Page 32 of Spectacular Things
Cat Lives and Dog Years
In December, Mr. and Mrs. Tupper’s twenty-foot-tall Santa lawn ornament across the street trolls Mia and Cricket through the kitchen window.
It’s been six weeks since their mother’s accident.
The sun set hours ago and now, with growling bellies, they excavate the neglected remains of their refrigerator.
“I don’t think we should eat this,” Mia says, gagging at the mold growing on top of a tuna fish salad.
“If you don’t think we should, then we definitely shouldn’t,” Cricket responds, chugging another glass of water. She wants to trick her stomach into feeling less empty.
The moldy tuna fish salad is the last of what Cricket refers to as the pity food.
Dazed by the slow drip of reality, the sisters have steadily eaten their way through the disposable trays of macaroni and cheese, ravioli, lentil soup, and spinach casseroles that friends, neighbors, and acquaintances have dropped off since Liz’s death.
It didn’t matter whether it was Lucia’s homemade pasta from Primo Bistro or Dr. Green’s chicken enchiladas or the gourmet black and white cookies from New York that everyone else from the dental office sent over—it all tasted like globs of sawdust to the Lowe sisters.
But now it’s all gone and they’re starving.
“I kept meaning to go to the store,” Mia says absently.
While she has bravely tackled the shoeboxes full of her mother’s unopened bills and dialed hundreds of 1-800 numbers to ask for extensions, she has tried to avoid face-to-face interactions as much as possible.
Other people’s blissful ignorance of the world’s incomparable loss strikes her as deeply offensive.
“Let’s go together, right now,” Cricket says, tossing Mia her van keys.
With ten minutes before the store closes, they race through the aisles of Hannaford, frantically grabbing random items in record time: pickles and barbecue chips and a frozen shrimp tower that’s on clearance but looks fancy.
It feels inevitable that the sisters will see someone they know, so they go faster and faster.
But it nevertheless happens in aisle 7, when they bump carts with the red-bearded Dr. Wilkins, Victory’s trusted veterinarian.
“Listen, I know it probably doesn’t mean much, but I’m so, so sorry about your mom,” he says, reaching out to put a hand on each of their shoulders.
Mia flashes to seeing him at the funeral and feels an unexpected wave of warmth for him.
Dr. Wilkins and his husband kept a standing reservation at Primo every Thursday at seven p.m. Mia remembers they tipped exceptionally well.
“How can we help? Dinner? Gift cards?” Dr. Wilkins asks.
Looking into their cart, he adds, “Do me a favor and check the sell-by date on that shrimp tower, okay? But seriously, what do you need?”
Mia demurs, even though all three of them smell desperation wicking off her. “Reach out anytime,” Dr. Wilkins says gently with a parting smile.
“Mia needs a job,” Cricket calls after him, suddenly inspired. If her mother landed her first job at the Hannaford, then it’s where Mia might secure a job, too. “Can she work in your office?” Cricket asks with enough assertiveness that it feels more like a command than a question.
This boldness, according to Coach, is Cricket’s superpower on the field.
This boldness, according to Mia, is humiliating in real life.
This boldness, according to Dr. Wilkins, warrants an immediate “Yes! Of course!”
The paperwork takes an hour and the training takes three days. The return to society, however, requires a bit more time, but not as much as Mia expected. In fact, she likes the job. She enjoys the distraction of helping Dr. Wilkins and his menagerie of patients.
Compared to fighting with the automated messaging of her mother’s homeowner’s insurance, Mia finds greeting pets and their human companions a far more enjoyable way to spend the day.
Seated at the front desk of Oceanside Animal Hospital, Mia checks in furry guests, records their weight, bills their adoptive parents, and considers an alternative future for herself, one that might not involve a return to Yale.
Amid the meows and hisses, the Labrador barks and the hound dog bays that mark the passage of hours and weeks, Mia feels the straight, rigid arrow of her ambition curl in on itself like a sleeping cat.
Rather than strive to become as extraordinary as her mom could have been, Mia feels a growing desire to be entirely ordinary.
The predictability feels safe, and the safety feels good.
Sitting on the floor of exam room 3 with a white-faced golden retriever and a little girl dressed in purple corduroy pants, Mia feels she’s in the right place.
“I lost my best friend, too,” she tells the girl, Abby, whose father sits across from them in a visitor’s chair, preoccupied with his phone.
He is the first person Mia sees wearing a face mask, his glasses fogging up every few minutes above his N-95.
As Mia watches the girl and dog lie nose to nose, the capacity to love strikes her as cruelly beautiful. At birth, each person unwittingly signs a contract to say goodbye to everyone they’re about to meet. Life is merciless in that way, in its promise to end.
Why invest what uncertain amount of time she has left somewhere new when her whole world is here?
She has nothing to prove. Without Liz around to witness Mia’s academic milestones, the conventional sense of academic achievement and pursuit of socioeconomic status seems laughably trivial.
Because Liz hadn’t gone to college, she’d raised Mia to think it was everything, and Mia had bought in, never pausing to question the price of such an endeavor until she tallied up the cost per minute of her freshman seminar on twentieth-century literature.
What Mia has gained in the loss of her mother is perspective.
She understands she is on Earth for such an indefinite amount of time and that the only guarantee is that life is short and unreliable and that it is easy to get waylaid in daily stress that doesn’t ultimately matter.
Her gift, if she has one, is simple: She is at her best when she is supporting others.
As the front desk caregiver, Mia dotes on her fluffy patients and smiles at their human companions as they swipe their heavy credit cards.
When Dr. Wilkins rubs at his eyes, Mia leaves a fresh cup of coffee and a glass of water by his computer.
When one of the vet techs says she’ll die if she has to perform one more glands expression, Mia gloves up because she learned all of the tech duties in the first few months at Oceanside.
She is the unsung hero, the first line of defense, the understudy and the fill-in, and she finds comfort in the familiarity of a low profile.
It reminds her of her childhood, forever the sweeper to her sister’s keeper.
Sacrifice has felt like love, and love like sacrifice, for as long as Mia can remember.
It’s March 2020 now, more than four months since Liz sent her last group text reminding both daughters to replace the heads of their electric toothbrushes.
If she were still alive, she’d text them about the coronavirus that’s all over the news.
The World Health Organization declared it a pandemic this week.
For the world and the Lowe sisters, life has only become more unrecognizable.
Stationed at the front desk, Mia answers Oceanside’s ever-ringing phone.
A dog needs his teeth cleaned. Mia books the appointment and walks the owner through different payment plans for such an expensive procedure. It isn’t rocket science, and it doesn’t require a degree from Yale, but it’s worthwhile.
A steady, ordinary life can be extraordinary so long as it’s centered around family and community and filled with love.
On a freezing Friday night, just before closing, an older woman arrives at Oceanside with her ancient cat, who is rail thin and missing large patches of fur.
It’s impossible to say who looks more stricken as they approach the desk, and so Mia gives them her most reassuring smile as she reminds herself: The only way to use your head is to keep your eyes wide open.