J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

His mother climbs out of the car and begins to make her brisk and direct way to the cafeteria door. On Wednesdays she reads to the kindergarten. Monday she plays guitar and sings songs, Tuesday she helps with bulletin boards. (On occasion she has left Ryan secret messages on the bulletin boards — a rocketship with his face sketched in the window, his name spelled out in a jumble of alphabet blocks — so he always gives them special attention.) Thursday and Friday she types in the main office. She goes on every field trip, not just the ones Ryan’s class takes. Of course she isn’t at the school all day; she also goes to meetings downtown and writes letters to the newspaper. The paper also runs photos of his mother, usually of her speaking into a microphone or holding up a painted sign. Once a new teacher clipped such a photo from the paper and posted it on the wall. The teacher announced that Ryan’s mom was famous. The following week another, nearly identical, photo appeared in the paper, but instead of posting it the teacher just took the first one down.

The boys turn to the kickball game. There are too many outfielders because there were too many boys, but the rule is that all the boys must be picked. A fly ball drops with a percussive wheeze onto the pavement near a cluster of such boys. The big kids get angry as the runner rounds the bases.

Bounder loved kickballs. He used to somehow get his narrow jaws around them, to carry them in that proud dog way without puncturing them with his teeth. There are half a dozen in the yard at home, mostly airless, to give the ailing Bounder a good grip. He liked to make a little pile of them, to half-bury them in the sod. He liked to bring them into the house and nibble and paw at them as if they were babies.

The dog’s decline has not been easy for Ryan. Of course he will miss Bounder, the games of fetch, the couch-sprawling, the scrap-tossing, the squirrel-chasing. And death itself — the specter of it, its inevitability, whether or not it has taken or will take notice of him, Ryan, personally — this is grounds for some concern. But it isn’t himself he’s worried about. It is his mother, what his mother is going to do without the dog. Who will she talk to after he, Ryan, has gone to bed? Already she asks him questions he doesn’t understand, questions that don’t seem to have answers but to which she nevertheless expects some response. How could they do this to us? What kind of nation do they think we live in? Are they serious, Ryan, I mean are they fucking serious? She gets upset about simple, faraway events that don’t have anything to do with her: the construction of a certain highway, something somebody said in a foreign country, some numbers read over the radio. She screams and cries and grips her hair in her fists. Ryan’s tack so far has been to gently embrace her rigid body and then go outside to play.

Now he sees that she has noticed the kickball game. She stands on tippy-toes, shading her eyes with her hand, looking for him. Philip scoots forward to hide him from her; he’s done this before, which is why he is Ryan’s best friend. But it doesn’t work.

“She’s got you.”

In the bright sunshine Ryan’s mother marches across the playground, waving as she comes. The asphalt-baked air distorts her image, so that she looks like a spelling test, a C-minus, uncrumpled from a booksack, flung by wind.

Last night they played a game she made up, a game in which Ryan pretends to be her, and she pretends to be Bounder. She went into the kitchen like a normal woman but emerged on her hands and knees, pushing the empty dog dish along the floor with her nose. With the same nose she poked Ryan in the shin. That’s how the game starts. Ryan fed her. She ate some of the food. He scratched her back. It wasn’t totally crazy — she was laughing the whole time, she always does, so does he, it’s like a kind of joke — but it was a little crazy. Last night it stopped when she brought him the leash in her mouth. He said No, Mom, we’re not going outside. She whined. He said he didn’t want to play anymore. After a while she stood up and went to bed.

When he was sure she was asleep, he went down the street to his dad’s. The bedroom light was on and he thought he could see him and Julia moving around. But no one answered when he rang the bell.

Now she is here. She says, “Hello, boys,” and the boys say hello.

“Will you two be attending our party on Friday?” This in a fake English accent.

Darren looks at Ryan in astonishment, but Philip only hangs his head. Darren says, “What party?”

“A farewell to Bounder,” says Ryan’s mother. “To see him into the next world.”

“I’m there, Mrs. Meibusch,” says Darren. “I am all over that.”

“You too, Philip,” she says sternly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She gives Ryan a look: Why didn’t he invite his friends? He gives her a look: Because it’s a freaky-ass dead dog party, that’s why.

When she’s gone, Darren says, “Dude, I didn’t know your dog died.”

“He didn’t,” Ryan says.

Julia had a dream one night, the autumn after the summer she started sleeping with Ray. She dreamed that she woke up and went to the window and saw something moving in the yard below: Ellen, dressed in a black catsuit, digging holes in the grass with a trowel. There was no apparent purpose to this exercise; it was methodical and uninspired and rather boring to watch, and Julia wondered why she was dreaming about Ellen and what the dream could mean. Then she dreamed she went back to bed and had a dream: a nice sensible one, something about flying and screwing; they (it was an old boyfriend she was screwing, but she would tell Ray it was him) were on a carpet or raft or something, and birds flew above and below them while they did it. She woke up and called Ray at work and described the dream, leaving out the part about Ellen. Then she forgot about it for a long time.

Ellen and Ray had been her landlords, that’s how she met them. They lived right down the street. Occasionally they came by on the weekend to pace the yard and look things over, and Julia had heard them argue from time to time, right out in the open. They didn’t seem to be arguing about anything personal. It was mostly Ellen doing the arguing, actually. How could they let India get nukes? Julia heard her shout once. Jesus fucking Christ, Ray!

One night a storm window blew off in a winter squall and the next day Ray came over to replace it. She invited him in for coffee. The next time he came it was to put mouse poison in the cellar. They had more coffee. On his way out, Ray fixed her with a piercing look and reached out and smashed a glass doorpane with his hammer. He said, “I’ll have to come over tomorrow and fix that.”

“Don’t you have a job?” she said, eyeing the glass shards scattered around their feet.

“I’ll take the morning off.”

She at last returned his gaze. “Take the whole day,” she said.

When he came, she led him up to her studio. At the time, she was hard at work illustrating a book called Self Esteem Through Self Love. The easel, walls, and floor were covered with photos, drawings, and paintings of attractive men and women getting themselves off. He turned to her and said, “So tell me about your work.” It was four months later that she had the dream. Not long after that, Ray filed for divorce. By March it was all over: joint custody of Ryan; one house for Ellen and one for Ray. Ray chose the house that already had Julia in it.

On one of their first semi-legitimate mornings together, Julia threw open the bedroom curtains and looked down at the yard. The newspaper lay soaking in a patch of melting snow. Nearby, yellow crocuses were blooming, forming patterns in the grass. Recognizable patterns, actually, spelling out the words FUCK YOU. She remembered her dream.