Hello Stranger(38)

“And maybe stop calling him the Weasel.”

“But he is a weasel.”

“You’ll definitely keep thinking that if you keep thinking that.”

I sighed. Another gotcha moment. “Confirmation bias?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“That’s my girl,” she said.





Twelve


DID THE GREAT Dr. Oliver Addison, veterinarian sex god, work a miracle and restore my geriatric bestie to perfect canine health?

Kind of. Mostly.

Though he did warn me that Peanut would be “a little tired” for a week or two.

Sure enough, on the day Peanut came home from the clinic, all he wanted was to curl up under the bed and nap.

But I wanted to hang out. I’d missed him.

I’d missed him so much, apparently, that all I wanted to do was lie on my tummy, half under the bed myself, watching him sleep and reassuring myself he was okay.

Look for good things, Dr. Nicole had said.

Peanut being home is definitely a good thing, I thought as I watched him.

But there was another good thing under that bed—one I’d forgotten about until I pushed it aside to get a better view of Peanut.

A box I’d kept for years, with my mother’s roller skates inside.

I hadn’t seen them in ages, but I decided to pull the box out and open it up.

My mom loved to roller-skate. The two of us used to skate up and down our block, listening to Top 40 on her little portable radio, and singing along, and waving to the neighbors. My mom could skate backward, do the moonwalk, spin around on one foot, and do the grapevine. Plus a million other things. She used to pull me with a rope behind her and call it water skiing. It was our favorite thing to do on weekends.

She had her own skates—white leather with pink pom-poms on the toes. And she’d bought me a matching pair when I was little. This was the nineties, and most of the world had shifted to Rollerblades. But not my mom.

After she died, I inherited them.

By inherited, I mean, I took them out of her closet before Lucinda donated everything to Goodwill.

I never wore them. After I lost her, I never roller-skated again. And my kid-sized skates got lost somewhere along the way, like things do.

Wherever I went, though, I kept my mom’s skates close—in that box under my bed. Not to wear. Just to have. Just because holding on to them felt like holding on to a piece of her. Just because, even though I never even looked at them, if I could save one thing in a fire—besides Peanut, of course—I wouldn’t even think about it.

One hundred percent those skates.

I wondered if they would fit me now. What size had my mom’s feet been? It bugged me that I didn’t know.

And I didn’t have anyone to ask. I could almost hear my father saying, What the hell kind of question is that?

And then, as soon as that thought popped into my head, I was on my way to find out.

Was roller skating on my list of approved postsurgical activities?

Hard no.

But to be fair: it wasn’t on my list of forbidden ones, either.

More important: Did the skates fit?

They did.

And now I knew something new about her. We were both eight and a halfs.

I grabbed a pair of tube socks—from Sue on my birthday last year—sat on a kitchen chair, and slid my foot into the leather boot of the skate with a satisfying shoonk as my heel landed in place. A perfect fit. It felt like a sign. I leaned forward and tightened the laces and made double knots. And then with a stubborn optimism that I still marvel at to this day, I thought, It’s perfectly safe if I just go slow, and then I stood and rose to my feet.

My mom loved Diana Ross and Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor. She was in her teens in the late seventies and imprinted fully on disco music and all its perky optimism. I had a whole disco playlist I listened to when I wanted to feel close to her: KC and the Sunshine Band, the Bee Gees, ABBA. I grabbed my earbuds and turned on the playlist I’d made of her favorites. And then I made my way to the door, opened it, and felt the rooftop breeze cross my face like silk just as “I Love the Nightlife” started up.

Was I a little bit shaky at first?

For sure.

But there are things you know in your body that you just never forget.

Here’s the great news: The roof of the warehouse was smooth concrete. And so other than a few seams to watch out for, it was a perfect, buttery-smooth, breezy, sunshiny space for roller skating. I swear, it felt like fate. Like this was where my entire life had been leading—to this glorious, windy rooftop moment.

Was I going to bother the tenants below? Unknown. Maybe the roof was thick enough to mask the sound. Or maybe it would just amplify it.

Either way, I got started—pushed off with one foot and rolled forward on the other.

For a while, I just pushed along jerkily, my arms out wide like a tightrope walker, feeling like I’d really left my youth somewhere back in the mists of time.

But the view from the rooftop was gorgeous—and also something I didn’t stop to appreciate often enough. To the east were historic buildings and more old brick warehouses. To the west was the greenscape of Buffalo Bayou—and its walking trails and kayakers.

I was glad they couldn’t see me, squeaking along like a tin man who needed oiling.

But then I could feel things start to shift as the muscle memory kicked in. The more I did it, the more I could do it.