September 2007 Pulpwood Queen Book Club Selection

C H A P T E R 4

Los Angeles 2006

The dog was so young it hadn’t grown into its extremely large feet yet. It was
also very dirty and, if the ribs poking through its patchy coat were any indication,
it was starving. It sat on Randa’s doorstep wearing a length of old
rope around its skinny neck. Holding the rope was Randa’s eleven-year-old
daughter, Susan.
“Mom, he was tied to a parking meter outside the mall.” Susie’s voice
throbbed with indignation. “He was out there in the hot sun, and he didn’t
even have a bowl of water. Just this note.” She pulled a grimy piece of paper
out of her school blazer pocket, and read, “You want him, he’s yours. Who
does something like that?” Her daughter demanded. Her blue eyes were
blazing; her face—still little-girl round—was red, and damp from the heat.
Randa considered telling her to tuck her blouse back into her skirt, but decided
against it. Her fierce child had no time for trivialities when there was
a wrong to be righted. Because, of course, what Susie expected her mother
to do was save the dirty little mutt by taking it in.
Randa looked desperately to the curb in front of her house, where one
of the new hybrid SUVs was idling. In the backseat were three of Susie’s
classmates from the pricey private school she attended in Westwood. Two
of these girls loathed Susie almost as much as she loathed them; the third
was her one lone friend at Cross Winds, a girl named Jennifer Porter who
was as smart and unpopular as Susie was. Jennifer’s mother was driving the
SUV, because it was her week for car-pool duty. Randa waved frantically at
the woman, who gave her a big fake smile and began to pull away from the
curb.
“Wait!” Randa called out, but Jennifer’s mother was already heading out
of the cul-de-sac.
“Let her go, Mom. Mrs. Porter is useless.” Susie dripped scorn with every
syllable. “Do you know what she wanted to do? She wanted to leave him
there. If I hadn’t said I’d take him home, he’d still be tied to that parking
meter. She wasn’t even going to try to help.”
The dog’s head was hanging. It didn’t have the energy to pant. Randa
didn’t want a dog. And if she had wanted one, this dog, which was undoubtedly
flea ridden, in addition to being one of the ugliest she’d ever seen,
would not have been the one she’d have chosen. But as she looked down at
the poor thing, she felt a knot in her stomach. The animal needed help. . . .
She couldn’t just turn her back on it. She leaned over and was about to
touch it, when a mantra her former shrink had embedded in her brain came
to her rescue. She’d finished her therapy with Dr. Alexander a decade earlier,
but his words still came back to her in times of crisis. You have a right
to say no.
“Susie, we can’t . . . ,” she began, but her daughter knelt down next to
the dog and began petting it.
“He needs a drink, Mom,” she said.
You don’t have to be rigid. That was one of Dr. Alexander’s maxims.
There’s always a compromise.
“You can give him a bowl of water in the garage. We’ll keep him here
tonight, and tomorrow morning we’ll call the animal shelter.”
“They kill them after three days at the shelter! Mom, look at him. He’ll
never get a home in three days!” Susie was almost crying, and crying was not
her style. This was serious.
“We can’t keep him, honey.”
Susie was on her feet. “Why not?”
Randa could have pointed out that she was a single mother raising and
supporting her child on her own. But she’d never, ever lay that guilt trip on
her daughter.
“A dog needs attention and we’re both busy. You know the hours I work.
My clients—”
“They’re a waste of space!”
That wasn’t fair—not totally. Randa was a business manager in the entertainment
industry. She worked out of her home with one assistant, and
was successful because she offered a personal touch that the larger, more
high-powered management agencies did not. When the veteran television
writer with twelve hit shows under his belt had a meeting with an infant
producer who didn’t know his name, Randa was the one who convinced the
distraught scribe that picking up his old cocaine habit wasn’t the way to
cope. When the Lindsay Lohan wannabe decided to blow six weeks of her
sitcom salary on a Rodeo Drive shopping spree, Randa figured out how to
pay the little brat’s mortgage. Because Randa’s office was in her home, her
clients thought nothing of calling her at two in the morning. Her assistant,
Andy, said she should have regular business hours and enforce them, but
Randa knew being available was what gave her an edge.
Susie tried to blink back tears and lost the fight. “This dog is worth six
of those losers, Mom. And I want him. He’ll be there when I get home from
school. I can play with him and teach him stuff—he’ll be like a friend.”
“Honey, you have friends.”
“No, I don’t! Not anymore. Jen’s going to Carmel next year. Her mom got
into Reiki after the divorce—it’s like this healing religion thing—and now
they have to move so Mrs. Porter can go to school to become a Reiki master.”
Randa’s heart sank. Losing Jen was huge. No wonder Susie was on the
verge of tears. “Baby—” Randa began, but her child cut her off.
“And don’t tell me I’ll make more friends at school, because they all hate
me.”
“I’m sure they don’t—” Randa tried again, but Susie was past listening.
“They hate me and I hate them! All they want to talk about is hot boys—
like they even know any—and clothes and their dads’ three-picture deals.”
She’s really unhappy there. How did I miss that? A hunt for another
school was indicated. Randa sighed, remembering how many schools they’d
looked at before Susie had settled on Cross Winds.
Meanwhile, the dog seemed to realize that it wasn’t going to be
moving—at least not for the moment—and lay down at Susie’s feet with
a little whimper. She bent down again to stroke him. “See? He already
likes me.”
“Honey—”
“I want to keep him!”
“He’s probably not even housebroken. If we bring him inside, he’ll . . .”
Randa trailed off because her daughter had done one of her lightning
switches from a child to a forty-year-old. Susie straightened up, and gave
her mother a knowing look.
“This is because of the living room, isn’t it?” she said. “You’ve just had it
redecorated and you’re afraid he’ll mess it up.”
“It’s not only that,” Randa protested weakly. Dr. Alexander would have
told her to come in for a refresher course if he could have heard her.
“Mom, all that stuff in there, it’s just . . . things,” Susie steamrolled on.
“This dog could die if we don’t help him.” Then she turned back into an
eleven-year-old. “Besides, the new carpet already looks like someone puked
on it.”
“This is not about the carpet,” Randa said. But it was. Randa didn’t want
the dog and its fleas anywhere near her living room.
“We don’t have to have things, Mom,” Susie said, picking up a fight that
had been going on between them for over a year. “We don’t have to have this
big house that’s screwing up the environment because we have to keep it
air-conditioned, and I don’t need to go to that crappy school—”
“Watch your language. And stop trying to change the subject.”
“This is the subject! You won’t let us keep this awesome dog because he
might trash our carpet or take time away from your dumb clients—”
On cue, Randa’s cell phone rang. Andy had gone home for the day, and
this was her special number reserved for emergencies. When she didn’t answer
on the second ring, the call automatically transferred to her office answering
machine, and since her office was right off the foyer, they could
hear the Lindsay Lohan clone screeching, “Randa? Randa, are you there?”
as they stood out on the front steps. Randa made herself ignore the voice.
“This dog needs us,” Susie said, as if that were the clincher.
“We can’t take care of the whole world—”
“We don’t take care of anyone but ourselves,” Susan broke in. “You’re
not, like, Angelina Jolie or someone, Mom.”
“Randa!” the voice on the answering machine shrieked.
Susie was watching her, willing her not to answer. But answering and
being available was how she made her living. “Honey, I have to . . . ,” she
started to say, but to her amazement, she felt her own eyes well up. And she
couldn’t let her little girl see that. “Put the dog in the garage for tonight,
Susie,” she said firmly. “I’ll take it to the shelter tomorrow.”
And her daughter, for whom she would have slain dragons, gave her a
look full of loathing. Then Susie gently helped the dog to its feet and
headed for the garage. Randa watched her, wanting to run after her. But
what would she say?
“Randa, where the fuck are you?” The voice on the answering machine
was now in early-stage hysteria. Randa went into her office.
By the time the Lindsay clone’s latest emergency was disposed of, six
more desperately urgent messages had collected on Randa’s voice mail. She
gritted her teeth and ignored them. And although she couldn’t bring herself
to turn her cell phone off, she put it on her desk, turned the volume on the
answering machine down as low as she could, closed the office door behind
her, and went to the garage to look for her child.
Susie wasn’t there, but the mutt was settled in with a pillow for a bed,
water, and a bowl full of rice and chicken, a concoction that Randa could
almost guarantee was recommended on some website for starving dogs.
Susie was a tireless Internet researcher. When Randa found her in her room
a few minutes later, she announced tersely—without looking up—that she
was online looking for no-kill shelters.
Feeling both relieved and guilty, Randa left her daughter, and started
back to her office. But her newly decorated living room was right across
the hall. She stopped at the doorway and looked in. She’d had the room
painted in shades of taupe and cream, the kind of light, classy colors she’d
dreamed of as a kid. Every stick of furniture was new. The silk curtains that
billowed out from the top of the floor-to-ceiling windows filtered out the
bright California sunshine, leaving a mellow glow. Usually, looking at the
room made her feel good, but now she wanted to cry again.
We don’t take care of anyone but ourselves.
Susie was disappointed in her, that was the hard part. Randa knew she
had it backward. She was the mother, and her daughter was supposed to
worry about disappointing her, but her Susie wasn’t an ordinary little girl.
This was not just the fond assessment of a devoted parent; her child was a
bona fide genius with the IQ scores to prove it. Randa had suspected as
much when Susie started reading billboards and traffic signs at the age of
two, but, not wanting to put her baby under pressure, she’d refused to follow
her pediatrician’s advice and have her tested. A year later the child’s
preschool had insisted. By that point, Susie was sneaking the Los Angeles
Times into her Barney backpack and working her way through the hard
words during rest period.
It was clear that her baby was not going to be like the rest of her peer
group, and Randa was determined that Susie would never feel bad about it.
Randa started drilling her on the idea that being different was another way
of saying you were special and terrific, and being like the crowd meant you
were ordinary and boring. Susie had bought it. Maybe it was because from
the second she was born, Randa had adored her with a passion she’d never
felt for any other living thing. Maybe it was because Susie was hardwired to
believe in herself.
But now it seemed that Randa’s miracle girl wasn’t happy. He’ll be like a
friend, she’d said about the mutt. Randa felt the tears sting her eyes again.
Maybe she’d gone overboard on the march-to-your-own-drummer thing.
But there was nothing she’d change about Susie. While her contemporaries
were trying to dress like the latest pop diva, Susie’s wardrobe consisted of
natural fiber pants, T-shirts, regular shirts, and a couple of skirts for dressup.
She had never lobbied to bare her midriff, pierce her navel, or tattoo any
portion of her anatomy. In a school where several classmates were already
beginning to flirt with anorexia, Susie remained healthily and unfashionably
solid.
The bulk of Susie’s generous allowance was allotted to causes: relief efforts
for disasters she’d read about on the Internet, and animal rights groups
she assured Randa weren’t doing property damage. Lately her daughter had
been branching out into politics. During the last congressional campaign,
she had supported the candidates of her choice with regular donations.
She’d given Randa a furious lecture on civic responsibility when Randa had
been too busy crunching the numbers for a client’s pre-nup to vote. Remembering
that moment, Randa sighed. Actually there was something
she’d change about her kid—lately she’d been wishing that every once in a
while Susie would try to understand where she was coming from. The mortgage
on the house had to be paid. And even if her clients were a waste of
space, Randa had no desire to live in an eco-friendly hut without electricity
or running water.
Her cell phone had to be ringing by now. She hadn’t heard it—the office
door was probably muffling the sound—but she never went this long without
a summons from someone. She should get the phone and return the
calls on her voice mail. She should go back to work. Instead, she walked all
the way into the living room, kicked off her shoes, and ran her perfectly
pedicured toes over the rug Susie disliked so much. Randa had standing
appointments—at her home so she wouldn’t waste time on the freeway—
for pedicures and manicures. She told herself it was a professional thing,
that she had to look pulled together, but the truth was, knowing her toes
were done boosted her self-confidence. Randa had never been very secure
about her looks. Her hair was brown and too curly, so she had it straightened
every six weeks and had highlights added that made it look tawny
blond. Her blue eyes and creamy skin were her best features, and she could
live with her generous mouth. The nose she’d had narrowed and the teeth
she’d had fixed were the best she could buy. She kept herself slim by working
out on the treadmill in her office, and wore the skirts of her business
suits as short as she could without being inappropriate.
She looked around her living room. She could never explain to Susie
what all this overpriced perfection meant to her. Susie couldn’t imagine living
in dingy hotel rooms with sheets that smelled, or sleeping on the sofa in
a one-bedroom apartment in the scary part of downtown L.A. Randa couldimagine it. In fact, she could remember it. Vividly.

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