Patsy found a carton and began stuffing it with clothes for her and Annali. Pru cleaned up the various messes the dog had made, and found its leash, food, and bowl. She wondered if Whoop would start pissing everywhere again when he saw the dog. Patsy locked the front door, and they headed back out of town. Jenny was in her crate on the backseat, next to Annali, who spaced out stroking her hat-lovey, until she fell asleep. Patsy, who had started crying again, leaned her head against the window and fell asleep, too. Pru drove the rest of the way home, listening to the news on the radio and the sounds of Jenny gnawing on her rawhide bone.
THE HAIR ON WHOOP’S BACK STOOD UP WHEN THE puppy came running in. He flew to his former place under the couch, and Jenny raced after him. The dog’s nails on her parquet floors made Pru cringe. Jenny stopped suddenly, and made a puddle on the floor. Here we go again, thought Pru, reaching for the paper towels. Whoop let out a low, threatening yowl from under the couch, where Patsy had flopped, and Annali began running after the puppy.
Patsy camped out in the living room, where she took to falling asleep in front of the television Pru had finally bought, following the last weekend she’d had Annali. Annali and Pru took the bed. The first few nights, she woke up to the sound of Patsy’s crying in the living room; after a few awkward, early attempts to soothe her, Pru began rolling over and pulling a pillow over her head to block the sound.
There wasn’t much going on that gave shape to their lives. Pru felt as if they were all waiting for something to happen. In the morning, Annali played with her toys or carried her hat around, looking bored. Patsy watched TV, and Pru continued to look for work. The money she’d recently earned hadn’t gone far, even though she’d been careful with it, and she was getting dangerously near the end of her severance. After that, she’d have only her father’s inheritance, which she figured she’d better save for the nursing home, without a husband or kids to foot that bill.
One day, after much nagging from Pru to get up off the couch and at least go outside, Patsy finally went out while Annali took a nap. She came back looking even worse than when she’d left. Her eyes were red, her hair in a tangle, and she seemed uncharacteristically slow and heavy. It was as though she was inhabiting a different body altogether. Pru imagined her sitting in the park, weeping, dead leaves and trash swirling around her feet.
For days Patsy didn’t shower, phone anyone, or do anything besides sit in front of the TV and take her afternoon walks. Sometimes Pru tried to talk to her, but Patsy gave only the briefest of replies to her questions. Compared with what Patsy was going through, Pru’s grieving for Rudy seemed like some harmless sandbox dust-up. Patsy wasn’t just missing the life she thought she’d have, like Pru had done—the phantom children, the beautiful house in Cleveland Park—she was missing all that plus a person. Pru missed Rudy in the way you miss the electricity when it goes out. You think, Okay, I can’t check my e-mail, I’ll watch TV instead—damn it! It was annoying, persistent, and pretty much everywhere you turned, for a while, but then the lights came back on. Patsy missed Jacob the way you’d miss your hands, if they fell off.
Pru hated to say it, but if Patsy didn’t have Annali to think about, would she have held out for Jacob a little longer? Would faithful persistence have made any difference? Her slide downhill was, in the long term, very fast, but for those living with her, a day seemed like a whole lifetime. One minute, she’d be walking around the apartment like a stoned zombie; the next, she couldn’t stop crying. Increasingly, Pru found herself in charge of Annali.
“Are you sick, Mommy?” Annali would say, hovering nearby. “Does your tummy hurt?” Or, “Are you mad, Mommy?” Patsy tried to play with her, but after a few minutes she would turn away, back to watching Oprah, or staring out the bay window at the view over the rooftops. She couldn’t get lost in her thoughts, or wherever it was she was trying to go, with Annali pulling at her legs. Pru did what she could to distract Annali, whose eyes never left Patsy for more than a few minutes, before she’d go over and touch her and the questions began again: Does your tummy hurt? Are you mad? The harder Annali tried to bring her mommy back, the farther away Patsy wanted to go.
Pru wondered how long she could live this way without losing her mind completely. She wanted to hide under the couch with Whoop, waiting for the strangers to go back to wherever it was they’d come from.
ON THE FIFTH MORNING AFTER THEY CAME TO STAY, PRU took Annali to the café for breakfast. She had to get away from Patsy for an hour or two, or she’d go mad. She knew enough this time to pack some crayons and a few toys, and to give her niece several stern warnings as well as the promise of chocolate chip pancakes, if she behaved herself. This was what she’d been reduced to, she thought, walking down the street with Annali: out-and-out bribery.
It was a busy morning at the café. John waved from behind the counter. They slid into a booth by the window. When Ludmilla came over to take their order, Annali carefully and politely asked for pancakes and milk. Pru watched John nervously out of the corner of her eye while they waited. She hadn’t talked to him since the drive home from Rehoboth and she wondered what kind of footing they were on. But he stayed behind the counter,
