Pug Hill - Alison Pace [106]
chapter thirty-three
She Really Was
Magnificent
“Henry, Henry man, you gotta listen to me,” C.P. says urgently, leaning across the breakfast table. I wonder why it does not occur to C.P. that the chances of Dad listening to him would increase tenfold if he could refrain from calling Dad, “man.”
Mom and Darcy returned last night from Canyon Ranch, both looking more rested and svelte and golden than they generally already do. Mom arranged it so that they were able to pick up C.P. at the airport on their way home. She believed that if C.P. arrived here first, and was here with just me and Dad, without Darcy as a buffer, that, as she explained to me before she left, “Your father may very well kill C.P.” The way Dad is looking at C.P. right about now, I have to concede that Mom, as she so often does, may have a point.
Dad doesn’t say anything. He angles his chin in toward his neck and looks up over his glasses. The carton of milk that is the focus of C.P.’s attention and near-revolutionary zeal is still in Dad’s hand, poised over his bowl of cereal.
“Do you have any idea what they do to dairy cows? Do you? It’s horrible, man, it’s so inhumane.” I watch Dad’s face get redder, see the cardboard on the milk carton compress slightly under the weight of his grip. “For one thing—”
“C.P., honey sweetie,” Darcy cuts in, leaning over in her chair to rub C.P.’s newly shaved head. “Let’s let Daddy enjoy his cereal. We don’t need to talk about dairy cows right now.” C.P. looks over at Darcy, as if it were really she who got up there and hung the moon. “You know what?” she coos to him. “Why don’t we go for a walk? I want to show you the beach.”
“Okay, honey sweetie,” he says, forgetting for now about the plight of the dairy cow. Darcy jumps up from her chair and reaches for C.P.’s hand. As C.P. pushes his chair away from the table, Darcy bounces back and forth happily from one foot to the other. She is the bounciest, bubbliest thirty-four-year-old to ever walk the face of the earth, I’m sure of it.
As C.P. stands, all eyes are on him. He puts his hands in prayer position right in front of his chest, his elbows sticking straight out at ninety-degree angles. He closes his eyes, bows his head for a moment.
“Please, enjoy your meal,” he says and turns and walks out of the kitchen. Darcy hops along behind him.
You can see and hear and feel my mom and I exhale. Dad pours the offending milk onto his cereal, puts the carton down with just slightly more force than usual and turns to his paper. Mom shakes her head back and forth a few times, pushes her own chair back and leaves the room.
I sit for a few minutes with Dad, but it’s pretty clear that right now he probably doesn’t want to talk. I think of Mom, how she looked upset right before she left the kitchen. I don’t want her to be upset on the day of her party, this party that she and Dad, and just about the whole world, have been looking forward to for so long. I put my coffee cup in the dishwasher silently and head off to find her.
I find Mom upstairs, in my parents’ room. She’s standing by the window, looking down at the large, round, skirted table in front of it. I’ve always liked this table: the dog table. On this table, Mom has only pictures of the dogs. Silver picture frames, in all shapes and sizes, display so many photographs of all the dogs, individually, in various groupings and pairings, engaged in different activities, over the courses of each of their lives.
I walk over to Mom and look down at the dog table, too. There they all are. There’s Morgan outside by a pond; Brentwood in a snow-covered field; Spanky, my Spanky, next to a peony bush; Boswell next to a Christmas tree; Captain and Annabelle at the beach; Betsy at a café in the south of France. So many moments of their lives, displayed here are the most joyous ones.
I notice that Mom has another picture of Boswell in her hand. This one is in a round frame; it shows Boswell in profile, from the shoulders up. Mom looks up at me then, and her eyes are filled with something.