Pug Hill (34 page)

“Bos was really magnificent, wasn’t she?” My mother asks me, looking back down at the picture frame in her hand. Perhaps I am not quite as psychic as I so briefly believed myself to be.

“Yes,” I agree, “she was magnificent.”

“She was. She really was. But, see, look here,” she says holding the picture out toward me. I lean in to get a closer look. My mother whispers loudly, it is too terrible to say at a normal volume, “I had a chain collar on her!”

“Yes,” I say and I’m not sure; I’m not sure where this is going so I wait, to let it go there.

“I just don’t know what I was thinking,” Mom laments.
“How
could I have had a chain on her? It’s so undignified! So cruel! She was never even on her leash, why would I have her in a chain collar?”

“Well she was very big, she probably needed it,” I offer.

“But she was so gentle!”

“Yes, she was, Mom,” I say, because I really don’t know what else to say. “She really was.”

“It’s just one of those things, one of those things that you’d never do if you’d known everything that was wrong about it when you were doing it,” my mother explains, as much to me I realize, as to Boswell. I nod my head in agreement.

Rod Stewart is playing in the background.
I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger
. But he’s not just playing in the background of my mind. I glance over at the stereo, and see the Rod
Stewart
Greatest Hits CD lying in front of it, the CD player turned on. Mom’s really going with this; she has gotten out Rod Stewart to accompany the moment lyrically. I look at the CD there, and think,
This is where I get it from.
I look over at the dog table, and think exactly the same thing.

“I’m sure she didn’t mind, Mom,” I say. “She had such a lovely, lovely life.”

“You think?” she asks me. I have never known Mom to need reassuring before this instant. I have always been the one so badly in need of reassuring, the sometimes close-to-the-edge-and-not-wanting-to-turn-around wreck, with all my insecurities and fears and issues and flaws. I want right now, more than anything, to be sure Mom knows that Boswell never minded for a second about the chain.

“Oh, I’m absolutely positive. I’m sure of it,” is all I come up with at first; I don’t want to hesitate for too long because hesitation can sometimes seem like doubt; it could seem like maybe I did think that Boswell was oppressed.

“And she really was magnificent,” I add on in a flash.

“Yes,” says my never-wistful mother wistfully, “she really was.”

We stand side by side for a while, listening to Rod Stewart and looking at all the photographs. At one point my mother sighs. And I sigh, too, because it’ll be afternoon soon enough, and then evening, and then it’ll be tonight, and I’ll be making a speech.

Clapping.

Clapping.

There is clapping, and the clapping is for me. I am standing on a stage, just to the left of the band, next to a microphone, and I’ve just finished my speech.

People aren’t gasping in horror at how bad I was. People aren’t stifling embarrassed smiles because they feel so bad for me. There isn’t even anyone running up to the stage with a towel to clean up the throw-up at my feet. All there is, all there is right now in the world, is
clapping.

This afternoon, Darcy and C.P. disassembled the non-L.L. Bean, non-REI, non-objectionable tent they’d put up last night in the backyard. Once their tent was taken down, people came and set up a much bigger tent, a much more festive tent, a tent that didn’t drive my parents slowly insane but rather made them quite happy as they looked outside, watching as it went up.

Up in my room, as I got ready for the party, I looked out my window and saw the band arriving. I noticed that someone in the band actually did have a mullet as I imagined he might, such a long time ago. I thought how weird that was and how maybe that wasn’t such a good sign. Then I had to practice The Lion and my One Nostril Breathing for about twenty minutes, before I was able to leave my room.

I walked downstairs in my lavender dress and my high heels and my makeup. I walked over to my parents, and my mother stepped back for a minute to look at me. She smiled at me, no, she beamed at me, and then she said, “Hope, you look just beautiful tonight.”

And I thought how I agreed with her, how it must be true since she was, after all, so often right. I felt something start to sting in the back of my eyes and I thought how completely simple it was, and how endlessly complicated, that maybe this, all along, had been all that I’d needed.

“Don’t cry, Hope,” my mother said, “your mascara will run.”

And so I went to the bathroom and I cried. But only a little bit, and then I fixed my mascara and practiced The Lion one more time. I walked around and said hello to all my parents’ friends. I assured Darcy that the hot pink boa she had opted for was nothing if not appropriate and tasteful. I tried not to drink too much champagne for what seemed like an eternity, but I think was only for an hour. And then, the mullet-headed band singer tapped on his mike, and announced to everyone, “Hope would like to make a speech.”

Hope, I repeated to myself. Hope would like to
make a
speech.

I don’t think I can really say that I stood up there brilliantly. I don’t think I can really say that I Took the Room and made eye contact with all the different people in the room. But I can say that honestly, truly, I did okay. And I can tell you with complete accuracy that at the end, there was clapping.

Dad leads Mom out onto the dance floor, and I listen to the clapping and step back from the microphone, officially ending my speech, officially ending my Overcoming of Presentation Anxiety, and maybe a few other things, too.

The band guy, the one with the mullet, looks over at me and winks and I think,
Really?
And then I think,
I wonder if a band guy with a mullet is the way it all turns out for me?
and then I hope not. I don’t have to worry for long though. I realize that the band guy is winking at me because I’m still standing in the middle of the stage, grinning. The band guy’s winking is not so much, “You and me babe, how about it?” as it is “Honey, it’s over, you need to get off the stage.”

“Okay, everybody!” he shouts into his own microphone. “Let’s bring it on back to the sixties!” A few woops rise out from the crowd. “Let’s put our hands together for The Beach Boys!” The band starts playing “Do You Wanna Dance,” as a horde of sixty-to-seventy-year-olds pile enthusiastically onto the dance floor. Many of them, I notice, are doing creative renditions of the twist.

I make my way down the steps, to the edge of the dance floor, just as Darcy and C.P. sashay on by. And they really are sashaying: they’re facing each other holding hands, letting go on one side and fanning out their arms and then holding both hands together again. They’re passing right by me and I smile. They both smile back at me and then, something bad is happening.

Both C.P. and Darcy have stopped anything that resembles forward motion. They are both facing me and dancing in place in front of me. They’ve let go of each other’s hands. They hold their hands out to me to join them. C.P. even gives a little flick of his wrist to be sure I’m quite clear that he wants me to join them. I start to shake my head, “No,” because sometimes, as much as I endeavor not to be, I am nothing if not a creature mired in habit. But I don’t quite get the shake out, and I change the “No,” at the last minute to, “Yes.”

Darcy is bouncing up and down like the Energizer bunny, and singing along to the Beach Boys, “Do you wanna dance and hold my hand?”

I step forward a little bit and take Darcy’s hand with one hand, and I take C.P.’s hand with my other. And the three of us together, we sashay. We sashay around the perimeter of the dance floor and for the time that it takes us to get all the way around, I manage to forget that Darcy and I were always so much more enemies than we were ever sisters, and that after that, we were so much more strangers. Because right now, as we’re sashaying, as I’m holding hands with Darcy and her Spiritual and Life Partner (as he likes to be called) none of that really matters. I realize that while you can forget about being enemies, or try to stop being strangers, we’ll always be sisters.

The three of us, me and Darcy and C.P., we sashay right up to where my parents are dancing. Darcy and I stop holding hands and we reach out to our parents. They join us and the five of us dance together in a circle in the center of the dance floor. Everyone smiles, everyone laughs.

Part of me knows that moments like these will always be few and far between, and so I try my best to stop being so damn philosophical about everything. I try to just be fully and completely in this moment. I sashay and swing and laugh and dance and I try to enjoy it, to feel only love, as much as I can.

Mom and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table, happily recounting the party and yes, saying how much they enjoyed my speech.

“Hope,” Mom says as I’m filling my coffee cup, “you were magnificent.”

“You really were,” Dad says, too.

“Thanks,” I say and smile.

The bay window is open and a light spring air fills the kitchen. Betsy is running a quick circle around the table; Captain is asleep at Dad’s feet. Annabelle looks up from her dog bed by the window, cocks her head at me slightly, just the way pugs always do. Just outside, I can see Darcy and C.P., practicing yoga on the wood floor of the tent.

I want it to stay this way. And, more than that, I want it to stay the way it was last night when we were all sashaying. I look out the window at the wood floor that was, just for last night, a dance floor and a stage. I think of someone telling me once how everything is replaceable and I see now that that’s just another way of thinking that everything is temporary. I don’t want everything to be temporary, even though so many things are. I think of my parents, of forty years, and know that there are also things that endure.

“I’m going to take a walk down by the beach,” I say, and my parents both look up at me. Mom says, “That’s nice, dear,” and Dad says, “Would you like some company?” And as nice as a walk on the beach with my dad is, I know he’s probably just gotten back, and that Mom likes to have breakfast with him.

“No, but thanks,” I say. “You enjoy your breakfast. I think maybe I’ll take Betsy with me.” Betsy halts midcircle and barks.

“Okay, have a nice time,” they both say in unison. Betsy barks again and as I head into the laundry room to grab her leash, through the window I hear Darcy and C.P. saying, “Ohm.”

I walk down the road to the beach working out in advance what our route will be once we get there. I think I’ll stick with the most frequent route, all the way across the field, then down to the water there, to the jetty, and then back across.

As we approach the field though, Betsy keeps pulling away from me, in the direction of the beach. At first I hold on to the leash and try and bring her back to the route I’d already planned on. Betsy strains harder on her leash and then turns back toward me. She sits down, digs her feet into the grass right where she is and looks at me as if to say, with every core of her being,
No way.
Betsy is pointing something out to me. The fact then that I am holding on to her leash doesn’t seem to make any sense and, after all, there’s no rule saying that we have to go the way I’d planned. I loosen my hold on her leash and Betsy gets up and walks over the little hill and onto the beach. I follow her lead and quicken my step in order to catch up, so as not to pull so tightly and impolitely on her harness again.

As soon as we get over the hill, as soon as my feet are on the sand, I notice that we’re not alone at the beach this morning. I look down at Betsy and I think she knew that, the way dogs sense things a long time before people do. I look toward the water at this guy, this lanky guy, by the way, who’s standing at the edge of the water, looking out. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a rust-colored windbreaker. He has really close-cropped black hair. Something about him, the back of him, gives me this feeling I’ve seen him before. His legs and the back of his neck are tan, quite tan I think for this time of year. I feel weird actually, standing on the beach unannounced right behind a stranger, like I’m spying, but I don’t want to announce myself. I’d rather walk back over the hill, but Betsy seems so intent on staying here. Even though, for the time being, I’m letting her stay I can hear that very distinct gurgling of protest rising in her throat.

Honestly, Betsy,
I think,
could you maybe just this once, with the stranger right there, give it a rest?
I tighten my grip on the leash and I’m about to roll the dice, I’m about to see if maybe, just maybe, I can get her back over to the field to take the walk I’d planned. The guy bends down and picks up a rock and throws it out into the water.