Born to Bark (16 page)

During this transitional time, Joan had taken a second-year course that I was also teaching. After completing her second-year work, she came to my office to ask for some advice about future course work. It was an early spring afternoon and I felt in need of a cup of coffee, so I invited her to come with me while we continued our discussion.

The Bus Stop was the closest place to get coffee, an old-style diner with counter service for customers who sat on pedestal-style stools. As the waitress, a Chinese woman in her midfifties, placed our coffee on the shiny white counter, I asked her about her dog. The waitress had recently adopted a mature dog from the SPCA that turned out to not to be fully housebroken. I had suggested some things that she might do to
remedy the situation.
She patted my hand and told me that the dog was behaving much better and thanked me.

Joan said, “Everybody feels comfortable talking to you. That’s why I felt that I could come to you for some advice.”

I never know how to respond to compliments, especially when I am not sure that they truly reflect my nature or accomplishments. Fortunately, I didn’t have to search for something to say, since Joan continued telling me about her concerns. In addition to her course of study in the Faculty of Education (with an aim to become a primary school teacher), she was taking a minor in psychology. Because she had a husband and family to care for, she was not taking a full course load and expected that it would take an extra year or so to complete her studies. She was considering several
different courses in psychology and wanted to know who the best teachers in our department were.

Most of her questions were easy to answer. With the business part of the conversation completed, and since there was still coffee in our cups, we continued talking and the conversation became more general.

Eventually I looked at my watch and told her that I was leaving campus to work the rest of the afternoon at home. She also glanced at her watch and said that she had to leave campus shortly as well, since she had to drive her kids to the swimming pool. Her three children, Kevin, Geoff, and Karen, were all competitive swimmers. Joan’s part in their training was rather dull, involving spending several hours in the afternoon at the pool sitting and waiting for them to complete their practice sessions. Because the pool was only a few minutes away from my apartment, I mentioned to her
that I usually worked on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at home, and if she got bored watching the kids some time, she could give me a call and come over and talk. Then I gave her my home phone number.

I winked deliberately and added, “Who knows, I might even offer you a glass of sherry along with the conversation.”

She looked down and, with a sweet, half smile she said, “I might just take you up on that.”

A few weeks later I was working at home when Joan called. She was at the pool and wouldn’t be needed for a couple of hours and wondered if she could drop by. I was surprised but not displeased.

A short time later we were sitting on my sofa sipping dry sherry. We talked a bit and eventually our conversation became more personal. Over time her visits would become more frequent and soon I could expect that once every week or so she would come to visit for a few hours. During these visits I learned more about her life, her history, and her children. Her marriage was in trouble, and she dropped a lot of small clues that suggested that she was being ill treated by her husband. Ultimately, she revealed that she was contemplating leaving him.

I did not press Joan for details. Talking about that aspect of her life made her uncomfortable, and she was quite happy when talking about any other topic. I liked talking and interacting with her when she was smiling and her eyes were sparkling. I expected that our relationship would end when Joan finished her education and started to work as a teacher. I had no idea that I would fall in love with her, so at that time sherry, smiles, and friendly company in the afternoon were all that I was seeking.

I sometimes wonder if I should have explored her consciousness more deeply in order to better understand her. It would have been easier to do that in those early stages, since there still was some distance and a clear status differential between us—important components for psychological analysis. However, it is likely that had I done such an analysis, we never would have formed the affectionate bond that we did. Once that bond was formed, my doorway to her past would remain locked, and after more than 30 years of knowing Joan, it still is. I have no desire to awaken those past f
eelings in her, since I still enjoy that half
smile and find it difficult to endure her discomfort. Knowing the past is not a requirement for living well and happily in the present. This is one place where Freud and I part company.

Joan did leave her husband. After she moved out of her house, we began to see each other more frequently, not just in the afternoon when the kids were swimming, but for dinner and for various social occasions involving my friends and colleagues. She was intelligent and dedicated; on her graduation, she was awarded the provincial silver medal for being the best student in the primary education program.

By now I had accumulated enough money to buy the house that I would need for my dog. After a lot of searching, I found a small bungalow that I could afford, with only 835 square feet of flo
or space divided into six rooms (if you count the bathroom as a room). Above each of the drafty, ill-fitting wooden-frame windows was a beautiful stained-glass panel. Dark wood trim, ceiling beams, and window frames gave the main rooms the look of an old hunting lodge. In the dining room, which was the largest room in the house, there was a fireplace. The lot that the house sat on was very small, 30 by 70 feet. The backyard was only 12 feet wide but could be fenced for a dog. I felt comfortable in this little house. It seemed like sort of a freestanding apartment with its own littl
e yard, and I knew I could live here quite easily with my dog.

The house was built in 1916, during the era when mail-order catalogs were a primary source of obtaining goods. Sears and Montgomery Ward, in the United States, and Eaton’s, in Canada, were the big suppliers of mail-order goods: work pants for Dad, a new dress for Mom, special gifts for the kids, and almost everything you needed for your house. Between 1910 and 1930, you could also purchase the whole house from
the catalog.
According to the Eaton’s 1915 catalog, the style of house I was looking at had a starting cost of $925, plus $150 for indoor plumbing and $90 for hot air heating. The special stained-glass window trim cost an additional $70. Thus the total cost would have been $1,235. It cost me a lot more than that some 60 years later, but it was still affordable.

Lawrence once again volunteered to help me move my belongings to my new residence. I think that I assured him that this would be the last time his services would be needed. The next day Joan visited me there. She sat on a high stool in the doorway of my new little kitchen while I unpacked my dishes and cookware. She was sipping red wine from a coffee cup. She laughed when I told to her that the coffee cup was really a stemless wineglass that would doubtless be extremely fashionable in the future. She would spend many hours over many days on that stool talking, while I fussed around
cooking dinner. I liked the idea of having her there in my home and began to think that I wanted her to be there all of the time. Clearly, I was falling in love.

Not too long after that, I asked Joan if she wanted to live with me. She had graduated from the university and was now working as a first grade teacher. She had been caring for her daughter Karen, but Kari had finished school and now had a job and a boyfriend with whom she was living. That meant that there was really nothing to keep Joan from joining me. A week or two later she parked her old orange Ford Mustang with its black racing stripe next to my house. She unpacked her rocking chair, sewing machine, some clothing, and a few boxes of books. Those were the only possessions that
she cared about, and that was all that she ever brought into the house—except for the love that she carried with her.

Too quickly it was the end of August and both Joan and I would be starting our new teaching year in a few weeks. There was just one more task I had to finish before the end of the summer—to fence the backyard. As Joan helped me build the fence, she and I chatted happily about the dog that I would get. During her marriage she had had two dogs: a dachshund named Max and later a Shetland sheepdog named Dusty. As I had felt about Feldspar, she believed that those dogs really belonged to her children, especially her daughter, Kari, who was fond of animals and had a good rapport with t
hem. When it came to the dogs, Joan’s job had simply been routine maintenance, and her bond with them had not been very strong. Truth be told, she liked sporting dogs—big sporting dogs like Labrador retrievers, the kinds of dogs she’d grown up around. But she understood that I would be selecting the dog, and perhaps a big dog would overwhelm this small house.

As we finished the fence and tested the gate latch, she asked, “So now are we ready for a dog?”

I certainly was, or thought that I was. Joan didn’t know that she would soon be sharing her life with a hurricane—not one surrounded by gray clouds, but one enveloped in gray fur. Before this year ended, life in my little house would change.

It was time for a new start. I had my little house, the woman I loved was living with me in that house, and my work was under reasonable control. I now needed a dog.

I knew that I wanted a Cairn terrier. A clinical psychologist might have suggested that a new start would require a new and different breed of dog so that I would have no bad memories associated with my previous life. But in my mind the pup that I was getting was to replace Feldspar, only this time the dog would be mine.

Even before Feldspar, I had an emotional connection to Cairn terriers. I suppose it began when I was still a child and saw Toto in my favorite film,
The Wizard of Oz
. Some say that the film starred Judy Garland, as the orphan adventurer Dorothy, but every child knows that the real star is Toto, a gray brindle Cairn terrier. If you doubt me, let me refer to a colleague of mine in the Film and Theatre Department, who did the hard number-crunching and found that Toto is in more scenes and has more screen time than Judy Garland does (although Judy has more close-ups). Dorothy also a
ddresses more lines to Toto than to anyone else in the film. The fact that the state of Kansas
features prominently in the original story recently led a resident of Wichita, Kansas, to start a movement to make the Cairn terrier the state’s official dog. Notice that no one has suggested that Judy Garland be the official actress of Kansas.