Suzanne Davis gets a life

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  I looked up to see who had rescued me and, let me tell you, the breath practically left my body. Really, if I were going to sketch a knight in shining armor as he might appear on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at a Doggie Meet and Greet, he would look like this guy. He was about my age, tall, well built, with a head of luxurious black hair and a pair of sparkling blue eyes. I’m not exaggerating when I say “luxurious” and “sparkling.” I know that these adjectives don’t usually apply in real life, but in this case, they did.

  “You looked like you needed a little help,” said this fictional-appearing creature. “I have experience with the breed.” He pointed to his own dog, a wheaten—I’m not making this up—though his was a well-behaved one, perhaps because he had the foolish wheaten cut. “This is Longfellow,” he said.

  The fact that both his dog and mine had the names of dead white male poets might seem like a startling coincidence, but this was the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where, though it is politically incorrect to, say, write a dissertation on such figures, it is almost required to name your dog after them. Longfellow, though named after the lesser of the two poets, was definitely the better behaved. He had a mellow, accepting look about him, and gazed pleasantly at Wordsworth as though he had known him all his life.

  As Longfellow appraised Wordsworth, I now had a chance to do the same with my rescuer. Let me officially report that he resembled—and again I’m not exaggerating—the young Sean Connery. Why hadn’t I seen him in the building before? How could I have missed such a paragon wandering in my vicinity? As I was now in the hands of a benign fate, the subject of my musings seemed to intuit my thoughts.

  “I’m Philip,” he explained. “I just moved here from Chicago.”

  I was looking up at him with my mouth open, and for a moment, I confess, I forgot my own name. I’ve forgotten things before under stressful circumstances: my zip code, what year it is, the name of the vice president of the United States. But I have never been so rattled as to forget my own name. This was a first, an indication of how dazzling this specimen of masculinity was.

  “I’m Suzanne,” I finally summoned up. “This isn’t really my dog. I’m taking care of him for a friend.” It seemed important to get this out of the way so as to make room for more salient details related to, say, the china pattern I wanted to register for our wedding.

  Before we could talk more, however, there was an interruption by the building manager to address the urination-in-the-elevator problem. “If it continues, we might be forced to take dire measures,” he warned.

  This elicited a wave of distress from those present. “Dire measures”—what could that mean? There were stifled gasps and some attempt at protest.

  “The dog who did it probably isn’t even here,” said one of the bandanna-wearing bichon owners huffily.

  “That’s not my problem,” said the manager. “I can’t run a building when dogs pee in the elevator. It has to stop.”

  No one dared ask what would happen if it didn’t, but there was some whispered speculation on the subject

  “They could banish dogs from the building,” Philip murmured in my ear. “In my old co-op they did that. We had to move.” He looked down fondly at Longfellow.

  “You could install a camera,” called out the wispy Stephen.

  Everyone, including the manager, agreed that this was a good idea.

  “Problem solved,” I said, smiling up at Philip.

  “Not necessarily,” said Philip soberly. “The small dogs can be very sly about how they do it. Just dribbling, you know. Even the big dogs don’t always lift a leg. It might be hard to tell.”

  I could hear others around us discussing the peeing techniques of various dogs that might circumvent the camera. But the manager had moved on to address the subject of barking. “Three complaints and we will have to ask you to make other arrangements for your pet,” said the manager. I was pleased to see everyone look severely at the short bald man whose bichon was yapping wildly.

  “I see you gave Longfellow the wheaten cut,” I noted to Philip, as the barking issue was discussed. We didn’t have to listen to this part of the discussion given that wheatens are quiet dogs and tend to growl rather than bark.

  “We know it’s a little foolish but we like it,” said Philip fondly.

  The use of the first person plural for the second time gave me pause. Was he simply enmeshed with his dog or was he— my heart sank at the thought—already taken?

  “Are you married?” I asked, deciding to be direct, but trying to sound nonchalant, despite my trepidation.

  To my relief, Philip shook his head adamantly. “But I’d like to be,” he said. “And I hope to… .” His voice trailed off, wistfully.

  Could there be a better answer? How many men, especially men who look like the young Sean Connery, would tell you that they longed to get married? Not many, I assure you.

  “Me too,” I agreed. Wasn’t it great that I could admit my desire openly after only five minutes of meeting this Adonis?

  He looked at me excitedly. “It’s awful, isn’t it? It’s been so hard.”

  I said I agreed it was hard, but I have to admit I was surprised: I could understand how it was hard for me, but not how it was hard for him. (For readers who may be ahead of me here, please be indulgent—I was bedazzled.)

  “You should come to dinner tomorrow,” Philip now followed briskly.

  Was it possible? Could it be that here in the lobby of my apartment building, my ship had finally come in? Normally, I had to grow on people, but the young Sean Connery apparently had, in a few minutes, made a survey of my character and found it to his liking. He had told me he wanted to get married; he had invited me to dinner. My mother had always said that when it’s right, it’s easy.

  The building manager had ended the information session, having duly frightened all the dog owners and given them fodder for weeks of serious discussion. He then handed out dog treats and refrigerator magnets advertising an appliance store in Brooklyn owned by his brother-in-law. Most of the owners immediately jettisoned the biscuits as insufficiently nutritious (“doggie junk food,” I heard someone mutter), but I happen to like junk food and so I let Wordsworth gobble up his treat. He probably would have eaten Longfellow’s too had Philip not quickly but discreetly deposited it in the trash can near the front door as we went out.

  The information session concluded, we all made our way to the dog run in Riverside Park to decompress. I was floating on air. Philip walked beside me chatting about the habits of wheatens and then segueing into a discussion of his work. He was an architect and had already, since his move from Chicago, acquired several excellent commissions, including one for an addition to the Brooklyn Museum.

  An architect doing an addition to the Brooklyn Museum! This was so easy, he must be the one, I thought. My mother, who had never, to my knowledge, been right before in her life, must finally have emerged from her thirty-four-year slump.

  I told him I was a technical writer and gave him some humorous nuggets about the air-conditioning engineers. He laughed, a good sign.

  Stephen, the wispy math teacher, had, meanwhile, come up on my other side, determined to talk, even though he must have seen that I was deep into discussion with my Prince Charming.

  “I saw you were having a little trouble with your dog,” he said. “But you’re OK now?” He looked at Wordsworth and glanced at Philip.

  “Yes,” I said with the mock graciousness that comes of being under the protection of someone who looks like the young Sean Connery. “All fine now. This is Philip. And you’re … ?”

  I hadn’t forgotten his name, but I felt that appearing to have forgotten gave me a breezy, glamorous look—as though I met so many people in my busy life that I couldn’t possibly be expected to keep them straight.

  “Stephen Danziger,” he said with a mixture of amusement and good nature that took some of the edge off my glamorous pose. Philip said hello, then proceeded to become involved in feeding
treats to Wordsworth and Longfellow (these treats, apparently, of a more high-end variety than those that the building manager had distributed).

  “You missed the discussion of Proust,” Stephen remarked.

  I have neglected to mention that I had taken a hiatus from book club after the breakup with Derek. Even Pauline had agreed that it might be a chore for me to sit through a discussion of Swann’s Way with Derek and Bathsheba present. It was typical of Derek to bring Bathsheba back into book club even though he knew that I was a member and might feel uncomfortable. This was not a malevolent gesture on his part, I acknowledge, only a thoughtless one, reinforcing what you probably already suspect: Derek, though very sensitive with regard to his own feelings, has no sensitivity whatsoever with regard to other people’s. This paradox is commonly encountered among the citizens of New York— behavior that I, on occasion, happen to share.

  “I can’t say the reconciliation is a good thing for book group,” Pauline had informed me on the subject of Derek and Bathsheba after the Proust session. “I used to think Bathsheba made good comments, but I have to revise my judgment; she’s really very pretentious and controlling.” I admit that I appreciated the loyalty behind this observation and took some comfort in imagining Bathsheba pontificating while the rest of book club rolled its eyes.

  “I’m taking a break from book club,” I blithely explained to Stephen now. “I thought Pauline told everyone.”

  “She just said you had something to do that evening.”

  “Actually, for a while,” I corrected. “I’m just too busy right now to fit it in.” I should note that I am always being told by other people that they are “too busy” to do this or that, a source of mystification to me, since I am never busy at all. Thus, it was a consolation to finally be in a position to tell someone else that I was too busy.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “I liked your observation about diapers in Moby Dick”

  He was smiling, and I realized that he was referring to the discussion about children in The Great Gatsby that had resulted in a brief riff between us—and I have to say that I was momentarily taken aback by his having remembered something I’d said that wasn’t even witty. Most of the time, men don’t listen to me when I speak, much less remember what I said weeks after the fact.

  I looked at Stephen now, flattered by his retentiveness. He had a thin, earnest face and slightly bloodshot eyes, but he wasn’t exactly bad-looking and not really wispy, despite my having thought of him this way since having first encountered him. As you may have noticed, I have a tendency to make snap judgments about people, often based on evidence that exists purely in my own imagination. Stephen’s wispiness was a case in point. His hair was thinning a bit, to be sure, but it was neatly combed and not unattractive in color or texture. In general, he had a nice way about him, and I momentarily recalled that Pauline had had him, not Derek, in mind for me to begin with. But all this was of no relevance now. Even though I’d convinced myself that looking for Mr. Darcy was a fruitless goal, one to be dropped in the interest of my mental health, I now felt that I had been premature in dropping it and that I should reinstate it. Philip, along with resembling the young Sean Connery, also looked a bit like Laurence Olivier, who had played Mr. Darcy in the old Hollywood movie of Pride and Prejudice. With someone of this caliber so obviously smitten and asking me to dinner, let’s face it, an ordinary man like Stephen is going to look pretty shoddy.

  And so I gave Stephen one of those exaggerated smiles that mean “you’re dismissed now,” and which some particularly dim-witted men don’t pick up on. But Stephen, to his credit, got it right away. He moved off, and his golden retriever puppy immediately attracted a new circle of admirers. I could see that he was not in the best spirits, and I suppose I understood, having been there myself numerous times. But hey, I’d suffered rejection and humiliation at the hands of the opposite sex; shouldn’t I have the chance to make someone else suffer these things? I know that it’s this kind of thinking that perpetuates the world’s abuse, but I couldn’t help it; I was feeling heady in the presence of the young Sean Connery, and my moral sense had gone out the window. Or, to put it in the context of the occasion: it’s a dog-eat-dog world; get over it.

  Once Philip had finished giving out the doggie treats— Longfellow, I noted, did a variety of tricks for his, while Wordsworth watched, feeling what I imagined to be a sense of his own inadequacy—he returned to my side and began pointing out details of the architectural facades on Riverside Drive. I’d always wanted to talk architecture this way—it gives you a savvy New York look to be walking beside someone who knows a lot about pediments and lintels. Philip and I gazed up at the buildings together, our heads practically touching, the two dogs trotting happily beside us. It was idyllic, and I could already foresee the years stretching ahead, walking hand in hand, looking at the facades of memorable buildings, Longfellow ambling alongside the stroller.

  I am vain enough to admit that it even crossed my mind that someone who looked like Philip would father nice-looking children—children who would be able to bypass the Kaplan nose (which, if this is giving you some ideas about me, I happen to have mostly avoided myself). But even though I dodged that bullet, the genes are there on both sides (my dad’s grandfather got “Davis” from an impatient immigration officer at Ellis Island unwilling to spell “Davidowitz”). Clearly you want to have something strong to counteract the possibility of those genes rearing their head—or, as it were, their nose.

  After the run was over and we headed back, Wordsworth, lulled by the lively example of Longfellow, was compliant, and I had no trouble entering the building and getting in the elevator with him.

  “Don’t forget dinner tomorrow,” said Philip, kissing my cheek. “We’re having pistachio-crusted tilapia with a tomato coulis.”

  I looked at him and Longfellow with bemusement. It was nice to love your dog, but that degree of anthropomorphizing was a bit much. I’d have to break him of the habit after we were married.

  ELEANOR CALLED the next day saying she wanted Wordsworth back.

  “I’m miserable,” she explained. “Every time I’m about to go out, I reach for his leash. I even miss hearing him whine at night.” Wordsworth, I neglected to report, suffers from night terrors. At around 2 A.M. he begins thrashing and whimpering, and you have to give him some chicken bouillon and have him listen to Bruce Springsteen for a while before he calms down. To be honest, I couldn’t bear the thought of another night with him. But I could see how, for Eleanor, who had lived for ten years with Ronnie, a sociopath with a mix of sadistic and regressive tendencies, Wordsworth’s doggie neurosis might seem soothing.

  “I know I said you could have him for a few days, but Ronnie’s been calling, wanting to get back together. I need all the moral support I can get right now.”

  I knew she was expecting me to put up a fight, but as I saw it, Wordsworth had already done his work. If he was a deeply neurotic dog, he was also, for my purposes, an extremely efficient one. I was prepared to return him, only I wasn’t going to miss getting some credit for it.

  “But I’ve just had him for one day,” I said in a plaintive tone.

  “I know, and I’m sorry,” sympathized Eleanor, who probably thought that I’d grown as attached to Wordsworth as she was. “But I have to have him back.”

  I gave a heavy, theatrical sigh. “OK,” I said. “You can come get him—if you must.”

  “You’re the best,” said Eleanor. “I won’t forget this. I know I owe you big time.”

  It was nice to rack up some points here, especially since Eleanor’s assets had recently greatly increased. It seems that Ronnie, in an effort to elude the long arm of the law, had transferred a chunk of his savings to Eleanor’s account, and she had rationalized this ill-gotten gain as recompense for pain and suffering. I wondered now if the return of Wordsworth could be parlayed into some important item, like a bigger apartment. Hopefully, however, marriage to Philip, a successful architect, would
relieve me of all future money worries and I could content myself with a moral advantage rather than a financial one.

  “Your mental health is what’s important,” I said magnanimously.

  “You’re the best,” repeated Eleanor. “You can come over any time if you want to visit Wordsworth.”

  As I saw it, once I was married to Philip, we’d soon be bonding a lot over the two wheaten terriers. I could foresee many afternoons with Eleanor and me romping with Longfellow and Wordsworth, Philip playing with the dogs and charming both of us, though demonstrating his undying affection for me in particular, with the result that Eleanor would regain her lost belief in the ability of men to be decent. I could even hear strains of made-for-television-movie music playing in the background.

  While I was still enjoying this daydream, Eleanor came for Wordsworth, and I proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon picking an outfit to wear to dinner with Philip that evening. After trying on everything in my closet and leaving it all inside out on the floor, I finally settled on jeans and a tee shirt—a variation on what I’d worn for the Doggie Meet and Greet. Why mess with a winning formula? When I showed up at Philip’s apartment at the appointed hour, I had a bottle of wine and no dog, which might be a disappointment to Longfellow but which I didn’t think was likely to bother Philip. His greeting, however, suggested otherwise.

  “Where’s your friend?” was the first thing he asked when he answered the door. He seemed genuinely dismayed. Had he taken to Wordsworth that much? Dog lovers, I knew, were nuts, so it was possible.

  “Oh, his owner took him back,” I explained. “She came home from her trip a little earlier than expected.”

  “But didn’t she want to come?” he asked, furrowing his impeccable brow. “We wanted to meet her.”