Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life (25 page)

"
Wow," I said. "That's frighteningly mature."

"
I know. Who knew I could chill like that, right? Oh, hey, remember Uncle Pete?"

"
Uh, yeah, vaguely."

"
Turns out he's just this guy in Phoebe's yoga class. He broke up with his partner, who's a masseuse or something, and they're fighting over who gets to keep the apartment, and they also have to unload this timeshare they own together in Vegas."

"
That sounds so familiar," I said.

"
Anyway, they're just friends. I apologized for overreacting."

"
Impressive."

A sign for Exit 13 came into view. Michael put on his blinker, moved into the right lane.

I tried to keep my mouth shut as we pulled off the highway, but in the end I had to say it because he was my brother. "Just try not to forget that you and Phoebe have been here a few times, okay? I mean, you're miserable together and then you're miserable apart so you get back together. And then before you know it you're miserable again."

Michael didn
't say anything, perhaps his subtle way of trying to get me to stop talking, too.

I took a deep breath.
"I can't stop thinking about what you said. You know, about the guy from the Boston Marathon bombing? That even though his legs were gone, he kept trying to stand up? Well, it made me think of this interview I saw at the time. A doctor who was just back from Iraq. He finished running the marathon, and then he ran a couple more miles to the hospital and saved people all day. I'll never forget this thing he said to the reporter—that you always choose life over limb."

Michael cleared his throat.
"Your point?"

"
You might have to choose your life over your marriage, Michael."

We twisted and turned along the back roads to
Marshbury. Unlike the sensible grid of Savannah or the manicured perfection of Hilton Head, they wiggled randomly hither and thither. We passed old homes and older homes, landscaped and not, an occasional cemetery or golf course popping up in the middle of nowhere, like a timeline of the last three centuries.

"
I'm not there yet," Michael said. "I still think I can save them both."

Chapter

Thirty-two

"We'll just have to make our own sunshine," our mother used to say when we were stuck inside the house. She'd break out the Silly Putty and dig up the Sunday funnies, aka the comics, which she saved religiously for just this kind of dank, rainy day.

We
'd gather around the pine trestle table in the kitchen. While our mother made blueberry muffins or banana pancakes, we'd spend the whole morning lost in our Silly Putty. We'd roll our shiny pinkish glob into a ball, then flatten it until it was shaped like a medallion. We'd press it down hard to capture a colored newsprint picture, admire our handiwork, fold it over and over until it disappeared, and then do it all over again.

All these years later, whenever I thought of Silly Putty, I could actually smell its sharp, distinctive scent, and it would bring me back to my childhood in a nanosecond.

I scoured the shelves in the equipment closet in my former master bedroom-slash-office until I found a little wicker basket of red Silly Putty eggs. I'd bought them for my classroom, thinking the kids would be totally wowed. A couple of the more orally fixated kids tried to eat it, and one of the boys sat on a plastic egg to see if it would hatch, but other than that, it was mostly ignored.

I carried a Silly Putty egg out to my kitchen table and twisted it open. The newer Silly Putty seemed to break apart when you stretched it. I wondered if the ingredients had changed, or if the attention span needed to warm the putty with your hands and slo
wly stretch it into shape just wasn't a part of our repertoire anymore. And these days it was harder to find the kind of porous newsprint that let you lift the ink right off the page. It was harder to find newsprint at all.

I spent an entire hour completely in the moment with my Silly Putty, picking up random images from the pile of catalogs that had been waiting for me in the mailbox when I returned home.

Since Michael had dropped me off on Friday, I hadn't left the house or talked to a soul. When I realized I was hungry, I'd opened up a box of Annie's and made my famous Sarah's Winey Mac and Cheese, substituting chardonnay for the milk and serving it to myself in a wineglass.

I
'd slept in on Saturday, then wandered around in my backyard, taking it in as if for the first time. The impatiens someone had planted before Kevin and I bought the house had reseeded again and were starting to bloom. The blueberry bushes that had also come with the house were heavy with perfectly ripened fruit. I picked some blueberries and popped them directly into my mouth. It wasn't exactly like living off the land on a deserted island, but it still gave me a little thrill. I went back inside for a bowl. I picked enough blueberries to sprinkle over my cornflakes for breakfast, plus extras, in case I decided to bake.

Saturday night I opened up a can of yellow fin tuna packed in olive oil for dinner. I drizzled it with lemon juice and ate it right out of the can.

I'd once read somewhere that solitude is the state of being alone without being lonely. When you grow up smack dab in the middle of six kids, you might be lonely sometimes, but you're almost never alone. Even as an adult, I couldn't remember the last time I'd disconnected from my family long enough to do nothing. And maybe even to feel something.

Lots of people do digital detoxes, turning off their computers and tablets and smartphones for a weekend or a week. But by Su
nday I realized that I was also doing a family detox. Maybe I'd finally figured out my own existential questions: Who was I without my family? And what did I want my life to be?

I got up at the crack of dawn and drove to the beach to watch the sunrise, munching on another handful of blueberries I
'd foraged off the land. The beach was practically deserted. I sipped my coffee, leaned back on my elbows. I kicked off my flip-flops and wiggled my toes in the coarse Marshbury sand.

As I watched the salmon and pink sun peek up over an endless blue ocean, it felt like I was making my own sunshine for the first time in years.

I could have called Michael to pick me up on the way to work on Monday, but I didn't. Of course, he could have called me, too. It was as if once he'd moved out, we'd cut the cord. Or maybe he was doing his own family detox.

I parked my car at the
Marshbury station and found a seat way in the back of the train. It was a long ride, more crowded with each stop. I tried not to think about the packed subway ride that was waiting for me on the other end. No wonder people fantasized about living on deserted islands. But I was ready to come back to the world. I was ready to get on with my life.

John Anderson wasn
't waiting in front of the Necrogamiac building with two cups of Starbucks coffee. Not that I expected him to be. I opened the door for myself, checked the sign next to the elevator, took the stairs up to the Human Resources department.

Keli
was sitting at her desk, wearing a miniskirt, legs crossed in shiny hot pink skyscraper heels. One shoe was firmly planted on the floor, the other dangled precariously from one toe.

I cleared my throat.
"May I talk to you for a moment, please?"

Keli
jumped, her dangling shoe skittering across the floor. She got up, yanked down her miniskirt, did a high-low hobble until she caught up with her shoe.

"Hey," she said as she sat on the edge of her desk and wiggled her shoe back on. "What's up?"

"
Now," I said. "Let's go."

I was ready to grab her if she decided to cut and run, but she followed me peacefully to the nearest restroom. I held the door for her,
then shut it behind me. I crossed my arms over my chest.

"
Knock-knock," I said. A good preschool teacher always has a knock-knock joke handy.

"
Who's there?" Keli said in a singsong-y voice.

"
Orange," I said.

If she didn
't actually gulp, she wanted to. "Orange who?" she said softly.

"
Orange you glad I'm onto you?" I said.

She wrinkled her nose adorably.
"Are you okay, Sarah? You're acting really strange. And by the way, have you had any trouble logging into the Gamiacs' private chat room? It's been acting really wonky lately."

"
Let's talk wonky," I said. "You put the moves on a certain someone. He tells you he's not interested. But instead of backing off, you decide you're going to try to sabotage his relationship with the person he is interested in. So you figure out his dog, like most dogs, hates the smell of oranges."

I hadn
't had many Nancy Drew moments in my life, but I liked it. If I ever needed a break from teaching, maybe I could open up my own private investigation firm. I reached into my shoulder bag, pulled out the orange blossom perfume stick, the organic orange essence lip balm, the pure blood orange lotion, and placed them next to the sink, one by one.

Keli
watched my every move. "It's just this thing I do," she said. "It's like I look around at everything I don't have yet and think: I want that and that. And that. And then I figure out how to get it all."

I stared at her.

She tilted her head and smiled. "I'm very resourceful. But don't worry. Once I have it I don't want it anymore anyway."

"
And worst of all," I said, "you involved the Gamiacs. You took advantage of the trust I put in you. You changed the password."

She smiled harder.
"No worries. I'll put it back right now."

"
You can't put it back. You're no longer an administrator."

Her eyes darted toward the bathroom door, as if she might be contemplating a quick getaway in her pink skyscraper heels.

I wanted to grab her by a clump of perfectly foiled hair. Or even an earlobe. But I was a professional, so I merely gripped the back of her arm firmly and pushed the door open with my other hand.

I walked her to the elevator, pushed the button, waited for it to open.

"Sit," I said, as I gave her a little shove toward the tufted elevator bench.

Keli
sat.

I leaned against the door to keep it open. I crossed my arms over my chest and gave her my best teacher glare, fine-tuned through years of practice.

"
What?
" she said.

"I want you to sit right here in this elevator, all morning if you have to, and I want you to think about the kind of person you want to be."

I reached into my bag again and pulled out the posts I'd printed. "And then, once you've finished your time-out, you're going to come with me and apologize to the Gamiacs. Then you're all going to read your posts out loud, discuss what you've learned since then. Then we're going to take them outside and burn them. And then we're all going to move forward."

I knocked on John
's office door.

"
Come in," he said in his professional voice.

I opened the door and leaned in.
"Listen, I know this isn't the time or the place, and I know you've got work to do, and I have to get back to the Gamiacs, but I just have to say this. In a million years, I don't think I'd find someone I'd rather be with, and I know I'm the one who's been screwing things up. You're right, I keep looking for reasons that this can't work, stupid things like distance, and family, and Horatio, not that Horatio is stupid. By the way, do you happen to know if he hates the smell of oranges?"

John shrugged.

I took a deep breath. "I kind of just got back from a semi-deserted island, and the whole time I was there I kept trying not to think about you, but I couldn't. And it wasn't because I didn't want to be alone. It was because you would have made it better. You would have known that Irish road bowling didn't really originate in Ireland, but in Scotland, or Germany, or Poland, and you would have wanted to take a walk on the beach as soon as we got there, and mostly, you would have laughed in all the right places. I don't really get the whole pinball thing, but I know that second chances don't only happen in pinball, and, well, what I'm trying to say is that I'd really like to give it another shot."

He made an odd gesture with his eyes, as if something was stuck in one of his contacts.

"Are you okay?" I said.

He nodded.

"Um, in summation, I'd just like to say that I'm really sorry, not for all of it, of course, but for the parts that were my fault. So, if you can find it in your heart to hit the undo button on that last breakup . . .. Wait. Is something wrong?"

John pointed.

I turned my head. John's boss was sitting in a clear Lucite chair in the corner with his Nerf crossbow in his lap.

I resisted the urge to ask him to please shoot me now.

"Hey there," I said. "Happy Monday."

He nodded.
"I've been hearing nice things about you. Keep up the good work."

I gave them both a little wave as I backed out of the doorway.

"Carry on," I said before I closed the door.