Paws before dying (10 page)

“Is there some particular handler you have in mind?”

“Yes,” I said. “Heather Ross. You know who she is.”

“Silver hair? With the silver standard poodle.”

“Yeah.”

“Rose Engleman was that much of a threat to her?”

“Well, probably from her point of view. For one thing, Rose also had poodles, and they’d been sort of archrivals for years. Poodle people are always so competitive. They have such high standards, because poodles can be such incredible obedience dogs. Malamute people aren’t like that, not in obedience.”

He laughed.

“Well, okay. In obedience, we practically never even see each other, especially around here. The only malamutes you ever see in obedience around here are mine, but the point is, I wouldn’t, and other malamute people wouldn’t, either, because they obviously aren’t the world’s greatest obedience dogs.”

“Misery loves company,” he said.

“It’s sort of true. When I see that someone’s put a U.D. on a mal—yes, it actually has been done—I feel grateful that somebody proved it’s possible, and I know how much agony went into it. But there are millions of poodles in obedience, and they aren’t as easy to train as people say. You have to work hard, and then even when your dog is really good, you’ve got lots of competition. With a poodle, anything below one ninety or one ninety-five is a disgrace, or that’s what they think, which is why they’re the people you see painting the backs of their shoes to match the dog.”

“What?”

“It’s an old trick. If you think the dog’s going to sit a little crooked, and you’ve got a black dog, you make sure the backs of your shoes are black, so the judge won’t notice if the sit’s a little off. I don’t do that, but with Rowdy, I always wear a dark skirt, and I never wear anything with a line down the front, a row of buttons or anything the judge could use to line up on and see if he sits just slightly crooked. That’s fair enough. It’s not like taping a hunk of raw liver to your left thigh.”

“Jesus!”

“You laugh! People do it. Anyway, how did we end up talking about dogs? Here’s what I know about Heather. First of all, since she’d known Rose for years, she probably knew she had a pacemaker. I didn’t see Rose all that often, but Heather did, since they both belong to Nonantum. Rose was showing the signs of some kind of heart trouble and then was in the hospital and then got better, so Heather must’ve known. Second, obviously, she benefits. She’s already started planning a memorial trophy that she can win. It’s disgusting. And the other thing is that according to the people who live across the street from the park, lightning didn’t strike there. They were home. And they say it didn’t hit. So what did? It’s raining. Rose is probably standing in a puddle of water. She has a pacemaker. She reaches out and touches the gate, and it’s metal. And something happens.”

“And? You don’t sound like you’re done.”

“And, look. Heather isn’t the only one who gained, and with the pacemaker, Rose was vulnerable, more vulnerable than most people. That’s what’s bothering me most, I think. A lot of things can screw up a pacemaker, and a lot of people had something against her. Like Jack’s family. She wasn’t Jewish, and when he married her, they sat shiva. And then at the house, his sister was there, and his father was arriving, and it felt like a sort of family reunion. And there are other people, people who had some kind of case against her. One is that son of a bitch Martori, the judge. You know who he is? She got him reprimanded. And there were these other people she accused of child abuse. Anyhow, the fact is, there were a lot of people who weren’t happy to have her alive.”

Chapter 10

I woke up the next morning with Heather, Abbey, and double handling on my mind. Obedience competition, it seemed to me, is a game that combines a giant version of bridge with an elaborate form of solitaire. You have a partner, so do lots of other players, and one of your aims is to do better than they do, but your main contest is the one you play with yourself. Double handling is as dirty as cheating at cards and as pointless as cheating at solitaire, which is not to say that it’s easy, especially if it’s as smooth as Heather and Abbey’s.

Rowdy was sleeping on the floor under the rattly old Hot-point portable air conditioner, but before I opened my eyes, I heard him stir, and a couple of seconds later, I could feel him staring at me. You may be able to convince your spouse, your lover, or even your children that you’re still asleep when you’re not, but you can’t fool a dog.

“Good morning, buddy,” I said.

He wagged his entire rear end and made that funny face mala-mutes put on when they’d like to bark like normal dogs, but don’t remember how. Then he woo-wooed at me, and I gave up and got up. When I’d let him out and in, measured out exactly one cupful of ANF30, put it in his bowl, and watched him devour half of it before the bowl hit the floor, I stood there in the kitchen and thought about malamutes and Jews, about my own family and Leah’s, and about Jack Engleman’s—in other words, about insiders and outsiders. Before that odd early morning moment, I’d assumed that no one with four WASP grandparents could grasp Jack’s family’s response to Rose and their marriage, but it came to me that the relationship between Leah’s parents and my own was in some ways as if they had sat shiva for each other. From my parents’ viewpoint, the problem with Arthur—and Cassie, ever since she married him— wasn’t anything he’d done, anything personal. The real issue was that we were dog people, but Arthur belonged to another clan. All of the personal gripes stemmed from that radical objection: He wasn’t one of us. Well, so what?

This is where malamutes and Jews come in, and don’t be offended. I’m serious. To my way of thinking, you see, the Alaskan malamute is, honest to God, God’s chosen dog, and no matter how much I love and admire dogs of any and all other breeds, I don’t want my malamutes jeopardizing the identity of their clan, because if enough of them do, there won’t be any clan anymore. How come? Because malamutes are so much better than other dogs? As bird dogs, guard dogs, or lapdogs, they’re useless, and if you try to get a mal to herd sheep, he’ll herd them directly into his stomach. A golden retriever, sheltie, German shepherd, poodle, border collie, or the average specimen of fifty or sixty other breeds, not to mention the average all-American mixed breed dog, is a better obedience prospect than the average malamute. Siberian huskies are faster racing dogs, bloodhounds track better than malamutes do, and if I ever lost my sight, even I wouldn’t trust a mal as a guide dog. Superior? No. Just different. Wonderful. Special. Chosen. And don’t think I’m confusing dogs with people, either. I don’t know whether Jews are different from other people, but that’s not the point. What I understood was the feeling people have about belonging to a clan and the importance people can attach to preserving it. I wouldn’t have bred Rowdy to Vinnie, my best golden ever, and there wouldn’t have been anything personal about it. Is it fair to have the same attitude toward people? I didn’t know, but I was beginning to understand the feeling.

“So,” I said to Rowdy, “the hypothetical situation is this: You get loose and fall hopelessly in love with a golden retriever. You won’t look at another mal, refuse to come home, and you father a litter of mixed breed pups. How do I feel? Okay, angry. It may be silly, but I can’t help it. And since we’re talking about people, let’s magnify it a lot, because the fact is, I could always get some more dogs, but children are hard to replace. And do I want your mate dead? Am I angry enough to kill her? If it’s the only way I get you back? Of course not. I don’t want anything enough to kill a dog.” But not everyone feels that way about dogs. Or about other people.

Half an hour later, when Rita stopped in for coffee, I told her what I’d been thinking about, and she told me not to do what I’ve just done, namely, tell anyone.

“Holly, look,” she said emphatically. “I never give advice. Hardly ever. But I’m telling you, don’t say any of this to anyone else, okay? I know you, and I understand that you’re not kidding. Dogs are how you understand Arabs, the Mideast situation, feminism, the Holy Trinity, psychotherapy, higher education, and everyone and everything else, but I’m telling you, you need to be aware that most people are going to find this frivolous and offensive, and you need to keep it to yourself. If it ever comes up, just say that you think you can empathize a little, or whatever. Don’t mention dogs.”

“Well, I won’t mention them to Charlotte Zager,” I promised.

“Who?”

“Jack Engleman’s sister. Charlotte Zager. She’s cleaning my teeth this afternoon.”

“What?”

“Well, she
is
a dentist,” I said.

In the midafternoon, I was sitting in a blue plastic stackable chair in a yellow plastic office in Newton Centre. I was trying to fill out the patient information form handed me on a clipboard by the receptionist. The form asked how I was referred to Dr. Zager, and it seemed inappropriate to write that I’d met her while visiting her brother when his gentile wife had just died under suspicious circumstances, that it was the first time Dr. Zager had been in the house, because the family sat shiva for Jack when he married Rose, that Dr. Zager seemed to me to be making herself all too at home there all of a sudden, and that wondered what kind of person she was and couldn’t think of any easier way to pursue an acquaintance with a dentist than to get my teeth cleaned. Besides, there wasn’t room on the form.

The memory of Charlotte Zager’s molar-wrenching handshake made me a little nervous, but after an assistant showed me into an examining room, put a bib around my neck, and cranked me in a  reclining dental chair, Dr. Zager came in, remembered me, didn’t ask any weird questions about how I happened to be there, and said she’d check my teeth when the hygienist finished cleaning them. Although I’d seen my own hygienist only a month earlier, this one, a pickle-mouthed blonde who delivered a moralistic scolding about regular flossing, spent half an hour lacerating my gums. When she finally tore her gloves off, Charlotte Zager came back and took a remarkably gentle look.

“Holly,” she pronounced, “I think your teeth can be saved.” In case you think sh was kidding, you should know that my father considers fluoride to be one of the principal instruments of the communist conspiracy. My teeth are a cold-war battlefield. Charlotte Zager was the Gorbachev of dentistry. She made me chomp into a mass of nauseating wax and told me I’d get a call when my fluoride trays came back from the lab and that when they did, the hygienist would show me how to use them. Then she asked whether I had a dog.

“Two,” I said.

“You do know about caring for their teeth?” she said. “They have teeth, too, you know.”

The most recent proof I bore of the truth of her claim was a scar left by Kimi, but I didn’t hold up my hand and point to it. It was mostly my own fault, and people don’t always understand that Kimi didn’t mean it. (I never tell people that if she’d been serious, I wouldn’t have the hand at all.)

“I do try to brush their teeth,” I said.

If this sounds bizarre, you’re behind the canine times. These days, the well-groomed Rover has his own toothbrush and special toothpaste that’s safe to swallow. If he suffers from halitosis, he also gets his gums squirted with mouthwash glop, and if he’s lucky, he gnaws on a bone-shaped hunk of dental floss.

“And regular professional cleaning?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “They’re both fairly young, and their teeth are good, and I don’t think it’s worth the risk of the general anesthetic.” Ready for a historic first? I swear, it was the first time I’d even considered this question, never mind actually uttered it, and the words felt stranger in my mouth than the lingering taste of wax: “Um, why are we talking about dogs?”

It might have been a first for me, but not for her. “My son is a veterinarian.”

And does he always ask his patients about their owners teeth? But I didn’t say it. “Oh, what’s his name? I have a good friend who’s a vet.”

“Don,” she said.

“Zager?”

She nodded.

“Is he around here?”

“Newtonville,” she said. “On Washington Street.”

On my way home, I took a slight detour to satisfy my curiosity. Not far from the corner of Walnut Street was a shabby two-story house with a curtained storefront and a fresh white shingle that showed a stylized outline of a Scottie and the name Donald M. Zager, D.V.M. The dumpy faded building had a view of the section of the Mass. Pike that has a Star Market built over it. It reminded me of something Rose Engleman had said, that Newton isn’t the way people think it is. As I know from Steve, who hates the business part of being a vet, even someone with great credentials and an endearing whelping-box manner has to remember that owners care about appearances even if the patients don’t. Donald Zager’s clinic looked like a place you’d go to have your palm read or your cards done, not somewhere you’d want your dog neutered or your cat defleaed.

Chapter 11

“JUST give it back,” Jeff was telling Leah when I walked in. His tone was reasonable, but his expression was hurt and sullen. The humidity had made deep-golden ringlets of his hair. He looked like a gawky, pissed-off Renaissance angel.

Leah’s hair was meticulously French-braided in cornrows and plaits, but an aura of tendrils had escaped. Her eyes were pleased, her mouth stubborn.