EMILY DICKINSON
At home, after the world’s longest day at the Ridge, Hitch and I cuddle on the couch. Our sofa wasn’t meant to support me and eighty-something pounds of squirming golden retriever, but I don’t have the heart to tell him to get down. He’s the one thing in this crazy world I can always count on—my rock, my best friend. When we were first introduced at Canine Companions four years ago, it was love at first sight. Dad used to tell anyone we met this story about how Hitch and I were like an old, married couple. From the moment we laid eyes on each other, we were hitched. People would shake their heads in confusion. Then Dad would explain the bad pun on Hitch’s name.
I used to cringe when Dad told personal stories to the mailman or to strangers in line at the hardware store or when he sang along to his favorite eighties songs on the radio. Now I’d give anything to hear him. A dull ache pulls in my chest when I try to recall his voice. My shoulders slump as I hug myself, trying to block out the emptiness.
It’s weird. I can remember every detail of his tan face, the indentation in his cleft chin, even the way the sun glinted off his five o’clock shadow when he didn’t shave, but I can’t recall his voice. I mean, I’d know it in an instant if I heard it, but I can’t quite re-create it in my head. When I try, it’s hollow, distant, like the summer I was seven and we made a homemade telephone out of tin cans and a piece of string. For an entire summer, I carried around my contraption. Dad was the only person who didn’t get tired of talking to me with a can to my ear. He’d whisper entire bedtime stories to me that way, long after Mom refused to communicate via the rickety apparatus.
The only way to smother the pain rising from my chest to my throat is to think about something else. I stare at the Whitman poem Ms. Ringgold assigned, but my mind keeps wandering. Every once in a while Hitch sighs or nudges my hand, reminding me to keep petting him.
I’m highlighting an implied metaphor in a line of poetry when the phone rings. The fluorescent pink marker jags across the page. I hurry over to the bar, grabbing the cordless phone. The number on the caller ID looks vaguely familiar, so I answer. There’s a long pause before a male voice asks to speak to Mom.
“She can’t come to the phone right now,” I lie. If I made the effort to stick my head out the front door and call for her, she could come to the phone. She’s only walked downstairs to check the mail.
“You must be Emilie.” The voice tries to strike up a conversation.
I picture a flat-faced, smiling pug of a man hitting on my mother and almost throw up a little in my mouth. “Do I know you?”
Hitch jumps off the couch, coming to stand at my side, alert to the ice in my voice.
“I’m Roger.” He breathes into the phone as he speaks. “Your mother’s friend Roger.”
He emphasizes the word friend as I concentrate on not puking.
“I’ve heard a lot about you.” He hesitates, like he’s choosing each word carefully. “All good, of course.”
I roll my eyes, digging the fingernails of my free hand into my palm, willing myself to at least be polite if not sociable. “Really? I haven’t heard anything about you.” Ouch—I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just . . . this is too weird.
Mom dating.
Me not.
Roger gives up on the friendly chitchat. I glance at Hitch, who does this thing where he raises one eyebrow, then the other, and lets his lower eyelids sag. He’s obviously disappointed by my lack of social graces. If Hitch were a person, he’d be Mother Teresa or Gandhi or someone who treated all living creatures with the respect they deserve. It’s depressing how my dog is a better human being than I am.
Before Roger can sputter out another cheery response, I mumble a quick good-bye and something about giving Mom the message he called, then shove the phone down on the charger. Bracing myself against the counter, I close my eyes and exhale through my nose. Specks of light flash on the back of my closed eyelids.
Hitch whines as I wipe my palm on my ratty sweatpants, but he doesn’t tug on my clothing in an effort to pull me to a safe place, which means I must just be overstressed and freaking out and not about to have an actual seizure. I open my eyes and study the sea oats outside the kitchen window, swaying on the dunes out back. My breathing begins to slow until the back door opens and Mom comes breezing in with a handful of envelopes and sale flyers.
Then all my pent-up emotions erupt. “Your friend Roger called,” I hiss, fists balled at my side.
A furniture advertisement slips from her hand, swishing to the floor. “Okay. Thanks.” She bends to pick it up, avoiding my eyes. “I’ll call him later.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.” I stomp my foot like a spoiled five-year-old who didn’t get the toy she wanted in her Happy Meal.
“Doing what, Emilie?” When she looks up at me, the ceiling light casts shadows on her face, accentuating the dark circles under her eyes.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I spit out the d-word we’ve both been avoiding: “Dating.” We lock eyes. “Mom, you’re dating.”
“Is that really such a horrible thing?” There’s heat in her voice, and I withdraw a step, afraid I might have awakened a sleeping dragon. The color drains from the hand she uses to grip the mail. Her nostrils flare. “Your father loved me. He would want me to be happy.”
“No.” I choke on the argument. “He told me you were like geese, that you mated for life.”
Her free hand clutches her stomach like I punched her. She steps toward the breakfast table, grabbing one of the ladder-back chairs for support. “We were geese, Emilie. We did mate for life.” Her voice is barely more than a whisper. “But your father . . . died.” She turns the chair around, sinking into the sagging, woven seat, her eyes fat with tears. “He left me, Emilie. He left me.”
When her shoulders sag, Hitch pads across the room to lay his big head in her lap.
“It wasn’t his fault!” I scream, swiping my palm along the windowsill above the sink. Dad’s collection of beach glass slaps the counter, clatters in the stainless steel sink, and crashes to the hardwood floor. “And—you’re a liar. All this crap about emotional development has nothing to do with me. It’s all about you and your . . . your friend Roger.”
Mom flinches but stays in her seat. Hitch’s eyes ricochet nervously back and forth between our faces. I run to my room, slamming and locking the door behind me before throwing myself face-first on the bed.
I hate her. I hate my life. Most of all, I hate myself. I’m being immature. What kind of teenager is jealous of her own mom? But Mom had the love of her life once already. Now, she’s going to start dating again. My forty-two-year-old mother is going to find another goose and soar off into the sunset. I’ll be an armadillo or something equally hideous for the rest of my life, burrowing around in my shell, too afraid to take a risk on a relationship. I’m a coward.
And I’m always going to be miserable if I don’t do something about it. Soon.