“We’re seeing The Naughty and the Mice!” Boomer told Grandpa in the way Boomer had of delivering even the most basic information with an exclamation mark.
To me, Dash said, “I didn’t think you’d want to come, so I didn’t ask if you wanted a ticket.” Dash was right. I didn’t want to see the movie because I’d already seen it. I thought The Naughty and the Mice was derivative, but Edgar Thibaud loved the Pixar movie about speed-demon attic mice who drag-race Matchbox cars when the house’s family is asleep.
I didn’t tell Dash I’d already seen The Naughty and the Mice, because I had gone to the movie with Edgar Thibaud. It wasn’t like me hanging out with Edgar was a big secret—Dash knew that Edgar also volunteered (court-ordered) at Grandpa’s rehabilitation center—but I’d neglected to mention that occasionally he and I hung out after hours. Usually just for a coffee, but this was the first time he and I had gone anywhere beyond a café. I didn’t know why I went. I didn’t even like Edgar Thibaud that much. Well, I liked him fine enough for a scoundrel who was responsible for the death of my pet gerbil in kindergarten. I just didn’t trust him. Maybe Edgar was my stealth side-rehabilitation project, Grandpa being my primary and only truly important one. I wanted to help mold Edgar into a good guy, despite the odds, and if seeing a movie with a girl with the full knowledge that she had nothing beyond a platonic interest in him might evolve Edgar, I could make the effort. I told myself that I’d been so busy the last several months, I needed the relief of a dark time-out in a movie theater, even if it was a movie I didn’t care about with a person I barely cared about. If I’d seen the movie with Dash, I would have been preoccupied the whole time, wondering, Is he going to kiss me now? If not, why not? With Edgar, all I wondered was, Is he going to ask me to pay for his popcorn?
“Have fun,” I said, and I managed to sound chipper, trying to be a good sport. I could never stay cold to Dash for long. But Dash’s leaving stung, like he’d given me the most fabulous gift only to prematurely snatch it away.
“Oh, we will!” Boomer promised, so anxious to leave, he was hurriedly walking backward toward the door, which caused him to bump into a side table with enough force that the lamp on the table crashed to the floor. It was a minor crash—only the lightbulb broke—but the noise was enough to wake the beast that had been napping in my room. Boris, my dog, came racing into the living room and immediately pinned Boomer to the floor.
“Heel!” I commanded Boris. As a breed, bullmastiffs are surprisingly good apartment dwellers for their size because they’re not very active. But they are essentially guard dogs, if compassionate ones—they pin intruders down instead of trying to hurt them. Boomer probably didn’t know that. I’d look as terrified as Boomer, too, if I had a 130-pound dog pinning me to the ground. “Heel!” I repeated.
Boris got off Boomer and came and sat at my feet, satisfied that I was safe. But the commotion had also coaxed the smallest fur member of the family out of his own sleep, and, typically lazy, he arrived late into the living room to assess the situation and secure the area. Grandpa lives with us now that he can’t live on his own anymore, and his cat, Grunt, came along with him. True to his name, the cat grunted at Boris, who standing upright is the size of an adult woman but is abjectly terrified of Grandpa’s twelve-pound cat. Poor Boris went from a heeling posture to standing up and draping his front paws over my shoulders, whimpering, his dear, wrinkled face looking into mine like, Protect me, Mama! I gave Boris’s wet nose a kiss and said, “Down, boy. You’re fine.”
Our apartment is really too small for all these people and animals. It’s a bloody zoo at my home. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, maybe I’d like for Grandpa, who used to be so robust and such a man-about-town, not to be so confined to our third-floor apartment because he can’t do the stairs more than once per day, and some days not at all. But if having a stream of family members and health care workers come in and out to help him and visit with him averts Grandpa’s worst fear—being moved to a nursing home—I’m all for the zoo situation. The alternative scenario is bleak. Grandpa often proclaims that the only way he’ll allow himself to be moved out of his home is lying flat, in a box.
Langston came into the living room from the kitchen and asked, “What happened in here?” and that was Dash’s cue to finally leave.
Dash told Langston, “Thanks for the tea and cookies you didn’t offer.”