Sleeps with Dogs (13 page)

Between the dogs by day, the occasional pet sleepover, and otherwise living with Annie's family and helping out with her boys, I wasn't meeting many people. And by people, I mean like-minded—in age or profession or hobbies or otherwise—individuals that could
potentially be my friend. I really wasn't being picky. A human with whom I could recreationally share a meal, or a laugh. Or, if I was lucky, both.

I had a guest pass to Annie's tennis club and tried to get to as many yoga classes as I could. I found that the stretching helped ease the back pains I got from pounding miles of pavement during my days. The gentle yoga I liked was almost exclusively attended by women in their sixties, all of whom I grew very fond of, but none of whom seemed to be in the market for a twenty-two-year-old SWF BFF new to the area and craving companionship.

If I was expecting to find likely candidates at the monthly association meeting of area pet-care professionals, I came up empty handed there as well. I was at least ten years younger than the youngest of the other business owners, but proximity of age was less material in my friend quest than overcoming the distant yet professional cordiality that was the norm in the group. We were, ultimately, competitors in a fairly tight market.

I could tell early that there were alliances between business providers—walkers that helped each other out, or greatly respected each other's integrity. But this wasn't an environment ripe for grabbing a drink afterward, or making plans for the following weekend. Nor was it the place to gripe about particularly quirky clients, or tell stories on ourselves, admit recent screw-ups, or air our dirty laundry. Everyone was looking for a small edge on the others, and mistakes were remembered, catalogued quietly, and judgmentally held close. An ill-mannered dog that didn't improve over time could tarnish your reputation; if you took on a client that handled their pet irresponsibly, somehow that irresponsibility transferred to you. Everyone knew who'd been sued, or who would surely get sued any minute now; who ran chronically late; which walkers took more than the maximum number of dogs out on the trails; who charged too much or too little.

So I minded my p's and q's, tried not to ask too many questions, always complimented that week's snack-bringer on their baking or their choice of chips, and assiduously logged the meeting minutes, which I emailed out to the LISTSERV no more than five days following the meeting. I didn't want to gain a reputation as a procrastinator. Or an incomplete-minutes-keeper. I already felt that my age and relative inexperience were dings against my otherwise acceptable reputation within the group. And, ultimately, I accepted that I was going to need to look further afield for that much-needed human companionship.

I was out with Charlie on our most successful walk yet when my phone rang. Normally I didn't pick up when I was out with a dog—trying to have a conversation simultaneous to walking distracts me from noticing cars, other dogs, and countless other factors that could become problematic for me or the dog. Having one hand occupied with a phone and the other with the leash makes picking up a hot fresh poop nearly impossible. Charlie had reached the outer limit of his comfort zone at the end of the block and was poking around in a patch of ivy, hopefully getting ready to do his business. We could hang out there for a minute, so I answered.

It was a friend from my undergrad years who was finishing up his master's in English literature. He'd been sending me his short stories, hugely entertaining fictions about small-town giants, cadavers, hoarders, and misfits. We had taken writing classes together at school, and it seemed like he had more than enough talent and motivation to formally pursue publication.

The sprinklers were on in the neighborhood yards, and the sky was twilight purple. I was trying not to spook Charlie with my telephone conversation and jinx my unbelievably good luck at getting him past the mailbox and down the street, so I was replying to Ian
quietly, and in short one- or two-word sentences. I still wasn't quite sure why he'd called. Usually he just emailed when he had a new story to show me.

While Charlie finally took a squat in the ivy, Ian was filling me in on his recent outbreak of psoriasis from the cold weather and the stresses of school. He said he'd stopped shaving and cutting his hair. He wanted to know what I thought of the last story he sent. I hadn't read it yet.

“So anyway, I gotta get out of the Northeast. My plan is to move out there at the end of the semester. I think we should live together.”

In a way, we'd lived together before. During our senior year of college, we lived in separate apartments in the same building, a converted train depot that had seen better days. He'd explode into my loft without prior warning, pushing through the heavy ten-foot door, bellowing, “Hello the house!” Sometimes I'd be just out of the shower and standing in the hallway in only a towel. Or once, he came into my bedroom at three in the morning because I wasn't answering my phone. But I tolerated it. Sure, he had boundary issues, but he meant well.

We ended the conversation with him declaring he'd be out by the end of May, just as soon as he graduated and packed. I didn't believe he was coming.

In an effort to right all of my supposed wrongs, I brushed Charlie's teeth. I crept behind the bushes in the garden, scraping up the hard, heavy dog piles. I sat on the floor in the corner, rubbing Charlie's belly for thirty minutes at a time until my hand felt like corduroy. I ran around the house playing keep-away with him and his teddy. I hoped that my exuberance would dispel any angst or bad juju that was hanging over the house. I fluffed the candy in the freezer, made perfect hospital corners on the guest bed, refolded
and returned the beach towel to its place in the back of the linen closet, and gave Charlie his beef-jerky-and-cottage-cheese treat.

I put the key on the dining room table before I left for the last time, along with the invoice and a note in which I baldly lied about how much fun Charlie and I had together.

In the aftermath of those overnights with Charlie, I'd started looking at studios in Berkeley—tiny affairs with kitchens that doubled as the living room and dining room, with walls so close I could almost touch both when standing in the center of the room. One had a slanted ceiling low enough that I had to stoop throughout the entirety of the tour. Still, I didn't think I could afford anything without having a roommate to share the cost.

I was seriously contemplating a place I'd dubbed “the phone booth”—a two-story converted storage shed with a two-burner stove top, a dorm fridge under the counter, a closet-sized bathroom, and a place beneath the stairs for a smallish chair—when Ian called again.

I'd been so certain he was bluffing, or that he'd flake on moving out to California. Yet there he was on the line, saying, “I can't think of anyone I'd rather live with, or any place I'd rather be. You can teach me how to cook! We'll have a book club and exchange our writing for critique. We'll be writers, and write together in our writers' den. We can find Michael Chabon and invite him and his wife to dinner!”

“So does May work?” he asked again. “Should I book the ticket?”

I was an easy sell, starved as I was for human contact and companionship in light of my professional sequestration with the animals I cared for. I was, after all, on the verge of renting a shoebox I couldn't afford, in which I couldn't even entertain without asking my guest to sit on the toilet lid or my bed. Ian's
enthusiasm was infectious, and I even half-believed we might do one or some of the wholesome, self-actualizing activities he'd described. I said, “Sure.”

The next time Katherine asked me back to watch Charlie for a week, I was staying with a Burnese mountain dog and his three-legged cat companion. The dog was as affectionate as Charlie wasn't, frequently clambering up into my lap as though he were twenty pounds and not eighty. He was a rapscallion, his puppy naughtiness lingering long past puppyhood. He loved to take his leash, or the edge of my shirt, in his mouth during walks and galumph off, dragging me in his wake. Worse, he chewed everything he could get his mouth around—napkins, the remote, car keys, socks, and, unfortunately for me, my eyeglasses. I'd returned to his house one night to find some kind of plastic twig dangling from his maw. I pried his jaws open to extract the mystery snack and pulled out the mangled remains of my frames. The lenses had long since popped out, and the rest looked like he'd been grinding on them all day long.

I couldn't drive, especially not at night, without my glasses, and they had to be replaced immediately. The owners wouldn't contribute to the cost, either, because I had known in advance that he ate everything, and I'd failed to put my glasses far enough out of reach. Raw deal, and really bad timing, as all of my extra money had been going toward the imminent move.

Whatever I perceived Charlie's and my differences to be, he wouldn't have eaten my glasses. When Katherine called, I had a sudden and unexpected rush of gratitude for him and his comparatively dignified, non-meddlesome comportment. I would have taken him on for another week, maybe even making friends with him this time, had I been available. But the dates in question conflicted with
the week I was taking to drive from Georgia to California with my mom—a necessary trip, but a major ding to the old bank balance.

Moving out of Annie's house meant leaving their loaner car behind, a complicating factor of my transition from their attic to my own abode. Annie had of course offered to give it to me for next to nothing, but my parents had leapt at the opportunity to restore my old car to my care. They had no use for the extra set of wheels, and the car itself was a far better fit for this line of work than the Volvo sedan had been. While old, and fitted with manual everything, the car I'd be retrieving was a hatchback with a fold-down backseat, making it ideal for ferrying dogs about as needed.

Overjoyed at the prospect of a road trip with her youngest daughter and East Coast defector, my mom had planned the cross-country journey. I'd fly home, and we'd make our way back by car. She was also using the mother-daughter expedition as an excuse to return (or in her mind, get rid of) the rest of the furniture and boxes I'd left in their basement when I'd flown to California the first time.

Soon after I'd returned to California, mother and car in tow, and was setting up house in the apartment I'd rented in anticipation of Ian's arrival, I heard from the colleague who'd covered Charlie. Katherine decided to give him to her mother down in Orange County. He was apparently “too much trouble.”

I was more than a little surprised to hear this, as I'd understood them to be blissful in each other's attractive and exacting company. Maybe it was his farts. Maybe she just couldn't deal with the smell. But she was the one feeding him a kilo of dairy a day. And if it wasn't that, what other aspects of his being was she dissatisfied with? In what ways was he inadequate? The toothbrushing, the teddy, the homemade treats; all of these were her doing, imposed
on an animal that at the end of the day probably just wanted a good hard butt scratch and a pat on his bony head.

Hopefully that's exactly what Katherine's mother was giving Charlie down in SoCal. And maybe Katherine felt her life was improved, and her house more to her liking, without his crate next to her bed, his basket of accessories in the laundry room closet, his treats cluttering the freezer and his hardboiled eggs hogging up the egg crates, his dog house in the courtyard, his tartan cushion in the corner of the living room. But it had to be even lonelier there now, with just her gingham bedding, monogrammed towels, and mysteriously malfunctioning washer.

Of course, as I puzzled over my gross misreading of what I'd perceived to be a symbiotic relationship between Katherine and Charlie, I couldn't have known that I was about to learn for myself that living with someone isn't always a cure for loneliness. It can even make it worse.

To: “Mom”

Subject: Measuring up

Mamasita!

Thanks for the newspaper clipping. It is comforting to know that animal-lovers across the country are as crazy as they are here. I can honestly say that none of my clients has a height chart for their dog. Although some of the dogs do have insurance policies, private rooms, and a wardrobe nicer than mine.

I know you always say that I didn't need to move out here to prove anything, but—despite my immense and ever-present homesickness—I think it has been good for me. With everything I am learning out here on my own, pretty soon I may even be able to say no. Now wouldn't that be a trick? And, no, to answer your question, I have not started reading
Codependent No More.
But thank you for the suggestion.

Your definitively codependent daughter,

Lindsey

CHAPTER SIX

Alpha Females