When the doorbell rang, Del jumped up and ran to get it and I stayed with CJ. Del came skipping back a minute later.
“There’s a boy here to see CJ,” he said.
The front door was left open and I could smell who it was: Shane. I was not happy. The only time my girl ever shut me out of her life was when Shane came around. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t stay with her, like when Trent visited.
When CJ got up from the table I naturally accompanied her, but sure enough, she shut the door on me, so I went back to my station under Del’s legs. Del rewarded me with a tiny piece of chicken.
“Emily. How long is she planning to stay?” Emily’s mother asked.
“I don’t know. God, Mom, she was kicked out of her own house.”
“I’m not trying to say Gloria Mahoney’s a good mother,” Emily’s mom said.
“Mahoney? Is she the one who came to the Halloween party dressed as a stripper?” the father asked.
“Stripper?” Del chirped brightly.
“Las Vegas showgirl,” Emily’s mother corrected sternly. “I didn’t realize she was so effective at grabbing your attention.”
The father made an uncomfortable noise in his throat.
“She’s always embarrassing us,” Emily interjected. “One time she brought a date home and the two of them sat down to watch what we were watching on TV, and then right there in front of us—”
“Enough!” Emily’s mom said loudly.
There was a silence. I licked Del’s pants so he’d know I was still there.
“What I am trying to say,” the mom said in quieter tones, “is that I know that CJ has a difficult home situation, but…”
“She can’t live here,” the father said.
“She’s not. It’s just temporary! God, Dad!”
“I like her,” Del said.
“This isn’t about liking her, Son; it’s about what is right,” the father said.
“I like her, too,” the mother said. “But she’s a girl who makes bad choices. She’s suspended from school, she’s been to jail—”
“It was juvie and it wasn’t her fault,” Emily said. “I can’t stand this.”
“Yes, and the boy who is responsible is standing on our front porch,” the mother replied.
“What?” the dad said. I looked over at his legs, which had jerked under the table a bit.
“Plus … I heard her in the bathroom last night. She was throwing up,” the mother said.
“So?” Emily said.
“That boy is not coming in here,” the father said.
Del tossed me a piece of broccoli, which I didn’t want but ate just to keep the treats coming.
“She was throwing up on purpose,” the mother said.
“Oh, Mother,” Emily said.
“How do you do that?” Del asked.
“She sticks her finger down her throat. Don’t you ever try it,” the mother warned.
“I don’t see what’s the big deal,” Emily said.
The front door slammed.
“Del, not a word of what we’ve been talking about,” the father said.
CJ came around the corner and she was upset. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. I sprang out from under the table and ran to her side. She wiped tears from her face. “I need to be excused,” she said in a low voice.
I followed her back to the bedroom she was sharing with Emily. CJ threw herself on the bed and I jumped up with her and she held me and I felt some of her sadness going away. Helping CJ be less sad was one of my most important jobs.
I only wished I was better at it. Sometimes the dark feelings were buried so deep in CJ they felt as if they’d be there forever.
Later that night Emily and CJ sat on the floor and ate pizza and ice cream and fed me little bits of it.
“Shane says if he can’t have me no one will,” CJ said. “Like we’re on a soap opera or something.”
I saw Emily’s eyes grow larger. (I was mostly watching Emily because she didn’t eat her crusts and CJ did.)
“But you broke up!”
“I know; I told him that. But he said he loved me in a special way no one else can, and that he would wait forever no matter how long it took. That’s how intelligent he is—I told him forever is actually forever, so we didn’t have to guess how long it would take.”
“How did he even find you?”
“He’s been calling like everybody, asking where I was staying,” CJ said. “God! He can’t open a book, but he can work the phones to track me down. He’ll probably be in a call center someday, selling life insurance over the phone. Oh wait, that would be hard work. Forget it.” She took what I was sad to see was the last piece of pizza. “You want this?”
“God no, I was full like three pieces ago.”
“I didn’t eat much dinner.”
“I don’t blame you.” Emily tossed me a piece of crust and I snagged it out of the air and dispatched it with a single chew, ready to do the trick again.
“You want any ice cream?” CJ asked. I heard the question in her voice as she picked up the carton, and wondered if maybe she was thinking of giving me some ice cream. The thought made my mouth water and I licked my lips.
“No, get it out of my sight.”
“I’ll probably gain like ten pounds,” CJ said.
“What? I wish I had your legs; mine are thunder thighs.”
“No, you look great. I’m the one with the big butt.”
“I’m seriously dieting after New Year’s.”
“Me, too.”
“Oh, stop, you look amazing right now,” Emily said. I was staring at her, willing her to pick up another piece of crust and toss it.
“I go to community service tomorrow,” CJ said. “It’s training service dogs.”
“It sounds like fun.”
“I know, right? The list was like, pick up trash along the highway, or pick up trash in the park, or pick up trash at the library—and then at the end of the list, work for this service dog place. I thought, which one will look better on my résumé? I mean, who knows, maybe I’ll want to go into waste management; then all the trash experience would help me with my career.”
Emily laughed.
“God, I can’t believe I ate all that,” CJ said, falling back with a groan.
The next morning CJ woke up before anyone else, showered, and took me for a car ride (front seat!). We arrived at a big building and I smelled dogs as soon as my paws touched the parking lot. I heard them, too, several dogs barking.
A woman greeted us. She said, “Hi, I’m Andi,” and then she dropped to her knees and reached for me, her long black hair draping my face. “Who is this?” she asked.
She was older than CJ but younger than Gloria and she smelled like dogs.
“This is Molly. I’m CJ,” CJ said.
“Molly! I had a Molly once. She was a good dog.” The affection pouring off of Andi was intoxicating. I licked her and she kissed me right back. Most people don’t like to kiss a dog’s lips. “Molly Molly Molly,” she crooned. “You are so beautiful; yes, you are. What a great dog.”
I liked Andi.
“What is she, a spaniel-poodle mix?” Andi asked, still kissing me and petting me.
“Maybe. Mother was a poodle, but the father nobody knows. Are you a spoodle, Molly?”
I wagged at my name. Andi finally stood up, but she kept her hand down within reach and I licked it.
“It’s a godsend you’re here; I really need the help,” Andi said as we walked inside the building. There was a big open space with kennels on either side and lots of dogs in the kennels. They all barked at me and each other, but I ignored them because I was a special-status dog, allowed to be out free while the rest of them were in cages.
“I don’t really know anything about training dogs, but I’m willing to learn,” CJ said.
Andi laughed. “Well, okay, but what you’re really going to do is free me up so I can do the training. The dogs need to be watered and f
ed and their kennels cleaned, and they need to be walked outside.”
CJ came to a halt. “So, wait, what is this place?”
“Technically we’re a dog rescue, that’s our main function, but my grant is letting me use the facility to research cancer detection. Dogs have a sense of smell that’s as much as a hundred thousand times more intense than ours, and some studies show that they can detect cancer on people’s breath before any other diagnosis has been made. Since early detection is the fastest way to a cure, this could be really important. So I’m taking the methodologies from the studies and trying to put them into practice.”
“You’re training dogs to smell cancer.”
“Exactly. I’m not the only one doing this, of course, but most trainers are working with dogs to detect specimens in the lab. They let the dog sniff a test tube. I’m thinking, what if it could work in the field, like at a health fair, or a community center?”
“So you’re training the dogs to go from person to person and see if they detect cancer.”
“Right! But my part-time employee got a full-time job and my full-timer is out on maternity. I’ve got some volunteers, of course, but they’re mainly interested in walking the dogs and not so much cleaning the kennels. That’s where you come in.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to tell me my job is going to be picking up dog poo,” CJ said.
Andi laughed. “I’m trying not to tell you that, but there it is. My aunt is a clerk for the judge, which is how I got approved for community service. At first I posted a very detailed description of the position and nobody picked me, small wonder. Then I changed it to be just working with dogs. I figure, though, you have to do community service and it’s sort of a punishment for your crimes, right? In the end, it’s not supposed to be all fun. So, what did you do?”
CJ let a few moments go by with no sound but dogs barking. “I let a guy talk me into doing something stupid.”
“You mean you can get arrested for that? Wow, I’m in big trouble, then,” Andi said. They both laughed and I wagged my tail. “Okay, you ready to get started?”
It was a strange day. CJ would put me in the outdoor pen with a dog to play with and be gone for several minutes. Then she’d come out and walk the other dog and me on leashes around the block. Her shoes got wetter and wetter throughout the day, as did her pants, and both were fragrant with dog urine. It was so much fun!
At the end of the day, CJ was rubbing her back and sighing. We stood and watched Andi play with a big brown male dog. There were several metal buckets and Andi would lead the dog to each one and the dog would sniff the inside of the bucket. At one of them, Andi would say, “Smell that? Now drop!” and the dog would lie down and Andi would give him a treat. Andi came over to us when she saw us watching, the dog by her side.
I edged up to the dog and we sniffed each other’s rear ends. “This is Luke. Luke, you like Molly?”
We both looked up at our names. Luke was a serious dog, I could tell. He was focused on the game he had been playing with Andi. He wasn’t like Rocky, who was interested only in fun and in loving Trent.
“That’s six hours total with the lunch break, right?” Andi said.
“Yeah. Six blissful hours. One hundred ninety-four to go.”
Andi laughed. “I’ll sign the form at the end of the week. Thanks, you did a good job.”
“Maybe I have a future in dog poop,” CJ said.
We took a car ride with me in the front seat! We went to Emily’s house. When we pulled in the driveway, Gloria was standing there talking to Emily’s mother. CJ stiffened when she saw her mother. Gloria fluttered a hand to her own throat.
“Oh great,” CJ muttered. “Just great.”
THIRTEEN
“I’ll let you two talk,” Emily’s mother said when we approached. She went inside the house. I stayed by CJ’s side, and CJ didn’t move at all, just stood there. Gloria’s powerful arsenal of scents wafted over me, obliterating everything else.
“Well,” Gloria said, “don’t you have anything to say to me?” Gloria was, as usual, very unhappy.
“I see you got a new Cadillac,” CJ said. “Nice car.”
“Not that. I’ve been worried sick about you. You never once called to tell me where you were. I could barely sleep.”
“What do you want, Gloria?”
There was a motion at the big front window. It was Del, who had pulled aside the drapes and was looking out. As I watched, his mother’s hand appeared, grabbing him and pulling him away.
“I have just one thing to say to you, and then that’s it, no discussion,” Gloria said.
“Sounds like a fair debate,” CJ said.
“I have, at great expense, consulted an attorney who practices family law. She says that I can file a motion of judgment with the court and force you to move home. She also says that I do not have to be held prisoner in my own house to a dog. So I am going to file for that, too. You have no choice and the judge could even give you a curfew. So that’s it. It will cost a lot of money to go to court and you’d lose, so I came to tell you that. There’s no sense spending the expenses for court when we could take a nice trip or something for the same money.”
It looked like nothing interesting was going to happen for a while, so I lay down with a yawn.
“Well?” Gloria said.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed to talk.”
“You can speak about what I just told you; I’m just not going to stand here and argue with you. You’re a minor and the law is on my side.”
“Okay,” CJ said.
Gloria sniffed. “Okay what?”
“Okay, let’s do what you said.”
“All right. That’s better. You’ve been very disrespectful and I have no idea what these people think that you’ve been living here with them. I am your mother and I have rights under the Constitution.”
“No, I meant let’s do what you said and go to court.”
“What?”
“I think you’re right,” CJ said. “Let’s let a judge decide. I’ll hire a lawyer. You said there were provisions for withdrawing money from Dad’s trust for my welfare. So I’ll get a lawyer, and we’ll go to court. You’ll fight for custody and I’ll fight to have you declared unfit to be a mother.”
“Oh, I see. Now I’m the horrible mother. You went to jail, and you got suspended, and you lie and you disobey, and I have devoted my life to you, but I’m the bad one.”
They were both angry, but Gloria was shouting. I sat up and anxiously put a paw up on CJ’s leg because I wanted to leave. She petted me but didn’t look at me.
“I hope someday you have a child as awful as you,” Gloria said.
“Trent said you didn’t feed Molly at all.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“That’s true; we were talking about what a bad child I was. So what do you think? Should I call a lawyer? Or do you recognize that Molly is my dog and that I’m keeping her? I mean, I can keep living here.” CJ gestured toward the house and, as she did so, a shadow backed away from the front window. It looked too tall to be Del.
“I don’t want you living with other people. It looks terrible,” Gloria said.
“So what do you want to do?”
That evening we moved back into our room at CJ’s house. Trent came over with Rocky and I was overjoyed to see my brother, who sniffed me up and down, suspicious of all the new smells. When we went outside, snow was falling and Rocky ran around in it, kicking up his heels and rolling in it until he was all wet. Trent came out and rubbed Rocky all over with a towel and Rocky groaned with pleasure. I wished I had rolled in the snow, too.
After that, things were back to normal, except that CJ didn’t leave to do school—instead, I got to take a car ride with her most mornings to play with Andi and her dogs!
The first morning we returned to Andi’s place, she greeted me by throwing her arms wide and kissing me and hugging me. I loved her affections and her wonderf
ul dog smells. Then she stood.
“I thought maybe you’d given up,” Andi said to CJ.
“No, I just had … There were family issues I needed to deal with. You didn’t call the court or anything, did you?” CJ replied.
“No, but I wished you’d called me.”
“Yeah, I’m … I should have. For some reason I never think to call people.”
“Well, okay, let’s get to work.”
The dogs at Andi’s building weren’t allowed to go out into the snow except for walks on leashes, so while CJ cleaned out their kennels my job was to play with the dogs in a fenced area inside the big room in the building. A lot of the dogs didn’t want to play, though. A couple of them were too old to do anything but sniff me and then lie down, and a couple just didn’t know how to play, snarling and snapping at me while I danced out of the way. Those dogs seemed sad and frightened and were put in another inside pen, one at a time, while CJ cleaned their kennels.
This left me with a lot of time to watch Andi play with Luke, her big brown male, and two females, one yellow and one black. The game was this: Some old people sat in metal chairs sitting far away from each other, and Andi would lead the dogs one at a time up to sniff them. The people didn’t play with the dogs, though—sometimes humans like to just sit, even if there’s a dog right there. Then Andi would put the dogs in their kennels and the people would all stand up and change position, sitting in new seats.
She told all the dogs they were good dogs, but she really got excited with Luke. Every time Luke was led to a man with no hair, Luke would carefully sniff, then lie down and cross his paws and put his head on his paws. Andi would give him a treat right there on the spot. “Good dog, Luke!” she would praise.
I wanted a treat, too, but when I dropped down and crossed my front paws Andi didn’t even notice and CJ was unimpressed. That’s how life is—some dogs get treats for doing almost nothing and some dogs are good dogs and get no treats at all.
At one point CJ came to get me and we went out to the outdoor pen. Several inches of snow were on the ground and I crunched through it to find a good place to squat. CJ put the burning stick in her mouth and exhaled smoke.