by Shirley Jump
Susan shrugged and stirred her drink, watching the lime bob among the ice. “It’s an act.”
“Well then you deserve an Oscar.” I took a big sip of my second drink. It went down smooth and easy, too easy.
Susan sipped, silent for a long while. She sighed, then ran her hand across the surface of the bar before she spoke again. “It’s all fake.”
“What is? The bar? Heck, I’m no carpenter, but even I can tell it’s not real wood.”
“No, I meant me.”
I glanced at her. A beautiful, perfect-featured blonde who could have easily modeled or been Miss USA. The kind of woman other women hated on principle because she’d been gifted with all the things everyone else spent a lifetime Sweatin’ to the Oldies to achieve. “Looks pretty real to me.”
Susan let out a little laugh, the sound jerking from her with a bitter note. She reached into her purse and pulled out a picture. “That’s me, six years ago.”
I glanced at the photo, a worn wallet-size picture of a couple. The denim-clad guy was bearded and scruffy, a bandanna wrapped around his temples. Thankfully, he was not my husband.
If Susan hadn’t told me she was the woman in the picture, I never would have believed it. Three hundred pounds hung off her frame, made worse by a shapeless denim dress and a pair of Birkenstocks. Glasses hid her blue eyes, and dark brown curly hair obscured most of her face. She wore no makeup and lacked her usual perky smile.
“This is you?”
“Yeah.” Susan took the photo back and tucked it into her wallet, hiding it behind a Visa. “Before I had my procedure.”
“Procedure?”
“Stomach stapling.” Susan brightened. “It changed my life.”
My own stomach turned over at the thought of someone messing with my internal organs with office supplies. “That’s how you lost all the weight?”
“With that, and with a little help from my neighborhood plastic surgeon.” She leaned closer and gave her chest a pat. “Like I said, it’s all fake.”
I couldn’t help but look at her perky fauxness. “Did Dave know?”
Susan swallowed and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “He paid for it.”
“He paid for plastic surgery?” The same man who thought we could make our old refrigerator last another year? Who’d told me the only good fences were made out of real wood, not vinyl? Who had insisted we buy organic produce to compensate for his Big Mac addiction?
“He did it for me. So I could feel good about myself,” Susan said, now turning an earnest gaze on me. “You don’t know what I was like back then. I had all the self-confidence of a flea. I dropped out of high school because of my weight, because of the way kids teased me. I never went to college. I never did anything until I met Dave.”
A part of me wondered if my husband had been building the perfect wife, but as I looked into Susan’s eyes and thought of the man I knew, I realized he would have done exactly what she’d said. Handed over the cash for whatever would make her happy.
“He encouraged you to do all this?”
“He gave me the belief that I could do it. Dave fell in love with me when I was still heavy. I couldn’t believe anyone could love me like that, I mean really love me. Fat or skinny, he didn’t care. He saw the real Susan underneath and because of that, it gave me the courage to go for what I’d always wanted. What is it they say on those commercials? To make the outside match my inside. He did something for me, Penny. He didn’t just write the check.” Susan reached over and took my hand. “He was a good man.”
I had to look away, to study the dusty velvet image of a bunch of dogs playing poker. I remembered that same picture hanging in our basement when I’d been a kid, dangling from a wire on a nail. My dad and his buddies played poker down there every Friday night because my mother couldn’t stand the smell of their smoke, the sound of their laughter. Inevitably, she would claim a headache and head off to bed, leaving my father to both police his daughters and his hand.
Until finally, one day, he’d had enough. My father walked out and never looked back. That night, my mother put the poker dogs picture into the trash, as if she were putting him there, too. She never mentioned the man’s name again.
“Did doing all that change you?” I asked, wanting, I guessed, the secret to unlocking the rest of Penny, too.
“It changed how I look. It changed how I acted when I went out in public. I stopped being a wallf lower. Got my GED, signed up for college. It’s just a community college, but it’s something. A goal. I’m still going, working on my degree in psychology, but at least I’m moving forward with my life, instead of just watching it from the sidelines.”
The words stung, sending a flare of jealousy through me. Why hadn’t Dave done that with me?
I raised my glass toward her again. “Then maybe we should toast Dave the saint.” The words were bitter, tinged by the alcohol.
“He wasn’t a saint, Penny. But I do owe him a lot.”
“So go on out there and find his dog,” I said, staring into the murky brown rum. I gulped down the last bit, tossed a bill on the bar, then left.
Let Susan pick up the pieces for a while. I was going to find a good blanket and disappear.
eighteen
I took a cab back to my hotel room, crawled into the uncomfortable, still unmade bed and slept until the rum wore off. When I awoke, it was late afternoon. The sinking sun sliced a sharp edge of orange through the curtains.
Straight into my hungover, regretful face.
Susan hadn’t returned to the room. Nor had Harvey found me. Apparently no miracles had occurred in the two hours I’d been asleep.
As tempting as it was to close my eyes again, I swung my feet over the side of the bed, took my second shower of the day and got dressed in jeans and comfortable shoes.
Without the alcohol to numb my feelings, guilt crowded onto my shoulders like a flock of birds straining a telephone line. I’d been mean to Susan, and she’d been nothing but nice to me.
Not to mention, I’d lost the dog. I didn’t want to care about a terrier I hadn’t asked for, but damn it all, I did. Somewhere between the Massachusetts state border and the Dog-Gone-Good Show, I’d started seeing him as a part of the Reynolds family.
A part of me. And now he was gone.
Oh, hell.
My car, I realized, was back at the conference site. I took another cab back to the Grand Resort Hotel, stopped inside for a huge cup of coffee, then got in the Mercedes. As I put the car in Reverse, I leaned over the backseat to watch for pedestrians—
And spied Harvey’s little denim personalized backpack. All this time, it had sat there, forgotten and never opened.
I grabbed the strap and hauled it up front with me. The zipper stuck a little, then gave way, spilling an assortment of vinyl toys onto my lap, one fuzzy stuffed bunny that looked well loved by a canine, and finally a silver dog whistle.
Jackpot.
I got out of the car, the stuffed bunny under one arm, the whistle in my other hand. Every few feet, I blew on the silent whistle.
In my haste to find Harvey, I completely forgot that I was at a dog show. Before I could say toot-toot, I had become the Pied Piper of Dogdom.
From all corners of the conference site, dogs broke away from their masters, dashing to my side, tails wagging. An Airedale brushed up against me, then a Great Dane, crowded in by two collies and a trio of poodles.
I was surrounded by every breed and type of dog—except the one I wanted.
“What the hell are you doing?” an elderly man charged up, clipping a leather leash onto the Airedale. He wagged a finger at the slim silver piece in my hand. “You can’t just blow that thing around here. It’s dangerous, for God’s sake.”
“Sorry. I’m looking for my dog.”
“You lost Harvey?” a woman corralling the poodles said. “How could you?”
“He ran away.” Even as I said the words, I realized how it sounded. Like I’d been a bad parent and Harvey had
headed for greener pastures.
The gaping mouths and narrowed eyes around me echoed that sentiment. As a dog owner, I was a failure.
Gee, add that to my wife score and I’d won zero and lost two.
Then, I spied a familiar streak of brown and white slipping under a parked VW Bug. “Harvey!” I broke out of the parking-lot pound and dashed over to the dog, waving the stuffed rabbit, calling his name.
He hesitated for a second, then sprang off his back two paws and galloped toward me. I scooped him up, not realizing until I held his tiny, trembling body against my chest how much I had missed him.
Tears burned behind my eyes. Oh, this silly dog. Who’d have ever thought I’d grow to care about him? Miss him when he left? Stand in a parking lot surrounded by the animal kingdom, blowing on a whistle to find him?
Harvey snuggled against me, working the rabbit out from my grasp. As soon as he had the stuffed toy firmly in his mouth, he sank into my arms, content. I bent down and nuzzled against him.
“You found him.”
I turned around at the sound of Matt’s voice. “Yeah. I don’t think he went that far.” I worked the emotion out of my voice.
“He gets a little stressed by the end of one of these things, which is probably why he went looking for Dave. I’m glad you gave him BooBoo.”
“BooBoo?”
Matt gestured toward the stuffed pink bunny. “That’s his security blanket.”
I felt terrible for never opening the bag, never realizing that the dog was more human and had deeper emotional needs than I’d thought. A security blanket, of all things. But with this dog, it made perfect sense.
“I had no idea.” I stroked a hand over the dog. The bunny wasn’t Dave, but it was all I could give the dog right now. “I understand missing your security blanket. Sorry, Harv.”
Matt cocked his head and grinned. “Am I detecting tender feelings for the dog?”
“Maybe.” I put my face near the terrier’s and received a rough-tongued lick on my cheek. He smelled of shampoo, dog food and in an odd way, Dave, too. “Okay, yeah.”
He chuckled. “Harvey does have a tendency to grow on you.”
I leaned closer to Matt. “He captured my heart when he shot Cee-Cee.”
Matt threw back his head and laughed. “That was good, wasn’t it?”
“I think I’m going to incorporate it into his routine.” The words promised a future, beyond this show. “I meant, with Vinny.”
“Yeah, I get that.” He grinned at me. “You were awesome out there, you know. I never knew you had such theatrical ability.”
“Thank you,” I said, making a half bow. “I’ll be here all day, if you want an encore.”
“I might just take you up on that,” he said. Those words also implied a future. I was glad when he changed the subject and when that intensity left his expression. “Well, now that you’ve taken the dog world by storm and made Harvey king, once again, of the Dog-Gone-Good Show, what’s next on your agenda?”
I drew in a breath, pushing away the triumph of today. I couldn’t run from the truth forever. And I knew, deep in my heart, I had to hear it all before I could go back home. No matter how much it hurt or how much worse it could get.
Matt was right. I’d survived a hell of a lot already. A lot more than I would have ever thought I could. Surely, after coaxing a terrier to play a piano and then engaging in a gunfight with a wayward poodle, facing the next obstacle would be a walk through the daisies.
“I’m going to go see Annie,” I said, the resolve finally cemented. “But I’m keeping Harvey armed with his little toy pistol. You never know when a dog like Cee-Cee is going to disrupt the whole plan.”
nineteen
We left Pigeon Forge, Harvey in a brand-new crate on my plastic-coated backseat. I’d left the door of the crate open, per Vinny’s advice, in case the dog felt like being sociable.
Susan sat beside me, uncharacteristically silent. The green rectangle of a highway sign blaring an upcoming exit for I–81 North loomed over the car, then disappeared.
One way, home. The other way, Annie.
Susan grasped the silver-buckled purse in her lap, her grip as tight as mine had been on the steering wheel a couple days earlier. It seemed like the trip down from Newton was a year ago, not a few days.
“I can’t do this, Penny,” Susan said. “You have to go it alone.”
I eased onto the shoulder, stopped the car and shut it off, then unbuckled and turned in the seat to face her. This didn’t sound like the kind of conversation I should have while trying to drive to Cleveland. Behind us, Harvey perched his paws on the front seat, watching the exchange. “What do you mean, go it alone?”
“I mean I’m done. I can’t pretend anymore. And I sure as heck can’t meet Annie and her little Mother Goose family.” She blew steam onto the window, then traced a circle in it, avoiding looking at me and at Harvey.
“I don’t want to meet her, either, but I think we have to. We still don’t know if Dave married her or—”
“I don’t want to know.”
The firm finality of Susan’s words surprised me. “Why? When we started out you were all gung ho. Even said this was fun.”
Ten points for me for not scoffing after I said the word.
“It was. With you. We’re kind of the same. But Annie…”
I laughed. “You and I are about as alike as Mutt and Jeff.”
Susan let out a chuckle, then sobered and finally turned to face me. “We’re both damned good at pretending, aren’t we?”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Uh-huh. And my breasts are real, too.”
“Seriously, Susan. I’m not…” My voice trailed off. I was pretending, at least with everyone I met. I’d been acting all along, at the wake, the funeral, on the road trip with Susan, pretending everything was fine, that this would all work out. “Okay, maybe I am,” I said finally. “But that doesn’t mean that I want to stop this. Or turn around. After everything, I’d rather deal with truth than with what-ifs.”
Susan ignored my statement. She unclipped then reclipped the clasp on her purse. “Have you thought about why Dave sought out another woman? Because I sure have. Since I found out about Annie, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”
“He was a nymphomaniac.” Lord knows he hadn’t been all that busy in our marital bed in the past two years, but he had surely been busy with Susan. Any man in his right mind would have.
“No, he definitely wasn’t that.” She laughed. “I know why he wasn’t happy with me. I know why I wasn’t enough. But still, I never imagined he’d find someone else.” Her voice had gotten smaller, each syllable laced with pain.
I sat in the car, silent, listening to the traffic whiz by, sounding like loud zippers being opened again and again.
“It was the baby,” Susan said after a long while. “That’s what drove him away.”
My body froze, veins turning to ice, spine as immovable as Mount Everest. I worked my mouth around the letters, trying three times before I could get the word out. “Baby?”
“I didn’t want one. I—” Susan sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and pivoted away from me.
My hand reached out and covered hers. An odd sisterhood, formed by circumstance. No one else in the world understood what each of us felt. Just Susan and me.
And, in the course of this trip, she had become a friend.
“Because of your career?” I asked. “That’s why I told him no. I was too busy at work, making my way up the ladder.”
“Trust me, my career as a waitress was never anything big. Dave bought me that house and paid for me to go to college. He thought I could be something. Something more.” She shook her head. “Anyway, it wasn’t because of my job. It was because of this.” She swept a hand over her perfect hourglass frame. “I didn’t want to undo all that I had worked so hard to create. I was terrified that if I got pregnant, I’d go back to being that other woman, the one society l
ooked at as nothing more than a gigantic, lazy loser.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t have—”
“I had an abortion,” she said, nearly spitting the words out, as if she were yanking out a splinter. “I chose my body, Penny. I chose these—” she smacked at her chest with her free hand, so hard I expected her to wince “—over my husband. Over the man who had changed my life. Given me a life, really.”
“Did Dave find out?”
She nodded, and the pain in her face made me want to take her in my arms, as if I were the mother and she the child, as I had done so many times for Georgia over the years of our childhood. Instead, I went on holding Susan’s hand. “I told him, just before he left for that trip to Ohio. We’d fought about it again that day.” She paused. “The day he died.”
The jigsaw puzzle assembled itself over our heads. Dave, wanting a baby so badly he’d married another woman, only to be rebuffed again. Neither of us spoke for a long time. Harvey put his two front paws on the headrest and nuzzled my cheek. I gave him an absentminded pat.
“I didn’t want a baby, either,” I admitted. Susan was the first person I’d ever told the truth to. Always, with Dave, with Georgia, I’d put up the career block, instead of the truth. “It wasn’t my job, though that was the excuse I gave Dave, and me. I guess it was easier than saying I was afraid to have a child, because you know Dave, he would have tried to talk me into it.” I inhaled, waited as a line of school buses passed us. “I didn’t want a dog or a cat or a baby or anything that would upset the perfect order of my life. I worked too hard to escape chaos to want to invite it back into my world again.”
“Do you think that’s why he kept looking? Because he wanted a child?” Susan’s eyes filled with tears. “Is that why he married Annie?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice cracking into the same range as Susan’s. “But it sure looks that way.”