Lawyer for the Dog

by Lee Robinson

  “You like this house?” I ask Sherman. He looks up at me, wondering why we’re stopping. “They probably have a dog.” But I don’t know for sure. Joe and I have been friendly all these years, exchanging pleasantries at bar association social events and in court, but never, until recently, risking anything beyond that. He’s never confided any unhappiness beyond the predictable rants about his job—how it’s his fate to be stuck in the family court forever—or occasional complaints about the adolescent exploits of his boys, complaints uttered with a smile, more like a proud father’s preening.

  It occurs to me, as I stand in front of his house, that I don’t know much about Joe at all anymore, nor he about me, and maybe that’s why it’s been so easy for both of us to sustain our fantasies.

  Sherman lets out a little bark, as if to say, Let’s get going! We continue down Meeting Street past the Calhoun Mansion and take a left on South Battery. The breeze is strong enough to send sprays across the battery wall and the smell of sea creatures rides the damp air. Now the dog knows where he is; his little legs move along the sidewalk so fast he’s pulling me behind him. Outside the Harts’ house he heads toward the shrubbery to the left of the front porch, and when I try to drag him back, he barks a sharp protest, so I give him some leash. He comes out with a newspaper in his mouth. “Good boy,” I say. It’s this morning’s Post and Courier.

  When Mr. Hart doesn’t come to the door after several rings of the doorbell, I think the worst, but then he appears in his bathrobe, unshaven, the long strands of his usual comb-over falling down across one ear. He looks as if he’s been sleeping for days. He takes a minute to adjust his glasses before he recognizes me. The scowl on his face isn’t welcoming, but when he sees Sherman with the newspaper he grins and lets us in.

  “You can take him off that damn leash, now,” he says, and I do. The dog runs in circles around him, sliding on the polished wood floor.

  “You didn’t return my call,” I explain. “I was worried.”

  “Sorry. Guess I thought it would be more bad news.”

  “I just wanted to let you see he’s okay.”

  He picks the dog up. Sherman licks his face. I notice they both have the same bushy eyebrows. “I guess I should be polite and ask you to sit down,” he says to me. “Excuse my appearance.”

  I follow him into the formal parlor and we sit across from each other, Mr. Hart on the delicate Victorian sofa that groans under his weight, Sherman beside him. “She’d have a fit if she could see you on this thing,” he says to the dog. “But go ahead, get it dirty. I don’t give a damn.”

  “Your wife had a visit with him this morning,” I say. “So I thought it only fair…”

  “There’s nothing fair about this whole business.”

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “But it’s not so bad, is it? You get paid two hundred fifty dollars an hour and you end up with Sherman!”

  “This is just a temporary arrangement. And again, it wasn’t my idea.”

  “You stretch the case out long enough, you make a fortune, and soon enough my boy here won’t even remember me.”

  “Mr. Hart, I’m doing everything I can do to expedite the case.” I pull out my legal pad. “Your wife told me about Anna. She thinks you’re in contact with her. I’d like her phone number.”

  “You don’t need to talk to Anna.”

  “I’m trying to be thorough.”

  “If you want to be thorough, you can find out where my wife goes at night. She leaves the house several times a week, always at night, stays away for an hour or two.”

  “If you’re really that interested, you should talk to your lawyer.”

  “I’m interested, but I don’t want to pay a detective. I’m sure I’ll end up paying for Maryann’s spy before it’s all over. So do me a favor, ask her where she goes.”

  “I will, if you’ll give me Anna’s number.”

  “Anna left home long before we got Sherman.”

  “I know that, but I want to talk to her. Will you give me the number?”

  “I’ll have to look for it. I’ll call your office.” He rubs a spot under Sherman’s chin and the dog turns on his back, begging for a stomach rub.

  “Why did you lie on your counterclaim, about Anna?”

  “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t contradict my wife when she wrote that we had no children.”

  “I think there’s more to it than that.”

  “It’s what she insists we tell people when they ask. ‘No children.’ I guess she almost made me believe it myself.”

  “But you see your daughter, don’t you?”

  “Once in a blue moon.”

  “So, I’m going to tell Anna you gave me her number, if that’s okay.”

  “What choice do I have? I’m like this poor little guy.” He rubs Sherman’s belly again. “Neutered. That’s what Maryann’s done to us, isn’t it, buddy?”

  “I need to get back to my office. You promise you’ll call with the number?”

  “If a promise means anything anymore,” he says, “I promise.”

  Golden Memories

  Delores is surprised to see me home so early, and she ignores Sherman, who prances into the kitchen a couple of steps ahead of me, as if he’s lived here all his life. “Your mama’s been napping close to two hours now. I was about to wake her up, or she won’t sleep tonight.”

  “I talked to her doctor, got the names of some nursing homes. I’d like to visit one this afternoon, if you wouldn’t mind looking after Sherman.” The dog is over by the trash can, circling it, sampling all its olfactory offerings.

  “We going to be stuck with this dog forever?”

  “It’s not his fault.”

  “The way you been acting with that dog, seems like you want to hold onto him,” she says.

  “That’s not an option, even if I wanted to.”

  “When’s the last time he did his business?”

  “What? Oh, just a few minutes ago.”

  “I don’t like him, but I’ll watch him.” Sherman’s ears droop, as if he understands the insult, and he heads back toward my mother’s room. “Now your mama, she sure does love that animal.” It occurs to me that Delores, despite her protestations, might be falling for Sherman, too.

  * * *

  There must be a national committee of insipid people who choose the names for nursing homes: Loving Hands, Golden Memories, Compassionate Care. The one closest to the condo, Golden Memories, is across the bridge in Mt. Pleasant, only ten minutes away. There’s an impressive stone entrance gate opening onto a well-kept complex of buildings. The main building is faux colonial, with white columns and a row of rocking chairs on the wide front porch, but the chairs are all empty.

  “Let me see if someone in our marketing department is available,” says the woman at the front desk. “We usually work by appointment…”

  “This has come up rather unexpectedly,” I say.

  “Have a seat, and I’ll see if I can find … Here, you can look over this packet and start filling out the forms.”

  “But I’m not quite ready to—”

  “I know, honey. Nobody’s ever ready, but we need some information about your loved one before we can get the process started.”

  “It’s my mother.”

  “And for your loved one, would you be wanting assisted living, nursing, or the dementia unit?”

  If she says “loved one” again, I’ll leave. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, like I said, you just go ahead and fill out the forms, and I’ll see if I can find someone in marketing.”

  But I don’t want to talk to marketing. She turns her back and I escape her, walking as fast as I can through the double doors, which spring open, set in motion by a man in a gray uniform who pushes a cart of cleaning supplies and who doesn’t seem to care about intruders. I find myself at one end of a long hall I can’t see the end of, with rooms on either side, the names of the inhabitants written with erasable marker on name pla
tes on the doors. Now and then a door is open and I can peek inside. Violet McCarter (orange marker, smiley face beside the name) is in bed, asleep, TV blaring. Sam Schumaker (blue marker, no smiley face) sits in a recliner, staring out into space. The place smells almost too clean, as if everything remotely biological has been extinguished. The framed pictures on the walls are the pictorial equivalent of Muzak—pastel florals and idyllic landscapes.

  But it’s not so bad here, I tell myself, not like that place I saw once in a newspaper exposé, with filthy floors and pock-marked walls, where old people with haunted faces wasted away in their beds.

  “May I help you?” says another person in a gray uniform.

  “I’m visiting my aunt.” I point down the hall.

  ”We ask all our visitors to wear a name tag,” she says, smiling. “Please try to remember next time. It’s for the protection of your loved one.”

  I turn a corner, thinking maybe I should leave—I’ll need to talk to “marketing” and do more research if I’m serious about putting Mom here—when I come upon an old man in striped pajamas, sitting in a chair that swallows him.

  “How are you?” I say in that way we do when we want to keep moving.

  “Please.” He grabs my hand. “You should come more often.”

  “I think you’re confusing me with someone else.” His hand is thin, cold. He won’t let go.

  “Your brother doesn’t come,” he says. “Not since Christmas.” Then he tries to stand, wobbles, falls back into the chair.

  “I’ll find someone to help you.”

  “You help me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bird.”

  I remember passing his room a couple of doors back (Charles Bird, blue marker). “Would you like me to help you back to your room?” I help him get to his feet, his fingers pinching my arm as we make our way step by shaky step. When I have him safely in bed he grabs my hand again.

  “You should come more,” he says. “Tell your brother … tell him he always was a selfish SOB.”

  I flee, past marketing, past the front desk, into the late afternoon. Only when I’m outside do I realize how that sanitized air has lingered in my lungs, left me feeling like I can’t breathe.

  I’m on my way home, trying to imagine moving my mother into such a place, a place humming with good intentions, staffed with decent people doing the best they can, all pastels and florals and smiley faces, but still a place where Mr. Charles Bird sits alone, lost, only a few doors from his room. A place that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, likely to foster any golden memories.

  I’m pulling into the condo garage when Gina calls. “Mr. Hart called to give you Anna’s number. Want me to call her?”

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  My mother’s asleep again when I get home, but at least she’s eaten.

  “Was it a nice place?” asks Delores.

  “Not too bad, but I’m going to look at a couple more. Where’s Sherman?”

  “Back there in her room. Looks like she made a friend for life.”

  “What’s that?” There’s a circle of wet tile on the floor around Sherman’s bowl. “She gave him some of her supper. You should have seen that animal, he just gobbled it up like nobody ever feeds him, but then he threw up.”

  “He’s not supposed to eat people food.”

  “Guess she wanted to give him a special treat. I didn’t have the heart to stop her.”

  “What was it?”

  “Spaghetti and meatballs. He chewed up four big meatballs like they was nothing! Before I go, you should take him out, see if he’ll do his business.”

  My mother’s room is dark. Sherman’s curled at the end of her bed; he winces when I pick him up. “Sorry, sweetheart,” I whisper. “You have a stomachache?” I hold him as gently as I can until we’re outside. There’s a sign sticking up out of the grass, NO PETS IN THIS AREA, but I don’t have time to take him to the park, so I let him down behind a big camellia bush. He curls his back and seems poised to go, but then he looks up at me as if to say, I need my privacy!

  “Just hurry up, please.” When he finishes he seems exhausted, so I carry him back upstairs and do my best to comfort him. “I’m sorry you don’t feel good. We’ll have a quiet night, okay?”

  * * *

  After Delores leaves I heat up some leftover vegetable soup and sit at the kitchen table with a stack of files. In the first months after my divorce I discovered this cure to eating alone: I invite my clients to dinner. It’s almost as if they’re in the room. I can work on their problems and feel useful.

  Sherman’s under the table, his head resting on my feet. When he whimpers I lean down to make sure he’s okay. One eye opens slowly but, as if focusing is too taxing, closes again. Maybe he’s depressed. I wouldn’t blame him. No one can explain to him what’s happening, why he’s in this strange place.

  I review the draft of a divorce decree in one of my few uncomplicated cases, a short marriage with few assets, then open the Hart file. Henry Swinton and Michelle Marvel have filed cross-petitions asking Joe to stay his latest order. Michelle alleges that “the trial judge, in an attempt to punish the parties, is instead punishing their innocent pet.” Swinton writes that “Sherman will suffer irreparable harm in the present custodial arrangement.” He means me. Sherman whimpers again as if in agreement.

  I make a list of witnesses: Mr. and Mrs., check. Dr. Borden, check. Mindy Greene, the next-door neighbor, check. I put a question mark next to Veronica, Mrs. Hart’s maid, though it’s unlikely she’ll risk saying anything negative about her employer. An “X” next to Bill Falkner, the ex-cop detective Mrs. Hart hired—I don’t need to watch the video of Rusty Hart kissing Mindy Greene. The last name on the list is Anna.

  I’m a thousand miles away from New York City, but I feel like an intruder. “May I speak to Anna Hart, please?”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “This is Sarah Baynard. I’m a lawyer in Charleston, South Carolina. Is this Ms. Hart?” She doesn’t answer, so I keep talking. “I’m sorry to bother you, but your parents are involved in some litigation—”

  “I don’t see why that concerns me.” The voice is controlled, the words sharp and clipped, no hint of a southern drawl.

  “Your parents are divorcing.”

  “I know that. Why they’d bother to divorce after all these years of being miserable together, I can’t imagine, but I’m not going to get involved in their absurd little drama. My father has already asked me and I’ve—”

  “I don’t represent your father.”

  She laughs. “So, you’re her lawyer?”

  “I represent … The judge appointed me to protect the interests of their dog.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “I just have a few questions…”

  “Look, Ms.—”

  “Baynard.”

  “Ms. Baynard, I haven’t been in my parents’ home for years. I haven’t seen or spoken to my mother since I was eighteen. I have nothing—”

  “But you talk to your father.”

  “Not often.”

  “I wonder if you would mind telling me what led you to become estranged from your mother?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “She told me that you had some differences over a boy.”

  “Look, I’ve spent ten years and thousands of dollars with a therapist, and I can assure you it’s much more complicated than ‘differences over a boy.’ But again, I’m not going to get involved in this. I can’t believe they even have a dog.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because they never let me have one.”

  “Who, your mother or your father?”

  “Both. They could never agree on anything. She wanted a little dog, he wanted a big dog. She wanted a purebred dog, he just wanted a dog.”

  “So Sherman is their first dog?”

  “I have no idea. Like I told you, I haven’t been home in years. Is
someone hurting the dog?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Because you said something about protecting the dog…”

  “Right. I’m kind of like a guardian for the dog, appointed by the court. Your parents both want him.”

  “That figures.”

  “They both love him very much.”

  “So to show him how much they love him, they fight over him, right? Sounds familiar.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  “In all these years they’ve never figured out how to share anything. They couldn’t even share me. My mother wanted total loyalty from me, which in her mind meant I wasn’t allowed to admire anything about my father. My father was just as pathetic in his own way. He didn’t want me to grow up to be like her, so he was constantly criticizing her to me, undermining her. They didn’t have a clue how to raise a child. And now I guess they’re doing the same thing to the dog. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I have to go.”

  “Just a couple more questions. When you father talked to you about the divorce, he didn’t mention the dog?”

  “No.”

  “And has he ever mentioned the dog in any of your other conversations?”

  “Not that I remember. We don’t talk very often. Look, I have to go. I have to pick my daughter up from the babysitter.”

  “Your father didn’t tell me he had a grandchild.”

  “Because he doesn’t know. I’m not going to let him become involved in my child’s life, so why hurt his feelings? He and I have lunch here in the city once a year or so. We’re not close. Besides, he wouldn’t approve.”

  “Approve of what?”

  “I’m a single mother. I know what he thinks about—as he would put it—‘children born out of wedlock.’ And let me be clear: It isn’t just my father. My mother’s just as bad, in her own way. The combination is lethal. They’ve never agreed on anything.”

  “So, I guess that answers my last question.”

  “Which is?”