Gaits of Heaven (14 page)

If you’re stuck with inadequate parents, the situation is
more hopeful than it might seem. There’s always psychotherapy, but it has its limits, including what are called “boundaries,” which good therapists set and maintain. Your fifty-minute session is your time, and unless you are in a dreadful crisis, you are supposed to express and satisfy all your psychotherapeutic needs in your therapy hour, and you are definitively not supposed to keep pestering your therapist with phone calls or otherwise to encroach on time that doesn’t belong to you. The relationship is supposed to be professional: the therapist is the therapist, you are the client, and that’s that. In contrast to therapists, dogs have a limitless mind-set. A dog never decrees that a small, fixed period of time, a fifty-minute hour, is all you get, and as to the boundary between your life and the dog’s, the dog sees the two lives as a richly intertwined unity. Indeed, one of the challenges of raising and training dogs is to convince these fusion-minded creatures that certain places and things are off-limits:
my
kitchen counters,
my
dinner,
my
cherished possessions, which are for
my
use only and are not to be mistaken for dog toys. It is also necessary to set and enforce the rule of nonreciprocity: whereas
my
belongings are exclusively
mine
, yours are mine, too, including your food bowl, your toys, and even your body, which I will handle whenever you need grooming or veterinary care. But once those rules about what belongs to whom have been suitably clarified,
we
are free to become a joyful plurality that offers in place of the fifty-minute hour a boundless flow of twenty-four-hour days and a limitless exchange of love.

And then there’s friendship. You can pay a shrink for it. Your dog will give it freely. But sometimes you need a human friend. When Caprice’s father deserted her, Leah and I stepped in. I wouldn’t have allowed Caprice to go alone to Ted’s, but soon after Monty’s departure, Leah got home and promptly organized the expedition to retrieve Caprice’s possessions. There are, I might mention, two people responsible for Leah’s bossiness. I am one of them. I introduced her to dog training and dog-show handling by putting her in charge of Kimi, who practiced a militant form of radical feminism and canine liberationist activism that would have challenged even an experienced dog person and did, in fact, challenge one, namely, me. Leah responded by rapidly learning to set and enforce strict limits and high standards. The second person responsible for Leah’s bossy streak is Maria Montessori, whose contribution was to found the educational movement in which Leah received her early schooling. The Montessori method, as I understand it, is supposed to produce self-directed children. In Leah’s case, it instilled the conviction that besides directing herself, she was supposed to direct the rest of us, too.

“Holly, we need your car,” she said. “I’m going with Caprice. There won’t be room for all three of us, so you’re staying here. She can’t go alone. Wyeth is horrible to her, and who knows what Ted might do? Try to get her to move back there? And she’s not doing that. Caprice, change into jeans or something, or you’ll ruin your dress.”

Caprice obediently went upstairs and returned in jeans and a tunic-length T-shirt. “Woof woof,” she said. “Click? Treat?”

Leah had the grace to blush and apologize. Then she hurried Caprice out to the car. When they returned an hour later, they were in high spirits.

“Caprice’s mother has left her all of the china and silver and stuff at Ted’s house,” Leah reported. “If he isn’t maximally polite and considerate to Caprice, we’re going to auction it all on eBay.”

“And let him eat off paper plates,” said Caprice. “With plastic forks.”

“He was there?” I asked.

“We only saw him for a second,” Caprice answered. “Between patients. Wyeth wasn’t home. We lucked out.”

“Was Dolfo there?”

“He was eating the mail,” said Leah.

Caprice added, “A while ago, Dolfo ate Ted’s passport, which he’s going to need when he and Wyeth go to Russia, and then when the new one came in the mail, he ate that, too. Mail is his favorite food.”

“It’s one of Sammy’s, too,” I said. “Paper and plastic. He likes to think of himself as a canine recycling facility.”

The convivial mood boosted my hopes. It lasted as the three of us unloaded the car and carried boxes to the cellar. Steve got home, and we fed the dogs and got ready to go out to the restaurant where we were meeting friends. Four of Leah’s friends from school turned up, and the group decided to go to a movie. Although everyone urged Caprice to go along, she declined by saying that she’d had a rough week and wanted to go to bed early. It had been a terrible week, of course, so no one leaned on her to change her mind. When Steve and I left, the household was peaceful: India was in her crate, Tracker was in my office, Rowdy and Kimi were in the living room with the door closed, and both Sammy and Lady were in Caprice’s room. We started to remind Caprice about who could and could not be loose with whom, but she rattled off the rules practically word for word. “And if Sammy starts to act wild, he goes to his crate,” she finished.

“Sammy always wants to be a good boy,” I said. “But he doesn’t always succeed. Right, Sammy?” His eyes had a glint that concerned me a bit. “Remember! He’s a big puppy. Don’t trust him! He gets into things.”

“I’m used to Dolfo,” Caprice reminded me. “Compared to Dolfo, Sammy is an angel. And he’s so sweet.”

In response, Sammy curved himself around Caprice and leaned gently against her. Then he stretched his neck, raised his big, gorgeous head, and gazed lovingly at her.

“If he has a fit of flying around and bouncing off the walls, put him in his crate,” I said. “No matter how cute he is.” I paused. “Where is Pink Piggy?”

Sammy replied by dashing under a table and emerging with the battered toy in his mouth. He gave it three firm squeezes, thus producing three distinct squeaks.

“We’ll take all the dogs out when we get home,” Steve said. “They should be fine until then.”

We had a so-so dinner at a restaurant in Inman Square. Our friends had to get up early the next day and didn’t want dessert or coffee, so Steve and I stopped at Christina’s and bought ice cream to take with us. Despite the hideously cold winters in Greater Boston, everyone here eats a lot of ice cream all year round, and everyone has an opinion about the major contenders for Best of Breed. When I’m judging, Christina’s wins.

We got home at about ten, and since the weather was now dry, we decided to take the dogs out to the yard and to have our coffee and dessert there. As I was making coffee and dishing out white chocolate ice cream, Steve let India out and, after her, Rowdy and Kimi. His optimism about harmony in the pack didn’t extend to foolhardiness: he trusted Kimi to behave herself with India only if the two were supervised. Consequently, he stayed outside. When the coffee was ready, I put our mugs, bowls of ice cream, spoons, and napkins on a tray. (Short on household items? Get married! We now have everything, including, for the first time, items without depictions of dogs.) As I was carrying out the tray, Lady came prancing into the kitchen and followed me to the yard. The big question—the fateful one, the crucial one, the one that should have been paramount and obvious—did, of course, occur to me: where’s Sammy? I have no excuse for failing to answer it. I should immediately have gone back inside to look for him. What’s more, Steve should have asked himself or me exactly the same question and should have seen to it that one of us acted on it. India and Lady were Steve’s dogs, Rowdy was mine, and Kimi belonged to Leah and me. But Sammy was
our
dog, Steve’s and mine, sired by Rowdy, bought by Steve, and, since our wedding, owned by both of us: my co-ownership had been Steve’s wedding gift to me. I had a ring, too, but as the wedding ceremony itself says, a ring is a
token
, and what’s a token, really? A trifle, an arbitrary sign, an object that’s a mere nothing by comparison with what it represents. Sammy, in contrast, was no bauble or trinket or symbol of love given and received; Sammy was love itself.

But as I set the tray on our wedding-present picnic table, the familiar voice of Kevin Dennehy called from the gate to the driveway: “Hey, Holly? Steve?”

With a six-pack of Budweiser in one of his big hands, Kevin entered the yard and was immediately surrounded by dogs. “Any thirsty boys here?” he asked. “Dry throats, huh? Hey, Rowdy, she still keeping you on the wagon?”

“Permanently,” I said.

“Hey, don’t yell at me. I didn’t teach him that trick,” Kevin said. “Did I, big boy? It came natural to you. Like singing. Some people are born being able to carry a tune like a songbird, and some aren’t. Knowing how to chug beer’s just like that. A God-given gift. And you got it.”

“Kevin, besides being a talented beer drinker, Rowdy does happen to have a spectacular voice, so why don’t you work on developing that talent and quit giving him alcohol! It is not good for him. Or for Kimi, either.”

Disloyally, Steve said, “A sip or two of beer now and then isn’t going to hurt them.”

“I don’t see you feeding them beer,” I said. In fact, neither India nor Lady had any interest in it.

“They don’t ask me,” Steve said. “They ask Kevin. Kevin, take a seat. You want some ice cream?”

He turned down the offer in favor of popping the top off a beer, sipping, and then accidentally-on-purpose holding the can at the level of Rowdy’s mouth. Even I have to admit that Kevin’s claim about Rowdy’s talent was justified. Strictly behind my back, Kevin had also taught Kimi to sip beer, but she performed the trick without Rowdy’s air of mastery. Also, she seemed to me to dislike the taste, whereas Rowdy obviously loved it.

“Enough!” I said. “Steve said a sip or two now and then. He’s had a sip or two. Enough!”

After giving Kimi her turn, Kevin rested the can on the table. “They do a good job of sharing,” he remarked. “You ever thought about writing to Budweiser about them? They could be on TV instead of those Clydesdales.”

“The Clydesdales haul beer around,” I said. “They don’t drink it.”

“That’s what I mean. What kind of ad is that? If you want to sell beer, you should show people drinking it. Or dogs. The head honchos at Budweiser could work out some kind of deal with Purina or Eukanuba or whatever. Brew Team Dog Chow. Just add water, and it makes its own beer.”

“Or the other way around,” I said. “All Natural Lamb and Rice Premium Performance Budweiser for Large Breed Adults.” I paused. “With small brains. But speaking of food, do you want a sandwich or something?”

“No, thanks. I can’t stay. I just wanted to tell you about those squirrels.” Kevin’s expression was uncharacteristically grim.

“They were at the feeders today,” I said. “Steve, I meant to tell you. I printed some pages from the Web. You need to add baffles. Two squirrel baffles on each pole. And PVC pipe for the poles to go in.”

“There’s a quicker way,” said Kevin. “That’s what someone did over there. Over at the Greens’.”

Steve and I waited in silence.

“I took a look at the feeders,” Kevin continued. “Like you said, no squirrels. And no squirrel damage. And in Cambridge, that’s not normal. My mother’s got that feeder you gave her, Holly, and half of what’s there are squirrels. They eat the birdseed, and the perches are all chewed up. And over there at the Greens’, there are a dozen of these feeders, all kinds, fancy ones, with no squirrel baffles. No nothing. So I start looking around and…” He shrugged. “And I call this bird feeder company, On the Wing, and ask if they’re doing something, putting something in the birdseed, and they say no, they’re not. They used to add some kind of hot pepper, but it turned out to be bad for birds, and they quit. There’s some kind of feeder that gives electric shocks, but the clients didn’t want one. So, then I get a bright idea. I send a guy up a tree. And there it is. Rat poison. A lot of it. In that tree and two others. Not all that high up, either. And that’s your answer. No squirrels.”

I reached for Steve’s hand and squeezed it. “Kevin, that’s monstrous. It makes me sick. No one
wants
squirrels at feeders, but—”

“It’s sick,” Steve said. “And dangerous.”

“There are dogs there!” I said. “Dolfo. And next door, Portia. George and Barbara’s dog. There are probably other dogs in the neighborhood. And cats. If one of them had eaten a poisoned squirrel…”

“And if kids found a dead squirrel,” Kevin added. “When I was a kid, we used to have these funerals for dead animals if we found them. Bury them, flowers on the little grave.” He crossed himself. “Kids do that. Handle the dead squirrel, put your hands in your mouth. And kids climb trees.”

“Have there been any reports?” I asked. “Reports of anything…?”

“No. And we asked around. It’s luck is all it is.”

“Kevin, who did this?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you something. Homicide, that’s a lot of people’s business. But this—this one’s Cambridge. Hey, a few years back, I could’ve been the kid that climbed one of those trees or buried a dead squirrel. This one’s mine. And so’s the bastard that did it.”

As soon as Kevin left, I suddenly and belatedly thought
of Sammy. “I’ll go get him,” I told Steve. “You stay here with the others.”

Neither of us was alarmed. Sammy was probably in Caprice’s room. The privilege of staying with her was new to Sammy, who was probably curled up on the bed next to her. Still, he was a sociable dog, and it was unlike him not to have come dashing down the stairs to greet us when we’d arrived home. Furthermore, he must have heard me dishing out ice cream, and any sound even remotely suggestive of food, the alpha and omega of malamute existence, usually sent him flying toward its source. It did not, however, occur to me that Sammy was in serious trouble. I casually checked the downstairs rooms and did not run upstairs, but tiptoed to avoid awakening Caprice, whose bedroom door turned out to be ajar. The room itself was dark. I heard her snoring lightly. Still on tiptoe, I checked the other rooms and then waited outside Caprice’s for a moment as I tried to decide whether to leave Sammy to keep her company or to make him have one trip outside before he settled in for the night.

Just when a rustling noise made me resolve to inch my way in and lure Sammy out, his big head emerged from the room. In his mouth were the damp remains of a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies. His formerly white face was smeared with what I at first mistook for dirt. A second later, the smears registered on me as chocolate. Chocolate contains a substance called theobromine that is toxic to dogs. A large amount of dark chocolate can kill a small dog. To a dog Sammy’s size, a small amount of chocolate, especially milk chocolate, isn’t usually fatal, but dogs vary in their sensitivity to chocolate. Without hesitation, I snatched the bag out of Sammy’s mouth. To my relief, it had contained oatmeal raisin cookies. Having examined the bag, I turned my attention to Sammy and immediately saw that he was simply not himself. His characteristically bright eyes looked at once wide and dopey, and his expression was puzzled and unhappy. Bending over, I ran my hands over his belly, which was frighteningly enlarged.

“Steve!” I screamed. “Steve, get up here now! Steve, help me!”

Before I’d even finished yelling, Sammy provided his own veterinary treatment by lowering his head and vomiting copiously on the hallway floor. Kneeling at his side, I rested my hands on his heaving abdomen and whispered gently to him. “Good boy. Poor Sammy. Good boy. Get it all up.” Reaching out a hand, I banged Caprice’s door open and shouted, “Caprice, get up! Sammy is sick. Get downstairs this second and tell Steve to lock up the other dogs and then to get up here. Go get him! Now!” Hearing Steve at the bottom of the stairs, I called, “Steve, Sammy is sick. Don’t let the other dogs up here. Do something with them, and then get up here. Please! I need you!”

In the light that spilled from the hall into Caprice’s room, I saw that the floor was littered with torn food packages and crumbs. The scene told the whole story: Sammy had raided a stash of food. And a big one at that. Strewn around were torn bags that had held potato chips, tortilla chips, candy, and yet more cookies. I was enraged. When Steve and I had welcomed Caprice, we’d carefully explained the house rules, most of which were about dogs. Caprice had understood those rules perfectly. Only this evening, she’d recited the ones that governed the safe and unsafe combinations of loose dogs. She’d been explicitly warned about malamutes and food, and she’d seen the precautions that Steve, Leah, and I took to prevent them from devouring every edible morsel in the house. Damn it! In return for our hospitality and our generosity, she’d done
exactly
what she’d been told not to do! I kept my temper only by thinking of Eumie’s death.

Steve was cool. He calmly led Sammy a few feet away from the stinking puddles and lumps on the floor and slowly checked him out. Caprice had finally appeared at the door to her room and was leaning against the door frame. She wore a gargantuan red T-shirt. Her skin was blotchy, and tears ran down her face. She looked drugged with sleep. Or maybe just drugged. In a child’s voice, she said, “You’re angry with me.”

Before I had the chance to tell her that she was right, Steve said, “Caprice, splash some cold water on your face. Right now, please.”

“I feel so—” she started to say.

“Wash your face in cold water,” said Steve. “Now. If I’m going to help Sammy, I’ll need some information.”

I had the sense to leave things to Steve. Here was Sammy, standing a few feet from the hideous mess he’d brought up, still looking ghastly, and what did Caprice have to say for herself?
I feel
…If I’d opened my mouth, it would’ve been to inform her that no one gave a single sweet goddamn about her feelings. I was right to keep quiet. Still crying, Caprice made her way to the bathroom and emerged about a minute later with her face and her baby curls wet.

“First of all,” Steve said, “I don’t see anything about Sammy that’s got me worried. At least not yet.” He sounded as if he were speaking to a distraught pet owner instead of to the person who could’ve killed our dog. “But I need to know what he swallowed. And there are three categories of things I need to know about. One is chocolate. Another is medication. Sedatives, antidepressants, marijuana, anything. Anything at all. And the third is foreign objects. Things. Socks. Underwear. Anything that could get lodged in his digestive tract.”

“Nothing,” she said.

Without showing a hint of impatience, he said, “Let’s start with an inventory of what’s on the floor of your room. Put the light on. Good. Okay, there’s a wastebasket in there. I want you to pick up everything, one thing at a time, tell me what the package or the wrapper was for, and then put it in the wastebasket.”

“There’s a bag that had oatmeal cookies,” I said. “It’s here.”

“Tortilla chips,” Caprice said thickly. “Potato chips. Corn chips. Pralines. Butterscotch.” She paused to blow her nose. Then she continued to name the junk she’d kept in a cache in her room. Eventually, she said, “Chocolate chip cookies.”

Steve must’ve heard me take a sharp breath. “Probably not enough chocolate to do any harm. Is that it?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Medications. Do you take anything? Ever.”

After a pause, Caprice said, “Sometimes. For sleep.”

“Take a look where you keep anything like that. Your purse. Anywhere you could’ve put any sleeping medication.”

I was watching Sammy, who was beginning to perk up. From Caprice’s room—our guest room—I heard a drawer open and close and then the sound of a zipper. “It’s all here,” Caprice said.

With endless patience, Steve said, “Objects. Anything missing? Any scraps of fabric on the floor?”

“Nothing.”

“Check whatever you were wearing today. Socks. Underwear.”

“All here.”

“Then we’re probably out of the woods,” Steve said. “We’ll need to keep an eye on you, Sammy, and watch out for dehydration. Or further developments. But it looks like you’re doing fine.” To Caprice, he said, “I’d like you to come on downstairs with us. There are a few things we need to go over. You want to get dressed? Or get a robe. Before we talk, there’s a mess here to clean up. I’ll get you what you’ll need.”

My first thought was a Ted-like one:
chutzpah!
The nerve! And how uncharacteristic of Steve! Then I realized that he was simply telling Caprice that fair was fair: since her carelessness had made Sammy sick, she was the one responsible for mopping up after him. Still, I took pity on her and helped out. Even for me, the task was challenging. In a lifetime with dogs, I’d developed a strong stomach. That night, I needed one. I have to admit, too, that I had a selfish motive, which was to make sure that Caprice didn’t damage the floor. When Rita had moved up to the third-floor apartment and we’d redone the second floor, we’d had the hardwood sanded and refinished. In the normal course of things, dogs who realize that they are on the verge of puking all over the place will immediately hasten to the spot where they’ll do the maximum amount of damage to valued human possessions. If a dog is seized with queasiness while he’s in the kitchen, will he considerately upchuck on the linoleum or tile? Never. Why? Because linoleum and tile are easy to wash. So, rather than create a mess that can be cleaned up at no expense and with no permanent harm done, he overcomes his nausea for the few seconds it takes to dash into the living room and leave an ineradicable splotch in the center of a light-colored rug, and not just any rug, either, but one that will be wrecked if you try to shampoo it yourself and thus requires professional cleaning, with an extra charge for the removal of pet stains. Sammy, of course, found himself in a situation somewhat different from that one. Once he’d realized that he was on the verge of bringing up what he’d wolfed down, he’d eyed our guest room and said to himself,
This won’t do at all! Nothing here but a cheap area rug that can go through the washing machine!
So, he’d shoved his muzzle and the cookie bag out into the hallway, where he’d spied our newly refinished hardwood floor, which was perfect for his purposes, since it couldn’t be scrubbed with hot water and assuredly couldn’t be bleached.

I made Caprice do her share of the work, and a disgusting share it was, I’m sure. When we’d finished, she washed her hands and face, put on a second and even larger T-shirt over the first, and joined Steve and me in the kitchen. To my relief, Sammy was his perky self again. Steve had even allowed him to sip water. Steve had made fresh coffee, caffeinated for himself and decaf for me. Caprice accepted a cup of decaf, and we sat around the table.

“Sammy is going to be fine,” Steve told her. “All he did was overeat. But the consequences could’ve been serious.” He patiently described chocolate toxicity, gastric dilatation and volvulus syndrome, and the hazards of ingesting foreign objects. For him, he was remarkably succinct. “And if there’d been medication in the same place as the food…I don’t have to tell you about that.”

“There wasn’t,” Caprice said.

“From now on,” Steve said, “prescription medications belong strictly out of the reach of dogs. Not in your purse or your backpack that you leave lying around. Food belongs in the kitchen.”

“I understand,” she said.

“You
understood
before. This time, from now on, you follow the rules. Part of my job is dealing with the results of carelessness. And that’s what we don’t want here. No matter how careful you are, dogs are going to get into things. All we’re trying to do is minimize the chances of those episodes. Now, about the food. You might’ve noticed that in this house, we eat nutritious food. And that’s what we feed our animals. Treats are treats. And most of them are nutritious, too. You’ve seen the book that Holly and I wrote.
No More Fat Dogs
. The reason we wrote it is that most dogs in this country
are
fat. They’re overfed and underexercised. Now, if you want to eat junk and overeat junk, that’s your business, but I don’t want it happening here.”

To my amazement, Caprice hadn’t burst into tears when Steve had mentioned overeating. When he’d said the word
fat
, I’d felt blood rush to my face. Caprice hadn’t reddened. She’d just kept watching Steve’s kind face.

He continued. “Prescription drugs. If you’ve got medication prescribed for you, take it the way you were told to take it. You got anything else? Anything prescribed for Ted? Or your mother?”

“Yes,” she said. “Over there, at Ted’s, that was the house rule. Share your meds. But all I have is Ambien and Sonata. And some Valium. And a little…I think it’s Xanax.”

“Anything prescribed for you?”

Caprice looked almost shocked at the notion of taking pills that weren’t meant for someone else. “No. Nothing. My therapist is a psychologist. Missy Zinn. She doesn’t prescribe.” After a little pause she added, as if Missy were guilty of an oversight, “And she hasn’t sent me to anyone.”

I finally spoke. “Does Missy Zinn know about the pills you’re taking?”

Caprice lowered her eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t want her to be angry with my mother. It was just something we always did. Shared.” I saw no sign that Caprice made any connection between the
just something we did
and her mother’s death. “With Dr. Zinn, I did a little work on my feeling needy. The divorce. The divorce was hard. Everyone was angry at everyone else. And hurt. Monty blamed Ted, and Johanna hated my mother.”

Here, I cannot resist drawing attention to the verb
to work
as used by therapists and their clients.
Work
, as I understand it, means putting out a lot of effort and then having something to show for it: a ditch that’s been dug, a book that’s been written, a class of first-graders who’ve learned to read, a cat who’s been cured of a urinary tract infection, or a dog who’s learned to heel so accurately and gracefully that when you’re his partner, you know that with your voice, your treats, your footwork, your timing, and, most of all, your relationship with the other half of the team, you’ve performed a damned miracle—what you started out with was a dog, and what you’ve ended up with is the honest to doG reincarnation of Fred Astaire. And that, let me tell you, takes work. But talking about your mother? Your father? Your parents’ painful divorce? To my mind, that’s just not work. It’s talking, isn’t it? Rita vehemently disagrees. In fact, when I told her about the miracle of Fred Astaire, she said that it was a pretty good analogy, except that it described patients who started out in pieces and ended up whole. But then, Rita has never trained a dog to heel like a dancer, and I, of course, have never practiced psychotherapy.

“I’m sorry to hear about the divorce,” said Steve, “but if you’re going to lose weight, you’re going to need to decrease calories and increase exercise. It’s real simple. Eat less. Do more.”

If you’re a dog, it is simple! Get an owner who decreases your calories and increases your exercise. In fact, as I hoped Caprice didn’t realize, Steve was delivering exactly the same lecture he’d given a million times before…in a slightly different context. Fortunately, he stopped before he reached the part about obesity’s contribution to the clinical signs of canine hip dysplasia.