Year of the Dog

by Shelby Hearon

  The truth was, I missed James deep in the pit of my stomach and not a week had gone by since I got here that I didn’t think about putting Edgar in the car and heading up the highway toward the Canadian border. But my fear was: real life wasn’t a sabbatical. In real life, Pete, James’s sidekick with the overbite and faint acne scars and eager smile, would be all grown up with a wife he’d met in Germany, and they’d come eat with us on the weekend, and James might miss him hanging out with him worse than he’d missed me. Maybe I’d see my old scroungy upstairs neighbors, Larry and Roland, at the Pharmacy where I’d got a job in, say, South Burlington, coming in for drugs of a milder, prescriptive nature. But they too would have their own places, their pieces of paper that entitled them to decent jobs, and would scarcely recognize me in my white coat without my doggy companion. Maybe I’d stay at PACIFIC VIEW, monthly rates, while I pretended to look for a house, taking Edgar for after-work walks along the lake in the Dog Park so he could trot in the brisk air and snap at snowflakes, or to visit his former person Sylvia when she needed cheering. And we’d both be grateful not to have to spend another panting summer in muggy Carolina.

  Could I do that? Leave?

  He didn’t look the same. Coming through the gate into the waiting area in black t-shirt, khaki pants, clean shaven, a carryon in one hand, the other slinging a jacket over his shoulder. James. James? I could see in my mind the straggly face-hair and grubby headband knotted around his forehead that he’d worn that first time. But here he was, all cleaned up, looking like a teacher just back from abroad. I got a lump in my throat. I didn’t want improvement; I didn’t want change. I wanted what I’d fallen for way back when.

  “Hey,” he said, his blue eyes looking happy to see me, leaning over to miss my mouth by half an inch.

  “Hi,” I said, slipping an arm around his neck and doing a better job of managing a welcome kiss.

  “How big he is,” he said, bending down to pat Second Dog.

  “He is. I found him a vet, and a big yard.”

  He slipped the arm clutching his jacket around my shoulder. “You doing okay? About losing her?”

  In the car, driving us back to Peachland, I tried to talk about my fine good dog which I hadn’t done long distance. We’d mostly emailed during the summer, because of the time difference when he was in The Netherlands, and I’d been glad every time to see his name and read his e-talk, but it wasn’t the same. His actual voice told a lot he didn’t put into words.

  I said, “You were right, you know, about the hydro-electric plant. That turned out to be a big step for her. Her leading me out of there.”

  “She did great, I told you.”

  “She did, but I didn’t really understand, not till I saw her at the trials, backing her person away from the big scary danger—that stupid black umbrella.” I had to pinch my nose to stop the tears. It didn’t do to think about all that, and I still couldn’t say her name, even to myself. Sometimes I’d think Good Big Dog, but that was all I could manage. Maybe in a year or two. I’d stuck the photos of her in the back of a Physician’s Desk Reference Manual five years out of date. Maybe in a year or a dozen I could look at them.

  We went up the steps of my rosy rental and he started toward the door, but I said, “Let’s try out the porch swing first.”

  We did, pushing lightly with our feet, then I asked the real question. “How are Lucille and Owen?”

  “I talked to them, but I haven’t been to see them. I wanted to come down here first. But listen, I want us to take my dad over there to The Netherlands next time, see Maastricht, the town where the kids study. I want him, you know, to see his people, where they come from. I mean, I’ve made that trip a dozen times, and he’s not even been out of the country. It’s another world over there, like a century ago in a way, everybody on bicycles or on foot; going over those cobblestone bridges you hear a dozen different languages at once.”

  Want us to take him? Pete? His students? Me?

  James said, “He asked how you were doing.”

  “How am I doing? I wash my undies and it’s all over town before breakfast. The first day I step out my front door, my ex’s wife shows up like the Welcome Wagon.”

  “You need to come back.” He turned my face to him. “I told him, my dad, I said, Janey’ll be there with me, at the reunion. That’s September.”

  “Reunions are just for family.”

  “We can remedy that. Come on back.”

  “James, how can I leave here? Everybody in town needs me.”

  “You stay, you’ll be double-dating with that guy you used to be married to, by Christmas.” He glowered in my direction.

  I nodded at the not unlikely thought. “There’ve been recorded cases.”

  “Come on, you liked Vermont.” His voice rose, “You liked me.”

  I took his hand and let the swing slow to a stop. “Right on both counts.”

  “How about you show me your bedroom that I came all the way down here to see, now that you’ve really got one.” He stood and hefted his bag.

  “I may not be able to, you know—in this place.”

  “Hey, we’re here, Janey. Don’t get cold feet.”

  I smiled and opened the door—no need to lock it around here. “Not in this climate.”

  I let Edgar out into the green backyard, loose and off his leash since he was an ordinary dog, with a bowl of fresh water under the shady cottonwood tree.

  Upstairs, out of his black t-shirt and good trousers, his heart pounding, James became his old self again, that boy I’d met at the Dog Park. Glad to have him here, I slipped out of my flowered southern dress and best new pale blue undies, and, under the breeze from the ceiling fan, we made Carolinamoon love in broad daylight on my big bed with the crisp white sheets.

  He seemed agreeable—after we’d got caught up over chicken-salad sandwiches in my sunny dining room with the ceiling fan, sharing the leftovers with Edgar, and then had a little tour of the town in the car, so as not to attract too much attention—to the idea of meeting my parents at the Southern Fried Café for supper. In fact, he seemed extra glad at the prospect of seeing my daddy again, Daddy not being one for writing thank-you letters about Sulzer Escher Wyss turbine photos.

  Probably, if I hadn’t been so needy to see him, so happy he’d invited himself down, I’d have thought through what our meeting my folks for a family supper in Peachland, South Carolina, meant. It meant the whole town had to show up for a look.

  It was still daylight when we walked through the door, me in a long pink skirt and tee, James in a blue shirt and khakis, with Mom and Daddy following behind us. Daddy, nervous in his best summer church jacket and tie, Mom in a green-and-white flowered silk, her eyes stuck wide open with mascara. Both of them dressed for a major public social event. The arrival of Janey’s new beau.

  “This table good for you?” ’ Maydelle asked, lifting off the RESERVED card next to the little vase of cut flowers.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Maydelle, this is my friend James Maarten.”

  At once, he stuck out his hand, “Maydelle,” he repeated.

  While Daddy and my mom got themselves settled at the table, deciding who should sit where, I bit the bullet and, with James holding my hand, made the rounds of the crowded room.

  Saying hello first to Millie and Curtis, who no doubt were sitting at the exact same table where they had eaten with her parents in another life.

  “Millie, Curtis,” James repeated, hand out, eyeing my ex, a former stud grown slack, who grudgingly offered to shake.

  I greeted Madge from the bank, and her husband Cletus, my lawyer. “This is James,” I presented him.

  “Madge, Cletus.” He pumped their hands.

  “Evening, Mr. Grady,” I said, seeing he had a RESERVED card on his table also. “And, my, this must be Gloriana, all grown up. James, this is Cornelius Grady and his niece. And this is Mr. Solomon Haynes and Blind Dog, who—.” I choked up and had to look away.

  “Gl
ad to meet you,” James said, shaking every hand. “Good boy,” he said, gently patting the big black lab.

  Then he shook hands with Mr. Sturgis, who stood to his full rotund height and told him, in a near-deafening voice, how glad they were to have me back and not one instant too soon, and for him, James, not to be taking me away again any moment, now. “You hear me?”

  “Mr. Sturgis,” James said, “Janey talked about you all the time, and that’s the truth.”

  “That right?” Mr. Sturgis, now Orville to me, looked around the room to be sure everyone caught that.

  Mom had turned petunia pink with all the fuss over her only daughter having a decent looking man to show around. After we sat and gave our orders to Maydelle for the fried chicken and chicken-fried steak, fried okra and sweet-potato fries, and the buttermilk biscuits and the cornbread, deciding that we’d think about dessert later, Mom said, “We figured you for a keeper, James, we did, right from the start.”

  “That’s right,” Daddy agreed, “we figured that up there Christmas, at the home of the aunt and her lady friend.” He said this offhand, as if his mind had already fit the two women into it and moved on.

  Mom, waving at Madge, didn’t appear to hear the reference to her blood kin in another sate.

  After a pause, Daddy asked, “How you been, boy? I set a lot of store by that picture of the turbine you sent me. I got it mounted in the hardware.”

  “I gave my dad one, too,” James said, lighting up. “He’s a high school physics teacher.”

  “You don’t say? Your dad? Huh.” Daddy looked at me to see if he’d get in trouble asking a personal question outright. “Where’s he at?”

  “New Hampshire. My parents live in New Hampshire.” James looked at the ceiling, as if amazed to hear himself say the words.

  “I don’t know about physics, but we’ve got plenty of engineering around here these days. You ought to detour over to Camden to check those little Chinese refrigerators they’re turning out.”

  Mom looked thrilled enough to pop, and kept glancing around to note who all else in town had decided to come have supper on the spur of the moment, mid-week, at Southern Fried, and so was seeing her at the center of the event.

  After a pause, Daddy asked, “You aiming to take Janey back up there, son?”

  “I’m trying,” James told him. “It’s up to her.”

  I looked at the two of them, touched at the way they’d bonded. Moved that they wanted me happy and mated, that they thought the choice was mine to make. But was it? Could you ever leave if the matter of leaving rested with you? Here James had got himself a new family and a new self that he’d never imagined before. And my Good Big Dog had done the same, done her best and done it right, and moved on to her new life and new person. Could I make that happen, too? Or was I stuck here till my hair turned white as my lab coat, still making my buttermilk pie and never seeing a face I didn’t already know?

  “Opportunities go by,” Daddy said, looking at James but maybe talking to himself or me.

  “I know it, sir. They do.”

  I smiled at them both. “I guess I will be heading north again one of these days. I can’t ask Edgar to spend another summer in this heat. And since I’ll be coming up anyway at the end of August to see my Good Dog graduate with her new person, that seems as good a time as any to check out available jobs.”

  “You mean it?” James asked, beaming at me, giving my. dad a thumbs-up.

  “Would I miss your very first family reunion?”

  Companion Dog

  41

  I HADN’T CRIED all the way from Carolina to Vermont. I didn’t even cry all the way to Massachusetts from Burlington where I was staying with James. But once I drove into the parking field where I’d last been for the puppy trials, I had to blot my eyes, my face, my shirt, with half a box of Kleenex. Had to mop my eyes until even my hair felt damp.

  Once I’d got myself together, I started for the section where the former persons of Companion Dogs could wait, and then, spotting Vijay’s guy, himself red-faced in a stiff white dress shirt which looked right out of the box, began to weep again. He waved me over, seeming glad to see me, and blew his nose when I sat down.

  “She graduating this morning?”

  “I’m so proud,” I sniffed.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. You take that dog that had the lung trouble?”

  “I did. Edgar. He’s glad to be back up here. How about you?

  “It takes about two years.” He blew his nose again, and pounded a fist on his thigh. “To get over them. Then, I guess, I’ll start to give a thought to getting another. Vijay, he was special. But he’s my third. After while you get over it and you want to try another.”

  “Oh, Vic. However could you go through this again?”

  Then we saw the trainers turn and give a signal, and ten Companions and their persons came single file out onto the field. The graduates, the blind people, each had a chair for the ceremony, with room for their dog beside them. And there was a loudspeaker and an official photographer and a number of people I didn’t recognize but who seemed, from the excitement and the way they were dressed up and waving, to be the kin of those officially getting their dogs today.

  Betty had told me about Good Dog’s new person. I guess all of the raisers seated, as Vic and I were, far back in sort of makeshift bleachers, close enough that we could see, but far enough away that we would not distract the dogs, had been given information. The blind woman gaining my former puppy was a sixty-five year old widow who had never wanted a dog. She didn’t consider that she got on well with dogs. She’d explained that as a girl in Needham when she’d visit her uncle and his spaniel with her mother, her skirt would be covered with dog hair when she left. She didn’t like the idea of moving an animal in her home; she thought of them as doing better out-of-doors. But her stepson and his wife coaxed her and cajoled her to consider the idea, telling her that she would be able to go to church again, to see her friends, to attend concerts, since they knew she quite loved chamber music. And because she, her name was Edith, was a kindly woman who realized that they’d otherwise be saddled with her care, she gave in. Allowing herself to be taken for the lengthy and intensive training sessions at the kennels. And had quite fallen in love with her gentle puppy. “They were a match from the start,” Betty had said.

  Trying not to break down, I watched the graduates coming along single file, and then I saw—Beulah. Such a big, grownup dog, so attentive to her person, so carefully and confidently directing her to a chair. And her person: a lovely, composed older woman whose face wore a look of almost unbearable happiness: She had done it; she had finished the course. She and her dog had many sociable and affectionate years ahead.

  “You okay?” Vic asked, standing to take a zoom photo of Vijay and the straight-backed graying man at his side.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m really fine.” And because I couldn’t see too well, I handed him my camera to take a picture of the kindly lady from Needham and her Companion. In case I might want to look at it some day.