Page 43 of Look on the Bright Side

Joy had bought this house on impulse without even seeing it first. Misery-scrolling through Zillow one night, she’d typed in Cape Cod. Seen this house, called the listing agent, offered a couple hundred grand over asking price. She had plenty of money. The house had come furnished and decorated. The only other things that were new were the bed linens and towels. One day, she was in their brownstone in New York; the next day, she was here, like Dorothy dropped into Oz.

It was awful. In her grief and befuddlement, she couldn’t remember how to talk to people. She was fifty-eight, and without the most important person in her life. The first week had been murder, Joy crying almost nonstop, drinking wine at ten in the morning, ordering crap online for no reason. The second week, she went to the local pet shelter, adopted a puppy—a Cairn terrier mutt already named Connery—and then almost immediately regretted it. What did she know about dogs? Nothing. He ran around the house, barking, then peed on the kitchen floor, ate with such gusto that kibble flew, and wrestled with the curtains in the living room, tearing the bottoms to shreds. But that night, he slept in her bed, curled against her chin, his fur soaking up her tears of loneliness.

On Monday of Labor Day weekend, as the summer people left to return to their regular lives, Joy sat on the deck and looked out over the beach, so empty inside her heart felt like it was made of the thinnest, sharpest glass. Just two months ago, she’d had her brother. And not that long ago, she’d had Paulie and Abe and their beautiful life to share, their friends, their stories, their gossip and lives to enjoy, a delicious buffet that filled her up. Now there was nothing.

She was on her third martini (Smirnoff vodka poured into a glass, if that counted as a martini) when she heard yapping coming from the beach. Oh, goddamn it, the dog! She’d forgotten about him! What if he ran into the ocean and drowned or was eaten by a shark? Or a coyote? Or a bear? Were there bears on Cape Cod? She wasn’t sure. You know what? If she got him back, she’d return him. All she did was clutch him and cry, anyway. The shelter had suggested puppy training, but Joy could barely make it to the little market in town, let alone focus on teaching a puppy anything.

She ran crookedly down the long wooden boardwalk that connected her property to the beach, twisted her ankle, kept going. “Connery! Connery, honey! Come to Mommy! Oh, damn it all to hell, Connery, please!”

There he was, racing into the surf, then yapping at the waves. “Honey! You’ll get sucked out! Come back here!” Was there a ripped tide? Why did they call it that, anyway? Because it ripped you in half? Joy didn’t swim. She didn’t know these things. “Connery!”

Then she saw someone, a young woman with long blond hair, throwing a stick, which Connery chased and pounced on. “Hi,” the young woman called. “Is this your dog?” She bent over and scooped Connery into her arms.

“Yes! Oh, God, thank you!” Joy said, teetering on her kitten heels in the sand. “Connery, I was so worried!”

“What a sweetheart he is,” the woman said. She looked about twenty. “And he’s so good at fetch. You love this stick, don’t you, honey? Connery, you said his name was? That’s so cute. You’re a smart boy, Connery.”

“He is?”

“Oh, definitely. I’ve been playing with him for about half an hour. I was going to start knocking on doors to see whose he was, but we were having a lot of fun.” She smiled and handed the dog to Joy. “I’m Lark Smith,” she said. “One of the Smith kids? My mom owns Long Pond Arts, and my sister owns Open Book.” At Joy’s blank stare, she added, “The bookstore?”

“Oh. Right.” She was the prettiest person Joy had seen in real life.

Connery whined and leaned back toward the woman. Lark. Even her name was beautiful.

“I’m Joy Deveaux,” Joy blurted. “My brother died two months ago, and I just moved here and I don’t know anyone. I just bought this dog for company, but…” Tears rushed to her eyes, and she was horrified. “I’m still adjusting. My brother was my best friend.” Mama would be disgusted at her, spilling her guts to a stranger.

“Oh no!” said Lark. “I’m so sorry.”

“Would you come up to the house with me? I’m a little”—drunk—“unsteady. The fear, right? Are there sharks out here? I was so afraid Connery would run in the water and get eaten. Like in Jaws? The movie?”

The rest, as they said, was history. Lark came back to the house, accepted a glass of wine and sat in the living room with Joy, as Connery, now exhausted, curled on her lap. She was an intern, in her thirties (what skin-care line did she use?), still living with her parents. “Kind of hard to find a place on my own, and I don’t have a lot of time to look.”

“I have a guesthouse,” Joy said immediately. It had come with the property, though the main house had five bedrooms. Joy had only looked into the tiny cottage once. “You could have it. For free.”

“Oh, no, that’s crazy. You could get a bundle, renting that.” Lark smiled and petted the sleeping dog.

“But would they be nice? Would they like dogs? You could pay me something if you wanted.” Please say yes. “Connery already loves you, and you could help me train him. I don’t know anything about dogs.”

“We had a dog growing up,” Lark said. “I did love teaching him tricks. Mostly dumb stuff, like balancing a cookie on his nose and then flipping it into the air and catching it.”

“We can share Connery, then,” Joy said. “Joint custody. Please?” She looked at Lark, her pretty eyes and smooth hair. “Please say yes. I’ll give you a break on rent if you can give me some Botox once in a while. And some filler, since you’re a doctor and all that.”

“That’s way too generous of you,” Lark said.

“You’d be doing me a favor. I’m…” I’m not sure I can go on living this way. “My brother was all I had. We were so close, and I’m…I’m lost without him. I’ll leave you alone, I promise, but I’d be right here if you wanted company. Or food. Or to use the house or anything.”

Lark looked at her then, and Joy saw something she recognized. Sadness. For all her smiles and prettiness, Joy had the sudden feeling that Lark was, possibly, a little lost herself.

She moved in the next weekend. Some nights, Lark would come in after a hospital shift and tell Joy about her patients, why she wanted to become an oncologist. She told Joy about Justin, and tears had streamed down both women’s cheeks. “I’m okay,” Lark said. “I mean…I’m not, but I am.”

“I get it,” Joy said. “I totally do. Come on, let’s go get something to eat. My treat.”

Besides her sweetness (and excellence at dog training), Lark was…how to think this without sounding creepy?…Lark was like a Pinterest board come to life. The smooth waterfall of naturally blond hair. Green eyes with a golden starburst around the irises. (Joy’s eyes were brown, and there wasn’t a lot you could do to romanticize brown eyes.) Lark was tall and slim and had a hearty appetite, and when she and Joy ate together, Joy watched, fascinated, as Lark scarfed down a cheeseburger without bemoaning the fat or calories.

But there was also a sense of fragility about Lark. Joy recognized that glued-back-together look. But on Lark, even grief looked beautiful. She was everything Joy had once wanted to be. Had been obsessed with being.

Joy had fought her physical self since the age of eight onward, both self-obsessed and horribly insecure. Joy didn’t go to the mailbox or the operating room without a full face of makeup. She got her hair colored every four weeks, a manicure every ten days, a pedicure once a month, a spray tan every six weeks. She wore a peignoir around the house and didn’t own a pair of yoga pants or sweats, thanks to her brother being the kind of gay man who thought women were gorgeous, glam and mysterious and should dress the part at all times. She had spent a fortune on plastic surgery and upkeep over the years, from her first nose job at age seventeen, forging her mother’s signature on the consent form, Paulie driving her to the hospital and letting her spend the weekend at his apartment. Since then, Joy had lost count of the number of times she’d been under the knife. Boob jobs, lipo, butt lift, chin implants, eyelids, lip fillers, more lipo. The unfortunate result was that she now looked neither younger nor well rested…just like a woman who’d had a shit-ton of plastic surgery.

---