“If you were going to keep him,” Hallie began, looking slyly at Clara, “what would you call him?”
At that moment, the phone in Clara’s pocket chimed several times, and she took it out to see a string of photos from Randi: a colorful braided leash, a hemp chew toy, even a crocheted canine sweater. “Moondance is now offering free delivery to favorite neighbors…” the text taunted her, and Clara laughed. If it was obvious to everyone else that the dog wasn’t going anywhere, she’d get Benny’s official sign-off tonight. She knew if he was truly against it, he’d have already said so.
“How about Aloha?” Clara asked, trying to act as if she’d only just begun giving it any thought. She and Benny had honeymooned in Hawaii, and she loved how three melodic syllables could not only mean hello, good-bye, and love, but also could conjure a sense of hanging loose, of no worries. She could already see herself calling it out the back door, maybe even getting a little tiki-style sign to hang on the wall over the dog bed.
“I like Pup-Pup,” Thomas announced. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking ahead.
“Well, that’s rather … I mean, that could be any dog. Shouldn’t we choose a name that suits this dog?”
He nodded gravely. “Pup-Pup,” he repeated.
Clara’s mother had admonished her about turning decisions over to the kids, even before Clara had been confronted with the opportunity to do so: “I’ll never understand how people let their children rule the roost these days.” She’d been pregnant with Maddie, Thomas was a baby, and they’d just announced that Benny had accepted the offer to partner at the Yellow Springs firm when her mother had initiated one of their sporadic and generally irritating phone calls. The comment seemed to come out of nowhere, and Clara had mistaken it for a judgment of her decision to leave her job and stay home after the move.
“Far more women stayed home in your generation,” Clara had pointed out.
Her mother scoffed. “I’m not talking about the decision to care for the children. Of course you have to care for them. I’m talking about letting them call the shots. Melissa’s grandchildren were just visiting the complex last week, and I’ll tell you…”
It should have come as no surprise that it wasn’t really about Clara. As a child, she’d spent evenings and weekends being dragged along to the step aerobics classes her mother taught to keep herself occupied around her father’s workaholic schedule. While her friends were taking ballet or playing soccer, she’d spent countless hours under protest in the corners of mirrored studios, reading her way through stacks of library books while trying to drown out the reverberations of eighties pop. If you’re looking for a physical outlet, you are welcome to join the class, her mother would say when she complained, missing the point entirely. She supposed that was part of what endeared her to Hallie: She recognized in the girl a familiar loneliness, a solidarity shared among only children with varying degrees of absentee parents.
Clara reached over and rubbed the dog’s soft belly. Her mother also never would have allowed any kind of pet, so the question of who would’ve been granted naming privileges was too far-fetched to contemplate. Sorry, pal, she told him telepathically. No island style for you.
Hallie shrugged. “I think Pup-Pup is a fine name.” She patted Thomas on the shoulder. “If you keep him, I’ll take his picture and put it in my paper. He’ll be famous.”
“Wow!” Thomas said, throwing his arms around the dog’s neck. “You have to stay, Pup-Pup. You’ll be a star!”
“Staaah!” Maddie yelled. “Wo!” Clara had to laugh. True, kids shouldn’t run the show, but there was no denying that the whole show was for them anyway. She’d grown used to going without sleep, trading in her alternative playlists for sing-along songs, and monotonizing her dinner menu. Why should it make her feel like she was letting go of something to hand over naming rights to a dog, of all things?
She turned her attention back to the notebook and reluctantly opened the cover.
At the top of the first page, she saw that Hallie had added a tagline. “The Color-Blind Gazette: Where No News Isn’t Good News.” “Get it?” Hallie asked hopefully.
“I get it,” she assured her. “Clever.” It was.
The first article, “Moondance Pays It Forward,” was about a new display of Damask weavings Randi and Rhoda had for sale, where proceeds would support Syrian refugees. “The first story came to me,” Hallie said importantly. “Rhoda stopped me on the street and asked if I was going to do another paper, She said they could use a way to get the word out. That’s when I knew I was definitely going to do it again.” Skimming the article, Clara could tell its reporting had been a good education for Hallie. She’d covered the history of the patterns in Damascus and beyond, and how the fine craftsmanship was a worldwide luxury, often imitated but never duplicated in the detailed beauty achieved by hand.
The second was a little piece on the fall festival at Young’s Jersey Dairy and how much money it brought in for the farmers before the slow winter. Hallie had quotes from several workers, and Clara had to admit she was impressed. The third was called “Up to Date with Second Date Update” and talked about how one of Yellow Springs’s newest residents was the producer behind the segment, which did occasionally manage to produce a happy ending—though Clara had to hide a knowing smile at how conspicuously sparse the details were.
“I told you there was good news to report around here,” Clara said when she’d finished skimming. “Nice job, Hallie. Has your mom seen this?”
“Not yet, but I promised to show her. She isn’t too happy about me doing another one, but once I found out she’d enrolled in ‘Censorship in Literature,’ she had a hard time rebutting my freedom of expression.”
Hallie was almost too smart for her own good. All she’d have to do was cry “censorship” anywhere within a generous radius of Antioch’s activist-filled campus, and troops would assemble behind her as if she’d gotten hold of the Pied Piper’s flute.
“Well, you’re doing great. You don’t need me after all.” It was a relief, really. “And it would be disingenuous to put my name on this. It’s wholly your effort.”
She jutted out her lip. “You’re just saying it’s good because you don’t want to help me make it better.”
“Not true.” Clara shook her head. “If you’re really fishing for feedback, just one thing—and for this no credit needed.” She landed her index finger on the last paragraph of the article about Izzy. “I don’t think it’s necessary to point out that the show’s producer happens to be ‘beautiful and single.’ I’m sure she’d appreciate the compliment, but aside from that, she might prefer you didn’t.”
Hallie’s chin raised in a defiant posture that was becoming too familiar to Clara. “It’s not like it’s a secret,” she said. “I’m trying to help. Maybe someone will see this and ask her out.”
“I’m sure she’s doing fine with that on her own, honey.”
“No. She’s not.” Hallie’s statement was so firm that for an instant Clara worried someone had mentioned Izzy’s problem with her brother-in-law in front of the child.
“What makes you think that?” she asked, hand on her hip.
“Paul.” Hallie spit out the word as if it were a mouthful of gristle, and an uneasiness overtook Clara.
“What about Paul?”
“He was there the other day,” she said.
“At Izzy’s?”
Hallie nodded. “Helping her fix something. I think he likes her.”
Clara could not recall ever having seen the two so much as exchange a word. “I’m sure he was just being helpful,” she said. “That doesn’t mean he likes her.”