Animal Appetite (2 page)

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Authors: Susan Conant

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women dog owners, #Women Sleuths, #Winter; Holly (Fictitious character), #Dog trainers, #Dogs, #Maine, #Massachusetts, #Indian captivities, #Women journalists

BOOK: Animal Appetite
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That same evening, when I’d finally reached Cambridge, fed the dogs, and unloaded half the firewood I’d been hauling back from my father’s place in Owls Head, Maine, my friend and second-floor tenant, Rita, and I sat at my kitchen table splitting a pizza and drinking her contribution, an Italian red wine far better than anything I could have supplied, meaning, at the moment, anything costlier than tap water.
“It did seem to me,” I told Rita, “that I was getting
awfully
good mileage.” I chewed and swallowed.
Bizarre though this may sound, Rita was eating her pizza with a knife and fork, and from a plate, too, not from the carton. Furthermore, ever since her last trip to Paris, she’s been keeping her fork in her left hand instead of transferring it to the right to get food to her mouth. Even when she was first learning the technique and accidentally stabbed her tongue with the tines, I didn’t laugh except to myself. Ours is a friendship of opposites. You could tell at a glance. For instance, if you’d magically peered in at us sitting at that table, you’d have noticed that Rita’s short, expensively streaked hair had been newly and professionally cut, whereas my unruly golden-retriever mop showed the signs of having been styled by a person, namely yours truly, with considerable experience in grooming show dogs. From Rita’s brand-new navy blue cashmere sweater and coordinating pants, and my Alaskan Malamute National Specialty sweatshirt and holes-in-the-knees L.L. Bean jeans, you’d have drawn your own conclusions.
As you’d soon have guessed if you’d listened in, Rita is a clinical psychologist. A Cambridge psychotherapist. I train dogs. I also write about dogs, not just for fun but for a pittance that
Dog’s Life
magazine passes off as money. Perhaps you’ve read my column? Holly Winter? So Rita and I deal with identical problems—mismatches, lost love, inappropriate conduct, needless suffering, failures of communication, and all the rest—but Rita gets paid more than I do because her job is a lot more complicated than mine. In Rita’s profession, everyone is always fouled up. In my work, it’s usually clear right away that an emotional block, a lack of moral fiber, or, in most cases, fathomless ignorance is causing the owner unwittingly to reinforce undesirable behavior in a potentially perfect dog, which is to say, almost any dog at all. In other words, even deep in her heart, Rita has to suspend judgment. I, too, can’t go around voicing blame. Instead, I mouth the same shrink dictum Rita does: “It’s not your
fault
, but it is your
responsibility
.”
But I digress. This story is supposed to have almost nothing to do with dogs. So let’s magically let you peer at us again and conclude what you will of us. Can you guess that I have a mad crush on my vet? That he, Steve Delaney, is my ardent lover? And that Rita, in her prolonged longing for a human male soul mate, constitutes consummate proof of the unutterable density of men? If you are perceptive, perhaps yes.
So, with European delicacy, Rita was carefully transferring morsels of crust from her fork to her mouth and, as usual, listening to my complaints, which moved from my foolishness about the gas gauge to the advanced age of my Ford Bronco to the failure of the proud yet humble profession of dog writing to pay enough to feed one human being, never mind myself and two big dogs. What I expected her to say in reply was the kind of thing she always says: She’d interpret dog writing as a symbolic representation of a withholding maternal image, demand to know whether I’d been abruptly weaned, or inquire about some other such developmental crisis that it was thirty plus years too late to fix.
But she didn’t. In fact, Rita astonished me by putting down her knife and fork, looking me directly in the eye, and asking a radically practical question: “Holly, has it ever occurred to you to take a break from dogs and, for once, write about
people
instead?”
A large lump of mozzarella stuck in my throat. To save my life, I was forced to wash it down with a big slug of wine. “Well, yes, of course, Rita, but it’s like what Robert Benchley said about exercise—sometimes I feel the impulse, but then I lie down, and the feeling passes.”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” Rita demanded, “that you are selling yourself short?”
I was suitably insulted. “Of course not!”
“Or that, by your own account, the book you want to write about the sled dogs of the Byrd expeditions will take you ten years to finish and will have a maximum possible readership of maybe two hundred people?”
I inched my chair back from the table. My eyes drifted to Rowdy and Kimi, whose ancestors went with Byrd to Antarctica. I looked back at Rita. “It’s still worth doing.”
“Or,” she persisted, “that, in fact, your only practical alternatives are—”
“A real job,” I finished. “No!”
“Or,” Rita said gently, “economic dependence on someone else.”
“I am
NOT
getting married! You are worse than Steve! And even if I did marry him, I would never, ever even think about marrying him or anyone else for—”
“Money,” Rita said.
“Money,” I echoed. “Rita, really! I am staggered that you would even suggest—”
“I was not
suggesting
anything, Holly. I was merely pointing out your options.”
“Well, that one is totally unacceptable.”
“Then,” said Rita, swallowing a sip of wine, “you’d better get serious about expanding your readership.”
“I am serious
now!
” I countered. “And I do not appreciate your condescending hints to the effect that I need to grow up!”
“What you are,” Rita informed me, “is afraid you can’t do it.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Write about people. Or, for that matter, anything else that has nothing whatsoever to do with dogs.”
I dug my incisors into a juicy slice of pizza. When I’d finished ingesting it, I daubed my mouth with a paper napkin, drank more wine, and said defiantly, “That is not true! I write about dogs because, in case it isn’t overwhelmingly obvious, dogs
are
what I’m interested in. Furthermore, as you know, I happen to be a person with a mission, namely, animal welfare.”
Rita sipped her wine, cocked her head, and sighed lightly. “Well, isn’t this just wonderful! Tell me, all of a sudden, are all of us free to earn our livings by pursuing our interests and following our missions? Do I, for example, get to cancel all tomorrow’s patients and spend the day researching whatever takes my fancy?”
“You think”—I divided the remaining wine between Rita’s glass and mine—“that just because I love my work, I don’t really work at all.”
“What I think,” said Rita, “is that you are failing to actualize your potential.”
“My potential, Rita, is strictly canine.”
“You’re scared,” she whispered. “You’re afraid you can’t do it.”
“I can write about any damned thing I choose.” After emptying my glass, I added, “Even including, if need be,
people!
”
“I bet you can’t!”
“How much?” I demanded.
“Five hundred dollars. Plus, of course, whatever you get paid for whatever it is you write. If, of course, you do.”
I stretched my right hand across the table. Rita reached out with hers as if we were going to arm wrestle. If we had, the outcome would have been immediate and unambiguous. Rita has one Scottie, and I have two Alaskan malamutes. I’d have won hands down. Instead of arm wrestling, however, we shook on the deal.
“Five hundred dollars,” Rita said, “for anything that has nothing to do with dogs.”
“Nothing whatsoever,” I replied. “Five hundred dollars.” Then I rashly described the statue in the center of Haverhill.
And that’s how I came to write about Hannah Duston.
CHAPTER 2
The next morning, ofi course, I tried to weasel out ofi the bet. I persisted for the rest of the week. I was letting Rita off the hook, I told her. We’d both had a lot of wine. I’d been exhausted. If I’d been thinking straight, I would never have agreed. She was my friend. It would be wrong for me to take her money.
There was no reason to believe that the deal would cost her a dime, she stubbornly replied. Or had I already finished the piece of writing I had contracted to produce? As to my unwillingness to accept her cash, I was, after all, a professional writer, wasn’t I? I didn’t just create for art’s sake, did I? Besides, a bet was a bet. We’d shaken on the deal. She was not letting me out.
The dispute, I might mention, took place not in the smooth, continuous way I’ve presented it, but in staccato bursts. Arriving home from work, Rita would rap her signature tune on my door and merrily inquire about the progress I was making with Hannah Duston. Returning from a walk with her Scottie, Willie, she’d start in again, and Willie, as usual, would fly at my ankles and yap out what sounded remarkably like a translation of Rita’s challenge into the scrappy language of terriers. By Wednesday, I felt sorry for Rita’s patients. By Friday, I heartily pitied them. On Saturday morning as I hurried out of the house on my way to a bat mitzvah, I ran into Rita and finally relented. “But
when
I win this bet,” I warned her, “I am donating the money. I am
not
becoming the object of your charity.”
Rita’s eyes crackled remarkably like Willie’s. “Splendid! It will give me great pleasure to know I’m rescuing homeless malamutes.” She paused. “As well as to read about Hannah Duston.”
“This hostility is completely unlike you,” I snapped. “And totally unnecessary. Writing about Hannah Duston will be entirely my pleasure.”
As it turned out, Marsha Goldbaum’s bat mitzvah offered me not just one, but two, independent opportunities to begin my research. It was also at Marsha’s bat mitzvah that I learned of the murder of Jack Andrews. I have, however, leaped ahead of myself. Marsha, I should first inform you, was what in Cambridge would be called a mentee of mine, meaning that her parents had hired me as her mentor in the world of dog obedience competition. A few years earlier, the family had bought a bright, charming sheltie—Shetland sheepdog, and, no, appearances to the contrary, never, ever “miniature collie.” The dog, Nickie, was supposed to be a family pet. To train him to be a good one, the Goldbaums sensibly enrolled Nickie in puppy kindergarten, where he and Marsha emerged as the stars of the class. (What
is
puppy kindergarten? I feel like a dope saying so, but remarkably enough, it’s kindergarten for puppies: rudimentary manners, socialization with people and other dogs.) To continue Nickie’s résumé: After graduation at the top of the puppy kindergarten class, he and Marsha entered a basic pet obedience class, then advanced pet obedience, and continued to shine. In the meantime, Marsha started teaching Nickie an impressive repertoire of tricks. All on their own, Marsha and Nickie worked out a wonderful little routine that tickled Professor and Dr. Goldbaum, and turned Nickie into the perfect, nuisance-free canine companion.
The nuisance part emerged when Marsha hit the dog-book section of the Newton Free Library and learned of the existence of American Kennel Club trials, titles, and ribbons, and of the various other rituals and honors of what I pursue as the religion of my own ecstatic choice. So Marsha started plaguing her parents, who had no idea what she was chattering about, but eventually located someone who did. Consequently, in addition to classes with a religious scholar, she got lessons from me. With her other teacher, she read the Torah. With me, she studied Barbara Handler’s
Successful Obedience Handling: The New Best Foot Forward.
Barbara
Handler?
Truly, she is a real person, an obedience judge as well as what her name proclaims. Here in dogs, we take for granted these little signs of meaning and harmony in an otherwise random and dissonant universe. I told Marsha so. In a rather different fashion, perhaps her temple conveyed the same message.
To become a bat mitzvah, Marsha had to wait for an arbitrary date, her thirteenth birthday. Nickie, however, earned his C.D.—Companion Dog title—in three straight trials. Twice in the ribbons. Brag, brag. Although my principal contribution to Marsha’s success had been to drive her to and from the scenes of triumph while enjoying her company—she was a really cute, bright kid, and the dog was brilliant—she was irrationally grateful to me.
So that’s why I got invited to Marsha’s bat mitzvah, which took place in a temple in Newton so Reform that its spacious interior was almost indistinguishable from a Congregational church, except, of course, for the absence of crosses and the presence of what to my New England WASP eye looked like an astonishingly large number of people for any day other than Christmas or Easter. But I’m no expert. I spent most of my childhood Sundays in the company of golden retrievers under the revival tents of dog shows, and except for switching to malamutes, I’ve stuck with the family faith.
I’d attended only a couple of other bar and bat mitzvahs, so I’m unqualified to review Marsha’s and will limit myself to reporting that there was more English and less Hebrew read aloud at hers than at the others and that everyone, even the rabbi, refrained from referring to the deity by a gender-specific pronoun, but consistently talked about God and God’s whatever, instead of His, Hers, or (heaven forbid!) His or Hers, as if speaking about revered sets of monogrammed towels. The high point of the service arrived, I thought, when Marsha walked as confidently and briskly to the pulpit as I’d taught her to do in the ring and delivered the speech she’d written. Her topic was the gory story from the Book of Judges about Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, who slew her husband’s enemy, Sisera, by driving a nail through his head. Indeed, just like Hannah Duston! As far as I knew, Hannah, however, was a heroine, plain and simple, who’d killed her captors to survive, whereas, according to Marsha, the ethics of Jael’s deed merited deep debate. Only later did I realize that I’d missed the essence of Marsha’s interpretation and thus perhaps the quintessence of Judaism—that the ethics of absolutely everything were always subject to endless reexamination. Debate and reexamination were, in fact, Marsha’s specialties. As she’d patiently explained to me, a certain portion of the Old Testament had to be read on schedule everywhere in the world on a given Saturday. The yearly cycle began in the fall, and the portion about Jael would be read in January or February. Consequently, Marsha had had to concoct a complicated explanation to justify a bat mitzvah topic that didn’t really correspond to the allotted portion for this Saturday in November. As I’d told Marsha, I understood perfectly: The American Kennel Club, too, had a yearly cycle of dog show weeks, and I had been comparably inconvenienced when, for example, the schedule made the Ladies’ Dog Club show fall annoyingly close to Memorial Day weekends that I’d otherwise have spent with my father in Maine.

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