Must Love Dogs

by Claire Cook

  The dancers were replaced by a six-year-old named Bridget who began to sing. Badly. She was tentative at first, but when the audience joined in, Bridget unfortunately let loose, mouth pressed to the microphone, belting out “Too-wah-loo-wah-loo-wah” for all she was worth. Her red ringlets danced around her shoulders as her big green eyes gazed across the stage to her parents. Bridget’s father began rocking side to side. Bridget responded to the reminder with an obedient sway of her own little shoulders.

  I was so busy watching the bandleader try to wrestle the microphone away from Bridget that I didn’t see Mark sneak up on me. “How’boutadancewithyourdate?”

  I separated his words enough to understand them. “No, thank you. And, by the way, I am not your date.”

  “Fuckyouthen.”

  “No. But thanks for asking.” I turned back to Siobhan.

  It was easy to avoid Mark after that. I sauntered away from Siobhan and joined my brothers and sisters at their table. “Nice loafers on that guy,” said Michael. “Hope they don’t get all scratched up from the sand.”

  “Yeah, I wonder what kind of fish he catches in that hat,” said Johnny. “Sushi?” He combed brown hair out of brown eyes with his fingers, looking like a younger version of our father. “Geez, Dad’s probably starting to look pretty good to you, Sarah.” Damn, even Johnny knew.

  “Come on, you guys,” said Carol. “Leave her alone. Anyway, I can tell it’s the sister who’s the real ocean buff. How’d ya like to float on her boat?” Everybody looked over at Marlene, who had taken off her hat in order to dance cheek to cheek with our father. She was holding it pressed to his back with one hand. The ribbons fluttered in the wind. The buckles on her shoes were large brass anchors.

  We were still laughing when the band began their final song of the day. Everyone who could stood for “God Bless America.” People with names like Murphy and O’Brien and Callahan, intertwined by marriage with an occasional Smith or Rosen or Angelo. More than a few wiped tears, flowing freely after several hours of watery beer. I was dry-eyed and sober, although by the time the whole crowd sang the home-sweet-home part, I was wishing I’d cultivated more of a taste for bad beer. Passing out early might be the high point of my day.

  When the final round of applause died down, I threw myself on the mercy of my siblings for a ride home.

  Chapter 4

  Siobhan kept turning the key in the ignition. “Uh, I’m pretty sure it’s started now,” I said carefully. I waited a couple of seconds, then added, “So you can, uh, let go of the key now. Good. Now give it some gas. Um, not quite that much. Good. Now just, uh, move your foot to the brake and put it into drive. Nice.”

  Siobhan hiked up the right leg of her oversized jeans so her sneaker could make direct contact with the brake pedal. “God, you’re so much better at this than my mother is. And my father sucks even more than she does.”

  “Okay, okay. Slow down a little. With the brake. No, we’re fine, that’s okay, next time just touch it lightly. Yeah, a little gas, just a little. That’s it. Good.” I tried to remember the safety ratings for Dodge Caravans. Siobhan had tried to hold out for her father’s Mustang, but instead Carol and Dennis had switched Maeve’s car seat over, piled the kids in and driven away from the Brennan Bake with a beep beep a beep beep, beep beep.

  “So when did you get your learner’s permit?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Wow. That recently.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the birthday present. Gift certificates are so perfect.”

  “Glad you liked it,” I said with relief. I was so bad at presents. Siobhan was particularly hard to buy for because her tastes changed so quickly. In the hair category alone, I could count her recent trials like the rings of a tree trunk. Shiny brown hair up by the roots faded into a summer application of Sun-In streaks an inch or so down. These overlapped an experiment with Jolen Creme Bleach and cherry Kool-Aid, which Carol had described to me in horrified detail over the phone, and which had grown down to about cheek level. Finally, the ends of Siobhan’s once thick and healthy hair split and frizzed around her shoulders, permanent victims of over-the-counter overprocessing.

  Siobhan drove along the winding Marshbury coastal roads. I kept myself from air-braking obviously on the curves. When she took one hand off the steering wheel to pull at an earring, I tried to will it back on. Looking straight ahead, for which I was grateful, she asked, “So, you have any boyfriends yet?”

  “Hundreds. You?”

  “About the same.”

  We drove for a while, past manicured lawns with water views. I glanced casually at the speedometer. “I’m pretty sure the speed limit’s thirty-five here.”

  “My father goes fifty,” Siobhan said as she slowed down. “So why did Kevin leave you, anyway?”

  “Leave me?”

  “Yeah. I mean, like, wasn’t the sex any good?”

  “Sex?”

  “Yeah. I mean, like, my parents are still disgusting. You’d think they’d be sick of doing it by now.” We stopped abruptly at a yellow light, then drove through. “And Maeve could be mine practically. That’s my mother, though. Just keep having babies and then ignoring them when they’re not kittens anymore.”

  I hoped she wasn’t expecting me to say anything. I reminded myself never to teach kids older than preschool. About a mile from her house, Siobhan turned on her blinker like a pro, then pulled to the side of the road. She put the minivan into park. Leaning back, she worked a pack of cigarettes loose from her waistband, offered me one. I shook my head no.

  “Well,” she said. “At least you and Kevin didn’t have any kids.”

  *

  Of course, Siobhan couldn’t really drive me home because she only had a learner’s permit, and wouldn’t be able to get back to her house legally without an adult in the car. This was the kind of little detail my family tended to overlook when I was involved. So, we drove to Carol and Dennis’s house, and Carol came out and took over for Siobhan. And now, after what seemed like an awful lot of riding around just to get home, Carol was sitting on my couch. Her feet were on my coffee table, her shoes under it, and she was sipping a glass of the Australian Chardonnay she’d brought. “Thanks again for daring to drive with Evel Knievel. Did I tell you that Dennis calls her Karate Mouth? As in her mouth should be registered as a lethal weapon?”

  “She’s a good kid.”

  “Thanks for remembering. God, was I that bad at her age?”

  “I think you just hid it better so Mom wouldn’t wash your mouth out with soap. Remember when she did that to Billy after he called her queer? I never did get if that was about disrespect or alleged sexual preference.”

  “I’m pretty sure ‘queer’ was still just odd then. Mom certainly wouldn’t have known if it was more than that. Anyway, Siobhan would call Social Services if we tried something like that. Or hire a lawyer.”

  I took a sip of my wine and asked Carol, because she knew everything, if Marlene was June’s mother’s best friend’s neighbor.

  “No, no, no,” Carol answered, swirling the wine around in her glass. “Marlene is the ex-wife of Jonas Swift. Huge trust fund money. Generous patron of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra. Rumor has it that Marlene slept her way through an entire section of the CSO.”

  I tried to reconcile this with my image of Marlene, hat removed to reveal a crisp gray French braid, snuggled up to Dad. “Which section?” I asked finally.

  “I think it was the horn section.”

  I thought some more. “Maybe that explains the shoes. Her predisposition to brass.”

  Carol put her feet on the floor and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Yeah, maybe she has a trophy collection. You know, shoes with saxophone buckles. Tuba earrings. Bugle barrettes for her hair. A way to keep track of her progress, to make sure she doesn’t miss any instruments.”

  I rolled the story around a bit. I liked it. It was much more interesting than the possibility that money didn’t buy taste and Marlene was
simply a horrible dresser. As I pondered whether to embellish the story or let it rest, I flicked my wineglass with a fingernail, trying to play a note. Instead I created a mini tidal wave that splashed over the edge. Since it was white wine and not red, I rubbed it discreetly into my jeans, then asked, “So, what about the brother?”

  “He’s the CEO of Wilson Electronics. Big bucks. Supposed to be brilliant. Currently unattached.”

  “I can see why. That nose hair.”

  A big-sister look came over Carol’s face. I could feel a lecture in the air, and stiffened in anticipation. “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Everybody has something. Dennis had ear wax when we met. Gobs of it. But I didn’t let that get in the way of the big picture. I waited an appropriate length of time, and then — ”

  “Bought him a box of Q-tips?”

  “No, no, no. I discreetly pointed it out, pretending it was the first time I noticed. I think I told him how relieved I was to find out that he wasn’t absolutely perfect.”

  Disgusting, I thought. Dennis had lots of other faults. He was an asshole, for starters, but there was probably no point breaking that particular bit of news to Carol. I took another sip of wine and waited for something conversational to pop into my head.

  “Kevin used to sit on the toilet for hours, reading the newspaper. With the bathroom door open and his pants around his ankles.”

  “They all do that.”

  I hadn’t realized that. I wondered for a minute if Kevin and I would still be together if I had known. “It wasn’t a very erotic pose. It got so that every time we made love I’d think of it. Him on the toilet. That and the sound he made gargling. Sort of like this….” I tilted the last bit of wine into my mouth, and tried to gargle like Kevin. Instead, I choked and laughed at the same time. A smidgen of wine exited through my nose.

  “Yeah, and, meanwhile, you’re such a class act, Sarah. Here, I’ll go get us some more.”

  While Carol was refilling our glasses in the kitchen, I tried to isolate the exact thing that had made my marriage to Kevin not work out. Besides him screwing around with another woman. I don’t know, it just seemed that at first so much time was taken up by when and where and how often we’d have sex. Then after that, there was all that planning for the wedding. Then looking for a house, and finding it, and decorating it, and having people over to see it.

  Until one day, we looked at each other across the kitchen table, and I realized we had absolutely nothing to say. I suppose it was probably just time to have children. We’d talked about it some, but Kevin was never quite ready. I was thirty-five, then thirty-six, then thirty-seven, which seemed way past ready and getting close to too late.

  But instead of children, Kevin decided to have Nicole. Nikki. Chatty as hell and ten years younger than I am. I found out, he left, and at this very minute, Kevin and Nikki were probably having my children. I hoped never to know for sure, even though I was certain the information would find me immediately. Someone would probably call to say when they’d had sex without birth control.

  God hates glib. I could almost hear my mother say it, although I’d lost the precise sound of her voice shortly after she died. That and the sophisticated crunch she made when she chewed cornflakes, a sound I tried my whole childhood to imitate. God hates ugly and God hates a smarty-pants were also part of our family lexicon. Quoting God in this way was not at all about religion, but about bringing in enough clout to give the speaker irrefutable authority on a subject.

  God hates glib. We all said it to each other, yet we were proud of our glibness. We polished it until it shone; it was our family shield. When Carol’s first boyfriend’s best friend phoned her to break up for him, which was only fitting since he’d also been the surrogate who asked her to go steady, she hunched over the telephone table at the bottom of the stairs. We loitered in the hallway behind her, smelling tragedy. Carol hung up, rearranged her face when she saw us. “That was Davy Jones,” she said. “They’re thinking it might be time for a girl Monkee.” We waited to see if she’d crack. “I told him I’d consider the offer,” she finished before running up the stairs.

  As if summoned by her decades-old line, Carol walked back into my living room, a replenished wineglass in each hand, Dad’s personal ad tucked under her chin. “Carol, what are you doing snooping around my stuff?”

  “Hey, it was right on your refrigerator, underneath one of those tacky favorite teacher magnets.”

  “Sorry. I guess I was so traumatized I forgot about it.” I waited while Carol read it through a couple of times.

  “This is great. No wonder you went out with him.”

  “I didn’t,” I started to say before I saw Carol’s big grin. I gave her the dirty look I’d been giving her since we were kids.

  Carol didn’t even bother to return the look. “Okay, Sarah, what’s the next plan?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I understood the concept of planning, even vaguely remembered that it was once part of my repertoire.

  “Have you answered any other ads?”

  “Now there’s a good idea. Maybe I can date an uncle. Forget about it, Carol. I’m done answering personal ads.”

  “Then we’ll just have to place one of your own. And not in the local paper. We’ll go right to Boston. It’ll be good for you to broaden your horizons a little. Plus, if we do it that way, you’ll have all the control.”

  I was starting to wonder if Carol was planning to date for me. Not a bad idea, actually. She could be my surrogate dater, and I’d get to stay home, read a good book, maybe 101 Places to Hide from Your Family or Never Too Old for the Convent. I sat back and let her write the ad.

  “The first thing we have to do is to invoke a mood. That’s why Dad’s ad worked so well. And we have to have a built-in test to weed out the sickos. Think, Sarah. What’s the best indicator of a person’s humanity?”

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “Come on, help me out a little. Okay, don’t they say dogs and children can always tell who’s nice and who’s just pretending to be?”

  “Yeah, the loves-dogs-and-children part was what got me in Dad’s ad.”

  “Well, you certainly can’t say anything about kids, you’ll scare ‘em off. We want you to avoid any hint of desperation. You have to sound as if you can afford to be choosy, whether or not that’s remotely true.”

  If I’d had more motivation I’d probably have been feeling insulted by now. Instead, while I watched Carol scribble away, I wondered if Siobhan was right about it being a good thing that Kevin and I had never had kids. If, even though I’d ended up losing my husband, I’d still managed to gain a child or two along the way, would I be less of a failure? At the very least, I’d have a good excuse to put off dating. Mothering, I’d say, with a hint of the martyr in my voice, it’s simply all I have time for.

  Instead, not only was I childless, but I felt like a child myself, and I missed my own mother. If she were still alive, she would have helped me find a new life by now. I even missed Kevin. No, it was more that I missed the idea of Kevin. Having a husband, even one I barely talked to, had given me a certain status, a respectability, a belonging. I had a place in the world. I knew what I’d be doing tomorrow, even if it wasn’t particularly interesting. I felt anxiety rise in my chest like mercury up an old thermometer. I decided to think instead about the kind of dog I’d get if I had the energy to commit even to a four-footed someone who might need something from me.

  Carol finished the ad, made two copies, and handed me one on her way out the door. “I’ll call you tomorrow, and we’ll discuss any possible revisions,” she said.

  After sitting quietly for a few minutes, I finally read it:

  Barely 40 DWF, absolutely childless, seeks special man. Please be intelligent, articulate and fun. Minimal time spent reading on toilet a plus. Must love dogs.

  Chapter 5

  I have a theory that adult personality can be accurately predicted by the way a three-, four- or five-year- old handles circle time.
June and I were sitting with the students on our classroom circle, a long strip of neon pink vinyl tape stuck to the carpet. Green and yellow and orange dots were arranged on top of the circle to designate individual places.

  Back in September, when the children first gathered for circle time, we placed laminated name tags on the floor in front of their dots. Brittany would see her name in block letters, along with the sticker with a picture of a cow she had chosen herself. Finding her place was a complicated process of discovering her cow, “reading” her name, locating the adjacent dot and successfully bringing her body in for a landing on it.

  In a good year, the name tags would be removed some time during October, and even the youngest children would be able to find their places without them. Then we would begin circle games, marching and dancing and choo-choo training around the ring of tape, only to finish the game and sit down on a new dot. There were children who were simply undone by someone else sitting on what had become their dot. Some melted into tears; others pounded the encroachers with clenched fists.

  Today we began circle time with sharing — who had a new puppy, who was wearing new shoes. It was Austin Connor’s turn and, as usual, he had a lot to say. He was almost five, having just missed the kindergarten cutoff, and precociously verbal with parrotlike recall. He had already told us that his parents were “taking a break from their marriage” because his father was “incorrigible.” Some of the kids looked up with vague interest.

  I broke in to tell the children we were now going to learn the Danish Dance of Greeting. It was one of my favorite dances, from an old Kimbo Educational cassette. First we found Denmark on a big blowup vinyl globe and passed it around the circle. The children nodded seriously. Then we found the United States on the globe and measured the distance by holding our arms wide. Far away, we all agreed.

  We stood up, June pressed the play button on the tape deck and we danced: Clap clap bow, Clap clap bow, Stamp, Stamp, Turn yourself around. So far, so good. Then way up to tippy-toes and we set off around the circle. We stopped when the music did and took a final bow. “Look down,” I said cheerily, “and sit on a new dot.”