Blindsided

by Karis Walsh

  “You’re kidding, right?” Cara asked. Lenae heard disbelief in her tone. “Pickwick will be this well-behaved when I have to give him back?”

  “Well,” Des answered from the floor. Lenae heard Pickwick’s distinctive tiny growl and figured Des was being mauled by the puppy in question. “We don’t have such high expectations for him.”

  “Or me, by implication,” Cara said with a laugh. “I’d be offended, but I tend to agree with you. Can you hold him still while I try to get this blasted raincoat on him? He hates the sound it makes.”

  “Come here, Pickwick,” Lenae said, kneeling on the floor again. She held out her hand for the raincoat as the puppy obediently trotted to her. “He needs to get accustomed to the plastic, not only for the times it rains, but because he’ll be around bags and umbrellas and raincoats all year round.”

  Pickwick sat patiently next to Lenae and let her wad up the plastic and rub it all over him before she buckled it in place. She heard a muttered comment from Cara that sounded like blasted puppy before he stood up, shook himself with a clatter of raincoat and scratch of toenails on the floor, and trotted over to greet Gem.

  “It really bugs me when you do that,” Cara said. Lenae recognized hints of frustration in her half-joking, half-in-earnest voice.

  “Don’t be too tentative with him or he won’t respect you,” Lenae said, thinking she needed to take her own advice and be assertive in today’s class. Not let Cara or the others see her as weak. She stood again and called Baxter to her. “Have the others arrived yet? Or your camera crew?”

  “No cameras today,” Cara said, with what sounded like a relieved sigh. “Pickwick and I filmed our segment in Seattle yesterday, so I’d be able to focus on class today and not on performing.”

  Lenae wasn’t sure what to say in response. From the start, she had hoped Cara would fulfill her puppy-walking duties in spite of the cameras around her, but she hadn’t expected Cara to go out of her way like this. Cara was more serious about her duties than Lenae had ever expected, and she was impressed—and she thought she owed Cara an apology for ever underestimating her commitment. She was trying to find a way to say those things to Cara when she heard the rest of the puppy walkers coming through the front door.

  “Thank you,” she said, hoping Cara might understand how much she meant by the simple words. Cara gave her arm a light squeeze of acknowledgment as Lenae walked past her. Lenae exhaled at her casual touch, caught by surprise yet again at her body’s immediate response.

  *

  “You’re welcome,” Cara said, even though Lenae had already left the office. Lenae had seemed surprised she’d come without cameras—surprised, but deeply pleased.

  Cara joined the rest of the puppy walkers, happy to be solo today and not surrounded by booms and cameras. She took a seat near the front of the room—instead of hiding in the back to be unobtrusive as usual—and let Pickwick romp with the other puppies. She noticed all of them had their raincoats on and wondered if no one else had needed assistance getting the simple garment on their dog. Part of her liked watching Lenae work with Pickwick, however. Lenae’s skills were undeniable, and Cara admired her easy way with the dogs. After a week alone with Pickwick, she appreciated Lenae’s help. More than that, she felt a curious sense of pride when she saw Lenae’s training talent in action. Cara had felt admiration for the people she interviewed, and sometimes an emotion bordering on envy, but it was different with Lenae. More personal, as if Lenae’s successes belonged in some small part to her, too. Cara was happy to joke about her own misguided attempts to manage Pickwick because her clumsiness underscored Lenae’s abilities.

  Each member of the group reported on their previous week, and Cara was relieved that she wasn’t the only one facing challenges. If this had been a room full of well-behaved dogs and competent handlers, she’d have been ready to give up and quit, but everyone had questions and funny stories about their puppies.

  “As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I don’t have cameras watching my every move this week,” Cara said when it was her turn to talk. “I wanted to have today free to concentrate on Pickwick, so I decided to take him to Seattle yesterday. We met the camera crew down by Pike Place, and they filmed me pretending to buy vegetables and fish while Pickwick walked with me. After they edit out the footage of him tripping people with his leash and stealing money out of a street musician’s guitar case, I doubt they’ll have much to use.”

  Lenae laughed along with the rest of the group. “What else did you do while you were in the city?” she asked.

  “Well…” Cara drew the word out for several syllables. She loved watching Lenae’s face relax into laughter, when her stress lines eased and her lips looked soft and pliant, so Cara launched into another humorous Pickwick anecdote. “I thought it would be fun to take him to the aquarium. I haven’t been in years, and it seemed like a quiet way to spend the afternoon. Pickwick, however, had no intention of being quiet. He barked at every fish and sea animal he saw, he dragged me past the underground tanks like he was being chased by sharks, and he got loose near the hands-on exhibit and ran off with a sea anemone in his mouth.”

  “He did not!” Lenae exclaimed, her voice sounding torn between horror and amusement at Pickwick’s antics.

  “Okay, I made up the part about the anemone,” Cara admitted. “But the rest is true. He barked until he could barely croak out another sound, and believe me, it echoes in that place. I’m surprised no one asked us to leave.”

  Lenae wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “How about we skip the aquariums today, but we’ll plan on getting all the puppies to one in the future. Sounds like a great training opportunity.”

  “Or lack-of-training opportunity,” Des added.

  “Very funny. Pickwick and I are offended,” Cara said. She wanted to spin stories all day long if they made Lenae laugh so hard.

  “Pickwick seems none the worse for the experience.” Nor, Lenae noted, was Cara. She loved how totally unfazed Cara sounded by the jokes and laughter. She was doing her best with Pickwick, but she didn’t mind sharing her mistakes. Lenae admired that quality in Cara, even if she couldn’t afford to have it herself.

  “Hopefully today will be a tamer excursion,” she said. “Des will drive us to downtown Olympia in the center’s van, so we can practice riding on public transportation. He’ll also be bringing Gem along and will explain the training she’s going through right now. She’s recently out of her puppy-walking year, and her behavior should give you an idea of where we’ll expect your puppies to be when they return to us.”

  Lenae led the group out to the van and explained how to navigate buses and seats. After she was seated and Baxter was tucked under her chair, Des went down the aisle and made sure everyone had their puppies safely out of harm’s way.

  “I see some bits of a chocolate Lab,” he said.

  Lenae felt a quick stab of guilt. She had been too distracted when Cara sat next to her, lightly pressing her leg against the length of Lenae’s, to check her seatmate’s puppy. Pickwick was quiet—for once—but he was the only chocolate in the class.

  “His paws are under the seat,” Cara protested. “You’re just used to criticizing him, so you automatically do it even when he’s doing something right.”

  “His feet are under the front of your seat, but his tail is sticking out the back.” Lenae heard Des tap on the floor behind Cara with his foot.

  Lenae laughed as she listened to the grunts and clipped curse words as Cara tried to get an apparently reluctant Pickwick all the way under her seat.

  “Lenae, help,” Cara said, but Lenae only laughed harder.

  “You can’t ask me to step in every time he does something wrong,” she said. “I managed to fit an entire adult dog under me. Surely you can get one tiny little puppy under yours.”

  Cara grumbled, but after a few more moments of pushing and pulling, she got Pickwick situated well enough for Des to give his approval. “When I want him to stay still, he�
��s like the Tasmanian Devil. When I need him to move, he flops down like he’s made of cement.”

  “He’ll learn,” Lenae said, slipping easily into her soothing teacher voice. “And you’ll learn. Better to struggle now and get it right than to hear a yelp of pain if someone steps on him when you’re riding the bus.”

  Des keyed the ignition, and Lenae took advantage of the engine’s noise to talk to Cara in private. “About the other day…”

  “Yes?” Cara asked. Her voice sounded distracted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Pickwick’s hind end just rolled into the aisleway. Oof, there. He’s back and Des didn’t even notice.”

  “Yes, I did,” Des said from the driver’s seat.

  Lenae lowered her voice even more. “As I was saying, about the other day. When I was talking about the trouble I was having with my student?”

  “The one who recently lost his sight? I remember. Has he gotten any more attached to Toby?”

  “No change yet,” Lenae said. She was almost tempted to tell Cara about her most recent experience with Gene, when he had shown up for training class with Toby on a leash instead of in his harness. He had claimed he had forgotten and had been doing fine without it. The class was a disaster, with a confused dog and a stumbling handler. Lenae knew he was still refusing to admit his need for Toby, reluctant to let other people see this proof of his new state. She wanted to share her frustration, hear Cara’s insistence that she was a good trainer, but she kept the tale to herself.

  “He’ll adjust soon, I’m sure,” she said, not believing her own words. “But I wanted to apologize for mentioning his situation in the first place. To someone outside the center’s staff. I hope you understand this is confidential—”

  “And I shouldn’t blab it on the news?” Cara asked. Lenae heard and felt Cara’s sudden stiffening. “I can’t believe you’d even feel the need to say something like that. We were talking as friends, I thought, not as part of an interview.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just wanted to be certain.”

  “My spots with Pickwick are just fluff pieces,” Cara said. “Even if they were serious news stories, do you think anyone cares whether you’re having trouble with a client?”

  “Fluff pieces? Is that really all this experience means to you? All Pickwick means to you?” All I mean to you? Lenae didn’t speak the last question out loud, but she knew it was implied by the anger in her voice.

  “No,” Cara said after a pause. “I apologize. Even though Pickwick drives me crazy, he really matters to me. So do…so does your center. I know you do serious work here, and I’m glad to be part of it.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  Cara lapsed into silence. She was angry, but mostly at herself. Her family liked to use the same phrase, and she had quoted it to Lenae with the same condescending tone her parents used. These are little fluff pieces, but maybe they’ll be enough to get you noticed. Any face time on television is good publicity. She shuddered to herself at the bad memories.

  The afternoon had been so promising. A day to herself with Pickwick and the other puppy walkers. Admittedly, she’d been especially looking forward to a chance to spend time with Lenae, minus the cameras and scripts. She had started the class with laughter, but now Lenae seemed to think she was some sort of cross between Deep Throat and Woodward and Bernstein, here to get dirt on the center and expose it on the news. She was angry with Lenae for misjudging her, but also with her parents for telling her to do almost the very thing Lenae accused her of. Fluff pieces, her dad had said, but if she could find some angle, some juicier bit of gossip than mere stories about Pickwick, then maybe she’d get more exposure, have her story picked up by the national network. The idea had made Cara sick, and Lenae’s warning about privacy made her fume.

  Lenae had struck a chord with Cara. Yes, Lenae had said the wrong thing, in the wrong way, but she was only voicing the things Cara already had in her head, put there by her parents and her doubts about her own worth. She wasn’t sure how to get them back to the lighthearted banter they’d shared. Lenae had only been trying to protect herself, to maintain her role as authority figure and not be seen as a rookie trainer who was making mistakes, but she’d managed to offend Cara in the process. Cara had thought Lenae might be the only one who saw the real person, the person she wanted to be, behind the televised face. Now, the wall between them was a palpable thing.

  They arrived downtown and gathered near Olympia’s waterfront. Cara stood in the cold drizzling rain and listened while Des explained about training guide dogs to protect the handler’s right shoulder. He demonstrated techniques he and Lenae were using with Gem. The puppy walkers wouldn’t be teaching their charges these lessons, but after observing the upcoming aspects of training more mature dogs, Cara better understood the process as a whole and her part in it. She was fascinated in spite of her surging emotions after Lenae’s hurtful comments.

  Lenae stood next to her during Gem’s demonstration, still in chilly silence. Cara felt the distance between them. Once Des was finished talking about Gem’s stage of training, the entire class walked along the boardwalk. Des occasionally pointed out differences among the animals. Fully-trained Baxter, just-learning Gem, and the wild puppies. Cara tried to focus on his words, but her attention was on Lenae as she mingled with the class. She took Baxter to each puppy walker in turn, giving them one-on-one advice and letting Baxter act as a calming influence for each youngster.

  Cara felt a mixture of relief and tension when Lenae finally directed Baxter to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as soon as Lenae was close. She paused by the railing and Lenae and Baxter stopped with her. Cara looked out over the water, at the boats gently bobbing in the harbor and the drops of rain dotting its surface. Pickwick strained at his leash and barked every time a seagull circled overhead. “I have a great deal of respect for you and the work you do at the center. I’m doing these weekly spots to promote your business, so to hear you suggest that I might do anything to compromise your clients…well, it hurt.”

  “You’re right. I’ve come to realize how much integrity you have, and I shouldn’t have implied you would use information I shared that way. I guess…”

  Lenae’s voice trailed off and she rubbed Baxter’s ears with nervous-looking hands. Cara knew them both well enough by now to see the signs of Lenae’s stress reflected in Baxter’s more protective posture. Lenae might be able to conceal her emotions, but they were filtered through her companion in ways of which she probably wasn’t aware.

  “You guess…what?” Cara asked.

  “I can’t seem weak,” Lenae admitted in a rush. “Telling you about my problems with Gene, needing and accepting your help with the center’s grounds. More than anything, I need to be strong and independent. Those qualities have helped me survive so far in life, and they got me through my old job. But now, in this new place and with new responsibilities…”

  For someone who had worked as one of the top newswriters in the country, Lenae seemed to be having trouble getting words out now. Cara knew what it meant for Lenae to struggle to express herself. The emotions were more difficult for her to explain than the hard facts of a news story.

  “I need too many people now,” Lenae continued. Cara heard her frustration. “I need Des to help me see what I can’t. I need volunteers and donors. I need help managing such a large and rundown piece of property.”

  “And maybe you needed a friend the other day,” Cara said. “Someone to listen without judging you as weak. We all need people in our lives, Lenae. You managed to get through a lot of years by creating a life that was independent, but that won’t work here, with these animals and with the fallible humans who are trying to handle them. I understand what you want, to make your own way in life without relying on others, but things are different now.”

  Lenae reached for Cara’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. She heard the notes of something indefinable in Cara’s
voice, and she kept hold of her hand, keeping them connected while Cara paused.

  “I’ve always had my family to help with my career, whether I wanted them to or not,” Cara said. She traced circles on the top of Lenae’s hand, and Lenae felt every cell in her skin, every tendon and blood vessel, respond to the rhythmic and whisper-soft touch. She kept her mind on Cara’s words with difficulty, and she wondered if the physical touch was Cara’s unconscious way of diverting attention away from what she was saying. “Some of their advice is…well, let’s say they wouldn’t have any qualms about using confidential information the way you thought I might. I’ve tried hard not to be like them, to have my own set of moral standards. When you said what you did, I heard it as an accusation that I’m just like them.”

  “I was only thinking of myself,” Lenae admitted. She had been determined to assert her space with Cara today, prove she wasn’t weak or needy, but instead she had discovered an even deeper and scarier weakness in herself. She liked Cara. Wanted to know more about her, wanted to discover the insecurities and desires that drove her. Sharing her own troubles and doubts with Cara had been dangerous. The urge to hear more about Cara’s life was even more threatening to Lenae. “My business and my future. I was really rebuking myself when I said those things—because maybe I had disclosed too much—and not passing judgment on your character.”

  “You can talk to me without worrying that I’m secretly coming up with an eye-catching headline for your stories,” Cara said. She pressed Lenae’s hand with hers before letting go. “We’re friends.”

  “Friends,” Lenae repeated. She pushed away from the railing and walked back to the van with Cara and Pickwick. After a vigorous shake, all the puppies settled quietly under their seats. Fresh air and the long walk had made even Gem and Baxter ready for a nap. Lenae and Cara were quiet, too, on the way back to the center, but with none of the defensive walls between them, as there’d been on the way to town. Friendship, sharing, vulnerability. Lenae had tried to experience those in her past but had been used. Her weakness had been used against her. Could she trust Cara enough to let down her guard again? Lenae wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t in a hurry to find out and possibly—probably—get hurt again.