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“One point seven miles.”
This caught his attention. “Really,” he said, looking slightly less tragic. “How long did that take you?”
“Oh, gosh, let’s see now,” I answered. “Um, about twenty-eight minutes.”
His laughter bounced off the walls, and I grinned along with him.
“Christ, Millie, I can crawl faster than that.”
“Ha, ha, gosh, you’re so funny, you stupid jock. I’m just starting, you know.”
Our wings arrived, and I, who had worked so very hard that day, felt that surely I deserved at least eight of them. We slurped our way through the food as old pals can, and I watched him for signs of suicidality or vegetative depression. None so far.
Sam was pretty attractive. Not the masculine perfection that was Joe, who had been the subject of at least three catfights in which the authorities had been called. Sam was averagely clean-cut, American attractive, tall and lean, light brown hair going to gray, beautiful, sad hazel eyes with crinkles at the corners. Gentle voice, nice smile. He was such a kind man, so sweet and hardworking. And yes, I had a master plan to fix his life, bring him happiness and undo some of the misery my sister had wrought. But I had to do this gently, because, after all, the poor guy had only been divorced a few hours.
“How’s your dad?” Sam asked as the waitress cleared our plates.
“Dad’s okay. You know. He’s still furious with, uh, Trish, but uh, you know how much he loves you.” Whoops! I didn’t mean to mention the T word. Sam grunted in response.
“So, Sam, how are you doing?” I asked in my best compassionate-doctor voice. He smiled sadly, tragically. I clenched my teeth hard for a minute.
“I’m okay, I guess.” He took a deep breath and another swig of beer, then rubbed his palms on his jeans. “It’s just that…well, I keep wondering what I did wrong. I never saw it coming.”
“Really?”
“Well, I mean, I knew she wasn’t happy. Neither of us was, but we weren’t exactly miserable, either.”
“Why wasn’t she happy?” I asked curiously.
“I don’t know! Don’t you guys talk about stuff like that? Ask her. She’s your sister.” Sam shot me an irritated glance, then began picking at the label on his beer bottle.
“Well, Trish and I aren’t exactly close,” I murmured. “I didn’t mean to upset you, big guy. It’s just…I don’t know, a marriage doesn’t fall apart just like that, does it?”
Sam sighed. “Probably not. She complained about me working too much, but, well, we had lots of bills. And she was happy to spend whatever I brought in.”
True enough. My sister liked nice things, a term she used to describe her spending habits. Others might use foolish or irresponsible.
“And…I don’t know, Millie. We got to a point where we knew things weren’t really working, but we didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t anything concrete, just this sense of things not being…right. I didn’t know how to fix it, so I basically just ignored it until the boyfriend came along.”
That was probably the longest paragraph I’d ever heard Sam utter, and he seemed to regret saying it. He took a long pull from his beer, then said, “It’s weird not to be married anymore. I’ve always been married, you know?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’ll take some time.” Six months and counting, I added silently. “And as for Trish, well, she’s just…she’s always wanted so much,” I finished lamely. “She’s kidding herself if she thinks she’s going to be happy with Mr. New Jersey.”
“Right,” Sam said tersely. I winced and made a mental note to avoid mentioning Trish’s lover.
“Guess what?” I said. “I’m getting a dog.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yup. I think I’ll name him Sam.”
He smiled. “It’s good to have you back on the Cape, Millie.”
I smiled back, and we chewed our celery sticks without further discussion, listening to the music and watching a game of darts. Then Sam glanced up. “Oh, hey, Joe,” he said casually.
My heart froze, my face froze, my mind—yes, you guessed it—froze. I looked up. And there he was.
It was like a play, when the spotlight shines only on the leading man. Joe Carpenter stood at our table, smiling down at us, dimples flirting, white teeth gleaming. Lust and panic flooded my veins in equal measure.
“Hey, Joe,” I said, my heart suddenly pounding, mouth dry.
“Hey, guys. Mind if I sit down a sec?” Joe asked, pulling a chair around and straddling it. He wore faded blue jeans, a flannel shirt and work boots, and I swear to you, he was the most desirable and delicious man God ever made, thank you, Father, thank you, Son, thank you, Holy Spirit.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Sam answered. “What are you doing so far from home?”
“Oh, just out on a date,” Joe replied, turning his beautiful, smiling green eyes to me. “Hey, Millie.”
“Hey, Joe,” I said again, wracking my brain for a clever comment.
“What about you two?” Joe asked. “What are you doing up here? Arresting someone, Sam?”
My heart thudded so hard my chest hurt. Why hadn’t I put on makeup? Why wasn’t I wearing something other than a Holy Cross sweatshirt? Did I have on earrings? Was chicken wing stuck in my teeth? Trying to save Sam from having to explain that this was Divorce Day and also to say something adorably memorable, I fumbled for an answer.
“Oh, we heard this place had good food,” I said.
Then, walking across the room, hips swaying, blond hair flowing as if in a shampoo commercial, came Joe’s date. Tall. Skinny. Big boobs despite the skinniness, their cantaloupe-like roundness announcing them as store-bought. Unlike me, she seemed to know what to wear to a bar in Provincetown: she had on a wide-necked shirt and interesting earrings that matched the blue in her blouse and, no doubt, her eyes.
“There you are,” she said, placing a hand on Joe’s shoulder in a statement of ownership. Yes, I could now see that her eyes were indeed blue—Caribbean-blue, I believe Bausch & Lomb called them.
“Oh, hey,” Joe said, grinning easily at the blond one, “let me introduce you. This is Sam, this is Millie, and this is Autumn.”
“Actually, it’s Summer,” she said with a glare. Sam swallowed a smile and I bit my lip.
“Right,” said Joe, unremorseful. “You’re just so pretty, I forgot for a minute.” Gross.
She bought it, gracing him with a tight smile. For us, she had nothing.
“Well,” said Sam. “We’ll let you get back to your night. Nice meeting you, Summer,” he said, standing. “See you, Joe.”
I sat frozen for a moment. Was I going to have to stand? This would mean Joe and Summer would see that I was still chubby, the day’s run notwithstanding. But, no, gracious Joe also stood. He smiled down at me and I managed to smile back.
“Bye,” I said.
“Bye, Millie,” he answered. Summer apparently didn’t think that a goodbye was necessary, for she just walked away, tiny little behind twitching.
I dragged my gaze away from Joe’s perfect backside and looked at the table. Say something, I commanded myself, not wanting Sam to see the love I had for Joe written all over my face. Feigning normalcy, I asked Sam if he wanted another beer.
While seeing Joe with another woman never felt good, it was certainly not uncommon. For sixteen years now, I had watched him with other women, and I didn’t expect that someone as gorgeous, sweet and hardworking as Joe would be alone. Of course, it bothered me a little. He was always with someone like Summer, someone very pretty and not really nice. These relationships never seemed to last.
I wholeheartedly believed that once I had Joe’s attention, he would see in me all that he had been missing with other women. I was smart, nice, funny, undemanding. And let’s not forget I was a doctor, for crying out loud, helping the sick, comforting their families, and, once in a while, saving a life! A pretty cool job, if I did say so. Once I became as attractive as I could become (short of plastic surgery and diuretics), Joe would finally see me as something more than an old classmate and fall in love with me.
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.
To the Cape Cod Animal Shelter in Hyannis I went. I first stopped at one of those mega-stores for pets, where I purchased an adjustable-length collar with day-glow reflecting colors to save my pup from an accident. Along with this went a leash, a comfy cedar pillow bed that had Sweet Doggy Dreams printed all over it, and a two-sided ceramic doggy dish with blue-painted paw prints in it. Throw in a bottle of shampoo, some tick repellent, heartworm tablets and a book on dog training, and I had spent $167 before even laying eyes on my new pal.
The animal shelter was surprisingly benign. When you picture the pound, death row usually comes to mind. Poor, abandoned animals in too-small cages, making their last confessions to the priest…but this pound was not bad at all. While I waited in the sunny foyer, I talked to the adoption counselor and explained what I was looking for. She told me to go ahead and look around, and so I went to where the dogs were kept.
A cacophony of barking, from savage snarling to high-pitched yipping, greeted me. The vast echoing room housed dozens of doomed doggies, each in its own cage. Tears welled in my eyes as I passed the inmates. It was death row. Doggy death row. Poor darlings. A huge black-and-brown beast snarled at me, and my sympathy faded as I leaped away from his cage. There were quite a few of this type of dog: huge, muscled creatures with terrifying, feral mouths excellent for killing the addict who tried to get to my stash. Of course, as I was not a drug dealer, I didn’t really need such a creature. Now, there was a nice-looking pooch, a little mop kind of thing of indeterminate parentage. Whoops, large scaly patches on back. Not a Joe-magnet type of dog. In the next cage a Chihuahua mix, looking like a wingless bat, trembled and urinated in terror. Sorry, kid.
And then…there he was. My dog. As if waiting for me, he wagged his tail as he stood on his hind legs, front paws against the chain-link door. Mostly white with splotches of black, floppy ears, sweet, hopeful eyes…he looked like some combination of Border Collie and Lab. I put my hand up to his eagerly sniffing nose.
“Hi there, buddy,” I said. He licked my hand. Sold.
Of course, we had to spend some time in the Bonding Room before I could leave with my new best friend, but it was just a formality. We were in love. I filled out the paperwork and coughed up some more cash. An hour after meeting, Digger and I were walking to my car. He was two years old, which meant he was fully grown, friendly, good with kids, and he was adorable. Wagging, wriggling, licking, Digger was my very own.
He loved the car. He was so excited that he peed on the passenger seat as we drove out of the parking lot.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NEXT STEP IN THE Plan to Get Joe was the all-important makeover. This would serve two purposes: one, obviously, to make me more attractive to Joe; and two, to make me look more professional at the clinic. In Boston, I hadn’t cared too much about how I’d looked, buying bland, comfortable clothes, favoring my ponytail for its ease and speed. But my attitude was different now. Some of the people I’d treat would become my clients, and I wanted to project a confident, professional demeanor. And of course, I wanted to be a babe. Dr. Babe.
Turning to the best possible source of a woman’s beauty—a gay man—I called my dear old friend, Curtis.
“I’m ready,” I told him.
“Thank God,” he replied.
Curtis and I had been pals since freshman year of college. He was from Nebraska, of all places, and I’d taken him home for Thanksgiving so he could see the ocean for the first time. He’d stood there, stunned and lovestruck, and hadn’t been back to the Cornhusker State for more than forty-eight hours since. At any rate, Curtis and his long-time partner, Mitch, had joyfully agreed to become my style consultants. These guys made the Fab Five seem like Neanderthals: Curtis’s fair-haired, blue-eyed-angel looks set off his wicked sense of humor, while Mitch’s dark, Byronesque beauty and uppercrust accent suggested generations of robber barons and too many Cary Grant movies. They looked perfect together, and, as far as I could see, they were. Their relationship was so blissful and solid and charming that everyone who saw them together felt happy inside, except for the zipperheads who beat them up periodically if they ventured too far from home.
Since college, Curtis and Mitch had lived in Provincetown, that mecca of homosexual freedom, beautiful gardens, charming shops and fabulous food. The boys owned and operated the Pink Peacock, a beautiful bed-and-breakfast that showcased their genius for interior design. And, true to stereotype, Curtis and Mitch adored women and absolutely reeked of good taste in all matters related to the female form. I had no compunction about placing myself in their well-manicured hands.
So it was that on a cold, blustery Wednesday, I drove up to P-town in my rapidly aging Honda. The drive was glorious, a straight shot up Route 6, the highway that runs down the middle of the Cape. I passed groves of stunted pitch pines and postcard views of salt marshes, zooming along in fourth—my overdrive had never worked—joyfully singing at the top of my lungs to “Rosalita” by my other boyfriend, Bruce Springsteen.
I turned off Route 6, passed the rows of cheerful beachside cottages and navigated down Commercial Street, where galleries and cafés hugged the narrow road. Parking was no problem this early in the season, and I easily found the salon recommended by Curtis and Mitch. The boys themselves frequented this place, and they had gorgeous, lustrous hair, robust cuticles and no visible pores.
Inside, the walls glowed a gentle apricot, and the soothing tones of classical piano music drifted out of discreet speakers. The guys were waiting for me. Their friend Lucien was the owner of the salon and had agreed to “do” me personally, an offer that Curtis and Mitch viewed as quite miraculous. As soon as I walked in, the three gay men descended upon me, clucking as if I had just arisen from my deathbed. I couldn’t blame them. A Boston University sweatshirt and jeans so old they were nearly white did not exemplify the height of gay male fashion.
