When I was done dispersing the ashes, I said, “I think my wife was perfect. I know I’ve told some of you that the only thing wrong with our pets is that they don’t live as long as we do. It’s not fair that she didn’t live as long as I will. It’s just … well … it’s just plain wrong. And I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it. But at least now I know I’ve done something perfect for her. I wish I could have done something perfect for her when she was alive.”
With that I sort of smoothed my foot over one small mound of ash. Marjorie stepped forward and said, “You did do something perfect for her when she was alive. You made her happy.”
That was when I started to cry again, and Ruby began screaming: “My baby girl, my baby girl!” She keened and bent over as if she were in great pain. My mother stepped forward and kissed me. One by one, everyone else came up to hug or kiss me. We all scanned the cemetery, looking down at the ashes, which were spread as evenly as I could manage.
Several passersby peered in at us from the sidewalk. I think Ruby’s wailing kept them on the other side of the fence.
Gradually people filtered out of the cemetery. By the time our allotted hour was over, I was alone again, standing inside the gate, holding an empty urn.
The Hispanic gardener came by exactly at one-thirty. He still didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I nodded and stepped outside the cemetery. He locked the gate behind me, shook my hand, and left.
I threw the urn into a wire garbage pail on Sixth Avenue and Twelfth Street.
And walked, by myself, back to the clinic and the place where I now lived without Anna.
Most of the people who attended the funeral had come back to the apartment. My mother had thought to order sandwiches and coffee and various desserts, as well as wine and beer. At first everyone ate and drank a little and talked quietly. As time passed, their voices got louder and less solemn. People started telling stories and even laughing. Phil told a story about the first time he met Anna, about giving her two left bowling shoes to wear, and suddenly I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face.
Ruby came over to me. Tentatively, as if I might lash out at her. She stood several inches away, her perfume overpoweringly strong, and for quite a while she said nothing. Finally she spoke: “You think I’m crazy. A lot of people think I’m crazy. Maybe I am. I do a lot of crazy things that hurt a lot of people. I lie about a lot of things and make people very uncomfortable. But I’m going to tell you something. I don’t know if you’ll believe me, and I guess I don’t really care. I’m past the stage of caring about anything very much. But I loved my daughter. I also hated her.”
“Please,” I said. “I don’t want to have this conversation. I really and truly don’t.”
“I hated her because right from the time she was a little girl, a baby really, she was every single thing I wanted to be but knew I wasn’t. She was smart and beautiful and adventurous. And she had a great amount of courage. Oh my Lord, she wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, especially me or her daddy. You were right, what you said in that Jewish cemetery place. If she thought what she was doing was right, nothin’ could stop her from doin’ it. She was stubborn as a goddamn mule, and mostly what she wanted was to get the hell away from us. Startin’ when she was five or six, all she used to talk about was moving moving moving. Goin’ someplace we weren’t. She was maybe seven when she told us she was gonna fall in love and move to New York and be a big success. Did you know that? Did she ever tell you that?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“It’s true. I used to tell her when she was a baby that I wanted to live in New York and go to Broadway shows and eat at fancy restaurants. And she used to ask me why I didn’t just do it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“What I told her was that I was too scared. Me in New York? What the hell would I have been here? I was pretty enough and smart enough for where I was. But here? Uh-uh. I’da been stomped on pretty quick, and I knew it. I didn’t have the nerve to do what she did. Ever. She lived the life I wanted to live, so I hated her. But I also loved her for it. And was jealous of her. Envious. Competitive. I wouldn’ta minded if she’d failed, which is a pretty terrible thing to say. But deep down I didn’t want her to. I really didn’t want her to. I wanted her to get what she finally got. You know—you, all her success. I guess a mom’s not supposed to feel any of those things. But I sure did. And I’ll tell you something—it was a lot easier than hating myself for not bein’ her.”
The whole time she spoke, it was in a quiet southern drawl. I had to lean in toward her to hear what she was saying; it was the first time I’d ever heard her speak in anything but a bellow.
After she finished, I looked at her for a long time without saying a word. For once I wasn’t seeing her through Anna’s eyes, and suddenly she didn’t look like a monster. She looked like what she was: a sad, lonely, destructive woman who had no real place left in the world.
So when I finally gathered myself to speak, I said, just as quietly as she had spoken, “I think in a lot of ways you killed your daughter. She tried so hard not to be you that it did her in. But I heard what you said, and I’m pretty sure I know why you said it. So I want you to know: I don’t hate you.”
She stared at me. Her black eyes flared, then turned cold again.
“That’s why you told me all that, isn’t it?” I said. “Because I’m your only link to your daughter and you don’t want me to hate you. So you can go home and find some small bit of peace and tell yourself whatever it is you’re gonna have to tell yourself to keep on going. Well, it worked. I don’t like you, but I don’t hate you, either. Not anymore.”
She dropped her stare and looked away. Then she raised her head again.
“Can I call you from time to time? Or maybe drop you an e-mail? So I can just see how you’re doing?”
I nodded. I couldn’t believe I did, but I definitely nodded.
And then she went back from whence she came.
Everybody else did, too. People got back to their lives fairly quickly. Phil went back upstate, after telling me that he knew I was going to be fine because I was sad. The clinic regulars brought me food—pastas and cakes, mostly; Goldie, a tiny woman, several inches under five feet tall, and perhaps the jolliest woman who ever lived, and who had the largest and most languid Great Dane imaginable, brought over a week’s supply of beef stew and approximately two tons of mashed potatoes. But the visits and the food and the forced companionship only lasted a week or so. For the most part, acquaintances and clients soon stopped asking me how I was doing and went back to being more concerned about their Peanut Butters and Carmelos and their Loveys. Which was all as it should have been. Life goes on. I understood that, and I found it vaguely reassuring.
When Teddy and Hilts left to go back to L.A., Hilts gave me a quick hug. He didn’t linger, probably because Teddy was watching. Teddy also gave me a quick hug. He didn’t linger either, but of course there was no reason for him to. Then he gave our mom a kiss good-bye, though he didn’t say anything to go along with the kiss. Hilts kissed her, too, and to my surprise, he hugged her quite fiercely. She loved it, of course, and smiled in a way I’d rarely seen her smile. For whatever reason, she loved this little boy. And he knew it. And he responded to it. I don’t think anyone else had ever loved him without wanting something in return.
That hug Hilts gave my mother was the first genuine thing I’d seen him do since he’d come to New York, and it made me think there might be hope for us all.
* * *
From the New York Daily Examiner:
ASK DR. BOB
Dr. Robert Heller is one of New York’s leading veterinarians. He is the author of two books about taking care of pets, They Have Nothing but Their Kindness and the fleeting New York Times best seller More Than Human. He is also a regular on the Today show with his weekly segment, “The Vetting Zoo.” Dr. Bob takes care of cats, dogs, horses, birds, snakes, turtles, frogs, fish, snails,
small pigs, and many varieties of rodents. You can e-mail him at [email protected] and ask him any question about the animal you love. His column runs Tuesdays and Thursdays in NYC’s most popular newspaper.
Dear Dr. Bob:
People write to you about such a wide variety of pet topics, I felt it was all right for me to ask you about something that might seem silly: pet plastic surgery.
My five-year-old boxer, Smokin’ Joe, had mouth cancer and, as a result, lost a piece of his jaw. He’s a wonderful guy, as friendly as a dog can be, but because of this deformity, I’ve noticed, some people shy away from him on the street, especially children. It makes him look mean or dangerous, I guess, and of course he’s neither. But, as with people, looks can be deceiving. His vet mentioned to me that there is such a thing these days as dog plastic surgery. Is this something I should consider? My sister had a nose job when she was sixteen years old, so I suppose it’s okay for a dog to have cosmetic surgery on his jaw, no?
—Smokin’ Joe’s Dad
Dear Dad:
This is indeed a tough one. Ultimately, you will have to make the decision based on your level of comfort with Smokin’ Joe’s appearance and Joe’s own level of ease with the way people respond to him. But this is my thinking: Everyone has some kind of scar—it’s simply a question of how many we get and how we bounce back from them. Some scars are on the surface. Some disappear quickly. Some linger before fading. But every time we’re nicked and scarred, we’re altered. It doesn’t mean we’re a lesser or better version of ourselves, but we are different. As for Smokin’ Joe … I don’t think having a reconstructed jaw will make a difference to him. He probably knows what he is and can live with it. If it makes a difference to you, then go for the plastic surgery. The truth will remain the same—as will Joe—whichever way you go.
—Dr. Bob
* * *
CHAPTER 8
PAIGE MACKENZIE
Paige was sixty-eight years old when she first brought her long-haired dachshund to me. She had just come from an audition for a Broadway revival of Where’s Charley? She explained that she’d gone on an equity “cattle call,” as it’s known—every stage show in New York is required to have an open call for anyone with an Actors’ Equity card so that, ostensibly, any actor in the city has a fair shot to get a role. Paige said the role she’d tried out for was an ingénue in her young twenties and claimed that she was perfect for it. When I hesitantly asked her if perhaps she was just a tad too old for that particular part, she was not at all offended. Instead, she looked at me as if I were a naïve and innocent rube and said, “When they say twenty, they really mean forty. Experience is the greatest requirement for any role in the theater.” I said, “Okay,” and refrained from pointing out that she was quite a few years past forty.
I saw Paige again several months later; her dachshund was suffering from arthritis. I asked her if she’d gotten the part. She looked at me, bewildered. I said, “Where’s Charley? The ingénue.” And she said, “Dear boy, that was dozens of auditions ago. Try to keep up.”
I learned that Paige went to at least three auditions per week—Broadway, off-Broadway, touring companies, summer stock. Mostly for parts for which she had absolutely no shot. She went to open calls for the parts of Anita in West Side Story, the oldest daughter in The Sound of Music, and for one of the backup singers in Dreamgirls. (I couldn’t help myself when I heard about that one and pointed out to Paige that she was most definitely a Caucasian. She acknowledged the accuracy of my comment but said she still felt the part was within her range.) Over time, I came to understand that she had not landed a part in over forty years but still considered herself a working actress. Clearly Paige didn’t know—or refused to accept—the difference between auditioning and actually working. She spoke happily about showing up at a theater, presenting herself to a director or casting person, and being rejected out of hand. She described these experiences in such glowing terms that I began to think of them as successful ventures for her. Periodically I had to catch myself and recall that I was talking to a woman who existed in a world far removed from reality.
I went to Paige’s apartment once when she had pneumonia and couldn’t bring Molloy, her dachshund, in for his shots. She lived in the smallest studio apartment I’ve ever seen. In the main room there was space for a single bed, a chair, a rug that was maybe two feet by four, the dog, and five-foot-high stacks of Playbills. The kitchen was built into the wall of her one room and consisted of a tiny stove, a small sink, and two shelves above that, which were eighty percent filled with cans of dog food.
I asked how she—Paige—was feeling, but she wouldn’t acknowledge being under the weather. She said she was trying to get as much rest as possible because she was going to an audition the next day for a revival of 42nd Street. She told me that she’d bought a tap dance lesson DVD and had been watching it over and over again so she could be certain to get her moves right.
I asked her if she’d ever tap-danced before and she said, “Dear boy, all movement comes naturally to me.”
I made her a cup of tea before I left. When I handed it to her she clutched at my sleeve and said, “I know you think I’m a silly old woman.”
I shook my head and assured her that I didn’t find her silly at all.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind. Offstage, it doesn’t matter how silly I seem. It’s onstage that matters. That’s when I can be anything I want to be.”
“What do you most want to be?” I asked her.
Her eyes flew around the room and she said, “Anything else, dear boy. Anything else.”
* * *
A few weeks after the funeral, life returned to something like normal, minus one crucial ingredient: Anna.
I carried on, as people do. I went back to work, I grieved, I fell into a regular, if different, routine. The grief eventually turned from a stabbing pain into a dull ache and then into a small, private throb, like a separate heartbeat, that was mostly quiet and benign except when it suddenly exploded. The explosions became less and less common over time.
After I met Elizabeth Gold, Anna began to recede even more. She was always present, always a part of me, and I never wanted to let go of her. But she became more a part of my memory and less a part of my present. Except for one day: the day I was at the hotel in Miami and Anna called me and a woman answered the phone and said I’d checked out. The day Anna called me to say her stomach hurt. The day we found out she was going to die. That day lived inside me always, the images and the conversations playing over and over and over again, not just inside my brain but inside my gut. Even during the time I spent with Elizabeth, that day was never far away from my very core.
And then Camilla Hayden walked into the clinic with a three-year-old alley cat named Rags. Camilla Hayden didn’t like cats, especially this one. It wasn’t hers; she was cat-sitting in exchange for an apartment in the city. She wasn’t happy to be spending money to help a cat she didn’t like and that wasn’t even hers. She particularly didn’t like seeing a vet in the late afternoon on a day when she was supposed to be drinking with a friend from Holland who was in for one day. And she even more particularly didn’t like seeing the vet who wrote the Ask Dr. Bob column, because she had a friend whose ex-boyfriend had written a letter to me two years before and I’d told him, in print, that either his girlfriend needed a change of attitude or he needed a new girlfriend, and he’d apparently agreed with me because he dumped the girlfriend soon after that. That’s why her first words to me were “Oh my god, you’re that Dr. Bob! I’ve been wanting to tell you for two years what an asshole you are.”
She was angry and aggressive and agitated. Her foot tapped impatiently, and she checked her BlackBerry for messages almost every minute she was in the clinic. When she wasn’t checking for messages, she was swearing at the fact that she couldn’t get a signal to get her messages. She had cuts on her hands, although her fingers were noticeably delicate and her fingernails were perfectly manicur
ed. Her hair was dirty blond, shaped to be practical rather than stylish. She wore a blouse that was oddly frilly—it didn’t match her agitated personality at all—along with boots and a short skirt. Her skin was remarkably white, her nose was a bit flat, her ears were small, and her eyes were large, and deep blue and irresistible. She didn’t smile with her mouth, she smiled with her eyes. Taken individually, her features shouldn’t have worked. But they did. Her beauty took my breath away. It turned out she was English; she spoke with a well-educated, upper-crusty accent. I thought she was captivating if vaguely terrifying.
She complained so much about missing her one opportunity to have drinks with her Dutch friend that when I finished examining her cat—who had gastritis, which was why he’d been vomiting and not eating; I explained that she needed to put him on a fast for several days, giving him only small amounts of liquid, even just an ice cube to lick periodically, and ease him onto a diet of chicken or turkey with rice and chicken broth, all of which she should cook for him; I also told her that she should bring Rags back to see me in five days, which produced another outburst of foul and abusive language—I asked her if she’d like to have a drink with me.
It wasn’t exactly a James Bond moment. Even considering the natural difficulty of transitioning from talking about feline gastritis to asking her out, the pivot was not super cool. It wasn’t “So I know a great little bar where we can get martinis and talk.” It was more like “Um … Don’t get offended by this or anything, but … I mean, since you’re new here and maybe don’t know that many people … and since you had to miss your Dutch friend … could I maybe take you out for a drink? I’ll understand if you can’t, don’t worry, I just thought I’d offer.” Actually, I think I’m downplaying how ridiculously stiff and pathetic this was as far as drink invitations go.
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