As I put down the phone, I glance over at the big table on the far side of the room. Sergei has just taken a seat, May is nowhere to be seen, and Elliot is still over here, all but making out with his easel. Stealthily, I slide out the door. I quickly buy two pretzels from a street vendor, carrying them with me as I hurry through the park toward Pamela.
As I approach her, standing right outside the entrance to the Boat House, Pamela eyes my pretzels suspiciously.
“Hi, Pamela,” I say brightly so as to foster the feeling that my next idea will surely be a good one. “What do you say to going right over there and sitting for a while at Pug Hill?” I ask, motioning with my pretzels, and adding on what is obvious, “I’ve brought pretzels.”
“Really?” she looks at me quizzically. “I mean, uh, isn’t Pug Hill just a weekend thing? Won’t dogs not even be there?” Pamela looks like she regrets not suggesting Serafina, and worse than that, she looks like she’s no more than two seconds away from saying, “I figured we’d just eat at the Boat House Café once you got here. The only reason I wasn’t already sitting down at a table inside was because you said you’d meet me out here.” Really, that’s exactly what she looks like.
“Pleeease,” I say, stretching it all out, waving my pretzel in the direction of Pug Hill.
“Alright,” she says, shrugging, “but I just don’t see what it is with you and pugs.”
Together we cross over the drive that loops through the park, and when we get to Pug Hill, we sit on a bench. I notice that the ground looks wet, but then, the next thing I notice is that there are two, quite stunning if you ask me, pugs right over by the pine tree.
“Oh, wow, Pamela,” I say, “right over there, see? Pugs.”
“Yeah?”
“I just always think it’s a good sign when they’re here on weekdays,” I say.
“Cool,” Pamela says, noncommittal, and as if on cue, one of the pugs (this one’s name is Lucerne) runs over and looks up at us panting. I reach down to pet him, listen to his snorting, and take in the look of utter sweetness in his eyes.
“They look like fruit bats,” Pamela announces. “I just think that if you want a fruit bat, why don’t you simply get a fruit bat?”
Oh,
I think,
Pamela.
“I think you just have to give the pugs more of a chance,” I suggest, even though I don’t think that’s quite true. Pretty much, I think there are pug people in the world, and then there are not-pug people. And I’ve learned that there isn’t a lot you can do with not-pug people.
“Hey!” Pamela yells loudly in the direction of the two well-dressed older women sitting a few benches over. “Can I pick up your dog?”
I shudder at Pamela’s brazenness, shake my head. But then, as one of the women nods her approval and Pamela reaches down and gingerly picks up the pug, I wish I were a little more like her. I mean, think of all the pugs I would have held on my lap by now. Pamela holds her arms out straight in front of her, and the inspected pug Lucerne squirms gingerly, suspended as he is, in midair.
“His name is Lucerne,” I tell her.
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” I offer by way of explanation. Pamela shakes her head; I think it is in disbelief. Lucerne looks at me lovingly.
“I don’t know,” she says, bringing him in closer. “I still think he looks like a fruit bat.”
Lucerne sneezes triumphantly in Pamela’s face.
After much squealing and gagging (Pamela’s) and snorting and then even some ever-elusive barking (Lucerne’s), I manage to get Lucerne away from Pamela, tell him he is simply gorgeous (with the hope that this unfortunate encounter with Pamela has not left him with any self-esteem issues) and watch as he charges over to his person. Once things have settled down, Pamela and I sit for a while in silence, eating our pretzels; Pamela continually wipes at her face. She doesn’t look very happy. Pug Hill, one realizes at times like this, means different things to different people.
“So,” I say eventually, banishing the fruit bat comments from my mind as much as I possibly can. “I have this assignment for my public speaking class, and I’m hoping you might be able to help.”
“Oh, sure, shoot,” Pamela says, leaning forward on the bench, her eyes widening a bit. Whatever bad thoughts I may secretly harbor about Pamela, she really is always willing to help.
“Well, we have to give a speech titled, ‘The One That Got Away,’ and I don’t really know what my speech should be about. And the thing is, looking back, I’m not so sure if
anyone
could be called ‘The One That Got Away.’ ”
“I see,” Pamela says, and I can tell she’s doing a quick calculation in her mind, thinking back, as I have, over the boyfriends I’ve had, all of whom are now, well, away. “Interesting,” she adds and nods.
“Also I think that maybe I haven’t been able to dive into figuring out exactly what I will talk about when I talk about ‘The One Who Got Away,’ because I’m still caught up in the interpretation.” Pamela furrows her brow in concentration. I think I’m confusing her. Understandably so; this is nothing, if not confusing. I try to explain, “See, we talked about it and someone pointed out that ‘The One That Got Away,’ it didn’t have to be a boyfriend. It could be like a pet or something.”
“Oh,” Pamela says, nodding slowly. “I would have thought it would have had to be a boyfriend.” Yes, I think,
I
know that.
“Yeah, I did, too, initially, but it actually doesn’t. So I have to decide first if I’m going to talk about a dog, a dog from my childhood who is no longer with me, or if I’m going to talk about a boyfriend, who has gone the way they all seem to go.” I laugh even though, really, it’s not all that funny.
“Dogs or ‘dogs,”’ Pamela says, making quotation marks in the air with her fingers after the second “dogs.” She smiles, and I smile, too, as that is the exact phrase I’ve thought to myself, quite a few times since last Thursday, since I remember so many of my boyfriends as being dogs, too, just a very different kind.
“Right, so, if I talk about dogs, dogs without quotation marks around them,” I continue, “of course I could talk about Morgan. You know about Morgan right? The Saint Bernard?”
“The one who was always running away to swim in swimming pools?” Pamela asks, a flicker of recognition in her eyes.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“I like that story,” Pamela says, and I agree, I do, too.
“In many ways,” Pamela says thoughtfully, “it seems that the very purpose of Morgan’s life might have been to get away.”
I agree. “If anyone could be ‘The One That Got Away,’ Morgan could be.” And I think again of Morgan’s story, so full of drama and intrigue as it is, it could make for a very good speech.
“Okay, that’s a good start, but we should cover more bases. What else ya got?”
“Hmmm,” I think, flipping back in my mind through all the dogs I’ve loved before.
“Or I could talk about Brentwood,” I continue. “The wheaten terrier we had.”
“Oh, I remember Brentwood!”
Brentwood, in a most literal and also in a most figurative sense, got away. He dug a hole in the backyard, underneath the fence, and ran off down to the beach. We looked for days and couldn’t find him. Two months later a strange man, who looked very much to be homeless, rang our doorbell, returned him to us, and turned away without a word. We wondered a lot what had happened to Brentwood during those two months, if he’d spent it just wandering, being homeless himself, or if he had been abducted. Something bad had happened; we suspected that strongly. We also suspected strongly that he blamed us. Brentwood spent the remaining five years of his life peeing on all of our pillows, every chance he got.
“He was the only dog we ever had who was relegated to the laundry room,” I say and we both look into the distance at the pugs, remembering the beleaguered Brentwood with a collective sigh.
After a moment, Pamela says, “I think the Brentwood story is a little depressing,” and she is right. I remember, perhaps a bit late, that I’ve been endeavoring lately to make a good effort at staying away from depressing.
“Yes,” I agree, “you’re right. And, anyway, if I’m going to talk about a dog, really, I should talk about Spanky.”
“Sure,” Pamela says, and I think maybe she’s a bit bored now, and I’m feeling a little self-centered talking only about my speech, but I’m also feeling happy because I’ve just thought of Spanky, and Spanky, out of all the dogs I’ve loved before, is by far my favorite.
“Which one was Spanky?” she asks. Even though Pamela has known me since childhood, has known all the dogs I grew up with, and it’s understandable that she could get confused, it seems so unreal to me that anyone could hear the name Spanky and not know instantly of which dog I am speaking.
“Spanky was the shar-pei,” I remind her, “the third shar-pei we had.” And then, for a few minutes it’s just me, sitting at Pug Hill remembering Spanky. Let me fill you in.
Spanky came to us at the end of the shar-pei years, a time I remember as a bit stressful, because the two shar-peis who came before him, Sasha and Margaret, were extremely high-strung.
Why my mother continued to acquire shar-pei puppies on a yearly basis, when the first two were such behavioral night-mares, is really a little bit beyond me.
But I’m so happy that she did because Spanky, beautiful Spanky, was so good and so loving and loyal and true, and at first we almost didn’t notice it, since he was the third shar-pei, and everything was pretty crazy by the time he got there.
Spanky was a loving dog, as loving as the day is long, and he talked. One of my parents’ current dogs, Betsy, does this, too: the gurgling notes from the back of the throat that sound so conversational. Only Betsy does it all the time. Spanky saved his talking mostly for Chinese Takeout Nights. All the shar-peis, being Chinese and all, loved Chinese Takeout Night, most every Sunday, but Spanky loved it especially, talking loudly and agreeably when my father would look down at him, up over his glasses, and read to him, in all seriousness, his fortune.
“Spanky’s the one who bit your nana?” Pamela asks, at last remembering the greatest dog ever.
“Right,” I say, and, even though I shouldn’t, I smile at the memory.
When he was alive, I always had this really strong sense that Spanky watched over me. Like when Nana came over once and gave Darcy a figurine of a fox and gave me a figurine of an owl.
“Darcy,” Nana explained, “you have a fox because you’re so pretty, which in my day, we called foxy.”
“And Hope,” she said to me, “you have an owl, because you’re so smart. But let’s face it, you’re not going to win any beauty contests.” Spanky snuck up behind her, so stealthily, and bit her on the backside.
“Spanky, no,” I can remember saying really unenthusiastically, and I always believed he did it as a personal favor.
I’m about to tell Pamela how I still feel like Spanky watches over me, but decide, I imagine wisely, against it. But just so you know, I was at a yacht club once in Naples, Florida, on a trip with a boyfriend, shortly after Spanky died. I will always remember it, how I felt certain that Spanky was there, how his presence was unmistakable. And I still feel like he’s around sometimes. Sometimes, when I’m falling asleep, I feel something, somewhere, in a corner of the room, and I’m sure it’s Spanky. But, never has it been so apparent as it was in Naples, where I was sure I actually saw him on a lounge chair, so sure that I told my then-boyfriend. He said, “No, Hope, it’s just a pile of towels,” but I knew it wasn’t.
“Spanky’s a good idea,” Pamela says after a while, a while in which I’m pretty sure I’ve just been sitting here staring completely into space.
“Yes,” I agree. “Thanks for listening,” I tell her, and then ask, “Tell me, what’s new with you?”
Pamela and I sit together for a while and she tells me about a recent date she went on and how she still likes the Sprocket from ‘Cesca, even though he could be prompter with the phone. I marvel at Pamela, how she’s so optimistic, how she really does take her own advice and embraces being single, embraces it all. I never think this, really I don’t, and maybe it has something to do with the spirit of Pug Hill, but I think it wouldn’t be the worst thing to be a bit more like Pamela in life.
“This was fun, having lunch,” Pamela points out, and then announces that she has to head back to her office. I look down at my watch, and already, it’s time for me to head back to work, too.
“It was fun,” I say, “and thanks again for helping me with my speech.”
“No problem. I’m glad you’re all set about The One That Got Away.”
“Me, too,” I tell her, even though as we say our good-byes, and Pamela turns and heads south, I’m not so sure I’m as all set as I might have just made myself out to be.
Because thinking about Spanky so much just now, thinking about how he’s always been with me, has pointed something out to me. No matter what anyone says, the thing is, I realize, is that a dog (of the four-legged variety) can’t ever be called The One That Got Away. Because once you love them, and they love you, they’re always with you. They never really go away.
I turn away from Pug Hill and walk quickly back toward the museum.
chapter twenty-three
What If I’d Just Laughed?
“Welcome, class. I hope everyone had time to think about their presentations, and I hope you’ll all continue to concentrate on them tonight, before you go, and as you go, so that ...” Beth Anne pauses dramatically, even though I’m pretty sure it’s been a while now since we’ve all gotten the point. “... you can get out of the moment, and yet ...” Another wide-eyed pause.“... truly be in it!”
Everyone stares at her expressionless.
“Okaaaay.” She looks down at her clipboard. “We have Alec, Rachel, and Amy up tonight. Who would like to go first?” Everyone stares at the floor.
“Claaaass, someone has to go first, and I would rather someone volunteer than I pick someone. I feel quite strongly that it is far less anxiety producing if you volunteer yourself rather than being assigned.” She stares out at us wide-eyed. I look down at the floor, too, even though this has nothing to do with me. You can never be too safe.