Pug Hill, page 25
“I’m sure she didn’t mind, Mom,” I say. “She had such a lovely, lovely life.”
“You think?” she asks me. I have never known Mom to need reassuring before this instant. I have always been the one so badly in need of reassuring, the sometimes close-to-the-edge-and-not-wanting-to-turn-around wreck, with all my insecurities and fears and issues and flaws. I want right now, more than anything, to be sure Mom knows that Boswell never minded for a second about the chain.
“Oh, I’m absolutely positive. I’m sure of it,” is all I come up with at first; I don’t want to hesitate for too long because hesitation can sometimes seem like doubt; it could seem like maybe I did think that Boswell was oppressed.
“And she really was magnificent,” I add on in a flash.
“Yes,” says my never-wistful mother wistfully, “she really was.”
We stand side by side for a while, listening to Rod Stewart and looking at all the photographs. At one point my mother sighs. And I sigh, too, because it’ll be afternoon soon enough, and then evening, and then it’ll be tonight, and I’ll be making a speech.
chapter thirty-four
Do You Want To Dance Under the Moonlight?
Clapping.
Clapping.
There is clapping, and the clapping is for me. I am standing on a stage, just to the left of the band, next to a microphone, and I’ve just finished my speech.
People aren’t gasping in horror at how bad I was. People aren’t stifling embarrassed smiles because they feel so bad for me. There isn’t even anyone running up to the stage with a towel to clean up the throw-up at my feet. All there is, all there is right now in the world, is clapping.
This afternoon, Darcy and C.P. disassembled the non-L.L. Bean, non-REI, non-objectionable tent they’d put up last night in the backyard. Once their tent was taken down, people came and set up a much bigger tent, a much more festive tent, a tent that didn’t drive my parents slowly insane but rather made them quite happy as they looked outside, watching as it went up.
Up in my room, as I got ready for the party, I looked out my window and saw the band arriving. I noticed that someone in the band actually did have a mullet as I imagined he might, such a long time ago. I thought how weird that was and how maybe that wasn’t such a good sign. Then I had to practice The Lion and my One Nostril Breathing for about twenty minutes, before I was able to leave my room.
I walked downstairs in my lavender dress and my high heels and my makeup. I walked over to my parents, and my mother stepped back for a minute to look at me. She smiled at me, no, she beamed at me, and then she said, “Hope, you look just beautiful tonight.”
And I thought how I agreed with her, how it must be true since she was, after all, so often right. I felt something start to sting in the back of my eyes and I thought how completely simple it was, and how endlessly complicated, that maybe this, all along, had been all that I’d needed.
“Don’t cry, Hope,” my mother said, “your mascara will run.”
And so I went to the bathroom and I cried. But only a little bit, and then I fixed my mascara and practiced The Lion one more time. I walked around and said hello to all my parents’ friends. I assured Darcy that the hot pink boa she had opted for was nothing if not appropriate and tasteful. I tried not to drink too much champagne for what seemed like an eternity, but I think was only for an hour. And then, the mullet-headed band singer tapped on his mike, and announced to everyone, “Hope would like to make a speech.”
Hope, I repeated to myself. Hope would like to make a speech.
I don’t think I can really say that I stood up there brilliantly. I don’t think I can really say that I Took the Room and made eye contact with all the different people in the room. But I can say that honestly, truly, I did okay. And I can tell you with complete accuracy that at the end, there was clapping.
Dad leads Mom out onto the dance floor, and I listen to the clapping and step back from the microphone, officially ending my speech, officially ending my Overcoming of Presentation Anxiety, and maybe a few other things, too.
The band guy, the one with the mullet, looks over at me and winks and I think, Really? And then I think, I wonder if a band guy with a mullet is the way it all turns out for me? and then I hope not. I don’t have to worry for long though. I realize that the band guy is winking at me because I’m still standing in the middle of the stage, grinning. The band guy’s winking is not so much, “You and me babe, how about it?” as it is “Honey, it’s over, you need to get off the stage.”
“Okay, everybody!” he shouts into his own microphone. “Let’s bring it on back to the sixties!” A few woops rise out from the crowd. “Let’s put our hands together for The Beach Boys!” The band starts playing “Do You Wanna Dance,” as a horde of sixty-to-seventy-year-olds pile enthusiastically onto the dance floor. Many of them, I notice, are doing creative renditions of the twist.
I make my way down the steps, to the edge of the dance floor, just as Darcy and C.P. sashay on by. And they really are sashaying: they’re facing each other holding hands, letting go on one side and fanning out their arms and then holding both hands together again. They’re passing right by me and I smile. They both smile back at me and then, something bad is happening.
Both C.P. and Darcy have stopped anything that resembles forward motion. They are both facing me and dancing in place in front of me. They’ve let go of each other’s hands. They hold their hands out to me to join them. C.P. even gives a little flick of his wrist to be sure I’m quite clear that he wants me to join them. I start to shake my head, “No,” because sometimes, as much as I endeavor not to be, I am nothing if not a creature mired in habit. But I don’t quite get the shake out, and I change the “No,” at the last minute to, “Yes.”
Darcy is bouncing up and down like the Energizer bunny, and singing along to the Beach Boys, “Do you wanna dance and hold my hand?”
I step forward a little bit and take Darcy’s hand with one hand, and I take C.P.’s hand with my other. And the three of us together, we sashay. We sashay around the perimeter of the dance floor and for the time that it takes us to get all the way around, I manage to forget that Darcy and I were always so much more enemies than we were ever sisters, and that after that, we were so much more strangers. Because right now, as we’re sashaying, as I’m holding hands with Darcy and her Spiritual and Life Partner (as he likes to be called) none of that really matters. I realize that while you can forget about being enemies, or try to stop being strangers, we’ll always be sisters.
The three of us, me and Darcy and C.P., we sashay right up to where my parents are dancing. Darcy and I stop holding hands and we reach out to our parents. They join us and the five of us dance together in a circle in the center of the dance floor. Everyone smiles, everyone laughs.
Part of me knows that moments like these will always be few and far between, and so I try my best to stop being so damn philosophical about everything. I try to just be fully and completely in this moment. I sashay and swing and laugh and dance and I try to enjoy it, to feel only love, as much as I can.
chapter thirty-five
The Beginning
Mom and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table, happily recounting the party and yes, saying how much they enjoyed my speech.
“Hope,” Mom says as I’m filling my coffee cup, “you were magnificent.”
“You really were,” Dad says, too.
“Thanks,” I say and smile.
The bay window is open and a light spring air fills the kitchen. Betsy is running a quick circle around the table; Captain is asleep at Dad’s feet. Annabelle looks up from her dog bed by the window, cocks her head at me slightly, just the way pugs always do. Just outside, I can see Darcy and C.P., practicing yoga on the wood floor of the tent.
I want it to stay this way. And, more than that, I want it to stay the way it was last night when we were all sashaying. I look out the window at the wood floor that was, just for last night, a dance floor and a stage. I think of someone telling me once how everything is replaceable and I see now that that’s just another way of thinking that everything is temporary. I don’t want everything to be temporary, even though so many things are. I think of my parents, of forty years, and know that there are also things that endure.
“I’m going to take a walk down by the beach,” I say, and my parents both look up at me. Mom says, “That’s nice, dear,” and Dad says, “Would you like some company?” And as nice as a walk on the beach with my dad is, I know he’s probably just gotten back, and that Mom likes to have breakfast with him.
“No, but thanks,” I say. “You enjoy your breakfast. I think maybe I’ll take Betsy with me.” Betsy halts midcircle and barks.
“Okay, have a nice time,” they both say in unison. Betsy barks again and as I head into the laundry room to grab her leash, through the window I hear Darcy and C.P. saying, “Ohm.”
I walk down the road to the beach working out in advance what our route will be once we get there. I think I’ll stick with the most frequent route, all the way across the field, then down to the water there, to the jetty, and then back across.
As we approach the field though, Betsy keeps pulling away from me, in the direction of the beach. At first I hold on to the leash and try and bring her back to the route I’d already planned on. Betsy strains harder on her leash and then turns back toward me. She sits down, digs her feet into the grass right where she is and looks at me as if to say, with every core of her being, No way. Betsy is pointing something out to me. The fact then that I am holding on to her leash doesn’t seem to make any sense and, after all, there’s no rule saying that we have to go the way I’d planned. I loosen my hold on her leash and Betsy gets up and walks over the little hill and onto the beach. I follow her lead and quicken my step in order to catch up, so as not to pull so tightly and impolitely on her harness again.
As soon as we get over the hill, as soon as my feet are on the sand, I notice that we’re not alone at the beach this morning. I look down at Betsy and I think she knew that, the way dogs sense things a long time before people do. I look toward the water at this guy, this lanky guy, by the way, who’s standing at the edge of the water, looking out. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a rust-colored windbreaker. He has really close-cropped black hair. Something about him, the back of him, gives me this feeling I’ve seen him before. His legs and the back of his neck are tan, quite tan I think for this time of year. I feel weird actually, standing on the beach unannounced right behind a stranger, like I’m spying, but I don’t want to announce myself. I’d rather walk back over the hill, but Betsy seems so intent on staying here. Even though, for the time being, I’m letting her stay I can hear that very distinct gurgling of protest rising in her throat.
Honestly, Betsy, I think, could you maybe just this once, with the stranger right there, give it a rest? I tighten my grip on the leash and I’m about to roll the dice, I’m about to see if maybe, just maybe, I can get her back over to the field to take the walk I’d planned. The guy bends down and picks up a rock and throws it out into the water.
Betsy barks, right at him, and he turns around. And then he smiles, a really big white toothy smile, and Betsy barks again and he walks toward us.
And all I can think for a second is, No way.
He looks exactly the same as I remember him but I can’t, looking at him, make out whether he looks really young now or if he must have looked older than the rest of us back then. I’m sure though that he looks no different; his eyes are the same, the way they were always a little bit sad, only now they don’t seem sad as much as they seem wise. Maybe that’s what they always were, wise, and I was just way too young to know what wise was.
“Hope McNeill?” he says, grinning as he walks over.
“Benji Brown,” I say as he stops, right in front of me. Betsy barks again and Benji Brown bends down to pat her. She flips over to display her belly. As he rubs it, he looks up at me and smiles again and I notice that the sad/wise eyes are actually different from how they used to be, because now they’re a little bit sparkly, too. Benji Brown, I think, the only man to ever make me mix tapes. Benji Brown, The Only One That Got Away.
“Wow, Hope McNeill,” he says again, and then hesitates. “Is it still McNeill?”
“It is,” I say, and I’m really happy to be able to say that. “You still have that pretty red hair,” he says, and smiles, and then he laughs.
“Yeah,” I say, “I do,” and then, as I say that, the church bells start to ring. No, really, it’s nine A.M. on a Sunday morning; they’re actual church bells ringing.
“Wow,” he says, “it’s great to see you.”
“Wow,” I say back to him, because, really, Wow! “Benji, it’s so great to see you, too.”
“Um, actually, it’s just Ben, now,” he says and smiles back, a little embarrassed, and I don’t think he should be embarrassed. Benji, in its day, was a very cool name. In spite of myself, in spite of everything I’ve learned in these past few months about the complete unimportance of footwear, I steal a glance at his feet. He’s barefoot.
“Ben,” I say. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been great, really good, how have you been?”
“Great, great,” I say and right at this moment, I feel like all along, it’s been the truth.
“Do your parents still live here?” he asks.
“Yeah, they do. Yours?” I ask, and for the life of me, I cannot stop smiling.
“Yeah,” he says, “just came out for the weekend.” He’s smiling a lot, too. “You work at the Met, right?” he asks, and I think it’s nice that he knows, and it’s nice, too, that after all these years I still really like the way it sounds when someone says, “you work at the Met,” even with all the things lately that have been distracting me.
“Yeah, five years,” I say and then, “What are you doing these days?” I remember years ago someone telling me that Benji Brown graduated at the top of his class at Duke Law School.
“I work for the DNC,” he says.
“The DNC?” I say, and believe you me when I tell you, I can hardly get the words out.
“The Democratic National Committee?” he says.
“Oh, I know,” I say quickly, not wanting him to think I don’t know what the DNC is, or worse, that I’m not all for the DNC, or worse yet, that I’m (I’m whispering now) a Republican. “It’s just,” and I pause as it occurs to me just in the nick of time that to tell him all about my theory, how what I really need, even more than Patrick Dempsey, Jason Bateman, Ed Helms, Stephen Colbert, Adrien Grenier, Joaquin Phoenix, and David Duchovny, is a Democrat, might be a bit weird. I nod my head instead. I smile some more. He smiles, too.
“That’s really interesting,” I say, “that’s terrific.” And yes, I know, I probably could have said something better, something smarter perhaps, but really I think this was okay because he’s smiling back at me, and saying, “I really love working there.”
And then we just smile some more at each other for a minute. It’s not at all a bored sort of okay-we’re-all-caught-up-here-time-to-move-it-on-out sort of smiling, as there is something so sweetly goofy about it.
“What are you up to while you’re out here?” I ask after a while.
“Oh, not much, just hanging out,” he says, and pauses for a second, as if he’s considering something.
“My dad just put his boat in the water and I was going to take it out for a sail.” He turns his head a little bit as he says this, and I think, Oh, good, he’s going to invite me. A second goes by and then I think that, also, maybe he isn’t.
I’m just about to say, “Have a great time,” or some approximation of that and then I think how once I say that, I’ll go back to the house with Betsy, and spend a little more time with Annabelle, and Captain. I’ll say good-bye again to everyone and head back to the city, back to the Rothko and to the pugs at Pug Hill. Everything will be like it always was, which isn’t a bad thing. But things, I think, could also stand to be different. I’ve learned these past few months about standing up straight, and enunciating and taking deep, calming breaths, and speaking clearly, and taking a room, one person at a time. But more than that, what I’ve learned is that, maybe, it really isn’t even about all of that. In the end, I’ve learned, it’s about being able to take a risk. I take a calming breath, because that helps, too.
“Would you like some company?” I ask.
“I would love some company,” he says, all the emphasis on love. And then, as soon as he says it; I realize that I might not be hearing church bells after all. What I might be hearing— actually, what I am most vertainly hearing, loud and clear and unmistakable—is Erasure. Track number eleven from the Pop! album: the song that starts with the guy screaming, We’ll be together again!
“Sounds good,” I tell him, and I think it’s probably best that he has no idea I’m talking about a song lyric.
“Great,” he says smiling, and looks down at his watch. “Want to say, two o’clock? I’ll sail over and pick you up at the dock?”
“Two o’clock,” I say, a little loudly, and it’s all I can do to not ask him if he hears Erasure, too, because I’m pretty sure he must. Betsy starts barking again and not just one bark, like usual, but barking, continuously until Ben, looks down at her and says, right to her, “You can come, too,” and she stops barking and looks up at him, quite taken. “Does she like sailing?” he asks me.
And of course, as you know, Betsy likes almost nothing so much as she likes the wind, and I tell him she does. Betsy’s still looking up at him, silent and perfectly still. I don’t think she can quite believe how completely he gets it.
