Ella Unleashed Read online

  After a few minutes of waiting, I’m feeling pretty calm again. But then we keep waiting, and we wait some more, and fifteen minutes later, the judge still hasn’t arrived. Now I’m getting seriously annoyed. Why did we bother to rush when it wasn’t even necessary? There would have been time to wash Elvis much more thoroughly. There are probably still sticky strawberry spots on him, and I’ll get points off when the judge finds them.

  But then something much worse happens: Elvis starts shifting from side to side in this very specific way. It isn’t his nervous tug or his excited sway; this is what Krishnan refers to as the pee-pee dance.

  “No, no, no, no,” I whisper. “Just a little longer, buddy. You can wait, right?” The last time someone took him out was this morning before we got in the car—ordinarily he’d be able to hold it way longer than that. But ordinarily he doesn’t drink thirty-two-ounce smoothies.

  I glance over my shoulder, trying to find the nearest exit; maybe I can take him out and come back before the judge even gets here. But of course that’s the moment she finally decides to show up. She’s about my grandma’s age, and she’s wearing this totally over-the-top jacket covered in green and purple sequins. At least she’ll probably appreciate my bedazzled treat pouch.

  The steward calls us into the ring, and as we line up along the low plastic fence, Elvis’s dance speeds up, and I feel my first real spark of nerves. He looks like I felt that time we got stuck in horrible traffic on the way back from a show in Maine and I had to pee on the shoulder of the road while Mom shielded me with a picnic blanket. I pull a treat out of my pouch and feed it to him, hoping it’ll distract him, but it only works for about five seconds, and then he goes right back to shifting.

  “Once around all together, not too fast,” says the judge. She doesn’t sound mean, but she’s stern, like she’s not going to cut us any slack.

  The Westie in front of us has much shorter legs than Elvis, so I let them get ahead of us, and then I tell my dog, “Come on!” in the most authoritative voice I can manage. I’ve been practicing giving him commands in exactly the right tone, and I must sound super in charge today, because he seems to forget about his discomfort for a second and does what I say. Off we go around the ring. I hold the leash away from my body and try to jog at the perfect speed so that he’s trotting but not running. Once we’re moving, I start feeling less jittery, and I can tell Elvis does too—maybe running will distract him from his bladder in a way treats can’t. Mom and Krishnan nod approvingly.

  One step down, three to go. Maybe things are going to be fine after all.

  The judge begins her exams with the first dog in line, a tall, skinny, long-haired one that I’m pretty sure is an Afghan hound. I hope she’ll hurry, but instead she’s really slow and thorough, and by the time she’s done looking at him, Elvis is fidgeting in a pretty major way. I make eye contact with my stepdad and try to send him telepathic distress signals—Is there some sort of trick to make dogs hold their pee? A pressure point I can squeeze or something? But he clearly doesn’t get the message, because he just gives me a thumbs-up and snaps a picture of us with his phone.

  The next ten minutes are agonizing. Elvis spends them shifting back and forth, and I spend them repeating Please don’t pee, please don’t pee in my head while I feed him treat after treat. Thinking about peeing reminds me of all the smoothie I drank, and after a while I’m honestly not sure either of us is going to get through this competition without an exploded bladder.

  And then it’s finally, finally our turn, and the judge waves me forward. I lead Elvis over to her and arrange his feet and head and tail in a perfect stack, exactly like the picture in the junior showmanship judging guide. It takes me longer than it took my competitors, since this is my first time in the ring, but the judge waits patiently. When we’re ready, I dig another treat out of my pouch and hold it above Elvis’s nose, and amazingly enough, he lifts his head and stands perfectly still. He’s done this literally hundreds more times than I have, and his training kicks in regardless of the circumstances.

  You can do it, Elvis, I think. Just a little longer.

  The judge feels the shape of his skull, checks his teeth, runs her hands down his chest and front legs, inspects the angle of his shoulders, and tests the springiness of his ribs. I pray she doesn’t put her hands anywhere near his bladder. But everything goes fine, and when she’s finished, she gives Elvis a friendly pat on the butt, and I finally exhale. Two steps down, two to go.

  “Down and back, please,” the judge says.

  It’s not a very big ring, so it barely takes Elvis and me any time at all to run across the square on a diagonal and back again, which lets the judge see him move from the front and the rear. Elvis trots along beside me with his tongue out, and when people clap for us, I realize I’m actually enjoying myself. I know I should be embarrassed when I hear a “Woo!” in what is unmistakably my mom’s voice, but instead it makes me happy.

  The judge smiles when we return and says, “Thank you. Right around, please.”

  I smile back—trotting around two sides of the square and straight down the middle on the diagonal is all that stands between us and victory. We did it. My dress isn’t ripped. I didn’t trip over my own feet. The pouch worked great. Smoothie-thief Elvis kept it together and behaved pretty much perfectly, and I don’t think the judge found any strawberry goo on him. I know dog shows aren’t beauty contests, especially not for junior handling, but I personally think he’s the prettiest dog in the ring, and that definitely can’t hurt. I might actually have this in the bag.

  I finally let myself relax a little.

  And that’s when Elvis decides to relax a lot.

  I’ve never actually seen someone open the valve on a fire hydrant, but the stream of pee that comes out of Elvis gives me a pretty good idea of what that might look like. In a matter of seconds, there’s a lake on the floor . . . and on my nice patent leather competition shoes . . . and on the judge’s sparkly green mermaid shoes. She leaps backward like she’s never seen a dog go to the bathroom before. In any other situation, it would be hilarious to watch an old lady jump so high—everyone in the crowd is roaring. But it’s a lot less funny when your dreams of a first-place ribbon are melting away like an ice cube in a mug of hot tea.

  “Oh my god, I’m so, so sorry,” I say to the judge. She doesn’t yell at me or anything, but she doesn’t say it’s okay, either. She fishes a tissue out of her pocket and dabs at her pee-stained sparkly toes.

  Standing there on the other end of my gushing dog’s leash is 100 percent mortifying, especially because he doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed of himself. But it’s not like I can stop him once he starts, so I have to wait it out, cheeks flaming, while everyone around me laughs at the never-ending stream. At least my underwear isn’t on display this time.

  So much for thinking of every possible problem.

  8

  My friends aren’t available for an EVGAP the next day, but they send lots of sympathetic texts and funny gifs, and Miriam offers to come over and join my dad and me for Italian Food Sunday. Her parents aren’t very good cooks, so it’s possible she’s mostly interested in the lasagna, but I know having her there will make me feel better regardless. I try to get Dad to take me to mini golf during the day to cheer me up, but he says he has too many chores to do, even though he spends basically every second that he’s not working doing stuff around the house. Knowing that the pre-divorce version of Dad totally would’ve taken me makes me even sadder. I really have to find him someone else to date soon. Both of us would be so much happier if he could go back to being his old self.

  Mir arrives a few minutes before dinner, and when Dad goes into the kitchen to take the lasagna out of the oven, she whispers, “When we sit down, ask me what I did this weekend.”

  “Why, what did you do?”

  “Ask me in front of your dad,” she says. “Trust me. I’m going to lay some groundwork.”

  I have no idea what
she’s talking about, but Mir never steers me wrong, so I just shrug. And then Dad calls, “Girls! Dinner!” and we follow the tantalizing smell of sauce into the kitchen.

  Miriam dives into her lasagna with the same enthusiasm as Elvis with a spilled smoothie. “OMG, Mr. Cohen,” she says, rolling her eyes back with happiness. “This is, like, the best thing I’ve ever eaten. You should quit your job and be a professional chef. The world’s taste buds need you.”

  “Seriously, Dad, this is awesome,” I say.

  Dad beams. “Thank you. I’m so glad you like it. I put butternut squash in it.”

  Mir nods hard. “Genius. I love butternut squash.”

  She stuffs another huge bite into her mouth, and I wait until she swallows before I ask, “So, what’ve you been up to this weekend, Mir?”

  “My cousins and I went shopping for bridesmaid’s dresses with my uncle’s fiancée, Kathryn! She’s so, so cool.”

  “That sounds fun,” I say. I work hard to make my voice sound totally casual, but I kind of want to leap up and hug her. I’ve been trying to figure out how to drop some hints that I’d be cool with Dad starting to date again, but I haven’t found a good way to bring it up.

  “I’ve never been in a wedding before, and everyone says people are supposed to turn into bridezillas when they get married, but she’s not like that at all,” Mir continues. “Nobody could agree on the best style for the dresses, so she said everyone can wear whatever they want as long as it’s the right shade of purple.”

  “Nice,” I say. “How long have she and your uncle been together?”

  Mir licks sauce off her fork. “Mm, a couple years, I guess? My uncle got divorced when I was probably . . . I don’t know, seven or eight? My mom never thought he’d find anyone else, but Kathryn joined the choir at his temple a few years later, and bam, they liked each other right away. I guess you never know when or where you’re going to meet someone awesome.”

  I peek at my dad, and even though he’s not asking any questions, it seems like he’s paying attention. I really hope he’s thinking about his own potential post-divorce love life, not the one Mom already has. “Do your cousins like her?” I ask.

  “Yeah, they get along great. Shira especially. I think she was nervous when Uncle Danny started dating again, but now she and Kathryn even do stuff together without him. Kind of like you and—” I shoot her a warning look, and Mir catches herself before she says Krishnan’s name. “Anyway, Shira totally loves her now. I’m jealous that she has this woman she’s super close to but who isn’t her mom, you know?”

  “That sounds pretty great.” I wait for my dad to say something, but he just sits there forking up his food, a slight frown on his face. Mir has probably given him enough to think about, so I give him permission to tune out by asking, “Do you have pictures of the dresses?”

  Mir pulls out her phone to show me, and the rest of dinner passes pretty uneventfully. Dad asks Miriam if she’s excited about her bat mitzvah, which is a few months before mine, and we talk about this new reality show called Chow Hound, where people compete to make the best gourmet meals for dogs. Dad has made ten-minute tiramisu for dessert, and even though I feel like I might pop at the seams, I still manage to put away a pretty generous helping. When Mir’s mom texts that she’s out front, it’s a huge effort to get up and walk her to the door.

  “Thanks for saying all that stuff to my dad,” I whisper as I hug her goodbye. “You were so sneaky!”

  “Of course,” she says. “We’re going to make this work—you’ll see.” She gives me one last squeeze, shouts an extra thank-you to my dad, and then she’s gone.

  I linger by the door for a few minutes, watching her mom’s car pull away. I’m nervous for the conversation I’m about to have with Dad—I’m not nearly as slick as Mir, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make the things I want to say sound natural. And it’s not like I have to say any of them right now. But Miriam served me the ball so perfectly that I can’t possibly ignore it.

  I go into the kitchen, where Dad is loading the dishwasher, and lean against the counter behind him. “So, Miriam’s new aunt Kathryn sounds cool,” I say. “She seems to really like her.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Dad says.

  I take a deep breath—it’s now or never. “Have you . . . have you ever . . .” I start, but that doesn’t seem like the right beginning to the sentence, so I backtrack and try again. “Um, do you think you might consider maybe trying to date again?”

  Dad shuts the faucet off and turns around to face me. His eyes are big and soft, almost like he feels sorry for me. “Ellabee, you don’t have to worry about that. I know how hard it was for you when Mom started dating, and I’ve got no plans to do it anytime soon.”

  It was a little hard for me at first when Krishnan came into the picture—Mom and Dad had only been divorced a few months, so everything was new and fresh and weird, and it was a lot of change all at once. But it’s been years since then, and now I know how great having a stepparent can be. “No, no, I’m not worried about it,” I say. “I actually wouldn’t mind at all if you went on some dates. I mean, if you wanted to. You don’t need to hold off because of me, is what I’m saying, if that’s what you’re doing. Seriously. I just want you to be happy.”

  “You have never kept me from being happy, and you never will,” Dad says. “I’m happiest when I’m with you, sweetheart. To be honest, I don’t have much interest in dating right now. All I need is lots of hang-out time with my number one girl.” He comes over and kisses the top of my head. “I don’t ever want you to feel like you’re not enough to make me happy.”

  I want him to have lots of things that make him happy again; that’s the entire point. “I love hanging out with you too, obviously,” I say. “But it wouldn’t have to be one or the other, right? I’m only here half the time, and I want your life to be awesome all the time. Maybe there are tons of amazing women around, and you’re missing out because you’re not looking. The perfect person could be sitting in her house right now thinking about how she wishes she had a really cool bald boyfriend who makes great pasta.”

  Dad chuckles. “If I ever decide I want to date again, I’m sure there will be plenty of women then too. They’re not going anywhere.”

  “But what if they are? What if the good ones are all taken by then?”

  His eyebrows crinkle. “Sweetheart, where is all this coming from? I’ve never heard you talk about this before.” He’s giving me this weird look that makes me realize I’ve totally overdone it.

  I shrug in a way that I hope looks casual. “I don’t know. Nowhere. All the stuff Miriam said, I guess. I thought it could be cool. And . . . I don’t know, I like hanging out with Krishnan. So I thought it could be fun having someone around here too. It only seems fair, you know?”

  Dad’s jaw tightens, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake by mentioning Krishnan. But his eyes also look steelier, the way they get when we’re playing cards and his competitive spirits kicks in, so maybe it was exactly the right thing to say. When he told me he thought I should quit the dog show a couple weeks ago, it only made me more determined to do it, and I definitely got that quality from him.

  “That’s very selfless of you,” Dad says. “Thank you. But I really don’t want you to worry about this. I know you’re stressed about other things, so you can put this out of your mind.”

  Of course, the fact that he doesn’t seem willing to date is one of the things that’s stressing me out the most, but it’s not like I can tell him that. So I say, “Okay. But if I promise I’m not stressed, will you promise me something too?”

  “Sure,” he says, slinging an arm around my shoulders.

  I snuggle into his side so I don’t have to look at his face. “If you happen to meet someone really awesome, will you give her a chance and not write her off because you think it might upset me?”

  Dad’s chest moves up and down under my cheek as he sighs. “Okay,” he says. “I promise. But don’
t hold your breath. It’s not like I meet awesome single women all the time.”

  I smile into his T-shirt. “True,” I say. “But you never know when coincidence might strike.”

  To: SuperDad_DSC

  From: DrownedInMoonlight

  Hey, SuperDad! Just stumbled across your profile, and I think we might be a good match. I worked in advertising for a little while before I went to law school; it’s a tough industry, and I admire you for sticking it out. I’ve definitely seen that granola ad you mentioned, and I remember thinking it was clever. I’d love to meet the man behind the idea. Any interest in grabbing a drink next weekend?

  xo,

  Linda

  * * *

  To: DrownedInMoonlight

  From: SuperDad_DSC

  Hi, Linda! I’m glad you liked the Granolatastic ads! You don’t say much about yourself in your profile! Do you have any kids? Any pets? Have you ever been married? Do you like being a lawyer? Hope you’re having a good day!

  David

  * * *

  To: SuperDad_DSC

  From: DrownedInMoonlight

  Hey, glad to hear back from you! Totally reasonable that you’d want to get to know me better before going out. I’ve never been married, and I don’t have any kids, though I’m close to my four nieces and nephews. I haven’t decided whether I want kids of my own, but I’ve always thought I might like to adopt someday. I have an adorable dog named Patti, and I’m thinking about getting another one. You wouldn’t believe how much time I waste on PetFinder. Are you a dog person? I’ve been doing intellectual property law for eight years now, and I really love it! I hope that doesn’t make me sound stodgy, because I’m actually pretty fun. :) You can find out much more about me if you meet me for a drink this coming Sunday.