“Shampoo.” Lacey scrubbed the dog into a ball of foam. Bibbits paddled frantically in water three inches too deep for him, and Lacey’s hand plunged through the foam and forced him underwater. “You’ve heard of it. It gets hair clean. Also dog fur. Have you smelled this dog lately? My bed reeks like a kennel.”
The dog’s legs were slowing down. Eric didn’t want to get into the middle of this—it was worse than the breast pumps—but he couldn’t stand there and let the animal drown. Harry laid down his rake. “Ladies,” he called as he walked across the lawn. Lacey turned to look at him, and her hand relaxed on the dog’s back. Bibbits surged out of the tub, and half the water sloshed out as he broke for freedom.
“Catch him!” Lacey and Ella Dane shouted. Ella Dane ran after the dog, and Lacey sank down where she stood, one hand pressed against the base of her throat. Eric stepped in front of Bibbits, who swerved to the right, directly into Harry’s arms.
Harry picked up the still-running hose, held the dog flat in the grass, and worked the water into the fur until there were no more bubbles. Ella Dane picked up the shampoo bottle and read the ingredients out loud in tones of horror. “Sodium laureth sulfate,” she said. “Salvia extract. So they dipped a sage leaf in it, big deal.” She went inside.
Eric helped Lacey up. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need the doctor?”
“No, I was dizzy, there was this feeling. Something came over me.”
“You were rough on the dog.” Such violence—this was a side of Lacey he’d never seen, and he couldn’t help imagining her, a year from now, alone with a baby who needed a bath, angry and impatient as she was with Bibbits. She wouldn’t. She would never lose her temper with a child, never. Of all the things Lacey would never do—but he kept seeing her hand, holding the animal underwater. “It looked like you almost drowned him,” he said. He’d been several yards away; he couldn’t be sure what he’d seen. But some of the things those women said on the Internet . . .
Lacey shrugged herself out of his arms. “Oh, come on. You think I’m going to take the dog outside and drown him right there in front of Harry and Ella Dane, really, you think that? How crazy do you think I am?”
“Of course not,” Eric said, but he added something new to his ever-evolving mental shopping list of things he needed to buy for the baby. One of those plastic bath seats, with a seat belt, the tub formed to support the baby upright. He’d spent half an hour yesterday watching online clips of babies being washed in a variety of tubs and seats and even, one of them, in the kitchen sink, which didn’t look safe at all. A plastic bath seat, for safety.
How crazy did he think she was? Not crazy at all, but maybe Ella Dane could stay on for the first couple of months. Several women on the depression chat wrote about how close they’d come to killing their babies, one way or another. Shaking, dropping, and drowning. Mostly drowning. It seemed so easy, one of them had written, it seemed like a thing I had to do, and dozens had agreed.
Chapter Nineteen
OVER THE NEXT WEEK, Ella Dane was sweet and careful with Lacey. She drove her to all the used-car lots that Harry Rakoczy recommended, and when they found a three-year-old Camry, silver, with only forty thousand miles, Ella Dane bundled Lacey back into her car and drove her away, telling the salesman, “We might come back later.”
They came back with Harry. Ella Dane insisted, and she was right. Harry made thoughtful sounds at the engine and doubtful sounds at the brakes, and the car cost three thousand dollars less than Eric had budgeted.
Something had changed between them, on the day Lacey gave Bibbits a bath. Between all of them. Bibbits took to licking her hand, or standing in front of her and wagging so hard his claws rattled on the floor. Gratitude or submission? Either way, it creeped her out, and something was wrong with Eric too. He watched her with a caution she knew well. This was how he evaluated any not-quite-adequate machine—would the car’s transmission last till September? How soon before the air conditioner needed servicing?—but why was he looking at her that way? It was only a little water, nobody got hurt. And Ella Dane stopped singing lullabies for Drew, stopped bringing home crystals and sprinkling rock salt in the fireplace. Instead, she began to talk about moving out. She wouldn’t move far, and she’d come back for a few days when the baby was born, but it was time to get her own place. She paused as if waiting for Lacey to protest Please stay, I can’t manage without you, but Lacey said, “That sounds great,” although she’d miss Bibbits. The little dog had grown on her.