The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (25 page)

T
HE PITTIES WERE
a few days away. I was aware of the presence of more volunteers, plus tension, plus a concentrated buzz that felt like preparations for a storm. The lower floor of the Sanctuary was off-limits to everyone such as myself. My dogs were spending their nights in the upper crates and living full-time in the open space of our classroom. For the first time, Boomer wanted the door of his crate closed. He didn't want it latched, just shut, which meant shutting out Josie. She took it personally, but Dora didn't like her crawling in there with him. Boomer didn't like having Dora boss him around. So he copped out, although he probably thought of it as being gentlemanly. He often pretended to be asleep, even when Josie paw-knocked on his door, looking crushed.

We had food up here now, bowls, everything they needed.

Giant George was busy all the time and barely speaking to me. Louise showed up in my class to work on “lie down” with Shadow. Her efforts went nowhere. Cracks had appeared in her calmness; she was too distracted.

Even our mealtime quiet was compromised. For the first time, volunteers in small batches were eating with us, keeping silence while expanding the level of noise. The married man kind of close to my age who reminded me of Romeo turned up often. I kept my distance but overheard him one morning in the hall, talking to staffers. They lowered their voices when they noticed me, but I realized he was an up-up in the Network and so was his wife. By now I'd seen her. I didn't want her to look like a twenty-something version of a perfect Juliet. I was hoping for someone who looked like the daughter of the ugliest witch in
Macbeth.

Apparently those two had plenty of leisure time and also money. I had picked up the understanding that they were bankrolling the pitties. If I felt a little splinter of jealousy now and then about that, I made myself think of Othello, and then I pulled the splinter out.

Alfie was letting Tasha into his lie-down space, not only because she was huge and he agreed with her that she could do whatever she wanted. Alfie and Tasha had started looking at each other like they were thinking about becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, which annoyed Shadow. He was awfully sulky, but at least he wasn't toothy like Josie. She kept going over to Alfie and Tasha to nip their faces and chew on their tails; she'd run off before they could swat her. Dora was in a phase of being aloof. She didn't need to learn basic commands. She had them. She was saying, I didn't need to be taught anything ever. I'm incredibly cultured. I was
born
this way.

I knew I had to do something about Josie and the biting and the don't you dare pat me, Evie. But I didn't know what. Margaret had told me to keep a muzzle for her in my pocket. The idea was, Josie was so disgusted by the sight of one, pulling it out of a pocket just a little would give her the chance to rethink her course of action. I was supposed to watch for signs of snapping, not stand around waiting for her problem to somehow take care of itself. Anyway, my pockets were always too full of treats.

Everyone was tense, tense, tense, yet I wasn't complaining about a thing. I went along in my own private orbit, feeling, at times, almost as buoyant as a bubble. I also felt I should substitute for frazzled Louise. I stepped into the void, filling the need of the dogs to have someone around who could send them vibrations of serenity. I was proud of myself: calm, strong, admirable Evie, star trainee and never mind that I was the only one they had. I was behaving like someone with advanced certificates in the practice of yoga.

And then.

Louise and I were with the dogs, on a morning that was feeling like one long recess. We were supervising a game of “Who can have a toy in their mouth and not destroy it?” In my hand was a cute purple terrycloth bunny, its stuffing intact, although one of its ears was hanging out the side of Tasha's jaws. Louise was trying to get her to drop it, but no one was obeying commands because they knew it was play time. In walked Agnes. She motioned to me to follow her.

Louise came over and took the bunny from me. Josie came over too, letting me know she was interested in going wherever I went. But Louise bent down and scooped her up.

“I'm sorry I still haven't done the assignment you gave me,” I told Agnes, imagining she meant to take me to a desk somewhere and tie me to the chair.

It wasn't about that. I followed her toward the dining room. She left me to go in alone. Only one person was there, seated at the table nearest the fireplace. On the table were a box of Kleenex, an open pot of tea smelling fruity and also of chamomile, and two mugs I'd never seen before. The mugs were decorated with, of all things, lifelike pictures of the heads and floppy ears of dachshunds.

Also on the table was an iPad, new-looking, not turned on.

Phyllis. That was the name of the staffer whose voice I'd heard on Mrs. Auberchon's answering machine.

Phyllis, originally Dark Gray, went the notes in my head. Age about seventy, more or less. Reminded me the first time I saw her of Mrs. Treats. Thought she was an alpha but she's not. Isn't around very much. Doesn't work with the dogs. Never seen taking a dog for a walk. Seems to be a manager type. Wears dentures. Has the most wrinkles. Favors long, loose skirts and cardigans and colorful woolen knee socks when not in a sweats outfit. Drinks coffee and tea black. Actually kind of boring.

“Would you like some tea, Evie?”

I sat down across the table from her. Warm as it was, the dining room had the feel of an empty shell, as if the walls could express emotions. The only one it was expressing now was the one of being lonely in all the downtime between meals.

“No thanks,” I said.

She poured me a mug of tea anyway, then one for herself. I had never seen a dachshund on something you'd raise to your mouth before. I looked at the long, pointy face, the high-up round eyes, the sheen of intelligence that wasn't just from a glaze put on by a potter. I remembered reading something in the breed book about dachshunds being maybe ten times smarter than the size of their brains. And they're honest, and they're famous as hunters, with a tendency to look at you one-dimensionally, totally stereotyping you, like you're prey they need to go after.

“I used to have a pair of these guys, long before I came to the mountain,” Phyllis said chattily. “They lived to an old, old age. I usually keep the cups in my room, but I was in a mood today to bring them out. Did you have a dog when you were a child, Evie?”

“I had . . .”

My voice very nearly stopped coming. Tell the truth? Tell a lie? Something was dachshund-like about her, even though her face was soft and round. I didn't want to feel like her prey.

“ . . . books,” I answered. “I had dogs in books.”

“Ah. Then you have much in common with Mrs. Auberchon.”

I let that go. There was nothing to say to such an unreal remark. What did she want with me? Why was I here?

She took a sip of her tea. When she put the cup down, I looked at the way her false teeth were so brightly white. They weren't overwhelmingly artificial-looking, but you could tell they weren't real, like you can tell when someone dyes her hair. Some of us in my former program, when we were let out for walks, supervised, around a few city blocks, played a game of False Teeth, Dyed Hair. You had to exclude hair that was green or blue or some other make-believe shade, on people who thought the days of punk weren't over. Whoever scored the most points could pick the after-dinner DVD on the big TV in what we called the living room, like we were a family. I became good at it. For a while I won every time. This was in my phase of Morgan Freeman movies. I'd be racking up points, not only from people on the sidewalks but from people I spotted in glass-fronted restaurants and shops, and people stuck in traffic too. And everyone else would be groaning and saying, “Oh, please, not
Lean on Me
again. Or not
Clean and Sober
or
Driving Miss Daisy.
”

“Evie,” said Phyllis. “There's something you need to be told. We've had an offer for an adoption.”

I was sure it would have to be Shadow, now that he had learned “drop it.” Even without “lie down,” he had the grades to graduate. Shadow! A search-and-rescue program had accepted him! Or a trainer, for one-on-one, like being home-schooled! A massive wave of feeling started building in me right away. He was my first dog. He had peed on my hand when we met. I had told him to get the fuck away from me. I had told him I would murder him if he peed on me again. I had told him how much I hated
Peanuts.
I'd witnessed the return of his voice. I'd counted the number of times he took to change two-ball into one. I worried about him when he was more depressed than Hamlet. But how could I say goodbye to him? I'd have to hide in my room when he left. I was too weak of a trainee. I was too unprofessional.

I tried to sound professional when I asked, just to make sure, “Which one?”

And Phyllis said, “Eric.”

She saw my surprise, my concern. She must have thought I was taking her for an elderly person entering dementia in front of my eyes. It was bad enough that she felt I had “much in common with Mrs. Auberchon,” when I'd just finished getting that woman out of my head, from being freaked for hallucinating her. Now she was telling me the name of a dog who didn't exist—at least, not anywhere here.

“His last name will become Fisher,” she told me. “That's the name of the family. Eric Fisher.”

She waited a moment, letting it sink in. Then she said, “Giant George.”

The iPad wasn't right in front of her. She had to reach for it to pull it closer. She turned it. She tapped it. She finger-stroked it. The one who was getting all demented, I realized, was me.

“I'll show you what they look like, Evie. They sent photos. There's one in particular I like very much, of all of them.”

I found myself looking at a group picture of a man and a woman and a lot of kids. “A lot” was my first impression, until I counted: three, four, five. They were all pressed closely together. The kids were different ages, from a youngest of seven or so, which I could tell from the missing baby teeth in her smile, to an eldest boy who was maybe a senior in high school. Three girls, two boys. They were in summer-type clothes. They were standing on the deck of a house. I assumed a house was what they were facing, their house. Behind them, past the rails of the deck, was a backyard of a perfect green lawn and what looked like an agility course, but for humans. But of course it was normal play equipment for children. There was also a swimming pool, the raised kind, with a second deck around it. Outdoor chairs were on that deck, little tables, beach umbrellas on poles. On the sunlit surface of the pool was an inflated raft, red as a tomato, with a lump at one end for a pillow. The yard was bordered all around with a fence, against which grew beans, tomatoes, other viny-growing things. There were shade trees too, big ones, thick, healthy, leafy.

“He asked me to be the one to tell you,” Phyllis was saying. “He kept putting it off.”

“I thought he wanted to go to Alaska,” I said. That was all I could think of saying.

The woman and the man had their arms around each other's waists, like a textbook example of longtime-married-people snugness. I could tell they were on good terms with each other in every way. The man was white, hefty, muscular, short-haired, sort of blond. The woman was black, taller than he was, broad-shouldered, straight-backed. On her head was the type of brimmed hat you'd expect to see on a gardener. The youngest boy was black, dark-skinned. The little girl was black, lighter. Neither resembled the man or the woman. The other two girls, of older-middle-school age, were Chinese, which made me think of a Chinese girl in my program. She was gay. She came from a very traditional family. When she tried to not be gay, in order to fit in with them, she ended up with a heroin problem. We became friends for a while, because I was flattered she made a move on me. She liked the way I apologized for being straight. We spent a lot of time talking about how it happens sometimes that you can spend your whole life wondering why you don't fit in with people you're supposed to be part of, like it's all your fault. Or you can go find other people to be part of. Then she disappeared into the outside world.

Phyllis said, “Tell me what you're thinking.”

“I'm not thinking anything. I'm looking at the picture.”

The eldest boy was dark-haired and white. He didn't resemble the grown-ups either. It wasn't that hard to figure out that this was a family with a history of adoptions.

“You know,” Phyllis said, “Eric was only daydreaming about Alaska, because of the husky pups. He was afraid it wouldn't go through with these folks. It's been in the works for quite a while. Are you okay? I'm asking because you'll miss him.”

“Of course I'm okay,” I said. “I'll miss him, sure, but it's not like he and I are close. I didn't even know his real name.”

“He needs to be in school.”

“Oh, I know.”

“He needs to be part of a family.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“He'd rather not have anyone know his past. I hope you don't hold it against him if he didn't open up to you.”

“I'm happy for him,” I said. “I'd never hold anything against him.”

“Would you like a Kleenex, Evie?”

“No thanks.”

She gave me one. I made like I was dabbing it under my eyes because I didn't want to waste it, like I was only going through the motions. I wished Josie had followed me here and was sitting in my lap, letting me pat her.

“They're a wonderful family,” she said.

“I can tell.”

“The man is a stay-at-home dad. The woman, as they say, brings in the dough. She's with a company that's been around for longer than you and I put together. It's an insurance company, and she's a vice president. I believe she runs one of their biggest departments.”