They May Not Mean To, But They Do(60)

Freddie was crying, just a few tears. Joy had never seen her cry. She was such an odd little thing, ebullient and tough all at once. Poignant tears, not like me, Joy thought, with my weeping and wailing every minute. Not like Molly, either.

“No one really understands this particular abyss,” Joy said. “Our abyss.”

“No, they don’t. But why should they, I suppose.”

“We’re an exclusive club.”

“The Abyss Club,” Freddie said, laughing. She took her hand back, wiped her eyes with the big cloth napkin.

They had ricotta cheesecake and cannolis for dessert.

“I’ll pay for it later,” Joy said. “So I always say. But it never stops me.”

*

Molly and Freddie disappeared the next morning and came home with a very small dog.

“You can walk it,” they said.

“Step on it is more likely.”

“Listen, it’s perfect: Freddie and I went to the pound and rescued this little fellow. Now we have a dog, right?”

“Apparently.”

“But we both have jobs, right?”

“Thank god. I don’t care what the ‘experts’ report about the economy, people are suffering, that’s all I can say.”

“We have a dog, but because of our jobs we don’t have time to walk the dog. So, Freddie and I really need you, Mom. We need you to walk our dog.”

“It would be a big help to us,” Freddie said. She smiled, and Joy of course smiled back and took the new plaid leash attached to the tiny dog.

They were such nice girls, and she appreciated the thought and effort that had gone into the plan. It was creative of the girls, she had to give them that. And she was touched that they cared enough about her mental health to go to such lengths to give her something to do. It was not their fault that the dog refused to cooperate.

The dog was named Gatto, which was amusing. But Gatto did not like to take walks. Gatto hated to take walks. The size of a large rat, he was part Chihuahua, part poodle, part parrot, Joy thought, for he was a very vocal little dog, making his wishes known with a remarkably varied vocabulary of squeaks and yelps, and his wishes were to stay home, curled on Joy’s lap.

“Gatto, indeed,” she said. Gatto squeaked, snorted, stretched, and balled himself up again. Joy patted his head, the size of a nectarine, and dozed uncomfortably. She was afraid to move. She did not want to disturb him.

*

The days went by, blue skies and pretty smells. She carried Gatto with her on her strolls, mostly as a way of starting conversations. She was uneasy talking to the girls, noticing their impatience, how they interrupted with unnecessarily big smiles to change the subject. Was she talking too much? Had she become boring? She supposed she was and she had. She became more and more quiet at home. But on her walks all kinds of people stopped her to admire the dog. They laughed when she told them his name.

“My daughter got him for me so I could take him on walks, but he doesn’t like to walk,” she would say, and they would laugh again.

Aaron, she thought, you would not like it here. There’s no normal place to get coffee, no normal barber, just an overpriced coffee place where people sit on uncomfortable, oversized wooden boxes, just hair salons for skinny young men. You would not like it here, but you are gone. She sometimes thought he was there beside her, shaking his head at the young people riding bicycles, no helmets, carrying surfboards under one arm.

“Where are all the old people?” she asked.

“It’s gotten sort of gentrified,” said Freddie. “A lot of tech companies moved in.”

“But where are the old people?”

Molly shrugged. “Assisted living?”

Joy did not ask again.

*

Because Gatto did not like to walk and Joy had gotten so much stronger, Molly and Freddie revised their plans for Joy to be useful. They got her a tricycle.

“It’s red,” she said. She did not know what else to say. What is there to say when presented with an adult tricycle? It had a basket for Gatto. It had an old-fashioned bell. It was gigantic. It was a tricycle. It was red.

“You can ride on the boardwalk. It’s great exercise.”

“You can do errands,” Freddie added. “Which are so…”

“Useful!”

Molly often finished Freddie’s sentences, and vice versa.

“Useful.” Joy wanted to be useful. She wanted that almost as much as she did not want to be lonely. But was a tricycle really the road to relevance? Were errands the answer? And she would look like a kook.

“Wear a hat for the sun, Mom.”

A kook in a hat.

“We got you a water bottle,” Freddie said.

*

Joy had ridden just such a red tricycle when she was a child. It was not dignified then. It was not dignified now.

“I know they mean well,” she said to Natalie one morning when both girls were off at work and she could speak freely on the phone.

“Don’t you know how to ride a two-wheeler?”

“Of course I do. They wanted me to ride it to the grocery store to get milk yesterday.”

“I thought you were lactose-intolerant.”

“I am, but I don’t want to hurt their feelings. But luckily, I had a terrible bout of diarrhea and couldn’t go. At least it’s flat here. But they really are making an effort, they’re trying.”