In 2023 I stood outside what was clearly a terrible piece of property on Commercial Street in Provincetown, Cape Cod. I was with my son, my dog, and a friend and his family. Walking up to it, my son said, “Mom, this is your house,” and I knew he was right.

The house, a former painter’s studio, had never had central systems of any kind other than indoor plumbing. It had space heaters embedded in the wall in two places, but they didn’t work. There was a water heater on the second floor, which at some point had caught fire. The flames had apparently extinguished themselves out of ennui, but the closet that held it was alligator-charred, ceiling to floor. Later, when we pulled off the cladding and the wall board in the single, first-floor room, we’d find that few of the rotted studs still reached the floor, which rested on only a dozen-or-so concrete blocks in the sand. How the thing had remained standing since 1946 was a mystery, and defied physics.

But I knew my dog Nellie, who I usually referred to as the Beagz, and I would live in that house together someday. I would write, and she would pass judgement on those who paraded by. We’d welcome friends of all kinds, and we’d keep each other company in our dotage.

The day before I signed the papers on the house, Nellie died. It had been a very rough few years, but that blow nearly took me down. She had been there through all the heartache and betrayal, endless sickness and sorrow, the fear and the fury. When I got the call that one son was thinking of ending his own life, she slept on his couch with me, no sleeping, really, as we desperately worked to keep him alive. When my knee was replaced she was my rehab partner and pain soother. When my illness was at its worst, before they’d figured out what it was, I would come-to on the floor, the Beagz sniffing my face, booping me awake, questioning my decision to “different” so incorrectly. When COVID hit, the kids sequestered with their friends and partners, my father housed with his trollop and her family, and I had the beagle1. When I started writing my book, started my new writing life, she lay snoring on the window seat next to me, a steady hum of reassurance and company. The idea of moving forward without my constant friend and only reliable ally seemed impossible.

The Provincetown construction moved ahead, no original stick was left standing, and a new, beautiful house grew in its place. I had a clear vision of what I wanted, and my friend Bob, a brilliant builder, knew how to make it all happen. The steel cabinets I’d pictured came to fruition through a metal worker in New York. Bob’s signature floating stairs and flush moldings gave the small house the clean, open look it needed. I found just the right furniture. I commissioned cobblestone patios and a stone wall, miniatures reminiscent of the plazas in Spain and Portugal for the spaces outside. I painted my doors a citron yellow/green that still delights me every time I approach. I planted flowering trees—pink cherry in front, white dogwood in back— yellow roses, and an orange-bark Stewartia for cinnamon colors in the fall. But even before I decided on all that, I knew I had to have one thing here for the place to be home, so I started looking for a sculptor that first year.

The first artist I found tried her best, but I realized, as we worked from photos, that it was impossible to convey Nellie’s Nelliness while still expressing her beagleness. In the details she didn’t look much like a typical beagle, but she was pure beagle through and through. After months of trying, I decided to change my approach.

“Will you make me a beagle?” I wrote to Jim Sardonis. It was September of 2024. I’d found his work while searching online with a friend, and saw an incredible sculpture of a Labrador running through a fence.

“I made a 6 1/2 foot one for a veterinary school. Would you be interested in something like that?”

Don’t think I didn’t think about it.

But last week Jim and Glenn, who runs the foundry and cast the sculpture, arrived from Vermont with my only slightly larger than life-sized girl, to be installed on the front wall.

There she now lives, joyously beagling, tail up in full, welcoming howl. The day after her arrival a nor’easter hit, with fifty-five mile per hour winds and driving rain. Beagle statue guilt was not something I’d considered, but when I looked outside that first night, anxious that she was somehow not OK, she was standing strong, enthusiastically howling into the gale.

She looks like Alice, and she has the spirit of The Beagz and all of both dogs’ ancestors. She is perfect.

As soon as the weather cleared the posing began. First, a fluffy white thing’s mother put treats in the Beagz’ mouth for her photo op. Next came a somber Chihuahua, whose dad desperately pleaded with him to smile, just once. It didn’t happen.

In the early morning I saw a mother fox on her hind legs, sniffing the statue. “What fresh hell is this,” I could almost hear, “All the tourists with their Frenchies aren’t bad enough?”

As I read in the sun on the front patio I hear footsteps scrape to a stop, then, often, “Is that the model?” as they point from Alice to the statue.2

“Her sister,” I say. They nod in understanding, sometimes with an undulating, “Awww.”

That she is someone is never in question.

The howling didn’t start until five days in; first a small boy howled a few times, full-throated, as he ran past. About an hour later, as we were watching a movie in the living room, we heard a grown man do the same thing. Then, later that evening, another.

Everyone who sees her smiles3, and that is the spirit and gift that Nellie really shared. People passing by are drawn to her, with or without dogs. Some smile a little wistfully, perhaps far from home, here working for the summer, finding comfort in her happy energy. Most break out in broad grins. They walk over and pet her, sometimes in an embrace, sometimes with a quick, glancing pat. It’ll be fun to see which parts of her become buffed shiny from all the hands touching her.

A neighbor walked by yesterday as I was sitting outside. “I love the statue!” he said, “Is that her,” he said, pointing at Alice, “or someone gone?”

“Someone gone,” I said.

But someone now returned, home at last to our cottage by the sea.

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