Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life

by Cook, Claire

  Even without pedaling and with the roof for shade, it was so steamy hot I couldn't decide what I wanted more—a fan, a Popsicle, or another shower. The sundress Carol had packed for me stuck to my back like it had been slathered with preschool paste. I reached for my water bottle and took a long, warm sip.

  Senior legs circling madly, our Slow Ride crawled along while our driver beeped and waved at people like he was running for mayor. Tourists chased after us with cameras and cell phones to take our picture. The driver pushed a button and suddenly The Everly Brothers were singing "All I Have To Do is Dream." Everybody joined in. My father made eyes at Sugar Butt as he sang.

  Carol leaned over. "As soon as they stop for a Geritol break, I say we cut and run."

  "Deal," I whispered.

  We hummed along and smiled at everybody. Our Dad had somehow managed to acquire a beer in a plastic cup. He took a healthy sip and extended it to Sugar Butt. The peacock feathers in her wrist corsage fluttered as she reached for it.

  "You don't drink from someone's else's cup," I whispered to Carol, "especially when you've just met. If she gives him mono, I will take her out."

  "At least she didn't offer him a dog dish," Carol whispered. "You've got to give her that."

  I glared at her. "I will never tell you anything again."

  A woman in a big straw hat smiled over at us. "This is how we work up an appetite for our weekly lunch at The Crystal. Mr. Don is the yard bird master. Wait till you taste his fried chicken with succotash and smashed potatoes."

  "And if you got a hollow leg," the Hawaiian shirt guy said, "you can start with the jawgia cracka nachos -- barbecued smoked pulled pork piled sky high on tortilla chips with cheddar cheese and diced onion, jalapenos, and chopped dill pickles."

  "Love me some of that she crab stew and onion rings," somebody else said.

  "Okay," Carol whispered. "Maybe we'll eat first, then we'll cut and run."

  Doris Day started singing "Que Sera, Sera" as our driver pointed out Flannery O'Connor's childhood home.

  "Ian and Trevor would love spitting over the edge of this thing," Carol said a while later. We were pulled over beneath a shady tree near Forsyth Park, waiting for the peddlers to get back from the public restrooms. "Even Siobhan would get a kick out of it, though Maeve would be a handful. Oh, God, I'm doing it again."

  "That's okay," I said. "I don't mind."

  Carol let out a puff of air. "It's not about you. God, I envy you your self-absorption."

  "Thanks," I said. "And I envy you your tact."

  "Do you know that I don't even remember how not to think about them anymore? Even when Dennis and I are out to dinner, we can't go more than three minutes without bringing up one of the kids. For more than a decade and a half it's been all about everybody but me, and even when they're not with me, I still can't get away from them."

  I didn't say anything. I was stuck on the decade and a half part. I'd never really thought about it that way before, but for the last decade and a half I'd been almost married, then married, then almost divorced, then divorced and back to square one with nothing to show for it. Except for a house I wasn't all that crazy about in the first place and couldn't really afford on my own. I might as well have just skipped the whole thing. Why would I ever want to go through all that again?

  Bathroom break over, our Slow Ride took off again, blasting "Sea of Love" as we crept along the street at the edge of the park under the shade of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. At the far end of the park, tourists looked on as water sprayed from a majestic fountain. I wondered if I could get away with jumping the wrought iron fence and diving in to cool off.

  "Hey, you two spring chickies in the cheat seats," Sugar Butt yelled back to us.

  Carol gave a little wave. "Hey," she said.

  I waved, too. "Hey."

  "So, why don't Southern women do orgies?" Sugar Butt yelled.

  "Holy shit," I whispered to Carol without moving my lips.

  Carol faked a smile. "Gee, I don't know. Why?"

  "Too many thank-you notes," Sugar Butt boomed.

  Chapter

  Twenty-seven

  "Irish road bowling?" Carol said. "What the hell is Irish road bowling?"

  "'Twill be the high point of the day," our dad had said. "Like a trip back to the old sod."

  Our father was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and had never actually been to Ireland, but we let him pretend that he had. We'd even talked about the whole family going over together one day, where I imagined we'd let him pretend to show us around his old stomping grounds.

  After lunch at The Crystal, the Slow Ride gang had reconvened at O'Connell's Irish Pub and then carpooled over the bridge to Hutchinson Island. Carol and I followed along behind in our Ford Focus. Sugar Butt was driving a red Volkswagen Rabbit in front of us, and when she reached for her blinker, it made the ribbons of her wrist corsage dance.

  "We'll just stay long enough to make sure he's safe," Carol said.

  "Exactly," I said. "And then we'll cut and run. Maybe it'll be cool enough to walk the beach by then."

  A long stretch of road was blocked off, and clumps of men and women appeared to be standing together in teams.

  We pulled over to the side of the road and climbed out.

  "Are those real cannonballs?" Carol said when we caught up to our dad and Sugar Butt.

  I walked over and picked one up, just to make sure our father wouldn't get a hernia. Or worse.

  "Twenty-eight ounces and seven inches in diameter," Sugar Butt said.

  Our father winked. "I think you're underestimating me, darlin'."

  "I think I'm going to be sick," I whispered to Carol without moving my lips.

  "So how exactly does this work?" Carol asked a man with a shamrock on his visor.

  He circled his cannonball backward with one arm as if he were a baseball player warming up for a pitch. "The course is a mile and a half long. The team that reaches the finish line with the fewest shots wins."

  "What kind of shots?" I said. If this was some kind of a drinking game, I was packing up my father and taking him back to the hotel right now.

  Sugar Butt laughed. "Don't worry, flufferpuff, that kind of shot comes later. Winning team buys the first round." She handed Carol a can of Deep Woods Off. "Just give yourselves a shot of this right now, then we'll put you girls on snake and gator watch."

  "That last part's a joke, right?" I said.

  "Faugh A Ballagh," somebody yelled.

  "That means get out of the way," somebody else yelled.

  If you didn't think about potential gators, it was a pretty interesting game to watch. A throwing mark called a butt, apparently no relation to Sugar, was drawn across the road in chalk. You had to step over the butt, or break butt, before releasing the bowl, which is what the cannonball was called. Wherever the cannonball stopped, they'd find the nearest point on the road and make a new butt mark for the next throw.

  I wondered if I could come up with a version that either the Gamiacs or the Bayberry preschoolers could play, although we'd have to substitute something less lethal than cannonballs, and both groups would probably dissolve into laughter unless we changed the term butt to something not quite so giggle-worthy.

  "Wow," Carol said. "Dad's still got a pretty decent arm on him."

  We moved up the road behind the bowlers. I reached for the Deep Woods Off and sprayed another cloud around us.

  "Faugh A Ballagh," somebody yelled.

  "So," Carol said. "He really wanted you to eat out of a dog dish?"

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "Dennis drank out of one of my high heels once. I think he saw it in a movie. It was kind of sexy, if you didn't factor in the cost of the shoes."

  "It wasn't supposed to be sexy. He was trying to get his dog to submit to me."

  "Whoa. That definitely crosses the line. No wonder you broke up with him."

  I buried my head in my hands. "It wasn't like that."

 
; "So then why is it you're not seeing each other anymore?"

  I sighed. "All he thinks about is his dog. He even hung this stupid painting it did over his fireplace."

  "You're jealous of his dog?"

  "Of course not. Well, maybe a little."

  "A man who loves his dog knows how to commit. So you might want to think twice before you screw this one up."

  "I didn't screw it up. He did."

  Carol swatted at a mosquito. "Come on, let's get out of here. I have no intention of spending the rest of my vacation scratching."

  "Good idea," I said. "All this gator watching is making me paranoid anyway."

  We took a few steps closer to the bowlers. "Give me a call when you need a ride, Dad," Carol yelled.

  Our dad turned around and blew us a kiss.

  Sugar Butt turned around, too. "Don't y'all worry about a thing," she yelled. "I'll drop Daddy off . . . one of these days."

  Raucous senior laughter followed us back down the road.

  "Jeesh," I said. "I hope she's not too much for him to handle."

  "Don't worry about it," Carol said. "Even if she is, at least we'll know he died happy."

  "I sure hope she can cook," I said. "I'm counting on those casseroles."

  "Don't get your hopes up," Carol said. "Casseroles are too perishable to ship anyway, unless we can talk her into dry ice."

  "Fine," I said. "Then she can visit, but just long enough to cook up a big batch. I think we need to seriously limit Dad's Sugar Butt time. I'm not sure she's a good influence on him."

  "Agreed," Carol said. "As soon as he gets back to the resort, I'll help him fire up his laptop and we can look for someone closer to home and a little bit more buttoned down. I think he just needs some supervision while he's looking."

  "Exactly," I said. "And speaking of supervision, it's not like I thought he'd really need it, but while he was in the shower this morning, I snuck a condom in his wallet, just to be on the safe side."

  "I did, too," Carol said as she clicked the lock on the Ford Focus. "Oh, well, better safe than sorry. The STD rate for seniors isn't getting any lower. Damn Viagra."

  Just as we were leaving Hutchinson Island, Michael called Carol's phone. We found him waiting for us down the street from The Olde Pink House, sipping from a bottle of water. He was sitting on a low wall made of tabby, a mix of masonry and crushed oyster shells that I couldn't get enough of. I wanted a house made of tabby.

  He gave a little wave when he spotted us inching toward him in the traffic.

  "He looks sad," I said.

  "But he's not pacing," Carol said. "That's a good sign."

  "How'd it go?" I said as soon as he jumped in the car.

  "Okay," he said. "Where's Dad?"

  "Sugar Butt said she'd drop him off later," I said. "Way later."

  "Uh-oh," Michael said. "Maybe it's a good thing I put a condom in his wallet last night while he was snoring away."

  We'd stopped for takeout on the way back to the resort so we didn't have to worry about going back out. We were all too stuffed to eat again yet, so I put our sandwiches in the tiny refrigerator in our room.

  Michael handed us each a Sam Adams and put the remaining three from the six-pack in the fridge in his room. Housekeeping had dragged Michael's mattress back to where it belonged, so Carol and I sat on one queen size bed in our room and gave him the other.

  "Okay, spill," Carol said. "I can't take it any longer. What happened with Phoebe?"

  Michael took a long slug of beer. "It went okay, I guess."

  Carol and I waited him out.

  He took a smaller sip. "Sort of surreal, almost like we were on our first date or something. And we could finish our coffee and walk away and none of it would have ever happened—no marriage, no kids, no house, no dog. Just hit the undo button and be done with it."

  He put his beer down on the bedside table, reached back with both hands, massaged his neck. "I mean, obviously, even if I could skip the whole thing, I wouldn't. Maybe I'm a little bit like that poor guy who lost both legs in the Boston Marathon bombing and kept trying to stand up anyway. I don't know if there's enough marriage left to hold us up anymore, but I can't seem to make myself stop trying."

  I closed my eyes. I wondered what it would have been like if either Kevin or I had cared enough to keep trying to save our marriage. Whether or not it would have made a difference.

  "How did you leave it?" Carol asked.

  "Phoebe's going to let me see the girls tomorrow. I think she feels guilty she hasn't let them call me. She gave them some crap about my phone being broken. Anyway, it killed me, but I stayed calm and acted like it was no big deal. She's picking me up at nine. The girls want to play miniature golf."

  "That's good," Carol said.

  Michael shrugged. "We'll see."

  I turned to look at him. "Does she know we're here?"

  "I didn't mention it," Michael said.

  "Smart move," Carol said.

  We sat there for a while, sipping our beer. I was thinking about how relationships were so much damn work. That it was amazing anyone even bothered. It didn't seem like the most positive thing to add to the conversation, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Carol picked up the remote and clicked through the channels.

  "Stop," Michael yelled. "It's Gilligan's Island."

  "Cool," I said. "You know, being marooned in this hotel is a little bit like being shipwrecked on a desert island, isn't it?"

  "Sure it is, sis." He made eye contact with Carol and they both pointed an index finger toward one ear and circled it, childhood code for crazy.

  We sang along with the theme song the way we always did. "Kind of scary that we all remember every single word," I said.

  "Not really," Carol said. "It just shows that our long-term memory is still intact."

  The camera cut to the whole crew circled around a picnic table. "Why can't we find someone like Mrs. Howell for Dad?" I said.

  "She's a little bit of a snob," Carol said.

  "Yeah, but just think—white gloves and pearls instead of bike shorts and a fanny pack," I said. "The casseroles would have to be a step up."

  "She's married," Michael said. "She'd only be thinking about Mr. Howell."

  We watched as Ginger, MaryAnn and Mrs. Howell decided to hold a beauty pageant.

  "Oh," I said. "I hate this episode. Beauty pageants are so offensive."

  "I don't think that's the intention here," Carol said. "It was a different time back then. On another level—"

  "I'm not sure Gilligan's Island has another level," I said.

  Carol took a sip of her beer and kicked off her flip-flops. "Of course it does. Think about it. What kind of beauty is most important to you, and when you get right down to it, what do you want your life to be? Do you want to spend it with someone who's got breeding, poise and mature charm? Are conventional good looks the most important thing? Or being kind and easy-going?"

  "Phoebe's all of them," Michael said. "Even when I hate her, she's all of them."

  "Nobody's all of them," Carol said, "at least once the happy horseshit stage is over and everybody stops being on their best behavior."

  "They should at least put the male castaways through a beauty contest, too," I said, "just to balance things." I took a long sip of beer. "I would so vote for the professor."

  "The professor would never win," Michael said. "He's wearing white socks with his boat shoes."

  "He actually reminds me a little bit of your Jack," Carol said.

  "His name is John," I said. "And I don't want to talk about him."

  There was a moment of silence.

  "Woof," Carol said.

  "Rrrrrrruff," Michael said.

  I shook my head. "Knock it off, you two. I said I don't want to talk about it."

  "We're not talking about it," Carol said. "We're barking about it."

  "Did he really ask you to eat out of a dog dish?" Michael asked. "I mean, if John Anderson is some kind of a sic
ko, I want to know about it."

  "So you can beat him up?"

  "Don't think I couldn't. He's not that big."

  Carol wanted to take a long hot bath by herself without anyone bothering her, so we'd borrowed a flashlight at the front card table and managed to find our way to the resort golf course. I'd suggested it. Michael was nervous about tomorrow and I knew golf ball hunting always relaxed him.

  "It's okay, Michael. He's not a sicko. And it doesn't even matter anymore. It's over."

  Michael worked the beam of the flashlight back and forth across the golf course. "I just don't get why nothing ever lasts."

  I looked up at the sky full of stars. "Maybe things will get better for us. Maybe Mercury's just been in retrograde."

  "For what, our whole lives?"

  I laughed and Michael joined me. He scooped up a golf ball from the base of a big clump of ornamental grass. I opened the plastic bag I'd brought so he could toss it in.

  A sweet smell cut through the night. Orange trees? My perfume? Tucked against a palm tree I found two golf balls, nestled side by side. I gave them a little kick to separate them. They bounced against the tree trunk, then rolled into each other and stopped, a couple again.

  Michael bent down and scooped them up, tossed them into the bag together.

  "Holy shit," I said. "Was that an alligator that just ran by?"

  We strained our eyes to see it, but it was long gone.

  "Should we be afraid?" I whispered.

  "Nah, I don't think so. Getting eaten by an alligator wouldn't even be the worst thing that's happened to us this year."

  "Thanks for reminding me."

  "I think it's pretty much what alligators do at night, hop from lagoon to lagoon."

  "Maybe we should try it. Kind of like bar hopping, but without the hangover."

  "It's a thought." Michael found another ball. He was really good at this, especially for someone who didn't golf. And didn't have any real use for golf balls.

  I held the bag open. "Michael, if you were seeing someone and she didn't get along with Mother Teresa, what would you do?"

  "Get another girlfriend?" Michael and the flashlight started moving in another direction.