Maybe she’d already forgotten I’d been in an accident on Friday. Maybe the details of my life were just details to her, not nearly as important as whatever drama was moving through hers and making her act like someone I didn’t even know.
“Veronica.” She appeared to exchange exasperated glances with Bowzer. “I know you don’t have a car. But how did you get yourself here?”
It was a profound question, metaphorically speaking. Non-metaphorically speaking, it was just annoying. I set the garbage bags down and crossed my arms. Bowzer whimpered, wondering, perhaps, what the holdup was. My mother looked down at him and said nothing. I lowered my head, breathing in the cold air around me. I had been wrong. She had been wrong. The incident at the Hardee’s, the hanging up, had not been an isolated incident. She really was different now. She was unreliable, distracted, preoccupied with something big that was not me.
I heard a door open on the other side of the driveway. My mother and I, aware that we were being watched, turned to see a tan, blond woman in a purple jogging suit. We smiled. The woman did not smile back. “Nice party,” she muttered. She let her gaze fall to the two bags of garbage before she turned around and slammed the door.
I closed my eyes. “Can I just have a ride to the dorm? Or do I need to call Highway Patrol again?”
When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me as if she wanted to hug me, but she was holding Bowzer, and the blanket, and the strap of her bag was sliding down her arm. She jerked her head forward and raised her hand, an invitation to follow.
We were still several feet from her van when I noticed the stained glass lampshade balanced against one of the back windows. It had been my grandmother’s. She’d had it in her house in New Hampshire, and then in her room in Kansas City, at the nursing home. A television screen faced out of the van’s other back window, an end table resting on top of it.
My mother shook her head. “Just don’t say anything, okay? Just don’t ask.” She sounded tired, and annoyed, as if I were pestering her about something we’d been over a million times. When she got close to the passenger door, she gestured for me to take Bowzer from her. I set down the bags and took him, watching her face as she fished in her coat pockets for her keys. She kept her chin tucked low, her jaw set, her eyes away from mine. When she opened the passenger door, she had to put her arms up quickly to keep two cardboard boxes from falling to the ground. Without a word, she set the boxes on top of the vacuum, which was lying on some blankets on the first long seat.
She opened the front passenger door for me and then walked around to the driver’s side. My seat was littered with empty Diet Pepsi cans and a half-empty box of Wheaties. On the floor mat sat Bowzer’s food bowl, alongside an old Cool Whip container full of water. I moved things around with my free hand and climbed in, still holding Bowzer. Once my mother was in her seat, he whimpered and tried to jump over the gearshift to her lap, but I held him back. He rested his chin on my arm, resigned. “It’s okay,” I said, stroking his chest. He still had the fat pocket, but everywhere else, he was so thin. I could feel his bones under his fur.
I was six when my father first brought him home in a plastic crate, with his tiny bark and big puppy claws, a red bow around his neck. My mother had been annoyed. She didn’t want a dog. She had told my father a cat, maybe a cat, but a dog would be too much. She was defeated, outnumbered, the moment Bowzer nosed his way out of the box with a red bow around his neck. Elise and I shrieked with delight and then took him outside to play. It was a sunny autumn afternoon, and the air smelled like burning leaves. My father carved a pumpkin on the back deck while Elise and I ran in circles, letting the still unnamed puppy chase us and yip at our heels.
At some point, my mother came out from the back door, a dishtowel in her hands. She smiled