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the meat section and grabbed a
package of thick center-cut bacon. She hadn’t bought bacon in seventeen years
because Dave had stopped eating it shortly after they got married. She went
home and made herself a gigantic BLT for dinner. She even cooked two slices for
Kona.
    Damn Dave. Poor
dog’s never even tasted bacon .

 
Chapter 4 – Is There Nothing You Won’t Eat?
     
    Maggie spent most of Sunday morning
lying on her favorite roost, the sofa. It beat being upright and trumped the
bed, where she felt the keen absence of Dave from “his side.” She could lie
still on the couch for hours. Although sometimes she tried different positions,
to break things up: feet on the arm, feet off the edge, face down, fetal,
laid-to-rest.
    What if I lay
here and never got up? She stared at the ceiling, hands folded on her
chest. Pros: Dave would feel guilty when he saw my name in
the obits. He’d have to deal with selling the house.
It’s one way out of accounting ...
    Kona ambled over and snuffled her
ear.
    Cons: Dave
would get Kona. It might be a while before anyone found me. Would Kona eat my
dead body?
    “Would you, Kona? Would you eat
your momma?”
    He trotted away and rummaged in his
toy basket. He came back with his ball. She rested her hand on his head, said
“Sorry, Buddy,” and rolled over to face the back of the couch. She was nodding
off when the phone rang.
    “Mags, come on, pick up.” Kevin.
“Please? OK, that’s it. I’m coming over there.”
    She’d better answer. Better to talk
to him than have company. “Sorry, I was outside.”
    “Hey, you’re there. Good. I, uh,
wanted to see how you’re doing.” He paused and when she didn’t say anything,
went on. “I’ve got Padres tickets for this afternoon. I know it’s kinda last
minute, but what do you say? Come have a dog and a beer with me?”
    “I’m not feeling too good. I was
just taking a nap.”
    “Oh, OK. Well, maybe we could go
out to dinner this week?”
    “I’m starting a new job, so...” She
trailed off. She didn’t want to lie outright and say she’d be busy. She was
starting a new job—but not for two weeks. He didn’t need to know Clean N’ Green
asked her to start June first. “I’ll call you when things are calmer. But,
thanks.”
    It was sweet of him, but she didn’t
want to go. Didn’t want to get dressed, wash her hair, abandon her slippers.
Didn’t want to chat or pretend things were normal. And she couldn’t really talk
to him. Not at a ballgame. And not without crying.
    Maggie and Shannon had analyzed
their brother many times, mainly trying to figure out why he never stayed with
the women he dated. They hadn’t come up with an answer. But one thing that was
easy to pinpoint was the reason for his extreme discomfort around crying women.
    When Dad had died so young of a
heart attack (Maggie always thought of it as a “heart ambush,” since they might
have seen an attack coming), she’d been a freshman, living in the dorms at San
Diego State, two hours away from home in L.A. Shannon had been spending her
last semester of high school in Paris on exchange. She’d come home for two
weeks but they’d all decided that Dad would want her to go back. That meant
Kevin, only thirteen, was left home alone with Mom. They knew he’d tried to
help, but she was devastated. How could she not be? And Kevin was just a kid,
ill-equipped to deal with their mother’s grief. He’d seen enough of a woman’s
tears to float an armada; enough to last his lifetime.
    Maggie remembered a time he showed
up for dinner without his latest girlfriend.
    “Where’s Cindy?” she’d asked.
    “We went to a matinee of Happy Gilmore . And she cried.”
    “She cried at an Adam Sandler
movie?”
    “Yeah. You know the part where his
dead mentor, the alligator and Abe Lincoln all wave at him from the beyond? She
said it was ‘ so touching.’ I took her home and broke
up with her.”
    As Maggie hung up, she thought, that’s
why he thought of