The Six Rules of Maybe

heartbreak.
    He smiled at me, went around to the back of the truck. I guess anyone would have noticed the way he looked in thosejeans. Of course I did. In the open pickup bed there was a big dog waiting to be let out. He was the sort of large, energetic dog that made Mom nervous. A sudden dog, and Mom didn’t like sudden things. She mistrusted squirrels and birds and men and anything that had the capacity to surprise. If she ever got a dog, she’d say, it was going to be one of those white and fluffy ones, like Ginger, the Martinellis’ dog, who looked the same as the slippers Mrs. Martinelli wore when she went to get the mail. You could put a dog like that into your purse like a lipstick and take it anywhere you wanted it to go, like women did in New York or Paris. A lipstick with a heartbeat that might pee on your checkbook, in my opinion, but this was Mom’s dream, not mine. I liked a dog you could lean against.
    The dog jumped down and made a galloping leap toward Mom, and the guy in the Levi’s lunged for his collar and said, “Zeus!” in a way that was both emphatic and desperate. Zeus, it would turn out, was actually a very well-trained dog—he’d do anything for Hayden. Zeus would look at Hayden in the complete and adoring way you privately wished and wished and wished that someone, someday, might look at you. But Hayden was a good dog father and knew his boy’s limits—meeting new people turned Zeus into a toddler in the toy aisle, with the kind of joy and want that turned into manic jumping. Zeus leaped up on Mom, who was horrified to be suddenly looking at him eye to eye, and she held him off with a palm to his tan furry chest. She looked down at her clothes as if he might have made her muddy, although the ground was dry and she was only in her old cargo pants and a tank top, her hair in a sort-of bun stuck up with a pair of chopsticks.
    It was then that Mom realized that Juliet had not descended alone from the heavens. She looked surprised at the unexpected visitors and the facts in front of her: this truck, not Juliet’s ancient Fiat convertible; this lanky, excited dog; this lanky, somewhat tousled and tangled guy grabbing his collar …
    And that’s when we saw it. We both did, at the same moment. It caught the sun, so shiny and new was the gold. A wedding band. On the guy’s finger. We both did the same thing next, Mom and me. We looked at Juliet’s left hand. And, yes, there was one there, too. That same gold band.
    My mother put her hand to her chest. I heard her gasp. And then she breathed out those two words, the ones I was feeling right then too, that multipurpose, universal expression of shock and despair.
    “Oh fuck,” my mother said.

Chapter Two
    B efore Juliet came home married to Hayden Renfrew, I had other problems. Clive Weaver, the retired mailman across the street, was losing his mind, and Fiona Saint George who lived next to him (she was a senior at Parrish High, where I was a junior) had fallen into some deep depression, judging by the dark designs she drew in chalk on our sidewalk. Mr. and Mrs. Martinelli, who lived next door to us, were on the cusp of dangerous involvement with scam artists who sent them Urgent Business Propositions by e-mail. And then there was my best friend, Nicole, and her parents’ divorce, which so far involved one breaking-and-entering, one restraining order, various personal items thrown onto the street (a television, too), and an impending trial to decide the custody of two kids almost old enough to vote. Nicole was in a constant state of turmoil, which had meant bouts of sobbing, endless phone conversations, and a brief fling with her parents’ liquor cabinet.
    But my sister’s sudden marriage to someone she’d never beforeeven mentioned —a someone, that someone, who was now heading inside our house carrying a backpack and Juliet’s old purple suitcase—it was a three-car pileup right in our very own driveway.
    Juliet spilled her purse while leaning into the car to retrieve a bunch of daffodils that Hayden had brought for Mom, and we chased an eyeliner and a roll of mints making an escape down the driveway. Finally, we’d gathered everything and went into the house and stood awkwardly in the kitchen. Hayden introduced himself and Mom folded her arms and looked at him as if he’d managed to marry Juliet without her permission. I got a mixing bowl for Zeus and filled it with water and let him into the backyard; he seemed to be