Must Love Dogs: (Book 1) Page 4

  Carol called back while the pan was soaking and I was watching a rerun of The Brady Bunch on Nick at Night. "It's all set," she said. "I even recorded it for you. Nobody could ever tell our voices apart on the phone anyway."

  Alice, the housekeeper, was about to give the Brady kids a lecture on minding their own business. I tore myself away. "Thanks for asking, Carol. You didn't talk in a really sexy voice or anything, did you? And what did the ad end up saying?"

  "Oh, it was pretty much the same."

  "That tells me a lot."

  "Trust me, Sarah. Anything I changed was for the better. Anyway, to check the responses, you dial 1-800-555-3967. Your box number is 991184, and your password is D-A-T-E. Actually, the numbers are 3283, but I changed it to DATE so you could remember it more easily. Plus, DATE'S a good omen, I think." I ignored the cutesiness, but wrote the information down obediently because Carol would only give it to me again if I didn't.

  I knew I should have asked Carol more questions, made her tell me what the ad said. And I knew, absolutely knew, that I should call in, right now, to hear it for myself. On some level, several layers down, I even wanted to know what it said, if she sounded like me, if we'd attract any interesting men. I was also sure that if it were someone else's ad, I'd be dying to hear it.

  But because it was my ad, it seemed somehow too risky. If I became overly interested in it, I might start to imagine a life beyond the one I'd botched. And if I hoped for a new life, I'd be crushed if one never surfaced. I remembered visiting my grandparents, my father's parents, when we were young. In the alley behind their triple-decker in Worcester, my brothers and sisters and I would play wild games of hide-and-seek, punctuated by earsplitting screams and gentler trills of laughter. My grandfather would suddenly appear, looking out over the petunias that cascaded from the window boxes on the third floor. He'd always say the same thing: "And what are you little hellions looking so happy about down there? Don't you know that happy is for the next life?"

  I waited until The Brady Bunch was over and went to bed without bothering to brush my teeth.

  . . . . .

  "You're sick?" I said into the phone in my classroom. "Well, I mean that's too bad, I'm really sorry, but don't you know someone who can fill in for you?" I took a deep breath. "You don't know a single other soccer coach anywhere? I mean, don't you people have a network?" Last week I'd had to fill in for the jewelry-making teacher, a student from Mass Art I'd managed to track down through Carol. She'd claimed to be sick in the kind of raspy whisper that made me think she was lying, that she really had a project due or a hot date. I'd taught the class myself, and we'd painted pasta, mostly penne and ziti, with poster paint and strung it to make necklaces and bracelets—an admittedly low-end project compared to the Sculpey beads they'd made the week before.

  Shit, who was I going to find to teach soccer in three hours? I dialed my brother Michael's work number. "Hi, it's Sarah. Can you do me a huge favor?"

  "Fine thanks, and you?"

  "Sorry, Michael. Listen, you know the afterschool program I'm running? Well, I'm desperate for a soccer coach for this afternoon and—"

  "Annie and Lainie have a game at three. I'm coaching."

  "Damn. Could you use a few more players?

  "Yeah, that would go over big. The other team would have us thrown out of the league for bringing in ringers."

  "Do you know anyone I could ask?"

  "Not really. Why don't you just coach it yourself?"

  I tried to imagine the soccer equivalent of pasta necklaces, but came up blank. "Michael, I know absolutely nothing about soccer. What will I do with them?"

  "Do you have balls and drill cones?"

  "Yeah, the school bought them for the program."

  "Well, give the kids one of each and tell them to make up their own drills."

  . . . . .

  "What's yours?"

  "Chocolate chip. Wanna lick?"

  I didn't know exactly how the ice cream cone drill got started, but it spread like wildfire. Now, all fourteen children were running around with their soccer balls balanced on top of the mouths of their orange drill cones. They were having a great time, and while it didn't technically have much to do with soccer, I thought I'd let it go for a while to kill some time. I tried to think of a line about gross motor development and balance in case one of the parents showed up early.

  When the kids began to actually lick the soccer balls instead of just pretending, I knew it was time to redirect. "Hang on to your soccer balls and let's make the cones into a big orange snake," I yelled. A couple of the third-graders rolled their eyes but, still, they all helped me make a wiggly row of cones across the field. I lined the kids up and, sending the eye-rollers first to demonstrate, let them take turns kicking their balls through, weaving them around and around the long line of cones.

  I was feeling pretty proud of myself when Kate Stone emerged from the strip of woods between the school and the soccer field. "Nice job, Sarah," she said, flicking a dried pine needle from her shoulder, "but next time you have to cover for the coach, lose the ice cream cones."

  . . . . .

  Michael handed me a Heineken and walked over to lean against my kitchen counter. "How'd your soccer debut go?" he asked, then tilted his head back for a long slug of his own beer. The white tail of a dress shirt peeked out from under his black Adidas jacket.

  I opened my beer, took a sip. "Thanks. And thanks for stopping by. It was fine. I think it's going to be a real pain to run this program, though."

  "So quit."

  "Yeah. Especially since I'm independently wealthy . . . ."

  Michael was midsip. He opened his eyes wide to signal that he had something to say. I waited for him to swallow. "Are you okay, Sarah? Do you need money?"

  "I'm fine. Really. Or I will be as long as I supplement one low-paying job with another."

  Michael looked tired. He put his empty beer on the counter, looked at his watch. "Maybe you should think about doing something else entirely. I mean, no spouse, no kids, no strings. Basically, you can go anywhere you want, do any thing you want." Michael sighed. "Jesus, I can't even imagine."

  I looked around my kitchen, a week's worth of the Boston Globe stacked randomly on the table, the day's dishes not filling even half the sink. "Trust me. It's not as glamorous as it looks."

  "Yeah, I guess. Well, I better go. Phoebe will kill me if I don't help the girls with their homework."

  Michael has a point, I thought as I waved to him while he backed out of my driveway. I could do anything. I tried to come up with an example, nothing ambitious or life-altering, just a toe-dipping kind of something to do. I flipped through my address book, dialed Lorna's number.

  Mattress Man answered on the second ring. "Yup."

  "Hi, this is Sarah Hurlihy from school. May I speak to Lorna, please?"

  Mattress Man didn't answer. I waited, wondering if I should repeat myself. Finally, I heard Lorna's voice. "Hey, Sarah, what's up? Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine. I was just wondering. Do you want to go out and do something? I mean, no rush, just one of these days?"

  Chapter

  Six

  I've lived in Marshbury all of my life, and never even knew it had a trailer park. My father was way ahead of me, of course. He'd not only located the trailer park; he'd found a woman there to date. Her name was Dolly and for some reason we were all having dinner at her home.

  Basically, it was a setup. Christine and Carol and their kids and I showed up at four for Sunday dinner with Dad, something several of us did once or twice a month, in varying configurations, whenever it worked out. Sometimes we brought food, sometimes we ordered out. If Dad wasn't there, we ate without him.

  This time, when we showed up, he ordered us back into our cars and said, "Follow me."

  He managed to pack all of himself into the black Mazda Miata he'd bought last year. He pulled on an ancient pair of brown leather driving gloves, smoothed his hair in the visor mirror, waited
while Siobhan buckled up beside him. The grandchildren, even the oldest kids, kept careful track of whose turn it was to ride in Grandpa's only passenger seat. Suddenly, both car doors opened again. Siobhan and her grandfather walked around to change places, stopping midway for a hug.

  "I know just what he's saying to her," Carol said to me. "'Jesus, Mary and Joseph, will you look at this, my baby's baby's driving. God bless ya, honey. God bless ya all day and every day.'" Carol pulled on her seat belt, then turned to make sure the kids were buckled in. "We'll see who needs an extra blessing or two once Lead Foot with Learner's Permit gets going."

  The Miata backed out of the driveway and took a left. The rest of us followed obediently. Carol started in on me right away. "Have you checked your voice mail box?" she asked, reaching behind her to grab an airborne doll before Ian could catch Trevor's pass. Without taking her eyes off the road, Carol handed the doll back to a screaming Maeve, who had a two-year-old's amazing lung capacity and flair for drama.

  I gave Maeve a sympathetic look, and tried to ignore Carol's question. "So, where's Dennis?" I asked as if I cared.

  "He and Joe are playing golf, then grabbing something to eat. Payback for Christine's and my shopping expedition last week. Well, have you?"

  "What?"

  "Okay, Sarah, do it now." Carol handed me her cell phone.

  "I don't have the number with me."

  Carol reached into her pocketbook and handed me a neatly printed index card. There was no hope. I dialed 1-800-555-3967 as slowly as I could. An electronic voice instructed me to please dial my password. I changed Carol's D-A-T-E in my mind to a more dignified 3283, and dialed it reluctantly. To hear your responses, please press one, the voice said. Although dialing a single number slowly is difficult, I did my best.

  You have eighteen messages. To hear them, press one. To save them, press two, to delete them, press three. I looked quickly at Carol. Her eyes were still on the road. I pressed three.

  "Nothing yet," I said pleasantly.

  "I knew it. You are amazingly self-destructive, and I can't even imagine where you'd be without me." We were stopped at a set of lights on the west side of town. Siobhan was revving the engine of the Miata. Carol reached into her pocketbook again and handed me a cassette tape. "Play it," she said, gesturing to the tape deck in front of us.

  "What about the kids?"

  "Okay, wait. We must be almost there. Where the hell is Dad taking us anyway?" The Miata took off with a small squeal of rubber the instant the light turned green. We followed, taking a sudden left into the parking lot behind a strip mall and then over a speed bump and down a dirt road. A sign read WHISPERING PINES PARK. Our three-car procession stopped beside it. Carol and I looked at each other. The good news was I thought she might have forgotten about my personal ad.

  Our father, after planting a quick kiss on Siobhan's forehead, had lumbered ahead to the door of a mint-green-and-white trailer. Carol helped Maeve out of her car seat, while Ian and Trevor and I looked around carefully. A dozen or so trailers, each with a carport on one side and a couple of scrub pines on the other, flanked a rutted circular road. Several short red signs read SPEED LIMIT 15 and SLOW DOWN.

  Christine and her two kids got out of their car. "Shoeboxes," said Sydney with her flawless pronunciation. "Shoeboffas," Sean repeated. Christine shushed them and hurried to join us.

  "These are trailers," Carol was saying. "Lots of people live in them in other parts of the country." The kids nodded wordlessly. We all looked up to see the door open. A tiny full-figured woman wearing a tight pink suit opened the door. Standing on her tiptoes, she put her hands on our father's cheeks and kissed him full on the mouth. They lingered and I looked down at my watch and timed it with the second hand.

  "Twelve seconds," I whispered. "And I started late." Ian and Trevor giggled loudly. Carol gave me her knock-it-off look.

  "Come in," the woman said. "Daddy's told me all about you." We filed cautiously toward the door, adults herding the children ahead. "Come right on in and give Dolly a hug." Obediently, we took careful turns hugging Dolly on the way inside. I tried hard not to stare, but I was fascinated by her looks. Beneath a pouf of pinky-blond hair and a delicate neckline, she looked like a female Jimmy Dean sausage whose casing had an extra tie at the center.

  Christine broke the silence. "What a lovely home you have, Dolly." I bit the inside of my cheek and avoided eye contact with Christine and Carol. Siobhan looked bored. She reached up to check the positions of her earrings.

  There was so much furniture in the trailer that it seemed to have displaced the air. Heavy, dark items, including a china cabinet and an armoire, all crammed in end to end as if waiting to move back into a house. A large organ, its top either belatedly or prematurely holding the sheet music for "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," faced a sofa from a distance usually reserved for coffee tables. The sofa became the organ's bench. A dining room table abutted the sofa's backside, and was elaborately set for Sunday dinner.

  We grouped around the doorway to the kitchen and peered inside. A crocheted potholder with a Halloween motif hung from each handle of the wood-grained Formica cabinets. The reassuring smell of roast came from the oven. "Wow," said Carol. "Great potholders. Where did you manage to find them?"

  My father put his arm around Dolly's shoulders and pulled her toward him. His fingers disappeared in the pink fabric covering her upper arm. "Everything you see is handmade by Dolly. She's very creative."

  "Our mother used to sew all of our clothes when we were younger," I said before I could stop myself. Christine rolled her eyes at me.

  "Daddy's told me all about your mother, honey." I glared at him, but he wasn't looking. I mean, what a traitor he was to talk about our mother outside the family. We all leaned back in the narrow hallway and held in our stomachs as Dolly turned and walked past us, her fingertips grazing Dad's belt buckle as she slid by him.

  We clustered outside the tiny bathroom, its sliding wooden door tucked inside the wall to expose the view within. A satiny black-and-silver shower curtain hid the tub, and an ornate gold mirror took up most of the wall space above the smallest sink I'd ever seen. Three Barbie-sized dolls, whose flouncy crocheted skirts concealed rolls of toilet paper, kept each other company atop the toilet tank. In a split second, Maeve managed to dash inside and fill her doll-free hand with one of them. Pulling it away from her, Dolly said, "If you're a good, good girl and Mommy's Daddy's a good, good boy to Dolly, I'll make you one someday, sweetie." We looked at Dad expectantly, thinking he might object to the bribe, but he seemed unfazed.

  Dolly led us to a closed door. "When my third husband died, I decided the house was simply too much. Ten enormous rooms and just little Dolly to fill them." She leaned in and kissed my father energetically. By the time I noticed Ian pointing to my watch, it was too late to get an accurate count.

  Maeve rescued us from the bedroom tour. "Dolly, dolly, dolly," she screamed furiously, trying to pull away from Carol's restraining hand and reenter the bathroom.

  "Isn't that cute," Dolly said. "She knows my name already."

  . . . . .

  Carol and I sat in her minivan. Christine and Siobhan would kill us for leaving them with all the kids, but that was later. Maeve had curled up in her car seat. She was sucking her thumb, her own doll clutched in her other hand, recovering from Dolly's lack of sharing. Turning the key in the ignition, Carol said, "Hand me the tape." I did, and she pushed the play button immediately.

  To hear your messages, press one. Carol must have done just that because, after a slight pause, the taped messages began.

  Friday, October 15, 6:53 p.m. Hi. I'm really good-looking and, uh, if you want to see for yourself, call me at this number. 508-555-1221.

  Friday, October 15, 7:48 p.m. Hello. This is in response to your ad in the newspaper. Exactly what do you mean by voluptuous? Do you mean big breasts or do you mean fat? Direct your answer to my box number, which is 99865.

  Friday, October 15, 9:52 p.m
. Woof. Woof, woof. I love dogs, too, and I have a great sense of humor. You can probably tell that already, huh? My box number is 99743.

  Friday, October 15, 11:04 a.m. Good morning. This is Simon. I happened to see your ad in the Globe and it caught my eye, so to speak. I must say that your verbal presentation was quite enticing as well—

  I leaned forward and pushed the eject button. "Jesus, Carol. What a bunch of losers. What did my message say? Gimme the phone." I dialed the 800 number, pressed in the password to hear all eighteen free words of my ad:

  Voluptuous, sensuous, alluring and fun.

  Barely 40 DWF seeks special man to share starlit nights.

  Must love dogs.

  I told Carol how horrified I was by her ad, how I would never let her meddle in my life again and, by the way, how cheap did it look to have exactly eighteen words?! She told me that technically she couldn't meddle in my life because I didn't have one. The responses, she insisted, got better, and there were actually a couple of promising ones if I'd just be patient long enough to get to them. And, by the way, did I know that one of my biggest faults, along with my passivity, was my impatience, and my refusal to cooperate with things that were in my best interest, not to mention my total lack of gratitude.

  By this point, we had gotten out of the car to lean up against Carol's minivan so we wouldn't disturb Maeve. We were both talking at once, creating a kind of discordant sibling rivalry with our competing voices. Faint strains of pre-dinner organ music from inside the trailer accompanied us.

  A new voice made us both jump. "Look, Dad, it's Ms. Hurlihy. Ms. Hurlihy, what are you doing yelling in Whispering Pines Park?" It was a child's voice, and a familiar one at that. I turned to see that it belonged to Austin Connor.