Page 49 of The Goode Girls of Maple Lane
I beam at him, this beautiful man with his beautiful heart.
My boyfriend.
“Now, that’s a choice I don’t have to second-guess at all.”
Chapter Nineteen
The rest of December flies by. Everyone on the sixth floor of the Maple Lane Apartments is leaving town for the holidays, jetting off to various family gatherings. Everett invites me to come with him to New Orleans, where his parents are currently teaching, but he knows I want to stay with Aggie, and that I need to fit in as much studying as possible. Also, I’m not sure I’m ready to meet his family. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around having a boyfriend.
Before people disperse, at Regina’s suggestion, we hold a Secret Santa gift exchange. I put a Post-it on Phone Girl’s door with an invite and my info, but she ignores it as resolutely as she ignored the Thanksgiving invite. Everyone else is eager to participate. We’re all on a tight budget—though not allquiteas tight as mine—so we agree to a spending limit of $10.
I draw Tegan, who I don’t know that well so I recruit Regina for intel. In a plot twist I maybe should’ve seen coming, given her sense of humor, Tegan has her own TikTok account: one she calls I Only Have Eyes for You. Not only is she responsible for the adhesive googly eyes all over town, she makes up brief dating profiles for them.Harry Hydrant. Done some hard time on the street. I like myromance hot, hot, hot. Personal motto: hose before bros. Rusty Pipington. Feeling drained by love. Favorite actress of all time: Farah Faucet. Currently looking for a partner in grime.Naturally, I buy her a bag of googly eyes. And I follow her account.
Minh Ha gives me a used copy ofJane Eyre, and I promise everyone I’ll read it soon. Regina makes Minh Ha and Pilot matching bucket hats in a beautiful blue and teal abstract-print fabric she designed herself. Everett gives Regina a trio of antique thimbles we find at a holiday market. Khalil gives Everett a tiny red windup watering can that clips to the edge of a pot, tilting and pouring when the gears turn. Tegan gives Khalil a T-shirt Regina and Everett helped with, custom-printed to saySome days I just want to run away and join the circuits, with a ridiculously cute cartoon of a robot in a clown nose and hat.
And everyone gets something for the dogs. Balls, toys, bandannas, Santa hats, chew bones, a Deadpool action figure we all have a good laugh at. It’s all so joyful, and I love that I can look around and see how we’ve gotten to know each other, maybe not as close friends who hang out together on Friday nights, but as a hell of a lot more than strangers in an elevator, politely avoiding eye contact or apologizing when we invade each other’s personal space.
Christmas Day is quiet. I study, play with Aggie, video-chat with Everett, with Hannah, and with my parents, and make nonfrozen meals in the kitchen Everett fully stocked for me before he left, despite a firm agreement that we wouldn’t buy each other presents. He swore it wasn’t a present. It was an insurance policy that he wouldn’t return after a week away to find me passed out from hunger and stubbornness while Aggie was left to fend for herself. He’s become very clever about finding work-arounds for my resistanceto letting him buy me things while I can’t do the same for him. If his gesture isn’t meant to spoil me, but to make me laugh, how can I say no?
In return, I’m watering his plants while he’s away, which is small compensation, but at least it’s something, and I like that it’s a gesture of care. I also like that he’s trusting me with keys to his apartment. So far, I’ve resisted the temptation to snoop.
It’s the first Christmas I don’t spend with my parents, and I expected to get sad about that, but I don’t. My dad has never understood the fuss of the holidays, complaining annually about the crowds and the cost while leaving the decorating, meal planning, and gift shopping to my mom, including whatever she wanted for herself. She’d sign a card from him and make a joke of it every year, examining a beautifully wrapped present and saying,I wonder what this could be!Meanwhile, she got us to smile for family photos she could post, dragging my dad away from the sports he was parked in front of and me from whatever pulpy novel I was devouring in my room as a much-needed break from schoolwork. Over time, I began to associate the holidays not with happiness, but with a pressure to perform happiness, no matter what I was actually feeling.
Now it seems odd to me that I clung to that routine, even after I left for college and my parents had to fly me home. Granted, until this year, I had no one else to spend the holiday with, not without flying overseas, which I couldn’t afford, but still, as I look at the screenshot my mom sends of her Facebook post, with her and my dad posing in front of a beautifully decorated tree he definitely didn’t help with, and the ill-considered captionSo happy we’re together for the holidays, I can’t help thinking of what Everett said the day we brought Aggie home.
Almost empty is not the same as enough.
No, I think.It’s not.And I suspect I’ve always known that, but the emptiness wasn’t as obvious until I had something to compare it to. Until I knew what it felt like to truly be full.
ON MONDAY, DECEMBER30, I wheel Aggie to Ruff ’n’ Rescue for her end-of-year weigh-in. We’re all crossing our fingers for ninety-nine pounds or less. Given her rapid weight loss in her first two months, averaging an astonishing two pounds a week, and her increased movement as her mobility continues to improve, eight pounds in five and a half weeks seems reasonable to expect. However, she’s been building muscle, and as is often the case with significant weight loss, the initial drop has leveled out, and she weighs in at a hundred and one.
A tiny flicker of disappointment passes across all of our faces as Sam records her weight, Sariah holds out a liver treat, and I guide Aggie off the scale, but by the time I’m crouching in front of her to scratch her neck and kiss her furry face, the disappointment’s already gone.
“You’re doingsogreat,” I tell her as I find all the places she loves to be touched. “Do you realize you’ve lost almost one-fifth of your initial weight? That’s incredible.”
“It really is,” Sariah echoes. “And look how she holds herself now. Her coat’s so much healthier, too. That’s a totally different dog than we met in September.”
As always, Aggie soaks up the praise and attention, and she’s very patient as we examine her joints and movement together, comparing a video of her walking down the hall to one Sariah took a month ago. Her steps are less shaky. Her pace demonstratesmore confidence. She walks farther without a toy or reward motivating her. She raises and lowers herself without my help, though I stay close, just in case. All that in three and a half months, and if it wasn’t enough to fill my heart with pride and joy, a shadow of golden stubble now runs the length of her tail. Every time I notice it, my chest practically bursts open. Maybe it’s not as significant a change as her weight and movement, but her naked tail has been such a clear sign of her mistreatment, and seeing it start to look like a dog’s tailshouldlook is like seeing her fully become herself.
Before we leave, I reach into the wagon and take out the gift I brought, grinning ear to ear as Sam and Sariah tear through the paper together and pull on the shirts Regina made for me, printed withEvery time a dog is adopted, a rescue worker gets their wingson the front, and with a whimsical line drawing of a pair of wings that sits between the shoulder blades on the back.
They both melt before me, as if fighting back tears, which means I do the same. We all hold it together, but barely, especially while Aggie smiles at us, with her brows twitching as her eyes shift from face to face and her slightly less hairless tail wags. I don’t know how I would’ve taken her in without R ’n’ R’s help, or if she’d even be alive without their immediate support after Andy’s call back in September, and I can’t imagine a life that doesn’t include her. My beautiful, funny, resilient, trusting, curly-eared fluff ball of love and acceptance. My dog.
When we finally collect ourselves and I stop gushing with gratitude, Sam and Sariah surprise me with a present of their own, a gift certificate for a half-hour consultation at Aqua Paws, the hydrotherapy clinic we’ve been discussing over the past several weeks.
“We think she’ll be ready soon,” Sam says.
“With a few more pounds off to reduce strain on her heart,” Sariah says.
“Or when she can walk about twenty minutes on her own,” Sam suggests. “Even better if she can manage a full mile with a steady heart rate and even breathing.”
“We’re getting there,” I say, though it’ll likely be a few weeks yet. I haven’t gone into this with everyone who asks, but cost aside, the three of us understand that if Aggie doesn’t have enough stamina to walk for more than a few blocks, putting her on an aquatic treadmill won’t do much good. The reduced impact will be easier on her joints, but the water’s resistance will make her work harder. Bodies are complex puzzles, and rehabilitation has to account for all the pieces. Rushing to strengthen one piece could injure another. Besides, Aggie’s pretty good at knowing her limits. If I just want her to get wet while she lies down, I have a shower for that.
“It’s only a consultation,” Sariah adds. “You can make your own choices after that.”
“It’s wonderful,” I say, and I mean it, newly hopeful my finances will be more stable in the new year, between Regina’s shirts and the sponsorships that are already underway. I heard back from all three companies Everett and I contacted, and all have sent products to post about once they arrive. Despite my earlier reservations, I’m genuinely excited to see what shows up.
I blubber out severalthank-yous. Sam and Sariah give Aggie hugs that leave a layer of dog hair on their new shirts. We all have a good laugh about it, fully accustomed to the inevitable fallout of embracing a golden retriever. Then I hoist her into the wagon, which Regina and Tegan decorated with tinsel and battery-powered Christmas lights before they left town, eager to ensureAggie’s first Christmas in a loving home was as festive as possible. I laughed at their suggestion that I get a tree, gesturing around my cramped apartment until they conceded the point without my having to explain it, but they strung lights, left me a plug-in evergreen air freshener, and hung mistletoe over Aggie’s bed, which I love, even though she’s hardly wanting for kisses.
