4

It’s the third day of camp and I have six things on my to-do list today. I can currently remember two of them. One involves buying a less embarrassing pair of pajamas for Greer and another has to do with a lost retainer. As I listen to the glorious trickle of my coffee brewing, I take a moment to enjoy the certainty that managing Pete’s dry cleaning isn’t on that list.

Before I had kids, I was still on the list. I’d get up in the morning, make myself coffee, and go for a run or do yoga before work. If there was coffee left in the pot, then Pete could have some when he got up. If there wasn’t, that wasn’t my problem. We had the same job, the same paycheck—he still saw me as a grown-up back then.

When I stopped working, I started making the coffee to suit Pete. He liked me to add cinnamon to the grounds, which I think completely ruins the taste of the coffee, but I made it that way because he was the one going to work. It seemed like his coffee moment mattered more than mine. Also, his evenings and weekends. It’s hard to tell your partner you need a break when you don’t have a job. Or if you have a job that kind of looks like a hobby and doesn’t bring in a lot of money.

I almost added the cinnamon to the coffee on the first morning that Pete was gone, but I poured it back into the container and pressed the button with great ceremony to brew my own, pure coffee. It was delicious in a way I can’t even describe.

I pour my own personal coffee now and twist my wedding ring around my finger a few times. I think of the cinnamon and how good it felt to stop that. I pull my ring off and spin it on its side. When it lands, I open my spice cabinet and place it on top of the cinnamon. I take a deep breath as the smell of coffee fills the quiet kitchen. I run my unjeweled, un-spoken-for fingers through my hair. Outside my window, the geraniums are going strong. It’s Wednesday and I don’t have to see Pete on Wednesdays. I have the sense that I am a limb that went numb, and I am starting to tingle again.

“You’re looking at your mug like you’re going to make out with it,” Greer says as she comes into the kitchen. This comment is mildly mocking and sarcastic, but at least she’s talking to me. Greer has gone a little salty since Pete left. She’s twelve and unsure and probably angry at me for what’s happened to our family. I don’t really know how to defend myself. I’ve just completed a full year of being a single mother, and she’s just completed a full year of sixth grade. Neither of us has had it so easy.

“I might,” I say, and take another sip. Cliffy comes downstairs and gives me the smile of a six-year-old boy who hasn’t seen his mom in ten hours.

“It’s archery first thing at camp today, can we be a little late?” Greer asks. She is not enthusiastic about Beechwood Rec’s summer camp. Next year she’ll be old enough to be a junior counselor, so this year just feels embarrassing. I don’t like being late, and I don’t like my kids being late. But I just took my ring off and the chances are my kids aren’t going to grow up and hunt for their own food.

I surprise us both by saying, “Sure. I’ll go up and get dressed.”

“Dressed?” Iris says, taking her seat in front of the third plate of eggs. I don’t have to explain whose is whose: the manner of cooking—scrambled, sunny side up, and over easy—is like a place card.

“Yes, dressed,” I laugh, and they are watching me. This isn’t new. Since Pete left, they’ve been looking to me for clues about how I’m doing, how well I’m going to be able to steer this ship. Iris’s big brown eyes peek out under the crooked bangs that she cut herself last week. She’s wearing all green, including her socks, and it looks the perfect amount of crazy. And Greer, with my mother’s wide smile and a face that is changing from girl to teen in a way that evokes both awe and panic. In September she’ll be in seventh grade. This is the year she’ll do a high-level overview of world history and sink into a Machiavellian hell. I can still feel the nightmare of seventh grade—the sudden and inexplicable abandonment by my friends. My mother putting me in the car and driving to Rockport to eat lobster rolls and walk around. We laughed at the corny sayings on needlepoint pillows and bought key chains with flip-flops on them. We had popcorn for dinner and stayed up late watching Auntie Mame under my grandmother’s yellow crocheted blanket. I want to be that mother, both steering the ship to safety and being the safety itself. I’m going to need harder pants.

When I’m dressed in my overalls and my favorite blue and white striped T-shirt, I text Phyllis to see if she’s awake. Phyllis is my ninety-four-year-old neighbor who lives in the too-close house next door. She has recently discovered the wide world of emojis on her phone. She replies with a coffee cup emoji, which tells me she won’t want her eggs until later. I reply with the thumbs-up emoji, and she replies with the laugh-till-you-cry emoji, which almost never makes sense but seems to be her favorite way to end a conversation.

I drop everyone at the rec center for camp and take Ferris to the dog park. Beechwood’s dog park is a giant lawn with hundred-year-old sycamore trees that ends dramatically at a seawall. Beyond that is the beach and then the sound. You can’t see Manhattan from here, the view is just around the point, but I like knowing it’s there. The park ends at the Beechwood Inn, bright white against the blue sky, with yellow umbrellas dotting the sand in front of it. A warm breeze comes off the water, blowing the lavender that’s just starting to bloom. All of this feels like something I should enjoy, but, truly, the dog park is the worst. Ferris loves to run around and randomly sniff dogs’ butts and force me into awkward conversations. It’s like a cocktail party without the cocktails, and my desire to flee when everyone else seems happy to linger makes me feel like I’m the wrong kind of person.

Today, even though I am bolstered by my ringless finger and what some might call an outfit, I do not want to make conversation. When you live in the town where you grew up, every polite question is loaded with history. I do not want to look into the eyes of people who have known me my whole life and see their collective surprise that I am orphaned, separated, and not quite living up to my potential. I don’t know how to respond to everyone’s casual ten-thousand-pound question—How are you doing? Better than you’d think. I’m finally getting divorced, and look at my pants.

Ferris is being bullied by a pack of Chihuahuas and runs to me for comfort. I plop down on the wet grass and know that I’ll be leaving the dog park with a dark wet spot on my rear end. Ferris is a fourteen-pound mutt with a long, wet nose and a mane of caramel-colored hair that he sheds like he’s a flower girl sprinkling petals down the aisle. He places the weight of his little head on my thigh, and I rub that perfect spot on the back of his neck. He’ll keep his head on my thigh for as long as I rub, and in this way we have a perfectly symbiotic relationship. His breathing steadies me, and I close my eyes to feel the light July breeze. Mom, I say in my head, I got dressed. I hear her voice: Now, darling, wasn’t that easy? Well, it only took me two years.

Ferris snaps me back by jumping out of my lap and racing to the far end of the lawn by the entrance to the inn. I stand up to see what’s caught his attention, hoping to God it’s not a squirrel carcass he wants to roll around in. He stops by a guy with shaggy light brown hair, almost blond, who’s holding a small black dog in his arms like a baby. A woman with a St. Bernard the size of Mike Tyson seems to be apologizing. As I approach, I mutter my mother’s “Comparison is the thief of joy” under my breath. She’s a little younger than I am, in jeans that fit and a pale pink blouse tucked in. As I get closer, I notice she’s even wearing a belt. A belt! I can see now that this guy is handsome. He’s wearing a faded green T-shirt and bright yellow swim trunks. He could be a teenager from a distance, but there’s something about the way he carries himself that exudes a more grown-up kind of confidence. He’s tending to his dog but is also being nice to the belted lady. It’s almost like he knows by looking at her that whatever her dog did had to be an accident, because she’s clearly got her act together.

Ferris is standing at his feet sniffing around, and just as I get within a few yards of them, it happens in slow motion: Ferris lifts his hind leg and pees all over the guy’s left sneaker. “No!” I shout, when it’s already too late. The realization spreads over his face, and he shakes his foot.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I say as I reach them and kneel down to grab Ferris by the collar.

The woman looks down at me and then says to the guy, “Did that dog just pee on you?”

He shakes his foot again. “Feels like it. All the way down to my sock.”

“I am so horrified,” I say, because I’m so horrified. “I swear he doesn’t do this. I mean he did it once when I brought my daughter home from the hospital. Because she was born, not sick. Anyway, she’s his favorite.”

“So maybe this is a compliment?” I look up and he’s smiling at me. It doesn’t make any sense given the state of his shoe, but he almost looks glad to see me. He’s probably about my age, though there’s a lightness about him that makes him seem younger than I feel. His eyes are light brown, a shade darker than his hair, and there’s not a hint of anger in them. It’s possible that he’s a guy who knows when a problem can be solved with a run through the washing machine. I’m taking in every detail of his eyes, mainly because I am trying not to look at his shoulders and the way his T-shirt stretches across his chest.

“Do you get peed on often?” the woman asks, and there’s a weird flirtatiousness to it that annoys me. “Because I’d be freaking out.” It strikes me as strange that she, with the great outfit, dry shoes, and potentially aggressive dog, doesn’t have the grace to let me off the hook.

“I’m really sorry,” I say again, and stand up.

“Honestly, it’s nothing. It can all be washed,” he says. There’s almost something about him that I recognize. I don’t recognize him, but the look. He’s looking at me the way men used to look at me when I was younger. Like he sees me. I wonder if my wedding ring served as a cloak of invisibility or if maybe it’s my nearly hard pants. I am at once terrified and delighted. These overalls don’t even have a zipper.

The St. Bernard gallops off after another dog, and the woman reluctantly follows. I didn’t check to see if she was wearing a wedding ring, but this guy is not. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a singles scene at the dog park, but maybe there is one. I run my thumb over my ringless ring finger and am struck by the fact that I am single, that I am a person who would be part of a singles scene. It’s as if that fact has been buzzing around my head for a year, circling in a way that I could faintly hear, and now it has landed. I am single.

“So what’s his name? The peeing bandit.”

“Ferris,” I say. “He’s a rescue, he came with that name.” I look at the little dog in his arms, pressing his head against his owner’s chest. “What’s his name?”

“Her name’s Brenda.”

“Brenda?”

“Yes, because she totally looks like a Brenda,” he says like he can’t believe I didn’t make that connection myself. “She got walloped by that dog’s giant paw, but I think she’s mostly just scared of other dogs. Maybe now that I’ve been baptized by Ferris, he’ll be familiar to her.” His eyes rest on me like there’s no place else he’d rather look. He holds my gaze until I have to look away.

“Really, I feel terrible.”

“Stop. Maybe he likes me.” Brenda is a dead weight in his arms, and I envy her that kind of comfort. I like this man with the big shoulders. I like his open expression, as if there’s a laugh waiting right behind his eyes. It’s been a really long time since I’ve noticed anything about any man, and it’s possible that I’m over-noticing this one.

“I haven’t seen you here. Do you live in Beechwood?” I might as well have said, “Come here often?” Why am I prolonging this conversation? We are not at a bar. I am not good at being single.

“I’m just visiting my family.”

I nod, and I can’t think of anything to say. This is why I can’t stand the dog park. There’s no context, no commonality except the indignities our dogs are inflicting on each other, or in this case, us. “Is she your first dog?” I ask. I immediately regret it. It’s clear I’m trying to keep the conversation going, and the answer to this is either going to be “Yes” or a really sad story about a dog dying. That’s the thing about dog stories, they only end one way.

“I’ve always had a dog, besides my freshman year in college,” he says.

“That’s a lot of responsibility. I mean for a college kid.”

“I guess. It’s sort of a habit. I don’t think I’d know how to get up in the morning and do anything but take a dog out.”

“Wait till you have kids,” I say. That’s a weird thing to say on a million levels. I don’t know that he doesn’t have kids. It also makes it obvious that I’ve surmised that he’s single. That I thought about it. “I mean if you don’t already.”

“None of my own, no.”

This got personal fast, and I want to know what that means. You either have kids or you don’t. “I have three. Twelve, eleven, and six.”

“Which one got peed on?” he asks.

“Eleven. Iris,” I say. “She’s adorable. I’m surprised all the dogs don’t pee on her.”

He smiles and it takes over his whole face. “I think you just called me adorable.”

“I did not.” My face goes hot, like prickly hot on my cheeks. I am totally out of control here. I meet one handsome guy in a decade and I completely lose it.

“You did—it’s the transitive property of adorable. If you play back everything you just said, it adds up to you thinking I’m adorable. I’m a little embarrassed for you.”

I’ve been embarrassed for me since before this conversation began, but now that it’s out in the open, it’s sort of fun. I look around. “Where’s the camera crew? You can’t prove this.”

“It’s obvious to me, the dogs, I’m guessing everyone at the park. You’re totally into me.”

“I am not,” I say, and fold my arms over my chest.

He laughs what I will admit is an adorable laugh. “I’m Ethan.” He rebalances Brenda and frees a hand for me to shake.

“Ali.”

He holds on to my hand for a beat too long. I have the strangest feeling that I want him to keep holding on to my hand. Also, that I want to spill my guts. I want to tell him that I took my ring off today. I want to tell him that I just realized I’m single and that I don’t know how to be that thing. That I’m fascinated that he’s borderline flirting with me and I’m wondering what comes next. How do people get past all those firsts? Do they meet for coffee? Or go straight to a meal? Is this what happens when you swipe right? There’s something intoxicating about how he’s looking at me like I’m someone I used to be.

To keep myself from saying any of this, I lean down and latch Ferris’s leash to his collar. “Okay, well, nice to meet you. And sorry again about your shoe.”

“It’s fine. He’s a cute dog.”

“He is,” I say. Brenda is sound asleep with her little black head in the crook of his elbow.

“She’s going to be fine,” he says, but I’ve been staring at his arms, not Brenda.

“Of course, okay. Bye. Sorry again. Nice to meet you.” I turn to go and I can feel with each step that the back of my overalls is soaked from the grass. I’m definitely coming back to the dog park tomorrow.