On our long drive up—tomorrow’s will be twice as long—I think about the different ways friends have counseled me, well-meant advice after I lost Tula. “I worry that you are trying to replace the joy of the past,” a friend said, which of course is exactly what I was doing, what we all do. What he really meant was, I worry that you are too old, too slight, to handle another sled dog. Bring it on, I said, life is short. I’m going to be one of those crazy old ladies with a team of dogs, maybe Tyler’s palomino; hell, I would have a dragon if I could.
But this is no dragon. She is a ghost orchid—a white doe of a Samoyed who places her paws gently on my chest when I meet her the next morning. She will turn out to be a shy dog, reserved with new people, but today she seems to know that she is mine, because she jumps in the back of my car without a hint of hesitation. I have put an old T-shirt in the crate with her and she lies down against it, and for the next ten-plus hair-raising hours that it takes us to get to Cambridge, she is completely silent. A queenly white dog looking out at a blizzard, all the way home.
Peter, three thousand miles away in California, is our self-appointed wingman. He texts every half hour, telling me what the weather reports say, even though we are driving through near whiteout conditions and could be a meteorologist’s storm trackers. Stay on Mass Pike all the way, he writes, as though there is anywhere else to go. I am cheered by his California navigation, interrupted only by phone calls from two other men friends who can’t believe we dared to make this trip. When I reply to my friend Jim with a photo of Jolene, surrounded by our world of white, he texts me back, Gail, that’s a dog you have there. From him, the highest of praise.
We drive up to my house at ten-thirty P.M. We have crawled home, past spinouts and deserted rest stops, at 35 mph. My old Subaru got us here but so did the men in my life, one driving, one spotting us long-distance, several checking in along the way. The brothers I always wanted and now am blessed with. Jolene will be reserved around strangers, but she will love Justin from that day on, and has an affinity for big, soft-spoken men. She has good instincts, and so do I.
Some days I fear that I have cheated grief, haven’t suffered enough, because Jolene reminds me of everything I loved about both Clementine and Tula, but this makes me happy, not sad, and the lonely purposeless fog that had enveloped me is gone. And then my friend Andrea, poet and realist, laughs at my worry and tells me I have suffered plenty. Tells me that being a shepherd is a calling, one with my name on it, and Jolene is my newest charge.
Tyler’s visits are shorter and less frequent these days—she is on her way to the park to shoot hoops, or is hanging with friends, or has after-school track or riding. I know this is as it should be. She is like a star that fell from the sky into my yard. I have done my job of becoming a good memory in the making. She is eight going on thirty, thinks she will be at least six two as an adult, and plans to start a national polo team. When I say one day, torn between humor and self-pity, that she will forget me, she says, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
One afternoon she is grumpy, or stormy, as she would say, and announces that she has decided to banish almost everyone from the world, with the exception of her family and the new utopia she has created and will lead. She names who she will keep: her cousins, most of her class at school, the track team. At the end of the long list she adds me, along with a teacher she likes. I am glad but surprised. You mean you’ll have adults in the new world? I ask. She shrugs. “I need some guidance.”
* * *
—
The first time I saw the Peirce grave with the ø, the empty set symbol, I mistook it for infinity, which is ∞. I fostered this misread for months, though I should have known better: I used to be a math whiz. So my error must have been a matter of want, the unconscious seeing forever instead of nothing. Horizons, not emptiness. I grew up where the horizon was an icon of each, something endless but not necessarily bountiful, and so maybe ø and ∞, to me and in the world, can seem like the same thing.
I think you need to be able to handle both. You need to know that genies will grow up and disappear, that dogs and friends and loved ones will leave you, that everything in life, including life itself, depends upon the transience of others as well as the kindness. You have to let forever blur into that one line of memory out there. You have to walk toward the mirage.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Early flashes of this story emerged through a series of rich conversations with Louise Erdrich, and my gratitude to her is on every page. My editor, Kate Medina, and my agent, Lane Zachary, were central in their support and acuity; thanks to them both for believing in me and in the need for this book. The folks at Random House have been great caretakers over the years. Thank you, Avideh Bashirrad, for being my star catcher this time around.
Andrea Cohen provided the unrivaled listening skills of a poet and good friend. I’m also grateful to Peter and Pat Wright, Judy Weinstock, Tink Davis, and Jean Kilbourne. Dick Chasin offered wisdom and essential humor. Finally, my thanks to Shannon Davies, Nancy Hays, Eliza Gagnon, and the Soeur Queens, for reminding me how powerful sisterhood really is.
For Louise Erdrich
and for Jaylin and Rafi
BY GAIL CALDWELL
Bright Precious Thing
New Life, No Instructions
Let’s Take the Long Way Home
A Strong West Wind
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GAIL CALDWELL is the author of three previous memoirs, including the bestselling Let’s Take the Long Way Home. She was the chief book critic of The Boston Globe for more than twenty years, and in 2001 received the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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