Gone to the Dogs (12 page)

“This is crazy,” Steve said. “Could you just tell her the truth? It isn’t like he died in agony. He didn’t feel anything. We did everything we could, and we lost him anyway, okay? You don’t have to lie about it.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I’ll tell her the whole truth. From Groucho’s point of view.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

“Trust me,” I said. “I know Rita, and what does it matter? I mean, he’s gone, and she isn’t, and God didn’t make me a dog writer for nothing, so just don’t contradict me, okay? It’s a small gift, but it’s what I’ve got, and I don’t intend to waste it. And I won’t lie. I’ll tell her the emotional truth. She doesn’t believe in historical truth, anyway. She believes in psychological truth. She’s always talking about it.”

“Jesus. Okay. Look, when you talk to her, ask her what she wants done.”

It took me a second to understand. “Cremated,” I said. “We talked about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. We talked it over.”

“Private?”

I didn’t want to imagine the alternative. Public cremation? God! “What?”

“Does she want his ashes?”

“No, of course not. Actually, don’t even mention it to her, because if you do, she’ll keep them here and spend years in analysis trying to decide what to do with them, and, in the meantime, she won’t get another dog because she hasn’t come to terms with losing Groucho.”

My pride in my craft compels me to admit that there was only one thing wrong with the death of Groucho: For obvious reasons, it wasn’t publishable. Imagine, if you will, the death of Little Nell collaboratively rewritten by Jack London and Albert Camus, but with a male dachshund subbing for the girl, of course. Maybe I overdid it, though: Rita was so moved that she decided to come home to say good-bye.

“Rita,” I said, “don’t you think it would be better to remember him the way he was?”

“I don’t want to … Is that what you thought? No, I don’t think I want to do that. I mean, it’s not as if … No. It’s important for me to remember that that’s not Groucho. It’s only his body.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“But I can’t stay here now, anyway. I knew I shouldn’t have come, because, you know, he did feel abandoned, and how could he not? I abandoned him. How was he supposed to feel?”

“Loved,” I said. “And not a nuisance. When he
was healthy, he liked to go places. He would not have wanted to keep you stuck at home because of him. And you didn’t abandon him, Rita. He was very old and very sick. Until the last few minutes.”

The part of her argument that made sense was that her family wouldn’t understand her grief. Most people don’t. According to Rita, Freud did. He apparently realized that our love for our dogs is the only unambivalent, unconflicted, entirely positive, perfectly pure feeling we ever have. Obviously, then, when your dog dies, you lose the one being that—even deep in the disgusting depths of your unconscious—you never wished dead. And then most people expect you to keep your dinner plans for the same night, enjoy your meal, show up at work the next day, and, in short, express about as much grief as you’d feel for the last housefly you swatted. Rita said that she wasn’t going to deny her loss by “falling into the old trap of socially sanctioned, familially induced dissociation” (can that be right?) and was coming back to Cambridge. She also announced that she was going to call Steve. Fortunately, I reached him first.

Rita arrived home late the next morning. When she tapped on my kitchen door, I still hadn’t decided what to do with Rowdy and Kimi, whether to let them offer comfort or try to keep them out of sight. In the dogless month between the day Vinnie died and the evening Rowdy chose me as his companion animal, I’d found other people’s dogs a source of comfort and pain. Sometimes I’d start to feel as if Vinnie had somehow been the only dog and that, in losing her, I’d had all dogs ripped away from me. Then Groucho would jump on me, or a free-range yellow Lab that used to live down the street would appear in my yard with a tennis ball in her mouth and beg me to toss it
for her, or another dog would force its way into my loneliness and remind me that they hadn’t all died, that, yes, I’d have another dog some day. Whenever the pain began to lose its edge, though, I’d be ambling through Harvard Square or waiting stuck in the traffic on Memorial Drive, and I’d see a golden retriever, any golden, not necessarily one that looked remotely like Vinnie. Tears would roll down my face, and I’d feel heartsick and furious, especially if the dog happened to be with a woman, a woman I’d hate because she’d gotten to keep her golden, but mine had died.

The presence of two big dogs would’ve been tricky to disguise, and the second Rita walked into the kitchen, I was glad I hadn’t hustled Rowdy and Kimi out to the yard or shut them in another room. Although Rita’s coat was navy blue, a color that rivals black for displaying dog hair, she sank to the floor and threw her arms around Rowdy’s neck. Kimi, slightly less huggable than Rowdy because she was incapable of holding still, nonetheless couldn’t endure being left out; she poked her nose into Rita’s face and shoved Rowdy aside. Exactly how our species first came to domesticate the wolves that evolved into today’s dogs is one of those moot questions that keep dog writers in business, but I’m positive that as I watched Rita and my dogs, I witnessed one basis of the complementary bond between people and
canidae:
Dogs like the taste of human tears, and people find comfort in having their faces licked. As it happens, Rowdy and Kimi also love moisturizer and foundation makeup, a preference that’s clearly a recent product of deliberate selective breeding.

Or did they actually perceive her sadness and try
to console her? I am supposed to understand dogs. I know nothing about them.

It seemed to me that the silent comfort of the dogs went beyond words, but either because she’s a therapist or because she’s not a real dog person, Rita needed to talk, and not to Rowdy and Kimi, either. Tea always feels more healing than coffee, so I made a big potful, let it steep, and filled two mugs Vinnie had won at matches when she was only a puppy.

“Vinnie won these,” I said.

“I know,” Rita said. “You’ve mentioned it.”

“Would you rather have brandy or something?”

“Holly, it’s what? Eleven-thirty in the morning?”

“It’s what you’re supposed to drink to buck yourself up, isn’t it? If you don’t want tea.”

“Buck,” she said. “What an odd word for you to choose.”

“I didn’t choose it. I just said it.”

“It’s your father’s first name.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said.

“Okay. It’s what everyone calls him.”

“Yes,” I said. “So what?”

“Never mind. Anyway, I don’t want to buck myself up, and I don’t see how getting drunk before noon would do it, anyway.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was only trying to help.”

“Well, more denial won’t do it.” Her eyes were dry now, but red and tired. She rubbed at them. “It went on for so long, you know, that I started to let myself think it wouldn’t ever end. It’s ridiculous. What did I think? That he was going to live forever? On the way back, on the plane, I was looking at an old picture of him, and it hit me that I hadn’t looked at it for a long time. If I had, I couldn’t have kept on
refusing to see what was happening. You’ve seen it for a long time, haven’t you?”

“What? That he was old? Of course he was old. Rita, you knew that. And you also knew he was sick. But the truth is, he could’ve died last year, and he could’ve lived another year. Or more. It just wasn’t predictable.”

“Oh, yes, it was,” she said.

“Rita, he did not die because you left him.”

“He did, you know,” she said. “That isn’t why he got liver disease, but it’s why he died now and not some other time.”

“Possibly,” I said. “But what were you supposed to do? Cancel your life?”

“Stay with him,” she said quietly.

“Look, Rita. Maybe you know some word for it that I don’t, but to anyone except you, it’s fairly obvious that what you’re doing is taking all your grief and turning it into guilt. You could have held him in your lap and never left the house, and one of these days, he would’ve been too sick to keep going. You did not kill him, no matter how it feels now. And he didn’t die all alone. Steve was with him. I told you all about it. He didn’t feel any pain. He didn’t suffer.”

“I know. I really do know that.” She sighed.

“Rita, is there anything I can do to help? Do you want to take one of my dogs? For a day or two?”

“Thank you,” she said, “but I don’t think that would help.”

“Is there anything that would? Anything I can do?”

“Well,” she said, “this may sound stupid.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Actually, maybe it won’t. To you.”

“It probably won’t,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of
mourning for dogs. Are you thinking about another one? Is that what it is?”

“God, no. Of course not. Not now.”

“Well, it does help,” I said. “It’s the only thing that really does.”

“Maybe sometime. But not now. He isn’t a replaceable part, you know. He isn’t some appliance that broke.”

“Did I say that? Of course not. No dog you love is ever replaceable. You might not even want to get another dachshund. It might be better to get some breed totally different from Groucho.”

“Holly, look. I am not ready to think about another dog. I am nowhere near ready, and I’m not going to be for a long time, okay? I have a lot of grief work to do first, which is what … This is going to sound silly, but I don’t think it is. Anyway, it feels right.”

“Good. What is it?”

“I can’t just let him disappear. I leave, then I come back, and he’s just gone? He’s vanished? If I leave it like that, then basically, it’s more denial. I can feel it. I half expect to walk upstairs and find him.”

“It’s always like that,” I said. “Everybody goes through that.”

“No,” she said. “Or if you do, you need to do something about it, which is where rituals come in.”

My voice was very soft. “Rita, do you want some kind of funeral for him? Because, if you do, I’m the last person to think that that’s stupid, you know.”

She started to sob, then reached into her purse, pulled out a tissue, and blew her nose. “I told Steve that I didn’t want the ashes.”

I nodded.

“And now I do. Do you think it’s too late?”

“Probably not. I don’t know. But, you know what? I’ll find out. I’ll ask Steve. I’ll take care of it. Is there anything else …?”

“Well, there is one thing. It’s just something I’ve been wondering about.”

“Yeah?”

“How did Steve know that Groucho was making a
decision?”

“He’s very intuitive about dogs,” I said.

As soon as Rita went upstairs, I phoned Steve at the clinic.

“Look, this is very important,” I said. “I know Rita said just routine final care, but now she’s decided she needs Groucho’s ashes, and if it’s too late, don’t tell her. Just give her
some
ashes.”

“No,” he said. “Anyway, it’s not necessary. The body’ll still be here.”

“So you can.…”

“Yeah, we can do it. This’s happened before.”

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Where
is …?
” I should’ve known, but there are certain matters upon which no dog lover likes to dwell.

“In the freezer,” he said matter-of-factly. “In a plastic bag. Lorraine’s brother hasn’t been here yet.”

The company that employs Lorraine’s brother—yes, indeed, nepotism—is called Perpetual Pet Care, and if the name strikes you as silly, you’re clearly a newcomer to dogdom, otherwise known as the land of foolish euphemism. I mean, there actually exists a liquid worming product called Evict. Prefer pills? You can buy, I swear to God, Good Riddance.

“So you can ask him to, uh …” I said.

“We’ll have to tag it,” Steve said. “But it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Owners change their minds now and then.”

“So …?”

“So if she wants private cremation, I need to find the right bag and put an ID tag on. That’s all.”

“They aren’t …?”

“They aren’t clear plastic,” he said.

“So somebody has to open—? Look, don’t. It’s not really necessary, is it? I mean, how’s she going to know?”

“Hey, Holly, we’ll take care of it. Don’t let it bother you.”

Then, as if to prove that the topic and task weren’t really unappetizing, he suggested that we go out to dinner that night, and we did. To celebrate his return, we ate at Michela’s, probably the only expensive restaurant in Cambridge worth the cost, which is more than Steve or I can afford. If we’d gone to one of the little Thai or Indian places, he might have told me about that business with Groucho. As it was, although Michela’s is not pretentious, you still get the message that you should probably discuss something other than body bags and canine cadavers over the house-cured
bresaola
with caponata and roasted potatoes. Also, the tables aren’t crowded together, but our neighbors might still have overheard, and if they had and then had lost their
pesce
, I wouldn’t have blamed them and might even have joined them.

So, having said something vague like, “It’s all taken care of,” Steve told me the big news: Jackie Miner had left Lee.

“She took Willie, didn’t she?” I said. It’s one
thing to walk out on a husband, but what kind of woman deserts her dog?

“I didn’t think to ask,” Steve said.

“You didn’t
ask?”

“Well, he wasn’t the one who told me,” Steve said. “And if he had—”

“Who did? Did she?”

“No. This was while I was gone. Lorraine told me.”

Michela’s bakes what is undoubtedly the best bread in Greater Boston. Steve tore off a piece of it, dunked it in the plate of olive oil you get there, and ate it. Does that sound disgusting? It isn’t. He wasn’t being uncouth, either. That’s what you’re supposed to do. In Cambridge, peasant is forever in.

He swallowed and said, “Lorraine says Lee told her he thinks Jackie’s with Oscar Patterson.”

“What?”

“Lorraine says that’s what Lee said, and then he told her to forget it.”

“I guess he doesn’t know Lorraine very well yet.”