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She walked out the door and into a world she'd only discovered since defecting from full-time employment and spending her days traversing the city's streets, often with a bouquet of leashes in her hands. The city from nine to five was hardly the ghost world she'd been imagining. There was an entirely different population, a secret city of mothers and babies, shift workers, students and deliverymen, the retired and unemployed, moving through streets and corners of the city that she'd never even known about, in spite of her years at law school and her years at the firm. Why would an unmarried, childless lawyer have known about Three Bears Park, a tiny pocket of a playground between Spruce and Pine Streets? Would a woman who took the same route to work every day have known that on the five hundred block of Delancey every house flew a different flag? How could she have suspected that the shops and grocery stores would be bustling at one in the afternoon, filled with people in khakis and sweaters instead of business suits and briefcases? Who knew that she could easily fill her hours with the stuff she used to cram into mere minutes of spare time? Her days began with dogs. She had her own key to the Elegant Paw, and each morning at the time she'd normally be buying her large black coffee and heading to the office, she'd be unlocking the door to the kennel, leashing two or three or four dogs, stuffing her pockets with biscuits and plastic poop bags, and heading toward Rittenhouse Square. She'd spend forty-five minutes there, in the square of the park, surrounded by dress shops and bookstores and fancy restaurants and high-rise apartment buildings, letting her charges sniff at bushes and hedges and other dogs. Then she'd spend her morning running errands. Drop-offs at the drugstore, pickups at the dry cleaners, zipping along sidewalks and side streets with her pockets heavy with keys, opening up doors for decorators, landcapers, exterminators, personal chefs, even chimney sweeps. In the afternoons, she'd go on another round of walks, heading back to Rittenhouse Square for her daily date with the little girl, the spotted dog, and the woman who was with them.
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Over her eight weeks as a dog-walker she'd become fascinated with the little girl, Joy, the dog Nifkin, and the woman she guessed was the girl's mother. They came to the park between four and four-thirty every afternoon. Rose would spend an hour tossing the tennis ball for her afternoon dogs and inventing a life for the woman and the girl and the dog. She imagined a husband, handsome in a regular-guy kind of way. She gave them a big house with fireplaces and bright woven rugs, a wooden chest full of every kind of toy and stuffed animal for the little girl. She sent them on family trips to the shore, hiking in the Poconos. She imagined them getting off an airplane—the father pulling a big wheeled suitcase, the mother pulling a medium one, the little girl with an appropriately small bag. Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear, and the dog trotting jauntily behind them. In her mind, she gave them a quiet, happy life— good jobs, enough money, dinners at home on weeknights, just the three of them, the parents urging the little girl to drink her milk, the little girl surreptitiously sneaking her vegetables to the dog named Nifkin. She'd already progressed from nodding hello to waving hello to actually saying "Hi." Given enough time, Rose thought, things might blossom into actual conversation. She sat and watched as the little girl chased the spotted dog toward the fountain, and the mother, who was tall, broad-shouldered, and heavy hipped, talked on her cell phone. "No, I don't like liverwurst," she overheard the woman saying. "That's Lucy. Remember? The other daughter?" She rolled her eyes at Ros e and mouthed My mother. Rose gave what she hoped was an understanding nod and a little wave. "No, I don't think Joy likes liverwurst either, Ma." She paused, listening, then shook her head. "No, Peter does not like liverwurst. In fact, I don't think anyone really likes liverwurst. I don't even know why they make it anymore." Rose laughed. The woman smiled at her, still listening. "Nifkin likes liverwurst," she said. "We can give it to him!" Another pause. "Well, I don't know what you should do with it. That was my
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one suggestion. Put it on crackers or something. Tell your book club it's pate. Okay. Right. We'll see you then. Okay. Bye." She hung up the phone and put it in her pocket. "My mother thinks I'm unemployed," she began. "Oh," said Rose, and cursed her rusty conversational skills. "I'm not," said the woman. "But I work at home. Which, to my mother, seems to mean that I don't work at all, so she can call me whenever she wants to and ask me about liverwurst." Rose laughed. "I'm Rose Feller," she said. The woman extended her hand. "I'm Candace Shapiro. Cannie." "Mom!" The little girl had suddenly reappeared, holding Nifkin's leash. Cannie laughed. "Excuse me," she said. "I'm Candace Shapiro soon-to-be Krushelevansky." She made a funny face. "Try fitting that on a business card." "So you're married?" asked Rose. She winced, shut her mouth, and wondered what had happened to her. Two months out of the office, two months with mostly dogs and deliverymen, and she'd forgotten how to talk to people. But Cannie didn't act as though she'd noticed anything strange. "Engaged," she said. "We're doing the deed in June." Huh, Rose thought. Well, if Hollywood stars could have babies before they got married, she supposed regular Philadelphians could, too. "Are you having a big wedding?" Cannie shook her head. "Nope. Smail. In our living room. Rabbi, family, a few friends, my mother, her life partner, their softball team. Nifkin's going to be the ring dog, and Joy will be the best baby." "Oh," said Rose. "Urn ..." That didn't sound like any of the nuptials she'd seen on TV. "How," Rose began, and then stopped, unsure of herself, before starting again with the most banal of cocktail-party questions. "How did you meet your husband-to-be?" Cannie laughed and flipped her hair over her shoulders. "Now
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that," she said, "is a long and involved story. It started with a diet." Rose snuck a glance at Cannie and decided that it couldn't have been a very successful diet. "I actually met Peter when I was pregnant with Joy, but I didn't know I was pregnant yet. He was running this weight-loss study, and I thought that if I lost weight this guy who I'd broken up with would want me back." She smiled at Rose. "But you know how it goes. You chase after the wrong guy until the final reel and then find out the right one was there waiting all along. Love works in mysterious ways. Or is that the Lord? I can never remember." "The Lord, I think," said Rose. "If you say so," said Cannie. "So how about you? Are you married?" "No!" said Rose emphatically. "I mean, no," she said, in a more modulated tone. "It's just that . . . well, I just ended a relationship. Well, I didn't end it exactly. My sister . . . anyhow. Long story." She looked down at her hands, then at Petunia, curled at her feet, then over at Joy and Nifkin, who were playing fetch with a red mitten, then over at half a dozen dogs standing in the middle of a triangle of grass. "I guess I'm trying to figure out what's next." "Do you like what you're doing now?" Cannie asked. Rose looked at Petunia, at the other dogs in the park, at the grayish tennis ball in her hand, and the bunch of plastic poop bags beside her. "Yes," she said. It was true. She liked all of her dogs— the disdainful, snorty Petunia; the golden retriever who was always so glad to see her that he whirled in circles of joy when he heard her key in the door; the grave bulldogs; the fractious schnauzers; the narcoleptic cocker spaniel named Sport who'd occasionally fall asleep at red lights. "And what else do you like?" Cannie prompted. Rose shook her head, smiling ruefully. She knew what made her sister happy—size two leather pants, sixty-dollar French skin cream, men telling her she was beautiful. She knew what made her
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father happy—a bear market, dividend checks, a crisp new copy of The Wall Street Journal, the infrequent occasions when Maggie'd managed to hold a job. And what made Amy happy—Jill Scott records, Sean Jean pants, and the movie Fear of a Black Hat. She knew what Sydelle Feller loved—My Marcia, organic grains, Botox shots, and feeding fourteen-year-old Rose dietetic Jell-O for dessert while everyone else got ice cream. Once upon a time, she'd even known the things that made her mother happy, like clean sheets and bright red lipstick, and the costume-jewelry pins that she and Maggie would pick out for her birthday. But what did Rose herself like, besides shoes, and Jim, and foods that were bad for her? Cannie smiled at Rose, and got to her feet. "You'll figure it out," she said cheerfully. She whistled for Nifkin, and the dog came running, with Joy trailing behind him, her cheeks pink and her hair coming loose from its ponytail. "Will we see you tomorrow?" "Sure," said Rose. She pocketed the tennis ball and began gathering her charges, holding five leashes in her left hand and the leash of a single renegade greyhound in her right. She dropped dogs off until she was left with just Petunia. The pug trotted a few steps ahead of her like a plump croissant with legs. Petunia made her happy, even though she'd had to relinquish Petunia to her owner, Shirley, a no-nonsense seventy-two-year-old woman who lived downtown and who luckily consented to let Rose walk the pug every day. What else? Not clothes, really. Not money, because all she'd ever done with her exorbitant six-figure salary was pay her rent and her student loans, sock away a prudent percentage for her retirement, and let the rest gather interest in a money market account, per Michael Feller's explicit instructions. So what? "Yo!" called a bicycle messenger. Rose scooped Petunia into her arms and jumped aside as the bike whizzed past them. Its rider had a bag slung over his shoulder and a walkie-talkie, bleating static, on his hip. Rose watched him pedal off down the street, remembering that she'd had a bike, when she was a girl. A blue Schwinn, with a
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blue-and-white seat and a white straw basket and pink and white plastic tassels on the handlebars. There had been a bike path that ran behind her parents' house in Connecticut, a trail that led to the town golf course and soccer fields. It also wove through a crab apple orchard, and in the fall, Rose used to ride her bike there, her wheels crunching through the fallen crab apples, whispering over the red and gold leaves. Sometimes her mother would come with her, on her own bike, which was the grown-up version of Rose's, a Schwinn three-speed with a baby seat over the rear wheel, a seat that had once held Rose and Maggie. What had happened to her bike? Rose tried to remember. When they'd moved to New Jersey, they'd lived in a rented condominium just off the highway, which meant parking lots and roads with no sidewalks or shoulders. She'd probably outgrown the bike while they'd lived there, and when they'd moved to Sydelle's, she'd never gotten a new one. She'd gotten her driver's license instead, three days after she turned sixteen, and she'd been excited, at first, about the prospect of freedom, until she realized that most of her driving would consist of dropping her sister off at parties, picking her up after dance lessons, and going grocery shopping. She dropped Petunia off in Shirley's apartment and decided that over the weekend she'd buy herself a bike—a used one, to start with, so she could see if she liked it. She'd buy one, and maybe put a Petunia-sized basket on the handlebars, and she'd ride it ... somewhere. She'd heard that there were bike trails in Fairmount Park and a towpath that ran all the way from the art museum out to Valley Forge. She'd buy a bike, she thought, smiling now and walking with a bounce to her step. She'd buy a bike, she'd get a map, she'd pack a picnic of bread and cheese and grapes and brownies and a can of gourmet dog food for Petunia. She'd have an adventure.
THIRTY'TWO
Mrs. Lefkowitz hadn't wanted to go for their weekly walk. "I can get my exercise in here," she'd told Ella, waving her cane at the ten-by-sixteen-foot expanse of her living room, into which she had crammed a couch, two love seats, an armchair with doilies decorating the arms, and an enormous wide-screen TV. "Not the way you need to," Ella had said patiently. "The View is on," she said, gesturing at the television set, where four women on the television screen were yelling at each other. "Don't you like The View?" "You mean the ocean?" Ella asked innocently. "I love the view of the ocean. Let's go outside and have a look." "Also, I've got a proposal for you," said Mrs. Lefkowitz, playing what was clearly her last card. "I've been thinking about you. Your predicament." "Later," Ella said firmly. "Agh, I give up," Mrs. Lefkowitz said. She put on gigantic square-lensed sunglasses, smeared zinc over her nose, and knotted the laces of her Nikes. "Come on, Bruce Jenner. Let's get this over with." They walked down the drive toward the tennis courts, where, last month, someone had hit Drive instead of Reverse and plowed
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right through the fence, right through the net, and right into an unfortunate woman named Frieda Mandell, who'd been playing a desultory game of doubles and ended up splayed on the hood of a Cadillac, with her racquet still in hand. This, Mrs. Lefkowitz had announced mordantly, was clear evidence that sports and exercise— tennis in particular—could kill you if you weren't careful. But her doctor had insisted she walk, and so every Tuesday at ten, Ella and her charge walked slowly to the clubhouse, had lunch, and took the trolley back home. Somewhere along the line, Ella had even started to enjoy the older woman's company. Mrs. Lefkowitz's walk had a rhythm. She'd plant the cane, sigh, step forward with her right foot, then drag her left foot behind it. Plant, sigh, stomp, shuffle. It was soothing, really, Ella thought. "So what's new?" asked Mrs. Lefkowitz. "You still seeing that one?" "Lewis," said Ella. Mrs. Lefkowitz nodded. "He's a good one. Reminds me of my first husband." Ella was puzzled. "Your first husband? Did you have two?" Plant, sigh, stomp, shuffle. "Oh, no. I just call Leonard my first husband. It makes me sound more worldly." Ella bit back her laughter and kept a light hand on Mrs. Lefkowitz's elbow as she negotiated a crack in the sidewalk. "Does Lewis have a good income?" "Fine, I think," said Ella. "You think? You think?" Mrs. Lefkowitz demanded. "Don't think. Find out! You could be left with nothing! Like that Charles Kuralt!" Ella was confused. "He was left with nothing?" "No, no, no. Not him. But he had, remember, the other girlfriend. And she was left with nothing." "Not even the Winnebago?" "Sure. Laugh," said Mrs. Lefkowitz darkly. "You won't be laughing when you're eating the cheese the government gives out." "Keep walking," said Ella. "And his children," Ella said. "Do they know about you?"
