“That’s so nice,” I say. “Are you up for that? I bet you are.”
“I’m up for it,” he says.
I don’t tell him the secret that I know—that Jessica is already pregnant. There’s a baby coming in about eight and a half months. Yeah, she knew early. She’s one of those women who knows she’s conceived the moment she gets up from the bed, she told me. She’s keeping it from Sammy, she says, until she’s absolutely sure everything’s okay.
And I have another secret, too. Andrew’s already gone out and bought her a new ring. He says the old wedding ring might have to be put down, like a sick animal. It didn’t do its job so great.
The new ring is going to be one you can count on for life.
Will that work? What do I know? All I know is that sometimes miracles simply show up, and you have to take them at face value. What really happened is probably something that Jessica can’t put into words: she just made up her mind to love him again.
Maybe it was timing, or, in some weird way, it could have even been the waitress showing up at Thanksgiving. But I can’t rule out that it was the spell I did.
I wonder if Blix had these doubts. Or if she just cast the spells and asked for the miracles, and then sat back and welcomed anything that came. Maybe this is how the whole system works. You put the wish out there, and then it takes the entire universe operating on your behalf to get it to come true.
If Blix’s idea was to put Patrick and me together, though, she’s not done so well. I’m awaiting an offer on the house, and right now there’s a U-Haul truck parked out in front of the building that’s saying that sometimes things simply don’t work out.
Patrick is getting ready to leave.
Around one o’clock, Sammy and I are bored with playing checkers, doing puzzles, and baking cookies, and I can no longer stand to see that truck sitting there, so we take Bedford out to the park. It’s still snowing, but we bundle up. Jessica lends me her snow pants and a parka and a scarf. She’s decided she’ll stay home and do the lie-about-the-house-napping-and-gestating routine. Sammy gets his gear all together, his snow saucer and his mittens and hat and scarf. Winter requires so much stuff. I don’t know how these Northerners keep track of it all.
We walk over to Prospect Park with Bedford on his leash. He’s fascinated by snow. He wants to run around in circles and bark at the snowflakes. He’s really lost his little doggie mind, such as it is, and he’s dragging me along, trying to make me go into the street so he can chase more flakes. As for me, I may be just as bad. I can’t get over the way the snow feels landing on my nose and face. These are big, fat flakes, drifting down to earth looking like jagged pieces of lace, all clumped together. Soft and delicate, melting on impact.
“The world looks so different,” I keep exclaiming. “It’s like it got all cleaned up.”
Sammy shows me where the best sledding hill is, and we take turns, one of us holding the leash while the other rides the saucer down the slope. Every time I get myself on the saucer, tucking in my legs and arms and holding on for dear life, the pan spins me around, and I always seem to go down the hill backward, screaming and laughing and closing my eyes.
“If you lean the other way, you won’t go backward!” Sammy calls. “Here, lean!”
“I don’t know what you meeeeeeeeeean!” I scream, because I’ve hit an icy patch and I’m careening across the whole length of the park. “Heelllllllllp!”
He comes running alongside me, laughing and saying, “Lean left, Marnie! Lean to the left! I mean, the other left! Lean to the other left!”
I wipe out on the path, and I’m lying there, glad to finally be at a stop, sprawled out on my back staring up at the sky, feeling the snow coming down right in my face, landing on my mouth and nose and eyes. I can’t stop laughing.
“Get out of the way! MARNIE! Here comes somebody!” Sammy is yelling, and I jump up just in time to avoid being hit by a demon in a red snowsuit screeching as she barely misses me, going hundreds of miles per hour. The wind whistles past me as she breaks the sound barrier.
“Oh my God! How am I ever going to not want to do this every day? This is what winter is about? Why didn’t anybody ever tell me the good parts?” I ask him. We link arms and go trudging up the hill, back to the line again.
We’re standing in line—on line—and suddenly I look around. “Wait! Where’s Bedford?”
“Oh, no!” says Sammy. “Where did he go? I went to help you, and I—”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll go find him. You stay on the snow pan.”
“No, I’m coming with you,” he says. His face has gone pale.
We thread our way through the crowds of people all coming to sled and play, calling his name. There’s a German shepherd roaming free, and a golden retriever who’s walking along between some twins like he’s their supervisor. No Bedford. A poodle comes by in a fussy sweater. And two dachshunds in down jackets.
“Bedford! BEDFORD! Here, boy!” I call. It’s snowing harder now, and I can’t see quite as far as I want to.
Sammy looks like he’s about to cry. “This is my fault. I lost him. I lost your dog.”
“It’s fine. We’ll find him. Let’s go down this other street. Maybe he left the park and started for home.”
“Yeah, dogs always know the way home,” he says. “I heard that somewhere.”
I don’t want to say that I’m not so sure that’s true of Bedford. He’s been a freelance dog since long before he belonged to me. He may not really know for sure where his home is, or even that he belongs with me. Maybe he met some nice people at the park and trotted off with them because they had fried chicken or something. I may never see him again, and I won’t know if he left me for a ham sandwich, or if he got taken to the pound.
I get out my cell phone and call Jessica. “Are you feeling okay?” I ask when she answers.
“I’m now lying about, being lazy,” she says. “What are you doing?”
“Well, we’re having a fine old time, but Bedford seems to have gone missing. Would you mind looking outside and seeing if you can spot his lovely countenance? Sammy has a theory that dogs know to go home when they’re lost.”
After a while, she comes back to the phone. “No sign of him. I’ll ask Patrick if he’s seen him and I’ll call you back.”
“Oh, don’t bother Patrick. He doesn’t even like Bedford. I’m sure he hasn’t seen him.”
“Well,” she says. “Okay.”
“I’ll keep looking around here for a while, and then Sammy and I will come back. The wind’s coming up, and it’s getting kind of cold.”
“I can barely hear you, there’s so much noise from the wind,” she says.
“I know. But listen, my battery is about to die, so we’re going to keep searching and then we’ll come back . . .”
“Shall I send Andrew? Are you near the pond?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure exactly. But give me a little while to look before you send him.”
The phone goes dead.
“She hasn’t seen him?” asks Sammy. His shoulders slump, but then he gathers himself up and starts calling again, “BEDFORD! BEDFORD!”