Lawyer for the Dog (23 page)

She nods, her mouth full of mashed potatoes, then spits them out, mostly onto the plate but some onto her blouse. “Mess,” she says.

“Mess is right, but don't worry, we need to wash this blouse anyway. What about some meatloaf?”

“No,” she says, and points to her sweatpants. “Mess.”

Now I smell it. “Okay, we'll deal with it.” I help her back to her bathroom, Sherman following close behind. My mother holds onto the back of the toilet as I remove her soiled pants and underpants, wipe her bottom, then unbutton her blouse. Sherman buries his nose in the pile of clothes on the floor. “Stop it, Sherman!” I yell. He backs off, chastened, and sits obediently while I shower her off and help her into a fresh diaper. It makes me sad to see how she tolerates this indignity. She's always taken such pride in her pretty underwear, those satiny, lacy things that now lie unused in the drawer. When I open it to get a clean undershirt—she's given up bras, too—there's the scent of lavender sachets. Once I would have thought those sachets were silly. Now I miss the mother who put them there.

I get her settled in bed and Sherman hops up beside her, licks her face, then nestles on the end of the bed, between her feet. She's calmer with him nearby, content. “I bet you'd like to keep him, wouldn't you, Mom?” I say, and she nods, but I realize it's cruel to involve her in my fantasy. “Want a story?” No, she's too sleepy.

I leave the door open a crack, go back to the refrigerator to scrounge for something, but nothing appeals. This is one of those nights when the silence doesn't soothe; it stirs up all my worries. What am I going to do with my mother? How will I tell her I'm putting her in a nursing home? Will she even understand what I'm saying, and if she doesn't, is that a blessing?

And what's going to happen to Sherman? It's an absurd idea, impossible, but I imagine myself on the witness stand:
Your honor, I've concluded my investigation. While I'm convinced that both Mr. and Mrs. Hart are fully capable of caring for Sherman, I'm also convinced that if you choose between the two of them, the dispute will never end. I'm not a psychologist, yet it's clear to me that the fight over Sherman isn't about what's best for him, but about what's broken in the Harts' marriage. How will they ever work together in Sherman's best interest? I could recommend that you award custody to Mrs. Hart and give Mr. Hart visitation with Sherman, or vice versa, but this would only involve the dog in their continuing bitterness. Look how many motions they've filed, many of them concerning the dog. There will never be a “final order” in this case. They won't ever stop. The only solution is to give him to a neutral third party.

And in my fantasy, my ex-husband looks down from the bench at me, comes to his senses enough to say,
What about
you,
Ms. Baynard?

And then the fantasy gets even better. Tony Borden, who's sitting at the back of the courtroom, stands:
Your honor, as you know, I've been involved with Sherman his whole life, almost five years now. I've come to know both Mr. and Mrs. Hart very well, and although I believe that they are each fully capable of giving Sherman a good home and meeting his needs, I agree with Ms. Baynard's assessment. I believe your idea is the perfect solution to a difficult situation. If you decide to allow Ms. Baynard to keep Sherman, I will of course do whatever I can to assist her.

“Don't be ridiculous, Sally!” I hear myself saying. Am I losing my mind, like my mother?

I try some TV for a while, CNN. Trouble in Afghanistan, Pakistan. Shootings in Chicago. The stock market up.

My own stockbroker left a message a couple of weeks ago but I haven't had time to call him back. I know what he's going to say,
You might want to think about being a little less conservative with your investments.
Maybe I'm too cautious with my meager nest egg, but I can't afford to lose any of it. If I have to raid my retirement account to pay for a nursing home, I'll be the Dowager of Domestic Relations until I drop. I turn off the TV, rummage through a stack of magazines for something soothing, but everything seems either too real (home-grown terrorists, global warming, the coming water shortage) or too unreal (mother-daughter bonding through cosmetic surgery). Maybe, I think, the real and the unreal are merging in some cosmic screwup, and I'm right in the middle of it.

I call my friend Ellen. “I'm sorry I woke you up.”

“I just dozed off. Terrible day in court,” she says.

“What happened?”

“Mistrial. Defense lawyer was drunk.”

“Not somebody from the P.D.'s office, I hope.”

“No. That young guy from the Holz firm. He was acting weird during his opening argument, wobbling over to the jury box, slurring, then he fell asleep after I called my first witness.”

“I thought he'd gone to rehab.”

“Guess it didn't take. His wife will probably be calling you any time now. Anyway, what's up?”

I tell her about my meeting with Joe. “I feel terrible about it.”

“Sounds like you handled it well.”

“I think he felt rejected.”

“That's the way he
should
feel.”

“I know, but he really needs a good friend right now.”

“Right. It just can't be you. You know that—that's why you told him you wouldn't talk again until he's been through counseling. By then you'll be out of the dog case.”

“He could still deny my motion.”

“I don't think he's
that
irrational. He'll grant it, he'll schedule a short trial on the dog-custody issue, and that'll be it. You'll feel a lot better when this case is over.”

“I guess so.”

“You don't sound so sure.”

“I'll miss the dog.”

“So get a dog.”

“But it won't be Sherman.”

“You've really fallen for that little guy, haven't you?”

“When he looks at me with those eyes, it's like he knows how I'm feeling.”

“Maybe he does.”

“But he's just a
dog
. I never imagined—”

“What? You never imagined you could love an animal this much?”

“I don't exactly
love
him.”

“What would you call it, then? There's nothing wrong with loving the dog. He probably feels the same way about you by now.”

“Maybe.”

“What else is going on?” Ellen presses. “You sound terrible.”

“Delores is leaving. Charlie's sick.”

“Oh, God.”

“I've got to find a nursing home. I went to one of those places in Mt. Pleasant. It was okay, but I just can't imagine putting her there.”

“Wendy Shuler's father has Alzheimer's. He's in a nursing home. Wendy says it's pretty good. Compassionate Care.”

“That one's on my list. I just haven't had time…”

“Why don't you go tomorrow? I'll watch your mother.”

“That's no way for you to spend your Saturday.”

“I'll bring some work over,” she says. “Hank's playing golf.”

“You're wonderful, Ellen.”

“We do these things for each other, right? Remember when I went into labor with Mandy? It was three in the morning, Hank was out of town. You came right over, drove me to the hospital?”

“Yeah, you were screaming all the way down Calhoun Street for me to go faster, and then when I hit the accelerator you screamed for me to slow down.”

“Anything else going on? Besides your mother?”

I give her a detailed report about my night with the vet. “Not exactly a great start to a relationship, is it?”

“If you can't see the humor in that situation, you're worse off than I thought.”

“It was awful.”

“What, the sex?”

“No,
that
was great, but I should never have let … Mom was so upset.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“No, I've been waiting for him to call.”

“This isn't high school. Why don't you call him?”

“I'm afraid to.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“He'll be polite, but who wants to get involved with a woman who's living with her demented mother?”

“You're going to put her in a home, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

“You are,” she says emphatically.

“I'm losing it, with all this stuff going on at once.”

“It's going to work out. You'll find a decent place for your mother, and you and the vet—What's that noise?” Ellen asks.

“The dog. I think he needs to go out.”

“Wow, he sounds desperate. I'll be there tomorrow by ten, okay?”

Sherman is desperate, all right, but not because he has to pee. When I open the front door he refuses to follow me, barks even louder, turns back down the hall and into my mother's bedroom. She's not in her bed, but on the bathroom floor beside the toilet, the diaper around her feet. She's not hurt, thank goodness. I lift her up—it's amazing how heavy she is, though she's lost weight—and onto the toilet. When she's finished I help her back to bed.

“Good dog,” I say as Sherman hops up beside her. I sit for a while in the easy chair nearby to make sure she's okay. Sherman's vigilant, too. Only when he hears her snoring does his head nestle into the bedspread. In the dim glow of the night-light I watch until he falls asleep, his chest rising and falling, his legs chasing something only Dog King of the World, in his dreams, can see.

 

Trying Dogfully

There's no “marketing director” here, just a director who doesn't seem to care that I don't have an appointment. He takes me on the tour himself. “All of our rooms have windows onto the community garden,” he explains. “Mildred and Tallie are planting bulbs for the spring.” Two old ladies sit on the edge of one of the raised beds, working the dirt with trowels. “We encourage all our residents who're physically able to adopt a small area as their own.”

We pass a room with a piano and a circle of chairs. “A volunteer from the college music department comes once a week to lead a song session,” he says. “Even the residents who can't sing enjoy listening. And afterward we have an ice-cream social.”

“My mother would like that,” I say.

“We also work with a local high school. Their kids partner with our residents—read to them, walk with them around the grounds, work in the garden. Most of the kids don't have grandparents close by, so they get as much out of it as our residents do.”

When the director opens the door into the courtyard, a big dog with a coat the color of caramel, approaches us. “Say hello to Ms. Baynard, Sadie.” The dog sits, lifts her paw. “Sadie's a rescue dog.”

“So you allow pets?” I ask.

“Just this one. She lives here. She's welcome in all the common areas. Official policy is that she's not supposed to go into individual rooms, but, as you can imagine, there's a good deal of cheating. Sadie's our most popular resident. Lots of admirers … and they keep her well-groomed, as you can see.”

We finish our tour. “Don't hesitate to call me if you have any more questions,” he says. This is always a difficult decision.”

As I drive away, I realize this is as good as it's going to get. I'm running out of time and I'm not going to find a better place. Delores needs to be with Charlie. But when I imagine leaving my mother here—no matter how compassionate the care—I break into a sweat.

Sure, I'll visit every day. And maybe she won't remember that I promised her I'd never put her in a nursing home. Maybe she won't even know where she is.

But
I'll
know.

*   *   *

When I get back to the condo Ellen and my mother are sitting on the sofa looking through a magazine, Sherman at their feet. “Margaret and I have been having fun,” Ellen says. “We were thinking maybe it would be nice for her to try a new hairdo, something shorter, maybe something like this.” It's true, my mother's once perfectly coiffed silver hair hangs limp and thin, almost to her shoulders. Until the last couple of weeks Delores and I have been able to help her put it up into her customary chignon, but now she pulls out the bobby pins before we're halfway done. “See, isn't this one pretty?” My mother smiles. “How'd it go? The place, I mean.”

“Much better than the other one. Thanks so much for doing this, Ellen.”

“My pleasure. By the way, the vet called. He said he tried your cell but you didn't pick up. Want to call him back while I'm here?”

“No.”

“Okay, fine, be that way. But you're going to have to give me all the details sooner or later.”

My mother needs a nap, so I settle her in bed and read aloud from
Travels with Charley.
She's soothed by the sound of my voice, the familiarity of the story of Steinbeck's cross-country trip with his dog. She doesn't notice when I flip back and forth looking for my favorite passages.

Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.

I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.

I used to have a sense of humor about my life. I could laugh at myself, laugh about all the relationships that had failed, talk to my girlfriends in that self-deprecating way that probably never fooled them. I was so confident, so sure that if I ever really wanted to settle down with a man, I would find the right one, and equally sure that I could be happy all by myself. But something's changed.

Once my mother's asleep I call the vet. He's at home. I've rehearsed a smooth way into the conversation, something about how grateful I am that when I called about Sherman, he didn't hesitate. “You came right away.”