“Oh, but that’s okay-I always knew you were here. I wanted you to just play.”
Exactly the right thing to say, because Benny heaved the deepest sigh and laid his head on my chest, his relief heavy as a winter blanket.
Sam was kissing my hand, each of my fingers. “You’re still wet,” I noticed, patting his damp sleeve. His lifted brows told me he thought that was an odd sentence construction. That was the moment it first hit me: I have a strange story to tell. And this probably wasn’t the time to tell it.
“That’s because we’ve had a bit of an adventure,” Sam began. “We-”
“We went on a picnic and Monica almost drowned! But Dad got her in time and she’s okay, and she’s in the lounge with Justin and Ethan. They came with us, but they have to go back and get all our stuff because it’s still there, because we didn’t pick anything up. We just ran! Daddy speeded.”
Sam and I smiled at each other, and I felt the world shift a fraction. Go back to normal. I was definitely home.
I stroked Benny’s dear, bumpy back, comforting him. Lovely for him to get his mom back, sure, but how terribly, terribly sad to lose his dog. “We’ll get another one, sweetheart,” was on the tip of my tongue when he suddenly sat up straight and said, “Mom! We got a dog!”
“Oh, baby, I’m so-”
“She’s a girl- Sonoma -she’s really good, and smart, she can shake hands and open doors and everything. We ran over her! But then we saved her and now she’s ours. You’ll like her, Mom, she’s really, really good.”
I looked at Sam in alarm. Didn’t Benny know?
Sam made a wry face. “Well, I don’t know how good she is, but she’s definitely our dog. She’s out in the car. Maybe they’ll let you see her later, tomorrow or-”
“ Sonoma ’s in the car? Sonoma is here?”
“Yeah.” Sam looked at me strangely again. “She’s a mess right now, though, been in the river, got some scrapes and bruises-”
“Monica said she saved her! Monica said she jumped in and got her by the shirt! Then she almost drowned, but she ended up on a rock and now she’s okay except a bump on her head. Monica said we should take her to the vet.”
“Don’t spay her,” I said. In case I wasn’t home by Tuesday.
They both looked at me strangely.
“I mean, if you were going to, you know. Just hold off till we talk about it, is all. ’Kay?”
“Sure,” said Sam. He looked bewildered. “No problem.”
“So we can keep her?” Benny asked in a very soft voice, also garbled because of the two fingers he had in his mouth. As if he didn’t really want me to hear. As if no answer would equal permission.
The fact that he was worried at all just killed me. “Hey, are you kidding? Of course we can keep her. She’s our dog.”
At least.
I couldn’t wait to meet her.
After
“Crap!” Sam makes a graceful grab for his jack of spades, but the river is too swift. The card floats away before he can catch it.
“I was wondering when that would happen,” I rouse myself to say. He’s been doing flawless fancy shuffling for five minutes straight. Something had to give.
“You said crap.”
“I was provoked.”
“Crap, crap, crap, crap-”
“Benny. Stifle.”
My son cackles and goes back to pitching a rubber ball to Sonoma in the shallows. Underhand lobs, up high and right into her mouth. Being in the river was supposed to add a new layer of difficulty, but they perfected this game a long time ago.
So here we are, back where we started. Looking at us, if you didn’t know, you’d think we were the same Summer family as before, just a year older and with a dog. You’d be right, except for all the ways in which you’d be wrong.
“What time are they coming tomorrow?” Sam asks, stashing his deck of cards in his pocket.
“Two-i sh. Which means two on the dot,” I say in the middle of a wide-m outhed yawn. Time for my nap. I love naps.
That’s a difference-old Laurie would’ve suspected some horrible health crisis if she’d ever wanted anything so pointless and wasteful as a nap.
Another difference is my friendship with Miss Punctuality: Monica Carr. She and the twins are coming down to the cabin for the afternoon tomorrow. Sam will take the boys fishing or hiking while Monica and I sit in chairs in the river-like now-and talk and talk, and then we’ll all go in and eat whatever delicious but healthful meal she’s prepared ahead and brought down with her. I won’t feel an ounce of resentment. I’ll notice all the ways in which she’s a better mother, friend, and general human being than I am, but instead of feeling cynical or superior, I’ll just be grateful. That she likes me as much as I like her.
She’ll probably bring her new camera and take lots of pictures. She never told old Laurie her secret ambition was to be a nature photographer-Why would she? I wouldn’t have been interested anyway-but she was afraid to try. What if she wasn’t any good? she worried. What if it took too much time away from Justin and Ethan? What if it was impractical or, horrors, selfish?
I like to think I helped set her straight there. If you can find a way to make a living doing what you love, welcome to the elite group of the most blessed people in the world. I’m in that group-I started back at Shannon & Lewis full-time in January. Sam’s in that group-he quit the hated actuary job in February, and now he’s doing magic gigs almost every weekend. Why shouldn’t Monica be in that group? I’m glad she took my advice and enrolled in photography courses at the Maryland Institute at night. We keep the twins.
I think of that spiderweb picture she took on the log. Bet it was great. Too bad it’s lying at the bottom of the Patuxent.
The Shenandoah is bright blue today, reflecting the June sky. “Say, pard,” Sam calls over to Benny, “wanna head up to the bunkhouse and rustle some grub for the old lady?”
Who could resist such an invitation. “What’ll we make?” Benny asks, splashing over to our chairs. He’s grown an inch since school ended, I swear. In two months he’ll be seven. I want to slow time down, make this summer last forever. Benny at six is too precious to lose, so I hold on tight.
“How ’bout a side o’ beef, a mess o’ beans, and a hank o’ jerky?” I say. Benny’s in his cowboy phase; it’s between spaceman and what I predict will be all soccer all the time.
He puts his arms around me, getting my shirt soaked. This is a good hug, though, spontaneous and fun. For a while last year, Benny’s hugs were needy and clingy and he was my too-constant companion. I’d wake at night with a feeling of being watched, open my eyes, and see Benny’s, two inches away. “Hi,” he’d say, stare until I said “Hi” back, and go back to bed.
We let it go, didn’t take him to a psychiatrist or anything. I let him have all of his mother that he wanted, every last second I could spare, all my attention and all my love-sometimes I thought I’d go nuts-and after a while he quit shadowing me. Of course, now I miss him.
“Or we could just heat up a boot.” Sam bends down to kiss me. “Got any ol’ boots, pard?”
“Just you, Hopalong.”
“Sure you don’t want to come on up to the ranch and help out? Me and Ben, we got a hankerin’ fer yer grits.”
“Why does that sound-”
“Can we just make some sandwiches?” Benny says with adult impatience. Sam and I look at each other and sigh. We feel bad. Nothing shoots Benny out of a phase faster than our embrace of it.
“So you’re okay?” Sam asks, sliding his fingers through my hair. Thank goodness the question is only rhetorical, but it took many weekends to get to this point-leaving Mom by herself in the river. After I woke up I went through a long period of dizziness, completely gone now, and a shorter period of “confusion.” I’d say something strange, something only Sonoma could know, for example, then get in trouble backtracking.