It was an afternoon in October of 1975, a year following my mother’s suicide, and there was a cool and welcome nip to the air after the two weeks of Indian summer that had just cleared out. The black oaks were flaming up in red and orange along the street, weaving their bright colors through the swamp maples out behind the house. I tried not to think about the fact that the weather and the aura of autumn had been just like this the afternoon of my mother’s suicide only a year before.
My father, Joy, and I were painting the south wall of the living room in the house in Weston. There was much repair and maintenance work to be done, as my mother had let many things slide since she and my father divorced in 1972 and he moved out of the house.
As we painted we didn’t talk much. There was a pleasant silence to it all, just the movement of our arms up and down and then the stretch into the bucket of white at our feet. The knock at the back door interrupted us, and it was Joy who went to answer. She came back quickly and her voice was alarmed.
“There’s a woman out there who says she hit a black-and-white dog with her car.”
We ran to the kitchen and crowded around the screen door.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, looking as if she would cry. “I didn’t mean to hit it, it ran out in front of my wheels.”
“Where is she?” my father asked quickly.
“I don’t know. It just ran off.” She pointed in the direction of the wooded area across the street. “Somewhere over there.”
My father nodded, and all three of us pushed past.
“Is there something I can do?” she called after us.
“Just go,” my father said harshly, even though ordinarily he was scrupulously polite.
We searched the woods for over an hour and couldn’t find her, returning home at last, discouraged and afraid, but it was a fear we couldn’t admit to. My father went back to painting, Joy left with a boyfriend, and I took off with an old high school buddy. We couldn’t bear waiting to see if Daisy would reappear.
There is a general disagreement between Joy and me about what happened next. She remembers that it was she, as she was returning home, who spotted Daisy out behind our house on the neighbor’s property line. Yet somehow I can also see it, as sharply as if it were happening in this instant: I looked out the driver’s window of my car as I came down Highland Street, scanning the trees in the back swamp, a painter’s palette of orange and gold and red, their trunks virtually invisible. Only a flash of white stood out, stark against the riot of color, just for a moment.
The sisterly difference of opinion will never be resolved, but in any case, this was the point at which the two of us joined in the driveway and ran into the woods to the now-appropriate place. We found Daisy lying on her side, her legs outstretched, as if she had been running and just fallen in place.
“I’ll go get Daddy,” Joy said urgently, turning back.
I stayed, and reached out to touch Daisy. Under her soft coat, her flesh was like cold stone. I snatched my hand back, scalded as if by dry ice. I had never touched a dead body before. My mother’s had been taken away by ambulance on the day she died, before I ever reached the house, and I had always wondered what it would have been like to have had the chance to say good-bye—a squeeze of the hand, or a kiss on the forehead.
I rocked back on my heels to get away.
As my father and Joy ran up, I started to cry.
Daddy gathered Daisy in his arms, and we took her around back, to a place behind the house where the ground was soft and yielding. He shoveled for what seemed like a long time, tears running down his face. Joy went back to the house for a blanket. Then we all stood, sobbing. The sounds we made were guttural and rough, but we were unable to stop. Daisy had been, without question, my mother’s dog. And in this season of loss, we all now wept as if we were at my mother’s memorial service once more.
Gently, Dad lifted Daisy up and then knelt to lay her down into the deep and wide hole. He covered her with the blanket. He picked up the shovel and began to move the soil back in on her. I turned away. I couldn’t bear the sight of the dirt falling on her.
The box of my mother’s ashes was in my father’s bedroom closet, shoved to the back of a high shelf, yet never out of my mind. It had been a year and we still had not been able to bury her, not even in a private family service. Yet now, suddenly and without warning, we stood at a grave—bewildered, perhaps, because it was not hers. Not my father, not my sister, not I, had been able to manage the organization of the steps necessary to consign her to the ground. No dirt had yet been shoveled for her.
“It’s as if Mom is dying all over again,” said Joy.
When my father was done with the shovel and tamped the ground shut with his feet, we put our arms around each other and just stood there, exhausted. Not since the afternoon of the suicide had I felt so bleak. There were no miracles to be found that Saturday, and it would be a long time before I was willing to give my heart to another dog again.
PART II
our very own
{IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE}
Rhiannon
Tia
five
DURING THE YEARS AFTER college, my boyfriend and I lived in small apartments that forbade dogs. Fresh from Harvard, Jim Fiske and I set up shop in a small studio west of Boston, and I began work on what would be my first foray into the literary world, immersing myself in editing my mother’s correspondence in Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters. Hours unraveled in the Special Collections Library at Boston University, where her archive was housed at that time, and those long stretches away from home, as well as the fact that we had no room in our tiny apartment for a puppy, meant dog ownership was impossible. In any case, my heart had no room, for Daisy still filled it. It would be close to fifteen years later before I felt motivated to try again. Mom was gone, Daisy was gone: I didn’t even want to begin to try to fill those particular voids.
The next four years were consumed by Jim’s attendance at Harvard Medical School and by my first novel. Once again, we lived in a dog-unfriendly apartment building. I had to make do with frequent trips out to Weston, to visit the aging Penny, any time I wanted a dog fix. But, in truth, as the four years passed, I didn’t think about dogs that much. My mind was on many other things, like work, and a relationship, and I had walled myself off from the trauma of two sudden deaths by refusing to even think of making myself so vulnerable again.
Marriage in 1979 brought new responsibilities and another small living space, this time in a Harvard dorm, where Jim and I became residential tutors to the undergrads as a way of saving money as he went to business school. Our schedules were full—I was writing my second novel and he was working. I found myself once again returning to my father’s home as a way of getting my hands on a dog. Penny, old and arthritic, would still cuddle up on the nights I came for dinner. It made me sad: to see the final curtain falling on the line of the Sexton Dalmatians, as my father said he would not get another dog when she died. He had remarried, and his new wife wanted to travel.
Just before Jim and I moved to Manhattan for his new job on Wall Street, my father put Penny to sleep. His wife seemed relieved; my father was quietly heartbroken. I mourned in a distracted sort of way, as my life seemed to have spun beyond dogs, into the world of children.
It was to a concrete high-rise overlooking the East River that I brought my first child home from New York University Hospital. I had been on strict bed rest for eight months of the pregnancy but hadn’t much minded, as I had had three previous miscarriages and would have done anything to make certain this baby survived. Yet, how I wished I had a therapy dog, those soft Dalmatian eyes to buffer me from the anxiety as the weeks rolled slowly by. In February of 1983, Nathaniel was born, followed shortly by Gabe in 1984.
When we moved the family to the suburb of Scarsdale, a forty-minute train ride outside of the city, it was the first time I allowed myself to again think seriously about getting a dog. We lived in a small brick house with t
hree bedrooms, one that reminded me of the house in Newton Lower Falls where I had grown up. There was a very small yard in the back, with a two-foot-high fence, one possibly suitable for a cocker spaniel or a Chihuahua or some other toy-size dog—but definitely not for a Dalmatian.
Somehow I just couldn’t get past it. A Dalmatian it had to be. We considered building a higher fence, but I knew the yard was just too small for the boundless energy of my favorite dog. And then, too, there were the demands of both my sons. Nathaniel was now nearly two and a curious, impossible toddler, and Gabe was still newborn, needing nursing and constant diaper changes. Perhaps inevitably, I found another sort of solution, a temporary one that sufficed for five years. An Abyssinian kitten bought on impulse when I went with a friend to a cattery to pick up her second Aby. As I watched the slinky red cats twine their way around our legs, the old yearning arose in me, and I called Jim. “How would you feel about a cat?” I asked, fooling myself into thinking that this would suffice.
He didn’t sound enthused, having come from a home where no pets had been allowed, but he knew how much I craved a dog again, as I stopped to pet with longing every canine that came down the street. It seemed that we never saw Dalmatians. Had the breed become extinct? I wondered. Would I ever have again the special grin of a Dalmatian in my life?
The following Christmas the unexpected occurred. As a surprise for my sister, her husband arranged for a special sort of present, which was of course a Dalmatian puppy. As Daisy had been for our mother, Jenny also became a “therapy dog” of sorts, a comfort for both Joy and her husband, who were having trouble conceiving. For a time, Jenny was to be the recipient of the love they could not give to a newborn, and when their adopted daughter came into the family, their beloved Dal was loved by someone new.
I was filled with happiness for them but felt a sharp envy as well. When we first visited them in their home in Newton Lower Falls, only a few blocks from the house I had been raised in, I felt as if I were zooming back in a time machine. Not only was I in the place of my birth, but I was petting the dog of my childhood.
In 1989, the Fiske family left New York and followed a career shift for Jim to a suburb south of San Francisco. For the very first time in all those years since Daisy died, I had a house with a large, fenced yard. The yearning revved itself up. The cats (there were now two of them), beloved by all, nevertheless faded into the background. This was the moment I had been waiting for, and eleven years had been too long. And so it was that when the kids graduated from kindergarten to grammar school, I listened to their entreaties and my own inner longing. As they, now eight and six, began to beg for a dog, I was reminded of the way Joy and I had been similarly single-minded on the subject with my father. Once again, all the families around us, and all the children’s friends, had dogs. But Jim was even more resistant than he had been with the acquisition of the cats.
Nevertheless, I called the American Kennel Club to find a Dalmatian breeder in our area. Without telling him. He had never before had a pet of any kind other than the Abyssinians, Doppler and Caya. He had never known a minute of the kind of loving a dog would bring.
I called the four names the AKC gave me and then secretly mailed a deposit to the three who were soon to have litters. I wanted a girl. I knew the wait would be several months, or longer, for the harder-to-obtain females. In all my family years with Dals, we had never had anything but. I couldn’t imagine breaking the streak with a boy.
Marty and Stu Stanford of StageCoach Dalmatians were the nearest to us. They didn’t have any puppies available at the time and weren’t expecting any for another six months, but Marty invited me to come over and meet her grown dogs, so that I could see her line and get on her list.
I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t find a big kennel with a string of runs filled with barking dogs. StageCoach was simply the Stanford’s home, a small ranch house even smaller than the Colonial I had grown up in, where we lived with Clover and Angel. Like all my childhood dogs, the Stanfords’ were housedogs. They slept in heavy-duty plastic crates stacked one on top of the other in the kitchen next to the oven. I looked at those crates with misgivings, thinking that they were a cruel alternative to letting your dog roam through the house. But—I reminded myself—not the street.
Yet, when we went into the backyard with its six-foot fence, five dogs were running around quite freely: three females and two males. The girls were a mother and her two daughters. The mother was now spayed but had been a noted champion. The Stanfords were waiting to breed one of the daughters, also a champion, at her next season. I had my deposit riding on that litter, perhaps six months hence, though there was no guarantee she would get pregnant, or that a girl would be available. Or that I’d be able to discipline myself to wait six months. I reminded myself that I had other breeders to meet, and some of them had litters due sooner.
The Stanford’s youngest girl, Rhiannon, now over a year old, was just starting out in the show ring. Marty and Stu were looking for a “show home” for her now because they believed it would be best for her if she moved out from under her mother’s shadow. They felt she might be excellent material for a beginner to train and exhibit on the days when neither of them was available. They would co-own the dog with her new owner and continue to show her in the extremely competitive California circuit. This seemed an interesting concept, one I had never heard of before.
She had been named after a Welsh witch and, of course, after the Fleetwood Mac song. She had a lot of spots, and many of them were run together in long wavy lines—a very “colorful” dog, as Dalmatian breeders kindly put it. Her eyes were light brown (a minor fault, though I couldn’t have known that then), but more important than their color was the soulful look she gave me as she came right over and put her head in my lap. Her whiskers prickled the skin of my leg. I stroked her silky head. Rapture.
When I left that day, I was totally smitten by each dog, even those who were so busy playing that they paid me little mind. All I could think about was when a pup would be available. All the fear and grief I had held when Daisy died had been long since resolved. I was ready.
And my boys were, too. When I got home, Nathaniel pestered me with questions and Gabe begged to go over to the Stanfords’ the next day so that they could meet the dogs. I called again and got permission to bring them. Still I mentioned nothing to Jim. As we went through the backyard gate, the dogs ran up, barking and smiling. The boys initially thought those grins were snarls and drew back. I had to explain it was the breed’s way of being submissive and happy.
Together, they all ran on the lawn as Marty and I talked more about the kind of home Dalmatians needed, as if I didn’t know: consistent, disciplined, with plenty of exercise and a lot of hands-on love. They were not the kind of dog you could confine to a kennel run in the backyard and walk away from. Not unless you wanted a lot of barking and digging and other destructive behaviors. They were true companion dogs. Once again, unbidden, Rhiannon came over and put her head in my lap.
“Looks like she’s picked you out,” Marty commented.
I laughed. “Maybe I should take her instead of waiting for a pup.”
“Maybe you should,” Marty answered, ever the business-woman, sensing an opportunity. Her wide freckled face was so friendly and open. It was easy to feel as if we had known each other for years.
I paused and looked down at my lap. The weight of Rhiannon’s head on my knee was sweet. The Stanfords would show her; I would love her.
But I pushed the thought away. I wanted a puppy, I reiterated to myself, an affectionate puppy I could raise from the get-go as all mine, not a yearling who had been at the bottom of the pack for the first twelve months of her life, overshadowed by both mother and sister.
Yet, without realizing it, I once again identified with the underdog, just as I had with Sherlock and his deafness, just as I had with Penny and her early difficulties. Dim in the bright light of my mother’s dramatic talent and her ever-present mental
illness, my sister and I had often been shoved to one side as well. Now it was Rhiannon who lived in the shadows. Suddenly all I could think of was rescuing her and making her someone’s top dog.
Startled, I realized that I had made up my mind, and as I drove home, I pondered a new problem: how to convince Jim that it was time for a dog. I didn’t relish the possibility of an argument.
Later that afternoon, back at home, the children were distracted from their homework. “Why couldn’t we just get Rhiannon today?” asked Nathaniel.
“Rhiannon,” Gabe chimed in. “Tomorrow.”
“We’ll see,” I comforted them. “We have to talk to Daddy first.”
We went out to dinner that night, meeting Jim at Scott’s, a seafood restaurant near his office. It took only a moment before the kids were babbling about the dog. He started to frown.
“You took them to see a breeder without even asking me how I felt about a dog?” He gave me an angry glance.
I sighed. I hadn’t asked him about a dog because I didn’t want to hear him say no. I knew it was wrong.
At this point I wanted to give Rhiannon a home. I had become committed to creating a place where she could be number one.
“Please!” Nathaniel begged.
“Oh, Daddy, come on!” entreated Gabe.
“As usual, I’d look like the bad guy,” he groused, rumpling his hair with his hand.
“You don’t have to.” I smiled at him winningly.
“I thought you wanted a puppy. This is a dog.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t know quite how to explain why I had changed my mind.
He smiled then, just a little bit, as if he didn’t really want me to see.
The next day I went out and purchased the recommended crate and a leash, a big bed and a pooper-scooper. Rhiannon came home to stay.
six
RHIANNON’S ATTACHMENT TO ME was as strong as steel. She followed me from room to room and always slept curled up at my feet as I worked in my office at the computer, except for the times when I left the house and she slept happily in her crate, which was as secure a den for her as it had been at the Stanfords.’ I was learning.
Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair With Thirty-Eight Dalmatians Page 5