The School of Beauty and Charm by Melanie Sumner Page A

removed the handkerchief from his back pocket and polished the lock of the trunk, a sign that we could all board.
    Roderick stretched out in the back seat with his inhaler and worn copy of
Civil Disobedience
, while I sat in the front, squeezed between Henry, Florida, and the white toy poodle, Puff LeBlanc, so that Roderick and I wouldn’t fight.
    Legally, Puff was Roderick’s dog. Roderick was allergic to most dogs, including his favorite breed, the Saint Bernard, for which Florida thanked God. She tried to talk Roderick into a Venus’s-flytrap, a plant that eats hamburger, and then a koi fish, but in the end, she gave in because at least poodles don’t shed.
    Roderick swore she would never have to lift a finger. He read several books on dog training and cleaned out a corner of his room for Puff’s dog bed, food bowl, and toys. When Puff arrived,he devoted himself to its happiness and well-being, following the pup around with a faint furrow in his brow and looking very much like Henry. Was his water clean enough? Did the collar fit? Why were we holding him wrong?
    Puff, however, had his own ideas. Within forty-eight hours of his arrival, he had scoped out the situation and bonded firmly with Florida. All over Owl Aerie, you could hear the tap tap tap of Florida’s heels followed by the tippety tap, tippety tap of Puff’s painted blue toenails. Up and down the stairs they went, in and out of rooms, tap tap tap, tippety tap, tippety tap. On the rare occasion that Florida sat down, Puff collapsed, exhausted, in her lap. Often he awoke from these naps entangled in knitting yarn, and she would scold him, pushing him roughly to the floor. She spoke no endearments, and did not rub him behind his well-brushed ears. Still, at the sound of her, “Shoo. Git!” he wagged his puff of a tail with delight. Daily, she fed him, walked him, and jerked the tangles from his hair with a cold metal comb. When he had diarrhea, she cleaned it up and fed him teaspoons of Pepto-Bismol, bracing his mouth open with her fingers. Once, she knitted him a sweater.
    â€œHe worships me,” she admitted. The dog only tolerated the rest of us, who ultimately had a low opinion of poodles and were disappointed that Puff acted so much like one. “You can’t change a personality,” Florida reminded us. “I have tried and tried with Henry. You take the good with the bad. When I married Henry, I thought he was perfect, but he’s not.” She poked him in the arm. “Are you?”
    A LTHOUGH H ENRY HAD never in his life exceeded the speed limit or turned without signaling or blown his car horn,he did have one bad driving habit, and it drove Florida up the wall. Sometimes he let the car run out of gas. It was an addiction, like gambling, an insane obsession to pit himself against chance. He did it that Sunday on the way to Red Cavern, Kentucky.
    At two o’clock that afternoon, when the needle of the gas gauge rested delicately on the inner edge of the bright orange e, Henry slowed down in front of a Texaco station in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Then he read the price sign and drove on.
    â€œDadgonit,” said Florida. She glared at him. “It’s on empty.”
    Henry looked straight ahead. He wore his driving sweater, a soft cotton cardigan with leather patches on the sleeves, and a pair of sunglasses from Kmart. Outside, it was too warm for a sweater, but we all needed one in the car, with the air-conditioning on high. With one hand on the steering wheel, leaning back in his seat as if it were a recliner, he said, “There’s at least three gallons left.”
    â€œThen why does it say empty?” demanded Florida.
    â€œOh, that’s not accurate. They set these gauges up for the general public. To give them plenty of warning.”
    â€œThat’s why the general public doesn’t run out of gas,” said Roderick from the back seat. We passed another gas station.