Must Love Dogs Read Online Free PDF Page B

glibness. We polished it until it shone; it was our family shield. When Carol’s first boyfriend’s best friend phoned her to break up for him, which was only fitting since he’d also been the surrogate who asked her to go steady, she hunched over the telephone table at the bottom of the stairs. We loitered in the hallway behind her, smelling tragedy. Carol hung up, rearranged her face when she saw us. “That was Davy Jones,” she said. “They’re thinking it might be time for a girl Monkee.” We waited to see if she’d crack. “I told him I’d consider the offer,” she finished before running up the stairs.
    As if summoned by her decades-old line, Carol walked back into my living room, a replenished wineglass in each hand, Dad’s personal ad tucked under her chin. “Carol, what are you doing snooping around my stuff?”
    “Hey, it was right on your refrigerator, underneath one of those tacky favorite teacher magnets.”
    “Sorry. I guess I was so traumatized I forgot about it.” I waited while Carol read it through a couple of times.
    “This is great. No wonder you went out with him.”
    “I didn’t,” I started to say before I saw Carol’s big grin. I gave her the dirty look I’d been giving her since we were kids.
    Carol didn’t even bother to return the look. “Okay, Sarah, what’s the next plan?”
    “What do you mean?” I asked. I understood the concept of planning, even vaguely remembered that it was once part of my repertoire.
    “Have you answered any other ads?”
    “Now there’s a good idea. Maybe I can date an uncle. Forget about it, Carol. I’m done answering personal ads.”
    “Then we’ll just have to place one of your own. And not in the local paper. We’ll go right to Boston. It’ll be good for you to broaden your horizons a little. Plus, if we do it that way, you’ll have all the control.”
    I was starting to wonder if Carol was planning to date for me. Not a bad idea, actually. She could be my surrogate dater, and I’d get to stay home, read a good book, maybe
101 Places to Hide from Your Family
or
Never Too Old for the Convent
. I sat back and let her write the ad.
    “The first thing we have to do is to invoke a mood. That’s why Dad’s ad worked so well. And we have to have a built-in test to weed out the sickos. Think, Sarah. What’s the best indicator of a person’s humanity?”
    “I don’t know, what?”
    “Come on, help me out a little. Okay, don’t they say dogs and children can always tell who’s nice and who’s just pretending to be?”
    “Yeah, the loves-dogs-and-children part was what got me in Dad’s ad.”
    “Well, you certainly can’t say anything about kids, you’ll scare ‘em off. We want you to avoid any hint of desperation. You have to sound as if you can afford to be choosy, whether or not that’s remotely true.”
    If I’d had more motivation I’d probably have been feeling insulted by now. Instead, while I watched Carol scribble away, I wondered if Siobhan was right about it being a good thing that Kevin and I had never had kids. If, even though I’d ended up losing my husband, I’d still managed to gain a child or two along the way, would I be less of a failure? At the very least, I’d have a good excuse to put off dating.
Mothering
, I’d say, with a hint of the martyr in my voice,
it’s simply all I have time for
.
    Instead, not only was I childless, but I felt like a child myself, and I missed my own mother. If she were still alive, she would have helped me find a new life by now. I even missed Kevin. No, it was more that I missed the idea of Kevin. Having a husband, even one I barely talked to, had given me a certain status, a respectability, a belonging. I had a place in the world. I
knew
what I’d be doing tomorrow, even if it wasn’t particularly interesting. I felt anxiety rise in my chest like mercury up an old thermometer. I decided to think instead about the kind of dog I’d get if I had the energy to commit