Pug Hill, page 4
“We met at the Met. Hope works there.”
Evan thinks it’s just easier all around to say we met at the Met. He thinks this is a nice story, and perfectly plausible, as if, on occasion, I did leave the Conservation Studio in the middle of the day, to stroll leisurely around the museum, striking up conversations with random passersby. As if Evan were the type of person to be at a museum, which he isn’t, ever, let alone in the middle of the workweek, which is when, ostensibly, I would have been there, you know, making new friends left and right.
“That’s so nice,” Courteney says.
Evan looks over at me, and smiles, and then stealthily winks. He crunches down on an ice cube from his Scotch. I’ve always hated the smell of Scotch, but when I first met Evan I thought it would be a good idea to not let the Scotch bother me. I don’t think that anymore. I don’t smile back at him, or wink or lend any of the previously lent agreement, any of the previously lent feelings of, oh, look at us, aren’t we bonded because we have this secret, which really isn’t a secret so much as it is a lie.
I notice that the light from the tremendous chandelier in the center of the room is bouncing off the gold buttons on Evan’s navy blue blazer. It’s a rip-off really, if you think about it, to go on JDate in the hopes that you might find yourself a nice Jewish boyfriend, and wind up six months later at The Union Club with Evan. I mean, someone like Evan, in my mind, he’s lucky. He’s one religion and not two. Why not just be Jewish? Why the WASPy squash club, I wonder, obviously not for the first time. Why add all that in?
I listen to the caw-caw around the table, rising up above us and heading to the chandelier. Evan and Brandon are laughing now about something that has to do with a hedge fund. Evan, by the way, works at a hedge fund, and I think Brandon does, too. To be completely honest, I have no idea what actually goes on at a hedge fund, no idea how all these people who work at hedge funds actually spend their days. It’s been explained to me; it’s just one of those things that refuses to sink in. A little bit like love, I think, even though thinking things like that can’t possibly help anything. I smile, and occasionally I ask Courteney a polite question or two about the upcoming nuptials, less because I’m interested and more so that later Evan doesn’t say, “Hope, you really weren’t being very friendly at all.”
Evan’s talking about pheasant hunting now, and I try as hard as I can not to hear. I stare at the melting ice cubes in my drink and wonder if the identity crisis so deeply ingrained within me is what drew to me Evan in the first place, as Evan is so clearly in the middle of one.
On our way home in the taxi, Evan reaches over and strokes the back part of my upper arm. Don’t be fooled. The way he does it is not in a way that is affectionate or kind. It is, I’m sure of this, much more in a way that wants to say, do you ever use those arm weights I got for you? I’ve wondered quite seriously at times if he and my mom are somehow in this together. Had one of them called the other and had they aligned themselves into some nefarious Evan/Mom axis of evil? Had Mom said, “I’ll stick with her thighs and the fact that she seems completely incapable of matching her foundation to her skin tone,” and had Evan then wholeheartedly agreed and said, “That sounds good, Mom, (because so bonded are they in their Evan/Mom axis of evil that at some point Mom said to Evan, ”Oh, Evan, please, just call me Mom.”) I’ll stick with the fat on the backs of her upper arms”?
And it’s not that I embrace the criticism from Mom, I certainly don’t, but from her at least I can understand it. Mom is an interior decorator. It’s in her nature to want everything to be pretty. And also, no matter what the religion of the man she married, she is also very much a Jewish mother; some might say it’s in her nature to be critical in, of course, a loving, albeit slightly annoying way. I don’t have an excuse for Evan.
The taxi pulls up outside of Evan’s building, and, as has been happening lately, I am overwhelmed by the desire to be in my own apartment. And maybe that doesn’t necessarily have to be a comment on how I feel about Evan, maybe it’s just because all my stuff is there, and Evan has really bad pillows. Once we are on the sidewalk, I turn to him.
“I think I’m just going to head home. I think I’m just going to stay at my apartment tonight.”
“Why?” he asks back quickly, right away.
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s not a big deal, it’s just my stuff is there, and it’s easier for me.” I look behind him, across Columbus Avenue and into the store that’s right across the street. I focus on the mannequins in the window: they’re not whole mannequins, they’re just the legs, wearing pants.
“Maybe it’s not always about being easy for you,” Evan says, drawing my attention back to him, away from the pants. “Maybe you’d just want to sleep at my apartment because sometimes it’s nice for me to stay at my apartment? Maybe you’d just want to sleep at my apartment to do something nice for me?” He stares at me, eyes bulging accusingly. I can see that this is not the exact best time to say that generally we do stay at his apartment, and that if you counted all the times he’s slept at my apartment, and then counted all the times I’ve slept at his apartment, his apartment—with all the messiness everywhere, covering every single surface, with the complete lack of any pillows that are either decorative or soft—would come out on top.
Evan’s eyes debulge ever so slightly and he asks, “I mean when was the last time you did something just to be nice to me?”
I stare back at him. I think how just yesterday I received a CNN Breaking News e-mail about how a cow in the United States had tested positive for mad cow disease. Evan is very disciplined with his low-carb diet; I have never seen him eat so much as a grain of rice, yet I have seen him eat countless hamburgers. I forwarded that e-mail to him right away. I am about to point this out, but I feel we are just moments away from jumping onto the hamster wheel that is late-night arguing and not getting any sleep, at either of our apartments, and there’s something to be said, I think, for not doing that. There’s something to be said for not always having to be alone in your apartment, or I guess, come to think of it, the world.
“You’re right,” I say and watch his expression soften. I take a step in the direction of Evan’s apartment, and he falls right in step beside me.
chapter five
Set Me Free, Why Don’t You, Babe
On Sunday morning, I wake up not at Evan’s apartment, but at mine; but still, I don’t feel right. It’s been four days now that I’ve known about the speech, and every morning when I wake up, without a solution appearing out of thin air, I feel a little bit more like the walls are closing in.
I look over at the sleeping Evan: so still, so quiet, so non-judgmental, so much easier to get along with this way. So as not to wake him, I slide silently out of bed and into the bathroom. And after the ease that is getting oneself together when one has all their stuff so easily accessible, I actually feel quite appreciative of Evan, appreciative that at the end of the night last night, he just gave the taxi driver my address, in a gesture I have to admit was pretty much a very nice one.
In the spirit of reciprocity, I head into the kitchen and start a pot of coffee. Yes, I am making the coffee for myself, too, but also for Evan. Surely the making of coffee for someone while they are still sleeping counts as something nice? I stand and stare at the coffee as it drips into the pot, and as soon as I’ve prepared a mug for myself, I bring it over to my desk.
I shuffle through the mail that has piled up over the week, not really expecting to find anything monumental, mail always being such a letdown. Then my eyes fall on a glossy postcard. Suddenly, I have this really fleeting feeling—one that’s already almost gone, which I guess is what makes it fleeting—that everything is about to change. I stare at the postcard: it has a bright blue background with green lettering that says, across the top, THE NEW SCHOOL. The New School is downtown, and I think they have an undergraduate program, but mostly it’s this great center, this Pug Hill if you will, of continuing education. I took a cooking class there once; Pamela has taken writing classes there; and I know that my boss, May, who likes to dabble in decorative painting, once taught a decorative painting class there. Really, you can take any sort of class you could ever think of at The New School: journalism, acting, French, basket-weaving, anything.
I pick up the card and turn it over in my hand. I focus on the smaller, white words: It’s not too late to register for spring classes! A thought fills my head, a thought I’m not entirely sure I want there. I could take a public speaking class. I turn the card over again, to the other side, to see if maybe the thought will go away. It doesn’t. I go so far as to wonder if there might be a public speaking class that hasn’t started yet. I mean, clearly there must be lots of classes that haven’t started yet, otherwise, why even send the postcard? And then, for a moment, I feel just the slightest bit peaceful.
I hear Evan getting out of bed, making stretching noises; I listen to his feet shuffle across the floor and into the living room.
“Hey, Hope,” he says sleepily, yawning, I notice, without covering his mouth.
“Hey, I made coffee,” I announce, gesturing proudly in the direction of the kitchen. Evan heads in the direction of the coffee, makes himself a cup, and brings it out to the couch with him. I swivel around in my chair to face him.
“What do you want to do today?” he asks. I lean forward quickly and grab the remote from the coffee table. I turn on New York One to check the weather: thirty-seven degrees. Damn.
“Well, maybe let’s go to brunch and then see a movie?” I suggest. “It’s really cold out.”
“Nothing good is playing,” he counters back instantly, “and I have squash at four. Want to get brunch and walk over to the Boat Basin and then down by the water? Or maybe,” he says brightly, a lightbulb popping up over his head, “there’s still some snow on the ground, maybe we could walk around the park and see if we can watch the kids sledding?”
“Watch sledding?” I repeat, with very little enthusiasm.
“Yeah, it’ll be fun.”
It occurs to me that if it turns out I’m actually more Catholic than I am Jewish, if the Catholic part actually wins out in the end and my eternal soul winds up in hell (for, let’s say, being a completely sulky and unenthusiastic girlfriend) then that hell for me will be to spend all eternity with someone whose idea of fun is to freeze his ass off in Central Park WATCHING OTHER PEOPLE SLEDDING!
“Ummm,” I say, “What about we get some brunch, and then maybe do you want to go to that place on Amsterdam where you can paint pottery?” I do not actually think this is something that Evan would like to do; I am more just trying to make a point.
Evan doesn’t say anything. Evan just looks at me in much the same way as he looks at me when I’ve just ordered a white wine spritzer. I look down at the card in my hand.
“What’s that?” he asks. “It’s nothing,” I say, tossing the postcard back onto the stack of mail. “Do you want to go to Columbus Bakery and then we’ll play the rest of the day by ear? Let’s do that, that sounds like a good plan,” I suggest with what I hope is a tone of finality.
“And then do you want to go for a walk in the park before my squash game?” Evan, as you may have noticed, is not so great at dropping things.
I exhale heavily before answering back, “Why don’t we play that part by ear?”
Right, dropping things; I might not be so good at that either.
After brunch at Columbus Bakery, Evan and I spent an hour walking around in the park before his squash game. Due to the fact that it had warmed up considerably, combined with the fact that I wore five thousand layers, it was not as cold as I was worrying it would be. During what had to be our millionth long, purposeful walk in the cold, I even briefly considered the possibility that I may envision things (public speaking excepted, of course) to be worse than they actually are. Later, when Evan headed over to the east side for his squash game, I waited until he was out of sight, and headed that way, too. Though I headed east for a very different reason: not to go to The Union Club, but to go to Pug Hill.
As I arrive at Pug Hill, there are actually five or six people here, their pugs all running around in a jumble. All the pugs are in blankets, coats, and sweaters, which sometimes makes it harder to tell who is who. Before I can really look at anything else, before I can pay any sort of attention to all the other wonderful pugs, I look over toward the pine tree. There, sitting on one hip, with his legs splayed jauntily out to the side, proudly showing off his rounded belly, is my favorite pug. Even though he’s in a bright green sweater, I recognize him. He’s a black pug. Black pugs, just so you know, are my favorite kind of pugs. Black pugs, if you ask me (and really, at this point, who else are you going to ask?) are the very best kind of pugs. When I get a pug, I often think, it’ll be a black one. This pug, my favorite, he’s also so much smaller than the other pugs; his name is Kermit. Kermit, as much as he reminds me of happiness, reminds me of my parents’ dog, Annabelle, whom, by the way, I also adore. Annabelle is a French bulldog, but secretly I think she might be a magical black-and-white spotted pug. Just like Annabelle, little Kermit, this little black pug that I adore, is very rough-and-tumble and always looking for an adventure, though he always manages to hold his own.
But right now, Kermit isn’t cruising with the other pugs, all of whom are running in circles around each other at the other end of the clearing. Right now, Kermit is just sitting peacefully, right by the pine tree, in this way that makes me think he’s waiting for me. I walk toward him.
“Hi, Kermit,” I say, leaning down to pet him. He tilts his head to one side, a bit of his pink tongue slipping out the other side. He looks up at me and fixes me in his mesmerizing gaze. I like to believe he’s smiling at me, just as I like to believe that sometimes he waits for me, right here by the pine tree. I tilt my head in the same direction as Kermit’s and smile back at him. Kermit snorts at me jubilantly, wiggles his curled piglet tail, and dashes off. And just like that, just as I always do when I see a pug, I feel calmer, better than I did before. I feel free.
I watch happily as Kermit’s tail bounds in the direction of his owner. I watch, still happily, but also a bit enviously as Kermit’s owner reaches down to clip a leash to Kermit’s harness. Kermit flattens his ears and coyly shrinks away from the leash, compacting himself into a much smaller pug than he already is. Kermit, you can tell, doesn’t want to leave. But even though Kermit’s owner, at present, is taking him away, it should be noted that Kermit’s owner is one of the cool owners, one of the owners who rarely yells after his pug, who respects that Pug Hill time is important in so many ways, and that pugs need lots of things and that those things do not always include its person braying after it all afternoon.
As a rule though, I try not to pay too much attention to the owners; I try not to go out of my way to figure out which person belongs to which pug. I feel like it cheapens the whole thing, at the least, and at the very most it completely diminishes the serenity. Pug Hill is about so much for me, but I try not to have it be about the people.
I do not, especially not here, want to draw attention to myself. There’s part of me that worries a bit that if I did, all the Pug Hill people would start to know me, and think of me as weird, or as a dog stalker, or a little bit sad. I worry sometimes that they’d start to think of me as some crazy pug-watching lady who lives under Bow Bridge. And then, as the years wore on, I’d become a crazy pug-watching lady who lives under Bow Bridge and has no teeth. You can see, I imagine, why it is best that Pug Hill be about the pugs, much more than about the people. I have enough trouble in all the other places of my life with people. I think it’s important that I don’t have it here.
I head to the bench, take a seat, do my best to forget about having no teeth, and just watch the pugs for a while. I watch them as they spin themselves around in circles, approach one another, jerk back cautiously, and reapproach. I watch them as they stop—almost midstride—to lie on their stomachs, legs out in front, legs out behind as if they are covering a hole in the ground. I listen to them snort, and make other strange but endearing noises for which I’m not sure there are words. And for what’s left of the afternoon, I stay on the bench and soak up just a little of their unconditional sweetness.
My whole life I’ve always felt better in the presence of dogs. And luckily for me, there have always been dogs, even before I was born. Before I was born there was Morgan. Morgan was not a pug, but a Saint Bernard. As I stare out at all the pugs here today, I remember Morgan.
Morgan spent a tremendous amount of her life running through our neighborhood and jumping in other people’s swimming pools. My father spent a tremendous amount of Morgan’s life tracking her down. But when Morgan was actually at home, I always felt like she looked out for me. When I was a baby and Darcy came into my room and picked me up out of my crib and dropped me on the floor, it was Morgan who barked to wake my parents, even before I had started crying. I always think she must have known what I was up against, being up against Darcy. And later, Morgan used to sit with me for hours on the yellow shag carpet in my room, letting me stick pieces of yarn up her nose.
When the sky starts to get dark, I take one last look out at the pugs, before I reluctantly start to head back to the west side. As I pass the playground that’s right there, right when you walk out of the park, I pause for a moment to look at the pewter metal plaque by its gate: THE DIANA ROSS PLAYGROUND. Suddenly, song lyrics pop into my head like so many sequin-clad Supremes: Set me free why don’t you, babe? Get out my life why don’t you, babe? I think I know why. As I cross Central Park West though, I wonder if I’ve even got it right, wonder, Did Diana Ross even sing that?
When I get to Columbus Avenue, instead of heading to my apartment, I keep walking west, over to Broadway. I have decided to fight with the hysterical, asylum-bound people who like to shop at Fairway on Sunday evening. Fairway, in case you don’t know, is this Upper West Side market where they have just about everything edible you could ever think of, and also, you can get a good deal there. Because of that combination, it is the most crowded, frantic market in all of New York. Sometimes, even, I imagine Fairway to be the most frantic market, with the most unpleasant clientele, in all the world. Though I’m probably wrong about that. Being generally more interested in peace and quiet than I am interested in a good price on my produce, I don’t go to Fairway very often. Pretty much, I can’t handle Fairway, but after a while with the pugs, I think it will be easier.
