Notes from a Liar and Her Dog Read online

  “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.

  When I was little, I used to love my father, but now I don’t know. He liked me better when I was little and stupid—when I thought every idea he came up with was the greatest thing. He doesn’t want a daughter. He wants a fan. Kate and Elizabeth are his fans now. I am not.

  My father parks his car half in the garage and half out of it. He always parks this way, I don’t know why.

  “He’s here! He’s here!” my sisters yell. For a second, I think about yelling this, too, and running down the stairs to meet him. I imagine him putting his arms around me and hugging me in his big hug way.

  Elizabeth and Kate bolt outside in their tights and tutus. Kate is jumping up and down. Elizabeth must have forgotten she is too grown-up for this, because she is jumping up and down, too. Now my dad is carrying Elizabeth under one arm and Kate under the other. He walks pitched forward like his shoulders can’t wait for his legs to catch up. He lets my sisters down and sweeps my mother off her feet, like the leading men in the old movies. My father is tall and blond, and he looks almost as handsome as an actor. Not the leading guy, though. The leading guy’s brother.

  They are inside now. I strain to hear what they’re saying. Elizabeth and Kate are both talking at once, telling my dad how they are doing in school. “One at a time,” my mother says. I look at my watch, wondering how long it will take for him to ask about me. My sisters blabber on about ballet class and their friends and the show they can’t wait to perform. Then my mother gets her turn. She tells him about a lady she met at Barbara and Barbara’s who got her house repossessed. She is pretending to sound sorry, but her voice is happy, like when she gets the right answer to one of her TV quiz shows.

  “Where’s Antonia?” my father asks when my mother takes a breath. I look at my watch. Eleven minutes, thirty-three seconds.

  “Where do you think?” my mother answers.

  My father takes the steps two at a time. He always does this. I don’t know if it is because he’s tall or always in a hurry. He knocks on my door. Rat-a-tat-tat, even the knock is a celebration.

  I put my head against the little ball of Pistachio and say nothing.

  “Little Brown Acorn, are you in there?”

  I’m quiet. I blink the tears back.

  My father knocks again. When I don’t answer, he opens the door a crack. “Antonia, are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m seeing to Pistachio is all. He’s sick.”

  “Oh,” he says, glancing down at Pistachio as if he has forgotten I have a dog. “You don’t want to come down and welcome your dad home?”

  I think about telling him that he is not my real dad, so there’s no sense in me going through this nonsense about welcoming him home. But I don’t. “I can’t leave,” I say. “Pistachio needs me.”

  He blows air out of his nose and bites his bottom lip, the way he does when he’s annoyed. This is not the way things are supposed to go when he comes home. There is supposed to be a show and then he is supposed to give out presents and then we are supposed to eat a special dinner.

  “I have a present with your name on it,” he says. “I guess I’ll have to give it to Elizabeth.” I can see by the way he says this that he is sure this will make me come around. It has worked before.

  “I guess so,” I say. I wonder what he has brought this time. Once he gave us Mexican blouses. Another time, it was wooden shoes. The thing is he never travels to Mexico or Holland, he always goes to places like Cleveland or Omaha or St. Louis, so I am not sure how he gets those gifts, but he does. I hope he will suggest I bring Pistachio downstairs. I think about telling him I will come down if I can bring Tashi.

  We are both quiet a long time. I smell the lasagna my mother is cooking. It smells like tomatoes and garlic and fried onions. My mother makes great lasagna. It’s the only thing she doesn’t make from a box.

  I try to open my mouth to ask if Pistachio can come downstairs with me, but I am too slow. “Suit yourself, Antonia,” he says, and walks out of my room, closing the door between us.

  I jump up and open it again. “My name is Ant.”

  He stops at the stairs and shakes his head without even looking at me. “Ants ruin a picnic, Ant
onia,” he says, and then he is gone.

  The tears are hot in my eyes. It’s safe to let them fall. I’ve hurt his feelings, he won’t be back. I creep out into the hall and strain to hear what is going on downstairs.

  “What happened?” my mom asks.

  “She says Pistachio is sick and he needs her. I’m gone for six weeks and she doesn’t even come down to say hello. She doesn’t need anybody, does she?”

  4

  PISTACHIO

  All weekend I’ve been watching Pistachio, trying to figure out what to do. He is so tired, he doesn’t do anything but sleep and stand at my door as if he wants to go out. But when I take him out he wants to go in. In. Out. In. Out. He is all confused, and he can’t seem to get comfortable. His dark eyes are dull, as if even the simplest decision is too much for him. He looks up at me like can’t I do something to make him feel better?

  I don’t know how to help. I’ve taken him to the clinic twice in the last few weeks, but they don’t seem to know what’s the matter. “A blander diet,” the vet with the chunky blond braid said, and then she gave me this special food that’s a funny yellow color and smells like vitamins. Tashi won’t touch it. The vet with the shaky hands gave him a shot. That didn’t help, either. Then I tried the rice and cottage cheese diet, and my mom went nuts. “Why on earth are you feeding cottage cheese to a dog?” she asked. “Do you know how much it costs?” Cottage cheese is nothing compared to what a visit to the doggy doctor costs. But my mom doesn’t know I’ve been going there.

  The problem is my mom hates dogs. So does my dad. It’s pretty amazing that we even have a dog. What happened was right after we moved to Sarah’s Road, my father was supposed to open an insurance office in Toledo. My dad wanted this really good insurance agent named Irene to move from Indiana to Ohio so she could run the office. But Irene wouldn’t go, on account of she had three dogs and landlords don’t like to rent to you if you have pets. But my dad wanted her really bad, so on one of his trips to Toledo, he found her a cute house to rent where the landlord said it was okay to have three dogs. Only problem was by moving day, Irene didn’t have three dogs. She had four.

  Apparently a teacup Yorkie terrier followed Irene home from the park and Irene had not been able to find his owner. So my father called the landlord in Toledo to see if he would allow four dogs, but the guy said forget it, four are too many.

  By then, my father needed Irene even worse than before because the office was supposed to open in two weeks, so he promised he’d find a home for the tiny Yorkie dog Irene called Pistachio. That night Pistachio came to our house on a “strictly temporary basis,” and the next day my mom put up Free Dog signs with our phone number on little pull tabs. Shortly after that all those signs “mysteriously disappeared.” I must have missed some, though, because one lady did call. Luckily, I answered the phone, and by the time I got through telling her all of Pistachio’s bad habits—those he has and those he might someday develop—she said, “No, thank you.”

  Then my mom got mad at my dad. She said she was going to take that dog to the pound. But my dad said he promised Irene he wouldn’t do that. Then I swore for the hundredth time I would clean up after Pistachio and keep him out of my mom’s sight. She wouldn’t even know we had a dog. But my mom said no. Every day I’d ask and every day she’d say no. After a few weeks I finally figured out my mom didn’t have any idea what to do with Pistachio and if I just kept quiet, he could stay.

  The problem is she won’t spend money on him. She buys dog food, but that’s it. This is why when I take him to the vet, I get a temporary case of dyslexia. I put all the right numbers and all the right letters on the forms, I just mix up the order quite a bit. I have to. The last time the vet cost $128. Who has that kind of money?

  This time I’m going to need her to pay, though, because she’s going to have to drive me. None of the vet clinics in Sarah’s Road are open on Sunday nights, which is the stupidest thing in the world. How are dogs supposed to know to get sick during business hours? There is only one vet clinic open all night, but it’s an hour’s drive away. My dad isn’t home right now, neither are Harrison and Mr. Emerson. I try to think of what I can say to my mom to get her to take Tashi to the vet.

  I walk downstairs with Pistachio tucked in the crook of my arm. My mom is watching some kind of interior decorator show with Kate. They get all excited when somebody has an old Egyptian urn they think is worth $5 and it turns out to be worth $50,000. “Hah, I knew it. Did you know it? I knew it,” they tell the TV.

  “Mom?”

  My mom turns away from the screen. “Antonia, you know perfectly well that dog is not allowed in the living room.”

  I step back off the rug onto the linoleum in the en-tranceway.

  “Mom, would you come out to the kitchen? I need you to look at Pistachio.” My mother sighs. She picks up her empty glass and follows me through the push door.

  “Mom, he’s really sick. We have to do something!”

  My mother sets her glass on the counter and gets a bottle of lemon seltzer out of the refrigerator. “Antonia, he’s a dog. What am I supposed to tell you?”

  “Yeah, and he’s sick. Can’t you see?”

  She groans, pours her seltzer, and stands with her glass in her hand. We both look at Pistachio.

  “His nose is hot. He’s hot all over. He’s not eating. Look, here’s a Milk-Bone.” I put him down on the floor. “He loves Milk-Bones. But he won’t even sniff it. He doesn’t even get up when I come in now. He’s not like this normally, Mom. He’s not!”

  Elizabeth floats in and pulls open the refrigerator. She gets some apple juice and pours it in her favorite pink cup. She looks down at Pistachio. “He does look sick, Mom. And if he dies in this house it will be the grossest thing. There will be maggots and worms. It will smell awful. The whole house will be contaminated. I can’t live in a house with a dead dog in it. Not even 409 can help that.”

  “Shut up! Why do you have to be so mean?” I ask.

  Elizabeth ignores me. “Just call the animal-control people. They’ll take him.” She picks up her pink cup and walks out of the kitchen.

  “So,” my mom says slowly. “What is it you want from me, Antonia?” My mother raises one eyebrow.

  “We’ve got to take him to the vet, Mom.”

  “Antonia, for God’s sake …”

  “If you were me, how would you get you to take Pistachio to the vet?”

  “If I were you, I’d forget it. We don’t have that kind of money. I spent $200 on the vet last time. Remember that? That was two weeks’ worth of groceries. I can’t be spending that kind of money every time your dog has a little headache.” My mom puts rice crackers on a plate and pushes the kitchen door open with her foot. I follow her.

  “What if we were the richest people in the world, would you pay to take Pistachio to the vet then?”

  “That’s a ridiculous question, Antonia.”

  I stop at the metal bar that marks the beginning of the rug. I raise my voice so she’ll hear me over the TV. “What if I did double chores, plus the laundry, plus the dishes and the weeding and the sweeping up, would you do it then?”

  “If you did the laundry, Antonia, our clothes would turn blue. If you swept the floor, your sweeping would make the place twice as dirty. And besides that, no means no! What part of no don’t you understand?” Mrs. MacPherson saw this on a mug a few months ago and ever since then it’s been her favorite saying. She thinks she’s clever every time she says it.

  “Look, Mom! Look!” I hold Pistachio up. “He’s suffering. It’s our responsibility to take care of him. It is.” I wish I could make her see how sick he is. The way he feels heavier to hold now, like dead weight, and he barely lifts up his head. You have to really know Pistachio to understand how un-Pistachio-like he is being.

  My mom moves the couch pillow behind her back. “He’s old, Antonia. I’m sorry about that. I am. But there’s nothing a vet can do about it. Dogs get old. They die. Cats get old.
They die. People get old and die, too. You know that.”

  I cover Pistachio’s ears. “‘Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,’” I sing in his ear so he can’t hear what my mom’s saying.

  “Antonia, if he’s still sick in a few days, we’ll talk about going to the vet, okay?” She takes a bite of her rice cracker and turns back to the TV.

  “Oh, great, and what if he dies in the meantime?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “Well, you just said he was old and he was going to die.”

  “Antonia, I’m not taking that dog to the vet tonight. On Wednesday, if he’s still sick, we’ll talk about it again.”

  “When you get old and sick,” I whisper, “and you need to go to the doctor, I’ll remember this. Let’s wait a few days and see if you die first, I’ll say.”

  Luckily, my mom and Kate don’t hear me.

  “Mom.” I walk right into the living room and hold Pistachio’s little body out at her.

  “Antonia, get that dog out of the living room! I have half a mind to take him to the pound right this minute! And what are you doing down here, anyway? You’re still grounded!”

  Dear Real Mom,

  Well, this confirms it. Mrs. MacPherson is the meanest person in the whole world. And I know for sure I am not the daughter of someone this mean. In fact, I’m not related to her in any way, and I know I wasn’t inside her belly or attached to her by any umbilical cord, either. Elizabeth and Kate probably were because they are mean, too. But not me. If I was inside my mom’s belly, I held my breath the whole time!

  Love,

  Ant and Pistachio

  When I hear my father come home, I head downstairs. It’s very late now and the chances of getting him in the car at eleven at night for any reason short of a neighborhood evacuation are slim. But I’m afraid tomorrow will be too late. What if Pistachio dies? This is too horrible to imagine. I’ll stay up all night and protect him, that’s what I’ll do. Only my bed is looking soft and warm right now and my pillow is calling me. What if I fall asleep?