The Dog Park

by Laura Caldwell

  A few days after that, the State’s Attorney’s Office issued a one-sentence statement. “Our office will be dropping all charges against Gary Stips.”

  The morning after that, my website crashed.

  Too many orders, too much activity. Like the plant in Grand Rapids, I had to suddenly (and without great thought) hire people to pitch in—on the web side, the design side and the order side.

  Sebastian left for another trip. It barely entered my mind that I did not know where he was, would never know those things about him, about his work. I was strangely okay with it. Something about advocating for Gary Stips and giving him a chance to move on reminded me that I had done the same, gave me that alive feeling again. Any remaining issues with Sebastian also hurt less because I had Gavin, and because I had Baxter.

  Baxy was doing okay. Surprisingly okay for a fifteen-pound scrap of fluff (albeit a tenacious, adorable one) who had survived such a blow. But he wasn’t unscathed. He flinched on the street when a car was too close. And he seemed to keep finding himself off balance.

  It was the balance thing that really troubled me. I only allowed him the ball now when we were in the park, far from traffic. When we finally got there, and I held the ball, he would shake his tail and dip his chest to the ground, miming, Let’s go, let’s go. Throw the thing. And every time I did he responded like he always did—a sprint in the direction of the ball. If the ball merely skidded instead of bouncing, all was good. Bax would snag it in his teeth and run it back to me.

  But when the ball had any kind of a bounce, that’s where he hit an issue. He’d leap onto his back paws, crane his neck and snap his jaws, as usual, but every time that week, he’d miss it by an inch or sometimes even a few.

  It sounded small, but it didn’t feel small for a dog with Baxter’s ball mastery. Fortunately and much to my relief, every day, the balance got better, he got closer and closer to catching the ball, and eventually he started to catch again.

  It was Gavin’s easy presence that saved us both during that time.

  Gavin left work early every day and he helped me answer phones, work with the new people, lug shipments in and out of the studio. I kept telling him he shouldn’t jeopardize his job.

  He scoffed. “You can’t jeopardize something that’s not worth valuing.”

  In fact, Gavin helped me out with any little thing until eight or nine at night when we would walk the few blocks to my place. If it was late, he carried Baxter in a football hold under his arm. I’d never seen him do that until after Sebastian had, and I wondered if the mimic was intentional. Either way, I liked seeing the guy I was falling in love with holding my dog-kid close to his chest, murmuring in his ear.

  When we got home at night, Baxter would sleep on one of the dog beds we now had in each room. Gavin would put candles on the kitchen table, every day, making the glass in the bay window sparkle. Sebastian and I had never thought to do something like that.

  If we didn’t order out food, we cooked, together, making something out of the scraps in my fridge. Sebastian used to cook for me. Gavin and I did it together. Although maybe I shouldn’t call it cooking, since it was mostly combining foods and nuking them, but we had fun doing it. Sex in the kitchen became a not-so-uncommon thing, me sitting on the island, my legs stretched across to the other counter, Gavin holding up the rest of my weight.

  In the mornings, sometimes Gavin would catch me when I was getting out of bed and pull me back. He would whisper something low, then start to stroke some part of my skin.

  “You like that?” he would say, not in a sexual way exactly, but as if simply out of curiosity, wanting to figure out which parts of my skin were more sensitive to his touch.

  “Mmm,” I said, usually too relaxed to form words.

  Back and forth, his touch went over my skin. With each brush, I began to feel lulled, as if I were floating. With each brush, he was sweeping me lighter, sweeping me clean.

  His soft touch would move to my shoulders, my arm, my forearm. He turned my hand over and stroked my palm.

  Such great mornings.

  During those weeks, my decision to stay in Chicago after the divorce made even more sense. Ah! I thought. This is why I’m still here.

  Moving to Chicago had been rocky at the start. First, there was my business as a stylist, which was much harder to grow than I thought. Chicago is streakier than New York. People, wisely, pull back the purse strings when they’re sensing difficult times ahead, when the threat of an Antarcticlike winter looms, when it’s too hot to think of wearing anything other than “something that won’t show sweat” like it had been that August.

  Moving to Chicago had also been challenging on the personal front with the dawning realization that, before me, Sebastian had slept with seemingly every hot, smart girl in Chicago.

  Back then we ate out a lot, and that’s when it often happened—the discovery that we’d run into yet another ex of some sort. We might be leaving a restaurant, like, say, RL. Outside, a stunning redhead with great shoes and a seriously expensive briefcase. This was not only a hot woman, but a hot, smart woman who worked her ass off and did it well. You could just tell. That’s what part of my job entailed—being able to intuitively take in everything about a client—their physical appearance, sure, but also their clothes, their attitude, the way they carried their shoulders, the squint or curious wideness of their eyes.

  I would then see the adoring cast on the redhead’s face when she saw Sebastian, then stood and waved. And I would see the disappointment when she registered me at his side, saw that he was holding my hand.

  I remember a St. Patrick’s Day when we were still living in New York but visiting Chicago in search of a condo, when we ran into not one but three people he’d been involved with. St. Patrick’s Day, I had quickly learned, is like high holy day for Chicagoans. I’d lived in New York for a long time, so I’d seen people who knew how to party. And hell, I lived on the road with the McGowan Brothers Band for almost a year. But no one, no one, knows how to have a good time like Chicagoans on St. Paddy’s Day.

  Other than his mother, at whose place we were staying while in town, no one knew Sebastian and I were visiting. That’s how he wanted it, he told me. “You and me in Chicago, me and you. This is how it’s going to be here.” He believed it when he said it. I know that. I believed him.

  So we made our own pub crawl that St. Patrick’s Day, walking south down Lincoln, barhopping all the way to Old Town.

  We stopped at a place called Rose’s for a few rounds of pool. “Take it easy, Jess,” Sebastian said, smiling, eyeing me making fast headway through my beer while he chalked a cue stick. “We have to pace ourselves.”

  “What a surprise,” we heard. A woman’s voice. A very pretty dark-haired girl turned around in her bar stool. “I’ve never known you to pace yourself.”

  He said her name and introduced me. We played only one round of pool.

  Next, we went to Irish Eyes, then John Barleycorn. I’d thought I’d gotten the Sebastian ex run-in out of the way. But then we went to a place called Four Farthings where Sebastian saw a woman who used to work at the same newspaper he did in New York. From there it was on to Bricks, a little hole in the ground led into by a bricked stairway and lights inside with red and gold tones.

  We were having so much fun, kissing so much over our table in between occasional bites of pizza, that I never wanted to leave. But then a couple came in and the woman and Sebastian greeted each other in that awkward “wow, I didn’t expect to see you” kind of way.

  “We’re going now. Good to see you,” Sebastian said, pulling me outside. I tried to be mad, but maybe I was buzzed enough because it was funny. By the time we got outside, laughing, it seemed every single person in the city had hit the streets, as well. I’d never witnessed such a sight.

  It was a strangely balmy day, and music poure
d from each window, each bar. Everyone was in high spirits, calling hello, slapping high fives with strangers on the street. There was a fair amount of stumbling and lots of people with arms around each other, apparently as much for support as for the camaraderie.

  “So that was...” Sebastian said.

  “That was awkward again. How many more, Hess?”

  “Hey, you got to remember that other than New York, I’ve lived in this town for my whole life.” He gave a sheepish grin. “They’re all good women.”

  “I will admit, they all seemed very cool. And very pretty.”

  “And you’re the prettiest and coolest of all.” He kissed me.

  With Gavin it was different thus far. No ex-girlfriend run-ins. Either Gavin hadn’t had such a storied history or he didn’t draw the same continued adoration after leaving relationships. Myself, though, I couldn’t imagine not adoring him.

  30

  One night, Gavin and I were at my studio, finishing things up. He was whistling while he taped a few boxes of orders I still handled in-house.

  “You are always so cheerful at the end of a workday,” I said.

  He stopped whistling, looked at me and smiled. “Am I?”

  “Yeah, and I always feel cranky.”

  “This is just so much better than my job. It’s so much more fulfilling.”

  He got a call then. He waved at me and took it out in the hallway.

  I decided to tidy some of the stuff in the studio—bobbins of leather, boxes of embellishments (and clips and leads), and more boxes of sample materials.

  When Gavin returned, it was as if someone else had walked in the room for him. His face had a definitely unhappy cast.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Work,” he said.

  “Oh, honey.” I crossed the room and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Gavin was nearly silent for much of the walk home, and pensive when we got there. He took another call and went to bed early. I didn’t think too much of it. I felt bad that his job brought him down so much.

  The next day would mark three weeks since my press conference. Three great weeks. That’s how I would later think of that time—working insane hours, with Gavin at my side, and loving it.

  In the morning, our plan was to sit outside somewhere with Baxter and have an egg-laden brunch and take some time off to breathe. Or at least I had suggested that. Gavin just assented.

  As we walked, I tried to engage him in topics far away from either of our jobs. Gavin didn’t perk up much. He tightly held one of my hands in his; the other held Baxy’s leash.

  I motioned for the leash, thinking that I should try to take any burdens off him, even something small like carrying the dog leash. “Want me to?”

  “No,” he said quickly.

  To anyone who glanced our way, we must have looked a cohesive unit, a contented couple with a dog. But we didn’t feel like a couple right then. Gavin seemed far away. He kept tsk-ing, as if gravely disappointed in something. Or someone.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  It took him a while to hear, or register, and then he shot a glance at me and shook his head, as if to say he didn’t want to talk about it. He sighed.

  “Seriously,” I said, “did I piss you off?”

  Shook his head again.

  “What happened with that phone call last night?”

  He stopped and looked at me fast. His face looked pained.

  But then he slipped a strong arm around my lower back and pulled me to him, and right to his mouth. He kissed me for a long time. As we always had, we started to pull back from our kiss at the same time. I was about to suggest turning around, maybe picking something up from a market and eating breakfast in bed at my place. After.

  But his embrace disappeared. I felt the relative cool of the air in its absence.

  Gavin looked down at Baxter. “Sit, please,” he said. I always thought it so cute that he said “please” and “thank you” to Baxter after giving a command.

  Baxter sat and looked up at Gavin, then me, expectant of what was next, but ready to wait. He was used to taking commands from Gavin now, as well as Sebastian and me. In Gavin I’d found someone who adored me, was around all the time and loved my dog.

  Then Gavin returned his eyes to me. “I have to talk to you about something. About something I did.”

  His words were vague. Yet they were so swift, they cut through the air, and drove right through me, like a sharp blade through paper.

  “What? What is it?”

  Gavin kept shaking his head. I couldn’t see his eyes, hidden under the deep reflective bronze of his sunglasses.

  “C’mon,” I said, nudging Gavin.

  He nodded and pointed to a nearby stoop. We sat and Baxter settled onto the pavement.

  When he finally spoke, he said, very resignedly, “I found something out.”

  “Something?”

  “About you.”

  “About me?”

  “You and Billy McGowan,” Gavin said. And he said it just like that—matter-of-fact.

  I felt another zing through me.

  Gavin took off his sunglasses, and his brown eyes—suddenly visible, vivid—mesmerized me, but I couldn’t let myself get sucked into that gaze.

  “What do you know about Billy?” I spoke plainly, with no intonation, no confirmation.

  “You were married to him.”

  Now I paused. My parents knew about Billy and me getting married, and of course Billy’s family knew. It was during the last year of us, when he denied cheating on me and wanted to show me how much he loved me. I lapped it up. I wanted us to be like my parents. But no one else knew, and when articles or books about the band came out, if I was mentioned at all it was always just “Billy’s high school girlfriend.”

  “Yes,” I said to Gavin. “We were married.”

  And it didn’t feel bad, that admittance, that disclosure.

  “And I know about your arrest,” Gavin said.

  The shadow of my past behind me grew darker. Shame swelled. Shame that had a muddy consistency to it, one that was hard to feel around or see through.

  Baxter moved and sat on my feet, then lay down, as if he could sense the swell was trying to hold me there.

  “Hey,” Gavin said, reaching for my hand.

  I jerked my hand away.

  “That kind of shit happens to everyone,” he said.

  “What kind of shit is that?” I didn’t want to admit anything. My father had paid a Manhattan attorney to expunge my record so that indications of my arrest could not be found. But I recall vividly the attorney warning us, You can’t hide anything forever.

  “Drug possession,” Gavin said. “With intent to sell.”

  “That’s the kind of shit that happens to everyone?”

  He shrugged with one shoulder.

  So. It had been found. By my boyfriend.

  “How?” I said.

  Why did he look confused? “How...?” he said.

  “How did you find out. Why?”

  “Superdog!” A woman’s voice on the other side of me now. She was already bending down toward Bax who leaped to standing, ready to greet his public.

  “We love him!” the woman said. She had ultra-tanned skin. “We watch him all the time!”

  “Oh, great.” My voice was weak.

  Thirty seconds later, probably noticing that Gavin and I weren’t talking, she moved on.

  I looked at Gavin, whose face was a mask of agony. For himself? For me?

  “Okay, so you know,” I said. “And you said that you found it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You, personally.”

  “Yes.”
<
br />   Anger flared. “Why were you looking up stuff on me?”

  There was a long pause. Then he sighed. “Research.”

  “Research? For what?”

  “I was trying to see if I could do it—you know, work on an actual story. It was you who encouraged me to try something on the editorial side.”

  My heart sank as I remembered all the times he’d talked about Sebastian’s work. And how he wanted to do more than sell ads. And he was right, I’d encouraged him to try.

  “So...” I said.

  He pursed his lips together, apparently unable to speak.

  “So you found this information about me,” I prompted.

  No response.

  “You didn’t tell them,” I said, something dawning.

  Slowly, he nodded. “I gave it to the magazine.”

  “The magazine you work for.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  He gulped. “Not right away. Of course not.”

  “Of course,” I said caustically.

  “Seriously. I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but then I saw you and Sebastian together when Bax got hit. I saw you still had a connection.”

  “Then you’re the only one who sees it. And why did that make you want to give them the story?”

  “Sebastian doesn’t know, does he? About your arrest.”

  “No. Hardly anyone knows.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I figured. So I thought that when Sebastian saw the story, it would only ensure you wouldn’t get back together.”

  “And you? What did you think would happen with me and you?”

  “There’s nothing they could print that would make me think less of you.”

  I gave a bitter laugh, but his words registered. “Print,” I repeated. “Please tell me they’re not going to run it.”