Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life

by Cook, Claire

  The simple elegance of teaching is that a good teacher meets her students where they are and escorts them to the next level. I chose to see this ritual as a sign of at least rudimentary social interacting potential.

  "I'll take that as a resounding and aromatic no," I said. Nobody laughed. Most of them had resumed eye contact with their iMacs. The nose picker reached for his nose. I handed him another tissue.

  I cleared my throat. "Next question: How many of you currently have a girlfriend or a boyfriend?"

  A couple of them actually glanced my way.

  "My last girlfriend," one of them said, "had the worst fucking taste in manga."

  "Hey," somebody else said. "Guess what I found out? If you stick toothpicks in two Peeps and put them in the microwave facing each other, when you turn on the microwave, it looks like they're jousting."

  "Die," the flannel shirt student yelled as he hunched over his computer. "Die you bastards, die."

  A purple foam dart hit me right between my breasts. Finally, everybody looked at me.

  I looked down. Under the bright light of the overhead LED bulbs, pomegranate martini spots dotted my purple wrap dress like a constellation. I moved my necklace back to center.

  "Whoa, dude, direct hit. Hey, did I draw blood? Tactical error fully acknowledged."

  There comes a point in every school year or summer camp session when the honeymoon's over and you have to let them know who's boss. Nine minutes in was early, but the signs were indisputable.

  "Unhand your weapons," I said.

  They ignored me.

  I clapped my hands.

  They ignored me some more.

  I put two fingers in my mouth to whistle the way my father had taught us when we were kids, sitting out on the back deck on a sticky summer's night, the air thick with the smell of low tide, waiting for the coals to get hot enough to blister the hotdogs and hamburgers within an inch of their lives. All six of us would be gathered around him as if he were the Pied Piper while my mother finished assembling the coleslaw and potato salad inside.

  "'Tis top secret, the family whistle," he'd begin, "so you've got to swear on your sainted ancestors' souls that you'll never let it leave this circle."

  "I swear, Dad," we'd all say.

  "How many times have I told you kids not to swear," he'd bellow.

  We'd laugh and laugh, like this was the first time we'd heard it instead of the hundredth.

  "The trick," he'd continue, "is to wet your whistle first." He'd reach for his beer and take another drink, then he'd look over his shoulder to make sure our mother was still in the kitchen. If the coast was clear, he'd pass the can around. We'd each take a sip and use our fleeting moment in the spotlight to follow it up with something dramatic—a blissful swoon, a throat-searing gag, or a Shakespeare-worthy death spiral to the splintery wood deck.

  When we'd all finished, he'd nod his head in approval and take his beer back. "God bless you and keep you. Chips off the old block, every last blessed one of you." He'd pause here for his own sip. "Next, you've got to leave enough space between your fingers for the whistle to get airborne, but not so much that it gets distracted and forgets where it's going."

  We'd put our fingers, still tasting of cold aluminum, in place. My father would walk around the circle, inspecting us one by one, nodding solemnly or adjusting a finger.

  "And then you say a quick prayer to Al O'Whistles, the patron saint of whistlers."

  We'd bob our heads, hanging on his every word.

  "On your knees," he'd roar.

  "Da-ad," the older kids would say, but we'd all get on our knees anyway, fake a quick prayer, cross ourselves.

  "And then you simply let her rip." And he would—a shrill, piercing, ear-clamping whistle that I used to imagine the angels could hear all the way up in heaven.

  We'd join in for a group whistle, our imperfect family harmony filling the air.

  Then our father would drain the last of his beer. "Boyohboy," he'd say, "Irish I had a Schlitz." And we'd all race to the kitchen to get him one.

  I blinked myself back to the present. I let out an eardrum-denting whistle.

  That got the Gamiacs' attention.

  "Take your hand off your mouse and stand up," I said. "Slide your chair under the table."

  They looked at me in disbelief.

  "Now," I said.

  They stood. The sound of metal chair legs on marble floor was not pretty as they slid their chairs back in, but at least they did it.

  "Wow, this is like when Bart almost has to go to military school on The Simpsons," somebody said.

  I made the universal teacher sign for zipping your lips. "IPhones on the table and line up by the door. Single file. We're going out."

  This time they looked at me in sheer terror. I wasn't sure if it was iPhone separation anxiety or fear of the outdoors, but I crossed my arms over my pomegranate martini stains and held firm.

  There were too many of us for the elevator, and I didn't trust them not to bolt if we broke into two groups, so we all clomped our way down four flights of stairs together. I pushed open one of the heavy double doors and did a head count as they filed out to the sidewalk. Like every good teacher on a field trip, I'd count and recount along the way to make sure I didn't lose anybody.

  I followed the last student outside. They clumped together like moles, blinking in the sunlight.

  Chapter

  Eight

  After we'd made love, sometimes John would just look at me and say, "Sarah." The way he said it, it was a complete sentence, both present and future tense, filled with everything you needed to build a life with someone.

  I really sucked at this kind of thing, but it seemed only fair to give it a shot. We were stretched out on our sides facing each other, the covers a tangled mess at our feet. I traced the letter J on his chest gently with one fingernail as I looked into his eyes. "John. I mean, Jack. You know, I really think we need to solve the name thing. In a way, it might be kind of cool to have a family nickname."

  "Or I could go out on a limb and have it changed legally. As a show of solidarity or to pledge my troth to you."

  "Sure, and maybe I could cut off an ear for you or something."

  He kissed the ticklish spot behind my left ear. "Maybe we should pick the name that sounds better in the heat of passion."

  I hooked one ankle around his. "That makes sense. Okay, here goes." I pushed myself up on one elbow and threw my head back. "Oh, John, oh, John, oh, John."

  He rolled over to his back and looked up at the ceiling while he considered. "I think that one has real potential."

  "Wait. Don't decide yet." I fluffed my hair and threw my head back again. "Oh, Jack, oh, Jack, oh, Jack."

  He stared at the ceiling some more. "This is tougher than you'd think it would be. Can I hear them both one more time? It's an important decision and I wouldn't want to rush it."

  There was a low growl on the other side of the bedroom door.

  "Uh, oh," I said. "Is that Horatio?"

  "No, that was me."

  "Good. I like a man who growls."

  Horatio had growled at me for the first time today when we'd picked him up at Happytails Puppy Play Care. John had taken a half-day off so he could leave with me when I finished my session with the Gamiacs. We'd wandered the streets for a while, hand in hand, and then stopped for lunch at a Thai restaurant. We'd gazed at each other over our pad thai, our sexual tension feeling like the dessert we knew was ahead, couldn't wait to get to, but also wanted to enjoy the sweet anticipation of just a little bit longer.

  John paid the check. As he wrote in the tip, I read the amount upside down, happy that he tipped not the exact fifteen percent you might expect from an accountant but like a pinball wizard who knew what it was to have a dream that might need some support. Kevin had been a stingy tipper, always looking for reasons—slow service, overcooked meal, delayed plate clearing—to undertip our server. I'd ended far too many restaurant meals over the cours
e of my marriage pretending I'd forgotten something so I could run back and leave a few more dollars on the table.

  "I bet," I said, as we walked back toward John's office to pick up his car, "that our waitress was really a songwriter. She plays guitar in a midlife girl band on her nights off and she's saving up for her first recording session."

  John nodded. "I like it. She has the soul of an aging rock star but the bills of a waitress."

  "Do you hate being an accountant again?"

  "Not really. I'm good at it, and it's a cool place to work. Plus, I like having an office with actual people in it to talk to, as opposed to a roomful of pinball machines." He sighed. "Especially when I'm alone so much since my girlfriend is constantly blowing me off."

  I reached my arm through his. "I am not."

  "Well, that remains to be seen. But back to the subject at hand, I think the reality is that very few people are as lucky as you are, Sarah, to have their passion and their day job all rolled up into one tidy package."

  "Ha," I said. "Not too tidy. I wiped out an entire generation of Painted Lady Butterflies, traumatized a preschool full of students, and you should have seen me today dodging Nerf darts with the Gamiacs. I'm not sure yet how much I'll be able to accomplish, but I like them. They remind me of supersized toddlers one minute and wise old souls the next."

  I let go of John's arm so we could walk around three laughing women blocking the sidewalk. He swung his arm around my shoulders when we found each other again.

  "Hard to believe most of the Gamiacs are in their mid-twenties," he said as we matched our strides again. "I have a theory that hovering parents and a crashing economy combined to create a generation of boomerang kids living an extended adolescence."

  I nodded. "I know. It's so not fair that childhood lasts longer these days."

  "Uh-oh. You said 'these days.' That means we're officially old."

  "Speak for yourself. Anyway, I like them. We're really going to have to work on hygiene. And farting. Nose picking's coming along swimmingly though."

  "See. You're completely into it already. You'll be drawing up lesson plans and making gamer finger puppets so they can practice their manners."

  "Wait." I reached into my purse for the little notebook I carried everywhere. "Let me write that down."

  Back at John's condo, Horatio growled again.

  John sat up in bed. "Horatio, place."

  Horatio barked and slammed himself into the door with a bone-shattering thump.

  "Horatio, place," John said again. This, according to the training manual John kept on his bedside table, was supposed to send Horatio to the doggie equivalent of the time-out chair, a fluffy little faux fur bed with Horatio embroidered on it in loopy cursive letters that was nestled in front of the tall condo window with the best view.

  We heard another bark and thump. Bark and thump. Bark and thump. Some serious scratching followed, which sounded exactly like fingernails on a blackboard to me.

  I put my hands over my ears. Horatio barked some more.

  John dangled one leg over the edge of the bed. "Okay with you if I let him in? I'm thinking maybe if we have a group cuddle afterward, he won't feel so bad about being kicked out of the bedroom."

  "Or you could be reinforcing his door-scratching behavior," I said. A flash of déjà vu hit me, as if I'd suddenly found myself doing a parent-teacher conference in the nude.

  John was already halfway to the door. I reached for the covers and pulled them up to my chin.

  As soon as the door opened, Horatio exploded into the room, a gangly barking whirlwind of long legs and tricolored fur. John scooped him up in his arms. Horatio covered John's face with kisses so thoroughly and enthusiastically that I wondered if I should be taking notes.

  John flipped his puppy over in his arms so that he was cradling him like a baby and began scratching his belly. Horatio's tongue dangled from one side of his mouth and his extreme panting made his chest go up and down in short even bursts. I watched them, not really jealous, but not really not jealous either.

  I was just contemplating a brief nap to pass the time when John remembered me. He smiled and walked Horatio across the room and placed him on the corner of the bed.

  "Say hello to Sarah, Horatio."

  Horatio crossed the bed in a single leap. His greyhound half had given him height and speed, his Yorkie side determination and a bad attitude. He stopped, inches from me, and started barking his head off. His bark somehow managed to be both yappy and ferocious.

  I held out one hand as a peace offering.

  He snapped at me, his teeth grazing my fingers.

  "Ouch," I said. I inspected my fingers, counted them just to be sure.

  "He didn't bite you," John said. "If he really wanted to bite you, you'd know it."

  "Why do people always say that? It's a really stupid thing to say. How do you know he just doesn't have bad aim? Or need glasses?"

  "Did he break the skin?"

  I flipped my hand back and forth and inspected my fingers some more. "Not really."

  "See. My point exactly."

  We looked at each other over the wall of furious puppy that separated us.

  I wiggled one toe under the sheet. Horatio took his barking up an octave.

  I shook my head. Horatio crouched low over his front paws, his butt sticking up in the air, and growled a really mean growl.

  "Do something," I said.

  "He's playing."

  "He's not playing. His fur is sticking straight up." I gave Horatio my strictest teacher look. "Do not raise your hackles at me, young man."

  Horatio dove for me, barking like a maniac. John lassoed him with his arms just in the nick of time.

  I jumped out of bed, grabbed my oversize shoulder bag in case I needed a shield, and made a run for the master bathroom.

  I slammed the bathroom door behind me. When Horatio hit it with a vengeance, the door actually shook.

  Horatio barked and scratched, scratched and barked, hit the door again.

  "Horatio, place," John said from the other room.

  Horatio let out another bark, but I knew what he was really saying, loud and clear, was Sarah, place.

  I felt the cool travertine tiles of John's bathroom under my feet, took in the frameless glass-enclosed double shower, the fluffy white towels. The brushed chrome fixtures were a perfect match for the twin contemporary mirrors topping his and her sinks. It was a nice bathroom, but I wouldn't want to spend my life hiding in here.

  I splashed water on my face and located my travel pack of makeup remover sheets in the bottom of my bag so I could wipe away the mascara that now ringed my eyes and made me look like a post-coital raccoon. I'd yet to leave any toiletries in John's bathroom, any clothes in his closet. Besides the fact that Horatio would probably have chewed them to pieces by now just to spite me, leaving a mere toothbrush behind felt like such a brazen declaration that I'd be coming back.

  An extra robe or a T-shirt was even worse. It was the kind of thing that could jinx the chances for a long-term relationship. Not to mention that it just reeked of those clichéd things you read about women doing to get one foot in the door, to be partially moved in before the poor unsuspecting guy realizes it.

  Still, it's not like you could show up to teach geek charm school rolling a cute little suitcase filled with fresh undies. So to save myself from doing a walk of shame back to Marshbury—same clothes, new day—I'd buried the bare essentials way in the bottom of my biggest shoulder bag. It was appropriately named, since by the time I finished lugging it all over the city, I could feel the weight of it wearing a new groove in my shoulder.

  Horatio hit the door again.

  "Let me know when you're ready to come out," John yelled, "and I'll make sure I'm holding him. Maybe that will help."

  Relationships, two-footed and four-footed alike, were just too damn complicated. For the first time it occurred to me that this could be a really long season. It was only June and we'd already hit
the dog days of summer.

  Chapter

  Nine

  My father was girlfriendless for Sunday dinner. This was far more unusual than having a strange woman, or even two or three, open the heavy oak door to welcome me into my family home.

  I let myself in with the tarnished brass key I'd had since junior high and headed straight for the kitchen. I knew I'd find everyone there. Sure enough, my father was hunched over his ancient manual typewriter at the old pine trestle table, two-finger typing on a thick sheet of ivory paper. I kissed him on the top of his head.

  "Sarry, my darlin' daughter, it's good to see your smiling face," he said without looking up. "Can you check a wee bit of spelling for me once I've finished?"

  "Sure, Dad," I said. "I'd love to."

  Christine looked up from snipping a stalk of rosemary over the pork roast with the kitchen shears. "Why does Sarah get to check your spelling? I'm the one who placed three times at the state spelling bee."

  Carol looked up from the potatoes she was peeling. "And she still has the trophies to prove it."

  Christine glared at her. "What's wrong with that? We have a trophy case. It came with the house."

  Carol rolled her eyes as she turned to me. "Where's Jack?"

  "He wanted to spend some time with his dog," I said.

  Everybody turned to look at me.

  "Don't say it," I said.

  "We wouldn't think of it." My brother Billy shook his head. "But I can't believe he calls you his dog. That's harsh. I mean, his teddy bear maybe—"

  "Or even his honey bunny," Christine said

  I was still watching my father. "Dad, don't you think it might be time to upgrade to a computer? You know, try a little email . . .."

  He combed one hand through his long white mane. "Never. Not as long as a single solitary mailman is still reporting for duty—"