eyes, surprised. He must have seen it, because he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said firmly. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”
I nodded somberly. I understood what he meant. But I was still hopeful. Really, the fact that he was just thinking it over was as good an assurance as any. When did anyone ever really know what they were going to do? People who had been married for decades broke promises to themselves and to each other, good intentions or not. That was the way it was with love. You had to have a contingency plan, or be ready to come up with one quickly. No matter what he decided this week, he could, at any time in the future, change his mind.
When I got back to the dorm, I opened the door to my room to find my mother sitting next to Bowzer on the floor, or rather, on newspapers spread flat all over my floor, with a large bucket of sand in front of her. A dark-haired girl in a pink hoodie sat on her right. Gretchen sat on my mother’s left. Three other girls who looked vaguely familiar completed the circle around the bucket. Everyone was taking turns scooping out handfuls of sand and dropping them into small paper bags.
Bowzer noticed me first. He wiggled the stump of his tail and struggled to his feet. A little pee dribbled out of him, forming a puddle on the linoleum.
My mother looked up. “Oh, hey, honey. How was the test?” She followed my eyes to Bowzer. “Whoops,” she said, standing up. “I’ll get that. It’s just a little. I’ve got wipes in my purse.”
“Hey, Veronica.” Gretchen waved. She looked comfortable, relaxed, as if she had been sitting there for a while. She had also taken the chemistry test that morning. We had caught the same bus and walked into the exam room together. But, of course, she had finished early. “I just came down here to get you for lunch,” she said, shaking out a new paper bag. “And I walked in on this good time.”
I looked down at Bowzer. I looked back at my mother. She’d already dabbed up the pee with one wipe and was now using another to go over the floor.
“Oh,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.” She tossed both wipes into the garbage and used another to go over her hands. “I explained the situation. They all like dogs. It’s fine.”
Everyone looked up, nodding in agreement. I took a step back, and tried to think where I should put my bag. I’d never had so many people in my room.
“We’re making luminarias,” my mother said. She air-dried her hands above her head. “For Christmas. Or I call them luminarias. What did you call them again, Inez?”
“Farolitos.” The dark-haired girl looked up and smiled. “They’ll look really good if it snows.” She shrugged. “They’ll look good anyway.”
Inez. Unless there were two girls named Inez on my floor, she was Inez from Albuquerque, the first person from Albuquerque my mother had ever met. She wore silver hoop earrings, large enough for the bottoms to graze her shoulders, and her hair was shiny black and very straight.
“It’s just candles, bags, and sand.” My mother nodded at Inez, smiled, and then looked back at me. “You missed the run to Hobby Lobby.” She lowered herself to the floor again. “Have a seat, honey. You should make a couple. You just put enough sand in the bag to weight it down, then nestle a candle in. It’s relaxing.” She looked up again. “How was the test?”
I shook my head. My gaze moved over the pile of votive candlles in the corner.
“Where are you going to put them?” I asked. My voice, in itself, was a wet blanket. And what was I worried about? Really, we already had a dog in the room. Why not a dog and a fire?
“Outside,” Inez said.
“Where outside?”
“Right outside. In front of the dorm. It’ll look pretty, for once.”
I caught Gretchen’s eye. She looked back at me, frowning. She stopped filling her bag with sand. “Shit,” she said. “You’re right.”
My mother picked up another handful of sand. “Right about what?”
“I don’t know if they’ll let us do it,” I said. “Not on the property. Candles are pretty much banned.”
“It’s not a fire hazard,” Inez said. She gave me a hard look, her chin jutting up. “That’s stupid. Everyone does this back home.”