Gaits of Heaven

by Susan Conant

  With that, I walked out.

  CHAPTER 28

  “The more I see of men, the more I prefer or love or admire my dogs, men meaning fellow human beings, of course. Mark Twain,” I said to Steve. “Pascal. Frederick the Great, Madame de Sévigné, and a few dozen other people. I’ve seen it attributed to all of them, probably because all of them said it. Or something to that effect. But if you want to quote me, the statement right now is that the more I see of myself, the more I prefer my dogs. Our dogs. All dogs. Any dogs. Even Dolfo was better behaved than I was! I am completely disgusted with myself.”

  That was on Sunday afternoon during our hike, which was not entirely ruined by my self-recriminations, but only because of Steve. He patiently pointed out that it was perfectly all right to stop someone from teasing a dog with food. Among other things, he said, the behavior was dangerous: Dolfo could have bitten Wyeth. Steve also said that it was probably high time that someone spoke bluntly to Ted. My only big mistake, in Steve’s view, was telling the brutal truth in front of Wyeth. I agreed.

  “You were trying to protect everyone,” he said. “Dolfo, Caprice, and Wyeth. There’s nothing wrong with kindness to animals and children.”

  “Oh, my impulses were admirable. But in front of Wyeth! He is so pitiful. And at the same time, he’s so cruel. My temper just snapped.”

  “You lost it,” Steve agreed. “It happens.”

  “It doesn’t happen to you,” I said.

  “It does. Go easy on yourself. Look, Holly, it was a one-shot deal. You don’t go around making scenes all the time. It’s not like you make a habit of it. Let it go.”

  And I did, at least for the moment. Even the weather seemed determined to lift my spirits. The New England climate is notoriously changeable: it typically changes for the worse by making abrupt leaps from freezing to sweltering and back to freezing again. The temperature that afternoon was, for once, seventy degrees. As if to compensate for my uncivilized conduct and my consequent shame and guilt, the dogs were at their best during the hike through the wilds of Dogtown, a large wooded area in Gloucester that Steve and I both liked. Kimi refrained from growling at India, and not once did she crowd Lady or loom over her. Kimi, Rowdy, and Sammy wore their red two-piece Wenaha packs, and Sammy managed not to detach the saddlebags that were Velcro-fastened to the yoke. When we stopped to give water to the dogs, no one tried to steal anyone else’s folding bowl. On wet stretches of the trail, Rowdy kept his head up instead of indulging his revolting appetite for mud. Lady moved with a bounce in her step that showed, we thought, unusual self-confidence. When we got back to the van and were loading in all the dogs, India, whose dignity usually prevented her from begging for treats, paused for a moment to nuzzle my pocket, and I had the pleasure of slipping her a piece of cheddar. We arrived home to find a note from Leah and Caprice to say that they’d gone to a concert at a nearby church and were going to hang out with friends afterward. Our house and our evening were ours.

  Sunday’s hike and the evening with Steve restored my equilibrium. Monday morning started off well. After finishing my usual chores, I took a shower and, contrary to the instructions on the CD that Eumie had given me, listened to the guided imagery while I shampooed my hair and bathed. Just as promised, I ended up feeling strong and relaxed. Better yet, I felt hopeful that showing my dogs could become fun again. That afternoon, I decided, Rowdy and I would go to a park to work on rally obedience. When we got to the park, I’d keep taking deep, smooth breaths in and out, and Rowdy and I would play. The happy thought came to me that the cure for my ring nerves wasn’t so much guided imagery as it was Rowdy, whose performance of the required exercises in obedience had always been maddeningly unpredictable, but who, I now realized, had reliably enjoyed every second in the ring and who was more than willing to allow his joy to replace my fun-killing pride and competitiveness.

  Writers are dreadful opportunists, and malamute-owning writers are the worst. Having experienced renewed optimism about my ring nerves for all of twenty minutes, I sat at the kitchen table with my notebook computer and rapidly drafted a column about the cure that I felt certain was going to work. The first half of the column, I must point out, was about methods that had failed or had made me more anxious than ever. For example, bursting into song to make sure I kept breathing had been dandy during practice sessions, but what was I supposed to do as I stood just outside the ring? Make a spectacle of myself by loudly caroling an off-key “Happy Birthday” or “Amazing Grace”? Or sing to myself under my breath when I was too terrified to have a breath to sing under? So, the first half of the column was based on experience, and only the second half was derived largely from my imagination. After all, a draft was a draft. I’d eventually do a few reality-based revisions.

  Caprice, I might mention, had roused herself at what was for her the early hour of nine o’clock. She’d eaten a nutritious breakfast of fruit and yogurt, taken Lady for a walk, and cleaned her room before going to see her therapist. After her therapy hour, she was going to Rita’s office to help Rita with her computer. As I hope I’ve suggested, Rita was a brilliant therapist—despite never having trained a dog. Rita’s present dog, Willie, a Scottish terrier, was no one’s idea of a promising candidate for competition obedience, but Rita had refused to take him to Canine Good Citizen classes or basic pet obedience. He walked politely on leash because he’d known how when she’d adopted him. He was house-trained. I had made notable progress in teaching him to quit yapping during her absence and to stop flying at my ankles. Rita was fully satisfied with him, as she’d been with her previous dog, Groucho, an amiable dachshund who, by virtue of walking pleasantly on leash and never using the indoors for outdoor purposes, was as educated as Rita expected a dog to be. Rita always argued that she spent her professional life helping people to change and that the last thing she wanted to do when she got home was to start again with her dog. I, on the other hand, said that anyone setting up in the therapy business should be required to have spent a minimum of two preparatory years training a dog; a clinician who lacked the prerequisite was merely practicing, whereas someone who’d learned first on a dog might actually be able to do human therapy. Rita excepted. But when it came to computers, she exemplified yet another radical difference between dog trainers and shrinks: dog trainers, who are fully accustomed to exchanging clear, unambiguous messages with intelligent beings different from themselves, easily transfer their skills and attitudes toward computers, whereas a lot of shrinks get irritated at computers on the grounds that computers fail to have deep feelings, never appreciate the complex nuances of anyone’s life history, and are aggravatingly reminiscent of unsatisfactory parents. Leah had tried to convince Rita that just as dogs were companion animals, computers were companion machines, but instead of buying the argument, Rita had hired Leah to help her. Leah, who was endlessly patient with dogs, hated the job and did it only out of pity for Rita. Leah was, however, working all day, so the pressing task of transferring Rita’s files from her computer to a CD that she could bring home, and deleting the sensitive material from her computer, had fallen to Caprice. Rita had taken Kevin’s warning seriously. She’d be right there as Caprice copied and deleted, and there’d be no need to open files, so there was no concern about access to anyone’s secrets.

  So, while Caprice was presumably at Rita’s office, when I’d finished my work, I gathered together the rally obedience signs I’d printed out from the Web, selected the ones I wanted, packed some dog treats, and made a shopping list. I intended to take Rowdy to the big park behind the Fresh Pond Mall and to buy food for dinner on the way home. By my malamute standards, the day was even better than the previous one—sixty degrees and overcast—so Rowdy would be safe in the car with the windows lowered and a padlock on his crate.

  Sammy was at work with Steve. Before leaving, I needed to make sure that the dogs left at home would be comfortable. I gave Kimi a turn in the fenced yard, then India and Lady. While they were still wandering around, I pick
ed up the pooper-scooper and was engaged in what Leah calls “the unaesthetic task” when India suddenly began to growl. The German shepherd dog is, of course, supposed to be a watchdog. Fortunately, India recognized the background noise of our neighborhood as just that and never sounded pointless alarms. Indeed, her watchdog vocalizations often struck me as primarily expressive rather than communicative: when India barked, she sometimes seemed less interested in frightening off intruders or in warning us of potential dangers than in voicing her observations of changes in the environment. I’ve noticed something new, she seemed to say. And I’m curious about it! If she perceived a threat, especially a threat to Steve, she sounded serious and even menacing rather than simply alert.

  But on the rare occasions when India growled, she meant business. A few seconds earlier, she’d been meandering around our little yard. Now, she faced the driveway and was approaching the wooden gate with slow, deliberate steps. Lady cowered next to her. I was less concerned about India than I was about Lady, who was clearly caught between the desire to flee and the equally strong wish to plaster herself to India, her powerful protector: Lady’s entire body trembled as if set in motion by the almost inaudible rumble emerging from India’s throat.

  “That will do,” I told India. “Enough. Whatever it is, it’s my job and not yours.” As I moved ahead of India to reach the gate, she obediently stopped growling, but I could now see that her lip was lifted and that her dark eyes were ablaze.

  It was typical of Steve’s horrible ex-wife to reply with an accusation: “You aren’t answering your phone!”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” I told Anita in what I hoped was a tone of calm control. I didn’t care what Anita thought of me, but I wanted to assure India and Lady that I had the power to keep the Fiend out of their lives. Although India had obeyed me, her intelligent face wore an expression of what I am forced to describe as skepticism.

  “We need to talk,” Anita said loudly.

  “Go away.” I took pride in keeping my voice firm and quiet.

  “I don’t like yelling through this gate.”

  “Then don’t yell. Just go away.” If I’d been alone, I’d simply have gone into the house and ignored Anita, but I couldn’t bear to sink in India’s opinion. Ludicrous though it may sound, I wanted India—and Lady, too—to see that I could make Anita turn tail.

  “I have to undo the wrongs I’ve done,” said Anita, a sliver of whose face was now visible through the narrow gap between the gate and the fence. The statement sounded rehearsed.

  Peering at Anita, I realized with sudden and foolish embarrassment that the pooper-scooper was still in my hand. Indeed, my fingers were gripping its handle tightly, as if my body intended me to use it as a weapon. With as much dignity as I could summon, I rested the implement against the fence. “Down,” I told India. “Stay.” Then I unlatched the gate, slipped out, and latched the gate again.

  Anita looked as beautiful as ever: tall, slim, and elegant, with even features and long, silky blond hair. She wore a beige trouser outfit and simple gold jewelry.

  “Make it quick,” I said. “India and Lady are on the other side of that gate, and your presence is bothering them.”

  “I need to make up for hurting people,” she said.

  “And dogs?”

  “What?”

  “Dogs.”

  “You must be joking.”

  “How do you intend to make amends to Lady?”

  Anita nearly spat. Truly, I’m sure that her mouth filled with saliva. She settled for saying, “If I knew of some way to undo the pain I’ve caused you…”

  “You haven’t,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re targeting me, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen what you did to Steve. To Gabrielle. And to Lady, who couldn’t defend herself. I hope you rot in hell. I never want to see you near me or near our dogs again. If you aren’t off my property in exactly sixty seconds, I am calling the police.”

  As I’d hoped, Anita retreated. I returned to the yard and led India and Lady up the stairs to the house. To my surprise, Caprice was in the kitchen.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing some of that,” she said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yes. If she shows up again, don’t let her in. That’s Steve’s ex-wife.”

  “Anita Fairley,” Caprice said.

  “Please sit down.” I pointed to a chair, took one directly across from it, rested my elbows on the table, and put my chin in my hands. For once, I didn’t offer coffee, tea, or food. Caprice was now directly across from me. I looked her straight in the eye. “Fairley,” I said. “No one here ever calls her Anita Fairley. We seldom mention her. When we do, we use her first name.”

  “Leah must’ve used her last name. It stuck with me.” Caprice wasn’t gazing at the ceiling or shifting around. Her eyes continued to meet mine.

  “Or possibly you looked her up. On Google? Or somewhere else. On one of the Deep Web sites? Let me guess something else. You looked me up, too. And Steve.”

  The facade broke. Tears ran down Caprice’s face.

  “Hey,” I said, “it’s okay! I’m sorry! Caprice, I don’t care. What’s there to find out about Steve and me? Nothing!” I got up, found a box of tissues, and handed it to Caprice. “If you looked me up, all you found was more than any sane human being has ever wanted to know about dogs.”

  A smile crossed her face.

  “It’s okay. I mean that. What’s getting to me isn’t that you checked us out. I use Google, too, you know. What’s making me uneasy is this feeling of secrecy. Not that I expect you to come right out and say, ‘Hey, I see that you’ve published forty thousand articles about flea control, and they all say the same thing.’ It’s—”

  “It’s that I was sneaky.”

  “We would’ve told you, you know. All you had to do was ask. But for all you knew, we had something to hide. I did. Or Steve did.”

  “If you do,” said Caprice, “it’s not on the Web.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Caprice apologized, and I ended up giving her a big hug. I then repeated my request not to open the door to Anita, and Rowdy and I left. Even though I was relieved to have confronted Caprice and even though I felt justified in having ordered Anita off my property, I needed time to commune with Rowdy.

  As planned, I drove Rowdy to the park behind the Fresh Pond Mall. Newcomers to Cambridge probably wonder how many trees were felled to create so large an area of grass. The answer is none: as I prefer to forget when I’m there and as you’d never guess to look at it, the place was once a dump. My only objection to it was the occasional presence of dog-aggressive off-leash dogs. That afternoon, there were no dogs in sight. The sky had clouded up, and the temperature had dropped. More to the point, there was no wind to blow away the rally signs I was placing here and there on the rough grass. At rally events, the signs are fastened to wooden stakes in the ground, and the particular signs are chosen to mark off a varied course, but my signs had no stakes, and I chose the particular exercises more or less at random. At the Novice level, rally offered no challenge to Rowdy or to any other dog with experience in competition obedience, but the shift was as difficult for me as it was easy for Rowdy. Learning to interpret the rally signs was like learning to decode traffic signs. I was becoming accustomed to the rules of the rally road, but I was still finding it hard to shake the high-pressure attitude of competition obedience, which is to say, the attitude responsible for my ring nerves. My reflexive response was to say, Well, perfect heeling doesn’t cost points, and scoring is scoring, so don’t settle for less than perfection! Worse, when I mulled over the idea that rally was supposed to be fun, I thought, Fun? Oh, we’ll be good at that. We’ll be better than everyone else!

  Anyway, once I’d finished laying out the course of stations marked by signs, Rowdy and I moved to the first station, marked by the start sign, where I automatically said, “Place,” and raised my left hand to signal Rowdy to get into flawless heel position and focus on my face
. Losing myself in his all-but-black eyes, I said, “Rowdy, habits are hard to break. We don’t need to do this, buddy. In fact, we’re allowed to rush hell-for-leather-leash into the rally course. You get to bounce around. I get to clap my hands and talk and whistle and cluck my tongue. And not just here, either. At real rally trials. If, that is, I have it left in me to loosen up. You do. So please remind me of how it’s done, chum. I need you.” I paused to take deep breaths in and out, and I released Rowdy: “Okay!” Then we started all over by running to the first station, a left turn, easy enough, and on to a moving side step right, into a fast pace, on to three spirals with Rowdy on the outside, and so forth, and all the while, I chattered and whistled and kept going so fast that precision was out of the question, and when we finally reached the finish sign, I was overjoyed at our success in having performed the exercises with admirably sloppy exuberance. Then we dashed through the course again and were even worse, which is to say better, that time than we’d been the first, and at the finish sign, I held out my arm and had Rowdy rise up in all his wolf-gray-and-white magnificence, his massive paws on my forearm, his face in my face, and I said, “Thank you, Rowdy. I love you with all my heart.”