Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life

by Cook, Claire

  "Great," I said. I jogged a few steps to catch up with him. If my brother and I were going to get eaten by an alligator, I wanted to go out together.

  "I feel the same way about Mother Teresa as I do about Phoebe. Well, not exactly the same way, but you know what I mean. It's till death do you part."

  Chapter

  Twenty-eight

  I shook my head. "I can't believe Dad didn't even call to say he wasn't coming home, I mean here, last night."

  "No kidding," Carol said. "He would have grounded us for a month if we'd pulled a stunt like that."

  Michael rubbed his wet hair with a towel. "Hey, at least I got a decent night's sleep. All I can say is good luck to Sugar Butt with that snoring of his."

  We'd stayed awake long enough to eat our sandwiches last night, flipped through some more old shows, turned in pathetically early. "Hey, Carol," I'd said right before we fell asleep.

  "What? And hurry up, I'm almost asleep."

  "Do you think it's really true that dogs and kids know who's a good person and who's only pretending to be?"

  "Absolutely. Their bull crap detectors are extremely fine-tuned. Kids grow out of it once they get old enough to start lying to themselves, but dogs remain shrewd judges of character for their entire lives."

  "So, if John Anderson's dog hates me, does that mean I'm not who I think I am?"

  "Not necessarily. It could be that something's standing in the way and causing interference, and his dog can't get your true essence."

  "Now that sounds like bull crap. What does it even mean?"

  Carol's only answer was a snore. I tossed and turned, trying to think things through, then trying not to think, then just trying to get some sleep.

  I finally drifted off, straight into a Technicolor dream. John and I were standing across from each other in a mansion dripping with spider webs. At first I thought we were in a room at Necromaniac, but then it morphed into the set of The Addams Family.

  Not the movie from the '80s, but the original TV series I'd watched as a kid. John reached for my hand and kissed it. He wanted me to speak French to him. Sarah est une jeune fille insouciante, I said as I batted my eyes at him. How had I not realized that John was really Gomez before this? That Wednesday and Pugslie had been our children all along? I breathed a long, luxurious sigh of relief that the kid thing had already been resolved, and all that stress flew right out the window. I gazed at my Morticia-self in a dusty mirror. When I flipped my long straight black tresses, they rippled the full length of my back. I wasn't too sure about that middle part in my hair, but other than that I looked great. In my tight black sheath, you'd never even guess that I'd gone through not one, but two, pregnancies.

  "Bonus points," a familiar voice yelled. Out of nowhere, the floor tilted and all these annoying bells started to ring. Soooooo loud. We'd been in the pinball game all along. An enormous Keli with one l and an i hovered over us, hands on the flipper buttons, aiming a big orange ball right at me.

  I choked on a scream and woke up. Somehow I'd managed to slide off the bed and onto the questionable hotel carpet. Carol was still snoring. It was close enough to morning, so I tiptoed into the bathroom for a long dream-purging shower. Then I took the rental car to find coffee and breakfast for everyone.

  I figured our dad had come back after I'd fallen asleep, so I bought four of everything.

  "Whatever," I said, once we all realized he wasn't there. "Anybody want dibs on his egg sandwich?"

  Michael held out his hand, so I tossed it over.

  "You sure you don't want company today?" I asked Carol.

  "Nope, I want to spend the whole day wandering around all by myself, without a care in the world and without having to worry about anyone else. No offense."

  "None taken," I said. "I love you, too."

  "I can drop you off somewhere though."

  "No, I'm fine. I think I'll just walk the beach and hang around."

  Carol crumpled the wrapper from her breakfast sandwich and reached for her coffee. "Just make sure you're both back in time for dinner. I made reservations at The Jazz Corner since it's our last night."

  "What time do we have to leave for the airport tomorrow?" Michael asked.

  "Our flight's at 9:17 A.M.," Carol said without even having to look it up. "We've got another stopover in Charlotte, so we'll arrive in Boston at 1:31. I wanted to make sure we'd get through Boston and be back in Marshbury before rush hour."

  "Good thinking," Michael said.

  "Okay, I'm out of here." I grabbed my father's coffee so it wouldn't go to waste. I walked all the way down the endless hallway again. I stepped off the elevator, smiled at the two women behind the card table in the makeshift lobby for the third time this morning, wove my way along the construction zone. It felt like I'd been walking for days.

  I still couldn't wait to walk the beach.

  Just past the PLEASE PARDON OUR MESS sign Michael had taped to my back, I found a stash of paint cans and used one to prop open a door to the pool deck.

  "Good morning," I said to the copper pelican stretched out in the fountain reading his copper book. I walked around some scaffolding so I didn't have to risk bad luck by going under it. I worked my way to the gate at the far end of the pool deck.

  I stopped for a sip of coffee and a breath of salt air, reached over the gate to unlock the latch. I followed a weathered gray boardwalk through another gate framed by a high curved arbor. A tall tassel of dune grass, summer green and rustling in the wind, greeted me from a softly mounded sand dune. I cut between two rambling lengths of storm fencing, some of the wooden slats snapped off like broken teeth, and kicked off my flip-flops. The warm powdery sand caressed my feet gently, so different from the coarse massage of the sand back in Marshbury.

  The long stretch of beach was peppered with walkers and runners, but it was still early enough that most of the beach goers hadn't showed up yet to stake their claim.

  I stepped over the high tide line down to the hard-packed sand. I waited for a couple on bicycles to pass, returned their smiles, then closed the distance to the ocean. When I stepped in up to my ankles, it felt like a warm bath to my rugged New England feet. I took another sip of coffee and watched a seabird I couldn't identify disappear behind a puff of cottony cloud.

  A green Frisbee sailed by. I watched it soar like some kind of tropical bird, then drop into the curl of a wave.

  A streak of chocolate brown dog caught me by surprise, splashing water all over me. Somehow the water didn't feel so warm when you weren't expecting it, and the cold shock made me scream.

  "Easy, Coco," a man's voice yelled behind me. The dog had the Frisbee in its mouth already and was swimming it to shore with the precision of a lifeguard.

  "Sorry about that," the man added in a softer voice. "She gets a little bit excited."

  When I turned around, I had to admit I got a little bit excited, too. The guy before me was about my age, give or take, with windblown dark hair and ocean blue eyes framed with thick dark eyelashes. He was on the tall side and in good shape, but in an outdoorsy way, as if he parasailed rather than worked out at a gym. He flashed me a big white smile.

  I was just launching into what I hoped would be a moderately flirtatious smile of my own when a swathe of wet fur hit me from behind, practically knocking me over. I took a big step forward to catch myself. The guy reached out and put his hands on my shoulders to steady me.

  His dog circled around in front of me, dropped the Frisbee at my feet, and shook, long and hard.

  "Coco," the guy yelled.

  "It's okay." I pulled my wet T-shirt away from me so it didn't stick to all the wrong places. Coco sat down on the sand and offered a paw. "Aww," I said as we shook. When I started scratching its chest, it wagged its tail like a maniac and gave me a pleading don't stop look with its big brown eyes.

  I stopped scratching so I could reach for the Frisbee. Coco nudged me with its nose. I went back to my scratching.

  "Wow," the guy
said. "She sure likes you. She doesn't act like that with just anyone."

  "Really?" I said. I hoped it didn't come out sounding quite as needy to his ears as it did to mine.

  He grinned. "Coco has a built-in bullshit detector. She's very picky."

  I grinned back. "Smart dog. They're not always so discerning."

  He bent over to pick up the Frisbee. His back muscles tensed under his thin gray T-shirt, and I resisted the urge to start panting myself.

  He threw the Frisbee way out into the water. Coco flew after it, crossing the sand in three long leaps. With her head just visible over the water, she looked like a seal pup as she paddled away.

  "So beautiful," I said. "What kind of dog is she?"

  "A Labradoodle. Half Lab, half standard poodle. At least we're pretty sure. She's a shelter dog."

  "I love shelter dogs," I said. "And Lab crosses are the best. We had a Lab/shepherd growing up, and also a Lab/Doberman." I started to mention that my assistant teacher had a Lab/shar pei, but I was stopped by an irrational and completely paranoid thought that he'd somehow know how pretty June was and ask me for her number. "I always wanted a chihuahua/dachshund," I said instead, "just so I could call it a chiweenie."

  He laughed. Our eyes went to each other's ring fingers at the exact same moment. He stuck out his other hand. "Paul Ridgefield."

  "Sarah Hurlihy."

  "Hey," he said. "You don't want to go grab a cup of coffee, do you?"

  I held up my coffee cup.

  "You could dump it out and start all over again." He tilted his head and opened his eyes wide when he said it. In that instant I knew that he knew how good-looking he was, but it didn't make it any less true.

  It would make a great story one day. That summer my family had dragged me to Hilton Head. I'd helped my brother reconnect with his ex-wife, chaperoned my father on a first date with a woman with canary yellow hair named Sugar Butt. Then, as was so often the case with my family, as soon as they were all squared away, they dumped me like a hot potato. So there I was, all alone, single again thanks in large part to a bully of a beast named Horatio, when a kinder, gentler dog showed up out of the blue to lead me to my future.

  I could almost believe it. I could see myself standing here now. I could picture telling the story one day. But the space between the two was daunting, and I wasn't sure I was up for all that peddling.

  Still, it wasn't like he was asking me for a date. It was only a cup of coffee. Plus, I was leaving tomorrow, so I'd be safely home before I knew it and anything that happened, on the off chance that anything actually happened, would be slow and gradual and long distance and not at all like jumping back into the dating fray, which I was really bad at and the thought of which made me want to go back to the hotel room and climb back into bed. Alone.

  Perhaps I hesitated a moment, or twelve, too long. Perhaps Paul Ridgefield simply had a bad case of shiny object syndrome. In any case, Coco came charging out of the water at the exact same moment a bikini-clad woman was walking by. Coco cut her off at the pass and dropped the Frisbee at her feet. The woman smiled. Coco shook. The woman screamed. Then she giggled, her still perky breasts jiggling adorably.

  Paul Ridgefield turned away from me. "Coco," he yelled.

  "It's okay," she said. She bent down to give Coco a pat. Coco sat and offered her paw. I watched Paul Ridgefield watching her breasts try to escape the inadequate fabric of her bikini top. It was as if I'd dropped off the face of the earth. It was as if I were

  invisible.

  "Wow, she sure likes you," I whispered to myself as I walked away. "She doesn't act that way with just anyone." I grabbed the hem of my baggie T-shirt and twisted it until water dripped to the sand.

  The sun was higher now. Even with a breeze off the water, I was starting to sweat. I walked the length of the beach, not really thinking, not really not thinking either. There were lots of kinds of men in the world. There were lots of kinds of dogs in the world. There were lots of men who acted like dogs in the world.

  A dark-haired woman in shorts and a T-shirt carrying a bright pink leash strode quickly in my direction. "You haven't seen a big chocolate brown Labradoodle running around, have you? What part of no dogs on the beach between 10 A.M. and 5 P.M. does my idiot brother not understand? I don't care if it's my dog, he's going to pay that five hundred dollar fine if he gets caught."

  "It's your dog?" I said.

  "Yeah, we all rented a house for the week for a family reunion. Next time I'm staying home." She shook her head. "Family."

  "Coco," she yelled as she ran off in the wrong direction.

  "Wait," I yelled. The squawk of two gulls fighting over what looked like a piece of donut drowned me out.

  I thought about chasing after her. Then I turned and jogged back in the direction I'd come from, my flip-flops in one hand, my empty coffee cup in the other. The sun was beating down on the back of my neck. My lips were parched and a trickle of sweat ran down my back. The coffee was going right through me and I needed to find a bathroom fast. But it felt good to run, good to break through the inertia.

  Paul Ridgefield and his wannabe girlfriend were on their way up to the top of the beach, Coco dancing between them, leaping and lunging for the Frisbee Paul held high over his head. They stopped walking. The woman looked at her watch, then said something. Paul nodded.

  "Hey, Paul," I yelled when I got close enough for them to hear me.

  He turned around and gave me a vague smile.

  "Your wife is looking for Coco," I said. "She said to tell you this time the no dogs on the beach fine is on you."

  A look of horror came over the woman's face.

  "Hey," he said. "I don't have a—"

  "You're married?" the woman said. "And you just hit on me?"

  "No," he said. "Really. Not married. No wife."

  I smiled at him. "And you don't have a dog either."

  It was an immature thing to do, but at the very least it made me feel better, and at best it might have saved another woman some aggravation. But what really bothered me as I walked back to my hotel room was how much of myself I saw in Dog Bait Boy. How much easier it was to fantasize about the next person instead of trying to make things work with the one you were with. How the grass was always greener around the relationship you weren't really having.

  Chapter

  Twenty-nine

  My cell phone had been languishing untouched in the bottom of my shoulder bag for so long that it was out of power. I rifled through my carry-on for my charger. I didn't doubt for a moment that Carol had remembered to pack it for me. I wondered what it would be like to go through your life so efficiently. I wondered how I'd be different if I'd gone through my own life without a big sister to pick up the pieces.

  Carol had made both beds before she left. Of course she had. I sat down on the edge of my bed, trying not to mess up all her hard work. The absence of my family was almost a presence, a silent sound all its own. I got up again, opened the sliding door a crack, enough to let in some real noise but not enough to lose all the cool air.

  I turned around again and yanked my pillow out from under the bedspread, quickly, like a magician pulling a tablecloth from under a full table setting. I flopped down on my back, kicked off my flip-flops, stared up at the ceiling.

  When our mother was dying, when the cancer had metastasized and spread to her lungs and hospice had been called in and none of us, not even me, could pretend it wasn't happening, she spent time with each of us alone. It was winter and her soft Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgown was covered with tiny blue spring flowers. It had ruffles of white eyelet around the neck, its bulk disguising her shrinking body, but not really.

  I tried my hardest not to notice whether my visits came before or after Johnny's or Billy's or Carol's or Michael's or Christine's. When you're one of six children, particularly a middle child, you're almost never the first one to get anything, but you never stop wanting it, even as an adult.

  I climbed into b
ed beside her, leaning up against the cherry headboard my parents had bought when they were first married. Every couple of minutes or so, sometimes more, sometimes less, she'd start to cough. Her cough was as sad and unrelenting as the march of death, and she'd wait it out with a brush of her hand in front of her face. Already I missed the belted dresses with full skirts she wore in our childhood, her red lipstick, the way she closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun while she hung damp beach towels on the clothesline, the sophisticated crunch she made when she ate cornflakes—a sound I'd tried unsuccessfully my whole life to duplicate.

  My marriage to Kevin was hanging by a thread at this point, and I was hoping I could hold it together long enough so that my mother wouldn't have to die worrying about me. My siblings and I had been taking turns spending the night, sleeping in our old rooms. Some nights I just stayed anyway, whether it was my turn or not.

  I tried not to cry while we waited out another cough. I held my mother's glass for her while she sipped some water from a straw. I tried to fluff her pillow without hurting her. I rubbed lotion on her dry hands, massaged her fingers gently, twirled the diamond on her wedding ring back to center. I read her a chapter from one of her favorite books as a child, The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp, by the same author who wrote The Bobbsey Twins. I held the book carefully so she wouldn't notice the worn binding had started to crumble away.

  I finished the chapter, closed the book, put it down carefully on the bedside table.

  "My Sarah," she said.

  I waited for her to tell me something that would get me through her death, maybe even through the death of my marriage, words that I could carry with me for the rest of my life. Something to guide me, help me figure out what I was doing wrong, why I just couldn't seem to get a handle on this life of mine, why the only place I seemed to have any success was in my classroom, and not always even there. Something. Anything.

  Her eyes closed. She let out a watery breath that turned into a raspy snore.