A Three Dog Life

by Abigail Thomas

  "How's your love life?" I suppose it was a fair question.

  "I'm married," I answered, not adding "buster," because I don't think that's what he meant.

  Whatever he did mean, he didn't pursue it, but the subject was raised and I had to think it over. Did he assume I was lonely? Did he think I ought to be out in the world, prowling around for another partner? Even if I wanted to—and I don't—I couldn't face all the talking. The past is not as interesting to me now as it was when I was young, and it would certainly come up. There's nothing I want to relive—certainly not youth—and as for what's to come, I'm in no hurry. I watch my dogs. They throw themselves into everything they do; even their sleeping is wholehearted. They aren't waiting for a better tomorrow, or looking back at their glory days. Following their example, I'm trying to stick to the present. I'm not stranded here, I know where I've been; I can conjure up details of old haunts, even former states of mind.

  Although the future is gobbling up my old city neighborhood. Where once there was sky on all four corners, there is a large charmless apartment building and across the street—we are talking about Broadway and 110th—there is a big hole where another new apartment building is going up. Gone is the West Side Market, Columbia Bagel, Dynasty Restaurant. Gone is the Ideal Bookstore and the little place that sent packages by UPS. I can still remember when we had three fruit and vegetable stands spilling onto the sidewalk within two blocks of each other. Now there is a hermetically sealed Gristede's (why does all that indoor fruit look so shiny?) and nowhere is the eye drawn to an outdoor blaze of color, all of it edible.

  I spent some of my salad days in the West Side Market, and the long-gone Cathedral Market, I flirted with butchers and cheese mongers and the produce manager. I was in my prime moving among the oranges and eggplants and celeries and apples and artichokes in their boxes and pyramids on the street. I had an admirer, a older gentleman who wore a sombrero and a black string tie. He was a tall man, and often drank from something in a brown paper bag, and he murmured "pretty lady" when we passed each other on the sidewalk. On days I wasn't looking my best I'd cross the street lest he have to pretend, saying "pretty lady" when it was really sad lady or tired lady or no lady at all. He was gallant. It's easy now—it's middle-aged lady, nobody's looking, nobody notices. I go without lipstick if I feel like it, and I always wear my comfy clothes. It's a life with fewer distractions, but should something beautiful show up, a middle-aged woman is free to stare.

  There was a husband and wife who used to have a drugstore on the west side of Broadway between 110th and 111th. It was a small, old-fashioned place, and we always shopped there instead of the discount chain that had opened across the street. The owners were Eastern Europeans, and their forearms bore tattoos. Every evening they strolled out together, the woman's cheeks rosy, her silver hair held in place by beautiful combs. My memory puts them arm in arm. They were a shy, courteous couple, the husband bowing slightly if our eyes met, his wife smiling in recognition, nodding her head. They walked an old dog. The drugstore has been gone probably twenty-five years, I can't remember what replaced it or even what part of the block it occupied, but theirs was the kind of marriage I wanted, so comfortable you probably didn't even have to talk.

  Rich and I don't make conversation; we exchange tidbits, how well we've slept, what was for breakfast. We are stripped down to our most basic selves, no static, no irony, no nuance. Once in a while Rich says something that takes my breath away: "I feel like a tent that wants to be a kite, tugging at my stakes," he said one day, out of a clear blue sky. He was lying in a hospital bed, but his eyes were joyous. In some ways we are simply an old married couple, catapulted into the wordless phase ahead of time. An old pal of mine used to extol the virtues of basic body warmth in the days when I was more into the heat, but now I understand. Rich and I sit together, we hold hands; we are warm-blooded creatures in a quiet space, and that's all the communication we need.

  But I have to resist the impulse to create memories suitable for framing. I have to resist the impulse to preserve us at our most content. Rich is restless. Some days he can't sit still. He is unsteady, and needs help getting to his feet. We walk through the house together. Do you want a cup of coffee? water? the bathroom? No, no, and no. Rich just needs to be moving. And I ask myself what use is a destination anyway?

  Recently someone asked about my worst fears—what were they? I couldn't come up with anything. To have a fear you have to be able to imagine the future, and I never think about the future anymore. It is no longer my destination. There are lots of things I don't want to have happen, of course. I don't want to have a flat tire or get lost driving at night or be eaten by wild animals. I don't want to lose my mind or my livelihood. I don't want to forget where I parked the car or the names of my children but I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it, as an old friend used to say. I did recently Google "fluid in the inner ear" and worried briefly about obscure ways to go deaf, because my left ear was clicking, but that went away—the fear and the clicking—after a Sushi Deluxe with Claudette at the Wok and Roll in Woodstock. But as for fears, I don't have any.

  You do so, says my sister Judy.

  I do not, I say.

  Then why can't you get in my elevator?

  That's a phobia, I tell her.

  Phobia means fear! she says. Don't you know any Greek?

  Maybe it's all semantics. My definition of fear is that it's a constant companion, a sidekick, riding you like a watch, going in and out of the days. I don't live like that anymore. The fact that I'm sixty-three has something to do with it. What I used to fear was growing old—not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking good.

  I had a piece of good luck. I married Rich in my late forties and thus was eased into middle age while living with a man who approved of the way I looked. When after three years of marriage I lamented the fact that I had put on a good deal of weight, he said, "Don't worry. I love it all. You can get as fat as you want." Then, upon reflection, he added sweetly, "As long as you can still get up from your chair."

  ***

  When Rich and I first met, we wanted to know every last thing about each other. The past was still damp and new, full of clues—it was the way to make sense and order of our lives, and to illustrate who we had become. Rich listened to stories of my marriages and my parents and my sisters and my kids, and I listened to his. We took each other's side in ancient disputes. Now, as my brother-in-law is fond of remarking, the past is in the wastebasket.

  Besides, I'm okay alone. I don't always want to answer a question about why I'm coughing if I'm coughing. I like falling into Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk without being asked what am I reading. I appreciate not being interrupted in the middle of thinking about nothing. Nobody shoos my dogs off the sofa or objects to the three of them with sardine breath farting under the covers in bed at night. I like moving furniture around without anyone wishing I wouldn't or not noticing that I have. I like cooking or not, making the bed or not, weeding or not. Watching movies until three A.M. and no one the wiser. Watching movies on a spring day and no one the wiser. To say nothing of the naps.

  Getting back to the question. How is my love life? Rich is my husband. We have been married seventeen years. We fall asleep together on the couch, trusting and comfortable and warm. That's my love life, it's all I want and I can have it anytime. All I have to do is drive to the Northeast Center, pick up my husband, and drive him home. But what with one thing and another—my icy driveway, big snowstorms, various colds—there were two months this winter when I couldn't. I chickened out every week, afraid I wasn't strong enough to help him with the steps, afraid of us both slipping and falling in the snow. When I was younger I never fell, and if I did, so what? Now I am brittle-boned, full of aches and pains, and I watch my step. Being cautious is new territory; my specialty was leaping, no
t looking. These days I pay attention. You can stumble uphill as easily as down. Ice comes in smooth and corrugated. Plastic bags are slippery underfoot. A big dog can knock you to your knees.

  When we stay at the Northeast Center, we hang out in the room. He sits in the chair with his part of the paper, and I sit on his bed with mine. When I glance over, his head is bowed, the paper on his lap. There are a couple of pictures of flowers on the wall, some photos of Sally and the baby, there is a green-checked quilt on the bed. Two bird calendars hang off tacks, one showing March, the other May. There is a corn plant, a spider plant; Sally bought him beautiful deep blue hydrangeas. But if Rich falls asleep, all I see is what my husband looks like alone.

  The first decent day I could, I brought Rich back to the house. It had rained and flooded and rained again, and the ice was finally almost gone, replaced by mud. Rich was silent on the drive, not remarking on the usual landmarks, nor did he appear to recognize the house. It felt like ages to me since he'd been here, but I don't know how it felt to Rich. I don't know how he absorbs time. I like it better when I bring him home. We have a busy routine—cups of tea, lunch, more tea, cookies, doing dishes. In good weather, we'll take a walk, or sit outside. If Rich needs his nails clipped, Sally does it. If he needs a haircut, Sally does it. She is careful and patient. Last week he needed a haircut. Yes, he wanted one, but not now. Rich was stubborn before the accident, he is ten times more stubborn since. All the "it will only take a minute"s were to no avail. He wouldn't budge. "Not now," he said for the third time, an edge in his voice. We all stood ankle deep in that long moment, and then he sat down in the chair, Sally put the towel around his shoulders and went to work.

  Five minutes into the haircut, Rich dozed off. Nora was carefully eating Cheerios, the dogs were behaving themselves for a change. Sally combed and cut, combed and cut. Rich looked peaceful. There is a volunteer barber at the Northeast Center, but Rich walks past without stopping. He is always walking, the nurses tell me; when he is poorly, he holds the railing along the walls of the corridors. Last week I found him in the corridor nearing the elevators. He told me he was looking for "the door to," "the place where," and then he gave up, unable to finish.

  After the haircut, Rich wanted to go upstairs. The stairs worry me and I've always talked him out of the second floor. Most of the time he doesn't even notice that there are stairs. Suppose he lost his balance and I lost mine? I don't have strength enough to keep him safe, I can't even lift his old typewriter anymore. "But why do you want to do that?" I asked him. "There's nothing interesting upstairs." By then I'd steered him into the living room and we were sitting together on the sofa. The fire was lit, the dogs were snoring away.

  "I should put my combs and brushes in their new places," he said happily.

  When I was young, the future was where all the good stuff was kept, the party clothes, the pretty china, the family silver, the grown-up jobs. The future was a land of its own, and we couldn't wait to get there. Not that youth wasn't great, but it came with disadvantages; I remember the feeling I was missing something really good that was going on somewhere else, somewhere I wasn't. I remember feeling life passing me by. I remember impatience. I don't feel that way now. If something interesting is going on somewhere else, good, thank god, I hope nobody calls me. Sometimes it's all I can do to brush my teeth, toothpaste is just too stimulating.

  The future was also the place where the bad stuff waited in ambush. My children were embarking on their futures in fragile vessels, and I trembled. I wanted to remove obstacles, smooth their way, I wanted to change their childhoods. I needed to be right all the time, I wanted them to listen to me, learn from my mistakes, and save themselves a lot of grief. Well, now I know I can control my tongue, my temper, and my appetites, but that's it. I have no effect on weather, traffic, or luck. I can't make good things happen. I can't keep anybody safe. I can't influence the future and I can't fix up the past.

  What a relief.

  I was on a small island once, in the middle of a great big lake, mountains all over the place, and as I watched the floating dock the wind kicked up, the waves rose from nowhere, and I imagined myself lying there and the dock suddenly breaking loose, carried away by the storm. I wondered if I could lie still and enjoy the sensation of rocking, after all I wouldn't be dead yet, I wouldn't be drowning, just carried off somewhere that wasn't part of my plan. The very thought of it gave me the shivers. Still, how great to be enjoying the ride, however uncertain the outcome. I'd like that. It's what we're all doing anyway, we just don't know it.

  Moving

  i

  I'm sitting in the essay aisle of Barnes & Noble trying to change my socks. I don't have an apartment anymore so this is my pit stop, Broadway and 83rd. On one side of me is Vivian Gornick's Approaching Eye Level and on the other the complete essays of Montaigne. I'm planning to take a look at both, but first things first. I bought new shoes on my way to the city and wore them out of the store and the shoes are green with pink dots and my socks don't match. Normally this wouldn't bother me but it offends the eyes to look at my feet. A young couple appears and settles down at the tail end of fiction, four feet away. They are making a sound that if they were older would be called chuckling and he wants her to buy a book called Sex Something-Something but she doesn't want that one. He won't let go of her or stop doing to her whatever it is he's doing until she agrees to buy the book with sex in the title, but she continues to resist.

  If I weren't busy, I'd be eavesdropping properly, but instead I'm struggling to remove the black sock with red peppers from my left foot. I had hoped for privacy. It's hard to sit on the floor and change your socks without looking as though you're sitting on the floor changing your socks, especially when you're sixty-three. I finally manage to yank them both off and slip on the new pink anklets, then slide back into my shoes. My feet are a vision of loveliness. The young couple is whispering, perhaps discussing the likelihood of my being nuts, but I don't glance in their direction. I open the Montaigne at random. "Of Drunkenesse," ah yes. You can do most anything in this friendly Barnes & Noble, as this is the branch where somebody sat undisturbed in a chair all day and all night and then at closing it turned out he was dead.

  Hours later I'm sitting on a bench in front of the bagel store on Sixth Avenue and 13th eating an everything bagel with cream cheese and trying not to spill any of it on my student's story when a gentleman with reddish gray stubble on his face sits down next to me. This is a small bench. He smells of unwashed hair, old sweat, and he is talking. At first I think he has a cell phone because he speaks and pauses, speaks again, asking someone if he'd like to come home. I check quickly, no cell phone. He asks again, politely giving himself time to think about his answer. From the corner of my eye I see him pull a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and then he searches for a light in the pocket of his jacket, which is right next to the pocket of my jacket. "Some other time," he is saying. I am still carefully eating my bagel but the everythings are falling on the title page. Finally he stands up to retrieve the matches, lights his cigarette, and sits down. Two drags later he gets up again. "Well," he says to himself, "see you tomorrow," and then he takes off.

  Bagel eaten, I rummage through my bag, which is stuffed to overflowing with twenty or thirty single-spaced typed pages held together with a bobby pin and many creased, soiled manila envelopes, a camisole (I can explain everything), a pair of dirty socks, three lipsticks, one mascara wand, a paper bag stuffed with tissue paper, napkins, two empty plastic bags, one poetry anthology (paid for), three diaries full of scribblings and shopping lists, various other pieces of balled-up paper, a pen from a Realtor in a different state and another from a hotel in South Carolina, and some cutlery just in case. I have a friend who always carries a copy of the United States Constitution in her bag in case she gets a chance to read it someday. It isn't lost on me that to the casual observer I might appear for the second time today to be a person whose eye it is advisable to avoid, but I want t
o see if there are poppy seeds stuck in my teeth and I'm looking for my mirror. Pawing through this rubbish I'm about one plastic spoon shy of starting to shriek or mutter, but here comes my student. Well, I just won't smile at him, that's all. Thank god I changed my socks.

  After class, at ten forty-five I take the subway to 111th where I parked under a construction scaffold this morning thinking que sera sera, and after I buy my big black coffee I am happy to find the car unscathed. This is my old neighborhood. One block from here, a painting that used to hang in my apartment went for sale on a card table in front of Academy Hardware. I know because the painter herself found it on the street and bought it back and then she called me up. I had not meant to throw it out, I told her, but in truth, I had.

  I threw out everything when I moved. Thirty years of diaries. I even tossed the one that began "Today I married my darling" (but not before sitting down on the floor to read it through). It was terribly personal and terribly boring, not even useful as CliffsNotes. How liberating! The minute I threw it into the trash I remembered how the judge had been late, and the party in full swing, and I'd been afraid he wasn't coming, that he'd forgotten, or lost the address, or the phone number, that he was sick or stuck, that he was going to be a no-show. Rich put his arms around me. "Never mind," he said, "we'll go on our honeymoon and get married when we come back." Was I comforted? I must have thought that's sweet but where's the judge. Now I think, oh my god, what a nice man I married.

  I drive back to Woodstock drinking coffee and blasting Leon Russell and I get home at twelve thirty to three excited dogs—there is a varmint in the yard and they'd like to get busy. Forget about it, I say, this is bear season. I breathe the night, go to bed with the rest of my pack, and wake up in the morning with a sawed-off past and a future I can't imagine.