Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life

by Cook, Claire

I thought we'd talk more the next time, but that was the last time we were ever alone together. She died a few days later, at home, surrounded by all six kids and her husband, the loves of her life.

  My Sarah. Maybe that had said it all. My mother had loved me. She'd had my back my whole life, and at the end of the day, at the end of a life, it was as simple as that.

  I powered up my phone to check in on the assignment I'd left for the Gamiacs.

  I found our private chat room, typed in SarahTeach and the password.

  A red message popped up on the screen. Password is incorrect. Please try again.

  I took my time, typed the password in again. And again. Got the same message. Clicked a link to send an email to myself to change the password.

  This chat room is private. You must be a member to join in.

  The Gamiacs had set up the chat room for me. I was its only administrator. Wait. No, I wasn't. Keli was an administrator, too.

  I closed my eyes as dawn broke over marble head.

  I typed in PrincessKeli. I thought for a moment, then flashed back to meeting her that first day. It's my happy place, she'd said as she held the door open with one hand. I even use elevator as a password.

  I typed in her password, entered the chat room, found my assignment. Let's talk about unrequited love, the one who broke your heart. The one you haven't thought about in years. Or minutes.

  I scrolled through the long thread of comments.

  ObsidianDream: Katie and I kissed few X when we were 6 or 7 but that was part of kissing tag so didn't really count. In 5th grade I developed serious feeling for her. Middle school asked her to dance and she said no but would I tell my friend to ask her.

  RavenSureSong: I was crushing on this boy in middle school and one day we had to pick teams for dodge ball and I was new and was used to getting picked last so I was trying not to act like it bothered me and it was his turn to pick and he picked me. I was so happy I thought I would die that he even said my name and I didn't even care if it was a pity pick. And then two kids got hurt and someone from our team had to go over to the other team to even them out. His friend pointed right at me and told them to take the ugly girl and he laughed.

  ObscureEssence: Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. Charlie Brown.

  DarkShadow: There was this girl in college and we ate at the same table alot in the dining hall since some of our friends were friends and whatever. So one of my friends has a birthday and we all take him out to celebrate and she's there and we have a good talk. And then she went to the bathroom. We never spoke to each other again. Now I can look back and see that I needed to take it upon myself to make a more significant step.

  Clearly the Gamiacs were enjoying the angst of strolling down memory lane. Maybe talking about their awkward past would help them move beyond it. I wished self-awareness and confidence and joy and love and luck for each and every one of them. And for me, too.

  I kept scrolling, giving each painful post the attention it deserved. Maybe at our next session we could print them all out and have a ceremonial burning in one of the funeral urns and talk about moving forward.

  Finally I found it.

  PrincessKeli: Everybody always wants to date me but mostly they're dipshits. They shoot me a smile and think that's all it takes. But there's this one guy that's different. A little geeky but in a cute way. And he talks to me like I have a brain. One night a bunch of us went out for drinks and I asked him out. So we went out to dinner and instead of going onandonandON about himself like a dipshit, he actually asked about what I liked to do and what I thought about things. So by the end of the night I'm ready to have his baby, or at least jump his bones, and he drives me home, locks his car and walks me to my door. And then he thanks me for a friggin' lovely time and kisses me on the cheek and leaves. Seriously? So I bide my time and about a day or two later I catch him on the elevator at work which by the way you guys if you haven't stopped it between floors and kissed somebody there DO IT becuz it is like the sexiest place on the planet. So there we are on the elevator and I tell him I thought he could do better than that last kiss. And he got like all serious and said he's in love with someone else and even though they aren't actively together his heart is still engaged and he doesn't think it would be fair to me to lead me on. See, total non-dipshit right down to his toes. So of course I want him even more so I tell him I'll take my chances and kiss him anyway. Let's just say it didn't go over too well but every time I ride that elevator I think of him. BUT he's a love me, love my dog kind of guy so I'll win in the end. Dating tip of the day: Want to land a dog lover? Cover his girlfriend in the scent his dog hates most.

  I logged out and pulled up Google. I typed What scent do dogs hate most? I hit Enter.

  Most but not all dogs hate the smell of citrus. Especially orange.

  I was still staring at my orange blossom perfume when the door clicked open and Carol walked in.

  I placed it on the nightstand next to my organic orange essence lip balm and sat up. "Ha," I said. "You caved."

  Carol dumped two handfuls of shopping bags onto her bed. "I know, I know, I couldn't help myself. I tried to drive by the outlet stores, but it was like somebody had programmed our stupid rental car to turn in automatically."

  "Right," I said. "Blame it on the Ford Focus."

  She pulled a shoebox out of a plastic bag. "I even found Dennis's favorite running shoes. In his size and forty percent off."

  "Great," I said. "I think that means this vacation just went from cheaper than staying home to actually putting money in the bank."

  "And how about these?" She pulled a family's worth of white T-shirts out of another bag. I SHAMROCK SAVANNAH was embellished on the fronts in Kelly green letters.

  "I'm feeling a Christmas card coming on," I said.

  "Exactly," Carol said. "I'd never find anything identical for all six of us at that price, especially something that Siobhan might actually wear. I couldn't walk away."

  I watched while she lined her purchases up on the bed: a seagull refrigerator magnet, a small stuffed pelican, fluorescent green sunglasses, a pair of feather earrings.

  I slid off the bed and stretched. "So, I'm just wondering . . .."

  She pulled a plastic dinosaur out of a bag and looked up. "What?"

  "Did you buy anything for yourself?"

  "Of course I did. A shamrock T-shirt. Obviously, I have to be in the picture."

  "That's it?"

  She put her hands on her hips. "Your point?"

  I shrugged. "I thought I heard you say something about spending the entire day thinking only about yourself."

  Carol contemplated her bed. It looked like a mini-Christmas had exploded all over it.

  "Son of a witch with a capital B," I said for her.

  "Exactly," she said. "I'm pathetic."

  I nodded my agreement. What are sisters for if not to point out the things the rest of the world is too polite to mention.

  She walked over and slammed the slider to the balcony shut. "So, what, do you live in a barn?"

  "Ha," I said. "You sound like Grammy Hurlihy. We can't keep heating the whole outdoors, kids."

  Carol turned around to face me. "You know, I'm kind of done with this whole vacation."

  "Turkeys are done," I said. "People are finished."

  "If it ain't one thing, it's six," Carol said.

  "Have fun and don't do anything stupid."

  "Catholic girls don't wear patent leather shoes. Omigod, I just remembered one of the nuns telling us that if you're ever in the backseat of a car with a boy and tempted to go all the way, to think of Mary standing outside the car window crying. Or maybe it was Jesus."

  "Ha," I said. "No wonder we turned out so well, with all that sage advice in our formative years."

  Carol reached for one of her shopping bags. "Yeah, no kidding. Though I might have to try that car window line on Siobhan when I get home."

  Chapter

  Thi
rty

  Somewhere in the chaos of the resort Carol had managed to get our boarding passes printed before we left for dinner.

  I held out my hand. "I can hang onto mine."

  She ignored me, attached the sheets of computer paper to her clipboard, threw the clipboard on top of her suitcase. I could picture her handing them out to us just before we went through security at the airport, like cookies to three-year-olds.

  I'd changed into nice jeans and the only decent top Carol had packed for me. It was the outfit I would have worn if Paul Ridgefield hadn't turned out to be a dog owner impersonator-slash-womanizer. If we'd actually had coffee that had actually led to a date. I was over him, but a part of me still hoped I'd run into him tonight looking really, really good.

  "I can't believe Dad and Michael are blowing us off for dinner on our last night," Carol said. "They could have at least called to say they weren't going to make it back in time. We have reservations."

  "So what," I said. "So our party of four turned into a party of two. We'll just tell them the other two people got sick, or our dates dumped us, and they'll give us a smaller table. Whatever."

  "It's so rude," Carol said. "This is what I hate about big families. Everybody feels totally free to dump you when they get a better offer. Because even if you stop speaking to them, it doesn't really matter because there are still plenty of siblings left to hang out with. There's no scarcity."

  Carol's phone rang. She scooped it out of her purse, looked at it, put it back in her purse.

  "Aren't you going to answer it?"

  "It's Christine."

  "That's so rude," I said.

  My phone rang. I dove for it and answered on the second ring. "Hello," I said. "I can't hear you. Hello? Hello?" I threw my phone on my bed.

  Carol rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure she fell for that. We are so going to have to make this up to her when we get home. Okay, where was I? Right, what would it take to pick up the phone and say that you're otherwise occupied for the evening?"

  "When you're otherwise occupied, you don't always think of it, because, well, you're otherwise occupied. God, do you think Michael and Phoebe are actually getting along?"

  "I don't want to talk about Michael or Dad," Carol said. "They don't deserve it."

  The red walls of the restaurant enveloped us like a hug when we walked into The Jazz Corner. A group of musicians were playing the kind of swing music our dad would have loved.

  I started to order an orange blossom martini then caught myself. Carol ordered a glass of Chilean chardonnay so I did, too.

  "You're not going to pout all night, are you?" I asked as I dug into my citrus-less prosciutto-wrapped sea scallops with pear and apricot chutney.

  "I will if I want to," she said.

  "Fine," I said. "Be like that."

  I tapped my feet to "Jump, Jive 'n' Wail" while we ate. The food was great but I had to admit I was over this impromptu vacation, too. I was even pretty sure I was ready to get on with my life.

  The band announced a short break. Carol yawned. "Someday," she said, "I'm going to start a business."

  "You already started a business," I said.

  She reached for her wine. "Another business."

  "Okay," I said. "I'll bite. What kind of business?"

  She took a long sip. "I'm going to run an adventure camp for women who need to have some fun."

  "But we're having fun," I said.

  "You might be having fun," she said. "I spent the whole day wandering around by myself trying to have fun, and I couldn't freakin' remember how to."

  "Language," I said.

  "I said freakin'," Carol said.

  "Relax," I said. "I'll help you run the camp if you want. I mean, I could use some more fun, too."

  Carol shook her head. "Oh, please. Your whole life is fun."

  "Right," I said. "It's a giggle a minute."

  "Okay, I left messages for both of them," Carol said. "I can't believe they're still not answering their phones."

  "Yeah," I said. "Who does that?"

  Per Carol's instructions, I'd written Michael and our dad a note on a sheet of hotel paper so they'd know what time they needed to be packed and ready to leave for the airport. I chewed a piece of Trident spearmint gum until it was soft, then used it to attach the note to the bathroom mirror. The gum part was my idea.

  I fell asleep while Carol was still flipping through channels on our shared TV. I woke up to the sound of her banging on the adjoining door.

  "Hurry up in there," she yelled. "We need to leave for the airport in an hour."

  Michael opened the door. He was wearing drawstring pants and no shirt and his hair was sticking up all over his head. "Where's Dad?"

  "What do you mean, where's Dad?" Carol said. Instead of waiting for an answer, she pushed past him into the other room. I followed her.

  "His bed is still made," I said.

  "It was like that when I got in last night," Michael said.

  "And you didn't tell us?" Carol yelled.

  Michael shrugged. "I just figured he was spending another night with Sugar Butt and they'd meet us at the airport."

  "Wait," I said. "Where's his duffel bag?" I pushed open the door to the bathroom. "His shaving kit is missing, too."

  Michael reached down and opened the tiny refrigerator door. "Beer's gone."

  "I'll kill him," Carol said. She turned and ran into the other room, grabbed her phone, hit a button.

  "Dad," she yelled. "Pick up the phone. We're getting ready to leave for the airport so Sugar Butt needs to get your butt back here right now."

  "Here, give me the phone," Michael said. "I've got it down to a science."

  Michael hit redial a couple of times. Then I called our dad's phone from my phone. It rang three times then went to voicemail. Frank Sinatra crooned about his regrets being too few to mention. Then the music faded and my father's voice said, What's tickin', chicken? Billy Boy's not home right now, so don't bother to beat your gums off time. Just plant your message and I'll dig it later.

  "Dad," I said when the beep finally stopped. "It's Sarah. Listen, you have to come home with us. You can catch up on your sleep, and then you can invite Sugar Butt for a visit. We'll have a cookout. Okay, well, call me."

  I hung up and looked at Carol and Michael. "Now what do we do?"

  "Do either of you know if his phone is set up so we can track it with GPS?" Carol said.

  "Remember?" Michael said. "We enabled it when we gave him the phone for Christmas."

  "Do you know how it works?" I said as we followed Michael back to the other room.

  He scooped up his phone from the nightstand between the two beds. "Yeah. Annie and Lainie have location tracking set up on their phones so Phoebe and I can keep an eye on them. I might have actually used it a few times to check up on Phoebe, too."

  "Grab your stuff and make it snappy," Carol said. "We're going after him."

  It was early enough that the tourist traffic hadn't completely clogged the roads yet, so we made good time getting off the island. We were all dying for coffee and breakfast, but in the end we chose our father over caffeine. We simply didn't have time for both if we were going to make our flight.

  Michael sat in the co-pilot's seat, tracking the green GPS map on his cell phone. My growling stomach helped keep me awake in the backseat as we drove.

  Carol shook her head. "Dad's Dad, but he still wouldn't do this to us. Would he?"

  "Of course not," I said. "At least I don't think so."

  "Hard to say," Michael said.

  I managed to yawn and sigh at the same time. "I have this awful feeling that Sugar Butt is holding him against his will. You don't think she could manage to tie him up by herself, do you?"

  "Sure I do," Carol said.

  "Especially if there was some kind of a striptease involved," Michael said.

  "Eww," I said. "It's way too early for that image."

  "I can't shake the feeling," Carol said, "that we're go
ing to knock on the door and she's going to pretend he's not there. And then she'll try to keep us from coming into the house. And she's got him tied up in her bedroom—"

  "With a long yellow silk scarf," I said.

  "Polyester," Carol said. "And blindfolded with a black sleep mask. Velveteen."

  "He'd think he died and went to heaven," Michael said. "She wouldn't get carried away and hurt him, would she?"

  "She might if he tries to get away," Carol said. "I just hope he has the good sense to just sit tight and trust that we'll come after him and not set her off."

  We drove for a while in silence. I was lost in my lapsed Catholic version of a prayer, which always started with a mini-confession, followed by a longer apology for not checking in more often. Just let him be safe, just let him be safe.

  "Okay, we're almost there," Michael said. "Get over to the left. It looks like the next turnoff."

  Carol put on her blinker and we pulled off the main drag.

  We drove slowly past an enormous brick sign with MOON CITY painted on it in big yellow block letters. Rows and rows of matching yellow flowers were spaced evenly in front of the sign. Ahead of us, down a palm tree-studded lane, a serious-looking guardhouse with an electric privacy gate blocked our way in.

  "Are you sure this is it?" Carol said. "I thought Sugar Butt lived in Savannah."

  "This is definitely it," Michael said. He turned his phone so Carol could see. "Look. It's right there—that little dot on the screen. Wow, there's like a million houses in this place. And three pools. Looks like a golf course, too."

  "This feels so familiar," I said. "Wait, I know. Those people who were cooking chicken on their grill and an alligator tried to follow them into their house to get some?"

  As soon as I said alligator, Carol clicked our car door locks.

  "Remember," I said, "the picture was all over the Internet—it looked like the alligator was standing straight up, trying to ring their doorbell?"

  "How the hell are we going to get past the security guard?" Michael said.

  "Whatever I say," Carol said, "just back me up."