They watched Quinta scoop up the puppy and wander to the other end of the porch to commune privately with it. "I think they were made for one another," Mrs. Birman agreed. "I'll get the papers."
In twenty minutes they were on their way, the puppy confined—as well as such animals can be confined—to a box lined with old towels. Quinta was feverish with joy. In marked contrast to her subdued, stoic manner on the way out, now she never stopped talking, addressing Alan and the puppy alternately and with equal enthusiasm.
"He'll be perfect for Dad, just perfect. I was thinking of getting Dad a dog for Christmas anyway; it's been so quiet around the house since ... my mother died, and Dad really doesn't socialize anymore .... Of course, I'll be the one who has to housetrain you, but you look so clever, you little beastie you .... Do you think Dad will mind? Really, I mean? Oh, I know he'll grump; he always does at first. He doesn't like you to spring surprises on him—get back in that box, you silly dog. No-o-o-o ... stay. Stay.
"I think Dad will need something to, you know, get him out of himself," she went on. "And he was trying to help the mother when she was hurt, so it seems logical that he'd want to see that life, you know, goes on. Oh no, oh God! He's peeing in the box. Oh jeez, I hope it doesn't go through," she wailed. "Maybe if I lifted the box up," she said, twisting around in her seat and reaching over to the back.
"No, Quinta, don't worry about it. Good grief," he said with a laugh, "it's a little puppy. A little puddle."
"That's what you think," she answered grimly, and twisted back around to look at Alan. "What if he's just an awful reminder of that night? I didn't think of that," she confessed in a low voice. "What if he looks in the puppy's eyes and sees—"
"That isn't what he'll see, Quinta," Alan said firmly, partly because he hadn't thought of it either. "He'll see a bouncing, playful animal, not a wounded one. He'll see a young dog fetching a stick or licking his hand or curled up faithfully alongside of him. That's what he'll see. Trust your instincts," he said, more to himself than to her.
He pulled into the parking lot of the Bellevue Shopping Center, and then they had a discussion over who would go into the supermarket for dog food. Quinta was adamant: her dog; she'd stay. Alan wasn't keen to go in—the place was a busy social spa and he preferred to stay low. He suggested they flip a coin. Quinta won.
Standing in the express line with a case of Alpo on the floor in front of him (he considered it one case, not twenty-four individual cans), Alan hid behind the pages of a National Enquirer and tried calmly to assess the current shambles he was calling his life. Amazingly, he had given up his long hard quest for the America's Cup. He was selling his beloved, swift Shadow. He hadn't done beans lately about managing his finances, although at least he wouldn't be throwing money down the 12-meter hole any more. He had basically ignored the shipyard in Connecticut; thank God he had a manager he could trust to keep it running smoothly. And he had got very, very involved, in a way he wouldn't have thought possible, with a beautiful, exciting woman whom he had considered, until recently, the enemy.
And, of course, there was Cindy. Or was there? Cindy was the wild card in his life right now. At first he was crushed by the news, convinced by her note that she'd killed herself and that it was his fault alone. But then the doubts began to roll in like the fog on the morning of her disappearance. Her body hadn't been found, and his gut feeling was that it should have been, despite the fog, the ebbing current, and a northeast wind blowing out the bay. The never-worn cobalt-blue shoe that was left behind ... had she planned to jump off the bridge wearing high heels? It didn't add up. And a few nights ago something had nudged him awake from his nightmare sleep, but he couldn't remember what it was, except that it was a square peg, and all that the police were offering were round holes. Maybe the fleet of investigators he'd hired ….
"Next, please."
It was his turn in the checkout line. He stuffed the paper back into the rack and forked over a twenty for the dog food. The checkout girl recognized him and made an arch remark that she couldn't possibly check out more than nine items, but she'd make an exception in his case. When he dashed off hurriedly she yelled, "Mr. Seton, you forgot your receipt" just for the fun of saying his name aloud. Heads turned, but not that many. Newporters are, by and large, a blasé lot.
He threw the dog food in the trunk of the Mercedes, hopped into the front seat, and immediately felt better again. Suddenly the most important thing in his life was, had the puppy pooped while he was gone? It had not. The second most important thing was, what should they name him? Because Quinta, granting godfather status to Alan, was insisting that they christen the puppy immediately.
"You can't leave without knowing what his name is" she argued. If you did he'd just be 'the dog' to you, not Blackie or Duke or whatever."
So then they plunged into an intense review of dog names. At the moment the puppy was looking more like a Dope than a Duke, but that would change, Quinta said. And anyway, she wanted the name to have what she called relevance.
Alan lifted his eyebrows at that. "Oh? Relevant to what?" God. Youth today, he thought. Relevance, yet.
"Well, I guess to... circumstances. He's kind of a—oh, what's the word—a continuation of things..."
He struggled along with her. "A legacy?"
"Good! That's what I'll name him. Legacy. That's my house, the gray one with white trim."
There was an empty parking space. "Quinta, Legacy is a very strange name for a dog," Alan argued as he pulled into it.
"Oh, and I don't have a strange name? Anyway, I won't call him Legacy. He'll be little Leggy, won't you?" The puppy was lying on its back in her lap, droopy-eyed and content, all four fat leggies sticking more or less straight up.
"You know," she mused, "my sister is due to have a baby any day. And now Leggy will be Dad's baby. Finally, a boy." Her voice sounded terribly sad, and a little ironic.
"Did your dad really want boys so badly?"
She laughed. "Oh God, yes! Whenever my sisters and I got to be too much for him he'd shout, 'I'm outnumbered! I don't need this! I'm moving to Alaska before you females drive me crazy!' I always thought he meant it, isn't that funny?" But she wasn't laughing.
To reassure her Alan said, "Parents aren't so different from kids, Quinta; they always yearn for what they don't have. But that doesn't mean they don't love what they do have. When my mother married my father she had twin nurseries fitted out in the main house, one for the girls that were to come, one for the boys. But I was her only child, and the Bo-Peep Room—that's what we called it, because of the wall murals—was never used. Any time my mother passed that threshold and I was with her, she'd pause and sigh tragically."
"No kidding?" Quinta was interested. "Did you feel, you know, guilty about it?"
He shrugged without lifting his hands from the wheel. "Of course, although God knows why. Nowadays when she does it—my mother is sixty-one—I just wink and say, 'Mother—maybe adopt."'
That brought a giggle, which stirred the dog, who started squirming. Alan said, "It's time to show Leggy his new digs, I think. I'll get the food. Are you sure you don't want me to run you back to your car?"
"My neighbor can take me later; I want to get Leggy settled in."
Alan carried the case of cans to her front door, and although Quinta asked whether he'd like to see how Leggy fared inside, he declined vigorously.
"Oh, well, you must have zillions of things to do yet," she said quickly, embarrassed that she'd taken up his time.
"Yeah," he said vaguely. He was rubbing Leggy's ears, reluctant to end the happy, carefree interlude. "Remember, if there's anything I can do," he said softly, and then delivered a comical, courtly bow, "I'm at your service, mademoiselle." And then seriously again: "Goodbye, Quinta."
"Goodbye, Alan," she said through beautiful, unblinking eyes. "Thank you."
On the middle step he turned. Quinta was standing there, watching him pensively, Joan of Arc in blue jeans, clutching her squirmy pu
ppy. Alan had been through a series of devastating shocks, of cruel blows. His mind was still scrambled—so much so that he wondered whether he was entirely rational. He wanted to take away the memory of the not-so-still-life picture before him so that he could console himself later, remind himself that "life, you know, goes on."
A small, sad smile rippled over the features of his face. "Hey, lady. I'm going to miss ... that dog. Take care," he said softly. And he was gone.
Chapter 7
On September 26, 1983, Dennis Conner and his out-designed 12-meter yacht Liberty lost the America's Cup to a bunch of upstarts on Australia II. Within an hour of the seventh and final cliffhanging race, Australia declared a national holiday. The United States went into mourning: a one-hundred-and-thirty-two-year winning streak was dead. And Newport, the grand, elegant hostess to the America's Cup races for the past fifty years, tore off all of her clothes and did the limbo on Thames Street. There was more than mere good sportsmanship in her frenzied celebration; on the night of September 26, Newport went a little mad with grief. It was possibly, she feared, her last dance, and she would dance it with abandon.
By the time Liberty and Australia II returned from the fateful race to Newport Harbor, it was nearly dark. The harbor itself was absolute bedlam, a churning, teeming, exhaust-filled maelstrom of anything that could float: power yachts and motor boats, twin-screw and single-screw; schooners, ketches, cutters and sloops of wood, fiberglass, and steel; rowing dinghies and sailing dinghies; kayaks and canoes and shells; launches and tour ships and even a cruise liner; and a man in a tuxedo on a windsurfer. No one knew where the moored boats ended and the moving boats began because hardly anything could move. It was a great, glorious bottleneck until the Coast Guard cutters, their blue lights flashing and their sirens wailing, hacked through the armada like machetes through sugar cane.
And in their wake, lit by a backdrop of flares and fireworks, lit by countless searchlights and the stage-front sweep of television network spotlights, came Liberty and the Americans, a huge U.S. flag flying high, high up from their headstay, and the Australians, also in the rockets' red glare, the victors. From the U.S. tender blared "Stars and Stripes Forever"; from the Australians' came their battle song, "Down Under," the driving rock hit by an Australian group. The din was inconceivable: churning engines, constant screams, hoarse shouting, sirens wailing, cherry bombs exploding, flares hissing, and air horns, air horns everywhere. And if you listened carefully you could hear, above the din, the pop of countless champagne bottles (the harbor was awash with bobbing corks the next morning).
If you listened even harder, you could hear sobbing. The deepest, most heart-wracking sobs came from the Liberty dock. No syndicate had trained harder, or longer, or at greater personal expense; but they had been outsmarted. There was mourning, too, at the old Yacht Club in New York where the Cup had spent most of its one hundred and thirty-two years securely bolted in a glass display case: yachting's holy grail. Even the Brinks guard who loaded the cherished trophy into his armored truck for the short, sad journey to Newport was said to have blinked back a tear.
But it was Newport, crazy lady, who cried loudest of all—wailed and laughed and cried some more. She whose hand had been kissed by kings, princes, generals, ambassadors, and titled wealth—she would be sought after no more. Her exquisite gilded salons, which every few years were filled with a crush of international society, would be filled with—day trippers. It would be like taking in boarders. Old Newport, crazy lady, shuddered and tossed off another glass of champagne. And so the night wore on, and Newport got drunker, and drunker, and drunker, until in the morning she had the look of a bag lady dragging down the street, picking her way through empty green beer bottles and broken wineglasses and strange, unassociated bits of clothing.
On an impulse Quinta swung her father's van onto Memorial Boulevard and headed down the hill toward the harbor. It was early morning yet; traffic would be light and she wanted to see the aftermath firsthand. She and her father had stayed glued to the television for the last race the day before. It was the first time in her life that she had seen an actual race close up. From a blimp's-eye view she had been able to see the lead change back and forth between Liberty and Australia II, to watch as Dennis Conner tried desperate tactics before at last crossing the finish line to historic defeat. She knew that most of Australia was staying up all through their night to watch the race via satellite, and it amazed her, simply amazed her, to think that people liked to dismiss watching Cup races as like watching grass grow.
She had hardly dared to glance at her father during that fateful race, but she knew that on the sixth leg of the seventh race, what little was left of his heart had broken. He'd said scarcely a word after that except to Leggy, and she didn't want to leave him to sneak down to the harbor for a peek at the wild party that was being broadcast on television. Through half the night she listened to the car horns and whoops of triumph, convinced that most of Western Australia had come over for the last race.
And yet this morning Thames Street looked fairly normal. True, there were extra street cleaners sweeping up, and the few trades people and yachties that she did see looked bleary-eyed and sullen. But maybe, she thought, yawning, she was projecting. She rubbed the cobwebs from her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on finding a parking space. Incredible luck: there was one in front of the deli. Climbing down from the van, Quinta scanned up and down Thames Street. No, really: hardly any difference at all. She'd expected broken store windows, rolled-over cars, people tearing out their hair. She'd expected people to be—protesting. Instead they were delivering provisions, driving bakery trucks, rolling down storefront awnings on the sunny side of Thames. The world was going on, whether or not America had held on to its Cup.
Inside the delicatessen Quinta peeled off a Boston Globe, a New York Times, and the Journal and waited in line. Ahead of her two very bronzed sailors, one blond and short, the other blond, bearded and tall, talked in desultory tones.
"Where's it gonna be?"
"The Terrace of the Marble House. One o'clock," the bearded one said with a sigh.
"Funny nobody's mentioned it."
"It's not as though losing was on the calendar of events," the tall one answered caustically.
"You goin'?"
"Nope. Who needs it? Coffee, regular," he said to the pretty girl behind the counter. Quinta knew her from school; her name was Debby, a normal, American name.
Batting her eyelashes, Debby asked hopefully, "Is there going to be one last party or something?"
"More like one last funeral. We're handing off the Cup this afternoon. The Aussies stole it from us, and now we're supposed to smile and say, 'Jolly good show.' Well, screw it," said the tall one. "I'm not going."
The short sailor frowned and said, "Hey man, this is history. I'm gonna go."
Debby batted her long lashes. "Can I come too?"
The short one exchanged a look with his friend and shrugged. "Anyone can, I guess. How about I pick you up?"
One o'clock! The ride back to Howard Street took an eternity; there was so much to do before one o'clock. Call the therapy center, reschedule her father's session, check out the Marble House grounds, get him there early for a good spot—was his blazer pressed? There wasn't time.
Leggy attacked her in the front hall. He was bigger and heavier now, a force to be reckoned with. He stood up against Quinta, pulling on one corner of the paper with his jaws.
"Oh Legs, come on, cut it out. I'm in a hurry."
Not so fast. He growled a kind of adolescent growl, putting a little more oomph in his voice than was strictly necessary, and gave an enthusiastic jerk on the paper.
"All right, all right already! Here. Take him this one." Quinta folded the Journal twice on itself and held it out.
He took it gingerly in his jaws—he was so proud of not slobbering much—and pranced into the living room.
"Hey-y, good boy, Legs. Over here. Thatsa boy." Neil Powers leaned forward
in his wheelchair and took the paper from his dog. "Did you see that, Quinta? How smart? Blood will tell. Your mother always said, blood will tell, and it will. Good boy, Leggy."
Quinta's idea of presenting her father with a puppy had been a smashing success. Something about the dog had touched him from the start. He'd embraced it as he would a little lost child. By the time her father had returned from his therapy residency, Quinta had trained the dog to be housebroken and to come when he was called. That was about all she'd had time tor. It was her father who had become obsessed with the training and development of Legs. For every hour that Neil Powers spent as an outpatient now at the therapy center, he spent one with his dog, brushing, petting, feeding, playing, teaching. Legs was the reason Neil Powers took his first tentative foray out onto Howard Street in his wheelchair: he wanted to walk his dog. Legs was the real reason the doorway to the kitchen was enlarged and a lower sink installed: Neil Powers had not been able to bathe his new companion.
Everything they said about a man and his dog was true, Quinta realized as she watched her father scan the papers quickly, sizing up the coverage of the Cup loss. With one hand he was idly stroking the black Lab's throat. Legs was as near to purring as a dog could get. It was an extraordinary relationship, and it spoke wonders for the way her father had changed since his accident. From being a disorganized, rather dependent member of the family, her father had become, almost overnight, a caring but systematic authoritarian—at least to Legs.
Far from demanding that Quinta or her sister Jackie remain nearby, her father now preferred to be alone, with just his dog for company. And he talked to Legs, a lot. Once or twice when she had returned home early from school, Quinta actually assumed that there was a visitor in the living room. Definitely, he talked to Legs more than to her nowadays.
By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs Page 10