“I would say so,” her father says.
That’s how Shelby knows it hadn’t been soy sauce in the soup. It was blood and bad luck. She’s glad she dumped the soup down the sink. Her mother hasn’t wanted to see her because something has gone terribly wrong. Shelby wishes she could call Ben to discuss her fears, but she knows it’s over for good. She knew the minute he walked into the restaurant and looked at her with true panic.
She quickly folds some clothes into a backpack and carries the two small dogs in a tote bag. She slips on sunglasses and grabs the cane she’d bought at the Chelsea flea market so she can say Pablo is a service dog if anyone gives her a hard time on the train. Luckily, the conductor doesn’t even look at her when he punches her ticket. She takes a cab from the station to her parents’ house. Her father is waiting for her on the porch. They don’t have much to do with one another, and he never waits for her like this, so she realizes the situation is even worse than she’d imagined. Her father doesn’t even complain about the dogs. Maybe he’s not loyal, but this is his wife and it’s hard for him to get the words out, and then finally he does. Shelby’s mother has stage four lung cancer. Her parents decided to keep the news from Shelby to protect her, even though she’s a grown woman and a college graduate. They did so because they thought she was “delicate,” meaning her nervous breakdown back in the dark ages. Shelby sits down on the stoop and cries, her hands over her eyes. Her father lights a cigarette even though he quit five years ago.
“That will give you cancer,” Shelby says. They both laugh, and then Shelby starts crying again.
“Come on. Snap out of it,” Dan Richmond says. “She’s right in the bedroom. You don’t want her to hear you crying.”
Shelby blows her nose on her sleeve.
“Geez,” her father says. “Have you heard of tissues?”
“Does she know?” Shelby asks as they go inside.
“Doesn’t she always know everything?” Shelby’s father has suddenly noticed Pablo’s presence. “I thought you had two dogs.” He seems nervous about Pablo. In the past, Shelby left the big dog with her neighbor when she came out to Long Island. Her dad has never been a dog person. “What the hell is this thing? A Saint Bernard?”
“A Great Pyrenees,” Shelby says. She has begun to think of a plan of action. “I can quit my job and stay while she has chemo.”
“She’s already had it. They started, but they had to stop. It didn’t work. It just made her sicker.”
“Is that why she’s been avoiding me?”
“She didn’t want you to worry. Just so you’re not shocked, Shelby—she’s bald.”
“That’s a bad joke.” When Shelby came back from the psych ward and shaved her head, her mother had wept. How could you do this to yourself? she’d cried.
“No joke. She won’t leave the house. That’s one of the reasons I decided to tell you. I want you to take her to get a wig.”
“Otherwise you wouldn’t have told me?”
“That was her choice, not mine. You think I’m the bad guy, I know.”
“Cancer,” Shelby reminds him. “The wig.”
“There’s a place on Main Street that sells them, but she won’t go with me. I think she’d feel a whole lot better if people didn’t stare at her. She’d look like her old self.”
Blinkie and the General follow Shelby into her parents’ bedroom.
“Hey, Mom.” Shelby has decided not to cry. She’s already done that.
Her mother is in bed, under the covers. Shelby perches beside her. She tries to peek beneath the quilt.
“Don’t look at me,” Shelby’s mother says.
“Do you think I never saw a bald woman? I was a bald woman.”
Sue Richmond laughs. When she’s convinced to sit up, she leans against the quilted headboard. She’s bald and pale and her eyes are red.
“Good Lord, Mom. You look like me.”
The General leaps up, and Sue pets him. “Which one is this?”
“General Tso.”
“Is he the smart one?”
“Smarter than Ben Mink.”
Sometimes Shelby calls Ben, then hangs up when he answers. Their date was such an embarrassment, yet she still has the urge to talk to him. She had her number blocked so he wouldn’t know she was the one calling, but he knew anyway. The last time she phoned he’d said, “Shelby?” She hasn’t called since.
“I liked Ben,” Sue says.
“He was a drug dealer,” Shelby reminds her.
“Still. He was nice. And he became very responsible. I always liked him.”
“Me too,” Shelby admits.
“You didn’t act like it,” her mom says.
“If he had known me, he would have known how much I cared about him.”
“People don’t have ESP,” Sue says.
“They should,” Shelby says moodily. “Everyone should know exactly what everyone else is thinking and then people wouldn’t hurt each other so much.”