Brute Strength (4 page)

Although Vanessa had been living in Cambridge for only a week, I'd learned on our walk that she'd graduated from that place down the street. In any case, she had the local look: simple hair, minimal make-up, ethnic beads, and a flowing jersey outfit with inadequate foundation garments. As promised, she'd brought a salad, a big one in a wooden bowl swathed in aluminum foil. Since the dessert was in individual serving dishes, her daughter, her son, and his fiancée all carried portions of it in baskets and boxes. Only Vanessa's father was empty-handed.

‘Cherry crisp,' Avery said listlessly. ‘We'll need to nuke it for a minute or pop it in the oven.'

Even for a New Englander in a rainy April, Vanessa's daughter was pale. Indeed, everything about Avery was pallid. Her eyes were a grayish blue, her hair was a dingy blonde, she had a wan expression, and she wore faded jeans and an almost colorless chambray shirt. Hatch, the son, looked like a tall, male version of his mother. He had Vanessa's regular features, and like her, he radiated fitness. His mother had told me that he was an internist, but his vigor suggested sports medicine. When I tried to remember what Vanessa had said about Avery, all that came to mind was the subsequent statement that she wished that her relatives would turn into dogs. Had the two children been thus transfigured, Avery would clearly have been the runt of Vanessa's litter. The young woman suffered by comparison not only with her brother, Hatch, but also by comparison with my vibrant cousin, Leah, and with Hatch's fiancée, Fiona, whose name had led me to expect a Scot, but whose ancestry was Asian. In heart-wrenching contrast to Avery, Fiona was strikingly beautiful. Her shiny dark hair fell to the shoulders of a shimmery red shirt that somehow managed not to be too formal for the occasion. Within minutes of Fiona's arrival, Steve had supplied her with a glass of wine, and my father was ushering her into the living room, offering her a choice of appetizers, and hearing about her training at Brigham and Women's. When she sneezed, Buck pulled a gigantic white handkerchief out of his pocket, and Hatch and Steve both proffered tissues. Aren't men wonderful? Here was Fiona, an MD completing her training at one of the nation's top hospitals, yet Buck, Hatch, and Steve leaped to act on the assumption that she couldn't wipe her own nose without male assistance.

‘Allergies,' Hatch explained.

He and I were lingering between the kitchen, where Avery was fussing with the bowls of dessert, and the living room, where Leah was chatting with Vanessa and her father, Tom Oakley. Leah was helping Steve to supply drinks and making sure that people had little plates for the food arrayed on the coffee table.

‘Is Fiona allergic to dogs?' I asked. Lady, India, and Molly were wandering around. ‘Because we can—'

‘No, thank God,' Hatch said. ‘Plants, trees, pollen. Spring is rough for her.'

Overhearing, Fiona said, ‘Oh, I love dogs. Hatch and I both do. We're getting one as soon as we're settled in San Francisco.'

The casual remark provided the opportunity for everyone to ask about Hatch and Fiona's plans. They were getting married in California in June and moving there in the fall. Their wedding would be held just outside San Francisco, where Fiona's family lived. Her father was also a doctor, and she'd be joining his practice. Hatch was going to be part of a research team at UCSF Medical Center. In our household, the mention of getting a dog naturally triggered an intense discussion of precisely what breeds Hatch and Fiona were considering. When mention was made of Ulla, they said that they were crazy about malamutes but that as a child, Fiona had had a golden retriever and was longing for another. Buck was ecstatic. My parents raised goldens, and Buck has one, Mandy. He had to hear everything about Fiona's childhood dog and everything about Ulla as well.

When the time came to move to the dining room, everyone except Tom Oakley pitched in to help transfer the food to serving dishes and carry everything to the table. The pale Avery, who'd kept herself out of the conversation, had what I saw as a sad tendency to cast herself in the role of kitchen help. Instead of socializing, she spontaneously began to scrub the roasting pan, wipe the counters, and load the dishwasher with the plates we'd used for appetizers.

‘That can wait,' I told her. ‘Just leave all this. Steve and I will do it later.'

As I look back at the ten of us who gathered around the table that Sunday evening, I remember being filled with love for my family and feeling happy to have made new friends. As Leah filled our glasses with red wine, she spoke warmly to everyone. We toasted to new friends. Fiona, who had switched to water because she'd be driving, raised only her empty hand; she said that toasting with water was bad luck. At the head of the table, Steve was carving the lamb with surgical precision. I can recall feeling oddly pleased to watch my husband perform the traditional male task with skill and flair. In spite of my father's idiosyncrasies, I felt grateful to him not only for marrying Gabrielle but for bequeathing me his love of dogs and, with it, the comfort and security of belonging to an amiable pack. When Gabrielle turned her charm on Tom Oakley and drew him out, I also felt increasingly thankful that for all Buck's faults, he was not in the least bit given to imaginary ailments.

‘Gabrielle tells me that you're a writer,' Tom said to me. ‘Carpal tunnel syndrome?'

‘Nothing wrong with Holly,' my father answered. ‘Sound as a bell. Always was.'

Before Buck had the chance to compare me point by point to a healthy puppy, I said, ‘Steve's the superhealthy one. He never even gets a cold.'

Tom looked disappointed. ‘Even after all your contact with animals?' he asked. To Leah, who was passing the salad, he said, ‘Thank you, but no. My poor beleaguered stomach won't tolerate roughage.' Tom did not, by the way, look sickly. He was a dapper man with bright blue eyes, short white hair, and good color.

‘Haven't caught anything yet,' Steve said.

‘Really,' said Leah, ‘getting a dog or cat or any other animal is the best thing you can do for your health. But dogs are the best because you have to get out and exercise them.'

Buck looked up from Lady, who was at his side, and beamed at Leah, as did Steve and I. To compensate for the negativity I've expressed about my father, let me point out that he is no dog snob. You can tell at a glance that the three malamutes, Rowdy, Kimi, and Sammy, and India, the German shepherd dog, are the products of careful breeding. The same quick look will tell you that Lady is what's called ‘pet quality'. Although my father combines a vast knowledge of American Kennel Club breed standards with a great eye for a dog, he fully appreciated our nervous little Lady as the valuable individual that she was.

‘Walking Ulla is beyond me,' Tom said. ‘I don't know how Vanessa keeps up with her.'

‘Easily,' Vanessa muttered.

‘With her mitral valve prolapse,' Tom said.

‘Ulla has mitral valve prolapse?' I asked.

‘I do,' Vanessa said. ‘It's nothing. A normal variant.'

Hatch and Fiona nodded, but Tom said, ‘What Ulla has is hypothyroidism. She has to take two pills a day.'

‘I'm mildly hypothyroid myself,' Gabrielle said.

‘It's very common in dogs,' I said. ‘Especially in northern breeds. But if you—'

Before I could say that if you didn't intend to breed a dog, hypothyroidism was no big deal, Tom said, ‘And then there's Avery. She's at dangerously high risk for osteoporosis. Thin white women, you know.'

Vanessa sighed. ‘Avery broke her wrist two years ago. He's been on this kick ever since. It was an accident. Avery's the picture of health.'

To my mind, Avery looked bloodless and depressed, but I didn't say so, of course. What I did was cast a pleading glance at Gabrielle, who read my wish and smoothly changed the topic by saying, ‘Speaking of accidents, Holly, I wondered about the ladder that's outside. You and Steve aren't using that, are you?'

‘I am,' I admitted. ‘But I'm being careful.'

‘Climbs like a monkey,' said my father. ‘Agile as a cat.' He has always had trouble reconciling himself to my membership in the species
Homo sapiens.

‘I'm a do-it-yourself type,' I admitted. ‘The north side of the house doesn't want to hold paint, and it galls me to pay to have it done and redone all the time, and gutters and downspouts need some work.'

‘That we should hire someone to do,' Steve said.

‘With all this rain,' I countered, ‘I haven't even been up on the ladder, but I don't believe in hiring people to do work that I can do myself.'

‘Yankee self-reliance,' my father said with approval. Miraculously, he did not go on to compare me favorably to a lodge-building beaver or any other sort of animal.

Fortunately, the subject of home maintenance diverted Tom from his interest in disease and Buck from his pride in me. Steve and I offered the names of reliable plumbers and electricians, Leah said that Elizabeth and Isaac McNamara would be great neighbors, and I encouraged Vanessa's interest in taking Ulla to classes at the Cambridge Dog Training Club. Vanessa said that she regretted having already found a local vet for Ulla; Steve, she said, would've been perfect. Leah discovered that Hatch and Fiona had gone to medical school at the University of Vermont, where one of her close friends would be starting in the fall. Gabrielle did her valiant best to befriend Avery and eventually elicited at least a tiny spark of interest in food. As Gabrielle recommended our local shops on Concord Avenue and got Avery to utter a few words about Loaves and Fishes, the big natural-foods emporium at the Fresh Pond traffic circle, it occurred to me that the person who'd adore the aisles of vitamin supplements and alternative remedies at Loaves and Fishes was Tom, who, as if on cue, asked whether liquid supplements were available there.

‘I have an exceptionally small throat,' he explained. ‘I'm forced to have prescription medicine specially compounded because I can't swallow anything except the tiniest pills and capsules.' He then questioned Gabrielle about exactly what type of hypothyroidism she had. Hashimoto's? Or something else?

It struck me that Tom's excessive interest in illness must be hard on Steve, who spent a good part of his work life listening to owners report on the symptoms of their pets, and even worse for Hatch and Fiona, who had to hear their patients complain about sickness and were then deluged with ailment talk whenever they saw Hatch's grandfather. At the moment, all three medical types were escaping the all-too-familiar subject. Steve and Hatch talked about fly fishing. When Buck joined in, he came dangerously close to mentioning Rangeley and asking Steve whether he was going to get any fishing in this spring. Leah and Fiona tried to draw Avery into a discussion of novels they both liked, but even when their efforts led to movies based on Jane Austen's books, Avery was sadly unresponsive.

‘I hate to rush off,' Fiona said when everyone had finished dinner, ‘but I'm on my way to Vermont tonight, and it's a long drive.'

‘All the way to Burlington,' Vanessa said. ‘But do stay for dessert. It won't take a second to heat up. Holly, no! Stay put. Avery and I will do it.'

‘How about if we all carry in our own dishes,' Gabrielle said, ‘and then we'll leave the dessert to you.'

Gabrielle is a natural leader with a gift for eliciting social cooperation. People always seem to end up feeling glad to participate in doing what she wants. As soon as she spoke, all of us, even Tom, rose, and in almost no time, the table was clear. I made caffeinated coffee for Steve, who is impervious to its effect, and for Fiona, who had a long drive ahead, and decaf for everyone else except Tom, who had a delicate stomach. I'd like to be able to give a detailed report of who was where when, and who did what, but I was busy with coffee cups, teaspoons, dessert forks, sugar, and cream. The time? It must have been about nine o'clock. I know that I gave Avery a hand-held electric mixer to whip cream for the cherry crisp. At some point, Vanessa urged Fiona to spend the night at her house and to leave for Vermont in the morning. Fiona refused. Her cadaver partner from medical school was about to have a baby. Labor was to be induced the next morning. Fiona had promised to be there. I also remember that Fiona swallowed a pill from a prescription bottle that she retrieved from her purse. She said that she was taking an antihistamine that didn't cause drowsiness. I had the passing thought that the medication might actually be a stimulant meant to keep her awake during the drive to Vermont. If so, so what? As a young doctor who was just finishing her training, Fiona must have up-to-date knowledge of drugs and doses. Besides, what she swallowed was none of my business.

‘I really should hit the road,' she said as we returned to our seats in the dining room, ‘but Avery will be hurt if I miss dessert. Besides, it's rude to eat and run.'

‘Please don't worry about us,' I said. ‘Being with a friend in labor? That has priority. And you don't want to be exhausted. Really, if you want to go now, that's fine.'

She smiled. ‘Thank you.' In a whisper she added, ‘I don't want in-law trouble before we're even married.'

For all the to-do about transporting the dessert in individual bowls and heating it up at the last minute, the cherry crisp was nothing but an old-fashioned cobbler made with canned sour cherries instead of apples. Buck likes that plain Yankee cooking, so he raved about it, and who doesn't like whipped cream? The specialness turned out to be a family tradition. Cherry crisp had been a childhood favorite of Hatch's.

‘I need the recipe,' Fiona said. ‘Not now! I really have to go.' She thanked everyone, and when she said what a pleasure it had been to meet us, she sounded genuine. In fact, Fiona had an openness and authenticity that I liked. Before she left, she and Leah exchanged email addresses, and Buck and Gabrielle gave her their phone number so that she and Hatch could call them if they needed help in finding a responsible breeder of goldens or in raising their puppy. As people were exchanging contact information with Fiona, Avery and Vanessa cleared the table and rinsed out the salad bowl and dessert bowls they'd brought.