Pug Hill - Alison Pace [109]
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