Angie said, “This girl could very much regret running away. Harvard was waiting for her. Yale. Wherever she wanted to go.”
The woman yanked on her dog’s leash. “So she could, what, enter some cubicle at a slightly higher rate of pay? Hang her fucking Harvard diploma on the partition wall? She spends the next thirty-forty years learning how to short stock and steal people’s jobs and houses, their 401(k)s? But that’s okay because she went to Harvard. Sleeps like a baby at night, tells herself she’s not to blame, it’s the system. Then one day she finds a lump in her breast. And it’s not okay anymore, but nobody gives a shit, honey, because you made your fucking bed. So do us all a favor and fucking die.”
The woman’s eyes were red by the time she finished and her free hand shook as she reached into her purse and came back with a cigarette. The air in the park felt raw. Angie looked like she was in minor shock. I’d taken one step back from the woman and both the gay couple and the elderly couple were staring at us. The woman had never raised her voice, but the rage she’d expelled into the atmosphere had been so torn and pitiable it rattled us all. And it wasn’t rare. Quite the contrary. You asked a simple question lately or made an innocuous aside and suddenly you were the recipient of a howl of loss and fury. We no longer understood how we’d gotten here. We couldn’t grasp what had happened to us. We woke up one day and all the street signs had been stolen, all the navigation systems had shorted out. The car had no gas, the living room had no furniture, the imprint in the bed beside us had been smoothed over.
“I’m sorry” was all I could think of to say.
She put the shaky cigarette to her lips and lit it with a shaky Bic. “Don’t know what you’re sorry for.”
“I just am,” I said.
She nodded and gave me and then Angie a soft, helpless look. “It just sucks. You know? This whole raw deal they sell us.”
She bit her lower lip and dropped her eyes. Then she and her Labradoodle walked off toward the gate that led out the back of the park.
Angie lit her own cigarette as I approached the elderly couple with the photo of Amanda. The man gave it a glance, but the woman wouldn’t even meet my eyes.
I asked her husband if he recognized Amanda.
He gave the photograph another glance and then shook his head.
“Her name’s Amanda,” I said.
“We’re not much on names here,” he said. “It’s a dog park. That woman who just left? She’s Lucky’s Owner. We don’t know her name beyond that, but we know she had a husband once, a family, but she doesn’t have them anymore. Couldn’t tell you why exactly. Just that it’s sad. My wife and me? We’re Dahlia’s Owners. Those two gentlemen? They’re Linus’s and Schroeder’s Owners. You, though? You’re just the Two Ass-holes Who Made Lucky’s Owner Sadder. Good day to you.”
They all left. They walked out the side entrance to the park and congregated on the sidewalk. They opened their car doors and their dogs hopped in. We stood in the dog park without a dog, feeling ever the fools. There was nothing to say, so we just stood there as Angie smoked her cigarette.
“I guess we should go,” I said.
Angie nodded. “Let’s use that gate, though.”
She indicated the gate on the other side of the dog park and we turned toward it, because we didn’t want to exit past this group who suddenly despised us. The far gate led into the children’s area and then the sidewalk beyond, where we’d parked our car.
A different group congregated here—mothers and their children and their baby carriages and sippy cups and formula bottles and diaper bags. There were half a dozen women and one guy. The guy wore jogging clothes and stood by a jogging stroller slightly away from the group as he drank continuously from a water bottle the length of my leg. He seemed to be modeling for the women and they seemed to be enjoying it.
Except for one. She stood a few feet away, closest to the short fence that separated the children’s park from the dog park. She’d strapped her infant to her chest in a Björn, the baby’s back to her chest so the baby could look out at the world. The baby wasn’t interested in the world, though, she was interested in squalling. She calmed down for a second when the mother put a thumb in her mouth, but then, when she realized it wasn’t the nipple or the pacifier or the bottle she’d been looking for, the howling started again and her body shook like she was being electrocuted. I remembered when Gabby had behaved exactly the same way, how helpless I’d felt, how utterly useless.
The woman kept looking over her shoulder. I assumed she’d sent someone for the bottle or the pacifier and was wondering where the hell they were. She bounced on her feet and the baby bounced with her but not enough to stop screaming.
The mother’s eyes met mine and I was about to tell her it gets better, a lot better, but then her small eyes narrowed and mine did, too, both of our mouths opening. The hair on top of my head grew damp.
We hadn’t seen each other in twelve years, but there she stood.
Amanda.
And her baby.
Chapter Nineteen
She couldn’t run. Not with a baby strapped to her chest. Not with a stroller and a diaper bag to retrieve. Even if she had track-star speed and Angie and I had blown ACLs, she’d still have to get in the car, turn over the engine, and strap the baby in all at once.
“Hey, Amanda.”
She watched me come. She didn’t wear that hunted look worn by a lot of people who don’t want to be found. Her gaze was level and open. The baby sucked her thumb into her mouth, having decided, I guess, that it was better than nothing, and Amanda used her other hand to stroke the top of the baby’s head where thin wisps of light brown hair formed swirls.
“Hi, Patrick. Hi, Angie.”
Twelve years.
“How you doing?” We reached the fence between her and us.
“Oh, you know.”
I nodded at the baby. “Pretty girl.”
Amanda gave the baby a tender glance. “She is, right?”
Amanda was pretty herself, but not in the way of models or beauty pageant contestants—her face had too much character, her eyes too much knowledge. Her slightly crooked nose was in perfect symmetry with her slightly crooked mouth. She wore her long brown hair down and heat-straightened so that it framed her small face and made her seem even smaller than she was.
The baby squirmed a bit and groaned, but then she went back to sucking Amanda’s thumb.