Gaits of Heaven

by Susan Conant

  For one thing, her long blond hair was in disarray; there was no breeze at all to muss anyone’s coiffure, and it was entirely unlike Anita not to have restored herself to perfection after trying on clothes. For another thing, her eyes looked oddly bright. My first thought was that she’d visited an ophthalmologist earlier in the day and that her pupils remained dilated after an exam. I immediately realized that I was wrong: the brightness wasn’t limited to her eyes, but included her whole face. Her expression was, of all things, animated. But the strangest thing of all was that as she emerged from the store carrying those big bags, she immediately accosted a dark-skinned couple, a man and a woman from Africa, I guessed, both of whom wore flowing academic gowns trimmed with vivid colors that signified, in some fashion I couldn’t decode, degrees or honors conferred by institutions of higher learning. Even on Commencement Day, with all its pageantry and finery, these people were exceptionally striking, tall and eye-catching in a distinctly exotic fashion. I must also mention that they were obviously engaged in intense conversation with each other while self-confidently hastening to some destination that they knew how to reach; they were clearly not hanging around hoping to strike up a conversation with a stranger, and I saw no sign whatever that they were lost and in need of directions. On the contrary, Anita the Fiend, Miss Uncongeniality, the personification of coldness and distance, had forced herself upon this couple, to whom she was now speaking with insistent friendliness. To describe my curiosity as piqued would be an understatement; I had an almost uncontrollable itch to know what was going on. In opposition to that fervent desire was an even stronger wish to avoid having Anita turn her attention to me. Consequently, before she had the chance to notice our presence, the dogs and I turned around and took a little detour to Mount Auburn Street that led us to Brattle, which took us to Appleton and eventually back home.

  When we got there, Caprice was pacing around in the kitchen talking to Leah, who was merely stopping in after attending the Commencement events at one of the Harvard houses and before dining out with a new graduate and his family.

  “If you seriously don’t want to go,” Leah was saying, “just don’t go!”

  “I feel as if…as if Eumie would want me to,” Caprice said. “Or as if I owe it to her. Or as if someone has to be there to represent her. Or her interests, somehow.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she can’t be there herself, Leah!” With that, Caprice started to cry.

  “Oh, shit,” Leah said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Caprice, I am so sorry.” She gave Caprice a big hug and then got a fistful of tissues out of the drawer where they’re kept to protect them from the malamutes. Handing the tissues to Caprice, she said, “Well, if you go, don’t take any crap from anyone.”

  “I want to remind both of you,” I said, “that this meeting is not going to be some free-for-all in which people are allowed to attack one another. It’s meant to help everyone and not to cause further pain.”

  “What it’s meant to do and what it actually does could be two different things,” said Leah.

  “If Caprice needs to leave, we’ll leave,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen. And Caprice is going to have lots of support. It isn’t as if she’ll be there all alone.”

  “Caprice,” said Leah, “I know you love Lady, but the one you really ought to take is Kimi. Lady is a pushover. Kimi is tough.”

  I was losing patience. “Leah, really! Kimi is not some kind of attack dog! You know that. And even if she were, that’s hardly what Caprice needs. Aren’t you leaving soon?”

  “As soon as I get dressed.”

  “Then get dressed, and stop badgering Caprice.”

  “She isn’t,” Caprice said.

  After that, I fed the dogs and washed greens for a salad. Leah, of course, was eating out, and Steve was going to a veterinary meeting that included dinner, so there’d be only two of us to feed. After that, since Caprice’s anxiety seemed to have infected me, I took a shower and simultaneously listened to the CD that Eumie had given me. The imagery was becoming more and more effective each time I listened. Of course, it was one thing to feel peaceful and calm in a relaxing shower and quite another to feel equally comfortable during a performance event with a potentially wild-acting and therefore humiliating Alaskan malamute. Still, I was learning to pretend that something wonderful was just about to happen, and the resulting happiness was beginning to make headway against my recollections of what I’ll euphemistically call malamute reality. I got out of the shower feeling grateful to Eumie for her gift and clear about the need to attend this meeting as the ally of Eumie’s daughter and of Eumie’s dog.

  After getting dressed, I checked my e-mail. So much for my feeling that something wonderful was about to happen! As if to teach me the distinction between fantasy and reality, a message from a friend with malamutes conveyed the sad news that Monty had died—not Caprice’s father, I hasten to add, but the real Monty, as I thought of him, Ch. Benchmark’s Captain Montague, ROM, Phyllis Hamilton’s great dog. ROM stands for Register of Merit. The title, highly coveted by breeders, is conferred by our national breed club, the Alaskan Malamute Club of America, on a dog with eight or more champion offspring or a bitch with five or more. I called Phyllis immediately.

  “I just heard about Monty,” I said. “I had to call. I am so sorry.”

  Phyllis thanked me. In spite of her grief, her voice was as clear, warm, and musical as ever. “He was fine until a week ago. He’d just celebrated his fourteenth birthday. Every one of my dogs is special, but maybe just once, we breed that extra-special one. I am so grateful that God gave this one to me.”

  It’s an unwritten rule of the Dog Fancy that breeders must take pride in the accomplishments of their dogs. Few breeders, however, possess the grace to give credit where it’s due, as Phyllis had just done.

  “I remember Monty so well,” I said. “He had incredible bone. And everyone said, ‘Nobody moves like Monty.’ He had such presence, such great dignity. Phyllis, he really was majestic.”

  “Monty knew who he was,” Phyllis continued. “He was so defined. He had a consciousness, a deep sense of who he was.”

  The same, I thought, could not be said of Sammy. “Was he always like that?” I asked.

  “No! His sense of who he was, the wave, really, began building when he was six or seven. Like with some men.” We both laughed lightly. “It’s only when they’re middle-aged that they begin to be defined.”

  We talked for a few more minutes before Phyllis’s sorrow overcame her ability to focus on the fourteen years of joy that Monty had given her. When I hung up, I had tears in my eyes, in part because I was sharing Phyllis’s grief, but in part because I was moved by the difference between my own extended family in the world of dogs and the network of the Brainard-Green family. In our malamute community, we shared passionate love for the breed and for our individual dogs, and we reached out to support one another in times of pain and loss. I felt terrible sadness at the contrast between the talk I’d just had with Phyllis and the meeting I was about to attend.

  CHAPTER 44

  Loyal as I am to the canine cosmological faith of my parents, I reject the notion of coincidence: delve deeply into any apparently haphazard phenomenon, and you’ll find evidence not merely of a governing principle but of an archetypal being whose all-pervasive presence reveals to the eyes of the devout the wondrous order hidden beneath seeming chaos and the joyous meaning of what nonbelievers misinterpret as muddled pointlessness. In brief, when the Almighty plays dice with the universe, they are dog-loaded dice. Such were the thoughts that filled my mind when I arrived at Ted Green’s and was filled with the awe-inspiring realization that twice in a single day was I to be blessed with the heaven-sent opportunity to wander in precincts patterned on the template revered by my forbears, all of which is to say that just as Harvard Square on Commencement Day had testified to celestial design, so too the therapeutic family meeting proclaimed i
ts spiritual origins in that paradigmatic Event of Events, the dog show.

  That the meeting was to be modeled on the dog-show archetype became apparent to me when I pulled Steve’s van into Ted’s parking area, which I unhesitatingly recognized as a variant of the unloading areas available to exhibitors so that they don’t have to haul crates, grooming tables, and other show paraphernalia, as well as dogs, of course, all the way across big parking lots to the show sites where they are going to set up. At actual shows, parking in the unloading zones is strictly temporary, whereas I had arranged with Ted to occupy a spot close to the show site for the whole evening. Also, I had nothing to unload. I did, however, have two dogs with me, Lady, who was there for Caprice, and Sammy, whom I was hoping to take to at least a few final minutes of dog training at the Cambridge Armory, and I’d wanted them near the house. Parking in Cambridge is notoriously terrible, but on Commencement Day, it can be impossible, and the point of having Lady with us was to have her available to Caprice, not in a car parked two or three blocks away. Besides, I hate leaving a dog in a car on the street, especially a dog like Sammy, who’d go anywhere with anyone.

  By so-called coincidence, Caprice, Lady, Sammy, and I arrived in Steve’s van rather than in my Blazer, my own car having supposedly just so happened to develop a flat tire. I’d discovered the flat before Steve had left, and since neither of us had wanted to be delayed by tire changing, Steve had arranged a ride to his veterinary meeting with friends, and I’d taken his van. The van was a battered old vehicle to which Steve was greatly attached, less because of its convenience, I suspected—it easily held five dog crates and was outfitted with compartments for veterinary supplies and fishing gear—than because of its ineradicably canine and thus homey and comforting odor. In fact, on the short drive to Ted’s, it was the redolence that reminded me of the afternoon’s odd little episode involving Anita, who had hated Steve’s van and had incessantly nagged him to replace it with a two-seater sports car with no room for even one of his dogs.

  But I digress. As I was saying, when I pulled Steve’s van into the parking spot at Ted’s, I was aware of using an exhibitor space, but was distracted from meditations on universal paradigms and such by Caprice, who said lightly, “The scene of the crime.”

  “No one is going to run you over tonight,” I assured her.

  “There’s my mother’s Reiki healer,” Caprice said. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Part of the network, presumably.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten to seven. We’re a little early. Do you want to take Lady in now? Or leave her here for the moment?”

  “I think maybe she can stay here for now. Can I give her one of the Kongs you brought?”

  To keep the dogs happy in their crates, I’d packed a cooler with four stuffed Kong toys from the freezer. Caprice eased open Lady’s crate, hugged her, slipped in the Kong, and latched the door. Meanwhile, I gave Sammy his Kong. “You be a good boy,” I said. “Keep Lady company. We’ll be back to check on you.” Then, leaving a couple of windows slightly open, I closed and locked the van, and Caprice and I made our way up the steps to the porch of Ted’s house and added our shoes to a row of twelve or fourteen pairs.

  Before I’d even rung the bell, Ted opened the door and, without mentioning Rita, made her influence apparent. “I hate to start out by kvetching,” he said, “but they won’t let me serve food. Not even coffee. Nothing. So, my apologies.” Ted was on crutches, but he looked freshly showered, and he wore clean, new-looking clothes, a greenish-yellow shirt and chinos with the right calf neatly slit to accommodate his cast.

  “It isn’t a social occasion, Ted,” Caprice told him.

  “The ultimate shikse, that’s what you are. Everything’s a social occasion.”

  A female shriek interrupted us. “Dolfo!” Ted yelled uselessly. “Dolfo!” To me, he said, “He’s taken a liking to Vee Foote, and she’s allergic.”

  My foot! I wanted to say. She isn’t allergic. She’s phobic. I restrained myself. Not everyone appreciates puns. I said, “Dolfo should be on leash. And I thought he was with Barbara and George.”

  “They aren’t speaking,” Ted whispered. “Well, he’s speaking to her, but she isn’t speaking to him. To George, I mean.”

  For the second time in less than a minute, I tactfully kept quiet. “Awkward,” I said.

  “But they’re here. Barbara brought Dolfo with her. They’re in the living room. Frank Farmer isn’t here yet. Dr. York and Dr. Youngman and the others are in the family room.”

  “What’s the Reiki woman doing here?” Caprice asked.

  “She was very special to Eumie,” Ted said. “I thought she ought to be here. And my acupuncturist. She’s here, too. I’m waiting for Wyeth. The hospital is sending his social worker with him. It was all a misunderstanding, but they’re—”

  “Wyeth tried to kill me,” Caprice said, “and he could’ve killed you, and there’s every chance that he killed Mommy. Now, where’s the misunderstanding?”

  “Caprice,” I said, “let’s let that wait for the meeting, okay?”

  She might not have listened to me. Luckily, her father, the false Monty, as opposed to Phyllis’s dog, arrived at that moment, and Caprice and Ted competed for his attention. Competed. As I’ve said, a dog show. Caprice won. Like the real Monty, Caprice’s father was a gentleman. His polite acknowledgment of Ted struck me as especially civil and admirable; Ted had, after all, stolen Monty’s wife when she’d been a patient of Ted’s. Even so, Monty Brainard nodded to Ted and said hello. Then he wrapped Caprice in a bear hug and greeted her with his favorite term of endearment: “Hi, baby girl.”

  Caprice, I was happy to notice, looked far less babyish than she had at Eumie’s memorial service. She wore a black linen dress with only a few of Lady’s hairs clinging to it, and her blond hair was curling back from her face on its own, with no childish barrettes or bows. Monty’s tan had faded a little since the last time I’d seen him, but he looked hearty and strong, and his thinning hair had been cut very short.

  It must now have been about five minutes before seven. I heard people at the door. Eager to spare Caprice a face-to-face encounter with Wyeth in the absence of a protective coterie of mental-health professionals, I said, “The meeting should be starting soon. Let’s move to the living room.” As she, Monty, and I started to make our way there, I looked back and saw that Wyeth was, in fact, among the new arrivals. With him were his mother and a woman I’d never seen before. As Johanna entered the hallway, the light from an overhead fixture seemed briefly to zoom in on her and to illuminate her face in an unflattering way, as if she were being photographed for the before picture in an impending makeover; her short blond hair showed a quarter-inch of white roots, incipient jowls appeared, and she acquired a vaguely ravaged look. The accompanying woman, whom I assumed to be the social worker Ted had mentioned, was a comfortingly familiar Cambridge type. At the age of fifty-five or sixty, she had waist-length gray-streaked black hair tied at the nape of her neck with an ethnic-looking scarf. Her flowing skirt and tunic had been handwoven in some Third World country. She had weathered skin and wore no makeup. I was willing to bet that the shoes she’d left on the porch were Birkenstock sandals. It seemed to me that she should occupy a place of honor in some living museum of Cambridge. I wanted to clone her.

  The living room, apparently intended as the site for the meeting, was all pale green and silk. It had a large fireplace that held a massive display of fresh flowers. In front of the fireplace, two long couches, a love seat, and a glass-topped coffee table formed what I thought was called a conversation area. Unfortunately, Dolfo’s activity there had not consisted of conversation. As one of the world’s leading experts on pet stain removal, I accurately diagnosed the cause of the yellow marks on the silky upholstery materials and knew that they were permanent. The urine splotches did, however, look dry, and the odor in the house was less pronounced than usual, in part because several windows were open and
in part because Nixie Needleman, Eumie’s psychiatrist, was exuding a nose-assaulting scent of musky perfume. As on the night of Eumie’s memorial service, Dr. Needleman’s platinum hair was tumbling down her back, her makeup was heavy, and the neckline of her black dress plunged toward her solar plexus. She was perched on one of the couches next to Vee Foote, who had gray-streaked brown hair and wore a rather dowdy gray jersey outfit. The contrast between the flamboyant Dr. Needleman and the conservative Dr. Foote, together with their positions on the silk couch and the intensity with which Dr. Foote was whispering to Dr. Needleman, suggested an old-fashioned tableau in which a female reformer, played by Vee Foote, visits a brothel to try to convince a prostitute, played by Dr. Needleman, to abandon her sinful, lucrative ways in favor of a respectable life of poverty in domestic service. Seated opposite them was the person Caprice had referred to as her mother’s Reiki healer, a small, wiry woman with short black curls who was talking to a tall, brown-haired man in a conservative suit. “You don’t touch them?” I heard him exclaim. “Then how does this procedure supposedly work?”