Gaits of Heaven

by Susan Conant

  CHAPTER 25

  “We had quite a scene here last night,” I told Leah at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. She had the day off and had slept late. She was standing at the kitchen counter buttering an English muffin. Her red-gold curls were spilling from a knot on her head. She wore at least two black tank tops and had more earrings in both ears than I wanted to count. Sammy had plastered himself to her left thigh and was drooling so profusely that he was leaving a spot on her jeans.

  “I know. Caprice told me. She heard me come in, and we talked for a while.”

  “Steve was…he was quite blunt with her. He said things I wouldn’t have.”

  Leah poured herself some coffee and took her mug and the muffin to the table. When she sat down, Sammy was her shadow. “Oh, she’s ready to drop out of therapy and see a vet instead.”

  “I wouldn’t have mentioned her weight. But it’s strange. I think it bothers me more than it does Steve. It’s not that…what I really want…I do not think that everyone has to be thin and good-looking. I don’t. It’s the way her face is distorted. That bothers me because it’s just such a tremendous disadvantage.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “Easy for you to say! Leah, what I want is for her to have your advantages.”

  “I sweat over chemistry. She takes physics courses for guts.” Harvard slang: easy courses.

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Maybe it should be.”

  “Look, before Caprice gets back…that was one of the effects of Steve’s, uh, directness. She got up at eight, and she’s out walking Lady. And she had boiled eggs and cantaloupe for breakfast. But while she’s out, I want to tell you…Kevin says that the police found rat poison in the trees in Ted and Eumie’s yard. Someone put it there to kill the squirrels.”

  Leah’s face fell. Her eyes filled with tears. “Who?”

  “I have no idea. Someone who wanted to keep the squirrels out of the feeders, presumably.”

  “That’s vicious! It’s monstrous!”

  “Yes.”

  “Ted? Or Eumie?” She paused. “Holly, Caprice would never do that. Never.”

  “There’s also Wyeth, not that he’d care about bird feeders, but—”

  The conversation ended abruptly when Caprice and Lady entered through the back door. Lady was wiggling all over and tossing happy looks to Caprice, who was flushed and damp. When Sammy ran up and greeted her with a deep woo-woo-woo, she said, “You’re still speaking to me, huh?”

  “Sammy will love you forever,” I said. “He’ll remember the feast and forget everything else.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Consider yourself redeemed,” I said.

  As I was refilling the water bowl that Lady had emptied, Kevin Dennehy’s signature rap sounded on the back door, and Leah let him in.

  “I heard voices in here,” he said.

  “Maybe you should see someone about that,” Leah told him.

  “Ha-ha. The three of you were chirping like birds. I thought maybe Rita was here. It’s a semiofficial visit.”

  “What’s she done?” Leah asked.

  “Nothing. A building up the street was entered last night. One of those places crawling with shrinks. It’s near where her new office is, and I thought she ought to know. If she’s got patient records there, she ought to get them out.”

  “I’ll go get her.” In seconds, Leah’s feet were pounding up the back stairway.

  “Coffee?” I asked. “Kevin? Caprice?”

  They both accepted, and I went ahead and made Dunkin’ Donuts for Kevin, Bustelo for me, half caffeinated and half decaf Peet’s House Blend for Rita, and Trader Joe’s French roast for Leah and Caprice. Cambridge! On the one hand, we’re affected and precious, but on the other hand, we’re wildly considerate. Kevin took cream, and Leah and I liked milk foamed in a clever pitcher-cum-plunger gadget that Steve had given me. Caprice usually drank her coffee black, as did Rita when she was dieting. But there were limits. I hate the bitter aftertaste of artificial sweeteners, and I won’t serve them with coffee unless someone asks or unless a guest has diabetes. Also, I’d recovered from the all-things-French phase I’d gone through after our honeymoon in Paris and thus was no longer buying those rough lumps of brown and white sugar that look ever so continental but won’t dissolve in liquid.

  As I look back at the five of us who were soon sitting around my kitchen table drinking coffee and talking about the neighborhood burglary, I realize that a stranger would have seen us as an ill-assorted group. Kevin and Caprice were about twice the size of anyone else. Kevin had the height and bone structure to carry to his bulk, but there was nonetheless a lot of him, as befitted his personality and, I suppose, his occupation. A frail cop? Dandy. On someone else’s block. Rita was the smallest of us, in weight and build, and although Kevin was wearing fresh chinos and a starched oxford cloth blue shirt, Rita was the only one who’d bothered to dress, in her sense of the word. By her standards, the black linen pants and top were informal, as were the flat-heeled black sandals she wore. Leah was an artist’s model from the Pre-Raphaelite era anachronistically costumed as a Parisian existentialist in hot weather, while Caprice wore a floor-length cotton dress that suggested membership in an agricultural commune of the 1970s. In my battered jeans, their pockets filled with clickers and treats, and my Alaskan Malamute Assistance League sweatshirt, with our motto, We Pull for Them, lettered across the back, I was unmistakable: a contemporary dog trainer and breed-rescue devotee. Sammy and Lady were timeless and, need I say, well-groomed.

  “There are twelve of them in the building.” Kevin sounded as if he were describing an infestation of alligators, maybe, or some other unexpected and unwelcome species of animal. “It looks like the front door got left unlocked. They’re confused about who was supposed to lock up for the night. No alarm system. The door to this particular office was locked, but the guy kept the key on the door frame just above the door, so it didn’t take a genius to work out where it was.”

  “Whose office was it?” Rita asked.

  “Guy named Hershberg. Myron Hershberg. You know him?”

  “I’ve heard of him. I don’t know him.”

  “Anyways, there’s minor vandalism, stuff tossed around. All that’s missing are some old diskettes and CD-ROMs.”

  “With patient records,” Rita said. “Oh, shit.”

  “Most secrets are online, anyway,” said Leah.

  Caprice nodded.

  “The information that patients confide in their therapists is very definitely not online,” said Rita. “Kevin, thank you. I’ll have to take precautions I should’ve taken anyway.”

  After Kevin left, the discussion continued.

  “Maybe the aim was to find information to discredit someone for some other reason,” I said. “Something to use in a divorce, maybe.” I thought of Anita the Fiend. Hiring some thug to obtain personal information about Steve was exactly the kind of thing she’d have done during their divorce. Fortunately, he hadn’t been seeing a psychiatrist. Besides, marrying Anita was the only discreditable thing Steve had ever done, and it was public record.

  “The aim might not have been practical,” said Rita. “The more I think about it, the more it feels symbolic. Penetrating a presumed repository of secret knowledge? It was probably more a plea for help than anything else.”

  “Some people just like knowing other people’s secrets,” Caprice said. “My mother was like that. She teased Daddy. She’d tell him to remember that she knew all his secrets. She did that with other people, too. Maybe that’s what got her—” To my astonishment, Caprice broke into tears.

  Ever so gently, Rita said, “Maybe this is a thought you need to finish, Caprice.”

  Between sobs, Caprice said, “She used to get me to help. On the Web. I’m good at that. It was stupid stuff, really. If people were older than they said they were, how much they paid for their houses, whether they owed back taxes…nothing anyone would’ve murdered her f
or knowing.”

  Leah took her hand. “But you still wish you hadn’t helped.”

  “It made me feel…dirty.”

  “You probably didn’t have much choice,” Leah said.

  “I did. I just didn’t know it.”

  Leah hugged Caprice, and then Rita and I did, too. Lady and Sammy crowded in. I like to think that the dogs were sympathetic. What I know is that if there’s one thing dogs hate, it’s being left out. Not that human beings like it. I, for example, had a disquieting thought that raised a question in my mind, and the question made me feel isolated. When Kevin had come here to question Caprice, she’d greeted him as Lieutenant Dennehy. Her use of his rank had struck me because I’d remembered that on the day of Eumie’s death, in the Brainard-Greens’ yard, I’d wanted to soften everything for her and consequently had introduced Kevin just as Kevin Dennehy. Furthermore, none of us ever called him Lieutenant Dennehy. So, how had Caprice known his rank? The answer was obvious: Google. She’d checked him out on the Web. Since she’d met Kevin only after Eumie’s death, she’d done the search for herself, not for her mother. Kevin’s rank was an entirely public matter; there was nothing even remotely secret about it. Furthermore, it was becoming common practice to use Internet search engines to find out who was who, hence the transitive verb to Google, as in She Googled him. The point wasn’t that she’d done it, though; the point was that she’d put the blame for using the Web in that fashion entirely on her mother. Eumie, Caprice claimed, had liked knowing things about people. Eumie, I thought, wasn’t the only one.

  CHAPTER 26

  On Saturday evening, Rita sits across the table from Quinn Youngman, who is eating a grass-fed organic baby duckling with farro, ramps, favas, cardoons, and guanciale, or so the menu promised. Rita’s dish, also described quite grandly, tastes to her like a plain roast chicken with mashed potatoes. Next to the chicken is a tiny puddle of violently red liquid. She wonders whether the puddle is, in fact, a sauce or whether it is blood that accidently dripped from the cut finger of someone in the kitchen. Consequently, she avoids tasting it.

  “Pleasant little bistro,” Quinn remarks.

  “Very,” says Rita, who thinks that Quinn probably likes this overpriced establishment because it is in a cellar and thus reminds him of the coffeehouses of his radical youth. Her own youth, which was thoroughly conformist, took place twenty years after the time of Quinn’s turbulence, so she has only his word for what that era of his life was like. Their age difference, she tells herself, means nothing. Quinn Youngman, M.D., is an attractive older man, an appropriate choice for her. Of his rebelliousness, nothing remains except the memories on which he dwells at some length. These days, his political activity consists of donating to the ACLU, Amnesty International, and the Democratic National Committee. He reads the New York Times and listens to National Public Radio. He is almost too appropriate for her.

  When they have discussed the food for a few moments, Quinn says, “Oh, there’s Nixie Needleman over there, just coming in.”

  Rita has seen Dr. Needleman before and is not surprised by the mountains of platinum hair, the thick makeup, and the cleavage. “She has quite a good reputation,” Rita says demurely.

  Happily for Quinn and Rita, Nixie Needleman and the nondescript man accompanying her are shown to a table at the opposite end of what Rita continues to view as this expensive basement.

  “Have you heard, uh, anything…let me start again.” Quinn refills Rita’s wineglass with the Argentine Malbec that he and the waiter made such a show of selecting. Rita considers it unsuitable for her chicken, but for all she knows, connoisseurs consider it utterly gauche to consume ramps and farro with any wine other than a Malbec. As an aside, I might mention that when Rita reviewed the restaurant for all of us, Caprice remarked that the ideal accompaniment to the menu was an unabridged dictionary.

  Rita smiles at Quinn, who has, she reminds herself, many good qualities. In particular, there is nothing fringy or alternative about his practice of psychopharmacology. On the contrary, he is solid, knowledgeable, and compassionate.

  Encouraged, he says, “This has to do with, uh, payment.” He exhales audibly. “Let me just say it. I have a new patient who’s been in treatment with her and also with”—his voice drops to a whisper—“Ted Green. What my patient has to say about him is nothing new—I’ve heard it before—and that’s that he expects to be paid at the beginning of each session. Preferably but not necessarily in cash.”

  “I’ve heard that, too,” Rita says.

  “Have you heard anything about…?” He nods in Nixie Needleman’s direction.

  “About patients paying her under the table? No. Would she be so stupid?”

  “What my patient has to say, and this is a credible woman, is that our, uh, silver-haired friend over there wasn’t happy to settle for the co-pay that my patient’s insurance allowed. My patient thought it was standard practice.”

  “Well, it certainly is not standard practice! It’s very stupid. If the insurance company finds out, she’ll get nailed for fraud.”

  Quinn nods. “It’s a dangerous game.”

  “So is unreported income. If Ted gets audited, it’s the first thing the IRS will look for.”

  “Eumie must’ve known,” Quinn points out. “Ted? Her husband? Of course she knew.”

  “That was safe enough,” Rita says. “She’d hardly have turned him over to the IRS.”

  Quinn laughs. “Don’t you treat couples?”

  Rita looks chagrined. “I see what you mean. I definitely see what you mean.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Ted Green had the nerve to call me at eight-thirty on Sunday morning to demand that I make an emergency visit to treat Dolfo’s posttraumatic stress. Instead of arguing with Ted about the diagnosis, I asked him to describe what Dolfo was doing. Could he give some examples of worrisome behavior?

  “He’s restless. He can’t settle down.”

  “Does he seem to be in pain?”

  “Pain! I knew you’d know. The dog maven! Dolfo is in pain.”

  “Angell has a twenty-four-hour emergency service. The Angell Animal Medical Center. It’s on South Huntington Avenue in—”

  “Emotional pain. He is suffering. But he has no words.”

  For all I knew, Dolfo was suffering from a torn cruciate ligament or a nail bed infection or some other physically painful condition. It would be just like Ted, I thought, to focus on the dog’s mental state while failing to notice that he was limping or bleeding. Consequently, I agreed to take a look at the dog. Steve was, for once, sleeping late, and I had no intention of dragging him out of bed. Furthermore, if Dolfo needed veterinary care, I’d send Ted to Angell or tell him to call his own veterinarian’s emergency number. Steve and I had plans to take all the dogs to Gloucester for a hike and a picnic, and I wasn’t going to see our day together spoiled because of a dog who wasn’t even Steve’s patient. Leah and Caprice were still asleep, too. With luck, I’d be home before the human household was awake.

  My previous semiprofessional visit to Ted’s had ended so sadly that I felt a superstitious sense of unease as I parked in his driveway, made my way up the stairs, rang the bell, and slipped off my shoes, but it immediately became apparent that the residents of the house, Ted and Wyeth, were noisily alive. As Ted was thanking me for remembering to remove my shoes, Wyeth was shouting from another room. “Stingy bastard!”

  “Separation from parents,” Ted informed me in an under-tone, “is an essential component of normal adolescence.” Then he called to Dolfo, who turned out to be in the kitchen, where Wyeth was slouched at the table eating a bagel. His hair was greasy. He wore a torn short-sleeved white T-shirt with yellow sweat stains. As I had on the day of Eumie’s death, I noticed the peculiarity of his body. Although he wasn’t overweight, he had the kind of potbelly that usually develops only in adulthood. His bare arms showed such an absence of muscle that his flesh seemed held in place by skin alone. The sink was filled with dirty dis
hes. Everything stank of old food and dog urine. On the floor was a gigantic dog dish filled with stale-looking kibble.

  “Coffee?” Ted offered. “Bagels. Cream cheese. Nova lox.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of—”

  As if I weren’t even there, Wyeth said, “The store opens at ten. The one I have is a piece of shit. And you promised.” He pouted like a two-year-old.

  “I keep my promises,” said Ted, “and I never promised you a new computer.”

  “You did so.”

  “If I did, I’ve forgotten it.”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  “Wyeth, Holly has gone to the trouble to come here to help Dolfo. She is performing a mitzvah. You’re going to need to wait a few minutes, and then we’ll discuss things.”

  “With a monitor and a printer,” Wyeth said. “And a router, too.” I wanted to tell him that what he could really use were manners, exercise, and a bath. If he’d stopped with the request for a router, I’d have controlled myself. As it was, he persisted. “Pig Face has a new notebook,” he said, “and an iPod and a new cell phone, and what’ve I got? I’ve got shit.” Before the insult to Caprice had registered on me, even before Wyeth had stopped speaking, he stretched one of his sausagelike arms over the table, grabbed a slice of lox, and held it above Dolfo’s head. Lox is, of course, smoked salmon, a treat that most dogs find irresistible. In that respect, Dolfo was a typical dog. His eyes lit up, his nose twitched, and he rose on his hindquarters. His foolish face was the picture of delight. And Wyeth raised the slice of lox.

  Even then, I didn’t get it. In our household, we never feed dogs at the table, but we do train with food. That’s exactly what I assumed Wyeth was doing: teaching Dolfo to sit up or maybe to jump in the air.

  Dolfo bounced upward, and Wyeth rose to his feet and dangled the slice of lox just out of the dog’s reach.

  My temper snapped. I stood up, snatched the lox from Wyeth’s hand, told Dolfo to sit, and, when he obeyed, fed him the whole slice. I then addressed Wyeth. “Get something straight—you don’t tease this dog or any other dog ever again as long as you live. In particular, you don’t tease this dog with food. In fact, if I ever again even begin to suspect that you are thinking about teasing Dolfo or any other dog with food, I am going to put a choke chain around your spoiled neck and I am going to yank until your Adam’s apple bursts.” I turned to Ted. “And you. You’re supposed to be the grown-up here. What the hell is wrong with you? You heard what your son called Caprice, and I have no doubt that he’s called her that to her face. You saw him tease your dog with food. And you did nothing. And you’ve had the nerve to call me here on a Sunday morning to treat your dog’s posttraumatic stress? Let me tell you something! The stress afflicting your dog is you! If I thought that anyone would adopt him, I’d tell you to find him a new home, but you’ve made the poor dog unadoptable. You’ve ruined a perfectly sweet dog, you’ve let Caprice get so fat that her face is deformed, you’ve turned your son into a cruel, insufferable, demanding brat, God only knows what happened to your wife, and if I’m traumatizing you by telling you the truth, good! It’s about time someone did. You deserve it.”