Gaits of Heaven

by Susan Conant

  What drove me out of the Brainard-Greens’ house wasn’t a sense of vulnerability to physical violence. Rather, the physical and emotional atmosphere of the place felt so toxic that I simply had to escape from the urine-scented air, the angry voices, and the ugly sense of contamination. I took the nearest exit, which was the front door and, by reining in Dolfo and forcing him to remain at my left side, managed to make it safely down the steps and reach the sidewalk, where I was surprised and relieved to see someone I knew and liked, a woman named Barbara Leibowitz. Barbara and her husband, George McBane, had taken their dog, Portia, through the beginners’ course at the club the previous fall, and Steve and I had sat with them at a fund-raising dinner for the MSPCA a few months earlier. Although Barbara and George were both psychiatrists, they had a tendency remarkable in the helping professions to talk about matters other than mental health. Barbara was a tall, striking woman with brown-black skin and black hair in elaborate cornrows. Leibowitz was, she’d told me, the name of her adoptive parents, who were white, and she’d kept it when she’d married George, all of whose grandparents had been born in Ireland. Maybe I should mention that this isn’t a story about Barbara’s search for her roots. I don’t know what they were or whether she had any interest in them. The interest of hers I knew about was animal welfare. Besides attending MSPCA events, she helped organize them and was known as a generous supporter of animal welfare groups. Her dog, Portia, who was with her in front of the Greens’ house, had come from the MSPCA shelter in Jamaica Plain. Portia’s roots did interest Barbara, who guessed that the little dog was half West Highland white terrier and half Heinz 57. In any case, Portia was entirely adorable. She had a pale, wiry coat, intelligent, snapping eyes, and a delightful habit of cocking her head when someone spoke her name.

  Barbara greeted me warmly and said, “I was so glad when Eumie told me you were helping with Dolfo! It’s about time someone did, and ‘Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner’ and all that, but if you have any success with Dolfo, maybe you could tackle the son while you’re at it.” She gestured to a big yellow house next door to the Greens’. “That’s our house, so we have something of a personal interest.”

  I had no idea what Barbara meant in saying with regard to Wyeth that to understand all was to forgive all. In ordinary circumstances, I’d probably have asked her, but as it was, I told her about Eumie’s death and the imminent arrival of cruisers and medical vehicles.

  “Are the children there?” she asked.

  “Yes. Unfortunately. It’s a horrible scene. I was the one who found Eumie. She was in bed. She apparently took an accidental overdose of something. If I’d known that the children were there, I’d have closed the bedroom door and kept them out, but it never occurred to me, and Caprice came in. It was terrible. She was screaming and screaming, and the son must’ve been asleep, and he came in and started yelling at her for waking him up. And Ted somehow has this crazy idea that Eumie may still be alive, and for God’s sake, rigor has set in. Dolfo jumped on the bed and…it was more than I could take. I’ve called nine-one-one. They should be here any second. I am so glad to see you. I feel as if you’re restoring my sanity.”

  “At the best of times, Ted and Eumie can be a little disorienting, and this sounds like the worst of times. Maybe we can get the children out of there. Not that they’re little children, but they are, uh, vulnerable. Wyeth could go to his mother’s. He splits his time between his parents. You might know his mother. Johanna Green? She lives somewhere near you. She has a papillon she walks a lot. Dainty little blond woman.”

  “I think I’ve seen her, but I don’t know her.”

  “Let me go try to reach her. And Caprice. Let’s mull that one over.”

  “Her father?”

  “Monty Brainard lives in New York. She’ll be lucky if he bothers to show up at all, but don’t tell her I said that. It’s not her view of him, and she’s better off with the one she cultivates. Sad situation all around.”

  “Monty,” I repeated. Say it ain’t so! At the risk of leaving myself vulnerable to psychiatric insinuations, I have to confess that my immediate reaction to Barbara’s negative assessment of Monty Brainard was that Barbara just had to be wrong. That’s not exactly a confession, is it? The confession part has to do with the grounds for my skepticism, which were—here’s the confession—not just religious but somewhat peculiarly religious, at least in the eyes of those who consider the faith handed down to me by my dog-worshiping parents to be odd, strange, weird, mentally unhealthy, or outright heretical, as it certainly is not. That being said, I was inclined on religious grounds to form a favorable opinion of Monty Brainard or, in fact, anyone else named Monty, because of the elevated position in the Malamute Pantheon occupied by a certain legendary Monty, namely, Ch. Benchmark Captain Montague, a justifiably famous Alaskan malamute bred and owned by my friend Phyllis Hamilton. Not that I imagined, of course, that every canine and human creature who shared the name Monty with the prototypic Monty simply had to possess the beauty, power, and strength of character so notable in Phyllis’s dog. Well, not that I exactly believed that Monty Brainard absolutely had to be a good guy. Still, let’s say that I was biased in his favor. And if my take seems irrational, let’s just suppose that you hear someone make a negative remark about a person named Mother Teresa of Calcutta or Saint Francis of Assisi. Point made? Thus my readiness to assume the best about Monty Brainard.

  Sirens wailed.

  Gesturing in their direction, Barbara said, “Caprice doesn’t need to see this. Can you get her out of there?”

  Wanting to be as kind as Barbara expected, I said, “Yes. I’ll go get her out of the house. And take her home with me.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “I know who you are,” said Caprice Brainard. “You’re Holly Winter, and you’re Leah Whitcomb’s cousin. You train dogs.”

  It was less than a minute after I’d finished speaking to Barbara. Intending to leave Dolfo outdoors while I went upstairs to rescue Caprice, I’d entered the backyard through a gate at the end of a short driveway that also served as a three-car parking area. I’d found Caprice seated on a teak bench. Ignoring the sirens and the voices of the men and women responding to my 911 call, Caprice said, “Leah’s bright, and she’s kind. And she’s so beautiful. At Harvard, everyone’s intelligent, but Leah is special. She’s a good human being. I’m Caprice Brainard. I’m Eumie’s daughter. My mother did not kill herself.”

  I do train dogs, of course, but training is the least of it. My true vocation and avocation is dog watching. Indeed, so ardently have I watched dogs that I have half merged with my subject and thus lack a strictly human eye to cast on the behavior of my fellow human beings. Consequently, when I should perhaps have rushed to the bereaved and distressed Caprice and given her the human equivalent of the tail-wagging, face-licking comfort that my own malamutes would have offered, I took dispassionate note of the total absence of any such exchange between Caprice and Dolfo. Set loose in the yard, Dolfo returned to the gate, jumped up on it, popped down, and then sniffed his way along a well-worn dog path that ran parallel to the fence. Caprice, in turn, addressed herself exclusively to me, a stranger, and took no more notice of Dolfo than she did of the house, the deck, the fence, or the many bird feeders. Had my Rowdy been there instead of Dolfo, he’d have approached her, fixed his soft, dark eyes on her face, stationed himself within stroking distance, and probably raised a paw. Of my three malamutes, only Rowdy was a certified therapy dog; he’d been taught to wait for my permission or for a direct invitation before touching someone. Kimi would either have hurled herself at Caprice’s feet or would have set herself the task of nuzzling and scouring the young woman’s hands as if they were ailing newborn puppies in need of revivification. And Sammy? All exuberance, he’d have run up to her, leaned against her, placed a great white snowshoe paw on her arm or her lap, and treated her to a sparkly-eyed smile that radiated joy itself, including the sweet expectation of having the joy reciprocated in fu
ll. Although I liked to believe that I was half malamute myself, I lacked my dogs’ unquestioning self-confidence. If Caprice had spurned Rowdy’s offer of contact, he’d happily have turned to me. If she’d brushed Kimi off, the judgment written on Kimi’s masked face would have been that Caprice alone was at fault for foolishly declining solace, and too bad for her! The whole point would’ve been lost on Sammy, who’d merrily have continued to assume that Caprice was just as thrilled with him as he always was with himself, and why not? He was handsome, charming, and happy; life in his vicinity was a delightful adventure; therefore, everyone else was as euphoric as he was. Being only half malamute, I felt inadequate and knew too well that rejection would leave me filled with self-blame. On the other hand—the big snowshoe-shaped one—I knew I had to try. Consequently, I took a seat next to Caprice on the teak bench and said, “Yes, I’m Leah’s cousin, and I’m so sorry about Eumie.”

  “She was careless about her meds, but the worst that ever happened was that she was sleepy the next day. Lethargic. I don’t care what Ted says! She was not self-destructive. Someone did this to her! She was not depressed. She was interested in things. Especially in people! Anyone who’s depressed enough to commit suicide loses interest in everything, and my mother had to know everything about everyone. She wasn’t just snoopy, which she was. She also had this passionate curiosity about people.” Caprice fumbled in her pocket. I handed her a tissue, and she blew her nose. “People told her things. They confided in her. Her patients did, of course, and Ted told her everything about his patients, too. And she found things out, including things people didn’t want her to know. And people resented her. Wyeth did. And Johanna. That’s Ted’s ex-wife, Wyeth’s mother. Johanna blames Eumie for wrecking her marriage, and Wyeth takes his mother’s side even though he doesn’t exactly get along with her. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

  I said what I guessed Rita would say: “Wyeth seems very angry.”

  “Wyeth is a little bastard,” Caprice said. “He’s a spoiled brat. And that’s not my mother’s fault. It’s Ted’s. And Johanna’s. I don’t know which of them is worse. Oh, God! What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? I can’t stay here. Not with Ted and Wyeth. My therapist is here. She’s in Cambridge. I have to see her, especially now—I can’t go to New York with my father. I have nowhere to go!” She burst into deep sobbing.

  I put an arm around her. “Home with me,” I said. “If you want a place to stay for a while, you’re welcome at my house. Leah’s with us for the summer. We’d be glad to have you.”

  Caprice was crying too hard to speak, but she nodded and gave me a big hug and then kept clinging to me. As I held her, I tried to think of ways to protect her. No matter what the need of the police for any information she could provide, I simply had to get her away from this lunatic household and especially from Wyeth, who, for all I knew, would repeat his insults to her and crow over her mother’s death.

  Somewhat to my astonishment, when I glanced toward the house, the row of glass doors to the family room revealed the hulking figure of my neighbor and buddy, Lieutenant Kevin Dennehy, who was the key element in my emerging plan to protect Caprice and thus seemed almost to have been conjured up by my imagination.

  “Caprice,” I said, “there’s a cop in the family room who’s looking out here. He’s a friend of mine. My next-door neighbor. His name is Kevin Dennehy. I’m going to have a word with him, and we’ll see if we can get you out of here. I’ll be right up there on the deck or in the family room. Okay?” Hesitantly, I added, “Would you like Dolfo to come over and sit with you?”

  The ridiculous-looking dog was curled up under a recently pruned forsythia bush. At the sound of his name, he roused himself and came loping toward us.

  “Dolfo is an idiot,” Caprice said.

  In his defense, I said, “His intentions are good. And dogs feel grief, too. He could probably use your company.”

  Rolling her eyes, Caprice stretched out a hand to the dog, who took the gesture as permission to approach her. With a wry grimace, she tapped him on top of his head but didn’t speak to him. With the sense that I wasn’t leaving Caprice entirely alone, I hurried to the steps that led to the deck, ascended them, and beckoned to Kevin to join me.

  His mother, who is the actual owner of the house next to mine, takes an ethnographic view of the human countenance: she always describes Kevin as having the map of Ireland on his face, by which she means that he has red hair, blue eyes, and freckles. Ireland is, however, a rather small country, whereas everything about Kevin is big: his head, each facial feature, his arms and hands, his torso, his tree-trunk legs, his mammoth feet. Furthermore, his oversized presence shoves him front and center. You could take a group photo of fifty people with Kevin standing on one side in the back row, and if you asked anyone to pick out the central person in the picture, the respondent would reliably point to Kevin.

  “Hey, how ya doing,” he said.

  “Not too well, but better now that you’re here. I had an appointment to help train the dog.” I nodded in Dolfo’s direction. “Eumie wasn’t up yet.” Giving Ted no credit, I said, “I’m the one who found her. Kevin, I need your help. That’s Eumie’s daughter down there on the bench. Her name is Caprice. I want you to be the one who questions her. Please don’t delegate the job. She’s very vulnerable.”

  “Mr. Sensitivity,” Kevin said.

  “And keep Wyeth, the son, away from her. He’s her stepbrother. Ted’s son. Ted is Eumie’s husband. Anyway, I’m still reeling from the way Wyeth spoke to Caprice. When I found Eumie, it never occurred to me that the kids were in the house, and Caprice came in, and there she was, standing at the foot of the bed with her mother’s body right there, and this kid, Wyeth, was unbelievable. Kevin, it was emotional abuse. The term gets tossed around a lot, but this was the real thing. I’m taking her home with me. She doesn’t want to stay here with Ted and Wyeth.”

  “Ted,” Kevin said flatly. “‘That’d be Dr. Green to you, boy.’”

  “He didn’t say that.”

  “Close to. Not in those words. What he says is it’s an accidental overdose of prescription drugs.”

  “Not so long ago he was saying that Eumie was still alive, so I guess that in terms of his mental health, this is an improvement. Caprice says Eumie wouldn’t have taken an overdose, accidental or otherwise. She thinks that her mother was murdered. She’s very insistent.”

  “Hey, it’s her mother.” He shrugged.

  “Do you really need to question her?”

  “She was in the house, and like I said, it’s her mother. Just a couple of questions, and then get her out of here.”

  Kevin followed me across the deck, down the steps, and to the teak bench where Caprice was sitting. Dolfo was on the grass a few yards away from her.

  Kevin took a seat and said, “Kevin Dennehy, Cambridge police. You’re going to be able to go home with Holly if that’s what you want. Or somewhere else if you want.”

  “Another planet,” Caprice said.

  “Seeing that we can’t manage a spaceship, will Holly’s do?”

  “Yes.”

  “She warn you about all the dogs?”

  “I’ve met Kimi. Leah and I were in a class together. She brought Kimi with her a couple of times.”

  “There are four more at home. And a cat. You got any allergies?”

  “No.” She pointed at Dolfo. “It’s just this one I don’t like. He’s ugly and demented.”

  I resisted the temptation to defend Dolfo. For one thing, Kevin wasn’t just chitchatting; he knew what he was doing, and he was getting results in the sense that Caprice was visibly more relaxed than she had been. For another thing, Caprice didn’t fit an idealized image of beauty any more closely than Dolfo did; the less said about appearance, the better.

  With astounding disloyalty, Kevin said, “So is Holly’s cat.”

  I said, “Tracker is my cat. She is a member of our family.”

  “Dolfo was Ted and
Eumie’s. Period,” Caprice said.

  “Slept in their bed,” Kevin remarked.

  “Peed on their bed,” Caprice said. “And everywhere else. Both of them were disgusting about him.” She eyed Kevin. “And if you’re wondering whether Eumie killed herself, there’s one reason why she wouldn’t have. In her opinion, Dolfo needed her, and it would’ve been traumatic to him to lose her. Her patients needed her. She wouldn’t have traumatized them by killing herself. More than anything else, she needed herself, if that makes sense. She was very narcissistic, and narcissistic people do not commit suicide. And if you’re wondering about an accidental overdose, Eumie could be frivolous and silly, but she wasn’t stupid. At one time or another, she took practically every prescription drug in existence, and so did Ted. Pills, capsules, liquid. And they shared. She talked about it all the time. But she was more careful than you’d expect. And lots of people had things against her. Wyeth hated her. So did his mother, Ted’s ex-wife. And she collected people’s secrets. Her patients’ secrets. Everyone’s. And in case you wondered, the house is practically never locked. The door on the side of the house, the one to Ted and Eumie’s waiting room, is almost always unlocked. We moved from the city four years ago. They thought Cambridge was safe.”

  “New York City,” I translated.

  “But they were wrong,” Caprice said. “They couldn’t have been more wrong.”

  CHAPTER 8

  As I see her in my mind’s eye, Anita Fairley sits at the desk in her room at CHIRP, the Center for Healing, Individuation, Recovery, and Peace. The room is all polished wood and natural fabrics. Its windows overlook fields and woods. The desk is bare except for Anita’s notebook computer, a telephone, a sheet of paper with a rather long list of handwritten names, a box of thick cream-colored notepaper, and a Montblanc pen with blue ink. The notepaper and the blue ink are not figments of my imagination; they are facts. Anita, too, is a fact, as is her appearance: her long blond hair, her lovely features, her slimness, and the hauteur of her expression. She is wearing new and expensive clothes appropriate to the occasion and the setting. She always does; therefore she does so now. Consequently, I see her in a designer version of the loose, comfortable clothing invariably recommended for yoga and meditation classes. Although the diagnosis of global chemical sensitivity is now passé, having been replaced by unfortunate systemic reactions to mold, I see Anita in unbleached and thus off-white cotton: a loose long-sleeved top and drawstring pants that fall in flattering drapes.