by Susan Conant
"You were roommates." I tried to keep my tone neutral, but Sarah understood.
"Question," she said. "Why would anyone room with Donna? Answer: She came with the suite. My freshman roommate and I moved into a suite in Adams House, and Donna was there. She was a senior. There were three bedrooms. She already had one of them. And at first, we thought she was so incredibly sophisticated." She smiled nostalgically. "She was from New York. She wore black clothes. Eye makeup. She read Kierkegaard. We were terribly impressed. She took organic chemistry because she needed a gut course that year. And that part was true. She was very bright. She took math and chemistry courses when she didn't want any work. She'd just take them and get A's, no matter how depressed she was. No matter how much of a mess. She'd be so nervous, her hands would be trembling, and she'd still get A's. That was true."
"And?"
"And the sophistication was what passes for sophistication in the eyes of two sophomores from little towns in the Midwest. And even then, we caught on pretty fast, and, once we did, she scared the shit out of us. She'd get on crying jags. Her hands would shake. And she'd get herself involved in these big, dramatic romances. Everyone was always trying to seduce her. Part of that was probably true. She was sort of naturally attractive. And when she was up, she was very up."
"And when she wasn't?"
"It sounds like the children's poem. When she was up, she was very, very up, and when she was down, she was frantic." Sarah made a wry face. "But it was distinctly unfunny."
"Was she in therapy?"
"She was seeing someone at the University Health Service. Anne Marie and I went to his office once. That was my roommate, Anne Marie. The whole situation was tougher for Anne Marie than it was for me, for some reason, and she talked to some people at Adams House, and we ended up talking to the psychiatrist. Mostly, he acted almost pathetically glad that Donna had any friends at all. And really, we weren't. But partway through the year, Donna started getting a little better, and it got easier for us because we knew she was graduating, that it was only for a few months, and so forth."
"But you stayed in touch with her?"
"Not really. It was just that we were both in Cambridge, and we'd run into each other, which was how I knew she had a malamute. We had lunch together once. She was not my favorite person, but I suppose I was curious about her. Also, I always felt guilty. After listening to her psychiatrist? If Anne Marie and I were as close as she came to having friends . . ."
"How was she doing? If she was so . . . ?"
"At first, I thought she was doing better. She was even talking about getting a job."
"She didn't work?"
"She had an independent income. That was where I learned the phrase. I never even knew such a thing existed. It was like a title—marchioness, viscount. In theory, I knew there were people who had them, but in practice? Not people I knew. The money was part of Donna's problem, I think. If she'd ever actually had to support herself, or if she'd known that someday she'd have to, she might have had to pull herself together. And the time we had lunch, I thought at first she was finally going to do it. But then she started in on some of the old stuff."
"Like?"
"Another one of the seduction stories. Actually, it wasn't seduction. And it wasn't violent rape. It was forced intercourse. This time it was a therapist."
"Why are you so sure it was a story?"
"Mainly, I guess, because I'd heard it before. The characters varied, but the scene remained constant. One time it was a fine-arts professor. Another time it was somebody in the chemistry department."
"Did she ever make any of this public? Besides telling you? Go to someone in the university?"
"How could she?" Sarah raised her eyebrows. "It was all imaginary. Or most of it was."
By now, Kimi was half sitting in Sarah's lap.
"Could she have been, uh, misinterpreting things?" I asked. "I mean, if she was alone with someone in his office and he did something like shake her hand when she left . . . ?"
"Who knows? Maybe that's the kind of thing that triggered it. But that's not what her story was. Believe me. I had to hear all the details. Shaking hands did not play a prominent role. Intercourse did. Anyway, after she launched into the latest, with all the graphic details, I realized that some things had changed, and others hadn't."
"What was it that had changed? That she was talking about a job?"
"That was one thing. Another was . . . This is pretty repulsive. Are you sure you want to hear it?"
"No," I said. "But tell me, anyway."
"One of Donna's symptoms was, uh, a compulsion, I suppose, to sort of pick at herself."
"Criticize herself?"
"That was its abstract form. She did do that. But she also did it physically. She'd pick at her nails until the cuticles were all torn and bleeding, and she picked at her skin. She pulled hair." She made a pinching gesture with the thumb and index finger of her right hand.
I reached a hand up to my hair.
"Sometimes," Sarah said. "But it wasn't so much that. In a way, it was worse. Mostly, she'd pull out the hair on her arms. The skin would be red and irritated-looking. She'd keep rubbing the area. It was disgusting. I warned you, didn't I? But the day we had lunch, last summer, she had on a dress with short sleeves, and I could see she hadn't been doing it. So I thought she was doing better. Donna was a very sick person. I know that's not a popular word, but it's true. I wasn't surprised when I heard."
13
"Talk to me," I said to Kimi. "Tell me all about it." We were heeling down Appleton Street toward Huron Avenue. Her leash was in my left hand, and I was using my voice to keep her attention. Mostly my voice. Marissa believed in appealing to a dog's finer instincts and desire to please. She trained golden retrievers. Malamutes want to please, too. Themselves. And they have fine instincts—fine for survival in the Arctic. One of Rowdy's finest, I'd learned, was his appetite, and it was one of Kimi's, too. If, as Buck believes, Marissa and all of her goldens look down upon us from heaven, I hoped that she either couldn't see or could forgive the dried liver in the pockets of my parka and in both of my gloves. But I was using my voice, too.
"Good girl. Nice work. Heel. Good. Super! Let's go! Nice. It didn't hurt, did it? I don't think it did. If it had, you would have taken a nice, good big chunk out of her, wouldn't you? That's my lovely Kimi. Sit." I pulled gently on the leash and guided her into a straight sit at my side, so she wouldn't discover the wrong way. "Good girl. Kimi, heel! She just rubbed and plucked gently, didn't she? She didn't want to hurt you, did she? She just couldn't help it. Kimi, heel! Easy does it. Good work."
Down the block. Back home. With a beginner like Kimi, it's important to keep training sessions lively and brief. Besides, it was four below zero that day, and I had two dogs to groom. We were going to a show. Kimi, of course, wasn't ready to enter in a children's pet parade. I hadn't registered Rowdy for the show, either, because he already had his C.D. and wasn't yet ready for Open, which is the class you enter when you're going for a C.D.X., the next title, Companion Dog Excellent. I could have put him in Graduate Novice, which is between Novice and Open—no title, just experience and ribbons—but the show we were going to had only the regular obedience trial classes, no Graduate Novice. So why the grooming? It isn't even mandatory for obedience, but there's always that chance that Buck is right. Marissa might forgive liver in the pockets, but if she saw me walk into a show with two unbathed dogs, she'd materialize and grab them both away from me.
When malamutes are shedding, removing brushful after brushful of the soft, woolly undercoat is exactly like shearing a flock of sheep, and the only sane place to do it is outdoors, but since neither Kimi nor Rowdy was shedding, we used the kitchen floor. The only problem I had was that they both wanted to lie on their backs and have their tummies stroked with the soft natural-bristle brush and didn't want to stand up and let me do the rest of them. I did them together because, of course, I wanted to compare their responses. Did
Kimi shy away? Did something bother her that didn't bother Rowdy? Not a thing. It seemed to me that she had been used badly, but not, from her point of view, abused.
I am stronger than I look. I forced Rowdy into the tub and kept him there until he was clean. I didn't get bitten. I did get wet. While he started to drip dry, I drained and refilled the tub for Kimi. I wasn't sure I had any strength left for the second battle, but it was obvious that she'd been taught—and not by Elaine Walsh—not only to get into a tub but even to enjoy it a little.
"Either Donna taught you this herself," I told Kimi as I sprayed water through her coat, "or she had you groomed by somebody who was nice to you. But I think she did it herself." Professional groomers generally don't share their own bathtubs with their clients because it would be too hard on their backs. They use raised tubs, and the dogs don't climb in the way Kimi had climbed into my bathtub. "I think she tried to be good to you," I said. "She got you from Faith. She took you to Steve. She kept you clean. She didn't really hurt you. She loved you. She was just very sick."
"She stopped picking at herself," I told Rita. "And she started on Kimi instead."
The world's most beautiful Alaskan malamutes were bouncing around and showing off for her. I was a mess. I'd scrubbed out the bathtub, but the Liquid-Plumr had to sit in the drain for twenty more minutes before I'd be able to take a shower myself. Steel wool in the drain opening catches most of the dog hair, but not all.
"Would Kimi have put up with that?" Rita asked. "Would any dog?"
"Plucking is a normal part of grooming some breeds," I said. "Besides, I'm really sure she didn't hurt Kimi. When Sarah first told me about it, about Donna, and I realized what she'd done, I was furious, but then I realized that this is not an abused dog. She just is not. If she'd been hurt, she'd show some sign, and she doesn't. Handle her, pat her, groom her, and she's no different from Rowdy. She's a lot easier to bathe. You know what it reminds me of? You know how little kids will rub the fur off their stuffed animals?"
"That's a benign interpretation," Rita said.
"I think maybe it was like that. It's still sick, though. But, look, is the other part possible? That she quit picking at herself and started on Kimi instead? Just in theory. Do people do that?"
"Displace it? It's possible. I've never heard of it. Here's what I can tell you. Maybe it'll help. A symptom like that never means just one thing, and it never serves just one function. Also, Freud said that every symptom is a compromise. It's the best compromise a person can reach. Does that make sense to you?"
"That maybe it was both? Is that what you're saying? What she did to Kimi was picking at herself and also the stuffed-animal thing?"
"Maybe. The truth is, I'm more concerned about Joel Baker. I was the one who referred her to Joel in the first place. I keep thinking that I'm the one who put him in jeopardy. I wonder how many people have heard that story."
"Sarah says that Donna didn't have a lot of friends. You can see why. So she probably didn't have a lot of people to tell. And you never really believed it. Did you?"
"Oh, I wondered. I'd like to think I didn't believe it, that I dismissed it. But I did wonder. You know, it's like some virulent infection, a rumor like that. Once you've caught it, it doesn't just go away. Once you hear that a therapist has been sleeping with his clients, or with one of them, it infects your thinking. I still feel doubt."
"Do you really think he . . . ?"
"No. I've mulled it over a lot, and I think he probably didn't. I know him. And even statistically, it's unlikely. He's a psychologist. I mean, that's why our malpractice insurance is so cheap. Mine is something like three hundred and fifty dollars a year, and for psychiatrists, it's a lot more than that. Psychologists don't get sued, not very often, not the way M.D.'s do. But even so, I feel doubt. I feel mistrust. And all it takes is enough people like me who hesitate, and he stops getting referrals, and that's it."
"You know what I don't understand? Why did Elaine believe her?"
"How was Elaine supposed to know? Therapists don't go out and cross-question all of their clients' friends. We work for clients, not their friends."
"So how do you ever know the truth about them? All you get are their versions."
"That's the truth we're after. We aren't outside investigators trying to find some objective reality."
"But what if the person's reality is totally off base?"
"By whose standards?"
"Anybody's."
"By a lot of people's standards, your reality is a little off base. Dogs are not all that prominent a feature of most people's reality."
"Precisely," I said.
"Which is precisely why you go to dog training instead of therapy, because this dog obsession isn't a problem for you. It's a successful adaptation. It's satisfying for you. You have fun with it. People come to therapy when their adaptive efforts don't work, when adaptive efforts go badly astray. Or backfire. Or when they're hopelessly at variance with other people's realities in a way that gets them in trouble."
"I would have thought. . ."
"Dogs don't cure everything."
"Well, she did stop picking at herself," I said. "If Kimi had known that, in a way, she was helping Donna feel better, she probably wouldn't have minded, especially if she'd known that Donna was that desperate. But I still can't see how she could have done that to Kimi. There's something so disgusting about it."
Rita shrugged.
"Do you think Elaine knew?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"And how could she not know that Donna was lying about Joel? And why would Donna have lied to her, anyway? I mean, what's the point? Why would anybody go to a therapist and then lie? And you know what else? Why would Donna have picked Joel Baker of all people? He's a perfectly nice guy. And before, she never really did anything. Really, what she did was put on a show for her roommates. Maybe that's all she wanted to do with Elaine."
"I wouldn't be too hard on Elaine about it," Rita said. "Partly, she was responding to the climate of the times. The truth is that women do get abused, and until recently, lots of women had no recourse. There was nothing they could do about it. They had to keep it private. And furthermore, they received every encouragement to blame themselves for it."
"So Elaine thought Donna was one more woman like that."
"Elaine believed in going public. She believed in assertiveness. Action. And, you know, it's remotely possible that she had reason. It's possible that Joel was somehow . . . It does happen."
"You know what's so terrible? In a way, it wouldn't have mattered. If Elaine had gone to that board and reported him, and if the whole thing had ended up in the papers, how many people would have bothered to find out what really happened? How could anybody know for sure? All of these people would have said what you just said: that it was possible. He could be a saint, and people could shrug and say, 'Oh, well, it's possible.' No matter what, there was no way he could have defended himself. That bothers me—that he couldn't have defended himself."
"That's a problem," Rita said.
"I guess he did find some way, after all," I said. "But it doesn't seem fair that murder should have been his only option."
14
For dependable personal protection, I trust the brand more women ought to prefer—the Alaskan malamute—but on the morning of the show, the protection I needed wasn't from muggers and rapists. I washed down two tablets of Advil with a cup of coffee.
The show site was the Northeast Trade Center in Woburn, just off the highway that everyone in Massachusetts calls Route 128 even though it's been 95 and not just 128 for years. On the same principle, the premium lists and entry blanks for the shows at the Northeast Trade Center always call it a beautiful show site. When 95 was nothing but 128, maybe it was. But all show sites really are beautiful, in more ways than one. First of all, places that are large enough for a dog show and also willing to put up with one are so rare that having a site at all is beautiful. That's why practically all premi
um lists tell you to behave yourself so the club can use the beautiful site again. If the exhibitors let their dogs soil all over the show grounds, the club sponsoring the show will have to find another place to rent for next year's.
Mostly, though, any site is a beautiful sight once the dogs arrive. For an aesthetic experience, forget museums. For beauty, you need animation, life, motion, change, feeling, excitement, suspense, diversity, contrast, meaning, and love, not to mention unity, proportion, order, and harmony. Marble and bronze are cold, and you probably won't be allowed to touch them, anyway. Paintings are static, and they won't lick your face. Besides, at a museum, you already know who won. What is beauty? Order. Sporting group, nonsporting group, working group, herding group, hounds, terriers, and toys. Proportion? Rest your eyes on the Best in Show. Balance? Both breed and obedience. Contrast? Oh, yes. In size, shape, color, and national origin. Irish wolfhounds. Skye terriers. Spinoni Italiani. Collies. Unity? Unity is best of all. Kuvasok, Dobermans, Irish water spaniels, Basenjis, Cavalier King Charles spaniels, Akitas, Maltese, Belgian Malinois, Dalmatians, Tibetan terriers . . . Giant, toy, noisy, silent, hairless, furry, they're all dogs. The next time the world starts looking ugly, don't search for beauty in some static tomb. Go to the greatest multimedia, multisensory art exhibit in the world. Go to a dog show.
Kimi, for example, found the beauty almost overwhelming, and although it wasn't Rowdy's first show, his aesthetic sense was so refined that show after show had left him as unjaded as the first. That's why we were there, of course, to transform my aesthetes into pragmatists. Take them to enough shows, and they'll learn to ignore the beauty that bombards them and start concentrating on the practical business of getting good scores in obedience.
Beauty was manifesting itself in the form of a well-stocked booth displaying the wares of the IAMS pet food company, manufacturers of IAMS cat food, dog biscuits, and a variety of dog foods. Kimi was sniffing one of the big bags of Eukanuba that sat on the floor in front of the booth, but Rowdy, the sophisticate, had set his sights high, namely, on the pile of free samples arrayed on the table at malamute nose level. I'd just finished a long and interesting discussion about ethoxyquin with the IAMS representative (and collected a pamphlet on the subject of that highly debated preservative as well as two sample bags of low-calorie dog food) when I spotted Joel and Kelly Baker collecting free samples at the neighboring Science Diet booth.