by Susan Wilson
So now, at the end of my fourth year of incarceration, I might finally have something to look forward to every day. A real purpose to fill my endless empty days.
Rosie
I was as excited as a giddy teenager about to meet a pop star that day the puppies were brought in. LaShonda and I waited together in the activities room. Although ultimately there would be four of us in the program, this day it was just the two of us. We kept giggling. For two women who were serving time for felonies, we were being pretty silly. “I almost didn’t get here today.”
“Why?”
“Almost got into it last night. Denise stole my ’phones. Said they were hers.”
“What’d she want them for?”
“Guess hers are broke. She wanted ’em to go to the movie.”
“What’d you do?”
“Well, I was kinda in a hard place. If I gave ’em to her, that’d mean I agreed they were hers, and I’d never get ’em back. If I didn’t, she’d force me to fight her for them.”
“So, what happened?”
“I was gettin’ kind of angry, could feel my blood pressure goin’ up. Then I remembered that today was goin’ to be the day to get the puppy. If I smacked her, I might keep my headphones, but I’d lose my opportunity. So in the end, I said, ‘Denise, you want to borrow these?’ She say, ‘Yeah. That’d be dope.’”
I laughed. “You did the right thing.”
LaShonda nodded. “This puppy better be worth it. I might have lost a little status on my unit with bein’ nice to Denise.”
Status. Cred. Power. Loyalty and honor. Omertà by any other name. Some days you couldn’t tell whose star had risen and who was in disgrace, so it was better not to speak to anyone. Some of these women knew one another from shared history; there were unresolved boyfriend disputes, ongoing street rivalries. More than a few were related, so old family issues popped up now and again. LaShonda had put much of that behind her because of this program, wanting something better.
The far door opened, and even before we saw the puppies, we heard them. Toenails on linoleum as the pair of Labrador retrievers scrambled to rush into the activity room without a clue as to why they were there. It was enough for the exuberant pair to be in a new place; that was excitement enough to get them dancing and peeing.
The director of the program, Edith Moore, held two leashes, against which strained the puppies. One was black and the other, Shark, was that wonderful shade of near-edible brown.
I put out a hand and Edith Moore put a leash in it—the one attached to Shark.
I could feel the presence of the guard behind us, how alert he was to our movements. I quickly stepped back from Ms. Moore. The puppy was very interested in the exchange of his leash from his known person to this stranger, and he fixed his brown eyes on me. I knelt and let him kiss me. His soft pink tongue tasted my cheek right at the corner of my mouth. It was the first kiss I’d had in years. It was the first affection I’d had, and I misted up. The puppy’s tongue found the moisture and erased it. Even now, after so much time, I can conjure the emotion that gripped me in those first few minutes of my acquaintance with Shark. The immediacy of my love for him. A coup de foudre of emotion I had not been expecting; tainted, however, by the fact that I only had him to give him up; I would prepare him for leaving me. Ten minutes into our association and I couldn’t fathom how I was going to do that. I prayed that Edith Moore didn’t see the love on my face. If she had, she might have intervened and seen that she’d made a mistake about me and taken him away right then.
As with anything in the prison, it had taken months before LaShonda and I, plus two other inmates, were accepted into the program, and then, finally, introduced to our puppies. Five days a week, our job was to housebreak them, and give the dogs basic training, like sit, stay, heel, and down. On the weekends, volunteers took our dogs to give them “real world” training, like riding in cars and being social with people who weren’t incarcerated. These dogs, mostly Labs, were meant as assistance dogs, dogs that would accompany their ultimate owners everywhere, doing everything from emotional therapy to flipping on light switches.
Every Saturday morning, we trainers watched as our trainees got to do what none of us ever got to do: walk free. We would hand the leashes over to the volunteers, remind ourselves that before long these pups would be on their way out for good, paroled, as it were. They would have become productive canine citizens, their prison months behind them, their future bright. It never failed to amaze me, though, that each time a dog was led out of the activity room by his volunteer, he would always look back at his inmate, as if worried he might not see her again; or, maybe sorry that she wasn’t going with him. When one of our fellow inmates was released, I don’t recall seeing that woman ever look back.
The puppies’ Sunday-night returns to prison were moments of high excitement, tails wagging and tongues lolling, just plain happy to be home, even if home was a prison. They had no idea, of course, and so their innocent happiness was infectious. How can you be sad when a half-grown pup is romping around, hoping you’ll play tug-of-war? The sound of toenails on the linoleum was the best sound in the world. I dreaded that inevitable day when my puppy would leave me behind forever.
* * *
Shark looked like his namesake whenever he flipped over onto his back and let his jaw hang open, tongue draped over his perfect white teeth, kept polished by Milk-Bone biscuits and my diligent brushing. He was a chocolate Lab, his coat just the color of a Milky Way bar. He came into my life when he was twelve weeks old and stayed there until just before his first birthday. It was always there, the fact that he would leave me. It was one of the things discussed when I was interviewed for the program: Could I handle saying good-bye? Of course I said yes. I wasn’t going to lose this opportunity by being honest. If I excelled at this program, then I would have another puppy to work with, and I believed that would be consolation enough.
Knowing that our partnership was limited, and that he had a future beyond these bars even if I didn’t, informed every day with my dog. Even if I got to train a hundred other puppies, he would always hold a special place in my heart; Shark would always be my first.
* * *
Charles and I had been dating almost a year when he suddenly decided that it was time that I met his mother. “She’s heard all about you, Rose, and would love to have you be her guest for a weekend in the Hamptons.”
“I don’t know if I can get the time off.”
“Of course you can. We’ll fly down on Saturday morning.”
The letter from Wright, Melrose & Foster had been ripped into tiny pieces and tossed before my father got home that night. I’d assured my mother that Charles wasn’t about to steal their house. Our house. I’d heard of eminent domain, but I didn’t think it applied to this. I really didn’t know, and I didn’t mention it to my mother.
Teddy pressed another puzzle piece into the eternally unfinished puzzle. “You know, there’s something I just don’t like about that guy.”
“Teddy, he’s my boyfriend.”
“Maybe he just likes you for your house.”
I responded with something crass and got a withering look from my mother.
I was cowardly around Charles. After that impulsive call, I never again brought up the subject of the letter to him. I never pressed to ask if his firm really was intent on buying out those last three homes on our street. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be lied to.
* * *
“Mary Rose. You must be Irish.” Cecily Foster sipped a delicate taste of the “very dry” martini that Charles had made for her. We were seated in the great room of her Hamptons “cottage.” The panoramic view of Long Island Sound was breathtaking even for a girl who was no stranger to the water. Boston Harbor and its islands maybe aren’t breathtaking, but it’s a pretty scene.
“I am. Mostly.” I have plenty of Irish pride; I come from a part of America that is renowned for its Irish ethnicity. Some of my antecedent
s had been here since the Revolution. Others had arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, hungry and in dire straits. I smiled at her, my Irish pride showing.
“And Collins. Any relation to the poet Billy Collins?”
“I wish.”
“Catholic, then, I presume?”
I was so awestruck by my surroundings that I didn’t hear the bigotry in that offhanded remark. Who in this century was biased against a mainstream religion? It wasn’t like I even had a crucifix around my neck. Much later, I would understand how my fellow inmates who were of Muslim origin felt at the sidelong glances, the hostile looks at their hijabs.
I should have known then that I was in trouble. Cecily Foster had only the bluest of blood flowing in her veins and she’d married a man equally patrician. In their insular world, blacks were politely tolerated, Hispanics were staff, and folks like me, of blue-collar origin, were to be avoided.
“Mother, you and Rose have something in common.”
“What’s that?”
“You have the same alma mater.”
Cecily raised one eyebrow. “How interesting. I was a legacy student. Were you?”
“No. I was a scholarship girl.” Best to get that right on the table. I tried not to see Charles’s reaction. He’d been so sweet to try to prove my worth to his mother through our common alma mater, and I’d tossed the goodwill away with the mention of receiving need-based help from a scholarship association that sought to diversify the student population, which trended toward being upper-middle-class and beyond. I could hardly add that the scholarship covered only my first year; thus, I was one of the legion of debt-burdened graduates.
Cecily Foster was a lot like some of the girls I’d met my first year. I’d encountered her type before, that saccharine niceness obscuring their fear and hostility toward someone who is otherwise not our kind.
“Rose graduated summa.”
“Well, of course, I married at the end of my junior year.” Somehow, Cecily made that sound like an accomplishment far greater than my exemplary grades. It probably was. She was sitting in the great room of a palatial summer house overlooking Long Island Sound, tastefully dressed in Lilly Pulitzer and pearls. I was living at home with my parents and shilling coffee for a living.
A black woman in a pink uniform came into the room to announce that luncheon—the last three letters stood out to me—was ready. We picked up our drinks and drifted out onto the terrace. Charles took his mother’s arm in a display of filial grace. Later, I would figure out that he was just making sure she got to the table without spilling a drop.
When I sat down for my first prison meal, also lunch—without the last three letters—I was asked how long I was in for. In the same mildly curious tone of voice, Mrs. Foster asked me what I did. I had prepared for this, practicing acceptable variations on selling fancy coffee. But before I could answer, something along the lines of “finding myself before I launch out into the world by working behind the counter of a specialty coffee shop and learning some of life’s hard lessons,” Charles sprang a surprise on me. “Rose will be coming to work for Wright, Melrose & Foster.”
“Charles?” The tomato on the end of my fork dropped to my plate.
“And moving in with me.”
How like Charles never to have mentioned this to me.
Cecily’s reaction was marvelous. “Are you to be engaged, then?” The Botox prevented her from frowning, but her eyes glittered with terror.
“Not quite.” Charles went back to eating his lunch, as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on both of us.
“Oh, I see. It’s an arrangement. Of course.” The terror modified into relief. Boys must sow their wild oats.
I was a communications major, I knew code for whore. “Charles, we really should talk about this.”
Charles fixed his gray eyes on me, lifted his square chin, and smiled. “Louisa, would you please bring us a bottle of that Dom Pérignon I know Mother has tucked away? I think we should celebrate.”
The one thing that I was sure Cecily Foster and my mother would have in common was their distaste for this new arrangement.
* * *
Along with our dogs, we were introduced to our trainer, a nervous youngish man, Jack Dunham. At first, I thought the nerves were because of us, of being in the same room with inmates, but I soon figured out that he was just one of those fidgety kind of guys. The only time he was relaxed was when he was focused on demonstrating the commands: sit, stay, heel, down, the four elements that comprised the basic training of these puppies. Once those commands were perfected, we would take on the work of teaching the puppies how to be helpful to their ultimate handlers. Two were destined to become bomb-sniffing dogs working for the TSA. Others, like my Shark, were earmarked for service- or assistance-dog work: flipping light switches and picking up dropped objects; standing still to support someone’s rise out of a chair; standing close to absorb fear, nerves, panic. I knew right away that Shark would be perfect at the latter. A lot of my own darkness of spirit had been dissipated simply by his presence in my life.
Now every day was different; routines were new. I even spent more time in the prison yard, rehearsing Shark on his commands, with the distraction of other inmates and the fresh air. And playing fetch with him. The greatest privilege was the evening last call, when we were allowed to go into the exercise yard with our dogs just before lights-out. The first time we were let out, I looked up and saw stars. I hadn’t seen a night sky in all its glory in years. Despite the overwhelming presence of the prison lights, there, in the middle, was a patch of dark sky, pale stars pinned to it.
Shark
He’s happy to meet this new person. In his short life, he’s been cosseted and played with and cuddled and asked to learn certain manners. He’s getting better about most of them. This new person has a different scent than the ones he’s known since he left his dam’s side. Where all the others carry the scent of the outdoors, this one does not. Her scent is that of inside. But as he investigates her more thoroughly, even going so far as to taste her skin, he understands that she is going to need his fun sense more than any of the other people in his short life. So he flops onto his back and pretends to bite her foot. He is instantly rewarded with that altogether marvelous sound of human laughter.
Meghan
“You should talk to that fella.” Meghan’s mother glanced toward a young man sitting opposite them in the physical therapist’s waiting area. He wasn’t any more remarkable than any of those who did their obligatory hours with weights and stretching and balance work. Scruffy, vacant-eyed; a cane across his lap and the prosthetic legs showing beneath his cargo shorts. The only distinguishing thing about him was the presence of a dog.
Meghan stubbornly refused to follow her mother’s glance, instead scowling at the suggestion she go make small talk with another client in this place just because they had one common trait, military service. Okay, two things in common, serious and obvious wounds.
“Ask about the dog,” Evelyn whispered.
Meghan pursed her lips in annoyance, but her mother wasn’t taking the hint.
“Okay. I’ll ask him. Sir, we were noticing your dog. Is he a service dog?”
“Mom, for God’s sake, it’s got a vest on; of course it’s a service dog.”
The young man’s face went from glum to bright. “Yes. She. She’s a trained service dog. My lifesaver, to tell you the truth.”
Evelyn got up from her seat beside Meghan and went to sit with the young man. “What does she do for you?”
As he talked, he stroked the dog’s head. The dog, a golden retriever, had her eyes riveted to the man’s face. Her soft muzzle was open, showing a row of perfect white teeth and a pink tongue.
Meghan feigned a deep interest in a Women’s Health magazine showing fit young bodies, which only reminded her of what she’d lost. But, out of the corner of her eye, she watched, half-listening as her mother interrogated the wounded warrior. “Where did you get her?” Evelyn sa
t on the right side of the young man and spoke close to his ear, as if she assumed that he, like Meghan, was hard of hearing.
“My buddy heard of this program and called me. Best thing I ever did.”
Meghan dropped the magazine and it flopped to the tile floor with a slap. The dog broke from her study of the young man to look at Meghan, the half-open mouth now closed, ears on alert for threat. “Oh, Mom, sorry…” She breezily gestured toward the dropped magazine.
Evelyn ignored Meghan and continued her conversation with the veteran.
Then one of the physical therapists came to the door. “Mr. Silensky.”
The young man got himself to his feet, the dog beside him. “Her name’s Ivy. Thank you for not trying to pet her. She’s working.”
“I knew better than to do that. Good luck.” Evelyn gave the veteran one of her most winning smiles, reminding Meghan of the way she’d smile at the gang of boys who used to come to their house after school, Mark’s friends. Offer up a welcoming smile and a plate of brownies.
Evelyn returned to her seat beside Meghan, picked up the fallen magazine, and put it back on the pile of reading materials. “Next time, you should talk to him.”
“Why? I’m not interested in getting a pet.”
“You know as well as I do, they aren’t pets. They’re service animals.”
“What I see is one more creature for you to take care of. Remember why we didn’t have pets when I was a kid? Too much work, you said.”
“We moved too much, Meghan, and besides, I’m just suggesting that you might be interested.”
“Again, to what end?”