Dog Stays in the Picture Read Online Free Page B

separating calmly with Eliza in the mornings. I dropped the boys off. The boys did not give a rat’s ass who dropped them off, or even where. They had each other, so there was never an issue. Maybe God saw how badly I was muffing it with Eliza and gave us twins to save everyone a little stress.
    By middle school, with the help of wonderful Ms. Tinari and Ms. Ferguson in their full-length down coats, smiling and dancing from one foot to another for warmth at the frosty curb every morning, Eliza and I finally learned to release with dignity. Eliza would hop out and trot gaily up the steps. I would be okay, I guessed. By the end of eighth grade I’d only occasionally linger to watch her pink backpack disappear through the glass doors before I’d well up, and have to gulp it back on my way up the driveway. She’s growing up fast. …
    By the spring of that last middle-school year she had a boyfriend. Eliza was thirteen, and being seen places with her mother was becoming a bit of an embarrassment. But she was forced into my company one evening in order to satisfy a requirement: Eliza had to attend a music concert of some kind, and write a paper about it. A Broadway musical seemed like the least painful outing, and the only touring company in Philly that spring was Mamma Mia!
    We knew nothing about it. I had totally missed ABBA in the ’70s, but my sister Colette, who is British and very cutting-edge, claims that their harmony is on the level with Bach or something crazy like that, and their material can be surprisingly primal, as well. For the uninitiated: ABBA was made up of two married couples. The name is a sort of anagram because both women’s names begin with an “A” and the men’s begin with a “B.” When the first “AB” pair divorced, they managed to keep the group together for a while. Some of the songs they wrote and performed toward the end were intensely personal, illustrations of the turmoil they were going through in their relationships: Picture A, belting out her anguish over B’s infidelity, while B, who actually wrote the song, is onstage playing backup. I was intrigued.
    During the first act, I think Eliza was too cool for school, attitude-wise, and to be honest, I was as well. I wanted to keep my mind open, but we both felt out of our element and were having a sort of reverse mother-daughter bonding experience, both of us rolling our eyes at all the screaming middle-aged women around us leaping to their feet for the climactic dance numbers. Platform shoes and glitter Spandex! So I was not expecting to be blindsided in Act II. There’s a heartfelt, simple ballad, “Slipping Through My Fingers,” where the central character (the Mamma) is helping her daughter into her wedding dress, reminiscing about how it felt to watch her “funny little girl” leave home with her schoolbag in the early morning.
    Sitting in the dark, surrounded by sniffling menopausal women, next to my own funny little girl on the eve of high school (The driver’s­ license! The college applications!), the song ripped me right out of my snarky attitude into a deep place; I was jettisoned instantly back to my minivan in the school drop-off lane, watching that pink backpack bob eagerly up the steps. Tears streaming, nose running, all the while desperately keeping my head as low as possible­, trying to conceal my sudden ABBA conversion from Eliza, because if she realized I’d been sucked in like this she would either be mortified, or worse, fall apart herself.
    I am beginning to sense I’m not the only hysterical helicopter in the box. I have company—my friend Susan, with her earthquake-kit milk letdown, for one, and these ABBA ladies, with their hot flashes, whimpering next to me in the dark. I really felt a connection with the ABBA ladies that night, and if Eliza hadn’t been there I probably would have joined the Conga line they formed up and