by the others, who were piled in on top of it. Though they smelled like death and were covered in matted, sometimes bloody fur, I fell completely in love with them.

Mrs. Parker said they needed foster homes because they were too young to stay at the center on their own overnight. I volunteered to take one, even though I knew I shouldn’t. She found two other homes and then dropped me off at my house after work with a Ziploc bag of puppy food and the usual how-to sheet we give out to adoptive families.

Dad was outraged. Seriously—a completely rational man turned to raging Hulk. Over a freaking puppy.

“You know how I feel about them,” he said. Them. Like she was an it. Like she was a nothing.

“It’s just for a few weeks,” I argued, holding her in my arms, now washed and fluffy and sweet-smelling.

“No way, Vera. No way.”

“I can keep her in the garage,” I said.

He shook his head.

“In the shed?” What else did we keep there but hoes and shovels and rakes?

“No.”

“Why not?” I finally asked.

“You know why not.”

“Because dogs cost too much? Because they shed?”

“Actually, Vera, it’s simple. You can’t have the dog because I said you can’t.”

“Oh wow. Great.” I rolled my eyes.

“It’s my—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, turning toward the hall and the front door. “I know. It’s your house. I get it. Whatever.” I went outside and sat on the front porch with the puppy in my lap for an hour. I figured the only way to keep her overnight was to pitch our old tent and sleep outside, which I did. It was one of the best nights of my life—cuddled close to the little thing, snuggling and listening to her snore. Even her meaty breath and the tiny pee she took on my sleeping bag were wonderful.

I didn’t sleep much. I lay awake thinking about Dad and what it must be like to be a cold, heartless Vulcan. I wondered if he was like that before Mom left, or if that was what her leaving did to him. And if he was like that because she left, what did her leaving do to me? Was it possible that it turned him cold while simultaneously turning me warm? Beneath these thoughts I hid my biggest question. Did Dad realize he was treating this innocent puppy the way Mom had treated me my whole life? Like an unwanted extra responsibility? A pain in the ass? A mistake?

Around midnight, I heard the familiar car chugging up Overlook Road and pulling into the gravel. About fifteen minutes later, I heard footsteps outside the tent.

“Veer?” he whispered.

I unzipped and let Charlie in.

“What’re you doing out here?” he asked. I showed him the puppy.

I didn’t ask what he was doing out because we both knew what he was doing out.