Maybe you’re wondering where I got the chutzpah, the hubris, the balls to go after a guy like Joe. After all, the longest relationship I’d had was less than six weeks. The thing was, I’d spent most of my life in love with Joe Carpenter. I would be turning thirty soon. I figured it was now or never, and if I was going to try to get Joe, I was going to give it all I had.
I put the encounter with Joe in the back of my mind…another trick I’d mastered over the decades. Later I would examine every detail with excruciating fervor, rating myself, considering what I could do better, psyching myself up for next time. But for now, I put the incident aside. After all, I was used to pretending Joe was just an ordinary guy.
Joe and What’s-Her-Name were occupied playing pool when Sam and I left a little while later. We strolled down to where we’d parked.
“So, Sam, you’re not going to go home, listen to a Norah Jones CD, get drunk and cry, are you?” I asked as we got into the car.
“Well, I think I’ll probably pass on that one,” he said amiably. “Another time, maybe.”
“You’re a good boy. An excellent role model for my dog.”
“Don’t you dare name your dog after me,” he laughed.
When we got back home, I felt warm and fuzzy, like a good sister-in-law, though officially, I wasn’t one anymore. Sam kissed my cheek, thanked me and walked inside his big house, looking, I believed, not nearly so wicked sad as he had earlier. “Hang in there, buddy,” I murmured, putting my car in reverse. “Life is about to get better.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT MORNING, I GOT OUT of bed and collapsed to my knees. My God! What had happened to me? Every muscle south of my scalp had seized like a bad engine. Scrabbling with my quilt, I hauled myself up and lurched stiff-legged into the bathroom, swinging my pelvis like John Wayne to minimize any leg extension. Knives of pain shot up my Achilles tendons into my calves. I’d been hobbled. Whimpering, I bent to the faucet for a mouthful of water and gulped down four Motrin.
My pain turned to joy as I mounted the bathroom scale. I had lost not one but two, two whole pounds! Of course, I knew this was just fluid loss from my excessive perspiring yesterday, and that I couldn’t really have lost two pounds of fat in one day, that the complex workings of the human body just won’t allow that, but long before I was a doctor, I was an overweight American woman, and guess what? I lost two pounds, that’s what!
Katie and her sons arrived a little while later. Corey was six years old, Mikey three. Like her sons, Katie had creamy blond hair and sky-blue eyes, making her my polar opposite. Her beauty attracted dozens of admiring men, but Katie…well, since her divorce, Katie had become a bit hardened. Maybe even before that, but since Elliott left her, she just didn’t, as she put it, have a lot of time for crap.
And when exactly had Elliott chosen to leave her, you ask? Why, just after she’d given birth to Michael, after thirty-six hours of labor and three hours of pushing her nine-pound, six-ounce son into the world. Good thing I was there for the birth, because Elliott the Idiot was not. In one of those unbelievable, made-for-Lifetime-television scenes, he arrived a few hours later and told Katie that he wanted a divorce, that he “just wasn’t happy anymore.” And so, as Katie bled from her impressive episiotomy, as her breasts took on the texture of granite, as her newborn son mewled in her arms, her husband had dumped her for a younger woman.
Katie had become, unsurprisingly, suspicious of men. In addition, she had to work hard to support the boys. She lived in an apartment above her parents’ garage and worked as a waitress at the Barnacle, and while she made ends meet, I wanted more for her. Though she swore the last thing she wanted was a relationship…well, I just happened to know a wonderful man who was recently divorced himself, a man who loved children, especially boys, had a fine son of his own, a man I was very fond of, who would make a perfect husband for my best friend. I had to tread gently here, because Katie would hate the thought of being set up. And Officer Nickerson was still smarting from my own sister’s betrayal. Gently, gently, subtly, subtly…
“I saw Sam last night,” I blurted as Katie and I sat at the kitchen table. The boys were in the dining room, engrossed in the Bob the Builder and Spider-Man coloring books I had bought for them.
“How’s he doing?” Katie asked.
“Sad, for some reason. He’s so much better off without her,” I said, deliberately insensitive, though I did indeed think it was true.
“Oh, come on,” Katie said. “They were together a long time. He must feel pretty crappy, poor guy.” She sipped her coffee with an appreciative murmur.
“Maybe we could take him out some time,” I craftily suggested. “Cheer him up a bit.”
“Sure.” Mission accomplished! “When do you start work?” Katie asked.
“April Fool’s Day. A coincidence, I hope, and not an omen.”
Though I wanted to go into private practice, the costs were prohibitive for someone just out of residency. I had approached Dr. Whitaker, our Norman Rockwell–style physician and my own doctor since birth, to take me on as a partner. He wanted me to get a little more experience first and suggested the Cape Cod Walk-In Clinic, which was a satellite of Cape Cod Hospital. Dr. Whitaker would then reevaluate the situation in the fall.
“Are you excited?” Katie asked.
“I sure am. Can’t wait.”
“And how’s the Joe-hunt going?” Katie inquired, looking into the dining room at her boys, their fair heads nearly touching as they colored. A maternal smile of happiness warmed her face.
“Joe, Joe…” I crooned. I told her about how yummy he’d looked the night before, how sweet he’d been, how funny it was when he’d called Summer the wrong season. Katie listened as my voice took on the tone of a zealot. I could hear myself babbling inanely about Joe’s virtues and charms, but like any good zealot, I found it hard to stop. Finally I reined myself in.
“So, anyway…that’s Joe for you,” I finished.
Katie chuckled and patted my hand. “You’re a nut, you know that?” She put aside her cup with a regretful sigh. “But you make the best coffee. Come on, boys. We have to go to the market. You can have a muffin if you behave.”
Corey and Mike cheerfully ripped out their masterpieces, proudly presenting the blurry, messy pictures to me for my refrigerator door, where they would hang for months. I received my kisses and hugs and helped buckle the boys into the back seat of the Corolla, waving as they trundled down my driveway.
Turning back to my little cottage, a small, familiar wave of loneliness mingled with my new sense of house pride. I knew Katie would have given her kidneys (well, one, at least) for the pleasure of a day alone, but it was different for me. When solitude was unrelenting, it tended to lose its shine. And so, onto the next step in my plan. Adopt a dog.
Oh, yes, a dog. Not a cat! No, having a cat says, “Hi. I’m single. For a reason. Because I love my cat. My cat and I have something special here.” But a dog! A dog is a statement of humor, energy, fun. A gal who can get down on the floor and wrestle with her dog is wicked cool!
We’d always had dogs when I was a kid, but when I was a teenager, our last dog went to that great beach in the sky, and my parents hadn’t gotten another one. Now, with a home of my own, I was all set to become a proud new dog owner. This dog of mine, my new best friend, my companion while I ran oh-so-gracefully, this dog who would adorably wake me with a cheerful nuzzle, who would collapse in paroxysms of joy upon my arrival home, who would protect me, no, die for me, who would undoubtedly love Joe and Joe’s three-legged dog, was just hours away.