Pug Hill - Alison Pace [99]
We watch as they tie the dingy to the mooring and get up onto the Whaler, and then, at the same time, we both look down to check on Betsy.
“Hi, Bets,” I say.
The wind is making ripples in her fur and you can see this pleases her to no end by the way she throws her head back with abandon. She throws it back that same way when Mom gives her Lil’ Cesar’s dog food. Actually though, when I’d seen her do this once while eating Lil’ Cesar’s, I’d commented on it, how she throws her head back with abandon when she chews, and Mom had explained to me, very seriously, that she thought it wasn’t so much with abandon, as it was with joy. And actually, looking right now at Betsy, I think she’s right; I think it is much more with joy.
“When I give her Lil’ Cesar’s, she does that with her head, throws it back with joy that way,” Mom says, and sometimes it’s so scary, how much it seems at certain times like she can just read minds.
“I worry though,” she continues, “as much as she enjoys it, the Lil’ Cesar’s has so many chemicals in it. I don’t know why I ever started with it.”
And I say, “Uh-huh,” and then from the end of the dock I hear, “Yoo-Hoo!”—yes, really, Yoo-Hoo—as Mrs. Gerard, so tall and dark, approaches.
“Hi, Mrs. Gerard,” I say when she reaches us.
“Nancy!” she corrects me gruffly, and then tries to make it un-gruff by smiling a big smile at me.
“Nancy,” I repeat as she leans over and kisses me on one cheek, and then the other, and tells me, “I’m very European!”
I assume she means the kissing and I agree, and then she turns away from me and swoops in on my mother. I’m happy for that, I’m happy not to be the focus of Mrs. Gerard’s attention. I wonder though, somewhat nervously, how long can it possibly last?
Betsy starts barking again, until Mrs. Gerard looks down and tells her, “Yes, hello, Betsy. You are my best friend.”
I turn back to the water, shielding my eyes to see the Boston Whaler as it glides toward us. As we all get onto the boat and pass out life preservers and take our seats, I try, tremendously unsuccessfully, not to sit anywhere near Mrs. Gerard. Sadly, tragically really, if you ask me, as we take off into the harbor, I realize I have not been as vigilant as this day has been demanding that I be. I don’t quite know how it happened, but somehow I’m sitting right across from Mrs. Gerard. Mom is in the front V section of the boat with Betsy, who is ecstatic now, intermittently barking and gurgling and screeching, while still managing at the same time to bite at the wind.
“Now, now Betsy,” I hear Mom saying to her, accomplishing, it seems, nothing at all. Dad’s at the steering wheel, and Mr. Gerard is in the chair next to him, so not only am I right across from Mrs. Gerard, right there squarely in her conversational line of fire, there isn’t anyone else around to distract her. You might have noticed my dad telling me earlier in the kitchen not to be so intolerant, and you might be thinking right now that I’m being intolerant of Mrs. Gerard just because she says things like Yoo-Hoo and Yodel-eh-hee-hoo (she says that, too) and announces that she’s European when she double-cheek kisses you and worse than that, sometimes speaks in really poorly accented French. But it’s not just that. No, Mrs. Gerard is, far and away, not exactly one of my favorites, but not because of any of the previous (and in my mind perfectly legitimate) reasons.
See, Mrs. Gerard is obsessed, obsessed, with the fact that I am not yet married, with unearthing the mysteries of it, with trying tirelessly, endlessly to figure out why. And I can’t handle it, not from her; I mean, I do enough of it myself.
And just like that, as we begin to motor slowly out of the harbor, before the engines have gotten too loud to talk over, Mrs. Gerard turns to me, eager, and asks, “How’s Evan? Is Evan coming out next week for the party?” There is no escape, I take a deep breath, look back