When Harry Met Minnie

by Martha Teichner

  Stephen put his bag back in the wicker box and replaced Carol’s picture. He put my bag in the shiny box made out of streaked wood and slipped the latch closed.

  “Should we see if Minnie is willing to come along?” I asked. “She deserves to be there,” Stephen answered.

  Minnie took some convincing. She balked at first, locking her legs so that a tug on her leash meant all four feet skidded along the sidewalk. She gave me that bull terrier look, sullen and stubborn and sly. The standoff lasted several minutes before she reconsidered her resistance and started walking. I had a bag of treats in my pocket to encourage her to keep going. Stephen carried the bin with the containers of ashes and two scoops.

  At six P.M., the park at Chelsea Piers was crawling with people, nothing like the quiet, contemplative place it was at dawn, when I normally went there. I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. It was Sunday, hot and bright, a little windy.

  We had to navigate the cyclists and skateboarders, the food vendors and runners and slow-strolling families admiring mega-yachts moored along the piers for the summer. The benches were crowded with couples sitting close together, their arms around each other, with smokers and people eating and homeless men stretched out sleeping. Tourists were taking pictures of themselves at a spot where way in the distance they could see the Statue of Liberty. As if Lady Liberty might actually show up in their selfies.

  I tied Minnie’s leash to an empty picnic table nearby. Stephen set down the bin. Between us and the Hudson River, a waist-high railing overlooked a ledge wide enough to stand on, bolted to huge wooden pilings. The water was a good eight feet below us. We were as close as we could get to it. The logistics of ash scattering here were obvious. Who hasn’t heard stories of people emptying out urns only to have the ashes blow back all over them, in their eyes, on their clothes? The stories are told as jokes. Ha-ha funny, unless it happens to you. We tried to figure out the wind direction.

  As we took out our scoops and opened the two boxes, I wondered whether anybody would ask what we were doing or whether it was legal. People were all around us. We must have looked a little odd, but no one paid any attention. This was New York, after all.

  “Okay, this is it,” Stephen said as he dug into his bag of ashes. I held off, considering where to stand and how to aim. Stephen tossed his first scoopful as far over the railing as he could reach. Gray powder fell on the ledge. He tried again. Same result. He grabbed the plastic bag, bent down, pushed his head and shoulders through the rails, and shook the ashes into the water. The wind caught the gray cloud, and it, too, settled on the ledge.

  “Damn!” Stephen climbed all the way through the railing, stood on the ledge, and tried to sweep the ashes into the river with his feet. By this time, we were both laughing. I got out my cell phone and began shooting video of his peculiar shuffle.

  “I can’t believe you’re taking pictures of this. It’s sooo disrespectful,” Stephen said sarcastically, and laughed some more. He went back to his footwork for another minute or so and then stopped. I stopped shooting. We looked at each other and then at the river and didn’t say a word. Neither one of us cried as it hit us both that we were there to say goodbye.

  But goodbye to what? To Carol and Harry and Bruno? To their remains? Sacks of ashes were not what remained of them. They left behind memories. Memories are our true remains, to be treasured, to be shared, to dim, and eventually to be lost, when no one is left to remember. So why was it hard to let go, to part with those ashes? What were we afraid of losing? I don’t know the answer.

  I decided to write this book because I didn’t want to stop living the story of what happened when Harry met Minnie. I didn’t want to forget any of it, even the sad parts. This story of unexpected friendship, of love, was a wonderful gift, and in the end it made me and Minnie happy.

  Harry did love Minnie, and she loved him. He was like a guest, fashionable, with impeccable manners, who arrived with a lot of luggage and some complicated dietary needs, but filled our hearts and left too soon. Minnie misses him. So do I.

  And I will always miss Carol. When I think of her, I imagine a shower of confetti, big, colorful squares of it fluttering down around me, gold and silver ones among them, adding pizzazz, catching the light.

  Stephen broke the silence. “Your turn.” I climbed through the railing, crouched on the ledge, and just for a few seconds hesitated before emptying scoops of ashes into the Hudson. I expected them to disappear instantly, to dissolve, but they didn’t. The river water wasn’t clear, but it was clear enough so that for a while I could see circles of gray, lingering in layers a few inches down, sinking slowly, something so final in the way they faded away.

  When I couldn’t see them anymore, I whispered, “Thank you, Carol. Thank you, Harry.”

  Carol’s favorite picture of herself with Harry, taken circa 2009.

  Every occasion an occasion to dress up.

  Sir Harry lording it over the landscape.

  Minnie the Mango Mama.

  A chilly day by the Hudson.

  Carol’s idea wall.

  Carol’s book of Lake Placid memories.

  Harry and Stephen saying hello.

  Minnie in her sack.

  Minnie playing hard-to-get.

  Harry contemplating theft.

  Harry with his bowl and ball in South Carolina.

  Together in bed on a cold morning.

  Harry and Minnie on the porch in South Carolina.

  Carol and the mahjong group in their laurel wreaths.

  Carol and the Three Graces.

  Carol’s last walk with Harry.

  Saying goodbye to Harry. February 26, 2018.

  The program for Carol’s remembrance.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many people to thank … I have to begin with Carol.

  I thank Carol for bequeathing me so much more than her dog and for trusting me to find something other than just sadness in the last months of her life. She was big-hearted and generous with her friendship and with her friends, who made a place for me, when they could have treated the stranger in their midst as an intruder. I’m especially grateful to Stephen and Lissa.

  And speaking of friends, thank you to my friend Reggie Nadelson, a terrific writer, who heard what I was writing about and insisted that I meet her agent, William Clark. I’d never written a book before. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a book proposal. William showed me a few proposals for books he’d sold, including one of Reggie’s. He was the perfect teacher and a patient man, seeing me through the six months it took to write my own, then critiquing it and making suggestions … gently. He sent it out on a Monday. By Friday we had multiple offers. I couldn’t believe it.

  I chose Celadon Books because, from the very beginning, Jamie Raab, Celadon’s president and publisher, got When Harry Met Minnie. I wanted her to be the editor. I knew that my story and I would come out whole at the end of the process and would be better for it. As a first-time author, I felt safe, not scared. I also want to thank Randi Kramer, Jamie’s capable assistant, for all her help. Without Randi, I would have disappeared in technological quicksand.

  Which brings me to the audiobook version of When Harry Met Minnie. Thank you to Mary Beth Roche at Macmillan Audio for loving Harry and Minnie even though she doesn’t love dogs and for indulging me when I said I wanted to record the book myself, to tell my own story. I am very grateful to Matie Argiropoulos and Katherine Cook, who gently nudged me through a very strenuous four days by tantalizing me with descriptions of the fabulous lunches they would order in. Because of coronavirus, Matie had to direct remotely from her apartment in Brooklyn, but we actually met, fittingly, at the Union Square farmers market. I could at least see Katherine, through a window, wearing her mask as she recorded me at CDM Sound Studios in Manhattan. I never laid eyes on Chris Howerton but offer him my sympathy and my thanks for putting all my stops and starts together and making them sound like a real audiobook.

  And many th
anks to Kate Adams and her colleagues at Aster for deciding that Harry and Minnie’s story should be told in the UK and beyond.

  As the deadline to deliver the first draft of my manuscript approached, I decided to take a couple of weeks of vacation to finish it. On the Friday before taking the time off, I discovered that my new downstairs neighbor was about to begin major construction in her apartment, directly under my dining table, where I had written most of the book. Frantic, I tried to figure out where I could find a quiet place to work. I remembered the New York Public Library, the very first place I ever visited in New York City more than fifty years ago, while I was in college. I think I was nineteen. My flights home for Christmas had been canceled because of a blizzard. I ended up stranded at La Guardia Airport with time on my hands. A Harvard student, who was also stranded, suggested we go into the city. He’d been there before. I hadn’t, so he offered to be my guide. He took me straight to the library on Fifth Avenue. It looked like a palace. We trudged through deep snow up un-shoveled steps, between Patience and Fortitude, the library’s famous marble lions, at that moment wearing what looked like comical snow hats. Walking into the spectacular main reading room was thrilling.

  I knew that many books had been written in that wonderful building, but I also knew that it could take months for a workspace to open up. I called anyway. It was four P.M. on a Friday. Zero chance anybody would even call me back, I thought. Well, I was wrong. Within three hours Melanie Locay, from the Center for Research in the Humanities, had not only called but had arranged to meet me the following Monday morning to show me the small, snug Shoichi Noma Reading Room and give me a card key so that I could come and go as I pleased. She told me her mother was a big fan of CBS Sunday Morning and that she was excited to meet me. I could hardly contain MY excitement meeting HER. Thank you Melanie, more than you know. I loved listening to the echo as I walked the library’s grand halls. I loved stealing glances at the two or three other people I’d see working nearby every day and wondered who they were and what they were writing. I loved sitting in my heavy oak chair reliving what happened when Harry met Minnie. I thought to myself: Imagine me writing a book and doing it at the New York Public Library. What could be better than that!

  Founded in 2017, Celadon Books, a division of

  Macmillan Publishers, publishes a highly curated list

  of twenty to twenty-five new titles a year. The list of

  both fiction and nonfiction is eclectic and focuses

  on publishing commercial and literary books and

  discovering and nurturing talent.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Martha Teichner has been a correspondent for CBS’s Sunday Morning since December 1993, where she’s equally adept at covering major breaking national and international news stories and handling in-depth cultural and arts topics. Since joining CBS News in 1977, Teichner has earned multiple national awards for her original reporting, including twelve Emmy Awards and five James Beard Foundation Awards. Teichner was also part of the team coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which earned CBS News a 2014 duPont-Columbia University Award. Teichner was born in Traverse City, Michigan. She graduated from Wellesley College with a bachelor’s degree in economics and later attended the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business Administration. She resides in New York City. You can sign up for ebook updates here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  One. Chance Encounter

  Two. Intelligence Gathering

  Three. Harry Meets Minnie

  Four. Another, Very Different Chance Encounter

  Five. Saturday, August 6

  Six. The New Normal

  Seven. A Perfect English Tea

  Eight. Sleepovers

  Nine. The Time Comes

  Ten. Red Jell-O and Halloween

  Eleven. A Gift for Friendship

  Twelve. Joyride

  Thirteen. Catch-22

  Fourteen. Domestic Bliss

  Fifteen. The Bus and the Rain

  Sixteen. Thanksgiving

  Seventeen. The Day After That

  Eighteen. Conversations Across a Deathbed

  Nineteen. The End

  Twenty. And Then What?

  Twenty-One. Bad News

  Twenty-Two. On Borrowed Time

  Twenty-Three. What Would Carol Have Thought?

  Photographs

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  WHEN HARRY MET MINNIE. Copyright © 2021 by Martha Teichner. All rights reserved. For information, address Celadon Books, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.

  www.celadonbooks.com

  Cover designed by Clay Smith

  Cover photo illustration by Elizabeth Turner Stokes

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Teichner, Martha, author.

  Title: When Harry met Minnie: a true story of love and friendship / Martha Teichner.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Celadon Books, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020024952 | ISBN 9781250212535 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250212511 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Dog owners—United States—Biography. | Bull terrier—United States—Biography. | Human-animal relationships. | Dog walking.

  Classification: LCC SF422.82.T45 A3 2021 | DDC 636.70092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024952

  eISBN 9781250212511

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: 2021