A Version of the Truth by Jennifer Kaufman & Karen Mack

Author:Jennifer Kaufman & Karen Mack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780440337362
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

When I get home I slosh through two giant pools of water in the kitchen. Old leaky roof. Old leaky house. I wipe up the water with a torn, faded beach towel and grab two big soup pots to place under the leaks. Black Dog's tail is wagging so hard he looks like he's doing the hula. Obviously hungry. Sam, on the other hand, is stewing in his cage and ignores me completely. I give Black Dog some leftover chicken mixed with his dry food and meekly offer Sam a carrot and a hunk of cheese. He's too hungry to hold a grudge, so he takes the food into a corner and eats it with his back toward me, still muttering peevishly under his breath.

I pull off my clothes, step into my molded Formica shower, turn it on full blast, and watch the trickle come out. Just as I sit down in my flannels to transcribe the lecture, I hear my mother's voice sailing through the kitchen door, “Honey, I'm home!”

“I'm home! I'm home!” echoes Sam.

“Cassie, open up! I'm locked out!”

Black Dog reaches the door first, jumping up on two legs and pressing his nose to the glass door panes. Then he lets out a high-pitched wail, like a tea kettle, and bounds out the door to greet her, clawing her two large shopping bags and knocking her off balance.

“Yes, yes, I missed you too, my darling,” she croons as she sets down the bags and rummages through her backpack for a baggie of treats.

“Sit,” she commands, holding out a rawhide stick. Black Dog jumps up and snatches it from her hand.

“Good boy,” she says matter-of-factly.

Mom hands me the bags, which are filled with organic dried fruits, preserves, almonds, honey, and giant containers of dates. Every time she goes to the desert she stops at a roadside date stand, halfway between here and hell, and loads up on this stuff. She likes to tell me that these food groups are the secret of happiness—with the added benefit of keeping one regular, sound of mind, and cancer-free. Sometimes I think if I could just combine my mother's healthy body secrets with Tiff's philosophical quest for happiness, I'd be the wisest person on earth.

When I was young, my parents and I used to stop at the place across the highway from the date shack, a giant weather-beaten concrete brontosaurus. It had a fifty-foot neck you could slide down if you didn't mind the bird shit and then climb about a zillion steps back up. I remember one time my dad got so winded he finally had to sit down, take a breather, and then double back.

My mother always loved stopping at weird roadside attractions. Like the time we went to a children's science fair on the way home from somewhere and took a tour of a walk-through human heart. It was a giant, pulsating, alarmingly red exhibit, the size of a two-story house, and when you first walked in, the rampway “arteries” were pitch-black and so narrow that we were forced to crawl.

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