Free Dog Medicine by Julie Barton Page B

Beauchêne to be the kind of place for special conversations.
    I also knew that this would be my dad’s attempt at an
I’ll Save Julie
trip, but I didn’t care. I was up for being saved. It was a thirteen-hour drive, and I wanted thirteen hours alone with my dad. I needed some time with him on a boat. I needed to be in a remote place with no interruptions, no work, just trees, birds, fishing gear, and my father’s ear. I longed to hear the loons calling through the morning fog.
    â€œDo you think fishing might be something you’d want to do?” my mom asked. I noted her overly careful wording.
    â€œSure, whatever,” I said. She pulled the newspaper down, squinted at me over her reading glasses, smiled slightly, and offered to take my empty cereal bowl. “Thanks,” I said, as I heaved myself up out of the chair and to the couch, where I disappeared into the television. I spent some time with MTV, then looked for a cheesy movie to watch. I stumbled upon
Some Kind of Wonderful
and curled into the couch, blissful at the escape.
    The next several days resembled this one. I slept past noon and my mom tiptoed around me offering food and silence as I lay on the couch, watched television, and slept. I was grateful for her patience and quiet with me. She was the one who rescued me from my urban demise, and the next day I threw a pillow at her. She had every right to be angry with me, but she wasn’t.
    Dad booked our fishing trip for the next week. For at least a few days I could escape my suffocating bedroom. Early the following Saturday morning, Dad and I packed the car while Mom fussed over the cooler and its peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,chips, apples, chocolate chip cookies, and soda. I was having another tough day, my thoughts running dark, but I managed to put enough underwear in a bag and get into the passenger seat of the car.
    After pulling onto the freeway, my dad and I started talking. Since my returning home, aside from the night he held me as I cried, we hadn’t spoken much. He was mostly working; I was mostly sleeping.
    So in his car, on Route 71 North, he asked what happened with Will. I told him that I’d fallen deeply in love but that Will was fighting some demons. I told my dad that I would always love Will and that he was a good man. My dad told me he thought the guy was too negative and that I was better off. I smiled and watched the road.
    The truth was, Will had started calling around the second week I was home. “I miss you,” he’d say. “More than I thought I would. I miss your skin. No one has skin like yours. So soft. No one else kisses me the way you do.” Of course I knew that he’d been with other women both while I was in New York and since I’d left, and I was aware enough to recognize that he loved me partially because I’d made myself unattainable. But I desperately needed to be wanted. I needed to feel adored and part of me still loved him, so I answered his calls late at night in my bedroom. I told him that I missed him and didn’t understand why things hadn’t worked out between us. He hinted that maybe some day they still could, but I couldn’t ever imagine that.
    Each mile out of Ohio peeled off another layer of the malaise. It felt like leaving New York: leaving trouble behind. I made a mental note that I needed to be careful, because I could get used to running away. Somewhere past the Canadian border, as we skirted around the lip of Lake Ontario, our tank nearing empty, we stopped at a gas station, and I started driving. As I pulled onto the freeway, my dad said, “Can I tell you about my parents’ deaths?” The question startled me. I glanced at him and nodded.
    My father was with both his parents when they died. His mother died when he was only twenty-four, before Clay or I was even born. She had rheumatic heart disease—a result of her childhood rheumatic fever. Her heart was