Pug Hill, page 21
He stands in the street, just off the sidewalk, and he looks at me, really looks at me. And for as long as I’ve waited, for what seems like an eternity, for him to look at me, there is a part of me that doesn’t need to wonder if this is wrong, because I know it is. Because of Claire. He hasn’t leaned in to kiss me, hasn’t done much else other than ask me for gum and stand with me in the street, but I wonder what will happen if he does. I think that all I’ve ever wanted in the world has been reduced to this very second, to how much I want Elliot to kiss me, if for no other reason than for all the hours I’ve logged.
But the universe, thinking about the universe, it keeps getting in my way. It’s the way of the universe, I think, that you just don’t kiss other people’s boyfriends. I think of all the boyfriends I’ve ever had, all the way back to Benji Brown who might have been the only good one, and in a way, how sad is that, or is it okay? Right now though what I’m thinking about has less to do with Benji Brown, the best boyfriend even if he is, chronologically, the farthest away from me now. Right now, with the real possibility that Elliot Death might at any minute lean in to kiss me, I can’t help thinking of the boyfriend who must only be referred to as Cheater. I can’t help thinking that somewhere along the way, out there in the universe, there have been girls who kissed my boyfriend.
Standing on Smith Street, in my Pumas, waiting for Elliot to kiss me, I can’t help thinking that maybe the universe owes me something.
“Okay, well I am actually going that way,” he says.
“Oh, right,” I say, “I should get a cab.” I wonder if cabs drive around this late at night in Brooklyn. I hope that they do, because right now, for so many reasons, I don’t want to be on the train.
Something behind me catches Elliot’s eye and he looks away from me, looks over my shoulder. His arm goes up.
“Here comes a cab,” he says. He stares at it with determination as it approaches, like it is one of so many Old Master landscapes. The taxi pulls up, and the moment is gone. And then, as I bite down again on the gum, the gum that I thought was so significant only a moment ago, I wonder if there was ever any moment at all.
“Really fun night, Hope,” he says as he leans over and opens up the door for me. “Thanks for coming out.”
“I had fun, too,” I say. “Bye, Elliot.”
“Good night, Hope. See you Monday,” he says and the door slams shut and even though we’re already driving away and if I turned around, which I won’t, I’d see Elliot getting smaller and smaller on Smith Street, I say, “Yeah, see you Monday.” Only the cab driver is here to hear me say it, and I don’t think he’s listening either.
As we speed over the Brooklyn Bridge, as I look at the lights of the city in front of me, I think that if there is any part of being single that I actually really want to run away from, it is the hopefulness, the feeling that at any moment, everything might be about to change. It’s the hopefulness that’s got to go.
I wonder if maybe instead of getting kissed by Elliot, if what the universe owes me now, after everything, is a really good cry. I wonder if what the universe owes me is a hall pass to just sit in the back of a taxi and sob.
And then it hits me. I don’t want to be this type of person. I don’t want to be the type of person who will spend as long as I’ve spent thinking so much about someone else’s boyfriend. I don’t want to spend any more time staring across a room, wondering what’s going to happen next. I don’t want to wait so much for things to change, for things to get better, for things to pass. I don’t want to be a spectator, staring across the giant Conservation Studio of my life, waiting for something to happen.
Starting right now, I think, I don’t want to wait anymore. I don’t want to be standing on Smith Street wishing someone else’s boyfriend, no matter that he is Elliot, would kiss me. I think that the first thing I’m not going to wait for anymore will be this: I’m not going to wait anymore to not have a crush on Elliot.
And I know, as much as I feel I’ve known anything, that with Elliot, at last, it’s over.
I wish I’d known all along that turning the corner, and leaving Elliot, someone else’s boyfriend, someone not at all interested in me, behind, would be so easy. But the thing is, and I know this, it wouldn’t have always been so easy.
chapter twenty-seven
I Want to Tell You a Story
“Claaass,” Beth Anne says, looking around, full of assurance and nurturing, at the six of us assembled. “Today, we’ll be watching our videos,” and with the word video, I feel myself tense up. I feel everyone around me stiffen, so automatically and so uniformly that it’s as if I can actually feel the air, the energy, changing completely.
We watch our poems in the order they took place. A month earlier version of Lawrence looks out at us from the television screen. He’s just finished saying the first of many lines that end in the ee sound. I think of the first time I heard Lawrence’s birdie poem, how it seems, so concretely, like years and years ago.
Throughout the video playback of Lawrence’s poem, he’s saying, really loudly, “I’m never wearing white again,” and “I’m definitely never wearing that sweater again,” and then, “Maybe I need to overcome my weight problem before I overcome my presentation anxiety! I’m sooo fat! Beth Anne, really, do I look that fat?”
As soon as the videotaped version of himself finishes his birdie poem, Lawrence stands up and wails, “The camera adds ten pounds!” and I look at the television screen and look back at Lawrence, and I have to agree with him, it really does.
When we get to the end, to my poem, I feel like I must speak, like I have to jump to my defense, and I have to do that not in a little while, not after I mull it over for minutes and minutes and hours and hours and days and days, but right this very second, right now before everyone, my poor introverted self included, has to watch the hideousness of those first few moments of my poem.
“I really think we should start my tape after I left the class,” I say. Beth Anne looks over at me.
“Um, I just think it’d be better to start it from after we talked,” I explain and Beth Anne, bless her, says that she agrees.
Unfortunately, she also seems to lose her prior mastery over the fast forward and rewind buttons and keeps going forward too far, and then back too far, and then eventually just rewinds it to the beginning of my poem, and we start watching from there. I focus all of my attention on the surface of my chair-desk; I don’t look up at all, but I still hear that croak that came out instead of “corner.” I don’t look up until the part after Beth Anne and I left, until the part that I remember as not being so bad. And really, it’s actually not so bad, except that those light blue corduroys I love so much and wear all the time, actually make my thighs look gargantuan. It is only in hindsight that I am able to see that pairing those light blue corduroys with a light purple sweater, something that at the time I remember thinking was an excellent idea, was clearly a mistake.
“Class,” Beth Anne says, right at the end, “it has been my pleasure working with each of you. I hope this class has helped each of you.”
One by one, everyone thanks her warmly and though I want to jump up from my chair-desk and envelop her tiny caftan-covered body in a bear hug, I satisfy myself with just saying, “Thank you,” again, so that I’ve thanked her twice. I hope she knows that’s just another way of saying, “I really can’t thank you enough.”
“One last drink?” Alec says as we all stand at the elevator, and I’m struck that it’s sad, that this is the last time we’ll all be together. Everyone agrees, even Rachel, who looks over her shoulder and then looks up at Alec and says, “I would like that. Thank you.” The six of us pile into the elevator, head over to Cedar Tavern and then up to our big table in the back.
We sit with our drinks and everyone even stays for a second round. We reflect back on the class, and it’s surprisingly unanimous, even Amy has some positive things to say. Everyone agrees that they have learned something.
I look around the circular table: Amy scowls across the table at Alec, and Alec winks at the waitress; Lawrence primps a little bit, his eyes dart everywhere; Rachel stares freakishly into space and doesn’t say very much; Lindsay sits up straighter than she used to, I think how we all do.
I remember that when the class first started I was wondering if in it I’d find out the secret of how to be normal, if some secret answer would at last be revealed to me. I think how long it’s been that I’ve been wondering where my normal is.
“Oh, before we go I want to tell you a really funny story,” Lawrence says. And I think that, in a way, that’s all that public speaking is: it’s just standing up and telling people your stories. And maybe the trick in life is just finding the people you want to tell your stories to? And finding people who want to listen to your stories, and tell you theirs, too?
“Ha!” I hear around the table, and “Ha,” again. As Lawrence finishes his story, Amy spits bourbon out across the table because she’s laughing so hard. “Sorry about that,” she says, and everyone’s laughing, even Rachel. No one can stop laughing, and then neither can I. I think, through all the laughter, that in addition to finding people who will listen to your stories, and who will tell you theirs, the gravy in all of that, the cherry on the ice cream, is that some of those people will make you laugh, too.
I take a sip of my white wine spritzer, look around one last time at our peculiar little group. A frustrated novelist, a rather poetic real estate broker, an accountant who lost mastery of her e-mail program at a most crucial time, a well-dressed attorney, a paintings restorer, and Rachel (to tell you the truth I’ve forgotten what her job is). I wonder if maybe this is my normal, and if it is, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing at all.
Out on the corner of University Place and Tenth Street, we all say good-bye to each other, and taxis pull up and take people away, one by one. The good-byes are quick, as if we’ll all meet again next week. Mentions of getting together soon are thrown around, but I don’t think we ever really will.
“Bye, Lindsay! Bye, Lawrence! Bye, Amy! Bye, Rachel!” I say cheerfully, one by one. But as I watch my classmates drive away in the back of taxis, I can’t help thinking that this is a sadder good-bye than we’re all giving it credit for. I can’t help thinking that this is one of those good-byes, the kind that is the hardest, the kind where you know, if you stop to think about it for a second, that you won’t ever see these people, this group, that was important, that meant something, ever again.
I want us to hug each other and say that we’re glad to have known each other, and that even though we only knew each other for six weeks, it was an important six weeks, and we’ll remember each other because this meant something, it did. I want our good-byes to be heartfelt. Or maybe I just want someone to tell me that when I make my speech next week, it will, in fact, be okay.
And then it’s just Alec and me standing alone on the corner.
“Do you need a taxi?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, “I do.” He reaches his arm up.
For a moment I can see my thirties, stretching out in front of me: years and years of saying good-bye to men outside of taxis. I hear Ben Harper playing in the background. It’s a song called “She’s Only Happy in the Sun.” I listen for a moment, up until Ben Harper gets to that line that says, The story of your life is hello, good-bye. I walk over to Alec and stand right next to him. He looks down at me. I reach up to his arm and pull it down. He smiles at me and I smile back. I notice a few taxis driving by, their numbers all lit up, as Alec leans in to kiss me.
chapter twenty-eight
Breakfast at Pug Hill
Okay, in case you were thinking, well it’s about time the poor girl got some action, in case you were thinking that you were about to turn the page, and at last, find yourself at the big juicy sex scene chapter, you can stop thinking that. Nothing happened, it was just a kiss. But it was a really good kiss, a really cinematic kiss right there on Tenth Street with all the empty taxis whizzing by. It was a Woody Allen kiss if ever there was one. And I think it helped me out with my need for a heartfelt good-bye. But that’s all it was.
I’m leaving in a few hours to go to Long Island for the week, a week at the end of which, I’ll be giving my speech. Before I go, I’m meeting Kara and Chloe for an outdoor breakfast. And of course, no question, we’re meeting at Pug Hill.
I head to the park and walk across it, drinking an iced coffee from Columbus Bakery. When Holly Golightly went to Tiffany’s, generally she got out of a limo, generally she was wearing an evening gown and, of course, she looked just like Audrey Hepburn. My eyes are nowhere near as big as Audrey Hepburn’s and my neck is nowhere near as long. I’m wearing yoga pants and I’m holding an iced coffee and a brown paper bag with three muffins it in, as opposed to, say, an antique cigarette holder, and a really fetching clutch. I’m wearing a ponytail, not a French twist. I don’t have the long gloves. Holly Golightly was going to look at the most elegant of accoutrements, at so many diamonds, and I am going to look at a bunch of pugs. But surely you see the poetic connection, the pure beauty in actually eating breakfast at Pug Hill, and on a Saturday morning no less, when the pugs are actually there.
There are so many pugs. There’s one of the extremely girthy ones: his name is Buster; and there’s Roxy, resplendent in a new faux-leopard harness. I sit on the bench so as not to torture the pugs with the muffins. It’s not that I don’t like to share with the pugs, of course I do, it’s just that I’ve learned that pugs, more often than not, are on a diet; it’s just that I’ve also learned that if you feed the pugs, more often than not, their owners will look at you disapprovingly, and ask if you could please not feed their dog.
“Hope!”
“Hey, Kara,” I say, motioning her over. “And hello, Chloe.”
“Ho!” she says.
“Sorry,” Kara says, smiling sheepishly.
“It’s okay,” I say, “it’s nice she knows my name.”
“Right?” Kara agrees enthusiastically, beaming at Chloe. “And she’s getting the H sound down, which is great.” I see that Chloe is carrying the Groovy Girls doll I gave her, minus all of its clothes.
“Who’s this?” I ask her.
Chloe throws the doll in the dirt and says proudly, “Ho!” “Hi, Ho!” I say, and turn to my bag and hand out our muffins.
As soon as we’re done with our muffins, or rather, as soon as Kara and I are done with our muffins and Chloe has thrown her muffin in the dirt, gotten end-of-the-world hysterical about it, and miraculously regrouped at the appearance of an Elmo sippy cup, we all get up and walk over to the scraggly pine tree and sit right in front it. Right away, Roxy runs over to us, snorting: a first for Roxy. Roxy, so fiercely independent, rarely displays any of the emotional sluttiness found in other pugs. Thinking of emotional sluttiness, I recall, of course, Annabelle, my parents’ French bulldog, who is as good an example as any of an emotionally slutty dog. Annabelle, I think, is as about as close as you can get to being a pug, without actually being one; I’m happy for that, that all next week on Long Island, Annabelle will be there.
Roxy jumps up and puts her front paws on my shoulders and begins slobbering wet kisses all over my face. I lift my chin up to take my face out of the line of slobber, and as I wipe my face with my sweatshirt, I tell her what I always tell Annabelle, “We don’t have to make out. We can take it slow.”
And Roxy, like Annabelle, is nothing if not respectful of my desire to take things slow. Within moments, Roxy trots off. I try not to think that she trots off in search of better action. Chloe squeals and claps her hands, and screams, “Lalo,” which I think means “Elmo.”
And then, just like that, like a good omen that’s always been there, and has simply been waiting for the right time to happen, Kermit, the little black pug, comes bounding up the hill.
“Oh, Kermit!” I say, and Kara smiles, because I’ve mentioned Kermit to her before, and I think she understands. Chloe squeals as Kermit sits down right in front of us, positioning himself so as to best display his rounded belly, and opens his mouth wide for us, and sticks out his tongue. As if all that wasn’t a good enough display of all the wonderful pug behavior, he cocks his head to the right quizzically and then to the left.
“Chloe,” I say, “this is Kermit.”
Chloe squeals and claps, and Kermit, as if on cue, jumps up and spins around.
“Chloe,” Kara says, “do you remember the song we sang that Kermit sings?”
“Ah,” says Chloe and I think she really is trying to remember. Kara helps her and sings the first line,
“Why are there so many songs about rainbows?” she sings. And I know this song, I love this song, and so I join in, too.
“And what’s on the other side?” I sing.
As Kara and I sing together to Chloe about rainbows being visions and only illusions she is rapt with attention, as is Kermit. I have to say I think Kermit is quite enjoying the song. When we get to the part, Someday will find it, Chloe lets out one of her higher-pitched squeals, and Kermit trots off. Before he does so though, he throws me a quick look, and I smile right at him.
Right as we get to the last line, the lovers, the dreamers, and me, I think how such a long time ago someone had said to me, “A girl can dream.” I hadn’t listened because I believed at the time that the person saying it to me was being annoying. I wonder though, if maybe I didn’t listen, because I didn’t think it was true. It occurs to me right now, as I sit on a beautiful spring day, surrounded by so many pugs, that a girl can dream, and more importantly, that I can.
Chloe continues squealing and clapping, so for the next half hour, none of the other pugs run over to visit us. But even so, it’s so nice to sit in the sun with an iced coffee and admire them. I can’t help thinking that as long as you have a place like this to come to, the bad things, really, truly, aren’t as bad.
