Notes From a Liar and Her Dog Read Online Free PDF Page B

cup. She looks down at Pistachio. “He does look sick, Mom. And if he dies in this house it will be the grossest thing. There will be maggots and worms. It will smell awful. The whole house will be contaminated.I can’t live in a house with a dead dog in it. Not even 409 can help that.”
    “Shut up! Why do you have to be so mean?” I ask.
    Elizabeth ignores me. “Just call the animal-control people. They’ll take him.” She picks up her pink cup and walks out of the kitchen.
    “So,” my mom says slowly. “What is it you want from me, Antonia?” My mother raises one eyebrow.
    “We’ve got to take him to the vet, Mom.”
    “Antonia, for God’s sake …”
    “If you were me, how would you get you to take Pistachio to the vet?”
    “If I were you, I’d forget it. We don’t have that kind of money. I spent $200 on the vet last time. Remember that? That was two weeks’ worth of groceries. I can’t be spending that kind of money every time your dog has a little headache.” My mom puts rice crackers on a plate and pushes the kitchen door open with her foot. I follow her.
    “What if we were the richest people in the world, would you pay to take Pistachio to the vet then?”
    “That’s a ridiculous question, Antonia.”
    I stop at the metal bar that marks the beginning of the rug. I raise my voice so she’ll hear me over the TV. “What if I did double chores, plus the laundry, plus the dishes and the weeding and the sweeping up, would you do it then?”
    “If you did the laundry, Antonia, our clothes would turn blue. If you swept the floor, your sweeping would make the place twice as dirty. And besides that, no means no! What part of no don’t you understand?”Mrs. MacPherson saw this on a mug a few months ago and ever since then it’s been her favorite saying. She thinks she’s clever every time she says it.
    “Look, Mom! Look!” I hold Pistachio up. “He’s suffering. It’s our responsibility to take care of him. It is.” I wish I could make her see how sick he is. The way he feels heavier to hold now, like dead weight, and he barely lifts up his head. You have to really know Pistachio to understand how un-Pistachio-like he is being.
    My mom moves the couch pillow behind her back. “He’s old, Antonia. I’m sorry about that. I am. But there’s nothing a vet can do about it. Dogs get old. They die. Cats get old. They die. People get old and die, too. You know that.”
    I cover Pistachio’s ears. “‘Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,’” I sing in his ear so he can’t hear what my mom’s saying.
    “Antonia, if he’s still sick in a few days, we’ll talk about going to the vet, okay?” She takes a bite of her rice cracker and turns back to the TV.
    “Oh, great, and what if he dies in the meantime?”
    “Don’t be so dramatic.”
    “Well, you just said he was old and he was going to die.”
    “Antonia, I’m not taking that dog to the vet tonight. On Wednesday, if he’s still sick, we’ll talk about it again.”
    “When you get old and sick,” I whisper, “and you need to go to the doctor, I’ll remember this. Let’s wait a few days and see if you die first, I’ll say.”
    Luckily, my mom and Kate don’t hear me.
    “Mom.” I walk right into the living room and hold Pistachio’s little body out at her.
    “Antonia, get that dog out of the living room! I have half a mind to take him to the pound right this minute! And what are you doing down here, anyway? You’re still grounded!”
    Dear Real Mom
,
    Well, this confirms it. Mrs. MacPherson is the meanest person in the whole world. And I know for sure I am not the daughter of someone this mean. In fact, I’m not related to her in any way, and I know I wasn’t inside her belly or attached to her by any umbilical cord, either. Elizabeth and Kate probably were because they are mean, too. But not me. If I was inside my mom’s belly, I held my breath the whole time!
    Love
,
    Ant and Pistachio
    When I hear my