I go to the little corner desk in my living room and sit down. I pull out the second file drawer and peruse my recipe folder, then find the lasagna recipe. Luckily, I already have all the ingredients, although the sausage will need to defrost.
I think about Judd Stevens. Maybe I should make a second lasagna to bring tomorrow night. We don’t have to eat it. He can put it in his freezer for another night. Then I realize that if I make a second lasagna for him, I’ll really have to go. My stomach clenches at the thought. I haven’t been alone with a man since Charlie. I don’t know if I remember how to behave.
I decide to make a second lasagna for myself. If I happen to keep the date—oh God, did I just say date?—I’ll take it to him. And if, more likely, I cancel, I’ll put it in my freezer and save it for another meal with my sister’s family. The kids love my lasagna. Possibly as much as they love me.
I pull the sausage out of the freezer and set it on the counter to defrost. My thoughts shift from Judd Stevens to Charlie’s new wife and his new family. They’re perfect, those children. Blond and gorgeous, I can tell from across the playground. Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be?
I know it’s wrong to resent innocent children, and, really, my resentment isn’t directed specifically at them. But they should be my children. Not hers and Charlie’s. Mine and Charlie’s.
I don’t like the direction of my thoughts, but I can’t really start the lasagna until the sausage thaws, so I march into the living room and sit on the couch and turn on the TV. I scan all of my recordings and settle on an episode of Bones from several years ago that I never watched.
A grown woman watching her TiVo at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning is pathetic. But there are worse things I could be doing. Worse things I’ve done.
THIRTY-SEVEN
SHADOW
I don’t like being alone. I like it much better when my humans are home. I like it best when all of them are here, but if it’s just one, that’s okay.
My mistress and Little Male and Little Female and my master left the house. I don’t know how long I was alone—I can’t really tell how the time goes by. But then my mistress came home. She patted my head and gave me a treat and that made me happy because I like treats even better than the food in my bowl.
I’m on my bed now, eating my treat, while my mistress sits at the table staring at the little screen. There’s nothing alive on the little screen right now, just squiggly lines, and her fingers are tap-tap-tapping, and more squiggly lines come on the screen with every tap.
I start at the knobby end of my treat and crunch through it. It tastes a little bit like the bendy strips my humans give me sometimes. Those are the best, and my tongue goes out of my mouth and drops of drool fall on the floor when I’m sitting waiting for them to give me one.
I finish my treat and feel my insides move. I get up and go through the small door that’s just for me in the big door. I go to the grass and sniff around for a while, trying to find the right place to make. Finally, I find it, over by the fence. I squat. Up on the branch of the tree from the other side of the fence is a bird. It shakes its feathers and looks down at me. I sniff the air and can smell the bird’s wings and the worm it ate.
I try to cover what I made with my back paws, but the grass never covers it. I hear something from the front of the house, and I go back inside. My mistress is still sitting at the table, but she isn’t tap-tap-tapping. She’s looking at her little screen. Her face is not happy.
I go into the couch room, behind the couch, and stand at the window. I see the front yard, the grass that I’m not allowed to make on. I see the sidewalk that sometimes I walk on when my humans put my collar on and attach it to a long rope. I see the dark, wide strip where the cars move back and forth. I see the sidewalk on the other side of the dark strip. I see, sitting on that sidewalk, the cat.
I push my nose against the window, hoping this time I can go through it, but the cold hits my nose and I pull away. The cat sees me, or somehow knows I’m here. It stiffens and turns its furry head in my direction and stares at me and then yawns.
I feel the fur on my back go up, even though I didn’t make it so. My ears perk forward. The cat meows, and I hear it through the window. A whine happens in my throat, and then I bark. And then I bark again, and then I’m just barking and barking and I paw at the window and the cat is just staring at me with a face that looks like it thinks it’s better than me, which is not so because dogs are better than cats because dogs eat cats and cats can’t eat dogs.
I bark and bark and my mistress comes into the room and I hear my name come from her mouth. I stop barking and turn to her. Her hands are on her hips, and she has an angry face.
“Shadow, no!” she tells me, and I whine and sit back on my haunches. I’m a Good Boy and I listen to my humans. But the cat is still there. My mistress says something else, and I don’t know what her words mean, but her voice sounds not angry anymore, so I wag my tail at her. She walks over to where I am. She says something I can’t understand, and then she says the cat and then something else, and I know she saw the cat. She pats my head and calls me a Good Boy, and I want to be a Good Boy for my humans, but I also really want to bark at the cat.
My mistress walks back into the kitchen, leaving me sitting, looking out the window.
The cat arches its back and stretches its paws, turns around and shows me its backside, jerking its tail from side to side, like it knows I’m watching.
I want to get the cat. I don’t know exactly why—it’s just something inside me. I don’t want to eat it. I just want to get it and show it that dogs are better and stronger and just more good than cats.
If I have the chance, I’m going to get the cat.
THIRTY-EIGHT
JONAH