It became clear after only a day or two—despite my mother’s attempts to track down last year’s feckless, dog-abandoning renters—that we now had a dog. Murphy had settled in, to the delight of my sister. Surprisingly, though, it was my father that the dog really seemed to connect with. When I left for work—always biking now, unless it looked like rain—he was usually on my dad’s lap, looking at his computer screen as though he understood what was happening, and he usually reclaimed his spot after dinner as well. I’d even caught my mother patting Murphy’s head the other day when she thought that nobody was watching. And to an outside observer, Warren would appear to be the dog’s biggest fan—nearly every day he bought Murphy more treats, another squeaky toy, extra rawhide bones. But I knew that this, like his sudden love for the veterinary sciences, had nothing to do with affection for the dog and everything to do with Wendy, the girl who worked at Doggone It!.
“And—” Warren started, as I pushed myself up on my elbows and shook my head at him.
“No,” I said firmly, pushing my sunglasses up on top of my head. “No more vet facts. I’ve reached my limit. Go torment Gelsey.”
Warren looked offended for a second, but then just sighed and shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, kicking at the water’s surface. “She’s off with her other half.”
I smiled as I lay back down on my towel. Gelsey and Nora had become a unit quickly, which seemed to make her parents very happy. They’d explained, one night as they came over to say hello and collect her, that they’d been working toward a script deadline and hadn’t been able to spend much time entertaining her. But this was no longer an issue. Gelsey and Nora had become pretty much inseparable after that first day. They’d arranged to be in the same tennis group, and when they weren’t tormenting their tennis instructors, they were riding their bikes in tandem, heading out in the morning, to the pool or the beach. Every night, Gelsey was burbling over with things that Nora had said, facts about Nora’s life in Los Angeles, reports of their adventures. As I listened at dinner, I realized that Gelsey finally had her first best friend. “Then go tell Mom or Dad,” I said to Warren, as I turned my head to the side and closed my eyes. “Because I’m done.”
The beep-beep-beep of a truck backing up sounded, and I sat up straight and looked back toward the driveway, even though not much of it could be seen through the screened-in porch. “FedEx?” I asked, as Warren turned and squinted.
“UPS,” he said, shaking his head. “FedEx was here this morning.”
In addition to his work packages, my father had started ordering things like crazy, and was getting a lot of deliveries. It seemed like every day, multiple packages arrived—books, DVDs, chocolates from Belgium, steaks from Omaha packed in dry ice. He’d continued to get up early, and we’d had two more diner breakfasts, complete with our question quiz. (I’d learned that he had dreamed of being an astronaut when he was little, that the food he hated most in the world was lima beans, and that he’d gone to a ballet every night for a month after meeting my mother, to catch up.) Every night after dinner, we all gathered in the family room and watched a movie, and he was usually still up by the time I went to bed, reading a book, surrounded by an ever-growing stack of them.
I’d been unable to fall asleep a few nights before, and had gone out to the kitchen to get a drink of water, more because I was bored than thirsty, and had found my dad stretched out on one of the couches, the embers of a dying fire still crackling a little in the fireplace. The dog was sleeping on his feet, and he had his reading glasses on and a thick book propped up against his chest.
“Hi,” I whispered, and my dad turned his head and smiled when he saw me, pulling his glasses off.
“Hi, kid,” he said quietly. “Can’t sleep?”
I shook my head and crossed to sit on the couch across from his, leaning forward to try to see his book. “What are you reading?” I asked.
“T.S. Eliot,” he said, holding it up for me. The cover showed a black-and-white photo of a mournful-looking man. “Ever read it?” I shook my head. He settled the book on his chest again. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” he said. “I remember it was my favorite in college.” He settled his glasses on the bridge of his nose again and squinted at the text. “I can no longer remember why, exactly, it was my favorite in college.”