Notes From a Liar and Her Dog (3 page)

“Why not?”

Harrison’s curly hair hangs in his eyes. He flicks the nub pile with his finger and it topples over. “Yeah, but I don’t see what
you
get out of it. Are you sure your mom didn’t get mad when she saw my grades?”

I shrug. “She’s used to it. Besides, it makes your dad happy. Maybe he’ll take us out for ice cream again. That was fun.”

Harrison pulls the pills off the blanket and rolls them in his hand. He’s forming some kind of blanket-lint creature. Harrison can make something out of anything. He shrugs. “Okay,” he says.

“Good. Now let’s get out of here.” I pocket a few Oreos, grab Pistachio, and we sneak down the trellis to take him for a walk.

When we get to the sidewalk, I put Pistachio down, but he doesn’t move. I hate when he gets stuck like this. “Come on, Tashi,” I say, grabbing a leaf for him to sniff.

He sniffs a little, then takes a step forward. Once he gets started, he seems okay, like he remembers what he’s supposed to do. He walks stiff legged over to the bushes and begins sniffing around. After a minute, he tries to lift his leg, but he wobbles so much on three legs, it looks as if he’ll topple over. I want to tell him to pee another way.

“Guess what?” Harrison says as I hand him another Oreo. “I found out where Just Carol lives.”

“Just Carol. Who cares about her? She’s a worm. You can’t trust her. I told you what she did. I still can’t believe she told my mom and Mr. Borgdorf. …” I am just getting warmed up with my story when Harrison presses his hands over his ears. “Harrison? What?” I ask.

“Just Carol is not a worm. Just Carol is perfect.”

“God, Harrison, whose side are you on, anyway?”

Harrison has his hands covering his ears again.

“Harrison?” I try to peel his fingers away from his head.

“I’m on your side. But don’t be ugly about Just Carol.”

“Okay, okay, I won’t say anything bad about her. Man.” I glare at him. I would get madder, but he looks as if he might cry. I hate when Harrison cries.

“Come on,” I say, scooping up Pistachio. “Let’s go to the yellow house.”

The yellow house is on a street where the houses are all old-fashioned. Two German shepherds and one black Lab live there. I like the dogs and their pretty house with the swing on the porch and the kind of white arch people get married under. This is the type of house my real parents would live in.

I change my mind about who my real parents are at least once a week. I have a book where I write down my notes about this. There are a lot of names in it, but they are mostly crossed out. I keep it in a hole in the lining of my raincoat, along with another book that has photos of me and things I’ve written and pictures I’ve drawn and stuff. The second book is for my real
parents. It will help them know about the parts of my life they haven’t been here to see.

We are at the yellow house now, so I put Pistachio down. Right away his stubby tail goes straight in the air and he begins barking his ferocious bark. Pistachio weighs six pounds, but something in his brain tells him he is a 150-pound killer dog. Nothing perks him up like picking a fight with a dog ten times his size. Harrison’s father says some wires in his brain are crossed and he thinks he is a tiger.

As soon as he starts barking, the German shepherds come running to the chain-link fence. They stand on their hind legs and try to get at Pistachio. The fence shakes. Their lips curl back. The German shepherds are barking so loud, it hurts my ears. They look mean, but not the Lab. She gets scared and lies on her back with her legs straight up.

“One down, Pistachio! Good dog,” I say. This seems to please him and he takes a rest. The German shepherds get tired of barking, too, and all the dogs sit down.

Harrison takes out his chicken drawing, which I know he has been dying to finish. He rummages through his pockets looking for a pencil. Harrison has ten or twelve pockets in his pants, so looking for a pencil can take a long time. I watch while he goes through pocket by pocket. He finally finds a No. 2 in his zipper pocket. It’s a little stub with bite marks all around. Harrison likes his pencils already broken in.

We sit down with our backs against the chain link and Harrison starts drawing. I like to watch him
draw. He is so patient about it, as if he knows exactly where he’s going and how to get there. He doesn’t get frustrated the way I do. I’ve never seen him scrunch his paper up and toss it on the floor.

He doesn’t get very far today, though, before we hear the beep-beep of Harrison’s father’s bakery truck. The truck is an old-fashioned van that looks like a cartoon car. Harrison’s father owns a bakery and this is one of the delivery trucks.

“Well, hello, fancy meeting you here,” Harrison’s father says. Harrison and his dad never have a set meeting time or place. His dad just drives around Sarah’s Road until he finds Harrison. Only a dad would do that. Moms would make sure you have a time and a place to meet. But Harrison doesn’t have a mom. She died when he was four. He never talks about her, either, and the way he steers way around the subject, I know better than to ask. Once, Mr. Emerson told me Mrs. Emerson was an artist. That is all I know about her.

“Hi, Dad,” Harrison says.

“Hello, Harrison, hello, Ant. How are you and that ferocious tiger dog doing?”

This makes me smile, even though he says it almost every time he sees me.

“Hey, Dad,” Harrison says. “Could Ant spend the night tonight?”

“That okay with your mom, Ant?” Mr. Emerson asks. He has the same goofy smile Harrison does. And the same wildly curly hair, though he is losing some of his on top.

I always plan to lie to this question, but when it comes time, I never can. I have the feeling that no matter how many times I lie to Mr. Emerson, he’ll still believe me. And because of this, I have trouble telling him anything but the truth. My mom is just the opposite. She never believes me, so it doesn’t matter what I tell her. I grab a dandelion and flick it with my thumb. “No,” I say.

My mom has forbidden me from ever going to Harrison’s house. This is because last month my mother picked me up there and she saw Harrison’s chicken walk in using the doggy door. “What kind of people have chicken droppings in their house?” she said. I tried to tell her they only let the chicken in the kitchen. Plus, Harrison trained him to use a kitty litter box, which the vet said was impossible, but Harrison did it anyway. But none of this matters to my mom.

Harrison’s father makes a sound as if he’s sorry. “Oh, well, Ant, my girl. Maybe the weekend.” He pats my head awkwardly. “Okay, son, time to pack up and go. I’ve got 800 pounds of flour and sugar coming crack of dawn tomorrow and still no space for it. So you say good-bye to Ant here and we’ll be on our way.”

“Bye, Harrison,” I say as he jumps into the cab of the old van.

Harrison smiles at me. One side of his mouth curls up more than the other and he has a dimple in his left cheek. I love this about him.

I stand and watch them drive past the bank of mailboxes, across the bridge, and around the corner onto
Sarah’s Road. I watch until I can’t see them anymore. Then I pick up Pistachio and walk home.

My mom is in the living room when I get there. I see her curly blond hair through the window. She is sitting on the couch watching Elizabeth show Kate the steps she learned in ballet class. I wonder if Kate has noticed I am gone. I wonder if my mom has looked to see if I am in my room. The way they are acting, I don’t think they have. I should be happy about this, but I am sad.

T
oday is the big day. My dad’s coming home from Atlanta. He’s been there for six weeks. My sisters and my mom are locked in the bathroom getting ready for him. When they come out, Your Highness Elizabeth and Kate are wearing matching tutus with sparkles glued to the bushy ends and sequined tiaras. My mother has made up Elizabeth’s and Kate’s faces so they look like plastic dolls. They are planning to perform a show for my dad. They always do this. They set up the living room to look like a theater, with big boxes of popcorn and a cardboard marquee. Then they hide behind the living-room drapes and my mom pulls the cord and they do a ballet dance. When they are done, they say, “Ta-da,” and my father and mother give them a standing ovation.

When I was little, I used to do this, too. That was when I went to ballet class with Your Highness Elizabeth. But now I won’t because it’s stupid and I would rather be outside with Harrison and Pistachio. My mother says I am a quitter. But I’m not a quitter, I just don’t feel like spending the day in
front of a mirror worrying about whether my butt is sticking out.

Kate is taking ballet classes now, too. She is as good as Elizabeth. “It runs in the family,” Miss Marion Margo, the dance teacher, says, forgetting all about me. Or maybe she hasn’t forgotten. Maybe even strangers can tell that I am a part of another family entirely. Probably no one will be surprised when my real parents sweep into the picture. My real mother will be wearing a flowered dress and no shoes. And my real father will have on jeans and chaps. My real father is very smart. He knows how to get water from a cactus when you are in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Plus, he is a cowboy, and cowboys never get a job somewhere else. They have to stay home and take care of their cattle. Maybe they go to a different range, but that is it.

“Aren’t you going to at least wash your hair?” Your Highness Elizabeth asks as she bristles by the door of my room in her tutu. “Mom, look at her hair. It’s disgusting.” Elizabeth picks up a strand of my hair and drops it again, as if someone has told her it is contaminated.

“Of course, Your Highness…whatever you wish, Your Highness.” I bow down low.

“See what she’s like, Mom? See?”

“All right, enough, you two. I don’t want any fights in front of your father. Antonia, you might think about putting on some clean clothes before you come down.”

“Come down? How can I come down? I’m not allowed out of my room, remember?”

My mother takes a deep breath. I can tell she is thinking about calling me a smart mouth or a wiseacre, but she holds her tongue. She doesn’t like to get angry right before my father comes home from a business trip. She wants everything to be perfect, like we are a family ordered from a catalog. “Well, if you want to watch the wonderful show your sisters have put together, you’re welcome to,” she says.

“Spare me,” I say.

“Don’t bother trying to be nice to her, Mom. She doesn’t even know how to accept it,” Elizabeth says as she watches herself in the hall mirror. She is standing up straight, trying to make her neck extra long. She says ballerinas all have very long necks. Hers is kind of squatty, so she is trying to stretch it.

“Oh no! My tiara!” Kate cries. Kate’s sequined tiara is slipping off and her curly hair is coming unpinned. Her whole face is red and she is bawling, open-mouthed like a three-year-old. I can’t believe her. Where is her spiral notebook? Where are the coins she carries in her shoe? Has she forgotten all about blackmail? I hate the way she turns into a mini Elizabeth when Elizabeth and my mother are around. One Your Highness is bad enough.

“Kate,” I whisper when she walks by, but she pretends not to hear me. When Elizabeth is paying attention to her, she forgets all about me.

I close the door. Not a slam, but loud. Then I sit on my bed, wondering whether my mother will come back and ask me to put on a dress and come downstairs. I plan my speech about how there is no way I’m
going to do this. Then, I wait. But there is no sound of creaking stairs. All the footsteps stay away.

I take out the book I’m making for my real parents and I begin writing a letter to my real mom.

Dear Real Mom
,

This is what I would like to happen. I would like you and my real dad to come RIGHT NOW. Then first thing after you get here, you should tell my supposed mom (her name is Evelyn MacPherson) about how I’m your daughter and I’m very special and you are just wild about me. I can’t wait to see her face when you say this. Maybe you could tell her how I am much smarter than Elizabeth and Kate and you don’t understand how come she hasn’t figured this out. And you might mention that Elizabeth’s neck is unusually short and squatty and you don’t see how anyone could be a ballerina with a short, squatty neck like that.

Then, when you see my supposed dad (his name is Don MacPherson), you can say you know he has a lot of problems at work and you are sorry. And if you have any extra money, maybe you can give it to him. Then you can shake hands and say “Good-bye,” and I will kick off my shoes and get on the pinto horse you brought for me, and me and Pistachio will ride away with you and my real dad.

Love
,

Ant and Pistachio

P.S. I hope you live near Harrison. Do you?

Pistachio snuggles next to me on my bed. He licks my hand. His tongue is hot, like it’s come from a furnace. I am thinking that I will take him back to the vet tomorrow, when I hear the
tchinka-tchinka-tchinka squereak
of the garage door. I run to the hall window to look out. It’s my father all right. I feel excited to see him, though that is not something I plan to tell him or anyone else.