Around the Bend

by Shirley Jump

  “Oh, it’s Harvey!” An older woman, somewhere in her sixties or seventies, came hurrying over to us, bending at the knees to greet the dog. Harvey looked to me, as if waiting for permission to greet a member of his fan club. I shrugged and Harvey moved forward, ears perked, back straight. The woman looked up at me. “Can you make him do his Swan Lake thing? I so love the way he dances. He reminds me of my Fred. God rest his soul.”

  “Uh, Harvey is a little tuckered out right now,” I said, considering I had no idea what Harvey’s Swan Lake routine was, or how to make him do it.

  She pouted. “I really like that dance.”

  “Maybe later.”

  The woman harrumphed and gave me a glare. “Dave always did it for me. Where is he, anyway?”

  I swallowed. “He passed away.”

  “Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry.” The woman pressed a hand to her chest, her face filled with the embarrassed f lush of trying to extract a foot from her mouth. “Please give his family my condolences.”

  “I will.” All three of them, I added silently.

  The woman bent to give Harvey a quick snout kiss before leaving. She hadn’t gone more than five feet before she stopped another woman and passed on the news about Dave.

  I sighed, turning back to Matt. “I didn’t think it would be this hard to tell people.”

  Matt leaned forward and placed a hand on mine. “I’m sorry that you’re going through all this.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” His palm on the back of mine was comforting, warm. It seemed a million years since anyone had touched me. I shook off the thought, then straightened. “Tell me everything about Annie.”

  Matt let out a gust and leaned back into his seat. “Penny, let it go.”

  “Why? What are you not telling me?”

  “Meeting Annie isn’t going to help you get over losing Dave.”

  I ignored what he said. It would help me. It had to. I didn’t have any alternative plans. I had Susan and Annie and an unfinished puzzle with my husband at the center. I swallowed hard, closed my eyes, then forced out the one question I had yet to voice. “Are there any others?”

  “No.” But what hung in the air after his answer was the unspoken not that I know of.

  None of this told me why. Why Dave had needed another woman or two, why I hadn’t been enough. “Am I the kind of person you’d picture with Dave?”

  It was Matt’s turn to swallow, to shift again in his seat, then he took a good, long look at me. “You’re a confident woman. Strong. Organized as hell, I can tell, just by that list. All numbered, prioritized and laid out in perfect rows and columns. I bet you’re one of those people whose hall rug fringe is all in alignment.”

  I chafed at the description. Being organized wasn’t a sin and was, indeed, the one thing my husband had said over and over again that he appreciated about me.

  Or had he?

  “In other words, I’m not the kind of woman Dave would go for.”

  He considered that for a moment. “More the kind of woman Dave needed.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re the kind of woman who likes things to add up, to have everything in your life fit on little labeled shelves.”

  “I don’t label my shelves,” I said, bristling. Okay, so maybe I had labeled the ones in the linen closet, but that didn’t count. I was merely following Martha Stewart’s example. “I plead the Fifth on all the rest.”

  Matt sat back and grinned, a good-natured smile that didn’t condemn me for my Type A personality. “Dave was…spontaneous and quick, but a total slob. I know because I roomed with him for a week once in Denver.” I wanted to ask what year, what day, and compare that with my calendar, but I didn’t. I’d had enough illusions shattered already. “He was a guy whose idea of order was pulling up to a drive-through window.” Matt’s green eyes softened and he leaned forward, his face earnest. “He needed you, Penny, to keep him on track. To keep him sane. If he went looking for something more, then he was a fool, because he already had everything he needed right here with you.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. For God’s sake, the last thing I wanted to do was start crying in the lobby of a La Quinta Inn.

  Nevertheless, the tears spilled from my eyes, trailed down my cheeks, plopped onto my jeans, spreading in dark denim puddles. “I’m sorry. I hate to cry.”

  At the last word, Harvey took off at a scramble, darted over to a nearby table and yanked a tissue out of the box, nearly toppling it in the process. He came skidding back, then dropped it gently in my hands, the thin paper barely dented from his tiny teeth.

  I blinked, looked at the dog, then at Matt. “Did you just see that?”

  He grinned, as if Harvey hadn’t done anything more exciting than sit up and beg for table scraps. “I told you, he’s empathetic.”

  “He…he knew I was crying?”

  “Harvey knows a lot more than you give him credit for.”

  I glanced again at the Jack Russell terrier, sure this time that I did see sympathy in his wide, wise eyes. Tentative and slow, I reached out a hand and stroked the dog’s head. Soft, almost silky fur met my palm, not the wiry fur I’d expected. He scooted an inch, maybe two, closer, then pressed his head to my knee and let out a puppy-size sigh.

  “How can you leave a face like that?” Matt said, grinning again.

  Oh, damn. I couldn’t.

  It was as if Dave himself were sitting there, looking up at me. The damned dog even had the same eye color as my late husband.

  I let out a breath and, with it, the weight that had been sitting on my chest all night.

  Whether I liked it or not, I needed this dog, and he needed me. We’d both lost Dave. I swiped my eyes, blew my nose, then gave up the idea of returning anytime soon to my happy place of organized cabinets and straight lines.

  “Okay,” I said, to both Harvey and Matt. “What do you need me to do?”

  thirteen

  An hour later, it became clear that walking Harvey around the ring of the Dog-Gone-Good Show involved a lot more than just watching while Harvey did his thing, tossing him the occasional bit of kibble for his efforts. The whole thing was definitely a huge dog-and-pony show—

  With me as the pony.

  Apparently, a different routine was needed to impress the judges who had already seen Harvey in action. Matt promised Vinny would help me develop a new rotation of tricks before the next morning. “Harvey’s a little rusty,” he said, “and you’re new at this, so it might take you some time.”

  “How much time?”

  “You have eighteen hours until the show. I’d say that’s about enough.” Matt took my hand after we had returned to the Grand Resort Convention Center, where I was supposed to meet Vinny, and gave me a smile. “You’ll do fine, Penny. I have no worries.”

  “I do. This kind of thing is so not my forte.” Harvey sat at my feet, patient and seemingly way more confident than I felt. “You don’t know me very well.”

  “No, I don’t.” His gaze met mine, something unreadable in those emerald-colored depths. “Yet.”

  Then he walked away, leaving me with another monkey wrench in my plan to get in, get out and not get involved. And yet, also with an odd surge of confidence that maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.

  I’d always wanted to be capable of spontaneity, of that kind of relaxed, easy fun I saw other people having. Maybe this was my big shot at the normalcy I’d never really achieved.

  I tried calling Susan from the lobby phone. No answer. Either she was at the nearest Payless Shoes or sleeping the sleep of Dracula.

  “Yo.”

  I turned around and saw a large man striding toward me, eating a burger as he walked, even though it was only eight o’clock in the morning and a loaded Big Mac wasn’t exactly a portable food.

  He was short and squat and had a swinging, penguin walk that seemed to tip him precariously from side to side. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a huge red heart around the head
of a terrier, faded jeans and worn, scuffed cowboy boots.

  “Are you Vinny?”

  He popped the last bite of burger into his mouth, seemed to swallow it as is, then threw out his arms with a flourish. “The one and only. Trainer extraordinaire. Isn’t that right, Harvey boy?” Harvey took the opportunity to leap upward, right as Vinny brought his arms together and caught the little dog, hauling him to his chest. “How’s my boy? You bein’ good? You eatin’ right? You’s a good boy, aren’t you?” Vinny snuggled his face into the dog’s fur.

  It was an odd juxtaposition, the fat man cuddling the tiny dog, but it seemed to work, at least in this alternate universe I’d inhabited ever since Dave’s wake.

  “He being good?” Vinny asked me, chuckling as Harvey made good use of his tongue against Vinny’s vast, bouncing cheek.

  “He’s fine. A little…skittish in the car.”

  Vinny roared with laughter. “Pissed on your seats, did he?”

  I nodded.

  “Dave should have told you. Harvey gets a little nervous in the car. Best off keeping him in his crate.”

  “It wouldn’t fit in the Benz.”

  Vinny roared again, making his belly jiggle like Jell-O on speed. “Harvey pissed in a Benz? That’s better than when he did it in the cab Letterman sent for us. Damn, he ticked that cabby off. The guy was cursing at us in two languages.” Vinny reached out and put a hand on my arm. “I have one thing to tell you. Plastic.”

  “Plastic?”

  “Yep. Hermetically seal your seats and Harvey can’t do much more than create a puddle. A few sheets of Bounty and wham, you’re on your way again.”

  I thought of Dave’s car, the twin to mine, sitting in the garage. Someone had brought it home—the cops, his brother, I had no idea. Both sets of seats were coated in plastic, the kind you bought at the hardware store for paint jobs. A memory came back, clear as the sun, slamming into my chest.

  “You know how I spill, Pen,” Dave had told me, smoothing the plastic over the leather, tucking it into the creases.

  That had been three, no, four summers ago. Dave in the driveway, me outside with him, holding his glass of iced tea and watching him work. He’d put the plastic on, then asked me to help him wash the car.

  I’d had enough of being outdoors and tried to back out of it, telling him I had stacks of files I’d brought home from work, waiting in the house for me to work on, but Dave had convinced me, with a sponge thrust to my chest and that irresistible dare in his eyes.

  I’d grabbed the hose in retaliation, chased him around the car, both of us ending up in a wet soapy mess, and then, before I knew it, we were running into the house, up the stairs to the bedroom, where we’d spent the afternoon making love. The soap had dried on the car, leaving a white film over the paint, but Dave hadn’t cared.

  Nothing had ever seemed to stress Dave, to worry him. I’d been the one to worry double, to cover for his “it’ll all work out” attitude. That afternoon, though, it had been like when we first met. Fun and spontaneous, completely out of my control.

  Then the fax line had rung, work streaming in through the printer, and I’d slipped out of bed, even as Dave tried to convince me to stay, to chuck the responsibility for a day.

  I shook my head, pushing the thoughts aside, along with the pained hitch in my heart. Would it be so bad to throw aside the old Penny, just for a day? To try on something new, in the anonymous safety of strangers?

  “So, tell me what I’m supposed to do with this dog.” I forced a smile to my face.

  Vinny chuckled. “It’s not what you do with the dog, it’s what the dog will do with you. First thing is to get him to listen.” Vinny put Harvey down on the floor, and instantly the terrier snapped to attention. He sat at Vinny’s feet, waiting patiently, his tail doing a soft swish-swish against the carpet.

  “How did you get him to do that?” I asked. “Calm right down?”

  “I’m the alpha dog,” he said. Vinny, I noticed, had straightened his posture. All of a sudden he went from being a schlumpy wannabe biker to someone who commanded attention, at least from the canine set. “Dogs,” he explained, “have a pack mentality. They need someone to be the leader. If you give off the air of being in charge, the dog will naturally respect you and wait for your cue.”

  “What happens if there’s no alpha dog?”

  Vinny chuckled. “Harvey runs roughshod over you.”

  “That I’ve seen. I think I’m the beta dog. Or whatever the lowest dog on the totem pole is.”

  “Not to worry. You can change that.” Vinny crossed the room, shut the doors of the small ballroom, blocking any prying eyes. Harvey didn’t budge from his spot on the floor. When Vinny returned, he glanced down at the dog, still patiently waiting for his command. “One thing you have to remember with dogs is to communicate. Dogs can’t read minds, so if you’re not communicating, he won’t know what to do. Okay. Let’s see what this boy can do.” He slung a backpack I hadn’t noticed off his shoulders, then withdrew three vinyl dog toys: a banana, a squeaky cat and an orange bone. He marked out several paces, then jumbled the toys into a rainbow-hued pile before returning to the dog. “Harvey, you ready?”

  Harvey’s swish-swish increased in tempo and his ears perked.

  “Go get the banana.”

  As if he’d been zapped with a cattle prod, Harvey lunged forward, dashed across the room and went straight for the pile of toys. He nosed the top two out of the way, picked up the yellow faux fruit, then turned and trotted back, his prize proudly between his jaws. He held it until Vinny put down his hand to exchange the prize for a piece of kibble.

  “How did he know which one was the banana?”

  “Scent discrimination,” Vinny said, the multiple-syllable word slipping from his tongue as easily as Harvey had retrieved the banana. Apparently work mode brought out a different side of the trainer, too.

  “Scent what?”

  “All tricks start with basic obedience. Harvey first learns to fetch.”

  “Like your ordinary cocker spaniel?”

  “Exactly. Then we take it up a notch. Start by putting out only the banana and telling him to get the banana. A few times of that and he associates the word with the toy.”

  “How does the scent thing work then? Is the banana scented?”

  Vinny laughed. “Not like a fruit. Like a hot dog.” He reached in the backpack and pulled out a baggie holding a wiener marked “Banana.”

  “You rubbed hot dog on it?”

  “If you were a dog, which toy would you grab? The one that smelled like a Barbie doll or the one with hot dog cologne?”

  “I’d go for the one with Chanel No.5 myself.”

  Vinny laughed. “Good one.” He reached again into his bag, withdrew a beach ball and blew it up, then handed it to me. “You want to try a trick with him?”

  I shook my head. “But I’m not alpha dog.”

  “Just pretend you are,” Vinny said. “The dog will believe you.”

  Could I do that? Pretend my way into the top-dog spot? I glanced at my left hand, at the wedding ring that I had yet to take off. Wasn’t that what I’d been doing all along, all my life really? Pretending everything was just fine?

  I straightened my spine and gave Harvey a stern glance, one I’d seen often enough in my childhood to have it memorized. Harvey sat down and stilled, waiting for me. Wow. Maybe there was something to this Alpha Dog thing. “Okay, what do I do now?”

  “Put that ball on the floor in front of him, then back up to the wall.”

  I did as Vinny suggested, walking backward, keeping my eye on the dog. Except for the occasional glance at Vinny, he maintained his sentry position. “Now what?”

  “Tell him to play s-o-c-c-e-r.”

  I gave Vinny a dubious glance but went along with it. “Harvey, play soccer.”

  Harvey leaped to his feet, bent his head down and pressed his nose to the ball. Working one step at a time, he nosed it to the left, then the right, foll
owing a straight path across the carpet, right up to my feet and then through my legs.

  I stood there, stunned. Harvey had done it. I’d done it.

  “Score!” Vinny shouted. “Now, give him a treat.”

  Just as quickly, my elation deflated. “A treat? Uh, I don’t have any. I left his little bag of Beggin’ Strips in the car.”

  “First rule of dog training,” Vinny said, crossing the room and dumping a few dog-food pebbles into my palm, “is to keep some kibble in your pocket. Always reward him.”

  I put all but one of the treats into my jeans. Eww. Now my clothes would have that special eau de Purina. Try explaining that to the dry cleaner. Beneath me, Harvey danced around the ball, waiting for me to put out my hand. When I did, he snarf led up the single treat, leaving a streak of saliva across my skin.

  My wet wipes never seemed so far away.

  “He needs some practice,” Vinny said, “but I think he’ll do fine tomorrow. Still, I think his mood is a little off.”

  To me, the terrier seemed his usual peppy self. Then again, what did I know about canine moods?

  “Must be losing Dave,” Vinny said, bending down to tickle Harvey behind the ears. The dog submitted to his touch, then rolled onto his back, offering up his belly. “You miss him, don’t you, guy? Yeah, me, too.”

  “Me, too,” I said, so softly I almost didn’t hear the words. An odd mixture of regret and anger settled in my stomach. As much as I missed him, and the life we’d had together, another part of me would have gladly shoved that banana down Dave’s throat.

  “What do you know about Annie?” I asked, reminded that as much fun as it had been to play Pelé to Harvey, there was an extra-wife reality waiting to be dealt with. I had to pose the question sometime and thus far, no one seemed to know anything—or rather didn’t want to tell me anything. I hadn’t felt this sheltered from the truth since I’d been five. “Have you met her?”

  “Nope. Never met any of Dave’s—” Vinny wisely cut off the sentence. “Uh, anyone else in Dave’s life, except for Matt, of course.”

  “Then why did you call me Annie? And how did you know he married her?”