Dog Bite - Page 12

The next morning. I was late for work. I was always late. Bella lounged languid on the couch. I prodded her to get dressed.

“I am dressed,” she said.

I made them both sack lunches. Peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat. I used the peanut butter smeared knife to make my point. “Don’t you want to wear something you didn’t sleep in?” I asked.

Bella gawked at me as if I were the worst person in the world. She turned on the Bluetooth speaker. Too loud and I was going into overload. Slapping the sandwiches in a little plastic bag, then into that brown paper everybody remembers, and then some single-serve Lays. Sophie wandered out in her tutu again.

“Sophia, do you want to wear something different today?”

She plopped on the living room floor.

“No.”

I looked out the kitchen window, towards the Vegas’ place. The sky was a wispy pastel blue, amber light rising. There was no dog. Stevie left the bat by the front door. Leaned up against the side of the refrigerator. Bella wandered into the kitchen barefoot. Happy. Black hair in a messy bun. She was in my flannel again, opened the fridge, drank orange juice from the carton, put it back, and started telling me all about some concept album by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. I guess that’s what was playing. Crowding out my thoughts. Making us all late. I looked to the center pivot out there in the rutted field of dirt, then back to Bella, who seemed to care more about this band than I had about anything in my entire life, and I thought how much I loved her.

You ever love your kids so hard, you feel it has to end in tragedy?

No? Maybe I watch too many movies.

“You’re going to be late,” I said. “Here, take this bat with you to the bus stop.”

The Lizard band loud, too loud for life.

Bella said, so matter of fact, “I’m never going back.”

Sophie, on the floor with Legos, “Yeah, me neither.”