CHAPTER 17
We Were Her Family, She Said
I got to the school before three and positioned myself near the front of a group of mothers waiting to pick up their kids, Bianca at my side, so that the kids would see us when they came out the main door. When Ruth joined me at five to three, stopping to say hi to several of the parents, Bianca strained at the leash to get to her, becoming very excited and jumping up on her when she got close. To my surprise, Ruth knelt down and let Bianca kiss her face. And she stayed there, crouched down, while Bianca put her paws around her neck and leaned her big face against Ruth’s, her tail wagging as if she’d just found a long-lost friend, which, apparently, she had.
The kids burst out from the double doors as if they’d been shot from a cannon, some heading right for the curb where buses were already waiting for them. I waited impatiently, but every time I looked at Ruth, she shook her head. Finally, two boys came out, heavy backpacks slung over their shoulders, one eating a cookie. Ruth touched my arm, but the boys were so involved in their conversation that, heading for their bus, I thought they’d see nothing but each other. Then one of them looked around, saw Bianca and began to pull on the other boy’s arm.
“The tall one’s Everett, the one with the hearing aid is Bob,” Ruth whispered.
“Can I pet your dog, lady?” Everett said in the thick, uninflected way of people who can’t hear their own voices.
“Sure thing.”
He slipped off his purple backpack and knelt next to Bianca, letting her sniff the back of his hand, then slowly, as if he was concentrating very hard, he lifted the hand she’d smelled and placed it on the top of her head, and, as if gravity were doing the work for him, let it slide down the slope of her nose. Bianca closed her little pig eyes and wagged her short fat tail. It was one of the few times I’d seen her sit relatively still for more than a couple of seconds.
“She’s the clone, isn’t she?” he asked, wide eyes watching my face.
I nodded.
“Jeez, she’s gorgeous. I knew it was true. I knew it.”
Bob was still standing. He looked at Bianca, at me, at Everett, and then at Ruth. “It’s her? It’s Bianca, Ms. Gordon’s other dog?”
Ruth nodded.
He shook his head slowly from side to side. This time he addressed me. “Can I touch her?” He was thin, with a long horsy face and wire-rimmed round glasses that made his eyes look too big. The hearing aid was in his left ear.
“Of course.”
His backpack was forest green. He shrugged it off and knelt next to his friend, both of them petting Bianca so tenderly that my heart broke all over again, thinking of Sophie and what a wonderful teacher she must have been, how tender, trusting, and honest with her students.
And what a big mouth she had about what was supposed to be kept secret.
More kids were pouring out of the doorway, some signing, some talking. It wasn’t nearly as loud as it would have been at a school for hearing kids. For some of them, I thought, going home wasn’t as much fun as school. Going home, in fact, might be a lonely thing to do.
I crouched down and touched the two boys on their shoulders. A little girl wandered over, too big to be sucking her thumb but doing it anyway.
I smiled at her, then addressed the boys.
“Ms. Gordon told you all about Bianca?”
“She did,” Everett said. “She told us someone had cloned Blanche so that other people with epilepsy could have seizure-alert dogs, but she never brought Bianca to school with her, only Blanche.”
“Where is Blanche?” Bob asked.
“She’s with me, at my house. I’m taking care of her until I can find out if Ms. Gordon arranged for anyone to take care of them when she no longer could.”
“Which is now,” Bob said.
“That’s right,” I told him.
Ruth took out a wad of tissues and blew her nose.
“She told us she was tested,” Everett said. I watched him as intensely as he was watching me, both of us needing to lip-read to be sure we understood each other.
“That’s right,” I told him. “Both bullies had a DNA test recently.”
“That’s because Ms. Gordon didn’t trust the first one.”
“What do you mean?”
“She said Bianca was tested when she was a puppy, before Ms. Gordon got her, but that when you test a puppy, you sometimes get the mother’s milk on the swab and then you might have the mother’s DNA. Ms. Gordon wanted to be sure Bianca was really a clone. That’s why she had her tested again.”
“She told you everything?”
He nodded. “We were her family, she said.”
“Just like family,” Bob said.
“It’s almost the same thing,” Everett said. He was crying.
“Did Ms. Gordon ever mention her other family to you, in class, you know, her blood relatives?”
“Just her sister,” Everett said.
I nodded. “Did she mention her name?”
“Rhoda,” he told me. “That’s hard to say. She made us all practice it.”
“Rhoda,” Bob said.
The little girl took her thumb out of her mouth and said, “Rhoda,” making bubbles as she did, popping the thumb back in as soon as she’d said it. A woman carrying a bag of groceries tapped her on the shoulder. She smiled and reached for her hand.
Another boy joined us, blond and nearly as pale as an albino.
“Hi, Will,” Ruth said.
“Hello, Ms. Stewart. Is it Blanche?” he asked. “She got skinny. She must be grieving, too.”
“This one’s Bianca,” Ruth told him.
“The clone?”
We all nodded. Bianca had two more hands on her now, which was mighty fine with her.
“So, what else did Ms. Gordon tell you about her sister? If I can find her, then maybe she’ll give the dogs a good home. That’s why I’m asking.”
“It’s okay to tell her whatever you know,” Ruth told Will. “Rachel is a good person and she’s trying to help. She’s been taking care of Blanche and Bianca.”
“You won’t find her,” Everett said.
“Why not?”
“She’s dead, too,” he said.
“Yeah. She died when Ms. Gordon was real little. In a car accident,” Bob said, “But Ms. Gordon didn’t. She only got epilepsy.”
I looked at Ruth. She shrugged her shoulders. “In all this time, she never once…”
“She wanted us to write about something sad,” Will said. “So she said she’d tell us the saddest thing in her life to help us get started.”
“Ms. Gordon said if you write down the things that bother you,” Bob said, “they won’t hurt your feelings as much as they used to. She said it helps to talk and write about things.”
“She said it’s different, writing and talking,” Everett said. “She said they both help, but in different ways.”
“And was that true for you? Did you write about something sad after she told you about her sister dying, and did it make you feel better?”
“I wrote about being deaf,” Bob said. “But I still can’t hear.”
Everett punched him in the arm. Then Will signed something to both of them and they put their backpacks on.
“The bus is flashing its lights,” Ruth said. “They have to go.”
“There were no other relatives she mentioned?” I asked.
They shook their heads.
“Will you bring Bianca again?” Will asked. “I hardly had a chance to see her.”
I looked at Ruth. She nodded.
“Okay.”
“And Blanche, too?”
“And Blanche, too.”
“We miss her. Ms. Gordon,” Everett said. “She was the best teacher I ever had.” Then all three boys headed for the bus.
I looked at Ruth.
“She never told you?”
“Not a word.”
“Does that make you feel worse?”
“I’m not sure
. She probably…”
She knelt and began to pet Bianca. I could barely hear her when she spoke.
“It was probably a kindness, the omission.”
I watched her petting Bianca, not saying anything.
“I’m heading downtown,” I said after she stood up. “Which way do you go?”
“Oh, I have to go back inside. I don’t get off until four-thirty.”
“Thank you for this, Ruth.”
She nodded.
“I was wondering, how many kids were in her class?”
“Only twelve. And most of them stay for after-school programs.”
“Will I be able to bring the bullies into her class one day before they’re…placed?”
“I’m sure I can arrange that. Now that we’ve seen how three of the kids reacted to Bianca, I think it would be a very good idea.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Bianca and I headed off and I decided that, before going home, I’d give the dog run one more shot. With so little other information, I was obsessed with finding Herbie.
The run got crowded after three, and by the time I got there, it was jammed. I let Bianca off leash and started at one end, showing the picture of Herbie to each and every person there, asking the same question, over and over. It was the third time I’d canvased the run, the third time I’d asked people to stop their conversations or stop watching their dogs and look at the snapshot I’d found on my client’s refrigerator, held there with a little, white bone magnet, saved when it should have been torn up and pitched out, the third time I’d waited for a response, a what’s-it-to-you or a shake of the head, and, finally, when I got to the far end of the run, just past the water bucket, someone said yes.
CHAPTER 18
The Driver Began to Shake His Head
Standing in the cavernous main room at Penn Station, waiting to be told which track my train would be on, I took the picture of Herbie out of my pocket again. I’d found him. In less than an hour, we’d be face-to-face.
“Sure, I know him,” the dark young woman had said, her miniature schnauzer digging a hole under the bench.
“You do? Terrific.”
“That’s Herbie Sussman. But you won’t see him here anymore. He and Murray moved to Metuchen.”
“New Jersey?”
“Yeah. That’s what I told him. ‘What’re you leaving the city and moving to New Jersey for?’ It’s crazy, don’t you think?” She had what my mother used to call “dirty blond” hair, uncombed looking, as if she’d been in a rush, pulled back with a purple elastic. She was wearing gray sweatpants and an oversize top. She hadn’t bothered to put on makeup. “The city,” she said, “is where it’s at. I don’t get it. But he went, ‘Murray and I are moving to New Jersey. Now do you want my address or not?’ You know Herbie.”
“Murray’s his dog?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, squinting up at me. I took the seat next to her, glancing over at the dogs, then looking back at her, the picture of Herbie still in her hand. “Then you don’t know him, Herbie?”
“Not actually, but I need to ask him something. It’s really important. Do you have his address in Metuchen?”
She unzipped her small purse and pulled out her calendar, flipping to the part that held her addresses.
“Nice town,” she said. “Lots of old houses. I only went once. I smuggled Parker onto the train with me. She and Murray were really tight. Best friends.” She nodded. “I don’t know,” she said, closing her address book and squinting up at me, the sun in her eyes. “Where’d you get this?” She looked at the photo of Herbie, then back at me.
“From his ex-girlfriend,” I said, thinking I was so close now, hoping I wouldn’t blow it, hoping she’d open the book again and give me his address. Never mind, I thought, Metuchen, New Jersey, I could get it from the operator, tell her it’s a new listing.
“Sophie?”
I nodded.
“I guess it’s okay then,” she said.
She didn’t know.
She pulled a piece of paper out of the purse, fished around and found a pen, and wrote it all down for me: Herbie Sussman, 1132 Bellamy Road, Metuchen. “He had a problem with his phone number,” she said, dropping the calendar into her purse. “It belonged to a cab company. Can you believe that? They’re supposed to wait a year, I think. Or is it six months? Whatever. They must’ve waited a week. He’d come home, his voice mail was full. He’d missed God knows how many calls. He just E-mailed me about it. So that number’s dead and he doesn’t have the new one yet. You want his E-mail?”
“Sure.”
She wrote that down.
“He was pissed,” she said.
“About the phone number?”
“About his job moving him out to Jersey. But he didn’t think it was a good idea to quit, not with all his credit-card debt; you know Herbie.” She looked up at me again, covering her eyes with one hand, squinting anyway. “Oh, that’s right,” she said, “I forgot. You don’t know him. Well, don’t tell him I told you he’s in debt. I have enough people pissed at me right now.”
I thanked her, took the picture back, and continued around the run anyway. Who knows what else you can learn, asking around. Well, usually nothing. But you never know, I’d thought, the excitement growing.
I’d E-mailed Herbie the moment I’d gotten home, told him I was a friend of Sophie, his ex, asked if I could come out and see him, there was something important I needed to ask him. He must have been on-line because I’d gotten his answer right away: “Why not ask me via E-mail?” I wrote again, saying I was an old-fashioned girl and I’d rather talk face-to-face. He wrote back saying, “Sure, whatever, you want to schlep all the way out to Metuchen just to ask me a couple of questions, why not?” He’d said he’d be home all morning. Then he’d asked me to give his regards to Sophie.
He didn’t know either.
I told him I’d be there in an hour and a half.
It was the same voice it had always been since I’d gone on the train with my mother when I was seven, to visit her cousin in Atlantic City: “The northeast corridor train to Trenton, ready on track three, all aboard.”
And like sheep being herded through a small gate by a Border collie who had been bred to disregard the fact that he was outnumbered, the crowd turned around and headed for the escalator that led to tracks three and four, the music that filled the main room fading as we rode down to the tracks and moved, as one animal, onto the train.
As the swell narrowed and squeezed into the door to the closest car, I grabbed the first seat I could, across from a woman with big hair, taupe nail polish, rings on three fingers, including the pointer, too much perfume, and an ankle bracelet of a type I hadn’t seen since I was a kid and Laura Weisbart got one from the only boy in ninth grade who didn’t have zits. But he had full braces and so did Laura. You don’t want to hear the comments.
The vista out the window wasn’t any better. Though it was September, there was nothing green in sight. The sky hung thick and low, a sickly gray. Off in the distance gigantic smokestacks poured chemical waste into the Jersey air. The ground was brown, the trees leafless, the air visible. We passed a factory that was flying the flag. Old Glory, in the Garden State, was red, gray, and blue. It was not a comforting view.
But halfway there, everything greened up, and even close to the tracks there were rows of pretty little houses with neat front lawns and asters or mums along the front walk. There was a tricycle here, a friendly mailman there. The American dream was alive and well.
The taxi stand was across from the station. The driver told me Bellamy Road was only a few minutes away. “It only runs a block,” he said. “Park across the street. You like ducks?” he asked.
“Love ’em,” I told him.
I could see the ducks as we approached, only they were geese. On the side opposite the park there were little clapboard houses with small front yards. Except for my taxi, there was no traffic.
The driver began to
shake his head.
“You sure you got that number right?” he asked. “These don’t even go up to a hundred, looks like forty-two’s the highest number.”
I looked at the paper I’d been given.
“Can you wait?” I asked the driver.
“Meter keeps running, I can wait.”
I told him that was as it should be. I rang some bells. There was no number 1132. There wasn’t another Bellamy Road, or anything that sounded like it. There were no new neighbors either. No one had moved to or from this street for at least five years.
I stood outside the last house and looked up and down the block at the green lawns and the curtained windows. Then I walked back to the cab, told the driver to take me back to where he’d found me, and waited twenty-two minutes for the train that would take me back to New York.
Sitting near a window again, I took the picture of Herbie out of my pocket. He had a bland face and the sort of smile you’d see in high school yearbook pictures. But, of course, he wasn’t a teenager.
And whoever he was, this pleasant-looking man with wavy hair, he hadn’t been Sophie Gordon’s boyfriend either.
Turning the photo over, I looked at where someone had written his name, to make sure I’d look for the man in the picture. To make sure I’d go on not just this one, but many wild goose chases.
I was sure now that if I looked carefully at the printing on the back of the photo and compared it to Sophie’s writing, I’d see it was different. I knew just where to look, too, because she’d written the names of her dogs on the backs of their photos and those pictures were in a file in her desk. And if by some chance I couldn’t tell if the handwriting was different or the same, I knew someone who could.
But why bother? I was sure now that neither the photo nor the handwriting was genuine.
I’d been manipulated. Someone was orchestrating what I found. And, more important, what I didn’t find.
The Wrong Dog Page 13