Page 59 of The Goode Girls of Maple Lane
Regina, Tegan, and Khalil all regard me skeptically while Aggie lets out a timely groan. Their looks speak volumes, and maybe what they’re not saying is exactly what I need to hear.
“I’ll talk to him once he gets through this work crunch,” I say. “Maybe it’s time to be firm about quitting sponsorships. Take the pressure off both of us.”
“He might not get it right away, but he’ll come around,” Regina says. “He clearly wants the best for you and you clearly want the best for him. I’m sure you guys can work it out.”
“Yeah. I know. Thanks,” I say, and while I may never share Regina’s certainty about life, love, or the sexual tension between bickering bakers, I love that I’m hanging out with friends on a Saturday afternoon, with the taste of buttery croissant still on my lips and a warm dog by my side.
This is happiness, too, I think.Tempered by complicated feelings for someone who’s not present, and arriving in a form I couldn’t have predicted. But definitely happiness.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The week after the croissant pep talk, Everett gets an invite to the current associate creative director’s retirement dinner, where his boss plans to announce who will take over the position. Everett knows he’s in the final running but he doesn’t know who his competition is other than Brandon, the beefy blond guy who spent Thanksgiving annoying everyone else, including the dogs. The dinner is planned for Monday, March 31, during my spring break, which gives Everett two and a half weeks to stress about his final interview and portfolio review.
I tell him I want to stop the sponsorships, for his sake as much as mine, but when Aggie’s vet suggests hip X-rays so we can make a longer-term care plan for managing the stress her bones have been under, Everett finds my laptop open to part-time job listings and talks me into another sponsorship instead. This time it’s a mileage tracker that will log Aggie’s walks, allowing her followers to see her progress in concrete terms. Despite my reservations, it’s a useful tool. It’s also hard to argue with Everett when we both know I’ll make more money with a few TikToks about walking my dog, which I need to do anyway, than I would working twenty hours aweek at any of the dismal jobs we see in the listings. We also know what happened the last time I filled every free hour with work. So I sign on to the sponsorship and make Everett promise to not obsess about branding and video production.
Predictably, he obsesses anyway.
He swears he’s not overdoing it.
I remain unconvinced.
When spring break starts, my cleaning job goes on pause, incessant rains limit outdoor activity, and I don’t have a major exam to cram for, so I settle in on the futon with a tired-from-playtime Aggie and finally,finallycrack openJane Eyre. I’ve always been a reader but only of fast-paced mysteries and thrillers. Dense classics with symbolic settings and long-winded passages about society and religion generally bore me, so I assume I’ll tire of Jane’s story within a few chapters, but hours pass before I even pause to make a fresh cup of tea. I thought the book was a romance between a governess and her rich employer, and it is, but more than that, it’s a story about loneliness, about a woman whose lack of familial affection, strong friendships, and romantic prospects leads to a kind of rootlessness, and her longing to be fully seen not as one part of herself, but asallparts of herself, and to be valued for the whole those parts make up.
Saying it’s relatable would be the understatement of the decade.
Also, the madwoman in the attic fascinates me.
Eager to talk about it when I finish the following evening, I head next door with Aggie, only to find Minh Ha worrying about Pilot, who’s curled up on a tiny, furry donut bed beside an armchair and a side table stacked with papers. Usually Pilot goes bananas when she sees Aggie, running circles around her and trying to get her to play. Tonight, she barely lifts her head.
“Is she injured?” I ask from the doorway.
“She picked something up on the street before I could stop her,” Minh Ha says. “Food waste of some kind that ran right through her. Now she won’t eat or drink, and her vet’s office is closed on Sundays. I could take her to emergency care but the last two times this happened, they charged me three hundred dollars for the consult, sent us home, and told me to keep an eye on her for twenty-four hours, returning with a stool sample if nothing changed.”
I wince at the dismissiveness, but I also understand. Unless a dog consumes something that could cause an allergic reaction or block or rupture its organs, most canine digestive issues resolve themselves in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. A vet could run a lot of tests, some more invasive and expensive than others. When in doubt, tests are worth running, especially if parasites are suspected, but with every new case, a judgment call has to be made, and while it never feels helpful in the moment,watch and seeis often relatively solid advice.
“Can I take a look?” I ask.
Minh Ha steps back so I can enter her apartment. “Please.”
Aggie saunters in with me, bunting Pilot with her nose while I kneel to examine her. Pilot’s gums are pale and her nose is warm and dry, but she exhibits no signs of distress when I massage her throat, sides, and belly. While I can’t offer an official diagnosis after only a quick evaluation, I suspect she’s tired and dehydrated, and probably has a bit of a bellyache.
“Have you tried chicken broth?” I ask. “To get her to drink?”
Minh Ha shakes her head, turning toward a minimal kitchen like mine where she finds a can of chicken soup she opens and strains into a bowl. Aggie’s nose works overtime as Minh Ha carries thebowl over, but I swear she knows her friend is distressed because when Minh Ha sets the bowl down near Pilot’s bed, Aggie makes no move toward it. Instead, she lies beside me and watches as Minh Ha picks Pilot up, gives her a cuddle, and then sets her by the bowl.
Pilot looks at us as though she knows she’s being observed and she’s not sure she wants to perform, but after a moment, she steps forward, sniffs the broth, and dips her tiny pink tongue in. One taste leads to another and soon enough, she’s lapping up the broth while the worry lines soften on Minh Ha’s face and she gushes with gratitude and relief. I tell her it’s no problem and I mean it. The assistance I’ve offered is so small. Although, seeing its impact, it doesn’t feel small. It feels big. Huge. Important. And being able to do something important feels really good.
“I should’ve thought of the broth,” Minh Ha says.
“It’s what we used to do for Marmie, my previous dog. She was basically a vacuum in dog form. We were lucky she never had to have surgery.” I lean into Aggie, drawing her against me with an arm looped around her neck. I’m lucky to have her, too, no matter how many medical appointments lie in our future. It’s hard to believe I met her six and a half months ago now. It’s also hard to believe I haven’t known and loved her forever. In my heart, I feel like I have.
When Pilot finishes drinking, she trots over and curls up against Aggie’s side, a tiny gray tuft against a mountain of russet fur. Aggie gives her a little nuzzle before flopping over for a nap of her own. While the dogs sleep, Minh Ha and I talk about how my degree is going (good but hard), and how her classes are going (good but exhausting), before segueing into discussingJane Eyre. I tell her why I connected to Jane, how I’ve never been good with people and havestruggled to form friendships and romantic relationships. Minh Ha listens with interest, full of insight about the author, symbols, and varied interpretations of the madwoman in the attic. I’m mortified to recall that I once told her I couldn’t imagine taking one of her classes. Not that I’m about to change my degree because of one conversation, but when she loans me her copy ofConvenience Store Womanby Sayaka Murata, suggesting I might connect to its heroine, too, I sense the start of a very sporadic but deeply rewarding two-person, two-dog book club.
Eventually we say good night and I head out with Aggie, but I pause at my door when I hear what might be someone quietly crying in the stairwell. I listen for a moment while stroking Aggie’s ears, unsure if I should check it out or leave well enough alone. I’m not a likely source of comfort or wisdom when someone’s upset. I don’t even know how to deal with my own emotions, not after being raised to pretend they don’t exist. But when the noise continues, more distinctly like a sob, I turn and head toward the stairwell with Aggie following close behind.
Opening the door, I find Phone Girl sitting on the edge of the landing in thigh-high boots, a tight leather miniskirt, and a fluffy oversize sweater coat that nearly swallows her slight frame. Her head is buried in her arms, which are folded on her knees, but she jerks upright at the sound of the door opening on creaky hinges, her red-rimmed eyes narrowing into a sharp glare.
“I’m fine,” she snaps at me.
