Pug Hill - Alison Pace [103]
And really, you might wonder, what does something like that leave you with? It leaves you with the fact that unless you want someone who’s never going to move to a commune to actually move to a commune, unless when that happens you want it to be on your head, unless you want to be the judgmental one who sent her to the commune, you better not be anything but nice. Regardless of whether or not the person to whom you must be nice spent the first three years of your life making you eat sand.
Darcy and Mom left to drive up to the Berkshires, up to Canyon Ranch, right after lunch. Later, at dinner, Dad asked me if I wanted to get up early tomorrow morning and help him with the new routine.
“New routine?” I’d asked.
“Yes,” he told me rather enthusiastically, “we’ve got a new routine now!”
“What time does it start?”
“Six,” he said, and I said that sounded great to me even though in truth, six pretty much sounds a touch on the early side.
“Great,” he said, happily. And here we are.
“Five minutes?” I ask without opening an eye. I hear Betsy gurgling, and I hear Annabelle snorting in the hallway and I think, from right at my father’s heels where he always likes to be, I might hear Captain panting.
“Five more minutes in bed, or five more minutes until you’re ready to go?”
I hear a soft thumping and I think it might be Annabelle dragging herself around the hallway on her stomach. I open my eyes and see that Dad’s in his sweatpants and his sneakers are already on.
“Five more minutes until I’m ready to go,” I say and I hear Dad leave the room. I marvel at how much harder everything feels at six in the morning, and I get out of bed.
“First,” my dad explains, handing me Betsy’s harness, “we take a walk twice around the block with Betsy and Annabelle.”
“What about Captain?” I ask over what has so quickly escalated on Betsy’s part to screeching, over the sounds of Annabelle’s barking which is much softer, much easier to talk over, and sounds very much like a muffled, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”
“Ah, Captain.” Dad looks over at Captain, who seems to know he’s not coming, seems quite resigned to that fact, and is resting peacefully in his dog bed. “No, Captain can’t make the walk; Captain just comes for the beach part,” he explains, and I wonder how many parts actually constitute the routine, and then we both focus completely on harnessing Betsy and Annabelle, not an easy task when Betsy is well, Betsy, and Annabelle, this morning at least, seems to find the hysteria contagious.
“Annabelle,” Dad begins, as we turn right out of the driveway, walking out onto the quiet street, “she just sits down on the grass as soon as we get to the beach. She doesn’t get any exercise, so we do this for her, we take a walk twice around the block each morning.”
“I see,” I say, as Betsy marches very seriously right next to my feet, very much like the trained dog she is not, and Annabelle sits down.
“Or we drag,” Dad explains, pulling gently on Annabelle’s leash. Annabelle, indeed, does not seem to be such a fan of exercise, and any chance she can get, she sits down, digs right into the cement of the road. She seems to be just slightly more inclined once we coax her.
“Ann-a-belle! Ann-a-belle!” Dad says enthusiastically.
“Ann-a-belle! Ann-a-belle!” I say, too. Betsy starts barking.
“You are my best friend,” we both say to her, at exactly the same time.
“Does Betsy still walk at the beach?” I ask, once Betsy has settled down, and Annabelle has reluctantly gotten up again and we are walking again, in something that marginally represents a forward motion.
“Oh, Betsy loves the beach. She just loves it. I let her off her leash down there and she