The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Thirty-Six

IF GETTING GINGER AVALON’S MESSAGE DIDN’T MAKE ME sick enough, the e-mail Vijay finally sent me did.
I’m sorry I’ve been quiet so long. Please understand it’s hard to talk to you right now. I need to recover, which I know I will, but be patient with me, Cam. I think I’m going to take some time off, all the vacation time I’ve never taken, and really do some thinking.

My eyes stung at the word “recover.” I’d hurt him, which I’d never, ever wanted to do. But, maybe . . . maybe he would figure out what he really wanted in life.
I would love to be able to talk to him about Zuzu, about all that Zayna had said, about losing Moonshot, to have his voice treat all my anxiety and sorrow. I missed him so much. I still held out hope.
That hope made me wretched with confusion over the lovely evening I’d just had with Dubey.
I’D ORIGINALLY WORRIED THAT THE FIRST HOLIDAYS WITHOUT Bobby would be difficult, but as it turned out, he wasn’t even a blip on my radar.
The Binardis usually had a huge gathering on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Columbus, so the actual holiday was a small, cozy affair at my mom and dad’s. In years past, I’d harass my mother, “What time are we actually eating?” knowing I could only expect Bobby to stay a certain amount of time. This year, Gabby and I went early, and we were surprised to find the Davids already there. “We always come this early,” Davy said. “We stay all day.”
Ava was there, too—they alternated years with Carol’s family—and she was happily icing cookies. (Big David had come up with an ingenious idea: Ava was happiest when busy doing something with her hands. Since she’d always been a baker, he had her roll sugar-cookie dough and cut shapes, then ice them. They delivered copious quantities of their cookies to food pantries around the city.)
Ava iced pumpkins, snowflakes, and Easter eggs. (“Easter eggs?” I asked. Big David shrugged. “It’s what she picked.”) I iced, too—it was addicting, like filling in coloring books.
When we sat down to dinner, Davy announced, “We were picked by another mother.” He said it as exuberantly as he had the first time. I loved that he still had that belief, that hope within him. “After what happened before, we feel a little weird. Don’t feel obligated to make a big fuss again.”
“Obligated?” my mother asked. “That’s hardly the word I’d choose. We’re thrilled.”
Mom hounded them for details. They told us about Jessie—twenty-four, graduating from a premed program at Northwestern.
“Jess is really smart and together,” Big David said, “but not ready to be a mom. She wants her baby to have two parents.”
“And she wants those two parents to be us,” Davy said, grinning. He handed the bowl of mashed potatoes to David.
See? I thought. You lose some, you gain some. Concentrate on the gain.
“The baby is a boy this time,” Big David said.
“Have you thought about names?” Gabby asked.
“Jack,” Davy said at the exact same moment Big David said, “Michael.”
WHEN THE DAVIDS AND AVA HEADED HOME, TAKING GABBY with them, I stayed with my parents to go to the annual Aperjeet Thanksgiving Open House. I’d attended this Open House for as long as I could remember—a fabulous Indian banquet, including my favorite, gajar ka halva.
The last time I’d been in their kitchen, I’d kissed Vijay in the pantry. I turned to Mom—we both brushed our hair in the mirror. “Do you know about . . . me and Vijay?”
She nodded, her face suddenly older. “Shivani told me. We were . . . disappointed—not at you! Or Vijay. Just sad it didn’t turn out the way we wished.”
“He hasn’t called me since it happened,” I said, my nose burning. “I never wanted to hurt him.”
My mother stopped pinning her hair in mid–French twist to put her hands on my arms. Her thick hair fell to her shoulders. We looked at each other in the mirror. “Of course you didn’t.”
“I . . . I think I would have hurt him worse if we had gotten married.”
“Only you know that. And if that’s so, you did the right thing.”
“Does Shivani hate me?”
“No!” She turned to me instead of my reflection. “Not at all.” She hugged me, and with her lips close to my ear she said, “And even if she did, that’s no reason to marry the wrong man.”
I released the hug and looked in her face, wanting her to understand. “He’s not wrong. He’s so right in so many ways . . . but he’s not . . . mine.”
She touched my cheek, then returned to pinning up her hair.
“Will he . . . will he be there, do you know?”
She turned sharply, her eyebrows raised. “Don’t you know? He’s in India.”
India? India? That threw me. I hated that my mother knew something about Vijay that I didn’t. He’d gone to India without telling me? We told each other everything.
India. By himself. For four weeks. To “recover” and “think.”
I missed Vijay with a violence that felt like an injury.
I went home instead of accompanying my parents to the Aperjeets’ Open House, going straight to Moonshot’s paddock, where I scratched his tail. He shivered in the cold, raw air. “Why don’t you finally try your stall, bud?” I urged him. “For your last two nights? Aren’t you cold out here?”
He fluttered his nostrils and chose to stay where he was. I tortured myself, replaying that proposal conversation. I didn’t understand how, if Vijay really wanted to spend his life with me, my words had made him disappear.
As my fingers ran through Moonshot’s now silky tail, I remembered how Vijay and I had found each other at our senior prom—outside with the smokers—commiserating on the lousy time we were having. “We should’ve come to this together,” he’d said.
Would it have been different if we had? Would we be together now? Would he have chosen a different path, one that allowed room for me?
Stop it. There are no what-ifs in life.
I might not have Gabriella in my life if I’d gone to the prom with Vijay.
To imagine this even fleetingly felt like an amputation.
Life unfolded as it should.
You made decisions that led to more.
I leaned against this horse’s haunch, here in the church of my barn lot, and prayed for Ginger Avalon to change her mind. Or, if she didn’t, for her to be the best thing that ever happened to this horse.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the warmth of Moonshot’s earthy coat. Let the right thing happen.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I AWOKE TO TINK-TINK-TINK-ING on the glass. The sky was still dark, but the moon shone in the mirror of ice that encased the yard. I couldn’t help but smile. Outside, I entered a wonderland. Every twig, every tiny pine needle, every thing imaginable was covered in its own glass sheath. The trees groaned.
St. Francis, encased in his new sugar coating of ice, looked intact.
I slipped and flailed down the treacherous brick path, until I gave up and minced my way on the crunchy grass, where at least there was texture to give me some traction. No sound but the freezing rain rattling down around me, tink-tink-tink-ing on the bricks, the barn, the trees, and the aluminum gate. I walked on my own planet, in my own movie, all alone.
Moonshot had pearls of ice beaded in his whiskers and a coat of crunchy ice steaming on his back. His stall door stood open, but he hadn’t opted to go in even from this.
“You look like an Appaloosa,” I teased him, “with all that white on your back.”
He snorted, taking a tentative step toward me, but skidded on the sheet of glass his paddock had become. As he bumped into me, I wrapped my arms around his neck. We slid together in slow motion to the fence, as if dancing a pas de deux in a skating rink. My laughter echoed in the silence the ice had created.
He turned his neck to snuff me where I clutched his shoulder.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I whispered into his ears tickling my chin. “At least not today.” I lifted my face to the sky and let the pellets of ice sting my skin. “Nobody is.”
I DECIDED TO BE PRESENT AND APPRECIATE THIS GIFT OF one more day. But the ice kept falling, shutting down our area for nearly three days. Branches tore off trees, cracking as loud as gunshots. The power went out, came back on, went out again. The Binardis had to postpone their gathering. I-75 shut down. The airport closed. School was cancelled on Monday.
The animals had trouble walking in the ice—all but Muriel. Surefooted and nimble, she capered about the farm on her built-in cleats as if she walked on gravel.
Each day, Ginger Avalon called, saying, “Well. We’ll try again tomorrow,” but on Monday evening she called and said, “I’m afraid I have to be back in Florida on Wednesday. May I leave him with you a few more weeks?”
I wanted to dance for joy.
Muriel did it for me. I hung up the phone and watched her deliberately run, then slide, down the driveway, like a child in socks on a wooden floor.
It’s temporary, I reminded myself. What did “a few more weeks” mean, anyway? Three? Six? I hadn’t asked on purpose. Whatever the amount of time, I wanted to savor it.
I WENT TO DINNER WITH DUBEY AGAIN, AND HE GAVE ME A salsa CD he’d compiled for me.
When I got home, I put on the music and danced. The cats watched, their faces expressionless. Max wagged his tail, wanting to join this game. Gabriella caught me. She shook her head but smiled.
Moonshot, Biscuit, and the donkey grew their winter coats. Elegant Moonshot looked absurd with thick legs, as if he wore legwarmers. Long hairs grew from his ears and under his jaw.
The donkey sashayed across her paddock twitching her black-tufted tail. When she brayed, Moonshot yanked his head away and went rigid. “I remember when you were a tough guy,” I teased him. “It’s just a little donkey, you silly thing.”
The donkey, we decided, needed a name. A full moon made the barn glow as Gabby and I mulled possibilities, so when Gabby suggested Luna, we agreed it was perfect. Luna lived in the stall next to Moonshot’s (which he still never used), and one morning I observed her stealing hay from his pile from under the paddock fence. He laid his ears back but otherwise did not protest.
Each morning, the ice melted a bit more, and the grass crunched under my feet on the way to the barn, until one day I awoke to snow. Muriel gamboled around in the fat, wet flakes—I swear she tried to catch one on her tongue. I watched her cavort around the scrunched-neck St. Francis and laughed.
The Binardis rescheduled their Thanksgiving. Nick and Olive came to pick up Gabby.
When she returned, late that night, bearing Tupperware containers of lasagna, baked ziti, tiramisu, and pignoli cookies, I got out a fork, sat on the kitchen island, and sampled it all. “Oh. My. God,” I said. “Damn, I miss this food! That man can cook.”
Gabby cocked her head at me, an odd look on her face. “That’s the only thing you’ve ever said you miss about Dad.”
I set down the lasagna. “Oh, babe, I miss more than that.”
She climbed up on the kitchen island and sat cross-legged next to me. She didn’t seem angry with me tonight, or judgmental. Just curious. “Like what else?”
I held the lasagna out so that she could reach it, too, but she put a hand over her stomach and said, “I ate so much. I can’t.”
I savored a couple more bites before I said, “I loved your dad so much. I still do, because he made it possible for me to have you.”
Gabby smiled but rolled her eyes. “That’s such a cliché, Mom.”
“Maybe. But it’s true. He’s a talented, complicated man. Once upon a time we really inspired and challenged each other. I don’t think I’d ever have gone for my own practice if I hadn’t watched him work for his own restaurant.”
I put down the lasagna and peeled open the lid on the tiramisu. I took a bite. Pure heaven. “How does she do that?” I asked of Mimi. “How can the ladyfingers not be soggy?” Each bite was the perfect combination of custardy zabaglione and slightly crunchy, espresso-soaked ladyfingers. “How’s Mimi? How’s everybody?”
“Mimi’s Mimi,” Gabby said, with a look. “She and Olive argued about the wedding, then Olive and Mr. Henrici argued all the way home.”
“If he’s going to be your uncle, you can call him Nick.”
She made a face. “Maybe after I graduate.”
Gabby held her hand out for my fork, even though she’d said she was too full. She took a bite of the tiramisu, then handed the fork back to me.
“Did Olive ask about your wedding speech?” I asked. I took another bite. I loved the slight grittiness of the cocoa-espresso dusting on top.
She slumped her shoulders and glared at me, but not in earnest. “Yes,” she moaned. “I was hoping she’d forget all about it. What am I supposed to know about marriage?”
“Nobody expects you to know about marriage. Maybe you could write something about love. You know a little something about love, right?”
She rolled her eyes and took the fork. Her face brightened. “Zuzu was there! She’s doing great, Mom. She doesn’t even limp!”
I smiled. “That’s a puppy for you. They heal fast.”
“Dad told everyone that story. He made you sound like some Superwoman, talking about how amazing you were, how you saved her life, how you did surgery without any help.”
“Well, that probably wasn’t very fun for Zayna to listen to.”
Gabby smiled a big, gleeful smile. “Zayna wasn’t there. They broke up.”
I kept my face still. “Oh.” Poor Binky. What a buffoon. “Wow. Do you know why?”
“Please,” Gabby said, keeping the fork for two turns in a row. “Dad and I never talk about stuff like that.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Anything real. I guess she left a week ago, but it was the first he’d said anything about it. And it only came up because Aunt Olive asked.”
That made me so sad, I couldn’t take another bite, even though it was my turn. I loved moments like this with Gabby, talking about “real” things. Bobby never had these with her? He was missing so much of his daughter’s life. But that was his decision.
“Wait. So he’s keeping Zuzu?”
“Yep.”
“Hey, give me that fork. It’s my turn!” We were down to a few bites left. “Wow. Your dad with a puppy.”
“Maybe we should volunteer to keep her here?” Gabby asked, her face all innocence.
“No. No way.”
“But Mom—”
“You can’t give me all that crap about ‘another animal’ and then ask me to take your father’s dog!”
She smiled. “I know. But she’s so cute.”
“So are you. So cute and so manipulative.”
“But you’re keeping me, right?”
I ate the last bite of the tiramisu. “Forever and ever,” I said. I didn’t want to miss any of it, either.