What a Dog Knows

by Susan Wilson

  Making the best of it, Ruby sends Doug to the showers and she makes the coffee, scrambles some eggs. She isn’t looking forward to a whole day of waiting to get started on her journey. This one step forward, one step back is driving her crazy. By the time she gets back to Harmony Farms and retrieves her van, it could be five o’clock. It’s not that she won’t start a journey that late, it is just harder to do at this point in her life. Long gone are the long hours of night driving.

  Still damp from his shower, Doug stands at the counter to eat. Ruby sees that this is his habit and thinks about her own single-person patterns. “Why don’t you drop me off at school, take my car, and go deal with your van?” Doug puts his dishes in the dishwasher. “I don’t need it. I’m out by three, three-thirty at the latest if the staff meeting doesn’t get bogged down in some circular argument about grades.”

  “That’s very generous of you.”

  “Well, you’ve been a bit generous with me.”

  The Hitchhiker reminds Ruby that she hasn’t been fed yet, or maybe it’s a little jealousy making her wriggle her head between them.

  Ruby drops Doug off at exactly seven twenty-five.

  Ruby rolls up Main Street, noticing that the little trees planted along the sidewalk have begun to take on a fallish hue. The deep green of summer is faded, and each little tree—maple?—has a smattering of red leaves woven within the green. How is it she’s been here so long that she’s gone from new leaves to nearly autumn? That hasn’t happened in a very long time. Well, time to move on. Finally. She signals for a parking space close to where her van was. Was. Should be. Isn’t.

  Choice words fly from her mouth, epithets and garment-rending fury. She is glad that there is no one walking by, glad to jack the air conditioner up to full and the radio to blasting. She will not be contained or prevented from her more than deserved tantrum. Ruby’s patience has been ground down to dust. “Cynthia! Why? What have I ever done to you?”

  Ruby suddenly realizes that she’s cowed the dog. The Hitchhiker is drooping on the passenger seat of Doug’s car. Her dark brown eyes are little orbs of sadness, of fear. She must think that Ruby has lost her mind. As quickly as Ruby lost it, she pulls herself together, shuts the car off, and reaches for the dog, who backs away. “Oh, baby, I’m not mad at you.” She scoops the dog onto her lap. She is struck by the connection, a powerful odor of fear and confusion, the tingle of an old memory of running. “You’re my good girl. I’m so sorry.”

  The dog’s thoughts are primal, wholly organic. “Don’t be separate from me.”

  “Never.”

  The dog rests her chin on Ruby’s shoulder. Sighs. The odor of fear, the tingle of unease begins to fade until there is only the lingering taste of confusion.

  Ruby and the dog get out of Doug’s car and walk around the park. Ruby needs the motion to formulate her next step, and the Hitchhiker needs to move to regain her usual joi de vivre. Calmed down, Ruby pulls out her phone and looks up Turner’s Tow. She’s not going to bother to call, she’s just going to show up and demand her van back. There is no doubt in her mind, and this isn’t due to some psychic vibe, that far from removing the boot, they have towed her car and impounded it at the behest of that witch.

  As Ruby and the dog get back into Doug’s car, it dawns on her that she needs to find out why Cynthia is so antagonistic. Yes, she’s kind of known for it around town, but to be so pointedly antagonistic specifically to Ruby is a mystery that it was high time Ruby solved. It is no longer enough to leave Cynthia in the dust, to leave Harmony Farms and never give her another thought.

  Instead of heading right for the towing company lot, Ruby goes around the block and turns up in front of the town hall. If Cynthia isn’t there, she’s going to find out where she is. Ruby beats back the “and then what” in her mind. Ignoring the NO PETS sign on the town hall front door, Ruby and the Hitchhiker march in. There is no receptionist, only a hallway with a sign indicating various town offices and their room numbers. The place reminds Ruby a bit of a school. There’s the same scent of paper and ink. Dust. Butcher’s wax. Each office door has an opaque glass window and old-fashioned black lettering designating it as Town Clerk, where Ruby had applied for her busker’s license; Tax Office; Board of Health. The Selectperson’s office is upstairs. “Let’s go.” The pair don’t bother with the elevator. Ruby is too ready for battle.

  It is an ordinary weekday, but to Ruby it feels monumental. The two individuals sitting in the office as she barges in should understand that she is there to demand justice. That their ordinary lives are about to take on a brand-new story, something that they will tell their children … the avenging angel of Ruby Heartwood come to demand satisfaction from the self-appointed Empress of Harmony Farms, Cynthia Mann.

  Ruby looks at the pair, a skinny man in a short-sleeved white shirt and chinos, ugly tie dangling over a pot belly. He is holding a file folder. The other guy is in a workman’s green uniform, a plumber’s logo on his pocket, and his name, Ralph, embroidered over it. He’s sitting on the edge of a large wooden desk. Both look at Ruby with only mild interest.

  “Where is Cynthia?”

  “Out at the moment. Can I help you with something?” The guy in the plumber’s uniform pushes off the edge of the desk.

  “It’s personal.”

  “Well, she’ll be right back if you want to take a seat.” The ugly tie wearer gestures to a chair pushed up against the wall. He notices the dog. “Um, I assume this is a therapy dog?”

  “Attack dog.”

  It takes a beat, but then both men chuckle, but say nothing more about the dog’s illegal presence in their office. The desk sitter resumes his position and the ugly-tie-wearer opens the folder to show him something therein.

  Cynthia Mann enters the room wiping her hands with a piece of paper towel. She doesn’t look in Ruby’s direction, is oblivious to her presence. Ruby stands up, the dog behind her. Cynthia lobs the balled-up paper towel into a wastebasket with a playfulness Ruby would never have expected. “Okay, gentlemen, what’s on this week’s agenda?” She’s reaching for the file folder.

  “Ahem.”

  Cynthia turns, sees Ruby, and smiles. “Oh, so sorry. My colleagues didn’t say we had a guest.”

  Ruby does not smile back. She is gobsmacked at Cynthia’s cordiality until she realizes that Cynthia doesn’t recognize her, that she’s never seen Ruby not in her fortune-teller’s garb.

  Then Cynthia spots the dog, Ruby’s highly recognizable familiar. “Oh.”

  “We have a problem.”

  Cynthia looks at her two colleagues and they leave the room without apology. She shuts the door behind them. “You really didn’t have to come here. All you need to do is pay your fines and collect your vehicle.”

  “Oh, no. I could do that, but I want to hear it out of your mouth why you are so against me. What in heaven’s name have I ever done to you that you’ve made it your mission to torment me at every turn? I even gave you a pretty nice reading. And, you broke my teapot and I still didn’t get mad.”

  “That was unfortunate, and I do apologize for that.”

  “And the rest? Why, Cynthia? Why?”

  “You’re the psychic, can’t you tell me?”

  Ruby studies Cynthia standing in the dusty office. Dust motes shimmer around her, sparkling in the sunlight eking its way through the high window. Ruby watches Cynthia’s aura, the greenish smear of self-satisfaction, deepen into a bruised yellow of old hurt. “A bad experience?”

  Cynthia leans against the desk. “Yes.”

  “A bad reading?”

  “If you could call it that. Look, I’ve never told a soul about this; why should I tell you?”

  “Because you’re blaming me for something that I had no involvement in and costing me a ton of money in the process.”

  Ruby waits, thinking about a lion tamer she once knew, a skinny Austrian with a pencil moustache who could make his cats bend to his will with the flick of his whip. They would, like
Cynthia is doing right now, stare at him with defiance, and then, growling, do whatever it was he was asking for. Grudging but obedient. Hoping, like the Hitchhiker does, for a reward. Ruby keeps her eyes on Cynthia until she pushes away from the desk and sits in one of the guest chairs, gesturing for Ruby to do the same. “All right.”

  Ruby wonders if she should offer Cynthia a reward.

  “I was dating two guys. I couldn’t decide which one was the better choice. They were awfully similar on paper, if you know what I mean. It was kind of like the old song, if you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with, but I don’t think that I really loved either of them. Not in the way I had hoped, you know, all agog and fluttery.”

  “Cynthia, I can’t imagine you ever being all agog or fluttery.”

  “Well, I wasn’t, and that concerned me. A woman showed up in town, worked in a little shop that sold hippy stuff, beads and hookahs and Tibetan flags, that sort of thing. On certain days, when she felt like it, she’d give psychic readings behind a curtain in the back of the store.”

  “What did she use? Palms, tea leaves? Cards?”

  “Just touch. She’d hold your hands and look into your eyes and ask questions and make up answers. All fake.”

  “And you know this how? That it was all fake.”

  “Because she pointed me in the worst possible direction. She said I would be with the man who next asked me out.”

  “Who was?”

  “The man who is now my ex-husband.”

  “Let me guess, he wasn’t one of the two suitors?”

  “No. And the fact that he wasn’t and asked me out almost within twenty-four hours of this pronouncement, well, I did feel a bit agog.”

  “She never said that you were meant to be with him forever, did she? She said ‘would,’ not ‘should.’” Splitting hairs, perhaps, but a distinction in the trade. “What else did she say?”

  “I don’t remember. I just know that my life, my reputation, even my sanity was compromised by that decision based on her advice.” Cynthia studies her knuckles. “You know about him, don’t you? Arrested for animal cruelty. But he was cruel above that as well.”

  “To you?”

  “In many ways. The more power he got from his job, the more competitive he got with his peers, the more controlling he became. In the end, he tried mightily to leave me with nothing from the divorce. Said I was disloyal. Faithless because I couldn’t make myself take his side. How could I take his side? I knew that he was more than capable of doing what he did. Shooting that poor dog.”

  “You’re okay now.”

  “I have a good lawyer. But, as I said, I won’t run for office again. People can’t get past my bad decision. A decision that was prompted by a fortune-teller more than thirty years ago.”

  “No one put a gun to your head.” Ruby blushes. “Oh, sorry. That was insensitive.”

  “A little.” The bruised yellow aura is fading, a slightly rose tone rising, signifying to Ruby that speaking of these things aloud has helped Cynthia.

  Whoever this mystic lady was, she had given Cynthia an accurate fortune. Cynthia had chosen the next man to ask her out. Ruby has no doubt that there was more to the message, any fortune-teller worth her salt would have added some decoration to a rather ordinary prognostication. You will be with the next man who asks you out. Be for life, or simply be in the same room? It’s all in the interpretation. It’s all in the desire that colors the hearer’s understanding.

  Cynthia gets to her feet. “I’ll call the impound lot, get your vehicle released without fines.”

  “Thank you. And, Cynthia. I’m out of Harmony Farms right now, but I don’t want you to think for one moment that you had anything to do with my departure.”

  “Of course not.”

  Ruby snaps her fingers at the dog who has been watching this conversation like a line judge at a tennis game.

  “Ruby, here’s the thing: I know you aren’t that long-ago misguided fake, but you sure do look like her. That’s why, well, why I first thought you might be her. But, of course, that would mean that you’re a lot older than you look.”

  Ruby takes her hand off the doorknob. “Cynthia, tell me, where was this, where did this reading take place?”

  “Right here. Harmony Farms.”

  Ruby resists the slightly swoony feeling, forces her fingers to not tremble. “One more thing, Cynthia.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You should run again. Give the animal control office a better budget and I predict that you’ll win reelection.”

  32

  What should she do with this information? Should she imagine that Cynthia means that she, Ruby Heartwood, in skinny jeans and a plain T-shirt, tinted moisturizer her only makeup, hair bundled into a twist, resembles this long-ago seer? Or that she, Madame Ruby, draped in gold brocade and stage makeup does? After all, Ruby modeled herself after Madame Celestine, who modeled herself after Madame somebody else in a long line of traditional psychics and seers all dressed like a dime novel depiction of a fortune-teller. Let’s face it, we do all resemble one another, she thinks, and shrugs off the shaky feeling of being on the verge of an important discovery. Cynthia could just as easily be yanking her chain. “Okay, let’s deal with the situation at hand and dwell on the possibilities later.” Ruby gathers the dog’s leash in her hand and pulls the keys to Doug’s car out of her pocket.

  The dog presses her forefeet against Ruby’s thigh. “Sit. Stay.” She looks pointedly at a park bench.

  “No, we need to get the bus back.” Ruby gives her a pat and points the key fob at the car to unlock it.

  As they drive along Main Street, Ruby can’t help but look at all the store fronts and wonder which one had been the hippy head shop, which one might have offered the services of a part-time fortune-teller. Could it be the card shop? Or the gourmet cookware store? The froufrou baby clothes place? Or the corner store that has paperback books and bins full of plastic toys spilling out of its doors?

  At the impound lot, Ruby braces herself to be told that her car has either disappeared or been wrecked, such has been her last twenty-four hours. But Cynthia has been true to her word and the guy behind the plexiglass window slides Ruby a release form to sign. “Got the keys?”

  Ruby slides him her set. It gives her the willies to let anyone into her “house” without her, but she knows that he’s just doing his job. She can hear the Westfalia before she sees it, a bass note just a little noisier than usual, and she rolls her eyes. Can she please keep it on the road for just a bit longer before attending to the exhaust system?

  Ruby is now one driver with two vehicles. The Dew Drop is close enough to the impound lot that she will ask Ravi if she can leave the van there until she picks up Doug in his car after school and they return to collect it. She’ll walk back to the impound lot, giving the dog a nice outing, pick up Doug’s car, and then meander over to visit with Polly. It’s on her mind to ask Polly, who has lived in Harmony Farms forever, if she has any recollection of the woman Cynthia claims to have encountered. If not Polly, then maybe Bull has an idea. He’s quiet, but well attuned to the goings on around town.

  There are no cars parked in Ravi’s lot, and Ruby has to hope that the emptiness suggests only that the guests are all out enjoying the area. His vacancy sign is lit, but she refuses to look at that as a bad sign. After all, it is a weekday and unofficially the end of summer. Surely he’ll be full over the weekend if the weather continues to be as beautiful as it has been.

  “Ruby, hello. Welcome back.” Ravi is alongside the well-trimmed edge of the circular garden, which now boasts a heavy concentration of begonias, a broom in hand. Leaf and plant detritus gathered in a neat pile. “I have your usual room available.”

  Ruby is about to say that she’s not there to stay, and then thinks otherwise. It is for sure going to be too late to start off for New Hampshire by the time she accomplishes all the steps involved in sorting out the complications of having two
cars. It was lovely last night being with Doug, but she’s not about to make that a habit she’ll have to break. “That would be perfect, Ravi.”

  The room in all its slightly askew affect is comfortingly familiar. The dog jumps onto the bed as if arriving home after a long absence. She immediately flops onto her back and looks at Ruby expectantly, clearly a belly rub is in order. Ruby accommodates her, and the fluffy white tail sweeps back and forth in her ecstatic delight. “Okay, enough indulgence, my dear, get your sneakers on and let’s go.”

  The Hitchhiker really only understands the word go. She jumps down from the bed and barks at the closed door, hurrying Ruby, having no idea where they might be going, but happy to be included.

  The walk back to the impound lot doesn’t take long and the two of them collect Doug’s car. Ruby points it in the direction of the shelter, about ten minutes from where they are. Arriving at the shelter, the Hitchhiker balks at getting out of the car, turning gimlet eyes on Ruby.

  “Sweetheart, don’t you know by now that I’ll never leave you anywhere?”

  “Everyone in there believed that about their people too.”

  “No, some of the animals in there got lost on their own.”

  “No. Their people got lost. They forgot to find them.”

  Sometimes this Vulcan mind meld of what passes for conversation between Ruby and her dog is exhausting, like arguing with a three-year-old. Which, if she thinks about it, is exactly what she is doing. “If you come in with me, there’s treats.”

  Finally, a word that penetrates the little dog’s stubbornness. “Okay. Two.”

  “Two.”

  Ruby is pretty sure this whole reluctance thing is an act meant to earn the treats.

  Polly puts the tea on the moment Ruby walks in the door. She is still beaming with the success of the fund-raiser. “Cramden’s Appliances will be delivering the washer and dryer tomorrow. I’m going to have a field day. Look.” She points to a Mt. Everest of dirty towels and bedding.