Paws before dying

by Conant, Susan

  “This is the one I hate most,” I said. I opened it to the order form. “There’s a thirty-day trial period,” I said, looking up. “One of us could rush-order one or go to a dealer and buy it, and then we could take a look at it and return it.”

  “Which one of us did you have in mind?” Steve asked placidly.

  “Does it matter?” I said. “Whichever one of us has the money, I guess.” Depending on the breed, you can buy one or two purebred dogs for the price of a fancy high-tech shock collar. “You don’t have an extra person to feed for the summer, so you’re probably less broke than I am.”

  “You know, Holly, the truth is, I just don’t feel comfortable about it.” His wonderful, tired eyes looked straight at me. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not do it.”

  “If you order it, you don’t have to put D.V.M. after your name, if that’s it,” I assured him. “Or don’t use your own name. Or pay cash. And we are going to return it. They give you all your money back. It’s not as if they’d profit from it. We won’t be supporting the industry.”

  “But, uh, it indicates interest. It’s a statement that it’s okay-Doesn’t it seem like that?”

  “So you’d rather I...?”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, the truth is, I don’t feel like it, either,” I said. “But we do need one, if we want to be really sure. I mean, how easy are they to tamper with? The other things we can try with a regular collar, I guess, if we have to. We can figure out how to fasten it to the gate. And see if we can rig it so we can retrieve it from far away, or if we have to go back and get it.”

  “Any chance of borrowing one?”

  “I guess. We must know someone who has one. Well, Heather does, although Abbey was the one who told me about using it. I mean, she didn’t say outright that they have one, but she all but did, and I could ask one of them. In fact, I can ask around tonight, at Nonantum. So what’d you find out about Don Zager? Did he call you back?”

  Serious people smile better than the rest of us. Lines appeared around Steve’s sleepy eyes, and the pupils glittered.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “What does he sound like?”

  “The question is where,” Steve corrected me. “The answer is California.”

  “Ah, acupuncture. Alternatives. Okay. It’s Cambridge enough, though.”

  “He isn’t. Cambridge is not, uh, mellow.”

  Cambridge is quick and sharp. It is less strident than New York, but there is nothing soft, gentle, or ripe about it.

  “Is Newton?” I said.

  “No. But the rents are better.”

  “So you did get to that! Great. And what did he say?”

  “He wasn’t too articulate. He doesn’t exactly rush to the point of things. He proceeds real slow.” This from a person who customarily leaves a two-second pause after every word.

  “He sounds brain-injured,” I said. I grew up in Maine, but I’m acclimating myself to the intellectual climate here, where any sign of relaxation is considered pathological or lazy. If you don’t take work with you on vacation, people eye you as if you ought to see a neurologist.

  “He’s just, uh, calm,” Steve said. “He’s had good conventional training. I don’t know if there’s anything in the rest, but he’s real sincere. Friendly. He doesn’t sound like a bad guy. Just, like I said, California.”

  “So what about the rent? Did you get anything else?”

  “I said Cambridge was a real interesting place, and he said the rents were high.”

  “Is that all? Everyone says that. Did he sound as if he wanted you to send him patients?”

  “Who doesn’t? But he also says he’s there temporarily.”

  “On Washington Street? In Newton?”

  “No, he’s staying in Newton. He knows people. He grew up there. He’s moving to some place in Newton Comer. It isn’t ready yet.”

  “So the financial motive is there. If it isn’t ready yet, it’s new. Or it’s being fixed up, right? He did sound as though he’s moving up, didn’t he? He sounded happy about it?”

  “Oh, yeah. He said he’ll be real happy to show me what he does, but he wanted me to wait until he’s moved. Yeah, it’s definitely a move up.”

  An hour or two after Steve left, Marcia Brawley called about the article I’d rashly proposed writing about her. Larry, her husband, had photographed the Akita wall hanging before the people picked it up. She had a print of that picture for me as well as a couple of others that I just had to see. Should she mail them to me? I thanked her, but said that I had a dog training class that night at the park across from her house. I’d pick them up.

  In the afternoon, Leah, Emma, Miriam, and Monica went into Harvard Square. Leah returned with an embossed leather cowboy belt she’d found in the markdown bin at Ann Taylor, but the other three had big plastic bags of cotton sweaters, shorts, and pants from the summer sales and darker, heavier back-to-school clothes as well. Was the contrast hard for Leah? I watched and listened in, but her lovely, happy face showed no sign of envy, and her voice was as enthusiastic as if the new clothes had been her own. Then they took over the bathroom to do each other’s hair to the accompaniment of a station that every five minutes accurately announced itself as the Blast of Boston. Kimi, Rowdy, and I escaped to the Stanton Library for a few hours of silent work on my column.

  When we returned, I wanted to inform Leah that a mere ten minutes of the time she’d devoted to personal vanity would have rid poor Kimi of the worst of the undercoat that was rapidly forming ugly, woolly lumps on her shoulders, loins, and rump, but I’d adopted a new strategy: Say nothing, and let Leah see for herself just how rapidly her pretty Kimi would turn into a shaggy mess. In the meantime, Kimi wouldn’t suffer. Blowing her coat didn’t bother Kimi. And if I worked her over with a shedding blade when I groomed Rowdy, it wouldn’t bother Leah, either. (A shedding blade, by the way, is a loop of serrated metal attached to a handle. If that’s news to you and you have a dog that sheds, I’ve just saved you about a million hours of brushing, combing, and vacuuming.) On Sunday morning before the match, Leah had perfunctorily gone over Kimi with a finishing brush that hadn’t touched the undercoat. No one had groomed her since, and she looked like hell. We had dog training that night. I was counting on Heather Ross or some other soul of tactlessness to remark what a neglected-looking fright Kimi had become.

  By the time we left for dog training, Kimi’s coat looked even worse than it had in the midaftemoon. Loose white and pale gray guard hairs and undercoat clung to every surface of her body, and the fur she’d already dropped had revealed the lean, muscled, wolflike contours usually softened by her thick, rich coat. When she moved, escaping fur surrounded her as if she were some skinny spirit dog passing through this reality in a ghostly cloud. The dark wolf gray on her head, back, and tail had paled, and, worst of all, the shining almost-black on her face had faded, washing out the full mask—the cap, the Lone Ranger goggles, the bar down her nose. Even to me, she looked almost like someone else’s malamute, some stranger’s pale gray dog.

  But I said nothing to Leah about grooming Kimi. On the drive to Newton, I made small talk.

  “Nice shirt,” I said. “I haven’t seen that before.”

  “Thanks. It’s Emma’s,” she said. I didn’t point out that Emma wouldn’t be happy to have it returned with an angora coating. “Hey, is it okay if I go to Emma’s after class?”

  “I guess,” I said. “But how will you get home?”

  “With Jeff.”

  “Sure. Just be home by eleven or so.” It isn’t easy to set a firm curfew for the reincarnation of your own mother. “Eleven-thirty at the latest.”

  Chapter 23

  WE arrived at the park a few minutes late. I hoped Marcia Brawley wasn’t in a talkative mood, but as it turned out, I didn’t see her at all. I’d told her I’d stop by for the pictures up at seven. When I got to her front doer, she’d left, but a note taped to the mailbox said she’d had to run to the store. It di
rected me to a big manila envelope that rested behind the screen door. I picked it up and started toward the Bronco, but then saw Leah waving at me. In fact, she was lifting her right arm and bringing her hand to her chest. It’s a dog-training signal usually reserved for the dog, but I knew what it meant: “Come!” I crossed the street, and, when I got close enough, heard her call, “Holly? They’ve started already, and I don’t have any money.”

  With both dogs on leash, she was standing by a card table where a bald, skinny guy from Nonantum was seated on a folding chair and checking people in.

  “I do,” I said. “Thanks for getting the dogs out. I’ll take Rowdy.” Then I added to the guy at the desk, “I’ll pay for her. Leah Whitcomb, for Bess’s class, and I’m Holly Winter, for Tony’s.”

  With no warning, Rowdy suddenly hit the ground and crawled a foot or two, and from under the card table, a ferocious snarl broke out.

  “Patton, that’ll do,” the bald guy told a Rottweiler crouched at his feet where I hadn’t noticed him.

  “Rowdy, be good,” I said, hauling him backward. I handed Leah the envelope. “Here, take these. I need both hands. And watch it. Don’t bend them. They’re photographs. Rowdy, heel.” He did. Patton retreated with all the compliant goodwill of

  the original George S. I dug into my purse, fished for cash, and paid.

  I don’t understand anything about dogs. Malamutes are an Arctic breed, and Rowdy was the first creature of any species I’d ever met who loathed hot weather as much as I did. Yet that evening, Rowdy didn’t seem to notice the ninety-degree temperature and the thick, moist air that was crushing my chest. He heeled as pertly as if he’d been enjoying the midwinter chill that invigorates us both. I wouldn’t have asked him to jump, but his eyes were pleading.

  The sight of a beautiful, athletic dog soaring through the air, independently searching out and taking his dumbbell, then flying back over the jump is breathtaking. That night, Rowdy performed perfectly. When I tossed the dumbbell, I could feel his eagerness, but he waited for the command, and when it came, he took two fluid strides, sprang, cleared the top board, and landed gracefully. He made instantly for the dumbbell, grasped it cleanly by the center bar, flew back over the jump, and ended up directly in front of me, where he sat perfectly straight and waited with infinite patience for me to take his dumbbell, which he hadn’t tossed or mouthed once. And his performance on the other exercises was almost as good, if less flashy. I forgot the heat. I wasn’t in that park in Newton. I wasn’t in Massachusetts. I was off in Rowdyland, which is another name for paradise.

  At the end of class, plunked back down on some weedy grass with my four-footed memento of the divine, I found a small crowd of Novice handlers and dogs surrounding Bess Stein, who was sitting in the chair by the card table to dispense advice and answer questions. Jeff and Lance, Leah and Kimi, and Willie Johnson and Righteous were part of her throng. Some of Tony’s other people were leaving, but I remembered that, having arrived late, I hadn’t helped set up. I also wanted to know what Leah had done with Marcia’s photographs. With Rowdy on a down—and, as insurance, hitched to a giant tree, one of the few objects a determined malamute can’t budge—I helped someone haul the heavy old wooden high jump to a van someone had driven into the park.

  Every dog training club, like every other club in the world, has some members who always pitch in and others who apparently believe themselves entitled to be waited on by the diligent. Heather Ross perhaps felt that her presence was a sufficient contribution, but Abbey usually did more than her fair share, especially since she didn’t even train a dog. In any case, when I got to the crowd around Bess, Abbey was trying to worm her way to the table so she could fold it and carry it off. I offered to help her. When we’d finally squeezed through the people and dogs, as we were folding the legs of the table, I took the opportunity to ask her about the shock collar, not by that name, of course.

  “You remember a while ago, you mentioned something about using a remote trainer? For squirming on sits and downs.”

  “Works like a charm,” she said.

  “I was wondering. Do you have one?”

  “You want to borrow it?”

  “Just as an experiment,” I said truthfully.

  “Sure, I guess so. I’ll bring it next time.”

  As we were lifting the table, Willie Johnson, whom I hadn't noticed, stepped in and put a hand on it. “I’ll do it,” he said nicely. “Where does it go?”

  “In that maroon van,” I told him. “Thanks.”

  When he got back, I thanked him again and refrained from asking whether the police had questioned him yet and, if so, what he’d said. Leah finally approached Bess to ask some question I didn’t hear, and when Bess had answered her and was turning to Willie, I pushed my way toward Leah and said, “What happened to the pictures?”

  “You gave them to me,” she said.

  Then we started leading the dogs out of the park and toward the street. “I know. But what did you do with them?”

  “Put them in the Bronco. I have a key, remember?”

  Jeff had crated Lance in the back of his family’s big white Oldsmobile wagon, and Leah begged to take Kimi with her, too. I gave in. She and Jeff hauled Kimi’s crate from my car to Jeffs, and while I waited for them to finish, I said hello to Monica, who’d shown up to get a ride to Emma’s with Jeff and Leah.

  Monica was wearing a short-sleeved navy-blue summer-Weight cotton sweater that looked brand-new.

  “Pretty sweater,” I told her as I stood holding the dogs’ leashes and waiting for Leah to get Kimi. “In fact, I ordered one just like it from L. L. Bean.”

  “Thanks,” Monica said. “Actually, it’s Leah’s.”

  Oh, was I slow. Was I trusting.

  Leah and Jeff finally finished fitting the crate into the station wagon. Then Jeff got into the driver’s seat, Monica opened the front passenger door, and Leah came to get Kimi. I handed her the leash.

  “Leah,” I whispered. “That sweater. The sweater Monica’s wearing? That is my new sweater, isn’t it? The one that just came today? From L. L. Bean?”

  “I was going to tell you,” Leah said blithely, “but I thought you might say something.”

  “Like what? ‘You’re wearing my sweater’? Leah, I want it back,” I said childishly. “I haven’t even worn it yet. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I’ve actually even seen it. And you’ve let someone else borrow it? Without even asking me?”

  “I’m sorry. Holly, really, I am sorry.”

  “I want it back,” I repeated.

  “Well, I can’t ask for it now,” Leah said reasonably. “What’s she supposed to wear? Nothing?”

  “No,” I conceded. “I guess not. But I don’t like this at all. And remember, eleven-thirty. At the latest.”

  Chapter 24

  “SO all I thought was, huh, Monica’s got a sweater exactly like mine,” I told Steve. “It didn’t even occur to me that it was a strange coincidence.”

  Steve had a big smirk on his face. It had been plastered there ever since I’d outlined the story. The heat and humidity had defeated my rattling old air conditioners and driven us outdoors to the back steps. The dogs and I supposedly share the fenced-in yard, which has a park bench, an iron table, and a pair of cheap white resin chairs as well as a collection of canine furnishings. Unfortunately, though, despite my diligent daily cleanups, the Cambridge midsummer steam bath defeats even the ordinarily effective application of Odormute, Odo Kill, and Outright. In short, the yard stinks.

  “And then I actually told her I’d ordered the same one from L- L. Bean,” I confessed. “I can’t believe I was such a naive jerk. I actually complimented her on my sweater.”

  He thought that was pretty funny, too.

  “Which was when she said it was Leah’s,” I added. “And then I finally caught on. It’s probably amazing that I managed to do that.”

  “But you missed the next step,” he said.

  “And what was
that?” I asked, unmollified.

  “Ask her whether you could borrow it. She’d probably’ve said yes.” And he laughed some more and patted Rowdy, who was half asleep on the concrete at the bottom of the steps.

  “Sure. Why not? And then Leah was so casual. And practical. It was completely maddening. Was I going to tell this girl to take off the sweater and go naked? And it wasn’t her fault. It’s not as if she’d stolen it.”

  “If you’d entered into the spirit of it, it would’ve been no problem,” he said. “You could’ve traded, right there on the spot.”

  “Right. On the sidewalk. And the worst of it was, I was just seething, and at the same time, I still didn’t want to make a scene. I don’t believe in humiliating kids in front of their friends, plus I ended up with this ridiculous feeling that I was being sort of stingy and unreasonable, and if I made a scene, I’d just be making a fool of myself. I mean, there they are, open and generous and free, and I’m constricted and selfish.”

  “It was right not to say anything,” he said.

  “Well, I did sort of hiss at Leah, and when she gets home, I’m not going to yell at her, but this is really too much. I know you think it’s funny, but it’s not as if I had a million new sweaters. Damn it, the dogs wouldn’t give away my new sweater. And I know you think it’s cute, but I’m waiting up for her, and the second she gets in, we are going to have a serious talk about it.”

  I leaned down, took Rowdy’s muzzle between my hands, and gently ran my fingers over his hot, unhappy nose. I didn’t say anything, but he knew what I meant: Summer is not forever. Snow will fall. You will be back in harness.

  “At the risk of sounding like Rita,” Steve said, “uh...”

  “Uh, what?”

  “It, uh... Well, you have been, uh, real willing to turn Kimi over to her.”

  “Yes,” I said rather loudly. “I have. I’m glad you noticed. The Alaskan malamute is not a one-person dog, remember?” Actually, the breed standard needs updating; it says one-man dog. “What time is it, anyway?”