‘No dogs allowed,’ the bartender said, just like I always knew he would.
‘But you don’t understand,’ I said, following a script I knew by heart. ‘This is a very special dog. This dog can talk.’
‘Okay,’ said the bartender. ‘Let’s hear it.’
I lifted Lorelei onto a bar stool. She opened her mouth, and the bartender and I waited to hear what she would say. But she didn’t speak. Instead, she leaned over to me and licked my face. Then, distracted by an itch, she turned away and started chewing on her paw.
‘See?’ I said to the bartender.
‘You’re right,’ he said, without a trace of sarcasm.
‘That’s quite a dog.’
When I woke up, I found that I was smiling.
I remember my wife in white. I remember her walking
toward me on our wedding day, a bouquet of red flowers in her hand, and I remember her turning away from me in anger, her body stiff as a stone. I remember the sound of her breath as she slept. I remember the way her body felt in my arms. I remember, always I remember, that she brought solace to my life as well as grief. That for every dark moment we shared between us, there was a moment of such brightness I almost could not bear to look at it head-on. I try to remember the woman she was and not the woman I have built out of spare parts to comfort me in my mourning. And I find, more and more, as the days go by and the balm of my forgiveness washes over the cracked and parched surface of my heart, I find that remembering her as she was is a gift I can give us both.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, first of all, to my parents, Doreen C. Parkhurst, M.D., and William Parkhurst, my stepmother, Molly Katz, and my grandmother Claire T. Carney, for passing along their wisdom and for being my first and most supportive readers.
Thank you to Kim Alleyne, Cybelle Clevenger, Lee
Damsky, Paula Whyman, and Katrin Wilde for their friendship, advice, insightful reading, and humor.
Thank you to my agent, Douglas Stewart, for all his
incredible work, and to everyone at Curtis Brown, especially Ed Wintle and Dave Harbor.
Thank you to my wonderful editor, Asya Muchnick, and to everyone at Little, Brown, especially Alison Vandenberg, Heather Rizzo, Michael Pietsch, Laura Quinn, and Sophie Cottrell.
Thank you to all the great teachers I’ve had, especially Kermit Moyer, Richard McCann, Matthew Klam, Ann
duCille, and Roberta Rubenstein.
Thank you to Barbara Fuegner for talking to me about dogs and to Annie Hallatt for talking to me about masks.
Thank you to my son, Henry, whose impending birth
provided me with the deadline I needed to finish this book and whose happy face reminds me daily of what really matters. And thank you, above all, to my husband, Evan, who has supported me in every way and who has provided the invaluable service of making me happy.
Finally, though they will not read this, I would like to thank all of the dogs who have let me share their lives, especially Chelsea, who was such a good puppy dog it’s hard for the layman to understand.
Song lyrics from ‘Mrs Robinson,’ Š 1968, written by
Paul Simon; song lyrics from ‘It’s a Small World,’ from Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s ‘It’s A Small World,’ Š 1963, written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman; song lyrics from ‘A Day in the Life,’ Š 1967 Northern Songs, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney; song lyrics from T Got You Babe,’ Š 1965, written by Sonny Bono.
The End.