My Boyfriends' Dogs (25 page)

“That's reassuring,” Eric said, not sounding all that reassured.

“Mom, don't joke about a thing like that. It's not funny.”

Mom looked stunned. “I'm sorry,” she said, her voice a mix of surprise and confusion.

I hadn't meant to sound like I was scolding her, but I didn't want Eric to worry.

Mom had the bird in the oven before the pizza guy got there. We devoured the pizza in short order and played a few rounds of three-handed poker. Eric lost every game.

“Good move bringing a guy who's such easy pickin's at the poker table, Bailey,” Mom said, raking in a pile of poker chips. We only played for chips, no money.

“Well,” Eric said, joking back with her as he got up from the table, “you card sharks can play all night. As for me, I'm cashing in my chips and hittin' the hay.”

“I thought you said this fella had culture, young'un,” Mom said.

“You know the only real culture comes from . . .” I began.

“Bacteria!” Mom and I said together. It was an old, old joke, but we were always there together at the punch line. Then I wished we hadn't been. All Eric needed was another reminder about bacteria.

Eric went to bed in my old room, and I bunked in with Mom. We stayed up most of the night talking and laughing, then shushing each other so we wouldn't wake poor Eric. The dogs loved it. We let them try to sleep with us in our bed. I couldn't remember the last time I'd bunked in with Mom. Probably when I was little and scared of storms.

 

In the morning I made myself get up early with Mom to check on Tom. The whole house smelled glorious, like only Thanksgiving morning can. It took both of us to lift the roaster out of the oven, fighting off Adam and Eve, who must have been going crazy from the aroma of real food. They scratched at my legs and whimpered.

“No way this bird is under thirty pounds,” I declared as we struggled to set the pan on the counter.

Eric came out to the kitchen, wearing cotton pajamas that looked like he'd ironed them. Mom and I had sweats and T-shirts. He yawned, and again his hair was all messy, and he had that sleep wrinkle on one side of his face. He looked so cute I had to go over and kiss him. “Morning, you.”

He hugged me and kissed me again. “Morning, you. How's our friend Tom? ”

“He got a little sick overnight,” Mom called from the roasting pan. “Something about salmonella. He seems okay now, though.”

“Not funny, Mom,” I scolded, for real this time.

“She's just kidding. You know that,” I whispered to Eric. I led him to the table and poured him a glass of juice. I imagined doing this every day of our lives, pouring my husband a glass of orange juice and getting a big morning hug and kiss.

Slow down,
I told myself.
He hasn't even asked you to the prom.

We hadn't slept together either—not that we hadn't wanted to. We'd get to that point where I felt I could get carried away. Then I'd stop us, or Eric would. We never talked about it, but I think we had an understanding. And anyway, Eric wasn't like other guys I'd dated. He had the money to take me to concerts and movies and things. So we had less car make-out time. The few parties we'd been to weren't the hang-out-and-make-out kind. Eric's friends were too classy for that.

“Tom smells good,” Eric said bravely. “What time is dinner? ”

“Whenever we get the food ready.” I got out a stick of butter and ran it over the bird's back. “This is one of my very few kitchen skills.”

Eric dressed up for our Thanksgiving dinner like he had for his family's. Since I didn't want him to feel overdressed, I dressed nice too, for me—slinky black pants and my new blouse. And I wore my hair up because Eric had loved it when I wore it up for the country club dinner.

“What's with the hair?” Amber asked, appearing in the kitchen in jeans and a Mizzou sweatshirt she'd picked up last summer.

“And Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Amber,” I returned.

“That too,” she agreed, still staring at my lofty hairdo.

Mom had all she could handle remembering to take side dishes—most of them ready-made—from the microwave.

“Love the dishes,” Amber said, shaking out the jellied cranberries from the can onto a little plate with a turkey in the center. Mom had a whole set of turkey tableware she'd won in a contest.

“Where'd you get the centerpiece? ” I asked. The ceramic turkey, occupying a square foot of space on the table, was pretty hard to miss.

“Garage sale,” Mom answered.

We sat at the table, and Mom had us hold hands. I remembered so many Thanksgivings when Mom and I were the only two people at the table. We'd sat across from each other and held hands like this anyway. It wasn't that nobody had invited the single mom and daughter for Thanksgiving dinner. We'd wanted to have it ourselves. Sometimes we'd invite people we figured didn't have anywhere to go, like Old Ollie, who came in his farm overalls. Or Mrs. Jannis, the old maid third-grade teacher who hated me, and the feeling was mutual.

“We have a lot to be thankful for this year,” Mom began, squeezing my hand.

I squeezed Eric's hand and smiled up at him. He looked like that deer in the headlights everybody talks about. Then I realized that his family hadn't said grace before meals. Now that I thought about it, their table conversation veered clear of anything controversial—no politics, no religion. And here we were, holding hands and ready to talk, not just about God, but to God. I wished I could have read Eric's mind. Or maybe not . . .

“Let's tell God and each other thanks for all the blessings this Thanksgiving. I'll start.” Mom listed all of us by name, Amber's family, our dogs, her new job, Eric's family, her friend Sarah Jean, and the family of robins that had nested on our ledge.

Amber named a lot of the same people Mom had and added Travis—he'd stayed in touch from Mizzou—plus her job as editor of
Tri-County Rag,
our school paper.

I gave thanks for Eric and Mom and Amber, for Adam and Eve, for Eric's family, and for our senior year.

When it was Eric's turn, he cleared his throat. “Thank you for the blessings which you have bestowed and this meal you have put before us, along with the hands that prepared it.”

It was a typical Daley Thanksgiving dinner, with Mom popping up every two minutes because she'd left potatoes, or beans, or gravy in the microwave. Or I'd get up and grab the butter out of the fridge or let the dogs out. Ours was a noisy feast. I hoped it wasn't too much for Eric.

At one point I caught Eric staring at my mother as she assembled her “Thanksgiving sandwich” without missing a beat in her conversation with Amber on freedom of the press versus investigative reporting of the school superintendent's DUI.

I felt I needed to explain Mom's sandwich. “Mom hates turkey.”

“You're kidding?” Eric frowned as Mom took a big bite of her unique sandwich. “Then why—? ”

“She says it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving if she didn't eat turkey,” I explained. “So she puts the whole dinner between two dinner rolls—turkey, a heap of stuffing, potatoes, gravy, beans, a little cranberry sauce. And voilà! A Thanksgiving sandwich. And
that
she loves.”

There wasn't a second of silence at the table during the whole meal or the hour after we finished the last bite of pumpkin pie and still sat around the table, laughing. We covered every subject from politics to Millet gossip to things Adam and Eve had done, like breaking into the neighbor's house and kidnapping their cat's rubber mouse.

I'm not sure when I noticed Eric wasn't talking. He was leaning back in his chair and holding his stomach. “Eric, are you okay? ”

“I'm not sure.” He put a hand to his forehead. “See if you think I have a fever.”

I did what he asked. “Feels fine to me, sweetie.”

“You're holding your stomach. Do you have a stomachache? ” asked my mom the worrier.

“Sort of,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “Abdominal pain. Or at least the beginning of it. I definitely feel gurgling.”

“Gurgling? ” Amber repeated.

Eric nodded, still frowning. “Peristalsis.”

Amber sighed. “Eric, were you on your computer this morning? ”

“What? ” Eric asked.

“Amber,” I warned, knowing where she was going with this. She'd heard Eric talk about his ailments at school after microbiology class a couple of times. Couldn't she just leave it alone?

“On the Internet? ” Amber pressed.

“I was looking up a few things,” he said to me, as if I'd asked the question.

“Like salmonella, for example? ” Amber guessed.

“Salmonella? ” Mom sounded horrified. “You think our turkey gave you salmonella? ”

“No he doesn't,” I said, trying to lighten the situation, while shooting Amber a shut-up glare.

“I've never heard of anyone cooking a turkey all night, so I thought I'd check it out,” Eric admitted.

“I knew it,” Amber said, letting out a little laugh that made me redouble my glare.

“It's not all that funny, Amber,” Eric said. “Salmonella is the second most common intestinal infection. Fourteen in one hundred thousand people are stricken by it every year, and it's underreported. Only three percent of the cases are ever reported to a doctor.” He didn't sound angry. I'd never seen Eric angry. It was more like he was lecturing a small child.

I knew from experience that Amber didn't like lectures.

“Eric,” Amber began slowly, “you don't have salmonella. You have a bad case of cyber-chondria.”

“What? ” Eric demanded.

“People who Google diseases on the Internet can get cyber-chondria,” Amber said. “Like hypochondria, only in cyber-space.”

I started to laugh, then swallowed it. The last thing I wanted to do was laugh at my boyfriend. “Amber,” I said, standing up and grabbing dishes, “help me clear the table.”

Eric still seemed as good-natured as ever. He got up from the table, but he didn't look at me. “Thank you for the lovely meal, Mrs. Daley. Let me help with dishes.”

“No way,” Mom said. “Maybe you should lie down for a while.”

“Yeah, Eric,” I said, eager to be sympathetic.

Still, he didn't even glance my way.

“If you're sure you don't need me,” he told Mom, “I think I will lie down a bit. Thanks.”

He was saying the right things, but it still felt like the closest Eric and I had been to a fight. I was a lousy girlfriend.

 

The rest of the afternoon Eric slept while Amber, Mom, and I cleaned up a million dishes and delivered turkey to the homeless shelter. We didn't mention Eric, but I agonized inside. I'd wanted him to have a great time at our Thanksgiving. I wasn't sure where things had gone wrong, but they had.

Mom dropped off Amber at her car, and she and I walked up the drive to our front door. The dogs were huddled together on the front step, and the house was dark.

“You poor babies,” I murmured, letting them in and rubbing their cold fur. “Eric? ” I called. He must have let them outside and forgotten about them.

“Eric? ” I walked back to my bedroom and peeked in. He was asleep. I shut the door and joined Mom and the dogs in the living room. Eve was still shivering. I turned to Mom. “Eric didn't know they shouldn't stay outside. He probably fell asleep after he let them out.”

“I know,” Mom said as we both tried to get the dogs to settle down.

I figured the dogs must have scratched at my bedroom door as soon as we'd left for the shelter. Then they would have started barking, and Eric wouldn't have been able to sleep, so he'd let them outside. “They don't have dogs,” I explained, feeling like I had to defend my boyfriend.

“Believe me, I can tell,” Mom muttered.

“Don't you like Eric? ”

“I do, honey. I'm sure everybody likes Eric. Eric the captain of the swim team, Eric the captain of the debate team, Eric the student body president, Eric—”

“Eric my boyfriend,” I reminded her. “So? ”

She fiddled with Adam's collar and didn't answer for a full minute. Then she smiled up at me. “He's just not Eric the dog guy, I guess.”

“He's
never
had a pet, Mom. What do you expect? In fact, I've been thinking that the only thing keeping Eric from being perfect is the fact that he's dogless.”

“And a cyber-chondriac,” Mom muttered. She grinned at me. “Being a dog owner
was
one of your requirements on your perfect boyfriend application, as I recall.”