Gaits of Heaven (3 page)

Rita rolled her eyes. “Princeton,” she said. “Otherwise known as the University of Outer Mongolia.”

“Also,” said Leah, “Caprice’s therapist is here.”

“Who’s her therapist?” Rita asked.

“Missy something. Zinn. That’s it. Missy Zinn.”

“She’s quite good,” Rita said. “At least someone in the family is getting help.”

“They all are,” Leah said. “They’re all in therapy.”

The door to the house opened, and Rowdy, Sammy, and Lady ran down the stairs. Steve followed. When I was alone with the dogs, there were strict rules about who was allowed to be loose with whom. Rowdy and Kimi were fine together if there was no food around. Lady, who was no threat to anyone, got along great with all the other dogs, but under no circumstances were Kimi and India to be together unsupervised, and the same went for Rowdy and Sammy. Kimi and India had never actually had a fight, but I’d seen Kimi deliberately provoke India, who was capable of retaliation. As for Rowdy and Sammy, they were both intact male malamutes, and dog aggression certainly does occur in this breed, especially same-sex aggression. Under my tutelage, Rowdy had learned to behave himself with other dogs, but his bred-in-the-bone inclination was to tolerate no disrespect from anything canine. Sammy, however, even in the throes of raging adolescent hormones, was one of the few malamutes I’d ever known who acted oblivious to challenges. If other dogs barked or growled at him, his first response was to throw me a bewildered look that asked,
Why don’t they want to be friends
? This from Rowdy’s son! I couldn’t get over it. I mean, who expects Tony Soprano to sire a pacifist? Not me. Consequently, I kept a close eye on the boys. Steve, however, habitually let the pack loose together, possibly because he trusted himself to repair any injuries the dogs inflicted on one another. I’d quit warning him to be careful. For one thing, he was careful. For another, the dogs responded to his expectation of good behavior by being good dogs.

After Steve, Rita, and Leah had greeted one another, and after Leah and I had gone into the house and returned with a bottle of wine and four glasses, Steve asked, “Has Holly told you about her new job?”

“Yes, I have. And it’s not a job. Rita knows Ted and Eumie, and Leah knows Eumie’s daughter, Caprice. The consensus is that this family is not a model of mental health.”

“I don’t know them well,” said Rita, accepting a glass of red wine from Steve. “I’ve met them. I know them by reputation.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“Within their field, it’s okay, as far as I know.”

“And their field is?” I prodded.

Rita was expressionless. “Trauma. Ted wrote a book called
Ordinary Trauma
. Lots of people find it helpful.” She sipped from the glass Steve had handed her.

“And that’s all you have to say about it?” Leah demanded.

“What I said is perfectly truthful. Lots of people find it helpful. Some of my clients have read it.”

Steve was watching her.

“And,” I said, “have found it helpful. Don’t tell us again.”

“It isn’t a bad book,” Rita said. “Really, it isn’t. It’s just that Ted has a very inclusive definition of trauma. But he’s perfectly sincere about it. And he’s connected to a place in western Massachusetts that’s, uh, in line with his thinking.”

“Is that the place you tried to send Kevin to?” Leah asked.

Our next-door neighbor, Kevin Dennehy, is a Cambridge police lieutenant. One time when the chronic stress of his job had become acute, Rita had tried to persuade him to spend some time at a retreat center of some kind. Her plan failed when Kevin discovered that one of the stress-reducing activities consisted of learning to feel at one with nature by developing the ability to identify wild animals by their spoor. He’d accused Rita of trying to send him to the woods to find raccoon dung, and there had ended her attempt at intervention.

“No,” Rita said. “This one is called CHIRP.”

“Birds,” I said. “Instead of raccoons.”

“Not at all. Center for Healing, Individuation, Recovery, and Peace. CHIRP.”

“Oh, God,” Steve said.

“Yes,” said Rita, “except that it’s more spiritual than outright religious. It’s a sort of spa, I think, oriented toward personal development. Retreat center. And a detox facility for people who need support rather than actual detox. Twelve-step programs, yoga classes, meditation, steam baths. For all that it’s focused on construing almost everything as trauma or addiction, hence Ted Green’s involvement, it’s supposed to be quite luxurious. Maybe that’s part of the recovery. I don’t know.”

“Steam baths,” I said. “That sounds wonderful.”

Leah was skeptical. “How much do you want to bet that dogs aren’t allowed?”

“I think Leah’s right,” Rita said. “There’s probably a concern about allergies.”

“What’s it called again?” I asked.

“CHIRP,” Rita said. “I assume it’s intended to sound upbeat.”

“Center for…?”

“Healing, Individuation, Recovery, and Peace.”

“With no dogs allowed? Healing, individuation, recovery, and peace—the very definition of the magical powers of dogs. You know what, Rita? Steam baths or no steam baths, that place is no retreat center. What that place is, Rita, is a scam.”

“You’re so quick to judge,” said Rita. “It’s a good thing you didn’t become a therapist.”

“I am a therapist,” I said. “Remember? I’m the one who’s going to save Dolfo.”

In my mind’s eye I see Eumie and Ted on that same
Thursday night as they prepare for bed. They are in the sumptuously renovated bathroom that adjoins the master bedroom of the Greens’ big house on Avon Hill. The neighborhood is perhaps a ten-minute walk from my house and, like mine, a twenty-minute walk from Harvard Square. Less grand than Brattle Street, the area looks misleadingly suburban and affordable. A newcomer to Cambridge, Massachusetts, someone unfamiliar with real estate values in the vicinity of Harvard, having taken into account the spaciousness of the houses, the well-kept appearance of the lawns and shrubs, the aura of comfort and prosperity, and the absence of commercial establishments and multifamily dwellings, would guess the average price of a house on Avon Hill to be between one-tenth and one-fourth the actual market value. Four years earlier, when Ted and Eumie had reluctantly realized that Brattle Street was beyond their means, as was the area near the Cambridge Common and the delightful little neighborhood between Kirkland Street and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, they reconciled themselves to the comparatively unpretentious pleasures of Avon Hill by resolving to invest in their newly acquired eighteen-room house all the money they’d saved by not buying in a neighborhood they’d have preferred, which is to say that they agreed to spend a great deal of money that they didn’t have.

The results so far had been satisfying. The master bath, in particular, was sybaritic beyond their dreams and, in fact, beyond the desires of most of the old-time residents of the gigantic and unaffordable colonials and Victorians that Ted and Eumie coveted. Whereas many houses on Brattle Street itself had bathrooms with ineradicably stained sinks and the original claw-footed tubs, Ted and Eumie’s master bath had a Jacuzzi, an enclosed shower with steam, and what was known as a double vanity, two sinks, each with its own mirrored medicine cabinet.

This Thursday evening, I see in my mind’s eye the masters of that palatial facility as they stand before the open medicine-cabinet doors of the double vanity and prepare for sleep by selecting from among a tremendous variety of soporifics, mood stabilizers, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and neuropsychiatric medications presumed to have beneficial effects even though no one quite knows what those effects are or why the preparations should produce them.

“Ambien is safe with anything, isn’t it?” Eumie wonders aloud. “It’s fine with Prozac. And Neurontin is really compatible with everything, I think. So is lithium.” She shakes two capsules into her hand and washes them down with the remains of her gin and tonic. She then drinks a small glass of soy milk and a small glass that contains a concoction of herbs and vegetable juices.

Ted, who has been peering at the plastic bottles in his very own medicine cabinet, selects one and tenderly offers it to his wife. “Do you want to try Sonata?”

“Thanks,” says Eumie, “I’ve tried it before, and it just doesn’t work for me.” Studying the vial she is holding, she asks, “What’s Paxil? It’s an SSRI, isn’t it? Something like Zoloft.”

“Eumie, those things take time to kick in. They aren’t going to do a thing for you tonight.”

“Depakote,” Eumie says. “Is that slow, too? I’m a little volatile. Maybe that’s—”

“Have you asked Dr. Youngman about sleep? Addressing the, uh, sense of volatility is one thing, but you need something for sleep.”

“What are you taking?”

With heartfelt affection, Ted says, “Good old Valium.”

“Valium! I’d almost forgotten about it. Can I have some?”

Wordlessly, Ted shakes three yellow tablets into the palm of his hand, gives one to Eumie, and dry swallows the other two. After closing the cabinet doors on what are almost like twin wine cellars, Ted and Eumie companionably brush their teeth and enter the bedroom, where Dolfo occupies the center of the king-size bed. Like Dolfo, the comforter is multicolored and expensive. The resemblance is no accident. Eumie chose the comforter to match the dog’s coat. At the sight of Ted and Eumie, Dolfo beats his peculiar tail, leaps to his feet, bounds off the bed, sniffs a corner of it, and, with a goofy smile on his face, lifts his leg, and empties his full bladder on the comforter.

Ted and Eumie exchange little smiles and shakes of the head. Eumie reaches for a spray bottle of odor-neutralizing enzyme solution that sits ready on the top of her dresser, sprays the drenched corner of the bed, returns the bottle to the dresser, and settles herself in bed. Ted is already under the covers. Dolfo jumps onto the comforter, turns around twice, and lies down between Ted and Eumie, who turn out their lights and wait for their medications to act. Dolfo, however, falls immediately to sleep. Or so I imagine.

At three o’clock on Friday afternoon, I managed to find
a parking space only a half block from the address Eumie Brainard-Green had given me that morning when we’d set the time for our meeting. I’d spent the day indoors working on a reminiscence of my late mother for the official publication of the American Kennel Club, the
AKC Gazette
, which was planning an issue focused on the golden retriever. Both of my parents bred and showed our goldens, but my mother was a grande dame of the breed. My father, I thought, would be pleased with what I’d written about Marissa, and I’d tried to avoid saying anything that would distress his second wife, Gabrielle, whom he’d married only a few years earlier. As I’d taken pains not to mention in the article, my mother was a hypercompetent martinet who set high standards for her dogs and for me, and who vigilantly monitored our performance with the intention of correcting deviations from perfection. In contrast, Gabrielle was warm and easygoing. I not only adored her but felt grateful to her for marrying the most impossible person I’ve ever met, thereby relieving me of the burden of worrying about him all alone.

Anyway, I’d squandered a beautiful spring day by spending it indoors, and as I took care not to trip on the uneven brick sidewalk, I mulled over my goals for the meeting with the Greens and Dolfo, the principal goal being to do whatever we did outside in the sun and fresh air. In the universal manner of overconfident fools, I assumed that my experience and expertise would carry me through; except to pack a tote bag with a collar, a four-foot leash, a clicker, and six different kinds of dog-delicious food treats, I’d made no preparations. If the animal-loving forces that govern the universe had wanted to reward me for my efforts to improve the lot of the creatures who had helped Homo sapiens to evolve, I’d have lost my footing on the rough sidewalk and taken the kind of hard fall that might have warned me of the consequence of pride.

As it was, I walked smoothly and confidently past a parking area paved with cobblestones to the steep flight of steps that led up to the Greens’ house, which was a big, rambling brown-shingled place with a rose-covered fence, bright flowers, and a charming veranda. The fence, the steps, the porch, the shutters, and the other trim were neatly painted in cream. Arrayed on the veranda were wicker chairs and end tables, and from the beams hung baskets of flowering plants and ivy that were being tended by a well-muscled, dark-haired young man in a T-shirt printed with words that I’d just read on a van parked on the street:
Year After Year: Perennial Care for Perennials
. The front door had a shiny brass knocker and matching doorbell. Mounted on the frame was a little brass cylinder that I recognized as a mezuzah, a container for a tiny scroll, a fixture of traditional Jewish households. A Jewish friend had explained to me that the mezuzah was a reminder of God’s presence and commandments. Had I known what I was in for, I’d have paid attention to the mezuzah and found comfort in the knowledge that if my own efforts failed, I could turn to a truly High Power for help with Dolfo and the Greens. In fact, after giving the mezuzah no more than a glance, I rang the bell and, as I waited, made unproductive use of my brain by wondering why Year After Year was taking care of the lobelia, nasturtiums, and other annuals in the baskets. The answer should have been obvious: because the company was paid generously. Had I put my mind to work, I’d have focused on the row of shoes and rain boots to the right of the doormat. What’s more, when Eumie opened the door, I’d have taken in the rows of shoes and sandals in the foyer, realized their significance, and wondered how any sane person could exist in a shoeless house with an unhousebroken dog. That answer, too, should have been obvious: chez Green, sanity had nothing to do with anything.

That’s not what Eumie said when she greeted me, of course. And
greeted
is an understatement. Just as she’d done with Ron, she squealed, threw her arms around me, and welcomed me as if I were a beloved old friend she hadn’t seen for years. “Holly, come in!” Gesturing to the footwear on the floor, she said softly, as if confiding a secret, “This is a shoeless house. You don’t mind, do you.” It was a statement or perhaps an order or even a commandment. “We have socks and slippers you can use.”

Reminding myself to watch before I stepped, I eased off my running shoes and said, “I’m wearing socks. I’ll be fine.” Actually, if it hadn’t been for Dolfo, I’d have been delighted. The phenomenon of shoeless houses fascinated me, mainly because everything about the concept was not just foreign to the way I lived but entirely incompatible with it. I’d been in two shoeless houses before this, and both times, I’d tried to imagine explaining to my husband, my friends, and my relatives that henceforth they were to remove their shoes at the door and walk around in slippers or stocking feet. That’s about as far as I’d gone with the notion, since it was clear that my husband, my father, and Kevin Dennehy would have been unable to comprehend what I was saying; they just plain wouldn’t have understood. The same went for the dogs, who didn’t wear shoes, of course, but who’d somehow have been mystified by the ban anyway.

“Ted is dying to see you,” said Eumie, who was wearing loose, flowing white garments, white slippers, and large silver earrings. On her left wrist were six silver bangle bracelets. I wondered whether the peasant-priestess garments and the artisanal silver represented an effort to adapt to Cambridge, which favors natural fibers, ethnic or handcrafted accessories, and shoes too hideous to deform the feet. As on the previous evening, Eumie’s hair was, however, artfully blond and her makeup copious and colorful. “We both feel awful that we’ve waited so long to get help for Dolfo,” she said. “It’s not like us. We are
not
help-rejecting types.”

By now, we were in the front hall, which was redolent of freshly applied Simple Solution, an enzyme product that neutralizes dog urine. Although Dolfo was not in sight, his presence was visible on the chewed rails of the graceful staircase and on the gnawed fringe of an otherwise lovely Persian rug.

“I thought we might work outdoors,” I suggested, not only because I wanted to enjoy the spring day but because Eumie and Ted might expect me to clean up after Dolfo if—when—he messed in the house. As Eumie had just said, she was not a help-rejecting type. Visible through the archway to the dining room was a barefoot woman energetically polishing a banquet-size table. Another woman, this one wearing slippers, was dusting a menorah that sat on a buffet. Glancing at them, I asked, “Your housekeepers?”

“They’re from Maid for You. They’re just tiding us over. We really prefer to have people who become part of the family. Ted should be free in a few minutes. Where on earth is Dolfo?”

Eumie set off on a Dolfo hunt with me trailing behind. We passed through a large living room, an even larger family room with massive leather furniture and a wall of glass doors, and a kitchen that was all cherry, granite, and stainless steel. All three sinks were piled with dirty dishes, and there were crumbs scattered on the hardwood floor. “Dolfo! Dolfo!” Eumie kept squealing. From behind a door in a corridor off the kitchen came the sounds of scratching and retching. Eumie opened the door to reveal a pink-tiled powder room and the clownish dog, who greeted us by dropping the bar of soap in his mouth into the puddle of soapy saliva at his feet. Bubbles dripped from his mouth and his tongue, which was the correct size for an Irish wolfhound, perhaps, and, being far too long to fit in Dolfo’s mouth, was doomed perpetually to loll from his mouth. Neither his tongue nor the taste of soap appeared to bother him at all. On the contrary, he wagged his silly tail and, catching my eye, gave what I thought was a smile of happy recognition.

Eumie was furious. “Those damn cleaners! They shut him in here like an—”

“Animal,” I finished. “He doesn’t seem to have swallowed much of the soap.” Blocking his exit, I said, “Eumie, if you’ll get a couple of paper towels, I’ll swab his mouth out, and he’ll be fine.”

Before I had malamutes, I might mention, I was a straightforward person. Now, thanks to Rowdy and especially thanks to Kimi, I’m manipulative and opportunistic. During Eumie’s brief absence, which I’d engineered, I reached into my tote bag, got a thin collar and a short leash, and had Dolfo dressed for the day by the time she returned.

“Dolfo’s school clothes,” I told her. “Ninety-nine percent of housebreaking is preventing accidents.”

Ted appeared in time to hear the statement. Dolfo, I might brag, didn’t jump on Ted. Rather, he obligingly looked at my face, and I fed him a treat. Dog training defined: you get the dog to train you to do what he wants when he does what you want. And people training? Oh, my. The next forty-five minutes could have served as a demonstration of how not to do it. We moved into the family room, which was at the back of the house. It had a floor of terra-cotta tile, a fireplace, big, comfortable leather couches and chairs, and a wall of glass doors that opened to a wide deck. Visible through the glass was a yard ten times the size of Steve’s and mine with a new wooden fence, teak benches, and an extraordinary number of large and expensive-looking bird feeders. There were glass-walled copper feeders on poles, hanging globes and elaborately designed suet baskets suspended from tree branches, and two platform feeders mounted on the railing of the deck. The first of my many therapeutic errors was to allow myself to be diverted from the task of housebreaking Dolfo by asking about the feeders, which were being cleaned and filled by a man who wore white coveralls with a company name embroidered on the back: On the Wing.

“Birds are special to us,” Ted said. “Eumie and I deal with trauma in our patients and”—he lowered his mellifluous voice—“in our own lives. The concept of flight as a beautiful adaptation has special significance for us.”

I’d intended to say that Steve was slaving to maintain a couple of feeders that were being raided and ruined by squirrels, but I felt almost ashamed to admit that winged creatures had no great symbolic meaning for my husband, who, in ordinary fashion, wanted to feed birds because he enjoyed watching them.

“Our own trauma histories,” said Eumie, “are probably what accounts for this delay in connecting to Dolfo’s needs, and—”

“Speaking of Dolfo,” I began.

“Oh, we are!” Eumie squealed. “You see, just as birds represent the healthy, adaptive flight from overwhelming experiences, Dolfo represents grounding in the safe sensations and perceptions of the here and now.”

My second major mistake: instead of zooming in on my area of expertise, namely, dog behavior, I got sucked into Ted and Eumie’s anthropomorphic perspective. Simultaneously, I made my third big error, which was to ask a routine question about Dolfo’s history. “Dogs certainly are the ultimate in the here and now,” I agreed in an effort to form an alliance with Dolfo’s owners. “But they have histories, too. Maybe you could outline Dolfo’s for me.”

Eumie smirked at Ted. “Isn’t that cute! She’s doing just what therapists do. Most therapists. Dr. Needleman spent our first two sessions on it. She is not gestalt at all. She’s an analyst. You know, Ted, now that I think about it, Dr. Foote hasn’t delved all that deeply into our individual narratives, has she? She’s more oriented toward our dialoguing, isn’t she?” To me, Eumie said, “That’s our couples therapist. When you’re dealing with two people with our kinds of histories, well—”

I knew exactly who Dr. Foote was. In fact, I’d “seen” Vee Foote, in the expensive sense of the word, after the combination of a head injury and Steve’s marriage to Anita the Fiend had left me…But that’s another story. Rita, who had referred me to Dr. Foote, now considered her greedy and incompetent. I, on the other hand, pitied Vee Foote just as I pitied everyone else afflicted with a pathological fear of dogs, which is to say, a paralyzing fear of life itself.

“The whole issue of time orientation in therapy is interesting,” said Ted. “I’d be curious to know how Missy Zinn handles it with Caprice…” And he was off. His own individual therapist was a Dr. Tortorello, Eumie’s was named Nixie Needleman, Caprice’s was the aforementioned Missy Zinn, and Wyeth’s was Peter York, who, as I didn’t say, was a young psychologist whom I knew because he was a friend of Rita’s and was about to go into supervision with her. Ted and Eumie shared a psychopharmacologist, Quinn Youngman, whom I knew because Rita was dating him. In addition to the traditional shrinks, there were herbalists, acupuncturists, massage therapists, Reiki healers, hypnotherapists, and experts in guided imagery, and there must have been primary-care physicians and dentists as well.

“Dolfo,” I summarized, “clearly inhabits a richly populated environment. So, all the more need for him to learn the skills required to be a valued member of this, uh, complex support network.” Having staked my claim to the conversational field, I consolidated my position by demonstrating clicker training, which is good old operant conditioning with positive reinforcement for desired behavior. The sound of the clicker gets paired with food and thus becomes a secondary reinforcer that precisely marks behavioral perfection, so to speak. Dolfo did great. By the tenth time I’d “charged the clicker” by clicking and giving a treat, he was watching me with an expression that said, “Ah-hah! Click means that food is coming!” I went on to explain that we’d click and treat when Dolfo produced outdoors.

“You see what Holly’s doing?” Ted asked Eumie. “Instilling hope! Showing that healing is possible.”

Heeling
with two
e
s was possible, if a bit advanced for Dolfo and his owners, so my misunderstanding was inevitable. Fortunately, I caught on when Ted said something about recovery, and instead of sounding stupid or ridiculous, I said that we had every reason to feel hopeful. The bird feeder professional having finished his work, we then spent about ten minutes outside in the fenced yard, where Dolfo cooperated by lifting his leg on trees and shrubs, thus giving Ted and Eumie opportunities to click and treat.