The cheerleaders are doing backflips now, flinging pom-pommed hands over their heads in victory. Watching them, Margaret feels terribly sad. She thinks of Carly Anderson, full of ambition, so sure of her path in life, and wonders where she herself got so lost en route. She wants, for just a minute, to run into the cheerleaders’ midst and grab a pom-pom and get someone to teach her how to do a flip. Instead, she digs for a paper napkin in the side pocket of her car and blows her nose in it, scrubs at her eyes. Before she starts the car again, she rests her head on the steering wheel for a minute to compose herself. And then she turns the key and coughs her way up the road toward home.
margaret sets her alarm for eight-thirty the following morning, but she’s awake and out of bed before it rings. Thinking of the money coming her way at last, she feels—what is it? A glimmer of hope? Optimism that the worst is over? She brushes her teeth vigorously, making sure to get even the molars she usually ignores. On her way out of the bathroom, she bumps into Lizzie, in her Speedo with goggles hanging around her neck, getting ready to go to swim camp.
“What are you doing up so early?” Lizzie asks.
“Going for a walk,” Margaret says.
“Really? Can I come?”
“No!” exclaims Margaret, alarmed. Lizzie’s face falls. Margaret tries to soothe her: “I need a little alone time, Lizzie. You know, to think?”
Lizzie just stands there, though, looking at her. “Margaret, is everything not okay in L.A.? Is that why you’re here? Is that why you haven’t gone home yet?”
Startled, Margaret considers her sister. How did she know? Should she tell her? But Lizzie’s eyes shine with adoration and concern, and Margaret feels reluctant to burst her bubble with the news that her sister’s life is a flop. “Don’t be silly,” she says. “I’m here because you said you needed me, remember?”
“Right,” says Lizzie. “But you
would
tell me if things weren’t good with, like, Bart? Or something? I mean, you trust me, right?”
“Of course!” Margaret tugs gently at her sister’s earlobe, feeling only a tiny bit guilty at her deception, then runs down the stairs. At the bottom, she pauses to consider the FedEx package that’s been sitting on the table in the front hallway for over a week now. Curiosity gets the better of Margaret, and, after glancing over her shoulder toward the kitchen, where she hears her mother cooking, she picks the package up.
It is addressed to Janice Miller, with the return address at the famous San Francisco law firm Sarmin, Anderson, Baretta, and Roth. It’s obvious that these are divorce papers of some sort. Margaret hesitates, then puts the packet back down. It’s her mother’s problem, not hers, she reminds herself. Janice has already made it quite clear that she doesn’t need any help. Especially not from Margaret. Anyway, Margaret can certainly sympathize with a reluctance to acknowledge bad news (
RESTRICTED NO.
flashes in Margaret’s head).
She finds her mother preparing breakfast in the kitchen. The table is already set with fresh orange juice and a plate of cantaloupe cut open like a flower. Janice, with a cookbook propped in front of her, is tossing oats and grains into the Cuisinart and grinding the mixture into mulch. The food processor groans and gyrates to a halt.
“Well, look who’s up!” Janice says. She glances up at the kitchen clock. “Has the earth moved? Or did my clock stop?”
“Good morning,” says Margaret, feeling generous enough not to take the bait. “What are you making?”
“Muesli. Very healthy and good for the colon. Would you like some? I got the recipe from
Gourmet.
”
Margaret shakes her head. “I’m going out.”
“Out!” repeats Janice. She opens the top of the Cuisinart and prods at the hamster food with a spatula. “That’s a nice change. Where are you going?”
“She’s going for a walk,” says Lizzie, from behind Margaret.
Janice blinks. “I didn’t know you…walked.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, you’ve never been much for exercise.”
“I’m practically a fitness nut these days, Mom,” Margaret lies, though she is pleased to realize that even her mother’s usual nit-picking hasn’t popped her fizzy mood.
Janice shakes a cup of raisins into the Cuisinart. She pauses to take in Margaret’s outfit. “You’re going to go for a walk in flip flops? Those don’t look very sturdy.” Margaret gazes down at the blue plastic sandals on her feet, one of the few pairs of shoes she didn’t sell back in Los Angeles. She shrugs, picks up a glass of orange juice, and drinks it in a gulp, invigorated by the shot of vitamin C. She grins wordlessly at her mother, who watches her skeptically. “Well, whatever you want to do, but
I
think they look uncomfortable,” Janice murmurs, and hits the “On” button on the Cuisinart. Margaret opens the kitchen door and leaves.
The first stop on Margaret’s route is two blocks away: a beagle named Skipper, owned by a family named Fincher that lives in a two-story Cape Cod. The beagle is waiting at the wooden fence when Margaret walks up the driveway, its tail wagging. She pushes open the gate and looks around for an owner. No one is there, but the leash hangs by the back door. Skipper bathes Margaret’s bare toes with a rough warm tongue while she hooks the leash to his collar. Amused by the dog’s indiscriminate affection, she scratches him behind the ears and sets off down the road.
As she walks, she keeps her head down, just in case one of her mother’s friends might drive by and recognize her and rat her out. The morning sun filters through the oak trees, though, and the streets at this hour are quiet, so, eventually, she lifts her face toward the sky. The squirrels chatter in the trees and run along the electric lines. The sound of her flip-flops slapping against the asphalt is extraordinarily loud. Skipper trots along, stopping to splash some urine against the occasional mailbox. A few cars cruise by as she walks and their drivers even wave at her, as if she ought to know them. Margaret finds herself waving back. She thinks to herself that this isn’t such a terrible way to pay off her debts.
Stop number two is four blocks away at the Brunschilds’—
Margaret vaguely remembers Dr. Brunschild, the family GP, as always smelling like mentholated cough drops—where Margaret picks up a geriatric dachshund named Mr. Pibb. Stop three, a few houses down, is a hundred-pound bloodhound named Dusty, a gentle red monster of a dog with ears the size of dish towels who snuffles along with his nose pressed to the ground, as if snorting up an endlessly long line of cocaine.
The final stop is a schnauzer called Sadie, owned by a family named Gossett. Margaret goes around to the side of an older Spanish ranch house with a buckling driveway, to where the dog, sensing her presence, is flinging itself against a wrought-iron fence. Margaret unlatches the gate and steps into the backyard. “Yipyipyip,” barks the dog, at an eardrum-shattering pitch.
Sadie is a little salt-and-pepper beast wearing a pink leather collar. Margaret takes an immediate dislike to her. Sadie does not seem particularly pleased to see Margaret either, and barks shrilly as Margaret tries to snap the matching pink leather leash to her collar while still holding the leashes of the three other dogs in her left hand. As she fumbles by the gate, a face appears in the kitchen window of the house, and a pale white hand shoots up in a half wave. Margaret tries to hurry, but the woman pushes the back door open and approaches across the lawn.
“Where’s Carly? Is she already at camp? Are you her replacement?”
Margaret struggles with the collar, which refuses to latch. A foot away from her face, Dusty lifts a leg and releases a long stream of urine against the gate. Mr. Pibb farts audibly. “YIP. YIP. YIPYIPYIPYIP,” complains Sadie. “I’m Margaret,” she calls from her crouched position by the dog. “I’m subbing for Carly today.”
She attaches the leash and stands up. By the time she is upright, the woman is standing right in front of her, wiping her hands on a towel. She wears beige linen trousers that skim over her thighs, and gold hoops in sagging earlobes. “Noreen Gossett,” she says, offering a damp hand, which Margaret, loaded down with leashes, can’t accept. Margaret dips her chin instead in what she hopes is a friendly nod. The dogs swarm around her feet.
“I’ll have her back in an hour,” she says.
Noreen examines Margaret, her gaze lingering on the limp dress, the plastic blue flip-flops. “Wait, aren’t you…are you Margaret Miller? Janice’s daughter?”
Margaret’s heart sinks. “Yes,” she says reluctantly. Dusty is snuffling in Noreen’s flower beds. He selects a particularly comely blue pansy and gobbles it down. Margaret yanks his leash as hard as she can. He doesn’t budge.
“I’m a friend of your mother’s,” Noreen Gossett says, one eye on the offended pansy bed, one eye frankly assessing Margaret. “I recognize you from the photos in the living room. You’re walking dogs these days? Your mother told me you were working for…what was it,
Vogue
? A women’s magazine, right? Am I wrong?”
“Actually, it’s called…” Margaret begins, then stops, deflated. “Right.
Vogue.
I’m on vacation, just helping Carly out.”
“How is your mother anyway? I haven’t heard from her since the IPO. And, well, we’ve been wondering…. Such an unfortunate turn of events. Is she just devastated?”
Margaret, edging toward the gate, finds herself annoyed by this woman’s nosy solicitousness. “Well, you should probably call and ask her yourself,” she says.
Noreen Gossett purses her lips. Sadie turns and nips at Margaret’s ankle. “YIPYIPYIP!” she barks. Margaret yelps and looks down at the broken pink skin on her foot. “I don’t think Sadie likes you very much,” observes Noreen. “She adores Carly. Carly always brings treats. You didn’t happen to bring those liver cookies, did you?”
“Sorry,” says Margaret. The beagle starts licking her toes again, and she pushes him aside with her foot. “I ate them all myself already.”
Noreen Gossett, unblinking, follows her to the gate. “Well,” she says. “Take good care of my princess. Keep her away from the oleander around the corner. It’s poisonous, you know. And don’t make her walk too fast, just because the other dogs are larger. She’s old and has stiff joints.”
Margaret smiles thinly and waggles her only free pinkie, as the dogs yank her down the driveway to the street.
Walking four dogs, she discovers, is infinitely more difficult than walking one. The dogs proceed at an uneven gait, and Margaret lurches between them. Sadie does not appear to be on good terms with Mr. Pibb or Skipper and yips at them whenever they get too close. She transfers Sadie to her right hand with Dusty, hoping that the enormous bloodhound will intimidate the schnauzer into submission. Her flip-flops smack against the asphalt. A blister quickly forms where the plastic strap rubs her big toe, rendering her mother’s warning depressingly prescient.
She pauses while the dogs take turns marking their territory on a newly painted fence, leaving stains across the white surface. Having done their duty, the dogs then trot forward amiably, led by Dusty. They seem to have fallen into a manageable polyrhythmic pace. The birds chirp overhead. Margaret loops Dusty’s and Sadie’s leashes over her right forearm while she flexes her right hand to get the blood circulating in her palm again.
A gray squirrel chooses that exact moment to dart across their path, and before Margaret can get a good grip on the leashes, Dusty looks up. His nose flares. His ears swivel forward. He snuffles twice, emits a hair-raising howl, and then lunges toward the squirrel. Margaret’s right arm is yanked from its socket and she stumbles forward, dragged along by the baying hound. She braces her feet and yanks backward. Dusty lunges again, leveraging one hundred pounds of torque against her. Mr. Pibb, in her left hand, decides to join in the fun and starts struggling against the leash. The leashes looped over her forearm slip. Margaret is jerked forward again and stumbles; the toe of her flip-flop catches against the asphalt and the plastic toepiece is yanked from its anchor. The shoe breaks in half. Her now-bare foot scrapes against the road and she screams in pain, letting go of the leashes in her right hand altogether to grab at the throbbing appendage.
Smelling freedom, Dusty bolts. He gallops across the road, the leash trailing behind him on the ground, and chases the squirrel straight up an oak tree. Sadie tears off in the opposite direction, her short legs taking her as fast as they can back around the corner toward the Gossetts’ house. From her left hand, the still-jailed Mr. Pibb and Skipper bark at Dusty. Margaret hops on one foot, watching Sadie disappear down the street, trailing her pink leash behind her. Across the street, Dusty has his paws halfway up the tree trunk and his head thrown back as he bays forlornly at the upper reaches of the oak. The squirrel, safely out of reach, chatters tauntingly.
Swearing to herself, Margaret turns left to chase Sadie, who has disappeared around the corner, then decides that she should grab the bigger dog first, since Sadie won’t get as far as fast. Sadie’s yipping fades away into the distance. The broken flip-flop dangling off her foot, she hops across the street to grab Dusty’s leash, trailing Mr. Pibb and Skipper behind her. It takes every ounce of her strength to haul the bloodhound down from the tree. She then rips the flip-flops off her feet and jogs barefoot down the asphalt after Sadie with the objecting dogs behind her.
She turns the corner just in time to hear the screech of tires and see a cloud of dirt rising from the road. Out of the dust, Sadie comes sailing through the air in a balletic arc, turning slowly through an elegant spiral. Margaret squinches her eyes closed and opens them again as the schnauzer lands with a sickening
thunk
in a stand of calla lilies, just twenty feet from the Gossetts’ front yard. A young woman in a pantsuit jumps out of an Audi TT, now idling in the middle of the street, and runs to stand over the inert body of the schnauzer.
The woman looks at Margaret, tears in her eyes. “The dog…it just came out of nowhere. My God, is it dead?”
Margaret runs forward, dragging the three dogs behind her. She crouches over Sadie, touches her fur, smells burnt rubber. The dog is breathing, but her front legs are bloody and jutting out at a decidedly unnatural angle. Margaret strokes the dog‘s head. Dusty snuffles at Sadie’s body, and Margaret yanks him back.