Dog House (22 page)

Yet, once, years later, I asked Barden if, around the time Dad was sick, he'd ever said anything about wanting a grandchild. Barden thought a minute or two. No, he answered.

But don't forget, Barden doesn't remember Tippy.

 

 

Juno's face was graying and almost white, Ajax was learning to love having his throat stroked, Diva was enjoying her mature Divahood, and my small human family was ensconced in Alphabet City. I was still writing every day, but what you've heard is true: It's solitary. My life's weather seemed to be turning relentlessly overcast and the outlook was for continuing clouds and showers with too few patches of Tucker. It also seemed to be a very long trip from Avenue D to Long Island.

Although I loved it, of course, when Tucker came, and the dogs loved it, too. When she was small, they were terrified by her crying and would hide when she visited, except for Diva, who would be insanely interested in licking her face—whereupon Tucker would hide. As she got older, though, the only one who found anything about her to object to was Ajax, who minded very much that she made herself comfortable in
his
bed to watch kid movies. When Juno got her lovely breakfast of milk and bread, Tucker would help me prepare it and feed both dogs bits of her own cereal and soothe them and croon to them. A little like me.

Though have I mentioned, she has Millard's olive skin and Millard's perfect fingernails? And she likes to crunch ice.

 

 

But between lovely visits, there was that internal weather.

One spring evening, I was talking to my brother, Richard, in St. Louis. He was all fired up at the prospect of maybe selling his house. Maybe he and his wife would live on a houseboat or in a Winnebago, maybe. (That familial gene.) Maybe they'd buy a great town house in the old section of town. Maybe they'd travel the world on bikes. He was so excited and convincing that when we hung up, I began to think about moving myself. Maybe.

Then, with growing certainty and mounting excitement, I turned to Diva, who'd scootched over next to me on the sofa and barked throughout our conversation, and said:

“I think I'll do that, too.”

Not the Winnebago part. The selling-the-house part.

And yes, I'd started talking to the dogs.

And no, Richard never moved.

 

 

Thus began my Seven Lean Years.

Which I'll spare you because you don't want to know, any more than I did, about the retracted offers, the failures to show up at closings, the suits, the countersuits, the financial losses and the unending accrual of unwelcome, aging angst. But hey, New York City with its doormen and food deliveries is assisted living for single women. But hey, as well, you don't need to hear about the too-large Manhattan apartment I moved to because—hey, I was going to miss my big house (and do you remember what I obviously did not? That I'd once sworn never to live an apartment again?) Then darling Norah, who had moved into the city with me, decided to retire to a condo in Florida to Irish dance with her girlfriends, and even the promise of a lifetime of nightly baked potato dinners wasn't enough to keep her in Manhattan. Neither were the terrific thrift shops. Not even my dogs, and especially Ajax, who needed her desperately to protect him from fire engines and dachshunds, were enough to keep her in New York.

Ajax had become a nervous wreck.

One evening, just as she was taking him out for a walk, one of the doormen dropped a metal tray on the polished marble floor.

“Ajax, in fact, almost broke a leg trying to get away,” she told me that night. “I had to hold on with all my strength. Those doormen thought it was so funny! They were laughing at him! So you know what I did? I said, ‘You two have shit-all to do here besides make this dog nervous! If you knew the miserable life this poor dog has led ...' and I walked him out the door.”

Norah may not have been from New York City, but she had all the essential attributes for making it there.

Later, she admitted, “I made them some soda bread the next day.”

She was from Ireland as well.

Ultimately, though, she was from the East Coast of Florida, where the “whiskey is half price,” “all the doctors are drug pushers,” and where she can watch all the old movies she loves all day long, and rattle off, under her breath, the names of the grand old stars. Whom she knows better than I do. Which is saying something.

 

 

So I was alone.

And I quickly discovered how very too large my new digs were and how really hard it was to handle three dogs on three leashes without losing your dignity and/or falling down.

It was the falling-down part that scared me.

You know those dog walkers with the fifteen dogs? It's always seemed wonderful to me that they manage to handle them all. Then, one day, I looked carefully and saw what I'd never noticed: most of the dogs are pretty much the same size—and
that's
what makes it work. If you're walking a Lab, a retriever and a pointer, it's perfect. If you're walking a greyhound, a Lurcher and a Norfolk, that terrier can walk right underneath the other two. And does. She can wrap her leash around their legs while she's chasing pigeons. And does. And while you're trying to get them all untangled, amid your Juno's shrieks of “don't touch my feet” and your Ajax's loud, deeply peeved barks, one or the other of the big dogs gets around behind you, and like some setup from the Keystone Cops, you just go over. One broken shoulder and five black eyes later, you learn to walk them separately. That's
nine
walks a day.

So that's some of the reason I decided to sell up once more, move to a smaller, cheaper, more central location and simultaneously, move Diva to an airier, less central, very much larger one. Because along with causing me grief on New York's streets, Diva had become so mouthy, so blithely busy peeing on new carpets and—aaarghhh—on my bed, so busy being such a terrier basically, that I needed to find her a country home.

Forgive me, terrier gods. Except for my trio of fighters and biters, there can be no excuse.

And it hasn't escaped my notice that biters in general seem to be less of a problem for other dog lovers than they are for me. Could it just be that it's not that I'm not as much of a Jack Russell person as I thought I was, but that I'm also not as much of an animal person as I want to think I am? Confrontation terrifies me; physicality and dogfights are anathema; but I'm not so thrilled either with pee. Reminds me of ... (Will she ever get out of this book?)

Thus I seem to have turned out to be—well— not a dog whisperer or a dog murmurer or a dog wrangler or even much of a dog serenader. I seem to be more of a wussy kind of watchdog: watching with horror as my dogs are, well, dogs. Then, going belly up myself. I did love those terriers, though. I miss them every day. So please understand, small terrier gods, that it was horribly painful to part with Diva. Millard had been her slave. Norah and I had been her servants. But one thing about getting older: I know myself better. I know that I have to avoid the hard stuff. I need easy pets. Something like ...

Turtles.

Ah, but I was so lucky to find our Deeviedog the absolutely perfect home; a home in the country with a wonderful young family who have a little boy and who let her chase birds and chipmunks in the woods and in general give her so much exercise that, now, instead of the waddle dog she was becoming with me, she could be the pinup dog on the weight-loss cover of some Special Pet Issue of
People.
Her adoring new owners tell me they've even bought her a carrier for car rides that “lifts her up high on the front seat so she can look out (and is less likely to throw up).” And she's doing a bit of obedience training, which is not, they say, “an overwhelming success.” They also report that she still chases airplanes and barks at the highly threatening second hand on their kitchen clock. Not the brightest bulb in your Louis Seize chandelier, our Diva. But happy. Happy now.

 

 

I've been a little dim myself off and on, but here comes the happy ending.

Juno and Ajax and I are soldiering on.

We share a few beauty-filled rooms (you've guessed that) with scores of fine friends just nearby.

I date. And Juno and Ajax do, too, in the literal sense.

For instance, in her very old age (she's almost sixteen, our Juno; or 105+), she's begun to wee the moment she hits the sidewalk. Right in front of my upscale apartment building. It's washed away with water immediately, but of late, I've been harassed by a neighbor who “finds it unacceptable.”
“My
dog is old,” he says, “and she doesn't do things like that!” Drag her to the curb, he orders in his seven A.M. phone call (though, of course, that leaves a trail). Put a diaper on her in the elevator—she's obviously incontinent. (She's not.) Do something, he demands, because I'm not going to leave you alone. He's even sent someone from the building's board to visit me. The co-op police.

Communal living.

If I forget myself when the time comes, I hope no one drags me to the curb.

 

 

Ajax's face and back are white now, too, and he's had his city snags. As mild as my big sweet greyhound was, after a year in Manhattan he became terrified of every other dog on the sidewalk; not just his own sidewalk, but the one across the street, the one two blocks away and, basically, all the sidewalks clear up to the Bronx. In fact, who knows how far he sees? That's why they call them sight hounds.

Here's how this happened.

It took him a full year to feel comfortable with the rumble and screech of the buses in New York, the scream of the fire trucks, the thunder of the Harleys and those sireens' constant wail, not to mention the relentlessly approaching legs. Relatively comfortable, that is, because almost immediately, Ajax also became paranoid about everything on four legs with fur.

He knows each dog out there is out to get him. He slinks through the building's front door and looks both ways like it's seventies Gotham and he's waiting for a mugger. Fearfully, he checks behind him, on both sides and in doorways, and in his terror, he attacks. Labradors. Yorkies. Big dogs minding their own business. Little dogs minding other dogs' business. It's that old fight-or-flee response, but forget the flee: He's leashed. What's worse, because he can't bite a dog he can't reach, he strains to bite Juno or me. They call it referred aggression. But knowing its name doesn't help, and neither do pricey meds or reward training or anything at all but going out for walks at weird hours or retreating into the street where Ajax and Juno and I hide from other dogs behind parked cars and hope the cabs don't hit us. Ajax wears a muzzle on the street now, too, and I guess one of these days, when he edges around behind me and the Keystone Kops arrive, I'll sort my photos and write a memoir.

And wait for Seven Fat Years.

 

 

Meanwhile, I kiss my dogs every day and don't get fleas. I dole out their meds and treats. I see lots and lots of movies. And my life is good and dull.

Still, I dream myself a film from time to time. I dream of my lovely dogs. Of someone showing up at the door with a sweet-tempered Jack. Of lovely roses and needy houses. I dream of white summer porches and dazzling sunsets and cool mown grass and arching mulberries and rippling, sparkling harbors. Of dimpled southerners.

I dream of a mythic Paradise where good dogs—and good men—have golden tales.

For her careful reading; Paula Brancato

For her warm and touchingly diplomatic reading; fellow dog-lover Barbara King

For her politic, empathetic (and speedy!) reading; Dylan Landis

For her incisive reading and promise not to die first; Carolan Workman

For her tough, pet-centric reading; Emma Sweeney

For her enthusiasm, support, and encouragement from the get-go; Megan Newman

And finally,

For her concept; apologies, and profound gratitude to Elizabeth von Arnim