The Dog I Loved

by Susan Wilson

  “‘Today I have encountered Doctor Bellingham along the Commons road. He is kind enough to have offered me a lift. And appalled when I gave him my new address.’”

  Carol asks, “What was her ‘new address’? I thought she lived here.”

  Now I feel like a storyteller winding up to the climax and I give in to a perverse need to keep them waiting. “Anyone want more coffee?”

  “Just tell us.” Meghan holds her mug up for another splash.

  I set the carafe on the table. “Jacob Baxter has evicted her because she can’t pay the rent. She’s in Dogtown.” I hear the present tense in my statement. Susannah is, for me, very much in the present.

  The cousins suddenly wear the same expression of dismay, and for the first time, I can see that they share blood.

  “He threw her out? A widow?” Meghan sits back in her chair, slaps the table. “What kind of a man was he?”

  “It was more gentle than that, if you read her writing. From the get-go, once her husband was gone, she knew she couldn’t stay here. She wrote that it was a place meant for a family, and she had none. Baxter had five kids.”

  “But Dogtown? That was considered a place of ill repute, wasn’t it?” Carol looks at Tucker as the historian in the room. “You know, witches and prostitutes?”

  Meghan sniffs. “What else do you call an old impoverished woman but a witch or a whore?”

  Tucker shakes his head. “No. By her time, the area was pretty much abandoned, so she must have holed up in one of the last houses standing.”

  “She did, Goody Mallory’s place. Which is interesting, because she says the dog, the one that followed her home, belonged to Goody.”

  “Was the cottage nice at least?” Carol looks embarrassed on her Baxter ancestor’s account and it’s painful to tell her that it wasn’t a “cottage,” but a hovel.

  “She wrote that it stank. She called the stench a ‘miasma’ that penetrated everything. Even her clothes.”

  “This Baxter sounds like a jerk.” Meghan tips the last of the coffee into her mug.

  Our historian chimes in. “It was the way things were done. Most widows would have gone to live with one of their children, but I guess, from what you’ve told us, Rosie, she had no one.”

  “She mentioned that her husband, Ben, had two sons from his first marriage, but neither of them offered to take her in. Besides, I think she was attached to Gloucester, to Cape Ann. She didn’t want to go back to Marshfield. She had a life here.”

  Tucker walks his mug over to the sink. “Except that my ancestor, Doc Bellingham, was making it hard for her, horning in on her livelihood.”

  I remember something from my last reading. “Tucker, I haven’t told you, but I found an entry where she wrote that Dr. Bellingham had asked her to help him with a case.”

  “That’s good. Maybe he helped her out. But still. Ending up in Dogtown.”

  I gently close the daybook and put it back in its archival box, close the cover, tie the black string that holds it shut in a neat bow. “She was a strong, independent woman who got treated pretty shabbily. She went from happily married to homeless, an outcast in her own town.” I’m looking at Meghan. I want my friend of the here and now to understand that this long-ago woman and I have certain things in common. “It may sound weird, but I relate to Susannah. We both have a solitary existence, a lack of accepting family. We are both victims of circumstances beyond our control. We both have a companion dog for comfort.” I stop before I get weepy. Shadow is back in the house and has dropped his chin onto my lap. I scratch behind his ears. I notice that Shark is getting the same treatment from Meghan. “But, you know, maybe Susannah found some solace. I mean, I’m in Dogtown, too, and”—I smile at Meghan, still amazed that she’s been my secret benefactor all this time—“it’s been really good for me.”

  Meghan nods, puts her scarred hand on mine. “I was hoping that it would be.”

  “And, in some ways, maybe there is something of Susannah in you, Meghan.”

  “What?”

  “Her strength in the face of adversity.”

  * * *

  There seems nothing left to do but go out and get lunch before Carol and Meghan have to head back to Connecticut. Meghan rides with me, Carol following so that they can get on the road right after.

  “So, what do I do with it? The diary. Does the family want it?”

  “Carol will survey the rest of them, but my guess is that we might want a copy of it, and the original can go to the library or the historical society.”

  “I keep feeling like there must be another piece of it out there somewhere. I’d love to find it. Find out how the story ends.”

  It’s a ten-minute ride to the Lobsta Land Restaurant, but I take my time around Grant Circle, never comfortable with rotaries at the best of times. It’s started raining in earnest now and I must need new wiper blades, because my windshield is all blurry. I have only minutes to ask Meghan my nosiest question. “What’s up with you and Marley?”

  Meghan

  “How’re things with your family?” Meghan snaps back.

  “Okay, off-limits topics. I get it.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve just been badgered by Carol over it; I’m a little fragile.”

  Rosie laughs. “I don’t think so. You’re about the least fragile person I know.” She signals for their exit. “The answer is, I haven’t broken through their radio silence yet.”

  “And I haven’t talked to him in a week and a half. We didn’t leave it very comfortably.”

  Rosie doesn’t say anything, but Meghan feels Rosie’s hand on her own.

  * * *

  Meghan rides in with Don the next morning, having spent the night with Carol and Don at their home in Fairfield. Shark likes the backseat of Don’s Mercedes-Benz, stretching out on the leather seat like a pasha. Over dinner last night, she and Carol filled Don in on the good work being done at the Homestead, and the sidebar of Susannah Day’s extraordinary diary.

  Don gives Meghan a side glance. “So, how was it? ’Fessing up to being nice?”

  “I won’t lie. It feels pretty good.”

  “Dare I say a relief?”

  “You might. It is a weight lifted, for sure. I had no idea being so guarded with a secret could be so wearing.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “Kind of pissed initially. But she’s not the kind of person to stay that way, and she’s so happy. Don, she’s really in a good place.”

  Don spends most of the rest of the drive into the city on the phone, while Meghan’s thoughts drift. Thinking about Rosie, Meghan feels very relaxed, maybe for the first time since she put Rosie’s name into consideration by the Advocacy. It’s true what they say about the weight of a lie. Not a lie per se, but a withholding. An omission. It’s like being released. She extricates her phone from her bag, sends off a quick text to Rosie: It was great to see you. Hope to see you again soon. xxoo. She’s never done that before, add those little letters x and o like some kind of schoolgirl. Next she’ll be drawing hearts over her i’s. In an instant, her phone chimes. xo to you.

  Meghan is unaccountably pleased. It’s good to have a friend. At least one that she hasn’t alienated. She was rude to Rosie about Marley but was forgiven. She was pretty cold to Marley, but she doesn’t expect to be forgiven about that. Another ding. Will call tonight to talk about the M situation. From what she’s been told, it’s always good to have someone to talk to about hard topics. Not so much a shoulder to cry on as a fresh perspective. Fresher certainly than Carol’s. Rosie doesn’t know firsthand how sweet Marley can be.

  Her phone chimes again, but this time it isn’t Rosie. It’s Marley. It’s like she’s conjured him with her thoughts. Meghan doesn’t open the text, just sits with the phone in her lap, staring down at the screen. They’ve entered the city and Don is waiting his turn to drive into the parking garage. Shark sits up and pushes his nose over the seat, pokes her cheek with it. She reaches back to pet him. The dog,
being an equal-opportunity lover, bumps Don’s cheek, as well. Meghan sees Don’s smile. Sometimes the best part of your day is getting dog kisses.

  The parking garage leads right into their building, and as they pass into the atrium-style lobby, Shark’s tail begins to wag with a vigor that can only mean he sees someone he loves. He softly woofs as he spots his pal Spike and her person, Marley.

  Suddenly, Don is six strides ahead of Meghan. “Hey, Marley, nice to see you.” He shakes the other man’s hand and then fairly leaps aboard an open elevator.

  Meghan wonders if Marley is going to block her way to the rank of elevators and then wonders at her own cowardice. This from a woman who performed sweeps of potentially booby-trapped buildings or ones harboring snipers.

  Spike has her own agenda, and she and Shark are quickly nose-to-nose, and other important areas, tails whipping from side to side. Spike breaks off from Shark long enough to greet Meghan. Because of their history, because of their former relationship, Meghan has no compunction against petting this working therapy dog. She runs her hand through the curly topknot on the dog’s head. Spike meets her eye like an equal and Meghan has a fleeting moment of whimsy that the dog is asking her to please give Marley another chance. Meghan shakes the impression off. In the next moment, Shark and Spike have flopped down on the cool, shiny floor of the lobby, directly in front of her wheels. Evidently, it won’t be Marley blocking her way.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi yourself.” Marley snaps his fingers and Spike goes to his side. “Got a minute?”

  She could plead an important meeting. She could say no. She is looking up at Marley, and he seems taller than ever. She gestures toward a bench. She doesn’t want to be forced to have a conversation with her head tilted—a position of vulnerability.

  Marley sits on the edge of the bench and she pulls her chair up to be beside him. She doesn’t want to be facing him. It’s easier to talk if she doesn’t have to look at him, at his eyes. Marley very gently, very respectfully takes her hand in his, her more damaged hand. “When I first came home from Iraq, I pretended that everything was fine, normal. That I was fine, normal. I wasn’t. So I turned, like so many of us do, to drugs. They helped on the surface, making it easier for me to deny what had happened. No, that’s not right. They were supposed to help me to deny that what had happened had affected me. But, of course, they were false gods. I wasn’t any stronger for taking them. The images and the fear and the nightmares were only blunted, not faced, not cured. And then I got Spike, and some of that I was able to put away. Not the fear, but the drugs. Not the nightmares. But the consolation of having this dog with me has helped. I am coping. Understand? Coping. That’s all we get, you and I. The ability to cope. We aren’t ever going to be perfect.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I think that you can cope with life going on. You have. And unless you really don’t have feelings for me, I think that you can cope very well with having me be a real part of your whole life, not just a compartmentalized section of it.”

  Meghan is aware that Shark’s fairly climbing into her lap, a sure sign that she isn’t coping.

  “The question I’m asking, Meghan, is, are you happier with me outside of your life, or in it with you?”

  It’s been only ten or twelve days, but despite the distraction of going to Gloucester, these have been the emptiest of days for Meghan. Even having Rosie fully back as a friend has been bittersweet, because all she could think of was that she didn’t have Marley.

  “Stay with me. Be in my life fully.” Meghan puts her good hand over Marley’s.

  Shark eases himself off Meghan’s lap, shakes, and flops down at her feet. Spike, already at Marley’s feet, drops her head on Shark’s rump and sighs.

  “Marley, I’m not sure I can do more than just be a friend.”

  “Then I won’t ask you for anything more.”

  But in the next moment, he’s kissing her, and it feels awfully good. “But you can always ask me for more.”

  Shark

  Spike! Life is good. The heavy feeling that he last detected between Meghan and Marley is lighter, if not entirely gone. Spike and he both keep their attention on their people, but then they do that mouthy submission thing that people do and he knows that it’s okay to start playing.

  Rosie

  I’ve been holding the inventorying of the upstairs rooms at arm’s length as long as I can. The late summer and early fall made prolonged periods in a dusty, musty attic seem very unattractive, more the kind of task one would undertake during the worst of the winter. However, the men are going to need to get up there sooner rather than later, so it’s upstairs I go, brand-new tablet in hand. I’ll record the items, snap a picture of each, and save the whole thing on the device to share electronically with the Homestead Trust, aka Meghan and Carol et al., and Tucker. I don’t think anyone believes that the key to buried treasure is up here, but who knows. Gramma Baxter was a pack rat.

  Chairs piled on chests. Bedsteads dismantled and leaning up against walls. A layer of gray dust coats everything, and I wonder if I should wear a mask. Carol said that they, the kids, slept in these rooms, and I imagine that in high summer it was an oven up here. There is no ceiling, no insulation, just rafters and roof boards. There’s a tiny bit of light like a star, and I realize that despite the fairly recent roofing job, there are problems. Indeed, beneath that glint is a crumbling cardboard box that has clearly suffered repeated wettings. Another job to add to Dogtown Construction Company’s ever growing list.

  I can’t imagine what it was like back in the day. There is no sign of a fireplace in either of the two upstairs rooms. Whichever people lived in this house after Susannah, they must have bundled together like puppies in their rope beds, the only heat up here body heat. Even today, a fairly mild October Thursday, I wear a fleece vest against the chill in these rooms.

  Shadow sits outside the bedroom door, which is a good thing, since he can only be in the way as I start to shift things around. I tally the big things: four beds—one iron, one spool, two very much 1950s-style rock maple. Most of the slats for this collection of beds are missing. In this room, no sign of a rope bed, which would have been interesting. I list the beds with their styles and move the headboards to snap photos of them.

  Next, I deal with the sheet-covered pier glass—nice, maybe worth something, except that the silver backing is worn and the mirror barely gives back my image, which I count as a blessing. It has been so long since I’ve had a good look at myself, I’ve been able to convince myself that I look just fine, not in desperate need of highlights, a manicure. A fresh look. I’m still pretty much rocking the jeans-and-T-shirt look of prison life.

  The chairs I lift and examine one by one, all very ordinary, all very broken. There’s a rolled-up braided rug similar to the modern one I put downstairs, except that this one’s colors are muted into a uniform color of highway slush, and the threads holding it together are frayed. It uncoils as I lay it out for its picture. Still, I think, it could be professionally restored. Maybe salvageable.

  So it goes for a couple of hours, and I’m surprised to find that I’ve gotten through room number one so quickly. I was imagining that this would be a weeks-long effort, and then I worry about what I’ll have to keep me occupied, keep me from thinking about the rest of what’s going on in my life. By which I mean this civil suit. Pete has tried to keep me off the ledge emotionally, with assurances that it won’t go anywhere, but I still fear Cecily Foster’s tentacles.

  * * *

  “It was a horrible accident.” I kept saying those words over and over as the too-young cop pulled out his Breathalyzer device.

  “Just puff into this.”

  Why did I feel like I was doing something obscene?

  It had been Charles who had been drunk, not me.

  We were in Connecticut, at the extravagantly tasteful wedding of the daughter of one of Charles’s late father’s business partners, who also hap
pened to be Charles’s godfather. Tatiana Bigelow and Charles had been destined for each other since the cradle. Until I came along, of course. So she’d found herself a consolation prize in the son of a well-placed political family. When his name was spoken, it was with the hushed reverence due a rising star, a future senator or even a president. Plus, they were richer than Croesus.

  I was not speaking to Charles and had no intention of going to the wedding. How could I bear the long ride to Litchfield side by side with someone who could prove himself so cruel? His abhorrent act should have been enough to send me out the door of his well-appointed luxury apartment, but I couldn’t think of anywhere to go. I had no friends in the city. Charles kept the credit cards, and I didn’t have enough money in my own checking account to get a hotel room or even a train ticket as far as Providence. I told myself that I was biding my time, that as soon as I heard from Paulie or from my mother, I could bolt. I was willing to suffer the “I told you so” that either or both would pummel me with. I was so broken. Even my angry family would have to see that I couldn’t stay with a man so vile and would take me back. I was willing to take my lumps.

  “You will go.” That’s what he said. That’s what his mother said. “You will not embarrass me.” That’s what they both said. I guess it was far better for Charles to show up with me on his arm as his certified fiancée than have Tatiana entertain second thoughts even as she glided down the aisle. Her missed opportunity. No one had ever told me why they broke up, but I bet now I could figure it out. Either she had more backbone than I did or she, too, saw the cruel side of Charles Foster.

  I sat in the backseat of the car, Charles’s favorite indulgence, his 1968 Chevy Camaro. Cecily was up front with Charles. I said not a word. They chatted about “dear people” they would soon see. It mystified me, how Charles went on as if he hadn’t done the thing he had, as if he had no moral compass. I realized then that he really didn’t have one; that his interaction with my own family proved that he had nothing more than ice water in those patrician veins. All the way to Connecticut my mind replayed what had happened to Tilley.