Laura Caldwell - The Dog Park

Suddenly, there was a crack of thunder, and a summer storm started pounding the windows, the room darkening. But strangely, neither of us moved. Sebastian’s eyes kept sweeping the room, quickly taking stock the way he always did, taking mental notes. His eyes stopped when they reached mine, and again neither of us moved. An energy seemed to hold us there, one that felt both powerful and calm, no anger bubbling around the edges.

We were, I felt in that instant, observing a marriage that once was.

He uncrossed his leg and nodded at his lap.

A mix of surprise and longing arose within me. That nod was what Sebastian used to do when he wanted me to sit on his lap. Often the reason was to discuss something, other times it was because he wanted to kiss me. I didn’t know which reason was applicable here. I hesitated.

“Jess,” he said in a voice that was tired but caring.

I walked across the room and perched on his legs, a movement that felt so familiar it caused an ache. Sebastian felt warm. He smelled faintly of the fragrance he wore that was part leather, part something like lavender. That scent alone had made me swoon many a time. I leaned back a little.

“You know what this reminds me of?” he said. “Block Island.”

I took a breath, emotions coursing through me. Block Island was where I first told him I loved him.

I had actually known that I loved him just a few months after meeting him, but I kept quiet. Turns out I didn’t have to wait long. Just a few weeks after my realization, we were at a party and he stopped me when I came out of the bathroom, no one else in the hallway. “I love you, you know. So much.”

I pretended to ruminate upon that revelation, said I needed to warm up to the idea of love. Technically, it was true. Because I knew—all too well—the destruction that could result from love.

But then one summer night, I returned the sentiment. We were lying in a rented room in Block Island—sandy sheets, candles in hurricane lamps—and I said it into his chest. “I love you, too.”

He was so happy. He squeezed me hard. He kissed me on the top of my head, then pulled me up and kissed my forehead, then my eyes, then my mouth. We murmured the words to each other over and over.

Soon after, he fell asleep quickly, as if hearing those words from me had finally allowed him to relax. I watched as his sable brown eyelashes fluttered with dreams, and it hit me. I will lose him.

I understood, in that moment, or maybe I should say that I remembered, that all things end, especially good things. At some point, either Sebastian would die or I would or we would break up. At some point, I would lose him. That recognition cut sharply through me, so exquisitely painful.

Tears sprang from my eyes that night on Block Island. I choked on a quick-rising sob.

“What?” Sebastian said, waking fast. A confused look around, his journalist eyes taking in and registering the details of where, what, who and when.

His eyes had looked at me, those eyes the same chestnuty-sable color as his lashes. “What is it, baby?” he said.

I took a deep breath, let it fly. I explained what I was thinking, feeling, realizing, about the eventual end of us.

He pulled me tight to him again. He brushed my bangs off my forehead and kissed my temples, my eyes. “You won’t lose me,” he said.

I knew that Sebastian meant what he’d said. I also knew that, unintentionally, he’d been lying.

“Block Island was great,” I said now, in my apartment. I stood up.

Block Island is over. And I am alive without you.

After a moment, Sebastian stood, too. He walked to the end of the folding table and fingered the various collars, leashes, embellishments.

He held up a pink string of flowers that would be placed on a white collar for a teacup poodle. “Promise me,” he said, “that you won’t put this on Baxy’s collar.”

“I promise.”

“So you like doing this?” Sebastian gestured with his hand at the dog accoutrements across the table.

“I don’t like it,” I said.

He looked at me, raised his eyebrows.

“I love it.”

Sebastian sighed. “I thought you were going to say that.”

“Why the disappointment?”

He breathed out heavily—not as weary as his sigh, but close.

“Seriously, Sebastian, what’s your problem with this?”

He shook his head.

“Really,” I said, “what is it?”

“No problem,” he said. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’m going to call Paul, the producer, and I’m going to tell him to run the show.”

10

Later I would think about how my showing Sebastian my dogwear business convinced him to call his friend the news producer. Therefore, I realized, I had essentially started my own demise—the outing of the past Jess behind the present one.

But it wasn’t that first national news piece that did it. Destruction takes a little while.

The night Baxter was on the national news, a few days after the phone call, Sebastian dropped Baxter off because I needed him to try on dogwear.

“I’ll get him tomorrow afternoon,” Sebastian said.

“Sure. Thanks for doing this.”

“Sure,” he echoed.

Awkward silence seemed to course through the kitchen.

“So Baxter is on the news tonight.” I figured he’d remember, but I wanted to see his reaction.

His face was neutral. “Yeah. I’m going to be at my mom’s.”

“Tell her hi.”

Sebastian nodded.

I looked at my watch. “Damn, it’s on soon.”

He glanced at his phone then. “Shit.” He sighed. “My mom has all her sisters coming over.” Sebastian loved his four aunts, but they could be a lot to take when they were all together.

“That’ll be fun,” I said.

He groaned. “I’m so tired from writing all day. I just don’t know if I can handle the coven.” His mom had the maiden name of Carey, so the sisters called themselves Carey’s Coven.

“You can watch it here,” I said.

Pause. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And so Sebastian and I watched the news piece together at my place, the place that had once been ours.

The last time we’d shared an evening in the condo, or at least attempted to share, was the night we got divorced. Neither of us wanted to be alone, but we didn’t want to be with anyone else, either. Our attorney had said it would be a simple matter. You’ll just step up to the bench and answer, “Yes.”

But the lawyer hadn’t told us, or maybe he hadn’t understood, how painful it was to hear a judge, in a bored tone, say, The spouses’ irreconcilable differences have caused an irretrievable breakdown of their marriage.

From the corner of my eye I’d seen something like a wince from Sebastian when the judge had said that. I’d looked over and saw he was squeezing his eyes shut. Sebastian, the man who didn’t close his eyes to combat and war and gruesome situations, had clamped his eyes shut, as if to ward off tears or pain.

But the anguish had kept coming as the judge had intoned, The court determines that efforts at reconciliation have failed.

I’d closed my eyes then, too, trying to stop the questions in my own voice streaming through my head—Did I make the best effort possible? Could we put it back together? Did we fail? Did I fail?

We’d both been shocked at how simple the proceedings ended up being, when nothing about our marriage had been simple.

But that night when Baxter was on the news, everything was just...lighter. Sebastian’s latest article, a piece on militias in Libya, had just released, and the story garnered raves and much attention, making him relaxed, open. And I was certainly in a much better mood than the night we got divorced. And then there was our little boy—our Baxy—on TV, bounding across a street and saving a little girl in a yellow dress.