The capris were a weathered purple—Mom would have called it baighani—and the top was a soft vintage tea-washed pink—Shayla is a genius with color. Silk, cotton, chiffon—she can dye them all. We have a sweet deal that I alter anything she needs tailored—hem jeans, sew pockets in dresses, custom-fit T-shirts—and she dyes fabric for me. I slathered on the moisturizer, the sunscreen, and the bug spray and added a slick of lip gloss, just in case.
The whimpering had turned into deafening barking. Yogi was clearly losing his mind.
“Let’s go, Yogi,” I said, and a blur of white fur streaked off for the garage.
A towel covered the back seat—my lame attempt at keeping the car fur-free. In spite of this, stray bits of white hair stuck to the mats on the floor. I’d have to vacuum them. Again. It wasn’t easy to love a living shedding machine.
I backed out carefully into the street and headed for the campus. When I got my license Dad and I negotiated the places where I could go dog-walking. Dad shook a bunch of news reports (about girls who tragically vanished in the woods while walking their dog) under my nose and threatened to impound the car if I didn’t comply. It wasn’t fair that he never put restrictions on Vinnie. To be fair, she has a black belt in Kempo, while I only made it to a junior yellow with a stripe.
The town we live in is Westbury, not to be confused with Weston, or Sudbury, or any other of the extremely expensive towns in MetroWest Boston. No, Westbury is a middle-class enclave, best known for having the biggest and most upmarket mall in the Northeast, where the residents of the surrounding affluent towns can shop without fighting traffic gridlock in their own streets. Point being, except for the town woods there aren’t many options for walking Yogi off-leash in Westbury.
But one of the spots Yogi and I loved was Lake Waban in our neighboring town of Fellsway. Half of it lay on the campus of Fellsway College. Given that the Fellsway student body is 99 percent female, though it’s not called a women’s college anymore, Dad felt better about my safety there than in the town woods.
Unleashed, Yogi took off up the track, fur bristling with happiness. I followed at a slower run, knowing he’d come back to me if I called.
Yogi and a brown-and-brindle Catahoula hog dog circled each other nose to tail as its owner and I exchanged a quick “is he friendly?” check. It was sweltering hot. I peeled off my top layer and stripped down to my crop top. I’d waited till five to take the dog out and it was still too hot. If I didn’t love the blasted mutt, you couldn’t have paid me to go out. Yogi leapt up a steep incline like a mountain goat, struck a gallant dog pose at the crest of the hill, and grinned down at me, radiating happiness. I grinned back and charged up the hill after him. Anything for Yogi.
When Mom and I picked Yogi out, he was a gangly puppy, all legs and floppy ears and whipping white tail. She knew by then that she didn’t have much time, but when they leveled with her about her prognosis she went straight to the animal shelter. Did she know that with her gone, Vinnie in college, and Dad’s long hours, I would need someone waiting for me at home? That I’d need something upbeat to talk about when everyone acted awkward around me? Other people with her condition would have gone all hyperclean and germophobic, but Mom got a not-yet-housebroken puppy instead.
Dad and Vinnie took Mom to the hospital for her surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, physical therapy. Mom and I took Yogi to Zen Dogs for obedience training. The nurses taught Vinnie to give Mom shots of painkillers, and how to operate the oxygen machine. Mom and I taught Yogi to fetch, sit, and stay. Okay, he never really got stay, but we tried. They brought the hospital bed into Mom’s bedroom. Mom had the dog crate brought into my bedroom. Every morning when Yogi was let out of his crate he ran to Mom’s room, jumped on her hospital bed, and spent an hour curled tight next to her. Until I called him to go for his morning walk. Then, one day when I called him, he didn’t come. I walked into Mom’s room in my pj’s and found him curled up by her, not moving an inch. Just curled tight with his nose in his tail looking at me with sad, sad eyes. Mom’s hand lay on his back, cold and still, her gold bangle gleaming against his snow-white coat.
I threw myself onto both of them and screamed. I could hear footsteps in the hallway as Dad, Vinnie, and the hospice nurse ran to us. Yogi stayed still. He didn’t flinch or bark. If I’m brave enough to think back that far, I can still feel his warm tongue licking my face.
Now, I blinked away tears behind my sunglasses. Why did that memory surface just now? What was even the point of going there? Yogi was seven years old. We had all moved on.
A black dog bounded out of the undergrowth with a menacing growl. There was no owner in sight. Not again! If you think poodles are little lapdogs, you’ve never seen a poodle in a bad mood. We had run into this particular critter before. Who hurt her, I don’t know, but for some reason she had it out
