Strays Like Us Read online

  “What do you mean, it’s just temporary?” I asked.

  “We’ll just use this until we can train him to come back when we call him. Then we can really let him run.” Margery jerked her chin toward the house. “Let’s go inside. I’m starving. After we eat, you can show me what you did in the shop.”

  I followed her into the house, trying hard to push down my rising panic. Still, I knew there was no getting around it. She was going to find out what I’d done to her sculpture. It was only a matter of time. I just couldn’t imagine what would come next. Carmella would definitely be called; that was a given. I’d probably be sent back, placed with some other family. Maybe Margery would even press charges; after all, I’d destroyed her personal property for no good reason. People called the police about stuff like that, didn’t they?

  “… and he really did break his neck.” I snapped to attention as Margery mentioned Mr. Carder. “Or at least a vertebra inside his neck. It broke from his fall down the steps. They’re not sure if he’ll ever walk again.”

  I knew there were thirty-three bones in the spine and that six or seven of them were in the neck. I wondered which one of Mr. Carder’s had broken. “Is he in a cast?”

  “More of a head brace.” Margery made hand motions around her head to show me. “It’s like a huge open cube with rods in it. All the rods are holding his head and neck in place so that they can heal.”

  I shuddered, thinking of it. “Is he still unconscious?”

  “No.” Margery peeled back the plastic on a package of ground meat. “We actually had a conversation. Maybe the first real conversation I’ve had with the man in twenty-seven years.”

  “He can talk?”

  Margery nodded. “Watch me first.” She took a chunk of the meat, rolled it between her palms until it formed a ball, and then pressed it lightly between the heels of her hands until a patty formed. “Okay?”

  “Got it.” I took the package as Margery slid it over to me.

  “Oh, he talked all right,” Margery said. “Mostly about you.”

  My hands froze around a wad of meat. “Me?”

  “You and Ardelia. He said you guys saved his life. That if you hadn’t been near the fence or heard him calling, he would have died there on that floor. All alone.”

  I could feel Margery watching me, but I couldn’t look at her. Not yet. “I’m sure someone would’ve found him. Eventually.”

  “Who?” Margery washed her hands, then reached inside a drawer and pulled out a knife. “Who would’ve found him? He doesn’t talk to anyone. He doesn’t have any friends, as far as I can see. Heck, his only son still hadn’t been to the hospital when I dropped by. No one would’ve heard him, Fred. You did that.”

  “Delia’s the one who heard him, actually.” I concentrated hard on shaping the meat into a patty. It was cold and squishy. “She’s the one who should get the credit.”

  “Delia?” Margery asked.

  Something lurched in my chest as I realized my mistake. “Yeah, you know, Ardelia.”

  “That’s what she likes to be called? Delia?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, you’re both heroes in my book.” Margery began peeling an onion. “Delia for hearing him in the first place, and you for staying with him like you did until the ambulance got there.” She paused. “He told me that, you know. That you stayed there with him until help arrived.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded again without turning around.

  “That meant more to him than anything.” I could hear Margery walking toward me, and I hunched my shoulders, as if the motion might make her stop. It was agonizing, sitting and listening to her go on about me like I was some kind of superwoman while the shattered remains of her sculpture lay less than one hundred feet behind us. Margery stopped when she reached the table and pressed her hands down flat against it. “Look at me, Fred.”

  I bit my lip and raised my eyes.

  “Mr. Carder thought he was going to die.” She spoke slowly, wanting me to absorb her words. “Literally. He said he felt as though he was passing from one world into the next as he lay there, just drifting, sort of, between the two of them. He wasn’t too clear about the other place, but he said that it was you, Fred, you, who he held on to in this one.” She paused, her eyes squinting at the corners. “It’s a big thing, what you did, whether you realize it or not.”

  The way she was looking at me was so intense I couldn’t do anything but blink. Margery smiled a little and nodded, almost as if she was encouraging me to say something.

  Anything.

  “I did something terrible today,” I whispered.

  Margery stood very still for a moment, looking down at her smashed sculpture. I stood all the way across the room, behind the table, and waited. My face burned with shame, and I could hear my heart banging around in my chest like a tennis ball. She stooped down and picked something up. Fingered it in her hand for a moment. “And you did this why?”

  I didn’t have an answer. The real one, which started with Toby wrecking the place and ended with me thinking about Mom, was too complicated. I still wasn’t sure it was a real answer anyway. “I don’t know.” My voice was a whisper.

  Margery stood back up. She tossed her long braid over her shoulder and turned around. “ ‘I don’t know’ is not an answer, Fred.”

  I stared down at the table. My insides felt like Jell-O.

  “I want an answer,” Margery said. “And we’re not leaving here until you give me one.” She set the piece on the table and waited.

  The silence was unbearable. Maybe even worse than the silence in the apartment with Mom. My brain raced this way and that as I tried to decide where to start. How much to say. How much to leave out.

  “Just tell me what happened.” Margery settled herself on a stool and hiked one leg over the other. She wasn’t going anywhere. “Stop trying to figure out what version of the story you think will make me the least angry and just tell me the truth.”

  I glanced over at her, wondering if she could read my mind.

  “I was your age once, too.” Margery raised her eyebrows and tapped the side of her head. “I remember how it works in there.”

  I told her all of it, even the part where I’d gotten so furious at Delia for leaving the paper bag behind and then later, when we’d practiced her standing up to Michelle Palmer. I told her about Carmella calling and the hearing that she and Mom and me would all have to go to in a few weeks so that Mom could get me back. I told her how, after that, I’d returned to the shop and told Delia she had to go home. And that after Delia had left, I’d thought about Mom in the apartment in Philadelphia, which had made me so angry that I took a wrench and smashed the sculpture to bits. When I finished, I hung my head and stared at the floor. I was exhausted.

  Margery hadn’t said a word during the whole thing, not even to ask a question. Now she uncrossed her legs. Folded her hands. “And that’s everything?” she asked.

  I nodded, but it wasn’t the truth. I’d left out the part about why thinking about Mom had made me so upset. And of course no one knew what Mom had asked me to do when she’d called. No one would ever know that.

  “This isn’t going to come as any surprise to you,” Margery said, watching me steadily, “but you are one angry girl.”

  I looked down at the floor.

  “I’m not telling you that to embarrass you,” she continued. “Being angry isn’t a bad thing. And it doesn’t make you a bad person.” She paused. “I’m speaking from experience. I know what it’s like to be that ticked off. It’s horrible because the anger runs so deep and hurts so bad. Sometimes it almost feels like an actual, living thing inside you. An animal, maybe.”

  I didn’t dare look up. My eyes were glued to the floor as I concentrated on breathing in and out. I felt transparent, as if Margery could see all the way inside me.

  “You have two options here, Fred. You can feed that living thing and help it grow into something so big that you beat up everyone at Conest
oga Middle School and destroy the rest of my personal property. Or you can starve it by putting all that energy into something else. Something better. The way I did.”

  I flicked my eyes up. “What’d you do?”

  Margery jerked her head toward the statue. “I started working with junk. Finding it, cleaning it up, making stuff out of it.”

  “How’d that help?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly.” Margery hooked her thumbs through the belt loops on her jeans. “Taking things people had thrown to the curb and turning them into something beautiful just made me feel good.” She shrugged. “It quieted that animal inside.”

  I wanted to ask her what kind of animal she had inside—and why—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Those were big, scary questions. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers. “I’m sorry about your sculpture,” I said instead. “I’d do anything to take it back.”

  Margery watched me for a long time without saying anything. “You don’t have to take it back,” she said finally. “But you do have to rebuild it.”

  “Rebuild it?” I echoed. “But I don’t know what you want it to be.”

  “I don’t want it to be anything,” Margery said. “Except what you decide to make it. I want you to start from the beginning and build something all your own. And I want you to do it before you go back to Philadelphia.”

  I stared at Margery, wondering if she was kidding.

  “I don’t know how to do that,” I said finally.

  “You’ll figure it out.” She stood up. “And if you’re angry that I’m making you do this, that’s okay. When you learn how to use the anger inside you to create instead of destroy, you’ll realize it’s one of the greatest tools you’ll ever have.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I didn’t want to tell her that and risk listening to some twenty-minute explanation about feelings. “Okay,” I said instead, shaking my head.

  “Think of it as your punishment,” Margery said. “Which, considering the crime, is a very generous one in my book. Now, let’s go back inside and eat. I don’t know if you remember what I told you about me when I get hungry, but it ain’t pretty.”

  We didn’t talk much during dinner. I think we were both drained from the talk in the shop, and there wasn’t really all that much to say after that anyway. We worked with Toby, though, after we cleaned up, letting him off his leash and bringing him back inside the shop.

  “You get a chance at all to do the paw press?” Margery asked as Toby jumped up on her.

  “Yeah.” I watched as she grabbed his paws in both hands and squeezed, all the while telling him no. Toby dropped back down immediately and whined. “I’m not as good at it as you, though. He keeps jumping up on me.”

  “He’ll keep doing that until it clicks.” Margery squatted down and patted Toby on the head. “That’s how it works with animals. You’ve got to be consistent. Do the same thing, over and over and over again. That’s the only way they learn.”

  I told her about Delia’s brother then, about how their dog, Sampson, had drowned him by accident.

  Margery shook her head. “That was an untrained dog,” she said grimly. “And he probably thought the boy was in danger, which is why he jumped in after him. What a tragedy.”

  I thought about telling her the rest of the story, too, how Delia’s parents had stopped talking afterward, and how they still didn’t talk, not even to her, which made her feel like she didn’t belong here. That she hadn’t ever been meant to be here. But I didn’t. That was between Delia and me. And for some reason, even though I was unsure where things between Delia and me stood, I wanted to keep it that way.

  “Let’s start with sit,” Margery said, standing back up. She reached into the front pocket of her jeans, pulled out a kibble, and held it by her side. “Sit, Toby!” She followed the command by slicing her arm up and lifting the kibble toward her shoulder. Toby peered up at her with his big eyes. “Sit!” she said again, repeating the hand motion. Toby whined. “Sit!” Margery repeated the command, along with the hand slice, at least ten more times until, suddenly, without warning, Toby lowered his haunches and sat down.

  “Oh, man!” I clapped my hands. “He did it!”

  “Of course he did it. He’s a very, very smart boy. And now he gets a reward.” She held the kibble out to Toby and grinned as he snapped it up. “You should always reward them when they do what you ask. Never punish. Always, always reward.”

  She stroked his black-and-white fur with her thick hand and cooed a bit more at him. And when she did that, I got the feeling that I’d had earlier with Delia and the curtain. It wasn’t as dramatic; Margery was only pulling back a little part of her curtain. But it was a real part. A true part. And it made me happy, seeing it.

  Maybe, I thought later, there were more sides to Margery I hadn’t seen yet.

  Maybe everyone hid pieces of themselves until it was safe to bring them out and show them to someone else.

  “Who taught you how to do all that?” I asked later, after we’d settled Toby in his little bed and gone back into the kitchen. Margery was sipping her tea, and I was drinking a glass of milk. “The training, I mean. With dogs and stuff?”

  “My father.” Margery didn’t look at me.

  “What was he like?”

  “He was a whiz with animals.” Margery slurped from her mug. “Not so much with people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Margery didn’t answer right away. And when she did, I could tell that she was trying to sound as though it was no big deal. Or like she didn’t care. Which meant, of course, that it was. And that she still did. “I didn’t grow up in a real happy house. Mostly because of my father. He was miserable, so he made sure the rest of us were, too. Think of Mr. Carder,” she said, taking another slug of tea. “And then triple that.”

  I winced, trying to imagine someone that awful. It was impossible.

  “But he was nice to the dog,” Margery said. “He loved Sebastian. We called him Bash. He was a big golden retriever with sweet brown eyes. My father spent hours with him, training him, taking him for walks. Bash slept in his room every night, right at the foot of his bed. I still think Bash was the only thing in my father’s life that gave him any joy. Everything else made him angry or irritable.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, lots of reasons. My mother died a few years after my little sister was born. He hated his job, but he was stuck taking care of my sister and me, all by himself. He’d never wanted girls. Only boys.” Margery waved her hand as if swatting a fly. “Blah, blah, blah.”

  “How old were you when your mom died?”

  “I was …” Margery paused, thinking back. “Fourteen? No, fifteen.”

  “Not too much older than me.”

  She shook her head. “My sister was only five.”

  “And you took care of her? Afterward?”

  “For a while. I wasn’t very good with Barbie dolls and playing dress-up.” She smiled sadly. “My father wasn’t, either. He ended up sending her to live with relatives. And by then, I’d saved up enough money to buy myself a bike and I hightailed it out of there.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Sixteen,” Margery said. “Almost seventeen.”

  “You just dropped out of school and rode your motorcycle across the country when you were sixteen years old?” I was incredulous. “What about money? How did you live?”

  “I had some saved. And my mother had left me some jewelry, which I sold. It held me over for a while. When I ran out, I did odd jobs for people until I got enough money again to go a little farther. I made it all the way to Oregon that way.”

  I shook my head. “Man.”

  “I stayed in Oregon for almost ten years,” Margery said. “Worked for a big logging company, cutting down trees. Oh, I loved it. It rains a lot in Oregon, so the air is different than it is here. Heavy. Dense. I remember standing in the middle of a forest once, and it started to rain. Poured, really, i
n sheets. Buckets and buckets of water. Everyone put their tools down and ran for the tent, but I just stood there and let it soak me to the skin. It felt so good. Like it was washing away all the stuff that I’d driven out to Oregon to try to forget.”

  We sat without saying anything. I wondered if that rainstorm had really washed away what she’d left behind. Or if it was still with her.

  “Did you ever see your little sister again?”

  “Once.” Margery blinked, as if returning from somewhere far away. “When I came back from Oregon to bury our father.”

  A little voice in my head said, “Stop. You’re being nosy, asking all these questions. Remember how you felt when Delia did it.” But I ignored it. “What happened?”

  “It wasn’t much of a reunion.” Margery stared down at her tea. “She just needed some money, really, and then she disappeared.”

  I got an odd feeling then. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but it made me nervous. “Where’d she go?”

  “I have no idea,” Margery said slowly. “Could be anywhere.” She brought her mug to her mouth and tipped it all the way back. When she lowered it again, her lower lip was trembling.

  “But …” I struggled for the right words. “Why don’t you know?”

  “Because my sister is an addict,” Margery said. “Which means that the only thing that matters to her is where she’s going to get her next fix. She calls now and again, and promises she’s staying clean so I’ll wire her some cash. But she never means it.” Margery pressed her lips into a thin line. “It used to break my heart, imagining her that way out there, but now I think it’s better that she keeps her distance. Trying to love someone who can’t be honest with you is always a no-win situation.”

  My heart was beating so hard in my chest that I was sure Margery could hear it. I didn’t know if the anger that had started boiling like a pot of witches’ brew at the bottom of my stomach was going to burble over the edges and swallow me whole. My voice was hoarse, just slightly over a whisper. “You can stop now.”

  “What?” Margery looked startled.