“There’s no need to speak ill of the dead.”
“I’m not speaking ill, merely speaking the truth. Because you see, it wasn’t long before my father essentially moved out of the house for a convenient little pied-à-terre in Manhattan, close to his white-shoe law firm and a string of willing secretaries.”
“His decision was one of convenience,” Iris argued. She held her hand up when she saw the waiter approach.
“We’ll just have coffee, Joseph,” she said. “Decaf?” She looked at Sarah.
“Yes, please,” Sarah said. She pressed her hand to her stomach.
Hunt watched as the plates were removed. “And I’ll have a cognac, too, please,” he said.
Iris cleared her throat.
Hunt ignored the warning. “Let’s see, where were we? Oh, yes, my father. Not a nice young man, it turned out. But we’ll never know if he would have reformed or remained a reprobate, because he died after being hit by a bus, of all things.”
Iris stared at her son. “I suppose there is a point to this story?”
“Point? I guess it’s that things were done a certain way in your time, and things are different now. Ergo, I really don’t think you should be judging Sarah the way you did.”
“I’m sorry, Huntington, but some things are right, and some things are not,” Iris fired back. Her overbite became more pronounced.
Hunt’s anger flared to a new level. How could she be so unfeeling, so cold?
Unhappily, he could feel the same ice in his own heart, and he called on it as he spoke slowly and carefully. “The second part of your dream—to have a happy and healthy child didn’t work out, either, did it?”
Hunt narrowed his eyes and continued in a low, almost menacing voice. “Because you couldn’t prevent your so-called golden boy from committing the one crime you can’t deal with. He got cancer.”
“But that’s a thing of the past now, Huntington. You should leave it behind, move on.” Iris sat up even straighter.
“See—” he looked at Sarah “—she can’t even say the word. Cancer, mother. C-A-N-C-E-R. The Big C. You see, no one in our family gets a cold, let alone has cancer. The Phoxes are too strong a stock. It takes a Broadway bus to level them. Sickness is a sign of weakness, and we can’t have that. Not when we’re too busy holding up ourselves to the community as the paragons of perfection.”
Hunt turned his glare away from Iris and addressed Sarah’s shocked expression. He tried to soften his tone. “You see, my mother’s way of dealing with my little ‘problem,’ was to bury herself in good works. True she agreed to see the oncologist after the initial diagnosis, but thereafter she refused to acknowledge or accept my trips to New York for treatments.”
“You always maintained you could deal with that yourself,” Iris protested. The coffee had arrived, and she placed both hands on her cup. They shook.
“You could have insisted. Never mind.” He waved away his own suggestion. He knocked back one sip of cognac, then pushed the snifter away. He’d never used alcohol as a way of drowning his emotions, and he wasn’t about to start now.
Instead, he laughed, an ironic, amused chuckle. One that he had practiced on many other occasions. He looked past the table to an oil painting on the wall, only vaguely registering a pedestrian landscape. “I’d go into the city, sit for hours in a chair while poison dripped into my arm, and then stay overnight at a hotel to recover. Then I’d take the train back the next day and drag myself to work, just as if nothing had happened. I spared you and everyone else the embarrassment of seeing me puke in the toilet. I won’t even go into the diarrhea. It is the dinner table after all. And the fact that all my hair fell out, needless to say was never discussed.”
“Why bring it up and embarrass you?” Iris determinedly sipped her coffee.
“Mother, I think it was so obvious!”
Iris signaled to the waiter to bring the check.
“How disappointing, therefore, it must be for you to have a son like me.” His anger was gone, replaced by sadness.
The waiter silently returned with the bill, and Iris eyed the items.
“Please, I’d like to pay for the meal,” Sarah offered.
“It’s the least I can do for your invitation.”
Iris patted her hand. “That’s really very sweet, Sarah. I’m sure you are a well brought-up woman and will make a fine mother. But it just goes on my monthly bill, anyway, and it is my pleasure to have met you.”
Iris signed with a flourish, then looked sideways at her son. “I’m not sure what inspired this outburst, Huntington, but if you meant to hurt me, you have succeeded. Still, you are my son, and I love you dearly. However—”
She held her hand up when he was about to speak. “You may criticize me, but in my defense, allow me to point out that I have a sense of purpose. You may not agree with what I think is important, you may ridicule the way I act and the values I have, but what exactly are you doing to contribute to society? I saw Rufus Treadway at the town Planning Board meeting for the new hospital construction, and I gather that even your dog is without a modicum of social behavior.”
“He’s a puppy, and besides, Sarah and I plan to take him to Rufus’s dog obedience class this Sunday.”
Iris started to push her chair back from the table to rise. Hunt, well schooled, rose and held her chair.
“Wait a minute, since when did I become a part of this project?” Sarah asked, getting up slowly.
Iris marched away from the table. Hunt and Sarah trailed behind.
“As my roommate I was sure you’d want to participate in training a fellow member of the household,” Hunt whispered.
Sarah shook her head. “Some household.”
At the cloakroom, he helped his mother on with her wool coat and they exchanged small talk as she pulled her leather gloves on. She waited for a small peck on the cheek before bidding them goodbye with all decorum and as if nothing remarkable had passed at dinner. She even mentioned to Sarah that she would like to invite her to her next Women’s Club luncheon.
“We have invited speakers on such topics as historic preservation and colonial gardening techniques,” Iris said.
“I’m not sure it will fit into my work schedule, but thank you so much for thinking of me,” Sarah replied.
After Iris left in her black Mercedes, Sarah walked silently across the club parking lot to the car, her hands fisted by her sides.
“You were wonderful. Why don’t we just forget about what happened tonight?” Hunt beeped open the Porsche.
“Just get me home,” she said, sliding into the seat. She huffed as she drew the seat belt across her chest.
“I know. It was terrible.” Hunt started the car.
“Yes, but I also need to pee. Desperately.”
They sat in silence all the way home, both alone with their thoughts. They waited in the car as the garage door lifted. Hunt pulled the car into the space, then came around to open her door. He waited for her to get out.
Sarah sat there, looking straight ahead, not moving. “Wait a minute,” she said, staring at the dashboard.
“I thought you said you need to go to the bathroom?” He rested his hand on the open door.
“I do, but this is important. What you said back there about just forgetting this? I can’t, and you shouldn’t, either.” She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t like saying this, but I have to. I hated you tonight. You were mean and hurtful to your mother.” For the first time, she glanced up at Hunt.
“She deserved it. What kind of a mother never shows a modicum of emotion to her child and whose idea of a little get-together is the formal setting of the Grantham Club? That’s where you take a client for lunch, not a place to catch up with your son.”
“It doesn’t matter. She’s your mother. My mother drives me crazy, too, and I can be mean to her, but, frankly, even at my worst I am nothing like the way you behaved.” She huffed and puffed and eased her legs to the side and out of the door. “Here, help me
up?” She raised an arm.
He guided her up and held on to her as she became vertical. “Hold still. Get your bearings,” he warned.
“Yes, Mother,” she cracked. “You can let go now.”
“In a minute.” He didn’t budge and instead replayed the evening in his mind. “You know, maybe the truth is I am like my father, charming on the outside, mean on the inside?”
Sarah shook her head. “You’re nothing like your father.”
“How do you know? We’ve only just met.”
“Will you get my knapsack and work clothes out of the back?”
“You’re steady?”
She nodded. “If you were like your father, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Someone like your father never would have bothered to be a good son. Never would have taken in a stray dog. Never would have taken in a stray like me, for that matter.”
He pressed the passenger seat forward and reached in the back. “Well, maybe I’m not a louse, but I was very upset. I mean, when she started to say those hurtful things to you about ‘certain kind of women,’ I just lost it.”
Sarah patted him on his cheek. “That’s sweet. But really, I don’t need a knight in shining armor. Besides, that comment may have made you angry, but I don’t think that’s why you were so upset.”
“No? I don’t even have the excuse of wanting to come to your rescue?” He scrunched up his brow and batted his eyelashes.
She smiled. “You look as pathetic as Fred when you make that face. Speaking of which, he must be going crazy inside.”
He was immensely relieved to see her smile. He’d take on his mother anytime for her, even if she didn’t need a protector. He grabbed her hand when she drew it away. “So tell me. If you weren’t the real cause of my outburst, what was?”
Sarah wet her lips. “You’re upset about getting cancer because you don’t think it was fair.”
“You’re damn straight I’m upset. How come I got cancer and not some lousy wife-beater or deadbeat father? What did I ever do to deserve it?”
“Nobody deserves to get cancer. Sometimes things just happen that we have no control over.”
Hunt was quiet for a moment. “I guess I wanted everyone else to feel as miserable as me.”
“Well, I think you managed that tonight.”
Hunt shook his head. “You’re right. I was awful. Mean, spiteful. My behavior was uncalled for.”
“Totally. But probably inevitable.”
“How do you mean?”
“All I’m saying is, maybe it was finally time for you to break out of that emotionally cool cocoon you live in? Maybe you needed to get angry the way you did? Because maybe you finally decided to stop wearing that mask of laid-back insouciance and started feeling something real.”
“Insouciance?”
She poked him in the arm. “Stop it! That’s just what I’m talking about. I think this whole confrontation was a long time coming, and you finally let your guard down enough to admit that you’re angry—angry at your mother, angry at the world, but most of all angry at yourself because you got cancer.”
“So now I suppose you’re going to say, ‘Get over it’?”
“No, I was going to say that I think it would be a good idea if first thing tomorrow morning you had flowers delivered to your mother. Lots of them.”
“You think flowers, even a whole florist shop’s worth will be enough?”
“No, but it’s a start.”
From inside the house, there was the sound of scratching.
Sarah looked around him. “Fred.”
“He can wait a minute.” Hunt looked down at her, at her fine blond hair falling to her shoulders, and her small upturned nose, her full lips, her amazing eyes full of intelligence and insight. “I think there’s one more thing I need to do.”
And he bent down and kissed her hard and fast on the lips, a thank-you kiss and more. Much more for him, Hunt felt as he rocked back unsteadily on his feet.
Sarah seemed to wobble a little, too. She gripped the top of the car. She caught her breath. “Okay, that’s different.”
“Different good?” he asked.
“Different, I have to think about it. And now, move—before I do something really embarrassing.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“SARAH, HUNT, IT’S GOOD to see you made it,” Rufus greeted them as they walked through the swinging doors into the high school gymnasium. “And, Fred, good dog.” He pulled out a piece of hot dog from a fanny pack and coaxed the dog over. Fred slunk low to the floor, but timidly moved forward when he got a whiff of the treat.
“Good dog. You’re not so afraid today.” Rufus offered him another treat, and Fred took it much more readily.
“Okay, folks.” Rufus turned and addressed the class members. “There’re some stools to sit on while we wait for everyone. It looks like we still have another couple and their dog to come. In the meantime, why don’t we all introduce ourselves and our dogs? So, to start, I’m Rufus Treadway, and I’m here to guide you and your pets in the Beginner Dog Obedience Class.”
Sarah and Hunt sat on the first two low stools against the cinderblock wall. Banners hung from above declaring Grantham High School the Class B Girls Basketball Champions for four years running. Fred was not nearly so enthusiastic, trying futilely to hide between Sarah and Hunt.
Sarah introduced herself, as did Hunt. They tried to coax Fred out from his hiding place to greet his fellow students, but he was intent on facing the wall. She patted him encouragingly. “He’s shy with new people,” she said apologetically.
“Fred’s a shelter dog and needs time and patience.” Rufus said encouragingly. “Did you bring some pieces of string cheese like I suggested? Food can be a great stress reliever. Next?” He looked to the woman seated beyond Hunt.
That was Marjorie with her dog, Sally, a nine-month-old black Lab who loved everyone. Then there were Rick and Jenny. They came with their Rottweiler, Bessie, who had a tendency to lunge when anyone got near. The Quigley family had turned out en masse with their one-year-old Saint Bernard, Tommy. Tommy was very good at drooling and being a large rug. They explained that he also liked to eat remote controls.
Just when all the introductions were winding up, Carleton and Anna—pronounced, “Ah-n-na”—walked in with a four-year-old poodle named Toulouse—pronounced “Two-lose.” Toulouse said hello by yipping at all the dogs and straining on the leash, but when Carleton took a seat on one of the stools, his pressed jeans rising to reveal well-polished cowboy boots, Toulouse sat obediently by his side.
“That’s not fair,” Hunt whispered to Sarah. “Toulouse is showing off. He already knows how to sit.”
Sarah patted Fred reassuringly. “Don’t worry,” she said to Hunt out of the side of her mouth. “Fred may not know how to sit, but he would never think of yapping.”
Rufus started passing around loose-leaf binders. “Here are some folders for everyone. You can use them to keep the summaries of what we did in class as well as the homework assignments I’ll give you at the end of each class. If you open them up now, you’ll see I’ve included ten tips for preventing behavioral problems.”
Hunt skimmed them over. “‘Set rules right away and stick to them. Avoid situations that can stimulate bad behavior. Observe your pet and provide the necessary care.’”
Sarah read over his shoulder and nodded. “I like number six. ‘Don’t encourage aggressive play or biting.’ You’d never bite aggressively, would you, Fred?”
Fred seemed to take courage from her words because he ventured forth with his nose, resting it in Hunt’s crotch.
“The philosophy of this class is positive reinforcement,” Rufus explained. “By that I mean rewarding your dog for doing something right rather than punishing him for doing something wrong.”
“I promise to reward you when you burp the baby,” Hunt murmured.
Sarah wet her lips. “You’ll come see the baby?”
“When your dog does s
omething naughty, he’s trying to get your attention. Any kind of response, negative or positive, tells the dog that that kind of behavior gets your attention. What we want to do is put you in charge of your dog, set boundaries where you and he can interact confidently and allow you to enjoy living together.” Rufus walked casually among the group as he spoke.
“Now I want each of you to stand up. We are going to start with getting your dog to listen to you,” Rufus instructed. “The command is ‘watch me.’ You look at your dog, say the command, and when he does, you reward your dog with a treat and praise. If your dog doesn’t respond to your voice, put a treat in front of your nose to get his attention. Then repeat the command. Why don’t I demonstrate with Sally here.” He walked over to the playful Labrador. Naturally, when Rufus held her leash taut above her head and said the words, Sally responded like a pro.
Hunt looked reassuringly at Fred. “Don’t worry, Fred, you’ll get the hang of this. If I can learn to fox-trot, you can master ‘watch me.’”
“Just keep the string cheese coming,” Sarah advised.
“I’m sure that would have helped with the dance lessons, too,” he said.
“Okay, let’s have everybody spread out and work on ‘watch me,’ and don’t forget to reward your dog when she responds.”
“Here, let me go first. Then I’ll help you up,” Hunt suggested to Sarah. He stood up, forgetting that the plastic bag of treats was on his lap. They promptly fell to the floor.
“You’re a failure already,” Sarah said drily.
Hunt made a face and leaned over to pick up the bag.
Toulouse spotted the cheese and pounced, clipping Hunt on the cheek with a nail. He eased Toulouse away with the back of his hand and stood up.
Ah-n-na rushed over. “Oh, are you all right?”
“It’s fine. Just a scratch,” Hunt said.
“I think she means the dog,” Sarah said to him.
After that, the class went quickly as everyone tried to master the exercises. Finally, Rufus spoke up.
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