was Veronica’s room. If she wanted her to leave, Natalie had to go.
She stopped turning. Her coat was in her daughter’s closet, where the robe was supposed to hang. She opened the door and pulled it out quickly. “I’ll step out and run some errands,” she said, which was stupid. What errands could she run? It was after seven, and she was a woman without a refrigerator. She pulled on her hat, avoiding her daughter’s eyes. Had Jimmy called again? Or was it something with the boyfriend? Was the boyfriend mean to her? Maybe the talk with Marley hadn’t gone well.
Bowzer, sensing her imminent departure, whimpered and tried to rise. One of his legs gave way, and he fell back on the bed. He groaned and tried to get back up. He couldn’t be without her at all anymore. It was like having a small child again.
“No. Stay.” She held her palm up to him in hopes he wouldn’t pain himself further. She looked at Veronica. “He can stay here with you?”
Veronica walked across the room to the bed and sat next to him. Her green sweater was nice, and made out of some soft material that looked like it might love dog hair. But she put both arms around the dog and eased him to her lap.
“You don’t want to talk at all?” Natalie asked. She couldn’t help herself. But she was ready to go, one hand on the doorknob. She just wanted to be sure.
Bowzer strained forward. Veronica only shook her head with a fast and unconvincing smile. “I’m okay,” she said.
Call if you need me, Natalie wanted to say, though she couldn’t. She didn’t have a phone.
She probably should have brought along something to read. She would have to kill time at a coffee shop or a restaurant. It was too cold and dark for walking, and she didn’t want to waste gas just driving around. She could try to find the public library. Or she could do what someone productive and virtuous would do in her situation. She could go get the newspaper and search the classifieds for a better job.
She stopped at a machine and got a paper, lifting it out of the box with dread. It was always so dispiriting—seeing adverisements for teaching positions and knowing, as she did now, that although they asked for someone with her degree, she was not what the good schools were looking for. She was too old, too out-of-the-loop, not up on all the new lingo. In the last few years, both before and after the divorce, she’d applied for twenty-eight teaching positions, and she’d gotten two interviews, both at junior highs with metal detectors at the doors and emergency alarms in every room. They were the bottom-rung schools, the ones where the fresh-faced graduates of teaching programs did not apply in droves; and apparently, they were the only schools that would consider hiring a middle-aged woman who had not directed a classroom in over twenty-five years. This realization—that she was, in all her lack of experience, yet another hardship to be thrown at the poorer children of Greater Kansas City—was so upsetting that at the first interview, she came across as sour and depressed; and, no surprise, she didn’t get the job.
But at the second interview, she’d really tried. Really, she told the very young and dreadlocked principal, the fundamentals of education hadn’t changed that much in a quarter of a century. He’d stared at her skeptically over the tops of wire-framed glasses. Of course they had a little, she was quick to concede, with computers and the new federal laws. She’d kept up with all of that. She read the paper. But drive and caring and creativity were the foundations of good teaching, and she had those traits in spades! She’d used them every day as a stay-at-home mother! No, she didn’t speak Spanish. But she’d always wanted to learn!
The principal had furrowed his young brow and smiled politely, so there seemed no option but to keep talking. She said she’d tried to find records and references from her years as a teacher, but she was having some trouble, as the school where she’d worked had been demolished because of asbestos, and the principal was dead. Not of asbestos, she’d added quickly. Just old. And now dead.
She found a franchise diner on one of the main drags, the dorms visible from the parking lot. Her waitress was young, maybe in high school, with a sweet, wispy