“And maybe, on the same days, you can teach my daughter to play guitar in the home? Austen told me you were a musician. She wants so much to play.”
I gave her my number. That could be an extra $100 or more a week. That’s health insurance. And then maybe find a couple more students. Why hadn’t I thought of this?
We got back to the apartment. I was feeling strong. I thought about Doctor Faustus. Really, I thought about Richard Burton. Why did he want to do Faustus? What was he saying? It was that he, himself, was a tormented man. That’s why he was drawn to it. He could cast his ephemeral Apollo, the real-life Elizabeth Taylor, in his movie, but he couldn’t find a magical power in the real world to make her completely his if that’s not what she wanted. There is no wizardry to summon but that which is our own willingness to see light and to change—and to wish well the change in others if it is to be.
I realized that my mind was made up. After I drop off the dogs, I would come back here and call Roxy, and tell her to please move on, that since she doesn’t want me all the way, she needs to get out of my life for good, take me out of her contacts, no more texting, calls, or visits—nothing. She wanted it done. Let’s be done.
Stasya would say, “Love is love.” But sometimes it’s not. I can’t just be an option, living like cells under a microscope. I realize that my own stagnation has played a big part in this, but I feel I have to figure out the way forward on my own, be my own trusted partner. If Roxy and I can be friends eventually, that’ll come as it comes. I know I can’t do that right now. There are a few days left on my deposit on that ring. That was never going to happen, was it? Some other girl with a size 4½ and vintage sensibilities will love getting it one day.
Outside of Irene’s door, I took a deep breath of fresh air, an old habit from my early days preparing to step inside there, and then I knocked. Fay let me in.
“Well, there he is—the man of the hour,” Fay’s wrinkled voice creaked out in chorus with the metal hinge of the door behind me.
Is that sarcasm? I wondered. Can people that old still be sarcastic?
As a kid, whenever I was in trouble and didn’t know it yet, when I walked into a room where my father was, he’d always say, “There he is—himself,” the opening gavel of a kangaroo court.
“And the doggies!” Fay continued with a half-alive smile.
Lauren started barking, but my penny can hand was empty. I glanced instinctively toward the kitchen to see if anyone had peed.
I unleashed the dum-dums, and they ran to Irene, who was sitting in her wing chair. She was as pale as the clean kitchen floor. Even in her energetic response to the dogs, she looked tired and worn like Elise’s Omar. Her right arm hung limp like my father’s after his stroke. She yanked each dog by the scruff with her left hand and set them on her lap. They danced like leprechauns and lapped their tongues against her cheeks as if she were a pork-flavored lollipop. Even their excitement couldn’t bring any color to Irene’s face. Before, I’d figured her to be about seventy-five; now she seemed older than sadness. She was trying to smile. The dogs forced her to. But I could see she was depressed, maybe beaten down on meds.
There was also a physical therapist there helping Irene get set up with exercise bands on the rear of her front door. I walked by her and hurried back to the bedroom. I opened the bureau top drawer, stuffed the gun into the back of my jeans and pulled my sweatshirt down. Tonight might be a rough night for Irene, and I didn’t want that revolver within arm’s reach. At that moment, I also didn’t want a poorly maintained, half-loaded pistol in my pants, cold, and nuzzling its way into the crack of my ass. But if I didn’t grab it now, I wouldn’t get another chance. Maybe she won’t remember that the gun was there in the first place. And from the flimsy look of her arm, she couldn’t use it to protect herself even if she needed to. I’ll talk to Randall again about getting bars on our windows.
I headed back out to the front room, realizing that I’d just shown a familiarity with Irene’s apartment that she probably wasn’t ready for. We hardly even knew each other, and here she’d returned to a clean place with all of her precious worthless crap suddenly vanished because of me.
With a chance to look, I realized that the physical therapist was adorable—Penelope Cruz in nursing scrubs and a spring jacket. She touched my forearm with her hand, tilted her head slightly to the right, looked at me, and said, “You did all this and took care of these two cuties while Irene was gone? You must be the sweetest man in the world.”
Am I, Sheriff ? Maybe I am.
“He cut my puppies’ hair. He’s a terrible person,” Irene interjected, jokingly, from deep within her own sick truth.
“I love Yorkies with short hair,” the physical therapist said. “I think they look like happy little puppies.”
An ally. Very nice. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Natalia,” she said. “I’ll be helping Irene transition home. I’ll be here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“I’ll be here every day,” I responded.
“He lives next door,” Irene said. “Contrary to what you might think, we don’t live together as a couple.” Busting my balls was bringing color back to Irene’s face.
Natalia went to Irene’s chair and stroked the side of Nelson’s face with the backs of her fingers. He turned and looked at me as if I owed him something for bringing Natalia here. Let’s just see how this goes, my friend.
I excused myself, as my quick exit had gone on long enough. When I stepped outside, it was over. The dogs were gone, back to Irene, back to that life. All that was before me was the empty battlefield of the thin grass of the front yard, smothered in desert sunlight, fighting its way into rightful springtime—there where we began our training, and the parkway by the curb where Lauren got her first Treat for Pee, the whole sidewalk up and down North Hayworth. This was our tiny world, the treadmill that spun under our feet through so many walks for sixty-some sudden days. It got us all into shape. Will they remember any of it? Will they do the right thing without my encouragement on top of them?
“Richard, are you all right?” I heard Fay’s slow voice whisper. I was still standing there in front of Irene’s door. She came outside. “Richard, I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done. Irene, underneath it all, is a proud woman, and stubborn. She’s lost so much in her life. It may take a little while for her to properly voice her appreciation, so I wanted to thank you for her.”
“How’s she really doing?”
“It’s not good. She may need a surgery on her arm, which would send her back into the hospital for a while. The doctor doesn’t want to put her through it. It’d involve a titanium rod that would go from her shoulder down to her elbow, so he’s in a wait-and-see mode, hoping that her bones heal. It’s not the bones though, really, it’s her bad balance. The scales have finally tilted, and they don’t see it getting any better. I hope Natalia’s a help, but I don’t know.”
I had to refrain from any comments begrudging the brutality of aging in the presence of a woman more than ten years Irene’s senior.
“Well, thanks for letting me know.”
“Are you all right?” she insisted.
Apparently, I’m not hiding something. “Yes,” I smiled.
“You’re going to miss the dogs,” she said. “Oh, that little Nelson, he’s just—”
“Yeah . . . I suppose,” I said. “I hope they stay clean. It’s nutty how life turns out.”
“Yes, it is. It is. Well, now you can have your life back.”
“Yep.”
She let me go then and returned inside. I came back to my place—my life—sat down on the sofa, and cried.
April
April 2, 8:00 PM
It was a painfully quiet afternoon. I’ll never forget it. I go over and over it. All the silence I’d wished for was now mine, and I hated it. I decided not to call Roxy about a hundred times that day. One more day, and maybe . . .
But I did call her that evening and told her that I
’d decided we should stay apart. She was unpleasantly surprised, which almost made me give in, but we talked it out, and I let her know that the hurt had been too much, I couldn’t go back, and that I couldn’t fully trust what going forward would be. And I know I was hurting her by not stepping up. From what I’ve learned, I finally told her, I have a lot of work to do on myself—figure myself out.
It’s been over four weeks, and we haven’t spoken since. It’s been a giant dividing line. I couldn’t even write in this log about it. Just silence and space—some sort of new life—but with one new element.
About two hours after that phone call with Roxy, I couldn’t take being as alone as I felt. I walked over to Irene’s door. The chandelier lights were on, and the storm door was slightly open behind the security screen. I could see her sitting in her wing chair, reading a book. I knocked. Then I knocked loudly. “Irene, it’s Richard.” I repeated it a few times until she responded.
“What?”
Maybe she’d been asleep. “It’s me—Richard from next door.”
“Oh . . .”
“I was wondering if I could come in and say hi to the dum-dums.”
“Oh, OK, sure, come in.”
I used my own key.
“I wish you wouldn’t call them dum-dums,” she said as I entered.
The dogs ran to me at the door, jumping, Lauren squealing as if she were trying to form vowels.
“These dogs are very smart, and they resent your insulting them.”
“Any dogs that pee and poop inside are dum-dums.” I stooped down to pet them. “So, until they change that, that’s what they are in my book. Actually, I had them going outside pretty much 100 percent of the time after a while.”
“They need a walk now, and I just can’t do it. If you’d like to take them, feel free. Fay told me you were very good with the dogs, which at first shocked me because, and I told her this: ‘No, he hates them! He’ll be terrible!’”
“Well, the dogs did learn some dignity and self-respect.”
Irene laughed. I hooked them up and took them for their nighttime walk. We trotted along under the non-starry, big-city sky and the glowing streetlamps. It was business as usual. When I got back, Irene and I chatted about her recovery, how she was doing. She loved telling me stories about the Nazi and other patients at the home. I brought her my bag of dog treats and explained the vitals of Treats for Pee. She said she’d try. I told her all about Roxy. I was amazed at Irene’s compassion and insight. Working through those divorces of her own, as well as her clients’, really did give her wisdom. She said it’s all for the best. Everything happens for a reason. When someone in her condition tells you that—rather than just the people doing well who spout that crap—it’s a little easier to swallow.
I’ve gone over there every night since. She tells me, “Don’t even knock anymore—what would you be interrupting?” I walk the dogs. You may see us some time if you’re on night patrol. They give me guaranteed happiness once a day. Then I visit with Irene. I drop the dum-dums on the bed if she is up there reading or resting in the new armchair pillow that Casino replaced. Sometimes I grab the 409 and spend a minute in the kitchen wiping around. I can’t stand the clean falling back.
I’ve shown her my chart. She thinks I have OCD. I still need her counsel in getting over Roxy, and the dogs still need my help getting over their bad habits and lazy desires. Irene is even shaking the penny can when Lauren barks, albeit with the force of a tranquilized butterfly. It’s not as frequent as it was, because Irene never leaves anymore. They’ve taken her driver’s license.
Natalia stops by my place after she’s worked with Irene, but I’m taking it very slowly. I need to winter the troops before we march again. I want to be healed. (Ally sent me some Gua Lou Pi and Xiang Fu.) I will give Natalia this though, she’s got me playing guitar again, singing my songs for her, and that feels good.
So, Sheriff, this six months of dog log worked. Life did change. Grand salute to the deputy who advised me on the phone back in October. I wish I’d gotten his name. If you can track that down, please offer him a promotion. Our problems are officially resolved and my complaint is hereby rescinded.
And it’s a bit of a miracle, too. I have three new friends—Nelson, Lauren, and Irene—who love me and need me, whom I need and love, who have been there all the time. Forty feet away—just on the other side of the “good fence.”
In fact, I have many new friends in the neighborhood, and, to think, the only time I went outside before was to go to my car to leave it.
So I’m not going to turn this in. I’m sure you’re too busy to read happy endings. I should revisit my above statement, however: I’ve got four new friends, not three, because you—without ever knowing it or knowing me—have had an effect on my life, just by listening. That has changed me forever. I’ve worked some things out. I’ve gotten halfway to halfway.
So, I thank you, my friend. It has been an honor, sir, or ma’am. All the best.
Afterword
Some time has passed since the events described in this book. My friendship with Irene has become very special, very close, with nighttime visits and dog walking, and meaningful, often very fun discussions about our lives past, present, and future. We share our hopes, and we share our gripes. She has helped me through good times and bad, many attempts and many failures. Unfortunately, she has fallen and/or needed some kind of surgery and convalescence several times over the years, and I continued taking Nelson and Lauren into my care each time.
The good news is, I was able to keep up their training. I got Lauren to stop barking at the front door, and both of them eventually stopped peeing inside—unless I stepped out and left them on their own, which I believe was more of a message to me than an accident. But I’ll never know . . .
The bad news is that life is also difficult, as time inevitably steals our vitality. My best little buddy, Nelson, passed away in August 2016, and it’s a hole in our hearts that Irene and I still acknowledge regularly. (He was, by the way, named after Irene’s favorite professor at Vassar.) Nelson’s ashes sit on Irene’s bookshelf next to a framed photo of him in front of a martini at the Fat Dog, and if they ultimately pass to me, I will keep them with me always. Since Nelson’s death, circumstances have become more and more challenging for Irene, so I’ve had Lauren in my care the majority of the time. Thankfully, Randall has been OK with me having the dogs in my apartment and has been more understanding toward Irene.
Lauren and I have had lots of fun with posts on social media as people have learned how our odd pairing came to be. She is sitting on my lap right now as I type this a few months before publication, just as she and Nelson both insisted on being on my lap, all three of us together on those chilly mornings when I was first typing away at turning this experience into a book. I hope there’s a way that you can meet Lauren, because she’s a real darling.
If you’re interested in my old album L.A. Never Dies, which I kept saying was so great but never got a record deal—well, you can judge for yourself now, as we’ve rereleased it and it’s available digitally everywhere. It remains untouched in its complete, original format, even the overambitious photo of the younger me on the cover. I hope there’s lots there for you to enjoy.
The Dog Log Page 22
