Free Stranger in Dadland by Amy Goldman Koss Page A

definitely did
not
look like a man suffering from a broken heart. I wondered if he’d been this calm when he broke up with Mom and left her and Liz and me. What if I’d run into the street and been hit by a car when he left us? Would he have blamed himself? I was just a baby back then. A puppy. I probably didn’t understand why Dad left
me
any better than Ditz understood my leaving
her.
    In the car on the way home, I asked, “Where was Cora tonight?”
    Dad shrugged, cool as a rock. “Beats me,” he said.
    Of course, I probably had Ditz longer than my dad had known Cora. So maybe it wasn’t so weird that he wasn’t crying. But forget crying—Dad wasn’t
anything
-ing. On the other hand, was I showing any signs of having lost Ditz? Did that mean I was like my dad? No no no no no!
    *   *   *
    There’s a time difference between California and home and my mom goes to bed early, but I figured I’d call anyway. I-didn’t wake her; she was up, busily stacking her fears higher and higher as she waited to hear from me.
    Once she was convinced that I wasn’t dead or dying, Mom said, “I keep thinking I hear Ditz’s toenails on the kitchen floor.” Then she felt bad for saying that and apologized for making me sadder than I probably already was. She said she hoped that Ditz’s death wasn’t ruining my trip and that I was having some fun in spite of it all. “Ditz-wouldn’t want you to be unhappy,” Mom choked.
    I told her I was having a great time.
    When I went back into the living room, Dad told me there was a message from Iris and she’d left me her phone number. He raised his eyebrows at me. I couldn’t say the call was about him and Cora, so I let him think Iris liked me. I wondered if that sort of thing impressed him.
    But I didn’t call Iris back. Three days down. Four to go.

chapter eleven
    The phone woke me the next morning. I stumbled into the living room. Dad, in his jogging clothes, was pacing as he talked. He held up the coffeepot, offering me a cup. Of
coffee?
What the heck. I nodded as if I drank it every day.
    But then Dad handed me the phone and said, “It’s Liz.”
    “Now who’s dead?” I asked her, too groggy to actually panic.
    “Jet!” she said. “At least I
wish
he was! Do you know what he said, the creep? You won’t
believe
it!”
    “Jet?” I asked, tasting my coffee. Awck! Added more sugar, more cream. “Your boyfriend Jet?”
    “Oh,
please!
How could I have been so
stupid?
” Liz said. “When I told him about cremating Ditz, do you know what he said?”
    “What?”
    “He said it was a waste of dog! Said we should take her to a
taxidermist!
Have her stuffed in a mean pose and stick a barking cassette inside her to scare away burglars! He thought that would be
cool!
He thought it was
funny!
”
    “It is a
little
funny, Liz,” I said.
    Dad winked at me. He was smiling. Liz must’ve told him about it too.
    “It is not a bit funny, John! How can you even
say
that?”
    “Liz,” I tried, “that’s why you
liked
Jet! Because you said he doesn’t think like everyone else. Shaved head, striped car, all that. He isn’t
predictable
and
boring!
Remember?”
    Liz’s voice went cold. “I thought
you
, of all people, would understand, John.”
    “Jet liked Ditz,” I told Liz. “I’m sure he didn’t say that to be
mean.
He was just being…
Jet!
”
    “Yeah, well, if
that’s
who he was being, I hate him.”
    I sighed.
    When I got off the phone, Dad laughed out loud. “That’s rich!” he said. “Stuff the family pet!”
    I was just about to smile—my face was halfway there—when suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore.
The family pet
, as Dad had called her, was
Ditz.
    Jet knew Ditz. He’d taken us to the vet last month when Ditz had hurt her paw and Mom wasn’t home. Jet had let her bleed all over the backseat of his striped car. He’d been the one to carry Ditz into the office. Dad hadn’t been there. He never even met Ditz.
    “Who’s this Jet fellow?”