Stepdog (15 page)

Eddie and the City

I
left California and for a while felt disoriented. I missed Jim so much. I moped around New York as a “married single.” But the city soon swallowed me and I barely found time to talk to my husband on the phone every night, let alone mourn over our tentative separation. I started the environmental beat at the
Times
for the Metro section and immediately was consumed with learning about a wide range of topics, from climate change to the toxic chemicals used by “organic” dry cleaners. As I waited out my tenants' lease so I could return to my apartment uptown, I rented a studio apartment from a colleague close to Times Square and the office. I had friends to reconnect with. I returned to old habits like theater on weeknights. This was my belief: if you're going to put up with the hassles of New York, you'd better take advantage of what's unique about the city. As one of playwright Terrence McNally's characters says, without theater New York would be Newark.

While I was in L.A., the
Times
building had moved. It was no longer in the middle of the theater district, next to Times Square and Sardi's. Now it was on the outskirts two and a half blocks south, across from the Port Authority. The brand-new tower by Renzo Piano was too beautiful and too corporate for us ink-stained wretches, but everyone appreciated being even a tiny bit farther from the tourist hordes lining up for pictures with the Naked Cowboy.

I made it to New York just in time to watch Barack Obama become president, from the living room of my friend Dana, who had gathered neighbors and friends to watch election results. Jim watched from Tom and Sally's, our friends who hosted the pot-smoking lunchtime salons. Regardless of political affiliation, people at our bicoastal parties appreciated the historic moment.

After I left, Jim got a job with the L.A. bureau of Bloomberg News, covering finance and Wall Street in the middle of the financial crisis. We got back to the monthly-visit schedule. Sometimes we saw each other more frequently, even on consecutive weekends one time, because of our friends Bill and Scout's wedding in Palm Springs. The life changes kept coming as we came and went. Arielle started applying to colleges on the East Coast and eventually got accepted at a liberal-arts college in Maryland. She'd be only a few hours away from New York by bus and train. Henry became a dedicated rock and roller, playing drums in rock and jazz bands at school. At some point the decision was made that he would benefit from a more focused environment and would do best at a boarding school before moving on to college. Jim was deeply saddened as his nest emptied but was proud of his kids' growing independence. And he could now start thinking about his own move to join me in New York. He would be able to transfer to Bloomberg News's headquarters in New York. We'd experience New York together for the first time as a married couple, with the security of good jobs and the well-being of the kids taken care of. I couldn't believe it. And Eddie? I was still plotting.

While apart, Jim e-mailed daily with reports from the home front. Eddie's happy world had turned a bit fraught after Jim got the Bloomberg job and stopped working from home. No more five walks a day for Eduardo. Instead, Jim walked him before and after work and hired kids from the neighborhood to take him out in between. One of them was only forty pounds heavier than the dog.

“Baby, major thumbs-up on Day One of the dog walking!” Jim reported via e-mail. “After our conversation I was suddenly nervous about Eddie breaking free when he got to the house of his nemesis, but Lauren (who weighs about eighty pounds) said she was ready for his tricks and the moment passed without incident. Now I just have to remember whether I told her he likes to eat pugs . . .”

He signed off with “XXOO, Jaime”—James in Spanish.

Eddie could occasionally demonstrate a knack for self-preservation, so he behaved for this new transition. But it was too late for amends. I refused to see spots in my future, so we still needed to figure out what to do with him. A husband and a dog in a small apartment was a recipe for divorce. No belated showing of good faith on Eddie's part was going to steer me away from my resolve to use this life change as an opportunity to get rid of him. This was my only shot. His exit would be planned in a way that looked after his own interest. This was not going to be cruel or harmful to Eddie. Nothing like the dangerous situations he had put
himself
in many times.

He had more lives than a cat. Before I moved to California, he took off after a deer and disappeared for hours in the coyote-infested canyon after Jim let him off the leash on the trail behind his old town house. Somehow he made it back to the trail uninjured. Another time we left him in the care of the ex to go to Puerto Rico and he bolted during a walk. He reappeared in Venice Beach, at the home of another dog owner, who picked him up and called the number on his tag.

“I have your dog,” the guy said in a voice mail. What a relief.

Making him disappear in a humane way would require a more concerted effort.

“Wouldn't Eddie be happier staying behind?” I asked my husband repeatedly. “He'll go crazy in a smaller place.” A California dog, I argued, would not appreciate wintry, overcrowded, and cramped New York. I was lobbying for leaving him behind with friends or, as a second option, finding him a suitable home in New York, outside the city, where we could still visit him and he could still roam and chase squirrels to his heart's content. A farm, perhaps? He'd be so much happier in the country. Win-win. I asked anyone within earshot if they knew of options for our dog.

“What kind of dog is he?” someone asked at my friend Lynda's birthday dinner.

As I held the attention of about eight women at the round table, I couldn't stop myself and launched into my long list of complaints. When I was finished, we all agreed I shouldn't be the one to write the want ad.

“You will find no takers for ‘spiteful dog that sheds and pees when scolded and may bite,'” one of the women noted.

I tried not to sabotage my search as I continued making inquiries among friends. I urged Jim to help with my placement efforts, but he resisted.

“I'm open to the idea if a good situation could be found,” he said over the phone from California. “New York is where I'll be moving because you're there and New York is the center of the media world, and that's where I need to be. I have to look at my life and be a breadwinner for the family. I assumed I'd figure out a way to make him figure in my plans, but it'd be complicated. You hate the dog, you're pushing me to get rid of him. You said under no circumstances he'd be allowed in your apartment. It's not like I have a thousand options.”

Wait—was that a yes or a no?

It was a no. I should have known my husband wouldn't budge.

“Eddie is part of our family,” he declared, and that was that. Jim would not give Eddie up.

•   •   •

A
few months after that conversation, on a glorious evening, the phone rang in my office. It was Jim, calling from Newark Airport.

“I made it. I can't wait to see you, darling.”

Finally, the long-distance marriage was coming to an end. My husband and I were finally together in New York for good.

As I waited for our reunion, I couldn't even picture Eddie, who had been shipped in his crate on Jim's plane, in the city. This was going to be a disaster, I was sure. Already Jim was delayed because he had to pick up Eddie in the cargo area. An hour went by. He had arranged for a van to take them to the city from Newark. Where were they?

I called him.

“Where are you?”

“Eddie is stuck. The guy who's supposed to get him out of the plane apparently took a break.”

Great. Dog trouble before the dog had even been unleashed here. I called Sazón, the Latin fusion restaurant in Lower Manhattan where I had planned to take Jim on his first night in the city, and canceled the reservation. I was still in the office, where there was always plenty to do, so I kept busy for another hour or so. I was about to bug Jim again, as it got closer to nine p.m., when he called to say he'd already checked in to the corporate apartment near Madison Square Park where Bloomberg News was putting him up for a few months. The plan was for me to move in with him from my own temporary quarters while my tenants in the apartment in the Heights moved out and I repainted and got it ready for us.

Jim and I arranged to meet somewhere in the West Thirties on Sixth Avenue.

As I headed south, I struggled with my bag of clothes and two bottles of wine. It was always rush hour in Midtown and the throngs were moving fast toward subway stops and nearby Penn Station. I muscled through to West Thirty-seventh Street and calculated Jim would soon be approaching me as he walked north. And then I saw them.

In the evening chaos, I first saw four legs in a sea of twos, and Eddie's blotched head looking every which way as he tried to keep up with all the stimuli. Eddie walked ahead of Jim as usual with a brisk step, fading in and out between the legs of pedestrians, as if he knew where he was going. It was an absurd image—Eddie in the city. My city. He belonged in this environment as much as a chicken on a leash. My thoughts immediately went to worst-case scenario—would he take a bite of one of the legs? But all worries momentarily dissipated when I looked up and saw my smiling husband, the picture of cheerful resiliency. We embraced under a sidewalk construction shed, by a life-size poster of Julianna Margulies advertising the new season of
The Good Wife
.

“Welcome to New York, baby!”

“Hi, darling,” Jim said into my hair.

When Eddie saw me his tail waved, but he made no actual move to greet me. His eyes darted around and took in his new surroundings. Distance had not exactly turned him into Mr. Lovey-dovey. But not even Eddie could dampen my excitement. My hubby was home. We didn't linger on the sidewalk, as we were at risk of being swept away by the human tide. I traded my heavy bag for Eddie. I sensed his anxiety. He was usually nervous around groups of people; how was he going to cope with the legs, and the honking, and the sirens, and the assault on his senses from all directions? How was he going to avoid being trampled or run over? How was he going to survive gray days, snow, and winter? More important, where could I possibly let him go right now?

I realized that I had no clue what the etiquette was for dogs in New York. The sidewalks were cluttered with people, newsstands, and vendors. Every few steps, there was a building or store entrance. There was no grass, no bushes, only concrete. There were lampposts and hydrants, but also so many eyes watching. I didn't want to be yelled at by a doorman or a busybody. Fortunately, Eddie was too excited and distracted for his dog-walking routine. His sense of smell was on overdrive. He sniffed with his head tilted upward—Pretzel? Hot dog? Pizza? All of the above?—and his internal GPS could barely keep up. We walked by a deli with its glass doors wide open, a long salad-bar spread straight ahead. Eddie squared off in front of it, body upright like a soldier, ears and tail up at attention. He didn't move a hair as he assessed whether this apparition was real. I kept him on a short leash at heel position but had to tug hard to bring him back to earth. Jim was also tense.

“Don't let him walk on the grating,” he said, pointing at the metal sidewalk grates that ventilated the subway tunnels underneath. “He hates it.”

But I could tell Eddie loved New York. He wasn't cringing. He was engaged. How could I have ever doubted it? The streets were filthy, full of nibbling possibilities. The smells were overwhelming. (Eddie did not eat his dry food for four days after his arrival, though. The six-hour cross-country trip had traumatized him. “When he got out of the crate at the airport, he had this crazed look in his eyes,” Jim said.)

When we got to the apartment building, Eddie had another first—his first elevator ride, all the way to the thirtieth floor. He saw a dog in the hallway when the doors opened on the fifth floor. When the doors opened again, this time on the tenth floor, Eddie was ready to “interact,” but where did the dog go? Eddie let out a whimper as he relaxed his stance.

The corporate one-bedroom apartment was modern, spacious, and very white—walls, tile, counters, furniture. And, miracle of miracles, it was pretty quiet. But it was tiny compared to our house. There would be little room for Eddie to maneuver, since he would be immediately banned from the bedroom and bathroom. That left him with the kitchen and living room, about half the place, but still about the size of one of our bedrooms in the Palisades.

But he stayed true to his bad habits. When we came back from a late dinner, we found Eddie on the sofa.

“Don't do that, mister,” Jim said as he shooed his dog off the cushions.

We could see the depression on the sofa and I put my face to it to count the hairs. Dozens! Eddie averted my eyes but I yelled at him anyway and he slinked away. I knew I'd have to police him all over again. I'd have to close the doors to the bedroom and bathroom, set sofa cushions upright, and put newspapers and bag packs on the sofa and chair. Every day we'd have to go through the same drill.