Must Love Dogs: (Book 1)

  Must Love Dogs

  Claire Cook

  Marshbury Beach Books

  The Must Love Dogs Series:

  Must Love Dogs (#1)

  Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life (#2)

  Must Love Dogs: Fetch You Later (#3)

  And stay tuned for lots more to come!

  Claire@ClaireCook.com

  http://facebook.com/ClaireCookauthorpage

  http://twitter.com/ClaireCookwrite

  Be the first to hear about Claire's next release:

  http://clairecook.com/newsletter/

  Praise for Must Love Dogs

  "Wildly witty" —USA Today

  "Cook dishes up plenty of charm."

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  "A HOOT" —The Boston Globe

  "Funny and pitch perfect." —Chicago Tribune

  "This utterly charming novel by Cook is a fun read, perfect for whiling away an afternoon on the beach."

  —Library Journal

  "A hilariously original tale about dating and its place in a modern woman's life." —Book Page"

  "The exuberant and charming Claire Cook is one of the sassiest and funniest creators of contemporary women's fiction."—The Times-Picayune

  "Claire Cook (Must Love Dogs) has built a brand writing light-hearted women's fiction blending kernels of the absurd and comedic in compulsively readable combinations."

  —Shelf Awareness

  Chapter

  One

  I decided to listen to my family and get back out there. "There's life after divorce, Sarah," my father proclaimed, not that he'd ever been divorced.

  "The longer you wait, the harder it'll be" was my sister Carol's little gem, as if she had some way of knowing whether or not that was true.

  After months of ignoring them, responding to a personal ad in the newspaper seemed the most detached way to give in. I wouldn't have to sit in a restaurant with a friend of a friend of one of my brothers, probably Michael's, but maybe Johnny's or Billy Jr.'s, pretending to enjoy a meal I was too nervous to taste. I needn't endure even a phone conversation with someone my sister Christine had talked into calling me. My prospect and I would quietly connect on paper or we wouldn't.

  HONEST, HOPELESSLY ROMANTIC, old-fashioned gentleman seeks lady friend who enjoys elegant dining, dancing and the slow bloom of affection. WM, n/s, young 50s, widower, loves dogs, children and long meandering bicycle rides.

  The ad jumped out at me the first time I looked. There wasn't much competition. Rather than risk a geographic jump to one of the Boston newspapers, I'd decided it was safer and less of an effort to confine my search to the single page of classifieds in the local weekly. Seven towns halfway between Boston and Cape Cod were clumped together in one edition. Four columns of "Women Seeking Men." A quarter of a column of "Men Seeking Women," two entries of "Women Seeking Women," and what was left of that column was "Men Seeking Men."

  I certainly had no intention of adding to the disheartening surplus of heterosexual women placing ads, so I turned my attention to the second category. It was comprised of more than its share of control freaks, like this guy—Seeking attractive woman between 5'4" and 5'6", 120-135 lbs., soft-spoken, no bad habits, financially secure, for possible relationship. I could picture this dreamboat making his potential relationships step on the scale and show their bank statements before he penciled them in for a look-see.

  And then this one. Quaint, charming, almost familiar somehow. When I got to the slow bloom of affection, it just did me in. Made me remember how lonely I was.

  I circled the ad in red pen, then tore it out of the paper in a jagged rectangle. I carried it over to my computer and typed a response quickly, before I could change my mind:

  Dear Sir:

  You sound too good to be true, but perhaps we could have a cup of coffee together anyway—at a public place. I am a WF, divorced, young 40, who loves dogs and children, but doesn't happen to have either.

  —Cautiously Optimistic

  I mailed my letter to a Box 308P at the County Connections offices, which would, in turn, forward it. I enclosed a small check to secure my own box number for responses. Less than a week later I had my answer:

  Dear Madam:

  Might I have the privilege of buying you coffee at Morning Glories in Marshbury at 10 AM this coming Saturday? I'll be carrying a single yellow rose.

  —Awaiting Your Response

  The invitation was typed on thick ivory paper with an actual typewriter, the letters O and E forming solid dots of black ink, just like the old manual of my childhood. I wrote back simply, Time and place convenient. Looking forward to it.

  I didn't mention my almost-date to anyone, barely even allowed myself to think about its possibilities. There was simply no sense in getting my hopes up, no need to position myself for a fall.

  I woke up a few times Friday night, but it wasn't too bad. It's not as if I stayed up all night tossing and turning. And I tried on just a couple of different outfits on Saturday morning, finally settling on a yellow sweater and a long skirt with an old-fashioned floral print. I fluffed my hair, threw on some mascara and brushed my teeth a second time before heading out the door.

  Morning Glories is just short of trendy, a delightfully overgrown hodgepodge of sun-streaked greenery, white lattice, and round button tables with mismatched iron chairs. The coffee is strong and the baked goods homemade and delicious. You could sit at a table for hours without getting dirty looks from the people who work there.

  The long Saturday morning take-out line backed up to the door, and it took me a minute to maneuver my way over to the tables. I scanned quickly, my senses on overload, trying to pick out the rose draped across the table, to remember the opening line I had rehearsed on the drive over.

  "Sarah, my darlin' girl. What a lovely surprise. Come here and give your dear old daddy a hug."

  "Dad? What are you doing here?"

  "Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do. And from one of my very favorite daughters at that."

  "Where'd you get the rose, Dad?"

  "Picked it this morning from your dear mother's rose garden. God rest her soul."

  "Uh, who's it for?"

  "A lady friend, honey. It's the natural course of this life that your dad would have lady friends now, Sarry. I feel your sainted mother whispering her approval to me every day."

  "So, um, you're planning to meet this lady friend here, Dad?"

  "That I am, God willing."

  Somewhere in the dusty corners of my brain, synapses were connecting. "Oh my God. Dad. I'm your date. I answered your personal ad. I answered my own father's personal ad." I mean, of all the personal ads in all the world I had to pick this one?

  My father looked at me blankly, then lifted his shaggy white eyebrows in surprise. His eyes moved skyward as he cocked his head to one side. He turned his palms up in resignation. "Well, now, there's one for the supermarket papers. Honey, it's okay, no need to turn white like you've seen a ghost. Here. This only proves I brought you up to know the diamond from the riffraff."

  Faking a quick recovery is a Hurlihy family tradition, so I squelched the image of a single yellow rose in a hand other than my father's. I took a slow breath, assessing the damage to my heart. "Not only that, Dad, but maybe you and I can do a Jerry Springer show together. How 'bout 'Fathers Who Date Daughters'? I mean, this is big, Dad. The Oedipal implications alone—"

  "Oedipal, smedipal. Don't be getting all college on me now, Sarry girl." My father peered out from under his eyebrows. "And lovely as you are, you're even lovelier when you're a smidgen less flip."

  I swallowed back the tears that seemed to be my only choice besides flip, and sat down in the chair across from my father. Our waitres
s came by and I managed to order a coffee. "Wait a minute. You're not a young fifty, Dad. You're seventy-one. And when was the last time you rode a bike? You don't own a bike. And you hate dogs."

  "Honey, don't be so literal. Think of it as poetry, as who I am in the bottom of my soul. And, Sarah, I'm glad you've started dating again. Kevin was not on his best day good enough for you, sweetie."

  "I answered my own father's personal ad. That's not dating. That's sick."

  My father watched as a pretty waitress leaned across the table next to ours. His eyes stayed on her as he patted my hand and said, "You'll do better next time, honey. Just keep up the hard work." I watched as my father raked a clump of thick white hair away from his watery brown eyes. The guy could find a lesson in . . . Jesus, a date with his daughter.

  "Oh, Dad, I forgot all about you. You got the wrong date, too. You must be lonely without Mom, huh?"

  The waitress stood up, caught my father's eye and smiled. She walked away, and he turned his gaze back to me. "I think about her every day, all day. And will for the rest of my natural life. But don't worry about me. I have a four o'clock."

  "What do you mean, a four o'clock? Four o'clock Mass?"

  "No, darlin'. A wee glass of wine at four o'clock with another lovely lady. Who couldn't possibly hold a candle to you, my sweet."

  I supposed that having a date with a close blood relative was far less traumatic if it was only one of the day's two dates. I debated whether to file that tidbit away for future reference, or to plunge into deep and immediate denial that the incident had ever happened. I lifted my coffee mug to my lips. My father smiled encouragingly.

  Perhaps the lack of control was in my wrist. Maybe I merely forgot to swallow. But as my father reached across the table with a pile of paper napkins to mop the burning coffee from my chin, I thought it even more likely that I had simply never learned to be a grown-up.

  Chapter

  Two

  I stayed in bed until Monday morning, venturing out only for quick trips to the bathroom or refrigerator. At some point on Sunday night or so, returning to the safety zone of my bed with the last remaining yogurt, I noticed a stale odor as I crossed the threshold of my bedroom. Not quite a sickroom smell, more the smell of days piling up. And a woman aging as her life slips by.

  The phone rang, which on Sunday night usually means one of my brothers or sisters. I looked at it. It kept ringing. Halfway through the fourth electronic jingle, my machine picked up. Hello, you have reached Sarah Hurlihy. Leave a message if you want to.

  "Sarah, pick up. It's me. Christine. Come on, Sarah. I already talked to Dad."

  I grabbed the phone and burrowed under the covers with it. "Oh, God. What'd he tell you?"

  "Just that you're dating again. That's great, Sarah. It's about time."

  "Come on. What else did he say?"

  There was no sound from Christine, who is seventeen months younger than I am and happily married with two perfect children. Nothing. I waited her out. Hysterical laughter, deep and infectious and really pissing me off, finally arrived.

  "Who else knows, Christine?"

  "No one."

  "Oh, come on, Christine. Carol has to know."

  "Why does Carol have to know? Couldn't I, just for once, know something before she does?"

  "Not in a million years." It drove Christine absolutely crazy that all family information filtered through Carol first. As far as I could tell, Carol's position in the family was the only thing Christine had ever wanted that she couldn't get.

  "Gee, thanks, Sarah."

  "Come on, Christine. Who knows?"

  "Okay. Everyone. Except Johnny because he's still in Toronto on business. Come on, tell me the whole story. You know Dad never gets the details right."

  So I gave up and confessed it all to Christine, knowing it would be passed along to my other siblings and immortalized as family history. It would be told, at Thanksgiving dinner or on the beach, tweaked this way and that, nudged and kneaded, and retold into infinity. Christine interrupted when I got to the part about Mom. "That old goat," she said, "his blarney level is so high that he actually believes Mom is pimping for him from heaven. No guilt, ever, now or even when she was alive. The one thing you can count on with Dad is that he'll see things the way he wants to see them."

  Christine paused. I could hear her sipping something, and I imagined her with her feet arranged artfully on an ottoman, relaxed now that her kids were in bed. "So, anyway, Sarah. Tell me the truth. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate Dad as a date?"

  I climbed out from under the covers just long enough to hang up the phone on her laughter.

  . . . . .

  If I didn't have a job, I might have stayed in bed until I rotted. Instead, I got up, showered and pulled a shin-length denim jumper over a long-sleeved avocado turtleneck. I stared at myself in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door. I hated to admit it, but the muted greens and yellows I'd been wearing were all wrong for me. From earliest childhood, and decades before having your colors done was fashionable, my mother had dressed me as a "winter." Reds, whites and blues, mostly, to complement my pale skin, dark hair and brown eyes. I thought I looked like an American flag, and resented that Christine, with her hazel eyes and light brown hair, got all the moss greens and bark browns and sunflower golds, like a flag from a more exotic country.

  I realized that my mother was right. Sadly, I was only eight months away from being forty-one years old, and I still couldn't dress myself. That's why Christine had kids and a husband and I didn't. I peeled the jumper off, switched to a crisp white cotton blouse and yanked the jumper back on. My skin was no longer yellow. Amazing. Not that it mattered. In fact, not only was there no one to notice, but now I was late for work.

  Twelve minutes later, I screeched into the parking lot of Bayberry Preschool. I had seconds to spare, but I could just hear my boss if I passed her in the hallway on the way to my classroom: "It's helpful, Sarah," Kate Stone would say, "when the teachers arrive before the students."

  June, my twenty-two-year-old assistant, was meditating in the middle of the rug. And I'd been the one to choose her out of a large field of applicants. But, I mean, who thinks to ask, Do you spend inordinate amounts of time meditating when you should be scrubbing Play-Doh off tabletops?

  I flipped on the lights and June stretched gracefully, sending a wave of blond hair shimmering down her back. That was the other thing about June, she was far too pretty. I must have been feeling temporarily secure to have let that slip by. "Good morning, June," I said briskly.

  "Morning, Sarah. Wow, I heard you had like quite the incestuous date this weekend."

  "Who told you?"

  "Uh, let's see. Um, your father had dinner with my mother's best friend's neighbor Saturday night." I tried to calculate how many people had been involved in this particular branch of the grapevine for the information to circle around and travel back to me.

  Parents began escorting their children into the classroom, saving me from thoughts of relocation or even suicide. Jack Kaplan had a new haircut to praise. Amanda McAlpine wouldn't release a choke hold on her father's neck and needed to be peeled away from him. After the weekend break in routine, Mondays are tough on preschoolers. Our system was for June to welcome the children while I grabbed the parents, particularly the drop-and-run types. Anything we should know? I would ask.

  I'd learned this lesson a couple of years ago when Millie Meehan unceremoniously dumped off little Max, who seemed subdued that day. He perked up a bit at recess, laughing and running around, until he suddenly stopped and said simply, "Ouch." He clutched his groin area, and stood still, wide-eyed. I picked him up and went inside to call Millie, who'd forgotten to tell us he'd had hernia surgery the day before. "I could have sworn I mentioned it," she said. "Are you sure you didn't forget?"

  Jenny Browning didn't look quite right somehow. Her mother, Bev Henley, was wearing an expensive suit and trying to keep Jenny from wrinkling it as she hug
ged her good-bye. "Pick me up and hug me good," Jenny said with authority. Bev picked her up, held her several safe inches away and kissed her on the forehead. Deftly, Bev spun her around and pushed her toward me. Jenny vomited. The sharp, sudden smell was tinged with peanut butter, and I felt the damp warmth invade the front of my blouse and trickle between my breasts. Bev looked as if she'd run if she could, but wordlessly took her daughter back, placing her on the ground beside her and walking her to the sink.

  June cleaned Jenny up and sent mother and daughter home. I opened the door to the adjoining classroom and, holding my nose while gesturing to my chest, let them know that I was running home for a quick change. Trying not to gag, I told June I'd be back in forty-five minutes tops. She looked at me sympathetically and said, "Take your time. Oh, before I forget, I'm supposed to tell you to tell your dad that my mother's friend's neighbor had a very nice time with him."

  . . . . .

  At the afterschool staff meeting, I found a seat a safe distance away from the other teachers. I knew I should have changed my whole outfit. I'd rifled briefly through the pile of clothes on my bedroom floor, looking for a skirt that could pass for unwrinkled. I gave up, pulled on the avocado turtleneck, which didn't look any better than it had earlier in the morning. I threw the sullied white blouse into the bathroom sink, rubbed it with a damp bar of Dove, added some water and left it to soak. The denim jumper appeared unscathed so I decided to put it back on.

  I'd been regretting that decision ever since. I kept trying to tell myself, as I opened the windows in my classroom, that the sour smell of vomit had simply lodged itself in my nostrils, or maybe in my memory banks.

  Lorna, one of the inclusion class teachers, sat down beside me. "Pee yew, is that you?"