Gaits of Heaven

by Susan Conant

  “So, Steve,” said Steve pointedly, “how did you like rally?”

  “You liked it,” I said. “I knew you would.”

  “And you,” he said with a glint in his eye, “like a challenge. This time, you might’ve taken on more than you can manage.”

  “Dolfo. Dolfo, I’ll have you know, isn’t a dog.”

  “I know. I’m a vet. Remember?”

  “He’s a fur person. Therefore, he doesn’t wear a collar, is never on leash, and, as you probably noticed, isn’t neutered, and, more to the point, isn’t house-trained, the point being that his owners, Ted and Eumie, are frantic because it’s impossible to keep good help these days if one of the requirements is cleaning up after the dog. Except that Ted and Eumie are not frantic. They are having a family crisis.”

  “And you’re going to rescue them.”

  “Steve, I couldn’t sic them on the club! They’re impossible. It was my fault they were there. They won us at the Avon Hill auction.”

  “I kind of liked seeing them there. They reminded me of the birds at my feeders. One or two cardinals for every five hundred house sparrows. Colorful.”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “I wonder if Rita knows them.”

  She did. When we got home, Rita was in our little fenced yard with my cousin Leah and our third malamute, Kimi, one of my original two. Kimi was dark, intense, and tough. Although Rowdy and Sammy were also dark gray and white, Kimi had a “full mask,” as it’s called, with a black cap, a black bar down her muzzle, and goggles around her eyes. The boys, Rowdy and Sammy, had white faces with no dark markings, and both were far more lighthearted than my fundamentally serious Kimi. As to toughness, if (doG forbid) she’d gotten into a major fight with either of the males, she’d have inflicted more damage than she’d have sustained. Fortunately, she and Rowdy were old friends, and she adored Sammy, who was as close as she’d ever have to her own puppy. That’s not speculation. I left Kimi intact so that my cousin Leah could handle her to her breed championship. (Breed: conformation, the judging of the extent to which a dog or bitch, technical term, conforms to the breed standard, and, in that respect, more than just a beauty contest.) Last winter, Steve had spayed Kimi, who could still be shown in obedience and in other performance events, but was now ineligible for the breed ring. As a show dog, she’d been good, but not up there with Rowdy. As for Sammy, he lacked only one major (let’s just say one big win) to finish his championship. Was he better than Rowdy? Two judges had thought so. My own opinion? It depended on which of the two I happened to be admiring at the moment.

  So, when we got home, Kimi was in the yard with Rita and Leah. If you know Cambridge, you’ve probably walked by the yard, which is on the Appleton Street side of my house. Our house. Marriage changes everything. Possessive pronouns. Possession itself. As I was saying, Steve and the dogs and I live in the barn-red house at the corner of Appleton and Concord. On the actual corner is what’s called the “spite building,” a long, narrow one-story structure presumably built as an act of revenge in some forgotten real-estate dispute. Far from resenting the spite building, I love it, mainly because its brick wall helps to fence my yard, as does my house itself. The other possible avenues of escape into traffic and death are blocked by ordinary wooden fencing that’s less attractive than the ivy-covered brick of the spite building. In contrast to the brick, the yard itself had disappointingly little vegetation. Having repeatedly failed in my efforts to grow plants, I was trying to cultivate a Zen-like attitude toward what an unspiritual person would have seen as the dogs’ warmongering determination to despoil this peaceful little spot of urban greenery. India and Lady were blameless. Rowdy would have abided by our Malamute Nonexcavation Proliferation Treaty were it not for his political alliances with excavating nations, namely, Kimi and Sammy, who were born to dig.

  At the moment, Kimi was not digging, mainly because she was lying on her back with her white legs and feet tucked in and her white tummy exposed for the rubbing Leah was delivering to it. Leah was kneeling next to Kimi on my latest effort to pacify the war zone, which is to say, a thick layer of fir bark mulch that had been a mistake. Literally. The malamutes had mistaken it for dog food. (Deleted: graphic description of consequences of malamute mistake.) Happily, Leah may be described in attractive terms that will, I hope, divert attention from the nearly omnipresent topic of canine digestive malfunction. Leah had masses of red-gold curls that were spilling from a knot on top of her head. Although she is the daughter of my aunt Cassie, my late mother’s sister, I have no idea where she came from except with respect to the red hair that runs in the family and bypassed me. The family breed should be the Irish setter but is the golden retriever, which is what I resemble, and not a show-quality golden, either, but a decent-looking family pet. Leah, however, is showy: voluptuous and flamboyant. Even there on the dog-tilled fir bark, she looked romantic and otherworldly. Looks deceive. Having just finished her exams at the second most famous local institution of higher learning, the most famous being the Cambridge Dog Training Club, she was about to move in with us for the summer and to begin working for Steve in the unromantic and worldly position of veterinary assistant.

  Rita was seated at the L.L.Bean picnic table we’d been given as a wedding present. Sammy had sculpted it in a few places, but my efforts to train the dogs to lift their legs elsewhere had been remarkably successful, and just to make sure that the table was fit for human use, I routinely washed it, as Rita knew. She is not the sort of person who places anything but the soles of her high-heeled shoes on the ground and is definitely the sort of person who cares whether or not her Ann Taylor and Eileen Fisher outfits come in contact with canine bodily fluids. She doesn’t actually get her hair streaked and trimmed every week, but you’d never guess it, and she uses makeup and hair spray and other foreign substances that the American Kennel Club wants removed before dogs enter the show ring. Dog makeup? Human mascara covers pink spots on dogs’ noses, not that Rita blackens her nose, of course. There is nothing outré about her. She is very New York and, if I may use an old-fashioned word, very smart.

  In more ways than one. While Steve was inside checking on India’s limp, I poured out my story of Ted, Eumie, and Dolfo, and Rita said, “Them!”

  “We wondered whether you knew them.” To Leah, I said, “They’re therapists.” In normal places, therapist might mean a physical therapist or some other kind of therapist. In Cambridge, psycho goes without saying.

  “They’re crazy,” Leah said.

  With Rita right there! “Leah, really!” I said. “Rita is a therapist, and she—”

  “I know their daughter. Not their daughter. Hers. Caprice Brainard. She was in one of my classes this year. She’s a freshman. She used to come with us to Bartley’s, which is the last place she ought to go. Caprice has a major weight problem.”

  Harvard College was founded in 1636. The Cambridge location was chosen because of its proximity to Bartley’s Burger Cottage, which was already producing the gigantic, greasy, delicious hamburgers and sandwiches for which it once received an official certificate of condemnation from no less a person than the late Dr. Atkins himself.

  “Is that all you have to say about her?” I asked.

  “No. Not at all. I like Caprice. It’s just that she’s very needy. What she is, is unhappy. And obsessed with her parents. That’s why I know about them.”

  I was suspicious. “Was this a psychology course you were in together?”

  Simultaneously, Leah said, “Yes,” and Rita said, “What’s wrong with psychology?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with psychology,” I said. “What’s wrong with Ted and Eumie Green?”

  “Brainard-Green,” Rita said. “He’s Green. Her previous husband was Brainard. Ted Green is a psychologist. Eumie is a social worker. She was his patient, and he left his wife to marry her. After she divorced her husband. That was in New York. They moved here maybe four years ago.”

  Until I met Rita, my image
of social workers was based on Jane Addams, Hull House, and genteel ladies who delivered baskets of food to the poor. Rita, however, explained to me that clinical social workers do therapy, sometimes with the poor, sometimes with the prosperous, the latter presumably on the grounds that the rich deserve help, too.

  “With his awful son,” Leah said. “Wyeth. He goes to Avon Hill. I think he’s a junior. Caprice says he’s a spoiled brat. She can’t stand him. She’s living with them this summer.”

  “Where’s her father in all this?” Rita asked.

  “New York.”

  I asked, “Why is she spending the summer with Ted and Eumie and this stepbrother if she can’t stand them?”

  “It’s just Wyeth she can’t stand, really. With her parents and Ted, she’s overinvolved.”

  “Enmeshed,” Rita said.

  “Preoccupied. Just because Ted and Eumie live in Cambridge, it doesn’t mean that Caprice has to go there all the time, which she does. She should’ve gone away to school.” Leah paused. “She could’ve gone to Yale.” Then, with profound Harvardian doubt in her voice, she said, “Or Princeton, I guess.”

  Rita rolled her eyes. “Princeton,” she said. “Otherwise known as the University of Outer Mongolia.”

  “Also,” said Leah, “Caprice’s therapist is here.”

  “Who’s her therapist?” Rita asked.

  “Missy something. Zinn. That’s it. Missy Zinn.”

  “She’s quite good,” Rita said. “At least someone in the family is getting help.”

  “They all are,” Leah said. “They’re all in therapy.”

  The door to the house opened, and Rowdy, Sammy, and Lady ran down the stairs. Steve followed. When I was alone with the dogs, there were strict rules about who was allowed to be loose with whom. Rowdy and Kimi were fine together if there was no food around. Lady, who was no threat to anyone, got along great with all the other dogs, but under no circumstances were Kimi and India to be together unsupervised, and the same went for Rowdy and Sammy. Kimi and India had never actually had a fight, but I’d seen Kimi deliberately provoke India, who was capable of retaliation. As for Rowdy and Sammy, they were both intact male malamutes, and dog aggression certainly does occur in this breed, especially same-sex aggression. Under my tutelage, Rowdy had learned to behave himself with other dogs, but his bred-in-the-bone inclination was to tolerate no disrespect from anything canine. Sammy, however, even in the throes of raging adolescent hormones, was one of the few malamutes I’d ever known who acted oblivious to challenges. If other dogs barked or growled at him, his first response was to throw me a bewildered look that asked, Why don’t they want to be friends? This from Rowdy’s son! I couldn’t get over it. I mean, who expects Tony Soprano to sire a pacifist? Not me. Consequently, I kept a close eye on the boys. Steve, however, habitually let the pack loose together, possibly because he trusted himself to repair any injuries the dogs inflicted on one another. I’d quit warning him to be careful. For one thing, he was careful. For another, the dogs responded to his expectation of good behavior by being good dogs.

  After Steve, Rita, and Leah had greeted one another, and after Leah and I had gone into the house and returned with a bottle of wine and four glasses, Steve asked, “Has Holly told you about her new job?”

  “Yes, I have. And it’s not a job. Rita knows Ted and Eumie, and Leah knows Eumie’s daughter, Caprice. The consensus is that this family is not a model of mental health.”

  “I don’t know them well,” said Rita, accepting a glass of red wine from Steve. “I’ve met them. I know them by reputation.”

  “Which is?” I asked.

  “Within their field, it’s okay, as far as I know.”

  “And their field is?” I prodded.

  Rita was expressionless. “Trauma. Ted wrote a book called Ordinary Trauma. Lots of people find it helpful.” She sipped from the glass Steve had handed her.

  “And that’s all you have to say about it?” Leah demanded.

  “What I said is perfectly truthful. Lots of people find it helpful. Some of my clients have read it.”

  Steve was watching her.

  “And,” I said, “have found it helpful. Don’t tell us again.”

  “It isn’t a bad book,” Rita said. “Really, it isn’t. It’s just that Ted has a very inclusive definition of trauma. But he’s perfectly sincere about it. And he’s connected to a place in western Massachusetts that’s, uh, in line with his thinking.”

  “Is that the place you tried to send Kevin to?” Leah asked.

  Our next-door neighbor, Kevin Dennehy, is a Cambridge police lieutenant. One time when the chronic stress of his job had become acute, Rita had tried to persuade him to spend some time at a retreat center of some kind. Her plan failed when Kevin discovered that one of the stress-reducing activities consisted of learning to feel at one with nature by developing the ability to identify wild animals by their spoor. He’d accused Rita of trying to send him to the woods to find raccoon dung, and there had ended her attempt at intervention.

  “No,” Rita said. “This one is called CHIRP.”

  “Birds,” I said. “Instead of raccoons.”

  “Not at all. Center for Healing, Individuation, Recovery, and Peace. CHIRP.”

  “Oh, God,” Steve said.

  “Yes,” said Rita, “except that it’s more spiritual than outright religious. It’s a sort of spa, I think, oriented toward personal development. Retreat center. And a detox facility for people who need support rather than actual detox. Twelve-step programs, yoga classes, meditation, steam baths. For all that it’s focused on construing almost everything as trauma or addiction, hence Ted Green’s involvement, it’s supposed to be quite luxurious. Maybe that’s part of the recovery. I don’t know.”

  “Steam baths,” I said. “That sounds wonderful.”

  Leah was skeptical. “How much do you want to bet that dogs aren’t allowed?”

  “I think Leah’s right,” Rita said. “There’s probably a concern about allergies.”

  “What’s it called again?” I asked.

  “CHIRP,” Rita said. “I assume it’s intended to sound upbeat.”

  “Center for…?”

  “Healing, Individuation, Recovery, and Peace.”

  “With no dogs allowed? Healing, individuation, recovery, and peace—the very definition of the magical powers of dogs. You know what, Rita? Steam baths or no steam baths, that place is no retreat center. What that place is, Rita, is a scam.”

  “You’re so quick to judge,” said Rita. “It’s a good thing you didn’t become a therapist.”

  “I am a therapist,” I said. “Remember? I’m the one who’s going to save Dolfo.”

  CHAPTER 4

  In my mind’s eye I see Eumie and Ted on that same Thursday night as they prepare for bed. They are in the sumptuously renovated bathroom that adjoins the master bedroom of the Greens’ big house on Avon Hill. The neighborhood is perhaps a ten-minute walk from my house and, like mine, a twenty-minute walk from Harvard Square. Less grand than Brattle Street, the area looks misleadingly suburban and affordable. A newcomer to Cambridge, Massachusetts, someone unfamiliar with real estate values in the vicinity of Harvard, having taken into account the spaciousness of the houses, the well-kept appearance of the lawns and shrubs, the aura of comfort and prosperity, and the absence of commercial establishments and multifamily dwellings, would guess the average price of a house on Avon Hill to be between one-tenth and one-fourth the actual market value. Four years earlier, when Ted and Eumie had reluctantly realized that Brattle Street was beyond their means, as was the area near the Cambridge Common and the delightful little neighborhood between Kirkland Street and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, they reconciled themselves to the comparatively unpretentious pleasures of Avon Hill by resolving to invest in their newly acquired eighteen-room house all the money they’d saved by not buying in a neighborhood they’d have preferred, which is to say that they agreed to spend a great deal of money
that they didn’t have.

  The results so far had been satisfying. The master bath, in particular, was sybaritic beyond their dreams and, in fact, beyond the desires of most of the old-time residents of the gigantic and unaffordable colonials and Victorians that Ted and Eumie coveted. Whereas many houses on Brattle Street itself had bathrooms with ineradicably stained sinks and the original claw-footed tubs, Ted and Eumie’s master bath had a Jacuzzi, an enclosed shower with steam, and what was known as a double vanity, two sinks, each with its own mirrored medicine cabinet.

  This Thursday evening, I see in my mind’s eye the masters of that palatial facility as they stand before the open medicine-cabinet doors of the double vanity and prepare for sleep by selecting from among a tremendous variety of soporifics, mood stabilizers, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and neuropsychiatric medications presumed to have beneficial effects even though no one quite knows what those effects are or why the preparations should produce them.

  “Ambien is safe with anything, isn’t it?” Eumie wonders aloud. “It’s fine with Prozac. And Neurontin is really compatible with everything, I think. So is lithium.” She shakes two capsules into her hand and washes them down with the remains of her gin and tonic. She then drinks a small glass of soy milk and a small glass that contains a concoction of herbs and vegetable juices.

  Ted, who has been peering at the plastic bottles in his very own medicine cabinet, selects one and tenderly offers it to his wife. “Do you want to try Sonata?”

  “Thanks,” says Eumie, “I’ve tried it before, and it just doesn’t work for me.” Studying the vial she is holding, she asks, “What’s Paxil? It’s an SSRI, isn’t it? Something like Zoloft.”