A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [56]
“No,” he said. Then, seeing her disappointment, he remembered the old pieces of clothesline in the garage. She tied the shortest length to the collar. The collar seemed loose, but he knew better than to get too involved. The minute she put the puppy down, he squirmed out of the collar and tore through the bushes, onto Mrs. Jukas’s front porch. Yelling, Jada chased after him. The door opened as the girl dove onto the yipping dog, trying to snare him with the collar.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Jukas demanded through the screen.
“I’m just trying to get my dog, that’s all!”
“Get out of here!”
“I am. I’m just tryna get the thing on him, that’s all!”
“No! Get out of here! You get off my porch right now!”
“I am! I am! I just have to do this!” Jada said as the collar slipped off the dog’s head again.
The commotion had summoned Marvella Fossum to her front door. She seemed confused at first, then hurried down the steps and across the street onto Mrs. Jukas’s narrow porch. “What the hell’re you doing?” she screamed. “If you can’t take care of him, then you’re not gonna keep him. Didn’t I tell you that? Didn’t I? Well, didn’t I?” Jada picked up the dog and was trying to untangle the rope from the leg of the aluminum chair the dog had pulled over. “Answer me! I said answer me!” Marvella cried in the frantic tone of baseless authority.
“Get out of here! Both of you! You get off my porch right now!” Mrs. Jukas said.
“Fuck you!” Marvella kicked the door panel.
The old woman’s head recoiled. “That’s it! I’m calling the police. I don’t have to put up with a tramp like you coming onto my property!”
“Ma!” Jada pleaded as Marvella charged the door again.
In the driveway, Gordon raised his hand.
“Stop it, Ma! Stop it!” Jada cried, and grabbed her mother’s arm.
“So she can call me any name she wants?” Marvella screamed. “Like I’m nothing? Like I’m just some piece of garbage?” she bawled as Jada managed to get her off the porch with the joyful dog straining at the lead.
Delores couldn’t believe her ears. Not a word from Albert in days and suddenly here he was with his mousy little Dearborn clerk, Katie, in her denim jumper, saying he was closing the Collerton store in a few weeks.
“It seems like short notice, I know,” he said.
“Short notice!”
Katie was tallying the merchandise count in a steno notebook, but Delores knew she had been brought as Albert’s shield.
“It was one of those what I call lightbulb decisions,” Albert intoned in that chest-deep voice he used when he wanted to impress someone. “All of a sudden you go, What are we doing, why do we keep carrying this deficit from month to month? . . .”
Katie looked up and nodded.
We? Who’s we? He and Katie? How can he do this? How can he be so insensitive?
“And then it hits me! Why not just end it now?” he said.
“What do you mean?” Her voice quavered. She stared into his eyes, as if they were the only two there.
“Close it. Clear everything out, just lock the door,” he declared.
“And that’s it?”
“Well, what would be the point really of a going-out-of-business sale? I mean, when we can just take it all over to the new store,” Katie called from behind the glass case where she knelt, counting Post-it pads.
“We can probably get it all out in a day,” Albert agreed.
“If that!” Katie scoffed.
“What about me?” she asked him.
“We’re still working out the details.” He opened the storeroom door. “Hey! Where’d the old copier go?”
“That’s the last thing we need, Albert Smick, another copier!” Katie laughed and jumped up. “He can’t throw anything out,” she told Delores. “You never know when you’re going to need it, right, Albert?”
That night Delores called her youngest sister. Babbie was the one she called when she needed to sound off but didn’t want a lecture. Of the five Dufault girls, Babbie was considered the featherbrain in the family, even though she was the only one