A Dog Called Jack

by Ivy Pembroke

  “He didn’t manage that,” said Anna dubiously.

  “He did,” Pen insisted. “Jack is very clever, you know. He’s probably part collie. Collies are very clever. The cleverest dogs. I wrote an article on them once.”

  Pen wasn’t sure if Anna was even paying attention, because Anna was watching Jack sniff curiously at the cats in her arms, and the cats, in return, were pointing out their noses to sniff back.

  “Look,” Pen said happily. “They like each other.”

  “Maybe they do,” said Anna cautiously, looking between the cats and Jack.

  “Hey,” Pen said after a moment of silence. “So, the street is basically you and me at the moment. Would you maybe want to . . . have a cup of tea?” Pen didn’t know Anna very well, and it might be nice to get to know her better. And it would be an excuse to procrastinate writing even more.

  Anna, after a moment, said hesitantly, “Yes. That might . . . be nice. Thanks.”

  * * *

  Sam, having arrived at where Miss Quinn was waiting for him and still smiling, decided to start off the evening with the very scintillating choice of, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” said Miss Quinn, smile widening.

  “How are you?” asked Sam, continuing in his vein of making awkward small talk as an effective date strategy.

  “I’m fine,” Miss Quinn replied, luckily still looking amused by him rather than annoyed. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” replied Sam, and then paused to think of his next remark.

  Miss Quinn said, “I fear you’ve lost your son. He just went in with a huge crowd of people.”

  “Yes,” Sam said. “My neighbors. They’re going to watch him for me.”

  “Watch him for you while you do what?” asked Miss Quinn, very deliberately, giving him the most perfect opening.

  Sam took it, grateful. “While I ask if you would like to watch some fireworks with me.”

  Miss Quinn laughed. “See, that could be an incredibly flash line, but I suspect you mean the literal firework display that will be put on by others, not us.”

  Sam, in the face of Miss Quinn’s laughter, felt the stiffness within him break loose. It was impossible for him to maintain any level of discomfort when Miss Quinn was laughing. It was as if her clearly relaxed state, her indication that she was having a decent time with him, reminded him of his ability to converse like a normal human being, inspired him to rise up to her level. He liked being in her presence, too. Surely he could find a way to show her that. “I like to start small,” he said. “Set a low bar. Make sure expectations are reasonable. I don’t want to promise too much. A bonfire and hopefully a literal firework display, if the weather holds. Maybe I’ll even buy you some cotton candy.”

  “Ah, well, I was vacillating, but your mention of cotton candy has now convinced me in your favor.”

  “You were vacillating?” said Sam. “Shall I expect that as a vocabulary word for Teddy in the near future?”

  “That was a special vocabulary lesson all for you,” replied Miss Quinn, dimpling as she smiled at him. “I can be persuaded to give private lessons.”

  Sam said, “With or without fireworks?”

  Miss Quinn’s smile widened even further, until Sam thought that everyone around them must surely have stopped bustling about, then he remembered to take a breath and smile irresistibly in response. She said, “Let’s see how the cotton candy goes.”

  * * *

  Marcel had heard often from Anna that he was not the world’s most observant person. But even he could observe that Emilia and Sai kept glancing at each other and looking away and making hand motions at each other that they thought no one could see, apparently, but were clearly attempts to communicate meeting up somewhere. Sai’s parents seemed oblivious to all of this, chattering enthusiastically with the gay couple and the poor old man who looked dubious about being subjected to the conversation, and Marcel couldn’t help but be proud that he had noticed when the rest had not. That, he thought, congratulating himself, was just how much he paid attention to Emilia. He couldn’t wait to prove it to Anna.

  “Chips?” he suggested to Emilia, wanting to get her alone so he could show off how clever he was being.

  Emilia, who had been in the middle of trying to translate a series of increasingly intricate hand gestures from Sai, looked at him in surprise and said, “Uh. Yeah. Sure.”

  Marcel turned away, toward the chips, deliberately to give Emilia the ability to send some gestures Sai’s way.

  When Emilia caught up with him, he said, “You said you could do with some chips.”

  “Yeah. Definitely.” Emilia smiled, not in amusement. “Mum would say that I am always in the mood for chips, wouldn’t she?”

  “You can’t let your mum get to you when she says stuff like that,” Marcel said. “She had a rough time of it when she was younger. I think she wants to make sure that you don’t have a rough time, ever, at all, in anything.”

  “By harping on about my weight?” asked Emilia sulkily.

  “Most of the world your mother can’t control,” said Marcel, as he ordered the chips.

  “So I get to be the one thing she tries to control endlessly?” said Emilia.

  “Maybe,” Marcel said, who had not thought of it in precisely those terms. “Possibly a little bit.”

  “I mean, that’s what the drums thing is all about. She doesn’t like the drums, so she doesn’t want me to like the drums. But she can’t control everything I like, you know? She just wants me to be just like her, and that’s not fair. I’m me, not her.”

  Marcel took the chips and handed them to Emilia and said, “Is that why you haven’t told her about you and the Indian boy?”

  Emilia looked up, her face a picture of absolute shock. “What?” she stammered. “What are you—I’m not—What?”

  Marcel could have laughed at how obvious Emilia’s response was. “Well, if I wasn’t certain before, I am now.”

  Emilia apparently decided it was no longer worth lying about, in favor of crowding closer to him and saying breathlessly, “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

  “So his parents really don’t know either?”

  Emilia shook her head. “They won’t like me because Sai’s supposed to just focus on school, all the time. And Mum won’t like Sai because Mum wouldn’t like anyone I like.”

  Emilia seemed so sure of that, so earnest, that Marcel’s heart broke a little. “Em.” He reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand. “That’s not true.”

  ‘Yes, it is,” said Emilia, fighting back tears and swiping away at them impatiently. “And I really like Sai. He’s a thing I really like that I just want to like without having to constantly justify it. I don’t want to have her . . . rolling her eyes or . . . making little cutting comments about him. I just want to be able to enjoy him, you know?”

  “She would let you enjoy him, Em. If you told her how important this was to you. She’s not trying to hurt you. She’s just trying to protect you. She loves you.”

  Emilia looked at him, eyes suddenly clear and sharp. “She has a funny way of showing that sometimes.”

  Which rendered Marcel speechless in response.

  Emilia wiped the last of her tears away and tore into a chip.

  Marcel watched her and then ventured, “How long has it been going on?”

  “Since the end of school last year,” Emilia said. “And we kind of got closer through the summer. We were both home all day.”

  “And how does he treat you?” Marcel asked.

  Emilia looked at him. “What?”

  “How does he treat you? Tell me about him.”

  “He’s . . . nice,” said Emilia.

  “Good to you?” persisted Marcel.

  Emilia nodded, with a reflective little half smile on her face. It made her look so strongly like Anna for a moment that Marcel’s breath caught. Anna, twenty years earlier, young and unbothered yet by life, with nothing more pressing to worry about than a
boy that she liked and the possibility that boy represented. That boy had been Marcel, and that possibility had been shining, and maybe there had been rough patches along the way, but Marcel didn’t think they’d done that badly, to have an amazing and remarkable daughter standing there making the same little half smile, unbothered by life, with nothing more pressing to worry about than a boy that she liked and the possibility that boy represented. That, Marcel thought, was exactly what he would have wanted, if you had asked him twenty years ago: a daughter who looked the way Anna had looked in those days, absolutely enchanted by possibilities.

  It seemed so long ago, and yet also just a moment ago, and all Marcel could think was that he wanted all of Emilia’s possibilities to be the shiniest they could possibly be.

  He pulled Emilia into a hug, which she jostled her chips to allow, and said, “I want you to be happy. So I won’t tell anyone. For now.”

  “For now?” echoed Emilia.

  “But you have to promise me that you’ll at least consider the possibility that your mother, if you were honest with her, would be supportive of any choice you might want to make in life, because your mother really does love you. You have to promise me that eventually, someday, you might have a heart-to-heart with your mother. Maybe. Someday. That’s all I ask.”

  Emilia was silent for a long moment, before saying, “Okay. Yes. I promise I’ll think about it.”

  * * *

  Cotton candy procured, Sam and Miss Quinn walked along the edge of the crowd, Sam very content to ignore everything that was going on in favor of watching Miss Quinn eat cotton candy.

  Miss Quinn gave him a sideways glance as they walked. “So. Is this a date?”

  Which caught Sam a little off-guard.

  She continued, “It’s just hard to tell, not being in the fruit and veg section of a supermarket, or on a school coach.”

  Sam laughed. “Come now. Didn’t the school coach make you feel young again?”

  Miss Quinn laughed in return. “I always wonder about people who are nostalgic for that time in their lives. I have no special desire to remember my time on school coaches. Do you?”

  “At the moment, no,” replied Sam honestly. “At the moment I am quite content to be a grown-up on a date on Bonfire Night.”

  “Ah, so it is a date,”said Miss Quinn wisely.

  Sam said, “I think, at this point, before we count this as a date, I really ought to know your first name.”

  After a moment, Miss Quinn burst into more laughter, and this laughter made her double over with mirth, gasping, laying a hand on his arm as if for support. Sam stared at her hand on his arm and tried not to get too besotted over it. If he were a poet, though, he would definitely write odes to Miss Quinn’s hands. If that wasn’t too besotted.

  Miss Quinn finally managed, “Oh, my goodness, do you really not know my name? Have I really never told you?”

  Sam shook his head, still a little fixated on Miss Quinn’s hand, which she had not removed from his arm.

  Miss Quinn said, “So all this time you’ve been thinking of me as ‘Miss Quinn’?”

  “No, for a little while you were Carrot Woman,” Sam said.

  Miss Quinn smiled and took her hand off his arm, which left Sam momentarily bereft, except that then she extended it toward him and smiled and said, “Libby Quinn.”

  Libby, thought Sam; it suited her, somehow. He took her hand and shook it and said, “Sam Bishop.”

  “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Bishop,” said Libby.

  “And you, Libby,” said Sam, and then, feeling bold, leaned over and kissed Libby’s cheek. And tried to move away quickly, so it wouldn’t seem creepy, but couldn’t resist a moment of breathing, of cherishing the trick of letting the world swirl all around them, insignificant.

  “Well,” remarked Libby, voice low as he leaned away, as if to not break the spell of the moment, “moving closer to the fireworks.”

  * * *

  The cats were both sitting on the sofa watching Jack. Jack was lying on the floor watching the cats.

  It seemed like a cautious détente of relations. Anna nonetheless watched carefully, just in case Jack might decide to suddenly viciously attack. One never knew with a dog.

  Pen came back into the lounge with two cups of tea, one of which she handed to Anna. “Too much milk?” she asked.

  Anna took a careful sip. “No, just right,” she said honestly. “Thank you.”

  Pen settled on the comfy, cozy chair across from Anna and sipped her tea and said, sounding amused, “You look so suspicious of poor Jack.”

  “I’ve always been a cat person,” Anna admitted. “Not much of a dog person.”

  “Well, he’s sweet,” Pen said. “Very protective of the street. Even protective of your cats.”

  “Do you really think so?” Anna looked across at Pen dubiously. “I mean, it seems like a lot of planning for a dog.”

  Pen smiled a little. “I like to ascribe good motivations to as many creatures as I can. Isn’t it nice to imagine a world where everything around you tries to be a little bit good? I even think good things about Chester.” Off Anna’s blank look, Pen said, “My goldfish,” and gestured.

  Anna glanced at the goldfish, then back at Pen, contemplating what she was saying. Finally she said carefully, not wanting to sound too dismissive but afraid she might not be able to help it, “It’s . . . rather a rosy view of the world, isn’t it? Everything being good?”

  Pen shrugged. “People might have terrible motives sometimes. If I like to think a dog tried to save a couple of cats because it makes the world a little more hopeful, well, why not? Surely we ought to try to think rosy thoughts whenever we can.”

  Anna took a sip of tea to cover her scoffing attitude toward that particular viewpoint. In her experience life was hard and tricky and thinking rosy thoughts didn’t pay the bills.

  Pen said, “Your daughter’s very sweet. She always says hello if we run into each other on the street.”

  Anna blinked, surprised. Not that she thought Emilia wasn’t sweet, but she supposed she hadn’t thought about Emilia being involved with the life of the street. “Oh,” said Anna, uncertain how she was meant to respond. She settled for, “Thank you.”

  “You must be very proud of her,” remarked Pen.

  Pen said it off-handedly, casually, like a platitude that you would say to anyone, and Anna went to respond to it in similar fashion, and then paused, hung up on the sudden realization that . . . she was proud of Emilia. She had never stopped to think of it in entirely those terms, and it was so hard to keep sight of that in the middle of all the fretting over everything horrible that might happen to the child you’d brought into the world, but the reason for all the fretting was Emilia, stubborn and bright and shining, and sometimes so different from Anna that she couldn’t remember ever being so young, and sometimes so similar to Anna that Anna ached for the world that waited for her.

  “Very proud of her,” Anna said, and was shocked to discover that she was choked up. She cleared her throat and said, embarrassed, “Sorry.”

  Pen said, “Not at all. Don’t be sorry.”

  “It’s just . . .” said Anna, feeling silly and that she ought to explain herself, “you have a child, and you work so hard to make a good life for that child, that sometimes maybe you forget to remember to stop and really see the child. You know? Oh, I must sound ridiculous to you.”

  “You don’t,” said Pen. “At all. You sound like a parent who loves very much and works very hard.”

  Anna chuckled self-deprecatingly. “And sometimes those things are at odds with each other and difficult to balance. And I’m not sure I’ve always done a good job of that.”

  “Nobody does a good job all the time, though,” said Pen. “Thinking you can always do a good job, that’s a rosy view of the world. It’s just impossible. You do the best you can, and that’s all anyone can ask.”

  Anna looked down at her tea and heard herself say, “I’m not always sure
I’ve even done the best I can.” She didn’t know why she was saying these things. Except that . . . maybe she didn’t have any close friends to talk to about this. She wasn’t Diya, running off to socialize daily. She felt so isolated in her own life, surrounded by people whom she loved but couldn’t find a way to reach across to touch.

  Pen said gently, “I think you’re being hard on yourself. I think, if you asked the people who love you, they would say that you’re hard on yourself.”

  And Anna knew that was ridiculous, because Pen barely knew Emilia and knew Marcel even less, but there was . . . hope in the way Pen was talking. And maybe that was a rosy view of the world, but it was a view Anna wanted at the moment.

  Anna said tentatively, “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” echoed Pen. “Definitely. After all, if cats and dogs can get along, anything is possible.” She nodded toward the floor.

  Where Jack and both cats were now curled up, close enough to be touching, all deeply asleep.

  * * *

  “So, Sam Bishop,” said Libby, as they wandered aimlessly through the crowd. The bonfire was burning away merrily and Sam could hear shrieks of laughter coming from that direction, but he could not have been less interested in that, being much more interested in the intriguing shape of his name in Libby’s voice. “Short for Samuel?” she guessed.

  Sam nodded.

  “You were born here, judging by your accent, somewhat blurred though it might be, from your time in America. Was Teddy born in America?”

  Sam nodded again. “His mother was American. I met her when I went over there for university. And then I sort of stayed.”

  “What made you decide to move back here? Unless that’s too prying,” Libby corrected hastily. “Sorry, is that too prying? I don’t do many first dates. Wait, I suppose I should say I don’t do many second dates.”

  Sam looked at her in disbelief. “Who wouldn’t take you on a second date? Are all the men in London mad?”

  “Actually, yes,” Libby replied seriously. “I know you asked that as if it were a joke, but really, honestly, yes. You would not believe the terrible first dates I have been on. One man brought his mother with him to approve the length of my skirt. I wasn’t wearing a skirt, so I suggest that was the first strike against me. Another proceeded to explain to me at great length why I had chosen the wrong career. Imagine thinking that a first date was the appropriate time to reveal that you think educating children is pointless, to a schoolteacher.”