When Harry Met Minnie

by Martha Teichner

  Wrong. A nurse informed us, “Oh, no, you have to take it back to where it was delivered and have it picked up there.” Why? “Because that’s a different hospice. Hospice Home Care. They have to pick it up wherever they delivered it in the first place.”

  “And they can’t pick it up here?” Stephen asked.

  “No.”

  Blessed bureaucracy.

  Kate stood behind Lissa, put her arms around her shoulders, and gently helped her to her feet.

  Leaving was tedious, a clumsy, logistical mess: pushing the empty wheelchair to the elevator; retrieving Stephen’s car from the parking lot; shifting the stepladder, the grocery cart, and the rest of the clutter in the back seat to make room for passengers; folding the wheelchair and wrestling it onto the dog bed in the back; boosting Teddy up next to it. In the rain. Stupid, ordinary stuff, absolutely infuriating in that moment.

  Stephen missed the turn we were supposed to take out of the hospital parking lot. We had to circle all the way around Lower Manhattan to get to Carol’s building. I think he must have been distracted and forgot about the security checkpoint in front of the NY Stock Exchange blocking our way. He jerked to a halt beyond the stop line, inches from where the steel jaws rose from the street, glinting in the light of a streetlamp. Armed guards leaped up. They searched the car. Their sniffer dogs sniffed Teddy. We were waved on. At 15 Broad Street, little was said. We took turns hugging one another, then Kate and Lissa turned away. The automatic doors parted. They walked into the bright lobby light pushing the wheelchair.

  Stephen announced he was running out of gas. I thought he meant he had had it, that Carol’s death, that all the driving, the missed turn, the fuss over the wheelchair, had gotten to him. It was getting to me. “No, I’m not sure I have enough gas to get you home, certainly not enough to get myself home. We have to find a gas station.” Easier said than done. Gas stations in Manhattan have been disappearing, poof, like magic, turning into high-rises. The ones Stephen remembered from before he moved uptown were all gone, we discovered, as we drove around in the rain watching the needle on the gas gauge edging closer and closer to empty. Shall we say, a drama ensued. I imagined a comic book word bubble full of X’s, hashtags, lightning symbols, and exclamation points right above my head but did not swear out loud. This wasn’t Stephen’s fault. He found out that Carol was dying, jumped in his car, and thought of nothing other than getting to Bellevue.

  The night turned strange. I don’t have a car in the city but remembered the BP station I passed every morning riding the bus, on Tenth Avenue around Thirty-seventh Street. “Can we make it that far?” Stephen looked at me. “We’d better.”

  Heading west on Fourteenth Street, though, traffic was stopped at Eighth Avenue. There we were blocked by a huge late-1950s Cadillac, a magnificent sight, all chrome and fins, raindrops glistening all over it, but stalled. Unbelievable. How could this be happening? I thought. The driver shouted out the window, “Do you have jumper cables?” Stephen shouted back, “Yes.” After a minute or so of rummaging in his junk drawer of a back seat, he held out the ends of the cables in both hands with a big smile, as if he had captured a snake. Of course, his motor was still running, drinking gas, as he attached the clips to the batteries of both cars. It was another five minutes before the Cadillac would run on its own. More gas gone. What next?

  We turned right onto Tenth Avenue, at a corner where there used to be a lovely big gas station that even had a car wash. No more. It was boarded up.

  I began to relax, only twenty-three blocks to go, a straight shot. We cruised along, past Twenty-second, my street. I could have just gotten out and walked home, but Stephen said that he wanted to see Harry. Then around Twenty-ninth, we hit traffic, bumper-to-bumper, nobody moving. Stephen pounded the steering wheel. Ahead of us, above the cars, the long neck of a construction crane, like some sort of mechanical giraffe, but bigger, was nodding its way across Thirty-fourth Street. Could this actually be happening? I wondered. It seemed so weird, unreal in my state of mind.

  “Hudson Yards,” I said. Stephen grunted. An 18-million-square-foot office and residential development, Hudson Yards was under construction just where we were stranded, practically in sight of the gas station. We sat, panicky now, idling. Stephen switched off his engine until finally, ten minutes later, a few cars began to move. Others jostled as they tried to merge and follow single file. Inching our way north, we could see giant girders being unloaded from flatbed trailers taking up two of Tenth Avenue’s six lanes. The crane took up three more, as it began lifting a girder skyward. A man in a reflective vest and a hard hat raised a stop sign, then allowed us to creep past. Three more blocks, I kept thinking, three more blocks.

  “Yes!” Stephen called out when we reached the gas station. Cars were backed up behind every pump. A taxi was in front of us. The driver, a man with a white beard, wearing a white ankle-length robe and white crocheted skullcap, stood next to it waving his arms. When the pump was free, he made no effort to get back in his car and move ahead. We waited. The man continued to wave his arms. “What’s he doing?” Stephen pounded the steering wheel again and yelled out the window. I watched as he got angrier and angrier. Suddenly, he flung open his door, jumped out, and strode over to the taxi driver. Through the windshield, I could see the scene unfold, Stephen confronting the man, his chest out, arms up. I thought he was going to haul off and hit him, but suddenly he stopped, stepped back, and wiped his forehead with his hand, realizing the taxi had broken down. The driver was trying to warn him off. I watched Stephen implode, the rage drain out of him. He apologized. The old man bobbed his head, said something, and pointed at his taxi. Together, they pushed it out of the way. We got our gas and drove off. Two stalled cars in one bizarre night, a night that felt like a hallucination. At least the rain had stopped.

  We pulled in by the fire hydrant across the street from my building. I brought Harry outside. At the sight of Stephen, he turned into a wagging, jumping, kissing, four-footed frenzy. Stephen dropped to his knees, held Harry in his arms, and wept into his fur.

  It was ten o’clock. Carol had been dead three and a half hours.

  twenty

  AND THEN WHAT?

  I think the real reason Stephen wanted me to go with him to Carol’s apartment the following weekend was dread. He said I needed to go through the rest of Harry’s belongings and decide what I wanted and what should be given away. How many more belongings could one dog possibly have, stashed in a studio apartment? I was convinced Stephen couldn’t bear going into Carol’s space alone. On the drive downtown, he said he hadn’t been there since the day she had fallen, the day he and Lissa took her to the hospital. Stephen was one of two executors Carol chose to handle her estate, friends she picked because she considered them family, part of the family she’d assembled for herself. His job was to make sure objects she had promised to particular people got to them, then to sell the rest of her valuables through his interior design contacts or at auction. Some things he had to find and deliver, others he had to photograph. “I have to go right away because Carol’s rent is only paid through the end of the December. Everything needs to be out by then.”

  We stopped in the lobby at the oversize, Louis-something-or-other-style reception desk, where doormen oversaw the comings and goings in the building. As we collected a key to Carol’s apartment, we noticed the framed death notice on the marble top. In the center, a photograph of Carol sitting on a low stone bench in her enormous Russian fur hat, earflaps down, only her smile and her glasses visible, Harry’s bowl and balls beside her. Harry, wearing his varsity jacket covered with pins, stood in front of her, staring at the camera. It was her favorite picture of herself with Harry, the one she used to say goodbye the last time she posted her art blog, Object-Lesson. To the right of the photo, the Object-Lesson logo, the antique engraving of an eye, colored bright blue. To the left, her armorial with its crown and little flags topped with whimsical creatures. The notice read, “Carol Fertig passed a
way peacefully on December 7, 2016, surrounded by loving friends. Harry Fertig was adopted into a new home outside the building, and is thriving. Thank you to all who reached out to her during her brief illness. Your kind words and gestures were much appreciated.”

  Lissa, I thought. She did that.

  When we walked into the apartment, Stephen inhaled loudly. His voice caught as he said, “I can smell Carol’s perfume.” I felt her absence, not her presence. I saw the gilded party chair I had admired the first time I’d visited, its seat upholstered in bull terrier fabric. I noticed that the beautiful marble dining table Carol’s friend Ann Rittenberg had bought was still there. So was the cupboard Carol had collaged with fragments of ideas and inspirations, of no use anymore. What had been expressions of Carol’s tastes, her passions and pleasures, were only artifacts now. The Carol-ness of the place was mostly missing. The bookshelves were empty. Her tremendous library of art and fashion books had been packed up and given to the Fashion Institute of Technology. Many of her clothes were gone. Stephen was looking for a piece of Venetian glass. As he searched, he would pick things up and tell me their stories, seeing the past, but I felt like a detective inspecting clues to a disappearance. I was a voyeur. Next to Carol’s computer, I noticed a piece of paper taped to the wall, a list written in black marker. Crossed off, “Halloween candy” and “ship box,” among other things. Farther down, still to do: “memorial,” and below that, “Martha-book homework,” then “codes & passwords,” followed by “clean desk, organize winter clothes,” and “9/11 Appt? 2nd or 20th.”

  In the middle of the room were neat piles of boxes and garbage bags, labeled. Lissa and Kate had been here already cleaning and organizing. Carol had died on Wednesday. It was Saturday. Harry’s wire crate stood next to the “Martha” pile. “Do you want it?” Stephen asked. “No, give it away. I can’t fly him to South Carolina in that kind. I can in his new one.” Rummaging through the contents of my pile, I discovered that Harry had vastly more clothes, tennis balls, collars, leashes, harnesses, toys, and bones than I had already been given. Where on earth had Carol been keeping them all?

  Then I came across a largish muslin drawstring sack, a note from Lissa sitting on top: “Carol wanted Martha to have this.” Inside, I found a designer handbag that I knew from the name had to have cost a couple of thousand dollars. It had a brown leather handle strap and was roomy but definitely not utilitarian. It was covered with thousands of black loops, made out of narrow ribbons of plastic, like loopy linguine, I thought. It was odd but undeniably chic, very Carol, a bag that was fun. I would never have bought something so extravagant, so out there, for myself. I own maybe three handbags total, my good, dressy one thirty years old. Now this one was mine. I opened it. Spotless. No Kleenex shreds or rubber bands, stray pennies or sticky old cough drops, the kinds of things in the bottom of my other bags. Carol had clearly used it but had taken good care of it, cleaned it out, plumped it up to keep its shape by stuffing it with wadded tissue paper. Why this? Why me? Suddenly, I knew. I remembered a night Carol had brought Harry to see Minnie. Over dinner, we talked about fashion, what we liked, what we didn’t. I recalled showing her the expensive black jacket I had bought and how she had examined the cut and the detail and had smiled her approval and how she had said, “I have just the bag for that jacket.” At the time, I wondered what she was talking about. That night she also told me about a man who photographs dogs.

  I felt in the zipper pocket of my new bag and found his card.

  * * *

  A WEEK AFTER Carol died, Harry and Minnie and I flew to South Carolina for the holidays. I packed Harry’s bowl and balls, plus two sweaters and one of his jackets, in my suitcase, figuring it would turn cold. I folded his giraffe rug in half and put it in his crate so he’d have something soft and familiar to reassure him during his first flight. Minnie had a fat, squishy pillow covered in shag inside hers. My little frequent flier, she had flown at least thirty times in the nine years I’d had her. I packed sweaters and a jacket for her, too, along with a thick braided-rope toy, so the dogs could play tug-of-war. I ordered all three kinds of Harry’s prescription dog food so they would be waiting at the door when we arrived. I told him what fun we all would have.

  Minnie loved the beach. She would race to the top of the dunes and jump off. I’m convinced she thought she could fly. She adored splashing through the little waves that lapped the sand, bodysurfing up to her neck, plunging into the deep pools that collected as high tide approached. The bigger the pools, the better she liked them. Sometimes the water was over my head. I worried about her trying to swim across. She wasn’t young anymore. As she paddled along, a tiny white thing in the distance, too far away for me to catch up to her, I’d pray she wouldn’t drown as I ran around to the far side. When I pulled her onto the bank, into my arms, she would look at me as if she’d just successfully crossed the English Channel.

  Every dog I’d brought to the beach loved it. At the end of Goose’s life, because of his heart condition, he couldn’t walk very far. I bought him a wagon with a removable side panel, so I could lift him into it. I’d pull him down the boardwalk. Once we got to the end, he could make his way slowly to the water. He’d lie down in it and let it wash over him while Minnie scampered around.

  I loved the beach, too, summer or winter, good weather or bad, so I could hardly wait to take Harry.

  When we reached the end of the boardwalk, I took off his red bootie but left the tape and wrappings on, so his cracked pad wouldn’t hurt when he walked. He stepped into the soft sand. It moved under his weight. He stopped, looked down, then up at me. I tugged his leash a little. He resisted. I tugged again. He began walking, stiff legged, like a pull toy. Shifting sands were clearly not his thing. I could imagine him asking himself, “What is this? Where’s the sidewalk? I’m a city dog.” He stopped to sniff some seaweed and a piece of driftwood. He considered a dead horseshoe crab. It looked like a miniature tank turret turned upside down. He peed in it. When I led him into the water, water maybe two inches deep, he jumped back, surprised. I could see he considered this a bad surprise, not a good surprise.

  My father had an expression for people who are finicky about roughing it, fussy about encountering insects or wildlife in the woods, unhappy with anything other than five-star luxury. He called them “hothouse tomatoes.” Harry was a hothouse tomato.

  I remembered what Carol had said when I told her Harry would be going to the beach: “If he takes after me, he’ll hate it.”

  * * *

  STEPHEN AND I spoke and wished each other a happy New Year. He laughed when I told him about Harry and the beach. He told me that everything was out of Carol’s apartment. He’d been there every day, going through her things. He’d also gone through her storage unit. “I have more stuff for you. I’ll bring it over when you’re back.” More? Impossible.

  I asked how he was holding up. “I miss her. It’s been hard seeing the apartment empty. I’ve gotten the things that are going to be sold cataloged and off to the auction house. Pretty much everything that’s supposed to go to someone has gone. Whatever else that needs to be kept, I’ve taken home, lots of papers and files.”

  “Is the photograph still up in the lobby?”

  “No. It’s been taken down.”

  The Carol Club had disbanded. The people she’d brought together with her gift for friendship had carried their memories away with the keepsakes they had inherited.

  I had Harry, the most precious of all her bequests.

  twenty-one

  BAD NEWS

  I think Harry was happy. I watched him, looking for signs that he was pining for Carol the way Minnie had pined when Goose disappeared from her life. I thought maybe he would stop eating or mope on his bed as weeks went by and nobody took him home to her. It didn’t happen. I expected him to ignore me when I walked in my front door at night, but not long after he came to stay, he began wagging his tail and dancing around when I said hello to him, as if he was glad to se
e me. And he licked my toes. Before I’d even met Harry, Carol emailed “a warning” that he was a “toe licker.” One night when they came over for dinner, I heard a rhythmical noise under the table, like loud, steady smacking. I bent down and saw that Carol had taken her shoes off, and Harry was hard at work. I couldn’t imagine him transferring his loyalties, indulging his foot fetish on anyone other than Carol, but he did. All I can say about that big soft tongue slipping back and forth between my toes is … think about being tickled as a kid, so hard you wanted to scream.

  Harry seemed to fit right in. I asked Dr. Farber, the vet, why he thought Harry was adjusting so well. His answer: “Minnie.” I thought about the way she teased Harry. It looked like flirting to me. And how he watched her perform, how he followed her around, used her as a pillow when they napped together, deferred to her when they wanted to go in opposite directions on their walks. When Goose was alive, he was the alpha dog, no matter how much Minnie wanted to call the shots. Now the girl who thought she was a glamorous movie star or maybe a princess could be queen. Harry was her subject, but no doubt about it, also her prince. She was ecstatic. I’d never seen her happier. The arrangement suited him, too. He found everything about her fascinating, particularly her habit of “hitting the sack,” my description for the way she worms her way into my stiffened-canvas laundry bin, which I leave tipped over on my bedroom floor for her. Harry would stand by looking puzzled while socks and underpants and T-shirts flew out and landed at his feet as she squirmed around. It didn’t take him long to decide he wanted to try out her sack when she wasn’t in it herself, when she was sleeping on my bed under the covers, for example. Unfortunately, he was too big. I’d find him standing with his head and front paws inside, stuck. Sometimes I’d take pity on him and pull him out. He was determined, though, and finally, one day, I couldn’t resist shooting video of him at it. I was laughing so hard I could barely hold my phone still. He’d gotten almost all the way in but couldn’t figure out what to do then. Turning around was impossible. It took him several minutes to extricate himself.