Evil Breeding (6 page)

The Houdon bust was on the Web. So was Madison’s town hall. Over and over, so was the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. I mentally drafted a frivolous submission:

Doggerel! What could be more suitable? When I’d completed that phase of my research, I composed a lot of e-mail messages to individuals and to lists like Malamute-L, Showdogs-L, and Dogwriters-L in which I reminded people that Elizabeth Kublansky and I were doing a book about Morris and Essex, and were eager to hear from anyone who had information about the shows or about Mrs. Dodge. I modestly mentioned in passing that B. Robert Motherway, the well-known shepherd breeder and retired AKC judge, was sharing his memories of Morris and Essex with me. Friends of his might want to know that his wife had just died. I was sure he would be grateful to hear from people.

I felt only a little guilty about suggesting a closer relationship with Mr. Motherway than I really had.

T
HE RICH EVEN HAVE
better trash cans than the rest of us. Or so I reflected as I drove onto the gravel in front of the Motherways’ barn. The four big barrels were larger than mine. What impressed me, though, was their color and design. They were made of heavy-duty plastic in the fashionable light-charcoal gray you see on upholstery in expensive cars. At least I assumed that the material was plastic. I didn’t fondle it. Even Geraldine R. Dodge hadn’t had genuine leather trash barrels. Or had she? The Motherways’ barrels also distinguished themselves from ordinary trash receptacles by shunning the traditional barrel shape in favor of an angularity that made them look like tall, roomy storage boxes. They rode on sets of sturdy wheels. Their green lids were, I swear, the precise color of dollar bills. Hundred-dollar bills. The damn thing was that I’d never seen trash barrels like these before and wouldn’t have had the slightest idea where to buy them. I sometimes think that there must be a Rich Person’s Store, a sort of consumer version of Mensa, open only to shoppers with incomes over a million dollars a year. What it sells are elite versions of seemingly ordinary household objects: alien-looking curtain rods, doorbells and light switches of strange design, wonderfully peculiar garden hoses, and all kinds of other marvelous hardware kept secret from the hoi polloi.

A few yards from the elegant trash barrels, Jocelyn was arranging six or eight neatly sealed cardboard boxes and a sad collection of paraphernalia for invalids. A cane, an aluminum walker, and a wheelchair documented the late Mrs. Motherway’s loss of mobility. One of the items was, I thought, a contraption designed to prevent falls in the bathtub. Another had adapted a toilet for her use. There seemed to me something obscene about exposing these private accoutrements to the clear sun of the May afternoon. It was almost as if the woman herself lay naked in public, her intimate vulnerability callously exhibited to revolted strangers.

With no preliminary greeting, unless you count the barking of the kenneled dogs, Jocelyn said, “They’re going to some veterans’ organization. You can’t just throw them out. It wouldn’t be right. They cost more than you might think. Someone else should get some use out of them.” The rationalization seemed directed more to herself than to me. Her eyes were bloodshot, and even more than on my previous visit, she was bent with the burden of shouldering unwanted height. She wore what looked like a man’s white dress shirt with a dowdy gray skirt, athletic socks, and running shoes. As before, a wide elastic band bound her hair to the nape of her neck.

“Yes,” I said. “I guess you can’t just throw them out.”

As if I were a critical and reluctant representative of the charity to which the items were being donated, Jocelyn added, “They’ve been disinfected. Not that Christina had anything contagious. She had Alzheimer’s. Senile dementia.”

“I was very sorry to hear about her. I gathered she’d been sick for a long time.”

“Yes and no.” The sharp tone surprised me. “Oh well, I’d better tell him you’re here.”

I trailed after Jocelyn to the front door, which she opened with one of the keys on a ring she pulled from a pocket of the dreary gray skirt. She entered ahead of me. As she did, the black shepherd rose from his rug and growled at her. If he’d directed the behavior at me, the intruder, I’d have found it unacceptable. Dogs don’t have to wag their tails, sing
woo-woo-woos
, throw themselves at the feet of visitors, and roll
over for tummy rubs the way Rowdy and Kimi do. But in my view, they damned well do have to mind their manners: If they don’t have something pleasant to say, they should keep their mouths shut. But this fellow was committing a far worse breach of etiquette than making a visitor feel unwelcome; he was publicly expressing aggression toward a member of his own household.

Dutifully minding my own business, namely, dog behavior, I told Jocelyn, “There’s no reason you should have to put up with that. It’s intolerable! He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”

You’d have thought I’d growled at her, too. She cringed. Then she repeated what she’d said on my previous visit: “He’s not my dog.” She paused. “And he has his good points. He’s not a
bad
dog.”

The subject of our discussion was once again lying on his rug. I was willing to bet that if I tried to take the rug from him, I’d lose an arm. If he’d been my dog, that rug would’ve immediately gone into one of the fancy trash barrels. I’d also have removed anything else he deemed his possession and not mine. “Has he ever bitten you?” I asked forcefully.

She hesitated.

“He’s put his teeth on you,” I guessed, “but he hasn’t broken the skin.”

Jocelyn nodded. As she was about to speak, Mr. Motherway appeared at the top of the stairs. Viewed from below, he looked even taller than he was. In advanced age, he was a handsome man. “About the dog,” I murmured to Jocelyn. “I can help.”

She looked skeptical.

“Jocelyn,” said Mr. Motherway, when he’d descended the stairs, “we’ll be in my office.” Opening a door off the hall, he gestured to me to enter first. I did. The room had a brick fireplace, walls painted in an odd shade of pale green, yet more American primitive paintings, and the most beautiful desk I had ever seen. Mr. Motherway was a big, tall man. The desk could have accommodated someone twice his size. It was made of cherry, I think, and had shiny brass hardware. Upholstered chairs faced the fireplace. Except for
Mr. Motherway’s framed college diploma—Princeton, 1930—the museum effect of the entire room was so pronounced that I half expected to see velvet ropes fastened across the chairs to prevent tourists from making themselves at home. And the whole house obviously had what the dogs and I would kill for: central air-conditioning. Mr. Motherway followed me into the room. The dog trailed at his heels. He was a long shepherd with the exaggerated rear angulation that produces a gait known as a “flying trot.” That distinctive angulation, together with the resulting gait, is the hallmark of the German shepherd dog bred for the American show ring.

“What’s the dog’s name?” I asked.

“Wagner.” He made the
W
sound like a
V.
The
a
was
ah.
Smiling gently, he said, “My dear wife was fond of music.”

“I’m very sorry.” I meant to refer to her death. What else? Why offer condolences on the deceased’s love of music? Or on an inoffensive dog name? Although Mr. Motherway couldn’t have misunderstood me, I felt awkward. In less elevated social circumstances not involving a recent death, I’d probably have tried to turn my faux pas into an unfunny joke. Now, it seemed best to ignore it. “Are you sure I’m not intruding?” I asked.

“Certainly not.” He directed me to one of the chairs by the fireplace and took a seat in the other. He didn’t sit until I did. Neither did Wagner. He waited for Mr. Motherway, and then sank to the floor at his master’s feet. Strange human manners: Remain standing until the lady is seated, but let her assume that your daughter-in-law is the maid. The growling, too: odd hospitality. “I believe in keeping busy,” Mr. Motherway went on. “Resumption of normal activity and all that sort of thing. And this book of yours must, after all, have a deadline.”

The word hung in the air:
deadline.
Then it reverberated in my ears:
dead, dead, deadline.
But Mr. Motherway’s family line wasn’t dead. Kennel help or not, Peter was his son, and there was also the grandson mentioned in the death notice, Christopher, presumably Peter and Jocelyn’s son.

Still, the word unnerved me. I pulled a steno pad and a pen from my purse. “There is a deadline, but it’s flexible.”

Mr. Motherway rambled a bit about Morris and Essex. Like everyone else who’d ever described it, he kept saying that it was fabulous. I was getting tired of the word. I wanted details, not adjectives. But the man’s wife had been dead for less than a week; this was no time to lean on him. If he wanted to ramble, I’d listen patiently. Eventually, I said, “You mentioned that you’d found some snapshots?” I wished that he’d come up with a menu instead.

He rose and went to the magnificent desk, where he rummaged and eventually found a couple of tattered, curling black-and-white photographs printed on old-fashioned paper with scalloped edges. They were just what he’d said, snapshots, and amateur ones at that; Elizabeth, my photographer coauthor, would have no use for them. In one, two men and a shepherd posed by a car with running boards. Both men were dressed in suits. The shorter, older-looking man had a substantial paunch. On his head was one of those felt hats that men wore back in the days when ladies wore white gloves. The other man, bareheaded and towheaded, was easily recognizable as the young B. Robert Motherway. The men and the dog wore serious expressions. They didn’t seem to be having fun.

“Kaiser,” Mr. Motherway said. “My stepfather’s favorite dog. Judge never looked at him.” His eyes looked distant. “That was 1929. My stepfather died before the year was out. He lost everything in the Crash. My mother couldn’t live without him. She never adapted to this country. She was German. He met her there. She was a war widow. He was there doing some research. He was an art historian, too, in a way—had a modest collection, even had a little gallery. He brought us to this country. Adopted me.”

I remembered the admonition not to ask Mr. Motherway about his sister, the one who’d died in Germany, the one he never talked about. “It sounds as if he was good to you,” I said. “And he had a major impact on what you’ve done with your life.” I meant, of course, art and dogs.

For no obvious reason, he looked startled. “With my wife?” he said sharply.

“With your
life,”
I said distinctly. “He had a big impact on your life.”

Mr. Motherway relaxed. As he was showing me another snapshot, a picture of himself with another shepherd posed near a big pot of flowers, the door opened and in walked, I swear, a clone of the B. Robert Motherway shown in the old photos from Morris and Essex. The newcomer was, I guessed, in his late twenties.

“Miss Winter,” Mr. Motherway said, “may I present my grandson? Christopher, this is Holly Winter. Miss Winter is writing a book about the Morris and Essex shows.”

“How do you do?” I said. The black shepherd, Wagner, didn’t growl at Christopher. On the contrary, the dog’s eyes brightened, and he thumped his tail on the floor.

Christopher nodded at me. I couldn’t help staring. The resemblance between grandfather and grandson was almost comical. Allowing for shrinkage—Christopher was an inch or two taller than Mr. Motherway—the pair were virtually the same man two generations apart. They had the striking sameness of appearance you see in closely linebred dogs. The grandfather’s hair was white, the grandson’s pale blond. They had the same build, the same upright posture, and identical facial features. Each was as German-looking as the other. Age had not greatly faded those arresting blue eyes.

Approaching his grandfather, Christopher asked for a word. Mr. Motherway stood and excused himself. With no command or signal, Wagner quietly accompanied the grandfather and grandson. They held their private conference just outside the door, which, I might mention, was not equipped with a magical latch from The Rich Person’s Store, but had an authentic Early American one that failed to catch and thus left the door slightly ajar. Christopher spoke more softly than Mr. Motherway did. Several times, his grandfather told him to stop mumbling. I caught phrases and tones of voice. Christopher was lodging a complaint about his father, Peter. The discussion concerned someone named Gerhard, who I somehow gathered was a foreign student. Perhaps Christopher objected to the way Peter was treating Gerhard? I couldn’t be
sure. I had the sense that Mr. Motherway promised to correct whatever situation was troubling his grandson.

Mr. Motherway returned with Wagner but without Christopher. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “Something’s come up.”

I thanked him for seeing me and agreed to a third meeting. I made it sound as if it had been my idea. It could have been, I suppose. I still hadn’t seen a photo of Forstmeister Marquandt, and Mr. Motherway still hadn’t told me much about Geraldine R. Dodge and her son, M. Hartley Dodge, Jr., the one who’d died young in a car accident in France.

Mr. Motherway saw me to the door. After he’d closed it, I fished in my purse for my car keys and furtively located one of the business cards I’d made with the new computer and printer my father had given me. As I approached my car, Jocelyn staggered out of the barn carrying another neatly sealed cardboard box. With the irrational sense of committing myself to serve as a secret agent in a dangerous conspiracy, I took deliberately casual steps toward her. Making a show of fiddling with my keys, I slipped her my card. “I don’t want to see you get bitten by that dog,” I said softly. “Call me. I can help.”

Her pasty skin turned scarlet, but she seized my card and surreptitiously slipped it into a pocket of the dowdy gray skirt. She said nothing, not even good-bye.