A Home for Goddesses and Dogs Read online

  Dedication

  For Jan & Elly

  and Sandi & Nancy—

  so much love

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. All Things Boxy

  2. The Goddess of the Third Heart

  3. Up Pinnacle Hill

  4. A Room of My Own

  5. The Sun-Maid Raisin Lady

  6. Lacking Unpacking

  7. First Morning

  8. Yard Full of Dogs

  9. Say What You Mean

  10. Not Bullet

  11. Night Whimperer

  12. A Dark Spot in the Morning

  13. Picking the Hole

  14. How to Stop a Bus

  15. Significant Facts

  16. A Stop at the Feed

  17. Shiny Prize

  18. Facing South

  19. When Girls Come to Go Walking

  20. The Onliest Few

  21. Paper Friends

  22. Ornery

  23. The Other Side of the Bricks

  24. A Name to Stick To

  25. Looking Forward and Back

  26. Two Little Goats

  27. Another Hard Story

  28. The Word at School

  29. A Gallery

  30. A Bad Green Machine

  31. Calling Tennessee

  32. The End of a Ragged Day

  33. The Perimeter

  34. Being She-Janus

  35. A Secret to Keep

  36. Sick in Bed

  37. Orange Envelope

  38. Snowshoes

  39. Oatmeal Cookies with Raisins

  40. A Place to Put a Foot

  41. A Not-So-Small Repair

  42. The Moving of Mice

  43. Goddess Spill

  44. By the Woodpile

  45. Wrong Thing, Right Reason

  46. A Bag Full of Stones

  47. A Big Reveal

  48. The Lump in the Couch

  49. Coming Around Again

  50. The Goats of Pinnacle Hill

  51. The Glue

  52. At the Top of the Stairs and Down

  53. The Worrying Room

  54. Dog Cash

  55. When a Dog Is Gone from Home

  56. When the Call Comes

  57. The Tale of Little Goats

  58. Coming to an Understanding

  59. When a Dog Comes Home

  60. Blountville Calling

  61. A Handful of Dirt

  62. Remembering the Nugget

  63. The Letter I Didn’t Know I’d Write

  64. Chelmsford, Night to Morning

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  All Things Boxy

  “You’ll be all right. You come from strong.”

  That had been my mother’s refrain. (One of them.) I would’ve given anything to hear her say it again, right then, in her voice. But that wasn’t going to happen. All I could do was think those words. Not the same.

  Lydia Bratches-Kemp, don’t feel lonely for her . . . not right now . . . don’t feel anything . . . tuck it away.

  I buckled myself into the front seat of Aunt Brat’s boxy car. Funny. Boxy car, a box on my lap, and outside the window was the little box of a house that I was leaving behind. We could never name the color of that siding. It wasn’t white enough to be white, not yellow enough to be cream. The grayish stains the house wore down its front could not be named either, though Mom and I had once tried.

  “Look, it’s changing color,” she’d said. “It must be bored! What do you think we have there, Lydia? Dove-feather gray? Maybe iris mist?”

  Today, the thin line of aluminum that framed the windows picked up a dull bluish light from somewhere in the winter sky. The outside of the house was nothing like the inside. Mom had spent the two years since my grandmother had died “personalizing the place,” as she’d called it. She’d made little stone-and-mosaic altars to the seasons on the windowsills—with a glue gun. She’d painted moon art on top of Grandma’s worn-out wallpaper, and we’d lettered lyrics and poems across the jambs and around the light switches. Mom called it our “happy retaliation after the fact.”

  We’d loved Grandma the way one loves a family’s most difficult member. But she’d made that house feel like a trap. No wonder Mom had wanted us to let loose on the place once Grandma was gone.

  Now Mom was gone too. It may sound impossible, but I was prepared—as much as one can be. When it came to death, Mom had been everything from mad to matter-of-fact, to jokey and irreverent, and—I’d always thought—forgiving. Her bluntness had made some people uncomfortable. But I’d grown up with it.

  We had talked about the day I’d be “finally fully orphaned.” We’d talked about Aunt Brat too. She was my last of kin. I’d go live with her one day. And here that day was; it just happened to be New Year’s Eve.

  I cupped my hands on the sides of the box on my lap. The driver’s-side door opened and I watched my aunt let herself into the car. She swept the fabric of her long boot skirt in with her. She slammed the door shut against a gust of Rochester’s winter breath.

  I had watched my aunt in recent days. She was tall, and even inside the tiny rooms of the little house, she’d managed to take long strides. I could hear that skirt swishing. When she’d reached up to empty the kitchen cupboards her arms seemed to sweep up there, almost like she was performing a solo stadium wave. It seemed familiar, though she’d only ever visited a handful of times.

  Grandma and Aunt Brat had never gotten along. Mom had always said she longed to see her older sister more. They’d stayed telephone close. Well, less so in recent years. After Grandma died, I figured Aunt Brat would visit. Maybe even a lot. But then I’d overhear Mom lying to my aunt on the phone. We were fine. Her health was good. (It wasn’t.)

  “You’ve got your job and a busy life, Brat,” Mom would say. “I’ll let you know when things get dicey with this cruddy heart of mine.”

  I’d felt bad for my aunt these past few days. She wasn’t as well prepared for this as I was. I had cried. Plenty. But if death was a dog of a thing—and my mother had said it would be—Aunt Brat seemed harder bitten. She had lost it more than once, convulsing into tears, as we’d cleared out the little house.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d said when she’d broken down in front of me. “I just wish I had known Holly was failing. I wish she’d called. I would have come.”

  Now, she smoothed herself into the driver’s seat and pulled the belt across her body. She pressed the key into the ignition and shot me a small smile—one a lot like my mother’s—as the car started up. She shook back her gray hair, cut blunt as broom straw to meet her shoulders.

  “Are you buckled, Lydia?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Perfect,” she said. “At least it’s not snowing.” She checked her mirrors and dialed up some heat. Off we rolled, away from the little house of unnameable color—away from my home for the last seven years. It’d be put up for sale now. Aunt Brat planned to use the money to pay the last of our Rochester bills. She hoped there’d be a little “college nest egg” left for me.

  “Don’t worry,” Aunt Brat said. She pulled onto the highway. “You’re not trapped. I promise I won’t talk at you for the whole trip.”

  “And I won’t do that to you either,” I said. We smiled.

  “However, it is a long ride. We might want to cover a few things.” She looked away from the road for a second to glance at me. “You can ask me anything. Hope you know that.”

  “Thanks,” I said. But I couldn’t make her the same offer. I hugged the
box I was holding on my lap. I probably sighed a little.

  “Are you sure you want to hold that? There’s still plenty of room in the back,” Aunt Brat said.

  “This is fine,” I said. I knew it seemed like a weird choice. The box was not heavy, but it was tall enough that it came up to my chest.

  I glanced over my shoulder toward the back of the car. I knew what was there: two suitcases of clothes (neither very big), one box of books, and a very cool old wooden art chest, with stacking trays inside.

  I drummed my fingers lightly on the box I held. This one was full of, well, paper stuff. Most important, a thick stack of collages: the goddesses.

  2

  The Goddess of the Third Heart

  Mom and I had made the goddesses over the past several years. They’d started out as black-and-white photographs in an old folio. Gold letters on the cover read: “Wasserman Studios, Cleveland, Ohio. 1946.” How that folio made its way from Cleveland to a flea market in Rochester is anybody’s guess, but that’s where we’d found it.

  Leave it to Mom: she’d dug the folio out of a steamer trunk full of “paper treasures from the past,” as she’d called them. The vendor had dragged a lawn chair over so Mom could sit while she’d leafed through the photographs—and not just because she’d wanted the twelve dollars and fifty cents Mom had eventually paid. No. That vendor had not been afraid to notice the person who’d carted her oxygen into the booth. (You’d be surprised how often we were ignored, how often people looked away.)

  The Wasserman photos were all of women. There were brides and debutantes, sunbathers and gardeners. Some were head-and-shoulder portraits, others showed the women standing full height or reclined on summer lawns. All seemed dull eyed.

  “Look at them, Lyddie,” Mom had said. She’d run her fingers along the edges of the thick, sturdy papers.

  I’d shrugged. “They’re kind of boring,” I’d said.

  “Yes, so posed, so staid and obedient. Yuck!” With a devilish grin she’d added, “I think we must get them home and begin to release them to their greater purpose.”

  She’d gotten the price down by half, and they were ours.

  A few days later, I’d found her with one of the portraits—a bride cradling a bouquet—only Mom had collaged a heart over the tops of the flowers. It was not a valentine heart. No, she had cut out an illustration from an old anatomy book; the heart had ventricles, valves, and an aorta. Mom had painted red and blue spaghetti strands from the heart to a little door she’d made in the bride’s chest.

  “Mom, what is it?” I’d asked. She’d sat looking at it and not minding at all that her paintbrush was leaving drips.

  “Hmm . . . I’m going to call her the Goddess of the Third Heart.”

  I’d felt my own heart sink. All we’d ever wanted was for Mom to get the heart transplant she’d needed. But when she’d been passed up for a third time she’d taken herself off the list.

  “It’s all good,” she’d said. “This is my way of wishing that third heart along on whatever journey it took without me. Here,” she’d said, and she’d handed me the paintbrush. “Practice positivity, Lyddie.” Then she’d squeezed a fresh dollop of paint onto her palette—plum purple.

  The Goddess of the Third Heart was the first of many goddesses, and they were tops on my list of things to bring with me. Well, equal to Mom’s long seafoam-green sweater. But that didn’t need to be packed because I wore it every day. Indoors. Outdoors. To bed. My second skin. Aunt Brat had left me alone to pack and I’d liked that. For the most part, it’d been clear to me what to leave and what to take. As for the goddesses, I knew that I needed them. But I also needed to keep them to myself.

  The holiday and birthday cards, also with my paper stuff, were from my totally off-duty father. (When we spoke of him we called him Kemp.) I probably didn’t need the cards at all—seven years’ worth of store-bought sentiments, most of them never opened. The few that were opened still had cash folded inside. That’s what he did: he sent cards and money. Money I never felt I could spend. If I had fooled myself about him when I was younger, well, I didn’t anymore. He was out there, living not so far from Rochester. (I’d seen his return address.) But I never saw him and didn’t think of him as family. With Mom gone, I was nobody’s daughter.

  When Aunt Brat and I had gone to the post office to arrange to have the mail forwarded, she’d put Mom’s name on the form. Then she’d turned from the counter. “We better fill out a form for you too, Lydia.” Immediately, I’d thought of those cards.

  “I never get any any mail,” I’d said. I’d felt a wash of relief. No more cards. Done!

  But what about the bunch I’d already received? They’d been the last items in my “undecided” pile as I’d packed up.

  Aunt Brat had popped her head into the room to say, “If you aren’t sure about something, bring it anyway. You can always divest of it later.”

  Divest. Good word.

  When we’d come down to the wire, I’d quickly double bagged the cards—with two thoughts in my head. First, keep the cards together. Second, keep them from touching my good stuff. Then I’d thought, Don’t contaminate the goddesses.

  The boxy car hummed down the highway. I’m not sure when or where I drifted off. Last thing I heard was Aunt Brat saying something about the Berkshire Mountains and losing the radio. I fell asleep leaning forward, with my right cheek and ear on the top of that box.

  I woke up thoroughly confused, willing my eyes open and trying to bring my mother’s face into focus while she gently touched my shoulder. . . .

  Wait . . . you’re not Mom. . . .

  “Oh. Aunt Brat,” I said.

  “Sorry to wake you,” she said. “I need some coffee. Anything for you? French fries? A bathroom break?”

  “No. No thanks,” I said. “I’ll wait here.” I used my sweater sleeve to wipe drool from the side of my face.

  Lydia . . . you probably look like a glazed doughnut. . . .

  I was awake for the rest of the trip, but I played possum for a while. When we crossed into Connecticut, Aunt Brat turned off the highway onto long roads that narrowed into hilly, country places.

  “We’re close,” she said. “Close to Chelmsford now.”

  I watched the miles of woods and meadows. A warm snow began to fall—the kind that makes fat flakes that fall so slowly you can pick one out and follow it down.

  Well, I thought, at least it’s pretty.

  3

  Up Pinnacle Hill

  The hill was a challenge for the boxy car. I heard and felt gravel slipping out from under Aunt Brat’s tires. But when we got to the crest the land flattened out for what must have been many acres. A pasture met a meadow, and the meadow met the woods. Everything was dressed in a thin layer of the wet snow. Light glowed in the windows of the farmhouse. This was my first look at Pinnacle Hill Farm.

  I had landed inside of a painting, I thought. Then I got such a pang. Mom would have loved this. She had been a country person who because of her health had to live close to the city.

  Aunt Brat had told me how she and her wife, Eileen, had come to live on the farm, which belonged to an old, old man with an unusual name. It was one of the things we’d covered during our five-and-a-half-hour car ride.

  “It was serendipitous,” she’d said. “A good arrangement with good timing. Elloroy needed someone to come in and cook dinner, and stay a little while each evening. We started off that way. Meanwhile, Eileen and I had been searching for a place where I could be close to the university. Eileen wanted barns and a good patch of land for . . .” Aunt Brat had paused there. She’d shaken her head. “Well, she had a project at the time but she’s taken a job at the local feedstore now. Elloroy felt he had more house than he could fill up ‘all by his skinny self.’” Aunt Brat had smiled warmly as she’d imitated the old man. “So we proposed that we move in with him. We offered to buy food for the three of us. We’d cook, keep house, and pay a little rent. He said yes to everything
except the rent, the old sweetheart.” She’d drummed her gloved fingers on the steering wheel, tilted her head back and forth a few times. “The place splits up nicely for the three of us.”

  Three about to be four. . . .

  “We’d never leave Elloroy now,” she’d added. “We love him. It’s been a few years. I’d say it’s working.”

  I’d nodded. How would I fit in? What was my role? Maybe the “young and strong” one? I was going to look for ways to be useful.

  Now, as we pulled up in front of the farmhouse a woman came tottering out of the door and down the porch steps to greet us. She ran her hands through her short brush of brown hair. I looked at Aunt Brat.

  “Is that your Eileen?” I asked.

  “Yes. My Eileen,” she said. The softness of her eyes said love. I felt a little bud of warmth at my core.

  Aunt Brat popped the locks on our doors. We unfolded our travel-weary selves from the car. I turned to set my box on the seat for the time being. (I’d kept it on my lap the whole way.)

  Eileen was beaming. We’d heard about her—Mom and I—but we’d never met her. I knew Mom was sorry about that. Aunt Brat and Eileen shared a pair of glad-to-see-you grins as we stepped out of the car.

  “We made it!” Aunt Brat called. She stretched her back. “Eileen, say hello to Lydia.” She presented me with both her hands upturned. I pushed out a smile for Eileen and noticed the tall skinny dog whose pointed nose kept bumping into Eileen’s butt. It was one of those racing dogs—a greyhound—and it pranced around the car with moves that made me think of a carousel pony gone free from its pole. I wasn’t used to dogs. But this one seemed okay—maybe even sweet. It wiggled, shivered, and bowed its narrow head. Brat cupped the dog’s chin fondly. “Hello, Soonie! Who’s a good girl?”

  It seemed safe to take my eyes off the dog, so I focused on Eileen. She was looking at me too, eyebrows high and a smile that sliced up into her two round cheeks. “So, Lydia Bratches-Kemp, is it?” (She emphasized the Bratches part.) “I’m to be living with Big Brat and Little Brat now, am I? Huh-haw!” Then she moved in close to me, put her arms around me long enough to say, “I’m sorry about your momma. Truly.” She gave me a squeeze before she let me go.