Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life (4 page)

Chapter

Six

Nothing was simple. I thought about leaving my car at the Marshbury station and taking the train to Boston so my car would be waiting for me when I got back. But with my luck the train would be filled with Bayberry families on an early summer jaunt to New England Aquarium or Boston Children's Museum. And if I paired my floppy hat with my sunglasses so they'd be less likely to recognize me, I'd have hat hair when I arrived at John Anderson's office.

I considered driving all the way in to the city, but once I got through the outrageous rush hour traffic, I
'd have to face an even more absurd hunt to find somewhere to park near John's office. And then later on I'd have to find somewhere else to park near his condo. John's condo only had one underground parking spot, so we'd have to drive around the block forever looking for on-street parking, and in the end I'd probably end up at a public garage or a parking lot, which would cost a small fortune. Money had been tight since I'd bought Kevin's half of the house, and even though Michael was paying for groceries since he'd moved in, we were both pretending his stay was just temporary so it's not like it made sense for him to pay rent.

So, after some serious overthinking, I decided to have Michael drop me off at a subway station on his way to work on the other side of the city. And then I was free to turn my attention to the other thing that
women who reside in suburbia, where you can live out most of your adult life in yoga pants, obsess about when they go to the big city. What the hell was I going to wear?

After Annie and Lainie and Michael were sound asleep and Mother Teresa had had her final pee of the night, I
'd stood in front of my closet door mirror as I tried on outfit after outfit after outfit. The thing about being a preschool teacher is that in the beginning of the year you promise yourself that you're only going to wear certain clothes to school. But then a Sunday night comes along and everything's dirty and you're tired and just don't feel like doing laundry, so you add one more outfit to the rotation. And so it goes. By the end of the school year, pretty much everything you own is covered with finger paint. It's supposed to be washable, but don't believe it for a second.

The other thing about being a preschool teacher is that most of your clothes are
, well, teachery. You have to be able to bend down to pick up a fallen picture book or whisper encouragement in a child's ear. You have to be able to kick a playground ball. And it's simply not okay to let your students see your underpants at circle time.

Finally, I called my sister Carol.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"
Why does something have to be wrong?"

"
Uh, because it's 10:03 on a Sunday night? Hold on, let me at least get out of bed so I don't wake up Dennis."

"
Never mind," I heard myself whispering, as if I were the one in bed with someone. "Just go back to sleep. I'll talk to you some other time."

"
I'm already up. What do you want?"

"
How do you know I want something? Couldn't I just be calling to catch up? Okay, I was wondering if you have an outfit I could borrow tomorrow. It's my first day of that consulting job—"

"
What?
You woke me up from a sound sleep with an eleventh hour clothing request? And by the way, I haven't forgotten you got Play-Doh all over that last sweater you borrowed, Sarah. You promised me you wouldn't wear it to school."

"
Forget I asked," I said. "Hey, will you stop by my place and check on Michael tomorrow night? I'm not going to be here and I just want to make sure he's not, you know, lonely. Or bothering Phoebe." I had to admit keeping Michael away from Phoebe was becoming a fulltime job, and as much as I loved him, I looked forward to a brief vacation.

"
Of course I will. It's already on my calendar. And listen, I'll leave that turquoise jacket you like in a bag on my front steps. The color's better on you anyway."

I hated that jacket.
"That's okay. Go back to bed. I just remembered I bought a new dress for graduation. I can wear that."

My purple wrap dress looked pretty good before my eyes were fully awake. I
'd sprayed it within an inch of its life with stain remover, but a crucial day or two might have elapsed before I got around to doing it. Just to be sure, I layered on a funky silver necklace to distract from any residual pomegranate martini spots.

Lainie and Annie, my visiting fashion police, even approved.

Annie looked up from her Cheerios. "Wow, Aunt Sarah, you look awesome. Can I borrow that necklace sometime?"

Lainie jumped right in.
"Can I borrow those earrings? Dad, when am I going to be old enough to wear dangly earrings again?"

Michael looked at me for the answer.

"Thirteen," I said definitively. I actually had no idea what Phoebe's dangly earring rule was, but firm, clear limits made kids feel safer, especially during major upheavals in their lives.

"
Oh, that's so not fair," Lainie said.

"
You can take turns wearing the necklace," I said.

We all piled into Michael
's car, and it made me flash back to my own car trips as a kid, all six of us unbuckled in the back of my parents' wood-paneled station wagon, the boys rolling around like puppies in the way back. We'd pass the long drive to Worcester or Holyoke to visit one of our two sets of grandparents by playing the license plate game. "Why, begosh and begorrah, I do believe I see a Z," our father would yell when we finally got to the end of the alphabet.

"
Where, Dad, where?" we'd all scream.

"
Right there," he'd say as he pointed. "On Ma
zz
achusetts."

All these years later, I pointed.
"I see an A," I said in my cheeriest early morning voice.

"
Boring," Annie said.

"
Boring," Lainie said.

Once we
'd dropped the girls off at school, Michael and I were quiet for most of the ride, lost in our thoughts. The thing about hanging out with your family is that you've given up trying to impress them and you don't have to entertain them. It kind of takes the pressure off.

Eventually we made it almost to Michael
's office. He stopped at a red light half a block from the nearest subway station, so I jumped out. "Call me if you need anything," I said before I slammed the door.

"
Thanks," he said. "Knock 'em dead, sis." He brushed a chunk of hair out of his eyes and I made a mental note to remind him about getting a haircut when I got back.

Michael worked downtown, which was far enough from
Marshbury, but John's office was over the river and through the city and almost to the end of the red line, and by the time I got there it felt like I'd traveled all the way to another planet. It was a good thing I'd only have to make the trek once a week. The rest of the time I'd meet with the geeks where they lived—online.

I spent the subway ride standing up and fighting to keep my balance while I hung on to a metal bar, packed in with the other passengers like a bunch of dressed-up sardines. I passed the time by trying to decide whether or not it would be okay to stop by John
's office before I reported for duty. On the one hand, it would be more professional to go right to the conference room where my students would be waiting and where John's boss would introduce me. On the other hand, John was the one who'd gotten me the job, so it would be only good manners to stop by first and thank him again. And after all, I was here in part to teach good manners, and modeling was one of the most effective methods of teaching. With luck John would be alone in his office and we'd have time to steal a quick kiss. Which was probably not all that professional, so maybe I should go straight to the conference room after all.

I got so caught up in my reverie that I almost missed my stop. I pushed my way past the briefcases and purses and messenger bags and made it out just before the doors swished closed again.

John was waiting for me on the sidewalk in front of the building, a soft khaki button-down shirt blending perfectly with his Heath Bar eyes. John's two-toned eyes were his best feature, a circle of chocolate surrounding a ring of toffee. He was wearing his contacts today and holding two cups of coffee. He held his arms out to the side and leaned in to kiss my cheek. He lingered for a moment and I took in the woodsy smell of his soap.

"
Thanks," I said as he handed me my coffee. 

"
You look great," he said. "You could charm me in a second."

"
You look great, too," I said. "And thank you again for setting this up."

"
I had to. It was the only way I'd ever see you."

"
That's not true and you know it." I took a sip of my coffee. "I have to admit there's a part of me still wondering why I let you talk me into saying yes to this. Right now I could be back at Bayberry where I actually know what I'm doing. Which is basically wiping noses and giving out hugs and time-outs."

He swung his non-coffee-bearing arm around my shoulder.
"Who's to say that's not what you'll be doing here? And besides, aren't you the one who always says it's not about the subject matter? That a good teacher can teach anything?"

"
What do I know." I took another careful sip of coffee, trying to minimize the spill chances. I endeavored to calm my nerves by reminding myself how much less time-consuming and more lucrative this consulting gig would be than another stint at Bayberry summer camp, where the teachers were even more underpaid than they were during the school year. Bottom line, even if it had been a bad call, I'd have money in the bank for a change and it would be over before I knew it.

But the truth was, it had been more than the money. When John first broached the idea, we were sitting at a trendy little tapas bar on Newbury Street, sipping glasses of sangria as we shared a plate of figs stuffed with warm goat cheese and wrapped in bacon.

John leaned toward me across the table. "Every time I so much as pass one of the Gamiacs in the hallway, it all comes back. I was just like that in high school. Geeky and isolated. I don't know what I would have done if my physics teacher hadn't started a model airplane club."

I smiled. "I bet that was a direct line to popularity."

"Popularity wasn't even on my radar—I was going for survival. And I didn't have the skills to get there on my own."

I flashed back to my brother Billy Jr., of all my siblings the one who
'd struggled most socially when we were growing up. His nose was always buried in a book. He didn't appear to have any real friends. He was four years older than me, which should have made him an instant crush magnet for my teenybopper friends, but even they ignored him to flirt with Johnny, or my younger brother Michael. 

One night I woke up to go to the bathroom, and as I passed the open stairway, I heard the sound of my parents
' serious voices below. On the return trip, I tiptoed halfway down the staircase to eavesdrop.

"I
'm worried," my mother was saying. "Sometimes I stand outside his bedroom door and listen, just to make sure he's still breathing in there."