Final Appeal. Lisa Scottoline

Who said?”

      “Daddy. He told me it was my decision.” Her tone elides into the adolescent sneer that comes prematurely to six-year-old girls.

      “Don’t be fresh.”

      “Don’t be fresh. Don’t be fresh. Daddy says you can break the rules sometimes.”

      “Oh, he does, does he?” Easy for Sam to say. After his highly suspect charitable deductions, fidelity was the second rule he broke. Sam is a high-powered lawyer who lost interest in me at about the same time I became a mother and quit being a high-powered lawyer myself; ironically, I thought that was just when I was getting interesting.

      “Gretchen says that if your tooth comes out too soon, you have to wait a long time for a new tooth to grow.” She twists a hank of Madeline’s yarn hair around her finger.

      “Is Gretchen a girl in your class?”

      “Gretchen knows about bugs and gerbils. She knows about why it’s a hamster and not a gerbil. She has three teeth out. Madeline likes her.”

      “Then she must be nice.”

      “She is. She has long hair, really long. Down to here.” She makes a chop at her upper arm. “She wears a jumper.”

      Like Madeline. “Do you eat lunch with her?”

      “Sometimes. Not usually. Usually I’m alone.”

      “Why?”

      “I don’t know that much people, so nobody ever sits next to me.”

      I try to remember what I read in that parenting book. Talk so your kid will listen, listen so your kid will talk; it’s catchy, but it means nothing. “What can we do about that?”

      “I don’t know.” She shrugs.

      I forget what the book says to do when they shrug. “Would you like to have Gretchen over? Maybe one of the days I’m off from work?”

      “She won’t come.”

      “You don’t know that unless you ask.”

      “But I don’t know her exactly as a best friend, okay?”

      “But, honey, that’s how you get to know someone.”

      “Mom, I already told you!” She turns away.

      I am at a loss. There is no chapter on your child having no friends. I even spied on her at recess last month after I went food shopping. The other first graders swung from monkey bars and chased each other; Maddie played by herself, digging with a stick in the hard dirt. Her Madeline doll was propped up against a nearby tree. I found myself thinking, If she’s digging a grave for the doll, I’m phoning a shrink. Instead I telephoned her teacher that night.

      “She’ll be fine,” she said. “Give her time.”

      “But it’s March already. I’m doing everything I can. I help out in the classroom. I did the plant sale and the bake sale.”

      “Have you set up any play dates for her?”

      “Every time I suggest that, she bursts into tears.”

      “Keep at it.”

      “But isn’t there anything else I can do?”

      “Let it run its course. She’s on the young side.”

      “But she was fine last year, in kindergarten. She was even younger.”

      “Weren’t you home then?”

      Ouch. Then my alimony ran out and almost all my savings; with child support, I can swing part-time. “Yes, I only work three days a week, and she has her grandmother in the afternoon. It’s not like she’s with a stranger.”

      “She’s just having some trouble with the adjustment.”

      Well, duh, I thought to myself.

      But I didn’t say it.

      Bernice’s ears prick up at the sound of a soft knock at the front door and she takes off, barking away, back paws skidding on the hardwood floor. In a minute, there’s the chatter of a key in the lock; it has to be Ricki Steinmetz, my best friend. She’s the only one with a key besides my mother.

      “Rick, wait!” I shout, but it’s too late.

      The door swings open and Bernice bounds onto Ricki’s shoulders. “Aaaiieee!” Ricki screams in surprise.

      “Bernice, no!” I yank the dog from Ricki’s beige linen suit, leaving distinct rake marks in the shoulder pads, and hustle Ricki and Bernice inside before my neighbors call the landlord.

      “Is that a dog?” Ricki says, backing up.

      I hold a finger to my lips and listen upstairs to hear if Bernice’s barking woke Maddie. Ricki understands and shuts up, her mouth setting into a disapproving dash of burgundy lipstick. There’s no sound from Maddie’s room. Bernice chuffs loudly on Ricki’s cordovan mules.

      Ricki gasps. “Did you see that? She threw up on my shoes!”

      “She just sneezed.”

      “These are Joan and David!”

      “Come in the kitchen, would you?” I take Bernice by the collar and walk her like Quasimodo into the kitchen. “What are you doing here? It’s almost nine o’clock.”

      Ricki snatches a paper napkin from the holder on the dining room table and follows me into the kitchen. “Didn’t your mother tell you I called? I wanted to come over and see how you were, after what happened,” she says, wiping her shoe. Ricki is a family therapist who takes clothing as seriously as codependency. She still looks put together even after a day of seeing clients; her white silk T-shirt remains unwrinkled, her lips lined. In fact, she’d look perfect if she didn’t have those rake marks on her shoulders and that goober on her shoes.

      “It’ll dry.”

      “Disgusting.” She slips on the shoe. “It’s the judge’s dog, isn’t it?”

      “Yep.”

      “Tell me you’re taking it to the pound.”

      “Nope. I own it. Her.”

      She stands stock-still. “You’re kidding me.”

      “Don’t start with the dog. I heard it from my mother, I heard it from my daughter. You came over to be supportive, so start being supportive.” I sit down on one of the pine stools at the counter in my makeshift eat-in kitchen, and Bernice stands beside me, tail wagging. I scratch her head.