Shelby wants to spend tomorrow with her mother. She feels her love inside her as if it were as tangible as blood and bones. They’ll go out for ice cream every afternoon and try every flavor there is. She’ll start house-training Buddy. She’ll learn how to make onion soup, her mom’s favorite. Things will get worse, but there’s no reason to think about that now. Tonight Shelby will look out the window to see if her angel returns, and if he does she’ll ask him how he knows so much about love. She wishes he would come to her tonight, climb in through the window to lie down beside her and explain how it’s possible to love someone so much and still manage to carry on when you have to let them go.

Chapter 11

Shelby sits on the picnic table in the backyard. It’s cold and there’s a light snow falling and her mother has just been buried. The past months are a blur. October and November were swallowed up by illness and hospitals. Toward the end Shelby left her dogs with Maravelle and set up residence in her parents’ living room. Her mother’s hospital bed was right next to the couch, and sometimes they held hands as they slept. Shelby found all of her old books in a box in the basement. She read the color-coded series of Andrew Lang’s fairy tales to her mother. They became lost in an enchanted cottage with vines growing over the window. It was dark and it was quiet and they could hear each other softly breathing. Every story had the same message: what was deep inside could only be deciphered by someone who understood how easily a heart could be broken.

“Wake up,” Shelby would say whenever her mother drifted off as she was reading. “The best part is just about to happen.” But as time went on, Sue was asleep nearly all the time, with Buddy beside her in bed. Shelby had to pick up the poodle and carry him outside so he would pee. He always ran right back inside. My baby, Sue would say, how can I leave you? Shelby was never certain if her mom was talking to her or to Buddy. Now it’s over and they’ve left her in the cold ground. Shelby can’t bring herself to go inside the house. Her fingers are freezing and her toes are turning to ice inside her new fleece-lined boots, but she doesn’t care. She has the grill out, and she’s burning the old Misty books. She doused them with lighter fluid and they flared with fire and all the pages turned orange, then blue, then black. It’s over. All of it. It’s smoke.

Dozens of neighbors are in the living room, partaking of the casseroles they brought over. There’s macaroni and cheese and meat loaf and chicken and dumplings. Comfort food. The same recipes Shelby’s mom used to make when Shelby had her nervous breakdown. Back then, Shelby had wanted to waste away; for weeks she only consumed what was pure: water, green apples, celery. Now, she opens her mouth and lets snowflakes fall onto her tongue. She’s empty and she feels like she’ll stay that way.

Maravelle and Mrs. Diaz attended the funeral, but afterward Shelby assured them there was no need for them to come back to the house. She’d rather they take care of her dogs, left at the house in Valley Stream. The truth is she didn’t want them to see her in her parents’ basement. She is never going to sleep on the couch again, and her mother’s hospital bed has already been picked up by the furniture rental company. She thinks she spied Ben Mink and his mother among the mourners, but she’s not sure, since she couldn’t bring herself to look at anyone and see their pity. She hasn’t seen Ben since their mortifying date, when he walked out on her and she knew he was right to do so. If Ben had even tried to convey his sympathies, Shelby would have fallen apart.

“Maybe you should spend the night with us,” Mrs. Diaz had suggested before they dropped her off. “You can sleep in Jasmine’s room.”

“Mami’s right,” Maravelle had said. “You shouldn’t be here alone.”

But she is alone, no matter where she is, no matter whom she’s with. She was being driven home from the cemetery by the Diazes because she didn’t want to get in the limo with her father. His girlfriend had attended the funeral. Her name is Patti something. She introduced herself to people as a friend of Sue’s. Shelby didn’t catch her last name, or maybe she didn’t want to. It’s the funeral, she wanted to scream at her father. Couldn’t you wait one more fucking day? Shelby loves Maravelle; she wishes she could spend the night in Valley Stream, but being with Maravelle and her mother would only make her sadder. She doesn’t have a mother anymore. There’s no one to whom she’s the most important person in the world.

Shelby’s father is in the kitchen with Patti and some friends. Shelby doesn’t care that people say widowers with good marriages always marry again quickly. She knows how lonely her mom was in her marriage, how much she wished for something more. All Shelby cares about is that her mother is in the ground, miles away, all alone on a dark evening when the snow is falling. Shelby may have screwed up her own life, but she has high standards for everyone else, including her father. She expects people to act like human beings.

Shelby certainly doesn’t want to sit in the living room and hear how sorry people are and what a wonderful person her mother was and that it’s all for the best that Sue Richmond isn’t in pain any longer. Instead she is burning her childhood books in the grill in the backyard. She wants to be alone, only she isn’t. Her mother’s little poodle, Buddy, has gotten out through the pet door. Shelby’s mom had the door put in when she couldn’t get out of bed anymore. She was afraid that people would forget about the dog, and they have. He looks bedraggled. “Hey,” Shelby says to the poodle.

Buddy doesn’t look at her.

“Hey, stupid, can’t you hear me?” Shelby says, then she feels horrible. Her mother loved Buddy, and now he’s sitting on the steps with a broken heart and Shelby’s calling him stupid. She promised her mother she would take him, and she wonders if anyone has thought to feed Buddy during the past few days. She gets off the table and goes over to him. Buddy looks down, as if he expects Shelby to hit him. She picks him up and feels him shaking; it’s all too sad, his chicken-thin bones, his fuzzy baby fur. He slept next to Shelby’s mother every night. Now he’s cold. Shelby tucks him inside her coat. She can feel him shivering against her chest. She’ll be damned if she leaves him here with these people who’ve come to honor her mother and didn’t even notice whether or not her dog is alive.

Shelby watches the books burn. She wonders if words are pouring down on other people’s houses, sad words, like beast and mourn and sorrow and mother. She pokes at the cinders as the paper turns black and flaky. A few sparks fly up. There goes her childhood, nothing but ashes. Shelby slips out of the backyard with Buddy curled up near her breastbone inside her coat, then walks along the path that sparkles with snowflakes. She’s reminded of the time when she would get lost on purpose and her mother would look for her, shouting her name as though calling for a lost dog. Now she burns with regret when she thinks that she hid from her own mother. She should have leapt up and waved her arms. She should have gotten into her mom’s car and said, Thank you for rescuing me.