Lisa Owens - Not Working

Nausea equaled only by snarling hunger; but there’s nothing on this earth I want to eat.

On my road, a woman strides by in an uncomfortable-looking suit, screaming into her phone, “ What are the side effects? What’s the life expectancy?”

At home, I send flowers to Polly and Will with a note reading, Sorry for everything. I mooch around the house in leggings and one of Luke’s jumpers (“boyfriend fit” being more snug than magazines and the fashion industry would have me believe). Waking from a short, deep nap on the sofa, I see I have a voicemail from my dad. I listen — the phrase “nothing urgent” crops up four times. I phone back immediately.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ah! It’s Claire! My favorite child! I’m just at home, sitting down to some lunch!” He sounds exactly how someone being told to “act normal” by a gun-toting madman would sound.

“At home? Do you have the day off? Eleven thirty’s early for lunch.” On his end, the landline starts to ring. “I can wait while you get that.”

“No, no, don’t worry — it’s no one. A nonsense caller.”

“Huh? Oh, nuisance, you mean. How do you know?”

“If it’s important, they’ll call again. So, what can I do for you?”

“You left me a message. I was phoning you back.”

The ringing stops.

“It was nothing urgent. Just, ah, checking in to see how things were with you.”

The ringing starts again, somehow more insistent the second time around.

“Honestly, it’s fine to get that. I’ll call back in—”

“One moment.” There’s a crunching noise and it ceases, mid-ring. “There! It’s stopped! Everyone happy?”

“Dad, you’re being weird. Is everything all right?” In the silence, a new sound like a sort of panting in the background. “Is that…? Can I hear a dog ?”

“Possibly.”

“In the house? You hate dogs. Mum hates dogs.”

“She doesn’t mind Walnut.”

“Walnut…” My addled brain tries to make sense of this. “Do you mean…Hazelnut?” Hazelnut belongs to their neighbors a few doors down.

“Whatever. I hope it’s him, anyway. Otherwise I don’t know who I have here.”

“Pretty sure Hazelnut’s a she.”

“Listen, do you think I should give it a tomato?”

“Dad, what’s going on?”

“Nothing. Doesn’t matter. Completely normal. Anyway, how are you? Did I already ask?”

“I’m good. No news really.” I shut my eyes tight to ride out a splitting headache, and try a different angle. “How’s work?”

After a few seconds of silence, he says, “The thing I want you to remember, Claire, is that the person in charge on a day-to-day basis is a small, shortsighted, arrogant arsehole.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. I have a thousand questions, but decide to let him continue, in the hope that any logic will emerge in the telling. His narration, though spirited, is typically roundabout: amid the twists and turns I identify a clear villain (the shortsighted, arrogant arsehole — I honestly can’t tell if “short-sighted” means this person wears glasses, lacks judiciousness or both), a victim (Dad) and an ongoing campaign of persecution. Dad makes more references to Hitler and the Jews than I’d let him get away with were anyone else listening, but he’s clearly in a bad way, so I park my objections and make a mental note to return to them later. At last, he gets to the crux: a frank exchange of words this morning (the Hitler — Jew analogy among them, alas), resulting in my father being asked to leave.

“Asked to leave the premises or to leave the firm?”

“Claire, I don’t know.”

“Is Mum with you?”

“She is not.”

“Have you told her?”

“Not yet.”

“I think…” I take a stab, “I might come over if you don’t mind? I have no plans today anyway, and it sounds as if maybe you could do with some company.”

“Well. I have Walnut.”

“Hazelnut, of course.” I’d forgotten all about the dog.

“It’s been answering to Walnut,” he muses. “Do they answer to anything if you use the right tone of voice? Peanut!” There’s a pause. “Marmalade!” Another pause. “Andrew! No, that didn’t work.”

“Shall I come over, then?”

“If you wish,” he says.

I pull on my shoes.

From the train station, I take a taxi to my parents’ house. Dad greets me at the door with the dog by his side. Over suit trousers and shirt he has on a frilly pink apron — an ironic gift someone gave years ago to my mother, who hates cooking. His hands are enormous in oven mitts, feet surprisingly small in socks. He reminds me of one of those dancing bears trussed up in a tutu.

“Hi, Dad,” I say. His embrace is tight; the mitts up around my ears muffle his greeting. “Is this your special dog-handling outfit?”

“Guess again.” He pulls away, making for the kitchen, with Hazelnut sashaying slowly at his heels.

—

The oven is open and a delicious, comforting aroma has diffused throughout the room.

“I was just checking on it when you arrived,” he says, tilting the cake pan, teeth clamped appraisingly over bottom lip. “Needs a bit longer.” He shoves it back in and slams the oven shut. The kitchen is in total chaos: utensils and ingredients have taken over every surface. By the bin, a whole tomato sits in a saucer.

“She might prefer a bit of meat,” I say. “Don’t you have some chicken breast or something in the fridge?”

“If she’s really hungry, she’ll eat it,” Dad says, a horribly familiar refrain from my youth.

“Shall I at least slice it up?”

He looks at me. “And tuck a napkin in her collar too?”

I sit cross-legged beside Hazelnut, who is sprawled in front of the oven, and ruffle her fur.

“So, the dog.”

“What about it?”

“Come on, Dad.”

He nods in defeat, swallows the end of a mug of tea. “It was in the garden. I went out to investigate and it got into the house.”

I look at Hazelnut lying on her side. She doesn’t look capable of swift action.

“Have you told the thingies yet — the Thompsons?”

He tuts, lowers his voice. “Odd people. What’s the one worse than vegetarian?”

“Vegan?”

“Precisely. She’s all right, but he’s a bit…odd. Calls himself a poet. Came round selling copies of a book he published, wrote our names in the cover without asking. Mum thinks it’s so we can’t take it to the thrift shop.”

“Are they any good, the poems?” I ask.

He wrinkles his nose. “I looked at one or two, but couldn’t make them out at all.”

“I think you should phone and let them know you have their dog.”

Dad slides a hand into the apron pocket, frowns, pulls out a tiny strip of paper, squints at it, feels in his shirt pocket for his glasses, which aren’t there, so holds it at arm’s length. “ ‘It looks like…’ ” he reads. His frown deepens. “ ‘Rain dear’?” He stares at me. “What does that mean?”

“Turn it over? I think it must be from a Christmas cracker.”

Presumably the last Christmas we celebrated together, pre-rift, pre-cruise, just the three of us and a turkey we called, for reasons I can’t remember now, Roy: so enormous he made our little gathering seem even smaller by contrast. Roy was still cropping up in soups and stir-fries when I visited well into April, thanks to Dad’s thrifty freezing.

He turns the paper over and reads, “ ‘What does Mrs. Claus say to Santa when she looks up at the sky?’ ” He shakes his head. “ ‘It looks like rain, dear.’ I’ve heard that one before.”