Connections (3 page)

Kid-Beauty-Damn Mutt was lying at the trunk of a tree in the Botanical Gardens near a seldom-used path. A woman who walked very slowly, leaning on a stick, sat on a bench in front of her. She felt safe because this woman had sat there many days, knowing she was behind her. Sometimes she talked to her, her voice tiny and small but soothing. She always carried a small plastic bag inside her pocketbook. She would open it, smooth out a napkin or square of paper towel next to her, unwrap a sandwich, and eat her lunch. The dog’s nose twitched, her mouth salivated, yet her basic fear of bondage kept her back. One day, the old lady finished eating and gently slipped the remains through the large slat in the back of the bench. Kid-Beauty-Damn Mutt crawled in the grass, grabbed the baloney and the bread and then darted back to the tree, keeping her eyes on the woman, who pretended not to notice.

After that, the leftovers got bigger, and the woman would divide her sandwich, leaving half of it on the bench. The dog stopped running, walked right up and ate, sitting in front of the woman. She finally let the old lady rub her head, massage her neck, or scratch her ears, which brought peaceful memories of being loved back to her. Now, feeling secure in her presence, she crept under the bench, its seat cutting the heat of the sun from her back, and slept. A sound or a smell or a disturbance in the air startled her awake. Her eyes opened on two legs in front of her snout. She looked up through the slats, just as a young man grabbed the woman’s purse off her lap, turned on his sneakers, and ran. She screamed. It took a few seconds for the dog to scramble out, because she could not stand to her full height under the bench. By then, the boy was several yards away. She leapt onto his back without once touching the ground. Her weight, sprung from such a distance, knocked him down, and she barked against his ear, baring her teeth, racing around him in close circles. The old lady screamed again. The dog picked up the purse, her eyetooth puncturing the vinyl, and carried it back to her, dropping it at her feet.

The old woman fell to her knees, sobbing into the dog’s neck, and hugged her. It was sort of an unspoken agreement that they would go home together. The woman didn’t have much income besides her Social Security, but she shared whatever she had. She wanted to call the dog Protector or Lifesaver or Savior but thought it would be too embarrassing to both of them. When she looked into her warm, loving eyes, she said softly, “You’re my little heroine, aren’t you. Heroine. Roine. Roine, that’s it.” She filled out the application for a license, because she didn’t want anybody to take her dog away because she hadn’t obeyed the law, and spelled it as Rowan to make it easier for the people who processed the papers to pronounce it.

The old lady didn’t play too much, but it didn’t matter. Because Rowan was no longer a puppy; she had matured into an intelligent, warm companion. They answered a want in each other that made them inseparable for a little over a year. Until one afternoon when Rowan nudged the woman’s back with her paw to remind her to feed her and licked her ear and saw there was no flutter of an eyelid. She knew, with her distant wolf and coyote ancestors’ instinct for the way of life, that the old lady was no more. She sat beside her bed and howled her grief through the night.

By sunrise, several neighbors had called the police. When the super unlocked the door to let them in, Rowan was lying on top of her. But they took her anyway. She followed the stretcher to the street and after they slid it into the back of the ambulance and she tried to jump in, they slammed the doors. Someone said, “What about the dog?” And someone else said, “Aw, someone will take it in.”

Rowan knew it was useless to try to follow the woman. Forlorn, she ran through the streets, whimpering. After two months, she joined a pack of vicious dogs that plagued the Bronx, and became as mean as they were. Eventually, her twisted front paw, hurt in a fight, slowed her down. So she was the only one of the pack picked up by Animal Care & Control when they ran out of an abandoned building.

Now, at five years old, she had lived a lifetime. Slightly lame and filthy dirty, Kid-Beauty-Damn Mutt-Rowan still showed an arrogance and spirit as she stood in her metal cage, her head slightly stooped because of its ceiling. Doomed to die in thirteen hours.

Rosa sipped her glass of red wine, wishing she could go across the hall for a chat like she used to. She shook her head sadly, trying to get Marliese Vilmer out of her mind. She thought about her a lot. Today, Marliese crept into Rosa’s thoughts constantly. But Rosa didn’t want to face her or think about what happened to her.

“Wonder how Marliese is, bambina.” She stroked Princess and considered calling Martin. But she wouldn’t know what to say, how to ask if she was still alive. Rosa used to speak to Marliese’s son regularly during the time she was in the hospital.

One day Martin told her he’d be coming over the weekend and would see her in person. When she heard them arrive—Martin and his wife and their son—she went across the hall. When she realized what they were doing, she frantically yelled from the doorway, “What she gonna do when she com-a home?”

“I’m afraid my mother-in-law won’t be coming home.” Marliese’s daughter-in-law, with her platinum hair and long fingernails with very white moons, dismissed Rosa. But Martin sat her down and patted her shoulder. “We know how good you’ve been to Mother, especially since she got sick. You were her dearest friend. Still are. I know it hurts you. It hurts us too. To have to do it.” He spoke to her as if she were a child. Or senile. “But she’s worse, much worse, than after the first one, and the doctor says there’s no way she can come home. The rehab center can’t do anything more for her. She’ll be going into a nursing home this week.”

Rosa stayed and watched them go through the closets, move the knickknacks, examine the silver. She saw a balled-up cardigan on the floor and automatically picked it up. She gently folded the sleeves back, bent it in half, and put it on top of a pile of clothes. “This she’s gonna need in the winter.”

“That pile is for the Salvation Army.”

“What? You mean you give all-a this stuff away?” Rosa’s stomach churned.

Martin and his wife looked knowingly at one another. “Of course, you can go through it and anything you want, anything that fits, you’re welcome to.” The woman’s voice reminded Rosa of diet soda. It seemed sweet. Until the artificial sugar went down and left a bitter aftertaste.

There was noise; greetings. She knew it was Marliese’s sister from Arizona. That must be her husband and her two sons. Then Martin’s daughter and son-in-law came. She’d be the one who had the baby. Marliese had never seen her great-grandchild, and Rosa knew she kept hoping they would bring the baby to her. “When the weather gets warmer,” they said. Then, when the weather got warmer, they said, “Wait ’til it gets a little cooler out.”

They were all polite when they said hello to Rosa. “Oh, I remember you from when I was a little kid.” Or “You still have that funny little dog?”

Dully, Rosa sat down on the couch, a smile frozen on her lips.

“What the hell is this supposed to be?”

“Why did Grandma keep this, do you suppose?”

“Put that on the give-away pile.”

“Who do you think will give us a bigger tax write-off—the Salvation Army or Goodwill?”

“This is disgusting. Can you imagine keeping it all these years?”

“Oh, let’s just throw these out; I’d be too embarrassed to donate them to charity.”

“Do we have another carton for garbage?”

“Who wants this table? Barbara, maybe you could stick it somewhere in your basement.”

Every sentence jabbed at Rosa’s heart as she listened to and watched a lifetime of mementos being discarded, while the descendants of a wonderful lady threw her heritage—and their own—into the garbage. It didn’t matter what country it was; these possessions were from another world, from a childhood and a family long gone. They were part of Marliese Vilmer. Rosa shuddered to see how they were sorted out so impersonally. Oh, they didn’t put the cut crystal from the great-grandmother in the donation pile. They weren’t stupid. But the faded, frayed photograph of a nameless ancestor? That they put into the big black plastic bag.

Rosa had gone home, shaking.
It could just as easily be Italy as Germany
, she thought. Then she lovingly touched the few meager reminders of her own childhood, wondering what would happen to them when she died. Who would go through her things and look in her drawers? Hold up her old-fashioned corset and laugh, asking, “Would you believe the old girl still wore something like this?” She didn’t have anything worth money, no jewels or antiques like Marliese had. Her sister wouldn’t come from Italy. All these years, she’d never come. Why would she come when Rosa died?

But that’s the way it was. Like across the hall—Marliese Vilmer’s whole family together in her home for the first time. So many times she had wished for a visitor, some company. She would have been so very pleased to have them all gathered under her roof. If only she could be there too, to enjoy them.

Later, when Rosa had heard the shuffling of cartons and bags being dragged over the tile floor to the front door, she got into bed, clutching Princess to her chest. Princess was the only thing in Rosa’s life worth anything. A chill shuddered through Rosa as she wondered what would happen to Princess if she died. Who would take care of her dog?

Now, thinking back to that day, remembering her friend and her own anxiety, a melancholy sadness overcame her. A teardrop fell into her glass, as it had turned out that Princess had died. Rosa had thought very carefully before getting another dog, knowing that at her age, she would probably die long before the dog did. She picked up her little love and rocked her. Guilt flooded her in anticipation of leaving her an orphan. What would she do without her? Would she be sent to some family and cry and howl all day, wanting her mama, wondering where she was? Would they put her in a cold cage at the Humane Society or the ASPCA, where she would cower, petrified, hating Rosa for abandoning her?

Now that Marliese wouldn’t be able to take care of her dog as she had promised, Rosa thought of writing to her sister, asking her to take the dog. Going on an airplane, in cargo? To a strange country? It would probably smell funny to a dog. No. Besides, her sister might not even be alive then. But no matter where she went or how wonderful the people were, Princess would not be happy. The only thing was to have her put to sleep so she wouldn’t mourn for Rosa.

Suppose she had a heart attack in her sleep? Or worse, a stroke, like Marliese, and didn’t die? Nobody would find her for days. Poor Princess. Rosa couldn’t bear the thought. She knew it was the only kind thing to do. She would write down instructions and leave them somewhere where they’d be found. But what would she instruct? Take her dog to the vet and have her put to sleep? She should do a will, even though there was hardly anything to leave to a niece and nephew in another country. But she should do it, for Princess’s sake. Her fear for Princess and her fear for herself burned in her eyes. And Rosa whimpered to herself in Italian.

Louise Sidway stuck her thumb under the leather to adjust her shoulder-strap bag. She didn’t realize how tired she was until she climbed the two flights of subway stairs onto the sidewalk and counted the long crosstown blocks she’d have to walk from Lexington Avenue. She decided to stay on 86
^th
Street, which seemed shorter because of store windows she could glance into and the crowds she’d have to pass through. Her feet hurt, her back ached, and she wished she could get home and just undress and relax. But she couldn’t because of Honda.

As she approached the last landing in her building, his whimpering turned to yelping. “Sh-h-h, you want to get us thrown out?” she called, knowing he would only cry louder at the sound of her voice and that the neighbors would complain anyway. When people asked her why she chose such an unusual name, she casually answered that it had been the name of a Japanese lover she once had. That always shut them up. The truth was he reminded her of a motorcycle. She smiled as she unlocked the door and braced herself for the streamlined mass of black, with the chrome-colored triangle on his forehead, that would jump on her. His front paws rested on her shoulders.

“I know you’re part Labrador, but nobody ever told me you’re part horse too,” she teased him. Following their ritual, Honda turned, raced to the bedroom, and stood on her bed to wait for her. She dropped her bag and followed him, collapsing with tiredness. She held him tightly against her, one hand kneading the thick fur of his neck. She kissed his face. “Hey, you gorgeous fella. I missed you.”

After resting like that for a few minutes, cooing and stroking, she jumped up. “Come on, kid. If we don’t go out now, the old lady’s not going to make it.” She hated using a choke collar on him, but he had once tugged so hard that he had come right out of his leather collar and almost gotten hit by a car. It was for his own protection. Louise gulped at the thought of something happening to him.

She’d been living in Manhattan only a year when her parents were killed by an exploding gas heater. Although Honda was really her dog, she had left him behind when she moved to New York. He was still young enough to adjust in a new home, where he’d have a long future. But his mournful eyes added to her grief. She couldn’t explain his loss of two people to him. How could she, when she didn’t understand it herself? He stayed close to her for the two weeks she was back in Maryland. She sobbed into his chest, screamed her anger at God into his ear, and held on to him for support. He was her only link to her past, the only living connection between her and her parents.

She rented a car so she could take him back with her and kept her sanity by talking to him for the five-hour drive. She had to move, because the landlady had a fit when she saw the dog. Still, she would have given up anything she had for him; she still would, because she loved him more than anything else she had.

Whenever she brought a man home, Honda always acted as chaperone. Some of her dates resented him; some would ask her to lock him up because they were afraid to kiss her in front of him; some were jealous. Honda stared at them with wary eyes, daring them to touch her. Except for rare occasions, she was relieved when they left. She’d cuddle up with Honda and tell him he was still the only man in her life. Her therapist once told her she deliberately used the dog as an excuse to get rid of the guys. She figured her dog was worth ten guys. She was bored with the therapist anyway, so she stopped going.

A cab turned the corner of York Avenue without slowing down, its horn blaring. They both jumped backward. It reminded Louise of the man who had told her, “It’s cruel of you to keep such a big dog in an apartment. He belongs in the country.” The guy was a schmuck. But Louise had felt terribly guilty in the beginning. Then she decided people belong in the country too; cities are not natural places to live. But dogs don’t have any more choice of circumstances than human beings do. Ask Honda which he’d rather have—a loving home in New York with her, or his freedom in the country with someone else.

“You’d rather be with me, right, Champ?” she asked him now. He was the only thing that really mattered in her life. If anybody ever tried to hurt him, she thought she’d kill for him. In fact, once, when she was very lonely and very depressed, she had…Jesus, she didn’t want to think about that. She turned her head away, as if Honda could see her shame, and roughly yanked him towards the curb.