Year of the Dog (2 page)

We saw the wind-whipped lake make whitecaps around two kayakers and a windsurfer, and, far off almost to the New York shore, watched a pair of sailboats listing sideways. We talked about the ducks and why there weren't more, since, he said, they loved choppy water and usually traveled in groups. And I asked why it was dogs tried to take the wind in their mouths, the way his did.

After a while, he guessed he'd better return the borrowed dog to his student, hanging back a few minutes like he wasn't in a rush, retying a boot lace, standing around long enough for me to notice blue eyes, which you didn't often see with nearly black hair. Then the two of them set off at a brisk pace, taking a short-cut across a green field behind the tennis courts. Watching his back in its faded tees, I had a moment of regret that when I was young and dumb I'd fallen for a no-good stud—and let all those fidgety boys go by without giving them a glance.

2

WHEN I FIRST arrived in May, I'd got totally crazed that I wasn't going to find any place to live, since the occupancy of apartments in Burlington, even with school out, stood at 105 percent the paper said (but surely they knew that couldn't be right). While I was hunting, I'd got myself a motel room, for a cheap weekly rate, south of town, at a place called PACIFIC VIEW. That blew my mind, up here in the Green Mountains on an inland lake, and I sent a postcard home to my folks:
Pacific View, Vermont.
But it turned out the name was because the small service station next door was called Pacific Gas. View of the gas station.

The thing was, the Companion Dog people didn't want your puppy confused at the start of your being together by being in a motel. When you took a puppy to raise, you had to be able to put her crate in the location where it would stay, for when she needed to sleep in the beginning or when you needed to put her up, if you were going out without her. Plus, at the start, you had to take her outside every hour to the same place in the yard, and then you called her name and said, “Get busy;” the first time the puppy peed where she was supposed to, you smothered her in hugs and told her, “Good girl.” So naturally they didn't want her starting out in some temporary
place, and getting confused by a move to new quarters and a strange yard with no familiar scent.

The rental ads I'd circled—that promised NEAR THE HOSPITAL or CLOSE TO UNIVERSITY, central locations in this town which sprawled along the lake and that seemed safe to me—naturally also said NO SMOKING and NO PETS. A few came right out and said NOT A PARTY HOUSE, which made it clear that the landlords had headaches about property damage and noise from students. So I started driving up and down the hilly streets, writing down every phone number from the cardboard signs stuck in front yards that had no realtor listed. What a discouragement. Half the time they didn't return my call—no surprise, since my cell had a Carolina exchange and who wanted to leave a message for a transient at the PACIFIC VIEW MOTEL? I'd been scouting in a dress and jacket, carrying a notebook, trying to look like a single professional who wouldn't make trouble, but I needn't have bothered. By the time I wheeled back by, the rental sign would already be gone and guys would be unloading boxes, moving in.

But finally my luck changed, and I got a look-see at a place a few blocks from downtown in a decent area with rentals and owner-homes scattered together. Seeing a short, scowling, portly man hammering a sign into a grassy front yard, I screeched to a halt on a steep street that plunged west toward the lake. From the outside, the place looked too good to afford—a narrow red-brick house, at least a century old, with a high front porch up half a dozen steps. Braking and leaping from the car, I hustled over to him. Looking down on his combed-over hair, I inquired in my most professional voice about an apartment, at which the man dropped his hammer and grudgingly admitted, “I got one vacancy.”

Inside the front door, I stopped dead still. We stood crammed in a dark closet-like entry with three doors, the
middle one apparently leading upstairs. Walls had been nailed where there hadn't ever been walls. “Somebody sure chopped up this old house,” I blurted out, forgetting myself.

The landlord opened the door on the right. “My brother-in-law did the work here,” he said, as if to explain. Then, staring at me, he added, “You're from somewhere, aren't you? You got an accent.”

“From down South,” I admitted, hoping that didn't ruin the deal.

The available apartment, which I followed him into, must have been the original home's parlor, now with a fake fireplace, scuffed wood floors, a ratty maroon sofa and wing chair, a single ceiling light. Entering the large kitchen, however, I got a nice surprise. Light and airy, it had a decent table by a window, and its own back door with steps leading down into a small half-fenced backyard. Just the size for one growing puppy.

“The bedroom?” I asked, back in the living room, looking for an interior hall.

“This is it,” the landlord explained, impatient. “This one's the efficiency. In there's the bathroom.”

I investigated the not-so-clean facilities and took a deep breath. I didn't really expect a cottage with climbing roses, but I guess I hadn't dealt with what it meant, having both a university and a college in a stone's throw, competing with thousands of students for four walls and running water.

“I'll take it,” I said, carefully not mentioning the canine companion I was planning to room with. “If the sofa makes into a bed.”

“It's not furnished, what gave you the idea it was furnished?” he hollered out, raising his voice as if anybody who spoke so slow might also be deaf.

“I'll take it if you leave the furniture that's here and put me a lock on the inside door.”

“You put it there yourself, Miss. That'll be two months in advance. The furniture'll cost extra.”

I wanted to yell at him, Do I look like I'm going to pay that, for half an apartment without a bedroom and a stall for a bath? But he narrowed his eyes like he didn't have all day, and was locking up the look-see by the time I got the check written. I'd just barely moved my savings into a bank on Bank Street (things were so literal up here!), but figured it would clear. He tossed me two keys (front door, back door) and we signed one of those standard leases that must come by the ream from Staples.

And that's how I got a home for Beulah. A home with a grassy backyard bathroom spot for her, under a huge hardwood tree with sweet-smelling white flowers, and, in a neighboring yard, a larger spoor-crazed hardwood raining white lint on the lawn. At that time, early June, with a perfumed breeze and an almost warming sun, I didn't of course foresee the matter of the Vermont winter.

* * *

The day my puppy was to be brought to me, I got up at sunrise, now five o'clock in the morning here in the north. Too psyched to sleep any longer on the lumpy ancient hideaway bed. I'd never spent all my time before with another living being, and it made me slightly panicked. You'd think marriage would be like that, but if you've been married you know that it isn't. You are at work and he is at work, or maybe he's off with his buddies and you're looking at the Carolina summertime grass, wondering if you need to water or if the ragged remnants of some early tropical storm is going to do the job for you. You're together at night—having supper, then he's trying to make a deal and you're talking to your mom, then you're in bed and things are going smooth or they're going
rocky, then it's morning and your head is on your work. But here I'd signed up for someone who I was going to have to keep with me all the time, hearing her noises, feeling her nose against my leg, rushing out the back door to take her down the open wooden stairs, brushing her soft pale coat and checking her ears, teaching her to listen for her name.

I broke out in a cold sweat. Terrified at the idea of having someone else breathing in the same room with me night and day, I went down into the yard, barefoot, in the oversize t-shirt I slept in, figuring no one else would be awake, and stood under the tree. Practicing aloud, along with the early birds, “Get busy,” “Good dog,” “Good girl.”

But when the Companion Dog lady knocked on my door hours later and the creamy little lab trotted inside, looking all around the strange room as if to say, “
Where is my person, where is my person?
” I forgot about my nerves. Getting down on my hands and knees, twenty-five-years old and never had a dog, I touched my nose to hers. “Hi,” I said, “Hi, Beulah.” Because they had already told me her name—explaining that the first letters of the names indicated the order of puppies and the litter from that year. The Companion, a pleasant woman named Betty, who donated her time, gave me the thick puppy manual, with every possible instruction on care and training, and her crate. And then the woman rubbed the puppy's coat, handed me the leash—and left Beulah in my care. We stood looking at each other, her tail wagging, until, after a moment, breathing deeply, I lifted her in my arms and carried her, warm and wiggling and with a clearly beating heart, down the back stairs into her new flower-scented yard.

Now, when we got home from the Dog Park and our meeting with the three-colored mountain dog and his person, she and I descended the open steps, and while she got busy, I stood thinking of what it might be nice to have for supper. I was missing southern food and wishing that instead of filling her
water bowl and pouring out her chow, I could let her share my meal and then lick my plate, as I imagined ordinary dogs got to do.

3

MOM AND DADDY were the kind who kept up with anybody the least bit kin to anybody they knew in any way. Whenever I stopped by their house back home, I could count on hearing them catching up with the latest on some one of Mother's friend Madge's Alabama cousins, or the brand new wife of the oldest son of the man who owned Daddy's hardware. So, naturally, because of this outlook, they'd assumed that the minute I got to Vermont my mom's only living blood relative, her maternal aunt, Mayfield Mason, would be having me to supper all the time and doing my laundry, that she'd be finding me a mechanic and a medical doctor, that she'd call every day and want to take me shopping. But the truth was, I'd been in town over a month and hadn't heard a word from her.

It became clear to me that I was going to have to be the one to call on her, being the new person in town with time to spare, and realizing that there was no way the older woman would understand why I was using up my entire life savings to spend a year where I didn't know a soul. Getting up my resolve the day after Beulah and I went on our outing to the Dog Park, I set out to find her house. Not thinking to phone ahead to ask when it might be convenient for me to drop by, not picking up some nice gift to present her with or even bringing a batch of homemade buttermilk biscuits to remind
her of where she came from. Just tired of hearing Mom's constant reminders that this aunt was the excuse she'd given everyone about why I'd picked Vermont for my sabbatical.

While I dried my hair and my puppy had her breakfast, I reread the letter Mom wrote her aunt, and then the one she received in return—after having waited on pins and needles for a two full weeks.

* * *

Dear Aunt May,

This is your only niece writing to you, to let you know that my daughter Janey will be visiting in your town for the year, seeing another part of the country and doing a little charity work involving dogs for blind people. I hope this letter paves the way for you to take an interest in her being in Burlington.

I don't know if you recall that she was until recently married to the Prentice boy, but since she did not take his name at the time, she'll be going by Daniels. That may have been part of the problem, but who am I to say?

While I am writing, I also want to thank you again for your good words and the generous spray of flowers when my mama, your sister, passed away. She was sorry to be out of touch with you.

Thanks in advance from your only niece,
Ida Jean Daniels

P.S. Also I want to say I hope that Janey can meet your good friend Bert Greenwood, all of whose murder mysteries I personally have read.

* * *

Dear Ida Jean,

What a surprise to hear from you, as I have quite lost touch with the family in recent years. Certainly, I will be glad to help Janey get settled as best I can, although I can't imagine a capable young person her age having much need of the advice or company of a semi-retired librarian.

With best wishes to you and Talbot,
Aunt May

* * *

It took me a while to locate her house at the corner of Larch and Gum, at the end of a street with two fenced cemeteries, around the corner from a synagogue and a Quaker meeting house, since most of the streets in town were named for trees, and twice I turned the wrong way and found myself back by the university and the hospital.

I pulled up on the grass of a deep lot, in front of a two-story brick house shaded by the same dark-barked tree with fragrant white blooms that sheltered Beulah's bathroom. Locking her in the car, I told her to stay, gently pushing her down on the floor of the front seat where Companion Dogs were supposed to ride, and left the window cracked open wide enough for her to get a scent of the flowering trees. Would that be confusing?

The woman at the door stood uncertainly, staring at me. My height, she had gray-brown hair with bangs, glasses, and wore loose jeans and old tennis shoes. “Yes?” she inquired, not unfriendly in her tone.

“I'm Janey—.” I faltered. “Your niece? Ida Jean's girl? I should have phoned to give you some warning. I was just out
for a drive and I thought—.” I blushed or at least my face got hot. “I guess since I've been up north here I've forgotten my manners.”

“Come in, won't you?” The woman, who had to be Aunt May, studied me a minute, then stepped aside. “You've caught me in dungarees and sneakers, I'm afraid,” she said. She found us chairs in a room with old furniture and walls of books. “Did she write me you were coming, your mother? I'm sure she did.” She sighed and put her glasses on her head. “Are you getting settled then, here in Vermont?”