by Susan Conant
“No apologies necessary,” he said. “I can’t stay. I just wanted to thank you again.”
He was dressed in a conservative summer suit, this one dark navy—how many did he own?—and his tan hadn’t faded at all. Rowdy and Kimi wouldn’t, of course, induce pallor, but if they brushed against Monty, their hair would be all over that navy suit, and I’d feel obliged to remove it. Or try. The easiest way would be to don a pair of ordinary rubber gloves and, using moderate pressure, run my hands repeatedly downward on the fabric while saying…I could just hear myself: Now, Monty, it may seem as if I’m using dog hair as an excuse to give you an intimate massage, but this method really is very effective. Plus, the rubber gloves would make him think I was some kind of pervert.
Fortunately, instead of greeting Monty in their usual hair-depositing fashion, the dogs behaved oddly. They sashayed up to Caprice and gave her the big-brown-eyes treatment, but what they did with Monty was…nothing. Specifically, Kimi did not drop to the floor, roll over, tuck in her paws, fix her gaze on her victim, and await a tummy rub. What’s more, she remained silent. Rowdy, for his part, did not stack himself as if he were showing off for a judge. Like Kimi, he failed to present his underbelly, and he issued not a single woo. Although one of his fleece toys was right there, he did not offer it to Monty, and he did not vanish and reappear with other fleece tokens of welcome. I also want to note that neither dog showed any sign of perceiving Monty as a threat. Those signs are subtle, but I wouldn’t have missed them. Kimi didn’t station herself at my side and move her eyes back and forth between Monty and me. Rowdy didn’t position himself between Monty and me as if to create a canine barricade. In brief, the dogs did nothing. For malamutes, especially these two, to ignore a visitor was peculiar and unsettling. Still, for once, a dark suit escaped unfurred.
Monty Brainard, seeing nothing, noticed nothing.
“You don’t need to thank us,” I said.
“I wish I could stay to help out,” Monty said.
“He’s due back in New York,” Caprice explained. “I need to go to Ted’s to get some stuff. There’s not a lot there that’s actually mine, but I’ll feel better if I can get it out.”
“The cellar here is dry. There’s plenty of room.” I couldn’t recall having invited Caprice to move in with us for the summer, but Leah might have issued the invitation for an extended stay. Steve would have consulted me first, but, always with good intentions, Leah could be high-handed. “If you need help, I’ll go with you, or Leah will. She finishes early today. She’ll be home soon.”
“Caprice would be better off not going there alone,” Monty said. “Thank you.” Then, after kissing Caprice good-bye, he left.
Monty Brainard knew that his daughter shouldn’t go to Ted’s alone. And what was his response? To leave for New York. If Rowdy had decided that I was threatened, he’d have used his massive body to place a barrier between me and the source of danger. If I’d had to enter a place I feared, Kimi would have stayed right by my side. Rowdy and Kimi were, in fact, better dogs than Monty Brainard was a father. Indeed, when the occasion demanded it, they were excellent parents.
CHAPTER 22
If you’re stuck with inadequate parents, the situation is more hopeful than it might seem. There’s always psychotherapy, but it has its limits, including what are called “boundaries,” which good therapists set and maintain. Your fifty-minute session is your time, and unless you are in a dreadful crisis, you are supposed to express and satisfy all your psychotherapeutic needs in your therapy hour, and you are definitively not supposed to keep pestering your therapist with phone calls or otherwise to encroach on time that doesn’t belong to you. The relationship is supposed to be professional: the therapist is the therapist, you are the client, and that’s that. In contrast to therapists, dogs have a limitless mind-set. A dog never decrees that a small, fixed period of time, a fifty-minute hour, is all you get, and as to the boundary between your life and the dog’s, the dog sees the two lives as a richly intertwined unity. Indeed, one of the challenges of raising and training dogs is to convince these fusion-minded creatures that certain places and things are off-limits: my kitchen counters, my dinner, my cherished possessions, which are for my use only and are not to be mistaken for dog toys. It is also necessary to set and enforce the rule of nonreciprocity: whereas my belongings are exclusively mine, yours are mine, too, including your food bowl, your toys, and even your body, which I will handle whenever you need grooming or veterinary care. But once those rules about what belongs to whom have been suitably clarified, we are free to become a joyful plurality that offers in place of the fifty-minute hour a boundless flow of twenty-four-hour days and a limitless exchange of love.
And then there’s friendship. You can pay a shrink for it. Your dog will give it freely. But sometimes you need a human friend. When Caprice’s father deserted her, Leah and I stepped in. I wouldn’t have allowed Caprice to go alone to Ted’s, but soon after Monty’s departure, Leah got home and promptly organized the expedition to retrieve Caprice’s possessions. There are, I might mention, two people responsible for Leah’s bossiness. I am one of them. I introduced her to dog training and dog-show handling by putting her in charge of Kimi, who practiced a militant form of radical feminism and canine liberationist activism that would have challenged even an experienced dog person and did, in fact, challenge one, namely, me. Leah responded by rapidly learning to set and enforce strict limits and high standards. The second person responsible for Leah’s bossy streak is Maria Montessori, whose contribution was to found the educational movement in which Leah received her early schooling. The Montessori method, as I understand it, is supposed to produce self-directed children. In Leah’s case, it instilled the conviction that besides directing herself, she was supposed to direct the rest of us, too.
“Holly, we need your car,” she said. “I’m going with Caprice. There won’t be room for all three of us, so you’re staying here. She can’t go alone. Wyeth is horrible to her, and who knows what Ted might do? Try to get her to move back there? And she’s not doing that. Caprice, change into jeans or something, or you’ll ruin your dress.”
Caprice obediently went upstairs and returned in jeans and a tunic-length T-shirt. “Woof woof,” she said. “Click? Treat?”
Leah had the grace to blush and apologize. Then she hurried Caprice out to the car. When they returned an hour later, they were in high spirits.
“Caprice’s mother has left her all of the china and silver and stuff at Ted’s house,” Leah reported. “If he isn’t maximally polite and considerate to Caprice, we’re going to auction it all on eBay.”
“And let him eat off paper plates,” said Caprice. “With plastic forks.”
“He was there?” I asked.
“We only saw him for a second,” Caprice answered. “Between patients. Wyeth wasn’t home. We lucked out.”
“Was Dolfo there?”
“He was eating the mail,” said Leah.
Caprice added, “A while ago, Dolfo ate Ted’s passport, which he’s going to need when he and Wyeth go to Russia, and then when the new one came in the mail, he ate that, too. Mail is his favorite food.”
“It’s one of Sammy’s, too,” I said. “Paper and plastic. He likes to think of himself as a canine recycling facility.”
The convivial mood boosted my hopes. It lasted as the three of us unloaded the car and carried boxes to the cellar. Steve got home, and we fed the dogs and got ready to go out to the restaurant where we were meeting friends. Four of Leah’s friends from school turned up, and the group decided to go to a movie. Although everyone urged Caprice to go along, she declined by saying that she’d had a rough week and wanted to go to bed early. It had been a terrible week, of course, so no one leaned on her to change her mind. When Steve and I left, the household was peaceful: India was in her crate, Tracker was in my office, Rowdy and Kimi were in the living room with the door closed, and both Sammy and Lady were in Caprice’s room. We started to remin
d Caprice about who could and could not be loose with whom, but she rattled off the rules practically word for word. “And if Sammy starts to act wild, he goes to his crate,” she finished.
“Sammy always wants to be a good boy,” I said. “But he doesn’t always succeed. Right, Sammy?” His eyes had a glint that concerned me a bit. “Remember! He’s a big puppy. Don’t trust him! He gets into things.”
“I’m used to Dolfo,” Caprice reminded me. “Compared to Dolfo, Sammy is an angel. And he’s so sweet.”
In response, Sammy curved himself around Caprice and leaned gently against her. Then he stretched his neck, raised his big, gorgeous head, and gazed lovingly at her.
“If he has a fit of flying around and bouncing off the walls, put him in his crate,” I said. “No matter how cute he is.” I paused. “Where is Pink Piggy?”
Sammy replied by dashing under a table and emerging with the battered toy in his mouth. He gave it three firm squeezes, thus producing three distinct squeaks.
“We’ll take all the dogs out when we get home,” Steve said. “They should be fine until then.”
We had a so-so dinner at a restaurant in Inman Square. Our friends had to get up early the next day and didn’t want dessert or coffee, so Steve and I stopped at Christina’s and bought ice cream to take with us. Despite the hideously cold winters in Greater Boston, everyone here eats a lot of ice cream all year round, and everyone has an opinion about the major contenders for Best of Breed. When I’m judging, Christina’s wins.
We got home at about ten, and since the weather was now dry, we decided to take the dogs out to the yard and to have our coffee and dessert there. As I was making coffee and dishing out white chocolate ice cream, Steve let India out and, after her, Rowdy and Kimi. His optimism about harmony in the pack didn’t extend to foolhardiness: he trusted Kimi to behave herself with India only if the two were supervised. Consequently, he stayed outside. When the coffee was ready, I put our mugs, bowls of ice cream, spoons, and napkins on a tray. (Short on household items? Get married! We now have everything, including, for the first time, items without depictions of dogs.) As I was carrying out the tray, Lady came prancing into the kitchen and followed me to the yard. The big question—the fateful one, the crucial one, the one that should have been paramount and obvious—did, of course, occur to me: where’s Sammy? I have no excuse for failing to answer it. I should immediately have gone back inside to look for him. What’s more, Steve should have asked himself or me exactly the same question and should have seen to it that one of us acted on it. India and Lady were Steve’s dogs, Rowdy was mine, and Kimi belonged to Leah and me. But Sammy was our dog, Steve’s and mine, sired by Rowdy, bought by Steve, and, since our wedding, owned by both of us: my co-ownership had been Steve’s wedding gift to me. I had a ring, too, but as the wedding ceremony itself says, a ring is a token, and what’s a token, really? A trifle, an arbitrary sign, an object that’s a mere nothing by comparison with what it represents. Sammy, in contrast, was no bauble or trinket or symbol of love given and received; Sammy was love itself.
But as I set the tray on our wedding-present picnic table, the familiar voice of Kevin Dennehy called from the gate to the driveway: “Hey, Holly? Steve?”
With a six-pack of Budweiser in one of his big hands, Kevin entered the yard and was immediately surrounded by dogs. “Any thirsty boys here?” he asked. “Dry throats, huh? Hey, Rowdy, she still keeping you on the wagon?”
“Permanently,” I said.
“Hey, don’t yell at me. I didn’t teach him that trick,” Kevin said. “Did I, big boy? It came natural to you. Like singing. Some people are born being able to carry a tune like a songbird, and some aren’t. Knowing how to chug beer’s just like that. A God-given gift. And you got it.”
“Kevin, besides being a talented beer drinker, Rowdy does happen to have a spectacular voice, so why don’t you work on developing that talent and quit giving him alcohol! It is not good for him. Or for Kimi, either.”
Disloyally, Steve said, “A sip or two of beer now and then isn’t going to hurt them.”
“I don’t see you feeding them beer,” I said. In fact, neither India nor Lady had any interest in it.
“They don’t ask me,” Steve said. “They ask Kevin. Kevin, take a seat. You want some ice cream?”
He turned down the offer in favor of popping the top off a beer, sipping, and then accidentally-on-purpose holding the can at the level of Rowdy’s mouth. Even I have to admit that Kevin’s claim about Rowdy’s talent was justified. Strictly behind my back, Kevin had also taught Kimi to sip beer, but she performed the trick without Rowdy’s air of mastery. Also, she seemed to me to dislike the taste, whereas Rowdy obviously loved it.
“Enough!” I said. “Steve said a sip or two now and then. He’s had a sip or two. Enough!”
After giving Kimi her turn, Kevin rested the can on the table. “They do a good job of sharing,” he remarked. “You ever thought about writing to Budweiser about them? They could be on TV instead of those Clydesdales.”
“The Clydesdales haul beer around,” I said. “They don’t drink it.”
“That’s what I mean. What kind of ad is that? If you want to sell beer, you should show people drinking it. Or dogs. The head honchos at Budweiser could work out some kind of deal with Purina or Eukanuba or whatever. Brew Team Dog Chow. Just add water, and it makes its own beer.”
“Or the other way around,” I said. “All Natural Lamb and Rice Premium Performance Budweiser for Large Breed Adults.” I paused. “With small brains. But speaking of food, do you want a sandwich or something?”
“No, thanks. I can’t stay. I just wanted to tell you about those squirrels.” Kevin’s expression was uncharacteristically grim.
“They were at the feeders today,” I said. “Steve, I meant to tell you. I printed some pages from the Web. You need to add baffles. Two squirrel baffles on each pole. And PVC pipe for the poles to go in.”
“There’s a quicker way,” said Kevin. “That’s what someone did over there. Over at the Greens’.”
Steve and I waited in silence.
“I took a look at the feeders,” Kevin continued. “Like you said, no squirrels. And no squirrel damage. And in Cambridge, that’s not normal. My mother’s got that feeder you gave her, Holly, and half of what’s there are squirrels. They eat the birdseed, and the perches are all chewed up. And over there at the Greens’, there are a dozen of these feeders, all kinds, fancy ones, with no squirrel baffles. No nothing. So I start looking around and…” He shrugged. “And I call this bird feeder company, On the Wing, and ask if they’re doing something, putting something in the birdseed, and they say no, they’re not. They used to add some kind of hot pepper, but it turned out to be bad for birds, and they quit. There’s some kind of feeder that gives electric shocks, but the clients didn’t want one. So, then I get a bright idea. I send a guy up a tree. And there it is. Rat poison. A lot of it. In that tree and two others. Not all that high up, either. And that’s your answer. No squirrels.”
I reached for Steve’s hand and squeezed it. “Kevin, that’s monstrous. It makes me sick. No one wants squirrels at feeders, but—”
“It’s sick,” Steve said. “And dangerous.”
“There are dogs there!” I said. “Dolfo. And next door, Portia. George and Barbara’s dog. There are probably other dogs in the neighborhood. And cats. If one of them had eaten a poisoned squirrel…”
“And if kids found a dead squirrel,” Kevin added. “When I was a kid, we used to have these funerals for dead animals if we found them. Bury them, flowers on the little grave.” He crossed himself. “Kids do that. Handle the dead squirrel, put your hands in your mouth. And kids climb trees.”
“Have there been any reports?” I asked. “Reports of anything…?”
“No. And we asked around. It’s luck is all it is.”
“Kevin, who did this?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you something. Homicide, that’s a lo
t of people’s business. But this—this one’s Cambridge. Hey, a few years back, I could’ve been the kid that climbed one of those trees or buried a dead squirrel. This one’s mine. And so’s the bastard that did it.”
CHAPTER 23
As soon as Kevin left, I suddenly and belatedly thought of Sammy. “I’ll go get him,” I told Steve. “You stay here with the others.”
Neither of us was alarmed. Sammy was probably in Caprice’s room. The privilege of staying with her was new to Sammy, who was probably curled up on the bed next to her. Still, he was a sociable dog, and it was unlike him not to have come dashing down the stairs to greet us when we’d arrived home. Furthermore, he must have heard me dishing out ice cream, and any sound even remotely suggestive of food, the alpha and omega of malamute existence, usually sent him flying toward its source. It did not, however, occur to me that Sammy was in serious trouble. I casually checked the downstairs rooms and did not run upstairs, but tiptoed to avoid awakening Caprice, whose bedroom door turned out to be ajar. The room itself was dark. I heard her snoring lightly. Still on tiptoe, I checked the other rooms and then waited outside Caprice’s for a moment as I tried to decide whether to leave Sammy to keep her company or to make him have one trip outside before he settled in for the night.
Just when a rustling noise made me resolve to inch my way in and lure Sammy out, his big head emerged from the room. In his mouth were the damp remains of a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies. His formerly white face was smeared with what I at first mistook for dirt. A second later, the smears registered on me as chocolate. Chocolate contains a substance called theobromine that is toxic to dogs. A large amount of dark chocolate can kill a small dog. To a dog Sammy’s size, a small amount of chocolate, especially milk chocolate, isn’t usually fatal, but dogs vary in their sensitivity to chocolate. Without hesitation, I snatched the bag out of Sammy’s mouth. To my relief, it had contained oatmeal raisin cookies. Having examined the bag, I turned my attention to Sammy and immediately saw that he was simply not himself. His characteristically bright eyes looked at once wide and dopey, and his expression was puzzled and unhappy. Bending over, I ran my hands over his belly, which was frighteningly enlarged.