Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life (22 page)

"
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 bed 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.

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 a
ssignment.
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 d
eserved. 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 se
agull 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.