by Jessie Haas
We waved goodbye, and Diana and I went down the street together. I listened to the sound behind me of the old VW turning around in a driveway and going off in the opposite direction.
For a greyhound and a tall, athletic girl, we went very slowly. Diana paused to decorate the sidewalk, and I considered the responsibility I’d taken on; dog food and pooper scoopers, and training her not to chase cats. And what if she barked a lot?
But as if already trained to it, she walked at my side, never pulling. Her long, thin head looked strained and tired, split by a nervous pant. She left a spotted trail of drips along the sidewalk. I thought how little this whole thing had to do with her. It was the family issue that was important. The dog herself was a mere catalyst, and when it was over, she would be my bonus. I hadn’t taken her because I wanted a dog. I’d taken her because I wanted at last to win.
Just like the racing people who sent her to be killed.
That seemed an indecent degree of power to hold over a fellow creature—whole races of fellow creatures—pigs and chickens and cows and horses, cats and rabbits and dogs and goats. The power of use, of ownership, of disposal. I had never seen it quite that way. I had never before owned an animal.
In no conquering mood, solemn, disturbed, and uncertain, I turned onto our street. A few seconds later a car turned behind me and passed. I saw Amy’s startled face at the window, and Mum’s head turning sharply as the car veered toward the Perellis’ hedge.
I just kept walking. I was too tired, now, to nerve myself for this engagement. It hadn’t been a strenuous day by normal standards, yet I saw the street through a long gray tunnel. My eyes prickled and my limbs were heavy. I wanted only to get to the kitchen and sit.
When I turned into our drive, Mum and Amy stood by the car waiting; almost identical short, blond people, with shocked china-blue eyes. Diana stopped walking when she saw them.
“No, it’s okay, girl. Come on.” I gave the leash a gentle tug and she came, with a brief, eloquent glance at my face.
“Kris,” said Mum, “who does that dog belong to?”
“She belongs to me.” I was walking past her into the house, but just before she said, “Kristin!” in a most dangerous tone, I realized that this was both brazen and unfair.
I stopped and said, “She’s a racing greyhound, and she was brought to be killed. Phillip saved her life.”
Mum started to look a little pop-eyed.
“There were three others they did kill.” My voice felt slow, furry, and stumbling. “They kill ten or twelve greyhounds a week there, Phillip says.”
“Why didn’t he keep her?” asked Mum, seizing on the most important point.
“He can’t. They have so many expenses with his father—”
“Well, you can’t, either, young lady, and you’d better figure something else to do with it before your father gets home.”
I shook my head. “Amy, I have to go get her some dog food. If I tie her to the clothes pole, will you make sure she doesn’t chew through the leash?”
Amy looked dazed with conflict. Most times she’s solidly allied with Mum. She’s an onlooker who doesn’t get involved in these battles. Now she was staring at Diana, in deep fascination.
“Will she bite me, Kris?”
“No. Come pet her.”
Amy came timidly, and stroked Diana’s head. Her clean pink hand, which knew all about manicures and hairstyling, did not know how to pet a dog. Diana rolled a worried eye at me but allowed it.
“Wow! She’s so smooth! Come feel her, Mum!”
Poor Mum. As soon as Amy left her side and the two of us started talking, she started to look helpless. At Amy’s bidding she came to touch Diana, and her hand knew how. Perhaps a dog isn’t so different from a kindergartner—and Mum didn’t always live in my father’s house. She comes from Aunt Mil’s family, after all.
“I thought greyhounds were nervous,” she murmured.
“She is. She just doesn’t show it.”
Mum’s hand smoothed Diana’s long skull. “She’s very beautiful—”
An unspoken but hung in the air. Now was the time to move on, before it could be uttered. “Just watch her for fifteen minutes, Amy,” I said, leading Diana through the breezeway to the backyard.
“Okay, but hurry up.” Amy didn’t want to be the one holding the dog when Dad got home.
“Be right back,” I told Diana when she was securely tied. I pushed off on my bike, and strength came back to my legs as I pedaled down the street. It felt good to be going away, free and fast.
Tomorrow I’ll get a dog-training book from the library and teach her to run alongside the bike. A greyhound could keep up.
When I got home, Dad still wasn’t back. I opened a can of food and dumped it in an aluminum pie plate. When Diana had eaten it and then answered the call of nature, and when I had cleaned up the lawn with rake and shovel, I decided to bring her inside. Tied out back to the clothes pole, she looked as if she only half belonged. I didn’t care to give Dad even that intangible advantage.
I untied her from the pole and led her up the cement steps, opened the door. She looked in uncertainly, ears flat, tail invisible between her legs. “Come on,” I said. “It’s okay.”
She didn’t think so, but when I tugged on the leash, she came creeping in, tail clamped up against her belly. I didn’t like to see her fear, and I looked at Mum to check for sympathy.
But Mum was far away. She stood at the counter unwrapping a package of pork chops, with a tight, worried frown on her face.
I felt angry for a second, because no matter how unfair Dad is with me, he doesn’t drag her into these fights. I don’t become her child when I’m disgraced. It wasn’t fair for her to look worried.
“Look,” I said, “why don’t you clear out? Take Amy shopping or something. No reason you should be mixed up in this.”
Her eyes fixed on me and gradually became quite angry. “Thank you, Kris,” she said, “I’ll stay right here!” Her hands quickened, fixing the chops, and for a few minutes she looked very like Aunt Mil.
I found an old plastic container and filled it with water for Diana. She followed me to the sink, and back to my chair at the kitchen table. Only when she was sitting there tight beside me, politely refusing the water, did she betray any sign of knowing there was raw meat around. Her muzzle tilted up just slightly, and her long nose twitched. She licked her chops once. Then she sighed and stretched herself out beside the chair in a way that emphasized the hardness of the polished pine floor. She was the kind of dog, I thought, who would appreciate a soft bed of her own.
We waited. Mum made salad and biscuits. Amy showered and dried her hair. Once the phone rang. That was Greg, saying he wouldn’t be home to supper. Mum folded her lips and wrapped two of the chops to put back in the refrigerator. Opening the door, she glanced briefly at Diana.
“Phillip says they feed them rotten raw meat,” I said. “They all have worms.”
“Well, these aren’t rotten, and she’s not getting them!” Mum put the chops away but lingered a moment at the refrigerator door. “She’ll need a worm pill, I suppose. And vaccinations …”
“I have money for all that stuff.”
“Of course you do,” said Mum impatiently. “Money is the last thing at issue here. But Kris …” She glanced at the clock, and then back at me, squarely. It was the first time in ages I could remember her looking at me without thinking of something else.
“Kris …” she said, and hesitated again, embroiled in a difficult thought. At last her eyes refocused, and she burst out, “He ought to be proud of you! The two of you are just exactly alike, and maybe if you give him a chance, he’ll see that.”
“Me give him a chance?”
“Somebody has to start it, and if you wait for him, you’ll wait a good long time!”
“He’s the adult,” I said. It sounded thin—I’m always thinking I’m more adult than he is, after all. But the man has twenty-five years on me! It seems
reasonable to expect a higher level of maturity.
Mum might have gone into all this, but just then we heard a car turn into the driveway and pause there, engine running. Dad said goodbye to someone in a cheerful voice. There was a moment while the bag of clubs was maneuvered out of the backseat, and then the car door closed with a hearty thunk and Dad was coming up the steps. Mum’s face masked over. She put the chops on the broiling rack.
Through the screen door I saw him in his bright lime-green golf shirt, his face fresh with sun and exercise, and a happy, victorious set to his shoulders. His eyes were unguarded, his lips half open with glad tidings. The door latch rattled. Diana swallowed, making a sticky sound with her tongue, and sat up as he came through the door. He stopped halfway and stood looking at her.
For the first several seconds he was merely stunned. Slowly his eyes grew as cold as two stones. He raised them to look at me.
Dad’s eyes must always be met. That’s the first line of defense, before words, and sometimes instead of words. Sometimes this is hard, and other times I’m able to be limpid and innocent, which infuriates him. Now I was too tired for either. My eyes were only seeing, not making any statements. It didn’t seem to be what he’d expected.
“Kristin, what is going on here?”
“The racing people brought four greyhounds to the vet to be killed,” I said. “Phillip saved this one, and since he can’t keep a dog, I took her.”
Dad’s gaze dropped to Diana, and the frown deepened. He looked not furious but unhappy. Slowly he came through the door, bumping it with the bag of clubs and not closing it.
“Damn it, Kris,” he said, and swept past us, upstairs to put the clubs away.
I’d thought I was ready for him, but I wasn’t ready for this. I’d never expected to feel guilty, or sorry for him. I looked to Mum, who was softly closing the door, but her face was turned away.
Diana pressed against my leg and I stroked her neck, remembering; she has the most to lose.
The golf clubs thumped down in their corner, and Dad’s steps quickened, down the hall and down the stairs, as elastic as Greg’s in his soft-soled sport shoes. He’s gotten himself angry now, I thought, and was relieved.
He came around the corner and said, “Call the Humane Society, Kris. They’ll come get it.”
Here was the moment for my simple act of defiance. A one-word answer was all that was required. But even as I drew in the long breath needed for that word, Mum was interrupting.
“Steve, they don’t pick animals up! You have to go to them.”
“All right,” said Dad, taking the keys from the counter.
“Steve, supper,” breathed Mum.
Dad looked baffled and irritated. “Right after then,” he said.
“You can’t do that,” I said. “She’s my dog.”
“And I have told you—innumerable times—that I will not allow pets in this house.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a waste and a nuisance! A waste of money, a waste of time, and a waste of emotional energy that might be better spent on your own family!”
“Why is it any worse than soccer or golf?”
That balked him for a minute. He glared at me, waiting for a good answer to occur to him.
“Sport,” he said at last, “is a time-honored human activity—”
“Keeping animals is a heck of a lot older than playing golf,” I said, bouncing into the middle of his uncompleted thought. But a triumphant smile lit his eyes, and I knew I’d somehow left an opening.
“Keeping animals is older, yes,” he said. “I’ve no objection to keeping animals for utilitarian purposes, as you can see.” He gestured to the platter of pork chops that Mum was placing on the table. “But the keeping of pets I regard as a degradation of the older impulse—and, I might add, a degradation of the animal. Think of all the years of human-controlled breeding that brought a wild, self-sufficient animal to that state!” He gestured at Diana, who stood pressed to my leg, her eyes dark with suffering and bewilderment.
It was my turn to fix my opponent with a glare while I groped for an answer. In the periphery of my vision I was aware of Mum bringing the salad and biscuits to the table. She went away, and I heard her at the stairs, calling Amy to supper.
I remembered at last an argument. “But they’re here!” I said. “Maybe it is degradation, but that’s the way things are!”
“I choose not to participate,” said Dad rather grandly. Mum speared a pork chop and put it on his plate. Absently and automatically he sat in his chair, never taking his eyes from me—as one dog eats in the presence of another, never letting down its guard.
“This dog doesn’t have that choice,” I said. “She had to participate—in good old time-honored sport! And she wasn’t good enough, so they could snuff her out anytime they wanted. I think that’s …” I searched for a word strong enough. Dad took it from the tip of my tongue.
“Obscene.” His eyes dropped at last to his plate. He took up knife and fork to cut his pork chop. But when he had a piece separated, he put down the silverware again, reaching for the glass of wine Mum had poured him and looking at Diana.
“Once there was a reason for a dog like that,” he said. “They caught game for people—food for the table. Now they’re just … an amusement for the decadent. A way to get something for nothing, if you’re lucky. Should be abolished.”
“But she’s here!” I said. “She’s alive! That’s reason enough—” Bang! A kick landed on my shin, and I broke off to look in amazement at Amy, placidly eating beside me.
Before I could figure it out, Dad was saying, “Yes, she’s here, but she’s not staying! I agree that the situation is deplorable—but I do not want a dog!”
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” I said. “She’s—ow! Amy, why are you kicking me?”
“Steven, another pork chop?” Mum asked as Dad glared at Amy and me speechlessly.
“I haven’t even started this one! Kris, she goes—and if we can’t have a civilized meal here, then she goes this minute!”
“If she goes, I go.”
It would have been nice to be steady and cool about it, but my voice was a little wild, a little wobbly. Dad looked at me with some of the fire dying out of his eyes. When he spoke again, it was in a quieter voice.
“What does your Aunt Mil have to do with all this?”
“Nothing!”
“But you’ll go to her, won’t you?”
I didn’t want to answer, but he didn’t press it. He looked down at his plate again and ate the piece of pork chop he had cut off many minutes ago. He chewed a long time, as if it were tough, and laid down his fork again.
“Kris, this is exactly the sort of sentimental gesture I despise. No dog is worth the breakup of a family—and this is a dog you can’t even …” He hesitated over the word, but at last got himself to pronounce it. “This is a dog you can’t even love yet. You’ve only had it a few hours.”
I looked at Diana, by my knee. No, I certainly didn’t love her, as kids in books love their dogs. I didn’t even love her as much as I loved Robert or Pish. But that didn’t matter.
“She still has a right to live,” I said, “and I have a right to keep her.”
I thought he’d jump me on that one, but he didn’t. He’s never quite as blatant about being the sole authority in the home as Aunt Mil and I make him out to be. Perhaps he truly believes our family is a democracy.
I was still waiting for the fight to begin in earnest; the force might be overwhelming, but I braced against it, with the thought of Aunt Mil like a pistol in my pocket. Soon I would have to whip it out. Soon my back would be against the wall and I would have no choice.
Dad went back to his chop. The frown lightened on his brow until it was only a shallow line. He sipped his wine quietly and said nothing.
Okay, he’s waiting until after supper. Then we’ll start the Humane Society bit again.
I ate, too, and Diana eased hersel
f down on the floor beside my chair. Natural dignity did for her what training did for other dogs. In a room resounding with herself as an issue, she, as creature, was completely unobtrusive.
Dessert was ice cream, and coffee for Mum and Dad. He remembered his golf game and told her about it. His eyes, having withdrawn, never once returned to me while I was watching.
At last he stood, cup in hand, and went to the counter, where Diana’s borrowed leash and the car keys lay next to the coffee maker. He poured himself another cup, not seeming to notice anything else, picked up the newspaper, and retired to his living-room chair.
I gaped after him in complete astonishment, and then I started to get mad. I hate being ignored! I got up from the table, stepping over Diana to go after him. But she sat up at the wrong moment, and as I clothespinned her between my legs and nearly fell, Mum said, “Kris!”
Her voice was deadly quiet, the voice that made me, as a little child, do what I didn’t want. “Kris,” she said, “get out of here.”
I opened my mouth to argue. She shook her head. “Don’t push,” she said. “Don’t push.”
All at once I felt close to tears. Not looking at anyone, I snapped the leash on Diana’s collar and we went out. Down the walk and down the quiet street, now in purple twilight.
I felt crushed. I’d won. It seemed like I had won, but nothing was solved and nothing was changed. I didn’t want it to be that easy.
I remembered the kitten I wanted when I was ten—a beautiful, fluffy, black-and-white kitten. Now it seemed like I could have had him, if I’d just tried harder. I could have cried right there on the open sidewalk, wanting that kitten all over again.
Diana watered the Perellis’ hedge and then came along easily, claws clicking on the asphalt. I spoke her name, and she glanced up with flattened ears and her secretly smiling eyes.
Okay, one thing has changed. I have Diana.
I have Diana, and I won. But I didn’t change his mind. I just outmuscled him. I scared him, and he backed down. I never would have thought he’d do that.
And it wasn’t good enough. It was a bullying way to win—the way he’d always won, by strategic position, not strength of argument. I wanted to convince him.
