by Holly Jacobs
“Nice. We were at Muriel and Josiah’s.”
“A gaggle of lawyers at dinner.” He shook his head. “I bet that made for some interesting conversations.”
“Well, there was some lawyerly talk. And by talk I mean debates. They were out of my league. But then they discussed science fiction.”
“And you held your own in that arena,” he said with a surety that came from knowing and sharing my love of the genre.
“Oh, I did,” I assured him.
“I thought Anthony wasn’t a fan of science fiction,” he said.
We’d invited Anthony to some of our opening night shows, but he’d always declined. I’m not sure if Ned had ever invited Mela. She hadn’t been a fan of the genre, but I suspected that if he’d invited her, she’d have come.
I worried about Ned since he broke things off with Mela. He hadn’t gone on any other dates, as far as I knew. He’d been alone for a couple months now. Maybe he’d come out because he was lonely.
I nodded at the chairs, and we both took a seat. “Anthony’s not a fan, but turns out the Johnsons are . . .”
We sat on my porch, under the glow of the light from the schoolyard, and talked about Star Trek versus Star Wars. Then we discussed which Star Trek franchises we liked best.
I’m not sure how long we sat there, talking in the murky light that filtered through my serviceberry trees, but Ned finally said, “I should let you get to bed.”
“How about you? Are you going to be able to get some sleep tonight?” I’d noticed a light on in his living room a lot at night since Mela broke up with him.
“I think I will,” he told me.
“Good.”
I watched him go inside and waved as he shut the door. I was worried about him. Even when you know a decision is for the best, it can still hurt.
I wished there was something I could do to make it easier on him.
I sat outside a while longer, looking at the light spilling from his living room window. I tried to think of something I could do.
Anything.
But in the end, I had to admit certain hurts simply needed time in order to heal.
And certain hurts, no matter how long you waited, never fully healed.
That Saturday was an Amanda’s Pantry Saturday. This week, Ned had volunteered to come help. We hadn’t talked about Mela, but he still seemed out of sorts. I’d spent the day trying to make him smile, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job of lightening his mood.
It wasn’t hard for me to be happy on Amanda’s Pantry days. I loved interacting with our clients. Our last client of the day was Mimi Ridley. She always brought her daughter, Lovey, with her. Lovey wasn’t actually her name. It was Lisbeth. But once you met her, you never had any doubt that her true name was Lovey.
Lovey came in and crawled on my lap. She was tiny for a kindergartener and fit on it with ease. “I made you somethin’.” Without waiting for me to ask what, she thrust a small stack of papers in my hand. “I wrote you a book ’cause you gave me some and I wanted to give you some back.”
“Lovey, that was so sweet of you.” There were colorful but hard-to-identify pictures and random letters filling the pages. “Would you read it to me?”
“Sure,” she said as she nodded like a bobblehead doll. “Once upon a time, there was Miss Pip and she told stories.” She pointed to a picture. “That’s you and a book and me and some other kids.”
I nodded as if that’s exactly what the circles and squiggles meant to me.
“And she gives them food, and last time, she gave Lovey some stuff for pancakes.” She pointed to ovals on the next page. “That’s me eatin’ pancakes. Mom made ’em for me.”
“That was nice of your mom,” I assured her.
“And that’s me and Mom after we ate them.” The ovals had morphed into broad circles.
“That’s lovely, Lovey.” The pictures might be a bit hard to identify, but the heart of the story was there, and it was a beautiful heart.
“I wanted to bring you some, but Mom said they’d be cold, and cold pancakes aren’t good.”
Ned stepped up. “That’s okay. I was going to take Miss Pip out tomorrow for pancakes.”
“You were?” she asked, her eyes wide, as if she were amazed by Ned’s mind-reading skills.
Ned nodded, completely serious. “Yes. I was going to ask her if she’d come with me and help me find a dog tomorrow, and I thought I’d feed her pancakes first.” He leaned close and whispered, “When you ask someone for a favor, it’s a good idea to do something nice for them first.”
Lovey weighed his words and nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, that is a good idea. What kind of dog you gettin’?”
“That’s my problem.” He sighed as if that very question had weighed on him heavily. “I don’t know what kind. Ms. Pip is good at figuring out people, so I thought she might help me decide just what kind of dog I need. I think choosing a dog is an important decision.”
“Yeah, that’s important. I bet she could help you. She likes to help people.”
Ned grinned at me, and I felt warmed by his expression. Ned’s happiness had come to mean a lot to me.
He whispered to Lovey again, as if her mom and I couldn’t hear him. “She does like to help them a lot.”
“Will you bring the dog with you sometime?” Lovey asked.
“I’ll tell you what, if you and your mom can come at the end of the day in two weeks, I’ll come and I’ll bring my dog with me. I’m not sure he’ll want to be here for a whole day, but I bet he’d like to walk over for a visit.”
Lovey turned around and asked Mimi. “Mom?”
Mimi nodded. “We always come late because I work Saturdays until two.”
“And I go stay with Mrs. Sandy across the street.” Lovey dropped her voice to a stage whisper and announced, “And she makes me lunches, but she don’t never make me pancakes.”
I had never seen Ned interact with a child before. Oh, he’d helped at the food pantry before and he’d certainly talked to kids, but not like this. There was a connection between him and Lovely. He was good with her.
I realized that in all the time we’d dated, Anthony had never come down to the food pantry and helped. Even knowing how much it meant to me.
I tried to tell myself that I’d never gone to court to help him with a case, but I knew it wasn’t the same thing.
Ned and Lovey chatted about dogs and pancakes as I helped Mimi.
And when they left, Lovey hugged Ned and promised to bring him his own book in two weeks.
The next morning, after the promised breakfast of pancakes, Ned and I went to the Everything But a Dog adoption event. It was held at the amphitheater down on the bay front.
I loved it on the bay. The area used to be an industrial hub for Erie, but over the last decade or so, industries had left and hotels, the main library, and tourist attractions had moved in.
From the rise, I could see down the grassy knoll to the amphitheater itself, and beyond that, the bay and Presque Isle peninsula on the far side.
Sailboats, motorboats, and kayaks dotted the bay water. Most days, looking at it would be enough of a reason to visit Liberty Park, but today we were here on a mission.
“Are you ready?” I asked Ned.
He nodded.
We began to walk through the park. There were dogs of every size and breed, in kennels and makeshift pens.
“How did you find out about this?” I asked as we walked aimlessly through rows of dogs.
I’ll confess that part of me wanted to take each and every one of the dogs home with me. Some looked excited to be out of the shelter; some looked depressed. All of them looked like they needed a home.
“Josiah knows the Salo family who runs this,” Ned said. “Well, he said it’s actually the matriarch of the family who
runs the organization and she enlists the rest of the family. According to Josiah, they don’t really have a choice.”
Mrs. Salo sounded bossy. And that thought, coupled with the mention of Josiah, reminded me about Anthony’s making plans for us.
“Where do the dogs come from?” I asked, rather than dwell on Anthony’s faux pas.
“All the shelters in town send the dogs over. The lady, Mrs. Salo, claims to have a special power to match dogs to the right owner.”
I laughed at the thought of a matchmaker who specialized in dogs.
Ned smiled. “Yeah, I have my doubts about her, but not about you. I trust you to help me find the right dog.”
“I’ve never had a dog, so I have no idea what to suggest when you’re looking for one.”
“You have insight, Pip. You have an ability to see inside people.” Ned knelt down by a houndish-looking dog. It sniffed his hand, then left him to go visit with a couple kids who’d come over.
“Not that one,” I said with a laugh.
He nodded and moved to the next pen. “I think your insight into people is why you’re so good at what you do. I’m good at digging up facts and measurable information about people, but you get to the heart of them.”
It was a lovely compliment. I sometimes wanted to argue when people said nice things about me or my work, but my agent had taught me that there were only two words necessary after any compliment. “Thank you,” I said, following her advice. Then I asked, “So why a dog now?”
Ned shrugged and I thought that was all the answer I was going to get, but finally he said, “Mela never liked dogs. She didn’t want the hair all over and she said they smelled. I don’t have to worry about that anymore, so I’m getting a dog.”
I didn’t want to talk about Mela. I was afraid that the fact we never liked each other would show through, so instead I asked, “Do you have a breed in mind?”
He shook his head. “Just a dog. I had a mutt when I was growing up. Major. He was supposed to be my father’s dog, but it was apparent from the get-go he was mine. Or maybe it would be more correct to say I was his. I think in most cases, the dog owns the human . . . it doesn’t matter if the human in question realizes it.”
A tiny little woman who had reached a point in her life where it was hard to assign a number to her age, said, “Oh, isn’t that the truth? My dogs, now they own me and I know it, but some people never do. My husband, he didn’t want dogs, but now they own him, too. He doesn’t know it, but me and the dogs do.” She eyed us up for a long moment, not saying anything, but studying us.
As she studied us, I studied her. She would make a wonderful grandmother in a book. She was so tiny that most of my preteen characters would be able to lift her, but she had that sort of indomitable aura that would mean none of my characters would ever dare.
She gave a little nod, more to herself than to us and said, “I have your dogs right over here.” She didn’t wait for a response but started walking down a row of makeshift dog pens, trusting we’d follow.
“Dog,” I corrected as we followed her because . . . well, it seemed like the thing to do. “Ned’s here for the dog. I’m just advising. So dog . . . singular.”
For a tiny woman she had a very large laugh. Without turning around she said, “No, you’re here for a dog. You just don’t know it yet.”
Before I could argue, she stopped in front of a kennel with two dogs. “This is Princess and Bruce.”
Princess was a tall dog with a poodle-ish look, but had wild, whitish hair that zigzagged in weird ringlets all over her body. Bruce was some kind of hound dog that didn’t bother to look up when we approached.
“I’ll let you all get to know each other,” the woman said and moved toward another couple farther down the row.
“Well, that was different,” I said.
Ned didn’t respond. He was watching the dogs with an intensity that didn’t leave room for anything else.
Princess was doing a pretty little dance of happiness as Ned reached over the barricade to pet her. She wiggled as if her glee was so vast she had to do something to let some of it out.
After lapping up Ned’s attention, Princess went back over to Bruce and nudged him to his feet. She walked back to us, trusting that he would follow, rather like the old lady who’d led us to this pen. Princess ignored me and went back to Ned, her preference clear. Bruce slowly ambled over to me and simply looked at me.
He had such sad eyes.
Big, droopy eyes that said, I expect nothing from life so I’m rarely disappointed.
I held out my hand and he licked it. I patted his head and he gave a halfhearted tail wag, as if he wanted to let me know he liked me, but he still had no expectations about our relationship.
The woman who had to be the matriarch running the event, Mrs. Salo, was suddenly back at our sides. “See, I told you,” she said. “Princess was waiting for him, and Bruce here was just waiting for you.”
Having decided she’d settled things for the two of us and the dogs, she walked in the opposite direction, this time to a family near the entrance.
“Well . . .” I said. Bruce didn’t wiggle or do a gleeful happy dance like Princess, but I could see that he enjoyed my attention.
“Well is right. She was an original,” Ned agreed. “But I think she might be right even though Princess isn’t the type of dog I imagined myself with.”
As if she realized that he was talking about her, Princess jumped up, reached over the fence, and put her paws on his shoulders. Her head was just beneath his chin and she gazed at him adoringly.
“You might not have imagined yourself with Princess, but she obviously has made her choice of princes known.” I didn’t need to be an expert about dogs, or be someone with empathetic insights into people, to see that Ned and Princess were meant for each other.
“And you?” he asked. “You didn’t come here to get a dog, but if you decide to take him home, you know I’ll help out.”
Bruce looked at me as if to say, It’s all right. I know you don’t want a dog.
The thing is, I discovered I did very much want a dog. Not just any dog, this dog.
I nodded at Ned. “Yes, he’s mine. And thanks. You know I’ll help with Princess, too.”
We filled out the paperwork and an hour later, we were walking our dogs down along the bay front.
“Look.” Among the other boats the Brig Niagara floated by. Once it had been the flagship of the Battle of Lake Erie; now it was the emissary of Erie. The rebuilt replica traveled ports all along the Great Lakes and was one of Erie’s crowning jewels. I could see the people sprinkled along the deck. “It’s probably one of its day sails. They take people out in the bay and onto the lake itself. Have you ever gone on one?”
Ned shook his head.
“I did once,” I told him.
The dogs seemed thoroughly unimpressed with the ship.
Princess was still prancing around. It was as if she found the entire world was full of wonder and she couldn’t contain herself. Bruce seemed as taciturn as he had at the event. Though I thought he did seem to have a bit more optimism in his step.
“What do you think Anthony’s going to say when he finds out you have a dog?”
“Congratulations? I mean, what else could he say?”
“He’s over an awful lot. He might not be any more enamored of dogs than Mela was.”
“While I like and enjoy Anthony’s company, I would never make a decision about my life around him and his desires.”
As I said the words, it struck me that if Anthony and I were truly a couple, I would make decisions based on him. I pushed the thought away.
We all took a trip to the local pet center and Princess and Bruce were soon decked out with every possible doggie decadence.
Anthony came over that night. “Surprise,” I said, pointing to
Bruce, who’d decided the rug in front of my fireplace was more comfortable than the dog bed I’d bought for him.
Anthony looked at Bruce. “Whose dog is that?”
“My dog.”
Anthony wrinkled his nose as if Bruce smelled, which I know he didn’t because I’d bathed him after we got home. “Oh.”
“Aren’t you going to say congratulations?” I asked.
“I’m going to confess, I am not a dog lover,” he said slowly.
I couldn’t hold that against him since I’d never thought about getting a dog until today. “He’ll grow on you.”
Anthony didn’t look convinced. “I wish you would have talked to me about it.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say why would I? but that seemed rude, so I settled for saying, “I didn’t plan on him, but I’m glad he’s here.”
Anthony simply nodded.
I hadn’t had a lot of experience functioning as half of a couple. Maybe I should have mentioned getting a dog to Anthony.
In the end, I decided no, I shouldn’t have.
We were dating, not engaged or married.
I didn’t need to ask his permission. After all, I was making a decision for myself, not for both of us.
Anthony left rather early. He’d wanted to go out, but I didn’t want to leave Bruce alone his first night home.
Not that I thought Bruce would have been overly bothered at being left. He seemed at home at my place and content to curl up on the rug.
When I went out to the front porch, he happily came along and curled up on the loveseat as I wrote in Amanda’s journal.
Dear Amanda,
I wonder if you have a pet.
I never did. It never occurred to me to want one, but now that I have Bruce, I can’t imagine not having him.
I’d have never thought about getting a pet on my own, but thanks to Ned, I have one.
Maybe that’s what having a good friend is all about . . . having someone who pushes you to try new things and forces you to look at the world in a new way.
I love the scene in Dead Poets Society where Robin Williams gets up on a desk and tells his students to look at the world from a new perspective.
