Dog Crazy (2 page)

I wait until her car turns out of sight before spinning around and hurrying back down the path to my apartment.

The relief floods through me as soon as I'm inside. I make a beeline for the bathroom and scrub my hands in the sink. Leanne looked like the picture of health, but you never know the truth until it's too late. The water is so hot that my skin turns pink. I persevere, humming the “Happy Birthday” song twice under my breath—a handy little tip I picked up during a recent study of the Centers for Disease Control's website. When I read the CDC's advice, I immediately wondered if my mother knew it. I managed to stop myself from calling her in Philadelphia and asking, but I can't stop myself from thinking of her every time I put my hands below that scalding water and watch my skin change color.

I shut off the water and listen as my shallow, uneven breathing slowly quiets.

Ninety-eight,
I think.

I look at my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I'm paler
now than I was when I moved here, but my eyebrows are unchanged: amber-colored, well defined, expressive. My best friend, Lourdes, tells me I have trustworthy brows. She calls them my moneymakers. Who knows? She might be right. Even the most reticent patient eventually reveals her secrets to me . . . black pieces of coal held so tight they've turned into sharp, gleaming diamonds.

“Ninety-eight,” I say aloud. It's an interesting number, the silky shimmy of ninety, the slammed door of eight. I say the number again. Tomorrow a new one will take its place and it seems important I keep track. “Ninety-eight.”

It's been ninety-eight days since I set foot beyond that gate at the sidewalk.

I
blame Google.

I'm kidding, of course. I'm a therapist; I know I can't pin this on the Internet. But it
is
true that the logistical difficulties of not being able to leave your home practically disappear when you fall into the welcoming embrace of the World Wide Web. Groceries, books, vitamins and supplements, even alcohol . . . they can all be delivered. The Internet enables me with the faux-casual finesse of a beady-eyed drug dealer.
No need to leave,
Amazon purrs when I run low on antibacterial hand soap.
I'll have a box on your doorstep tomorrow.

In my friend Lourdes's version of my life story, she is the one who pried me out of Philadelphia four months ago, yanking me from yet another of the sort of dead-end relationships I seem to be particularly skilled at cultivating, and from a job that, while satisfying, never felt like the exact right fit. I let Lourdes believe
she was responsible for my move because there's some truth to the claim—I am, after all, now renting the first-floor apartment of her San Francisco home. There's no need to burst her balloon, no need to assert that the real catalyst for the life change was my dog, Toby.

After graduate school, I'd accepted a counseling position in Philadelphia Hospital's grief clinic. I stayed there for seven years, but it wasn't until I began volunteering after work as a pet bereavement counselor at the SPCA that I experienced an “Aha Moment” that would have made Oprah proud. Helping people who'd lost their beloved pets felt like my true calling, the one that aligned my training and experience and personal interests.

By personal interests, I mean dogs. I've always loved dogs. You know how some people can't pass a baby without stopping to coo in his pudgy little face? I'm like that with dogs. And puppies? Forget it. I'm convinced that petting a puppy is good luck. Some people rub Buddha bellies; I pet puppies. I've been known to trail a puppy for blocks just to have the chance. It seems to me that believing in the luck of puppies makes a lot more sense than believing in, say, a lucky number. Can a number remind you of the power of pure, unconditional love? Can a number embody loyalty or joie de vivre or goodness or friendship or . . . Well, you get my drift. I love dogs.

Despite the strong sense that I was meant to be working with other animal lovers, I held on to the hospital job because I felt a responsibility to my patients and it was steady work that paid well and I had a comfortable, if not particularly exciting, routine in place. It's hard for me to accept change (for this, like all good therapists, I blame my parents). Besides, pet bereavement is not
exactly a cash cow as far as therapy niches go. The idea remained stuck in pipe-dream territory for a long time.

John, my boyfriend back then, didn't support the career shift either. He'd been cagey regarding his feelings about animals during the early months of our relationship, but I sometimes believed I saw his well-tended hair rise a quarter of an inch when I spoke of my dog, Toby. It was like he was literally bristling—like a dog raising his hackles when he senses danger. John was needy in the way of a lot of well-coiffed, handsome men; I don't think he could handle sharing the limelight, or even just my affection, with a dog. So, in a way, I'd known John and I were ill matched almost from the start, but once I embrace someone, it's hard for me to let go. I began to think of John's forthright self-centeredness as a lovable quirk, not unlike when my paternal grandfather died and at his funeral I found myself speaking fondly of his unapologetically thunderous burps.

Still, everything was relatively fine until what I've come to think of as the Great and Terrible Stir-Fry Incident of 2013.

Five months ago, John started letting himself into my apartment to make dinner for me on the nights I worked late. John, to his credit, was an excellent cook, and the whole dinner thing was a nice idea—in theory. In reality, I came home to a mess in the kitchen and the sound of Toby barking frantically from my bedroom.

“Your dog was giving me the hairy eyeball while I cooked,” John told me by way of explaining why he'd shut Toby away in the bedroom. He'd just dumped a pot of spaghetti into a colander and steam rose up behind him from the sink.

I'd never liked how John referred to Toby as “your dog,” but
I was also aware that not everyone loved dogs the way I did and that dating someone who was not exactly like me was probably a healthy route to take. Also, I assumed John's hairy-eyeball comment was a joke. I mean, Toby had the standard canine, hair-
around
-the-eyeballs thing going on, but his expression rarely strayed from one of trusting good cheer.

The second time I came home to Toby barking from the bedroom, I understood that John had not been joking. Or at least that I no longer found him funny. John pretended to be baffled by my anger, but I could see something callous and hard lurking behind his innocent expression. His actions were a power play, I realized—an ultimatum. John wanted me to choose his side, to pick him over Toby, to prove that I loved him more than I loved my dog. His lack of self-esteem was sad, and as a mental health professional my heart went out to him, but as his girlfriend it was becoming increasingly clear to me that I was dating an asshole.

Still, I kept my cool. I tried to explain Toby's state of mind to John. “Toby is lonely and confused,” I said. Except for the high school girl who stopped by to walk him in the afternoon, he was on his own all day. “He's probably underfoot when you get here because he's hoping for a quick walk . . . or at the very least, a little attention.”

It broke my heart to think of the disappointment and maybe even dread that my dog might have felt when the front door opened to reveal John instead of me walking in at the end of the day. Toby was fourteen years old—he didn't deserve that sort of treatment.

I'd had two dogs before Toby—a beautiful, high-energy spaniel named Bella followed by a dignified white shepherd named
Star. I'd loved those dogs, really loved them, but Toby was different. I picked him out from the shelter when I was nineteen years old. According to the information sheet attached to his kennel, he was a flat-coated retriever mix, weighed sixty-four pounds, and was about one year old. I liked the idea of adopting a dog that was beyond the puppy stage, a dog with an unknown span of life under his belt. It seemed only fair; he didn't know what he was getting into with me either. Toby looked solid and strong, his black wavy hair spilling over his paws like bell-bottoms, and the clever, playful spark in his chocolate-brown eyes caught mine immediately. When I opened his kennel gate, he ran to me, and a wonderful lightness expanded in my chest. I remember that I laughed out loud, the sound mixing in with the din of barking dogs. The only thing missing from the scene was orchestral music soaring to a grand, heart-swelling crescendo. That's how big that moment felt to me, and still feels years later, looking back on the memory: the moment I chose Toby and he chose me.

And so Toby became my constant companion throughout that strange terrain of my twenties when I was trying to get my bearings in the new world of adulthood, no longer living at home, wading through boyfriends and college and graduate school and then my rewarding but draining work as a grief therapist. Toby was there through all of it, a goofy, loving friend who kept my spirits up. Boyfriends had come and gone, but Toby had remained.

I have a theory that you get the right dog, the dog you need, for a particular stage of your life. Bella and Star were the dogs I needed in my childhood—comforting, undemanding, and sweet. Toby was the dog I needed to help me break out of my shell as I became an adult. He provided humor and heart and unwavering
friendship, never letting me retreat too far into myself. We understood each other, Toby and I. In many ways, I thought of him as my dog soul mate.

I'd never explained to John exactly what Toby meant to me, but really, did I have to? It was my apartment, my rules, my dog. I told John in no uncertain terms not to lock up Toby again.

So when I returned home a third time to the smell of stir-fry in the kitchen and the sound of Toby barking in the bedroom, my frustration boiled over into rage. I raced down the hall, glaring at John as I passed the kitchen.

Toby stopped barking the moment I opened the bedroom door. It may seem strange to describe a dog as charismatic, but that was Toby—high-spirited, gregarious, brimming with good-humored mischief. How could anyone not love him? He had a wide, handsome head, bright, intelligent eyes unclouded by age, and soft black fur that was lately streaked with gray. Now his lip was caught on his gum, exposing a couple of teeth, giving him a funny, disheveled look that made me laugh despite the fact that a moment earlier I'd been fuming. Toby seemed a bit offended by my laughter, or more likely at having been shut in the bedroom, and shook out his fur with a proud little swagger. I grabbed his leash and headed for the door without a single word to John. No amount of perfectly stir-fried, teriyaki-coated baby corn was worth this bullshit.

We were a block away from my apartment when my cell phone rang.

“We're done!” Lourdes said by way of greeting. She and her husband, Leo, had finally finished construction on the rental unit below their house and were about to post the listing on craigslist.
She'd been trying for months to convince me to embrace the idea of starting my own practice, but to do it in San Francisco, where, in her words, “the hippie-dippy Bay Area animal lovers would flock to pet bereavement counseling like hipsters to hand-brewed coffee shops.” She'd never been much of a fan of John's, and ever since she and Leo had entered the home stretch of renovating their rental unit, her effort to get me to move had reached a fever pitch.

As I listened to my friend launch into one final push to convince me to take the apartment, I glanced down at Toby. His hips seemed a bit stiff, but his gait, if slower, was as happy as ever. When we reached the corner, he looked up over his shoulder at me.
Where to next?
his eyes, alight with enthusiasm, seemed to ask.
Let's go!
Already, he'd forgotten his confinement in the bedroom and was eager to move on. That's the wonderful thing about dogs—they're always looking forward.

What am I doing with John?
I asked myself.
Why am I still working at the hospital?
At thirty-two years old, I'd never lived anywhere but Philadelphia. I'd been in the same apartment, blocks from my parents' house, for ten years. I'd been treading water, embedded in routine, for so long—waiting, but for what, exactly?

On the phone, Lourdes had reached her final and most desperate apartment-selling point—the energy-efficient toilet. “There are two levels of flush,” she was saying. “One is for pee, and the other—”

“Lourdes,” I interrupted, laughing, “I'll take it.”

“What? You're not dying to know about the second level of flush? This kind of information isn't going to make or break your decision?” She paused. “
Shut the fucking front door
. Did you just say that you'll take it?”

Lourdes's excited squeal was so loud that Toby froze, cocked one silky salt-and-pepper ear toward the sky, and barked.

F
OUR MONTHS LATER
, here I am, knocking on Lourdes's door. If you must come down with a touch of agoraphobia, I highly recommend doing it in an apartment where your best friend from college lives upstairs, safely within the confines of a fence that separates the property from the city sidewalk.

The moment Lourdes opens the door, her poodle, Giselle, races forward and wedges herself between my legs. I steady myself on the doorframe and laugh.

“Well, it's happened,” Lourdes says, staring at her dog. “The girls have finally convinced her that she's a pony.”

I kneel down to Giselle's level and smooth back the funny bouffant of ginger hair between her ears. It springs right back into place. Giselle is gangly and cheerful and smart and I imagine that if she spoke she would sound just like Julia Child, whose television show my mother watched in reruns throughout my childhood. Her tongue shoots out and I turn my head, laughing, so it lands on my cheek.

Lourdes takes in our little exchange, amused. “Wine?”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

At the kitchen table, Lourdes's daughters, Portia and Gabby, are drawing on a long sheet of white butcher paper that is anchored by two plastic bins of crayons and two glass-sphere terrariums filled with dirt and succulent plants. The succulents are cuttings from the rows of raised beds that Lourdes herself built in the backyard.

If I love my downstairs apartment for its tidy quiet, I love Lourdes and Leo's house for its energy, the jazz rhythms of family
life. It's a pale slip of a home that all winter long seemed in danger of having its edges erased by fog and rain. There one moment, gone the next. It looks like a modest Victorian from the front, but they gutted the inside a couple of years ago and now there is an open floor plan with concrete floors and an entire wall of glass that can be folded like an accordion when the weather allows. The glass wall is closed today. In the distance, fog clings to the steep, dark tilt of Sutro Forest, a hint of sunset searing its edges. I feel a twinge of vertigo and look away.