The Dogs of Babel (3 page)

Suddenly I feel tired; I think we’ve both had enough. I kneel down and put my arms around the dog. “Come on, girl,” I say. “Let’s go for a walk.”

A
friend of mine from college used to live on the nineteenth floor of a high-rise in New York City. His next-door neighbors when he moved in were a youngish couple with a dog. I remember sitting on his balcony, drinking with him into the night, and seeing the woman of this couple come out onto her balcony, right next door, with the dog, a little pug. They had covered the sides of the balcony with chicken wire so that the dog could sit out there safely, without danger of slipping through the bars.

After my friend had lived there for a year or so, the man next door climbed onto the railing of the balcony and jumped. My friend was in bed when it happened—it was about one A.M.—and he heard a short piercing scream and then nothing more. It wasn’t until the next day, when he was playing loud music and one of the family members who had gathered next door to grieve came by to ask him to turn it down, that he learned what sound he had heard.

I was in town a month or so later, and I stayed on his couch—this was during the young part of my life when I was happy to have someone else’s couch to sleep on. As we sat drinking on the balcony, we couldn’t stop talking about it. It haunted us, and every conversation seemed to lead back to it. Toward the end of the night, when we’d drunk quite a lot and had moved very quickly through the stages of grief for this man we hadn’t known, we began to joke about it. We looked down from the balcony and tried to imagine the trajectory the man’s body would have taken as it fell. We speculated about where exactly he might have landed—there was a building whose roof lay directly below us, ten stories or so down, but we thought that perhaps the wind might have blown his falling body out over the sidewalk—and it was only as dawn began to break that we realized we were talking quite loudly and that the young widow was sleeping next door. I never found out whether she heard us that night—I suspect not, because when she moved out a month later, she made a special point of thanking my friend for his kindness during that terrible time—but the very possibility of it still fills me with horror. If I were to meet this woman again (and I don’t even know that I’d recognize her all these years later), I would fall to my knees and beg her forgiveness; I would tell her that I only now understand that what I did to her, whether she knew I did it or not, is the unkindest thing I have ever done in my life.

I was thirty-nine when I met Lexy. Before that, I was married for many years to a woman whose voice filled our house like a thick mortar, sealing every crack and corner. Maura, this first wife of mine, spoke so much while saying so little that I sometimes felt as if I were drowning in the heavy paste of her words. The most ordinary details of our lives had to be broken down and processed; in every conversation, I had to choose my words carefully, because I knew that any of them, innocuous though they seemed to me, might mire me in a nightlong conversation about my motives in uttering them. It seemed to me that Maura was anxious all the time, nervous she might not be doing it all right, and the only way she could keep control of the pieces of her life was to analyze them until there was no life left in them at all. Sometimes, in the car, we’d be driving in silence, and I’d glance over at her when her face was, for a rare moment, unguarded. “What are you worrying about right this second?” I’d ask. And she always had an answer.

Toward the end, after I’d begun to refuse to participate with her in these dialogues, she began leaving me notes. Just normal things at first—“Please pick up some milk” or “Don’t forget dinner at Mike and Jane’s tonight”—but as time went on, they became more and more complex and increasingly hostile.

Our marriage ended late one night when I came home to find a note that said, “I’ve asked you several times to do me the favor of putting your breakfast dishes in the dishwasher before you leave for work in the morning, and yet I’ve come home once again to find your coffee mug sitting on the table. I guess I’ve been wrong in assuming that I can expect you, as my husband, to listen to me when I voice my needs, and to honor my wishes with sensitivity and respect. We need to talk about this as soon as possible.” The last four words were underlined twice.

I picked up a pen—this was not my finest moment, I’ll admit—and wrote “Fuck you. I’m sick of your fucking notes” across the bottom of the paper. I stuck it on the refrigerator for her to find in the morning. We left each other the next day, but not until she’d tried to engage me in one last conversation. I walked out without saying a word.

I met Lexy less than a year later, and I knew from our first conversation that when she talked it was an easy thing, plain and open, with none of the byzantine turns and traps I found myself caught in when I talked to Maura.

We met because she was having a yard sale, and I happened to follow her handmade signs from the main road. Going to yard sales was something I had taken to doing after my divorce. I liked the treasure hunt of driving through neighborhoods I’d never visited before, and I liked investigating the small mysteries of the lives of the people I met—how had they come to acquire this particular combination of things (shower radios and ornate liquor decanters, hand-crocheted baby sweaters and limited edition Super Bowl Coke cans long since emptied of their contents), and what had happened along the way to make them decide these items no longer had a place in their home? I found a strange, childlike excitement in the promise that I might discover something I had been looking for for years without even knowing it, and it reassured me, humbled me somehow, to see that other people’s lives, too, could be broken down into pieces and spread out on the lawn for anyone to examine.

On this particular Saturday, I pulled up in front of a small green house, set back from the street by a tree-shaded lawn. Lexy was sitting on the front steps, reading a paperback. She had dark blond hair, dipping just below her chin, and she was wearing a loose cotton dress printed with a pattern of vines and flowers. She was very pretty—I won’t say I didn’t notice—but I did little more than register the fact and let it go. She was easily eight or nine years younger than I was, and I immediately added her to the “wouldn’t be interested” list that grew longer in my mind with each passing day.

She looked up and smiled as I got out of my car. “Hi,” she called. “Let me know if you have any questions.”

An enormous brown dog lay on the grass nearby. The dog looked up at me with wide-eyed interest for a moment, then laid her head once more on her thick paws.

I browsed the tables that had been set out. There was the usual collection of books and CDs, a worn-looking toaster oven, souvenir glasses with cartoon characters painted on them. I didn’t find much that interested me, but I didn’t want to leave just yet. At the back of the yard, toward the house, I noticed a rack of formal dresses of the shiny, oddly cut bridesmaid variety. A sign attached to the rack read, “Free to anyone who likes to play dress-up. One per customer. Free dyed-to-match shoes with every dress.”

“Any takers?” I asked, pointing to the dresses.

“A couple of little girls who took the choice very seriously, and a guy who fell in love with this awful off-the-shoulder floral thing. It actually looked great on him. Sometimes I think bridesmaids’ dresses are actually designed for drag queens.”

I smiled. “My ex-wife has friends who still won’t talk to her.” I was surprised to find I had said this. Was I flirting? Letting her know I was available? This was certainly more information than I usually gave out to perfect strangers.

I was afraid I might have put her off—
Warning: pathetic, lonely man on the prowl
—but she laughed. “What color?” she asked.

“Lavender. With puffy sleeves and a big bow across the back.”

“Ah, the butt bow. Why do they always insist on the butt bow?”

“I just don’t know,” I said. I turned away, unsure of what to say next, and began to examine a collection of objects spread on a blanket. A small cardboard box, labeled Square Egg Press, caught my eye. The picture on the front showed a plate of hard-boiled white cubes on a bed of parsley. One of the cubes was cut into careful slices, displaying the square shock of yellow yolk inside. I opened the box and found a hard plastic cylinder with a squat square base. According to the instructions, you were supposed to place a hard-boiled egg, warm and quivering and rid of its shell, into the square chamber, then drop a sort of plastic hat on top of it. There was a screw-on lid, which, I gathered, pushed down on this egg hat, applying the pressure necessary to negotiate the egg into its new, unnatural shape.

“What
is
this?” I asked, turning back to her.

“Well,” she said, reading from the copy on the box, “apparently, it turns ordinary hard-boiled eggs into a unique square taste treat.”

“Does it work?” I asked.

“You know, I never tried it,” she said. “It belonged to an old roommate of mine, and when she moved out, she left it behind. I think she actually got it at a yard sale, too. She was an art history major in college, and she wrote a paper about it for a class on surrealism.”

“Surreal is one word for it,” I said. “How much are you asking?”

“Fifty cents,” she said, turning the box over in her hands. She looked thoughtful, and a little troubled. “I can’t believe I’ve had it all this time, and I never made a square egg.”

“Well, I was going to buy it, but you don’t have to sell it if you don’t want to.”

She shook off her troubled look and smiled. “No, no,” she said. “It’s the kind of thing that should be passed around to as many people as possible. Maybe someday when you’re finished with it, you can sell it to someone else.”

“Absolutely,” I said. I gave her the money and stood there for a moment. “Well, thanks,” I said. “Good luck with your sale.” I started back toward my car.

“Thanks,” she said. “Good luck with your square eggs.”

I drove away with a feeling like laughter caught in my chest. I felt happier than I had felt in a long time. So I went home and made some square eggs.

It was late in the afternoon by the time I returned to her house, and she was beginning to take her unsold items inside. She was facing away from me as I drove up, the late sun in her hair, and I sat and watched her for a moment before I got out of the car. The plate of eggs sat beside me on the passenger seat. I had arranged them on a bed of parsley, just like the picture on the box, and cut one into careful squares. I hesitated for a moment—what odd courtship ritual was this?—but just then, she turned and saw me, and I figured I’d have to go through with it.

I walked toward her, holding out my strange offering. “I thought you might like these,” I called out.

“Square eggs,” she said. Her voice was almost reverent, and as she took the plate from me, her face was filled with a kind of wonder. “I can’t believe you made me square eggs.”

She looked up from the plate and studied my face. She smiled a slow smile that grew until her whole face was lit with it. “I’m going to ask you out on a date,” she said.

“Well,” I said. “Well. I’m going to say yes.”

And we stood there smiling, with the plate between us, the egg cubes glowing palely in the growing dark.

H
ere’s another talking-dog joke. My colleagues have been sending them to me by e-mail. A man walks into a bar with a dog. He says to the bartender, “I’ll sell you this dog for five bucks. He can talk.” “Yeah, right,” says the bartender. The man nudges the dog. “Go on, show him,” he says. The dog looks up at the bartender and says, “Oh, please, kind sir, please buy me. This man mistreats me. He keeps me locked in a cage, he never takes me for walks, and he only feeds me once a week. He’s a terrible, terrible man.” The bartender is amazed. “This dog could make you rich,” he says. “Why do you want to sell him for five bucks?” The man replies, “Because I’m sick of all his damn lies.”

It’s just a joke, but it brings up an interesting point: Who’s to say that your average talking dog would be any more honest than your average talking person? Who’s to say that Lorelei, if I could loose her tongue, would speak the truth?

I had never owned a dog before I married Lexy; to be honest, I was rather afraid of them. When I was a child, I knew a great mammoth of a dog named Rufus who was angry all of his days. His owner was a bitter and reclusive man named Bucky Jones who used to terrify neighborhood children by gutting deer carcasses in his yard and throwing bits of bloody viscera in our paths as we walked by on our way to school. I’m quite sure he abused the dog on a regular basis, but even so, Rufus was devoted to him. The same dog who spent his days tied to a tree, leaping and snarling bloody murder, would whimper with sweet puppy joy whenever his owner came into the yard. On summer evenings, when Bucky used to climb up onto the roof to sit and drink beer and say wild things to no one, he’d hoist Rufus up there with him, and the strange silhouette they made against the night sky is something I see in my dreams to this day.

The first time I met Lorelei, apart from the wary once-over we gave each other the day of the yard sale, was when I arrived to pick up Lexy for our first date, a date that, as it turned out, would last a full week. As soon as I rang the bell, I could hear the enormous noise of Lorelei’s bark beginning at some distant corner of the house and moving with alarming speed toward the other side of the door. I took an involuntary step backward and cowered against one of the porch posts as Lexy opened the door. Lorelei bounded out and leaped toward me, landing with her paws just below my shoulders. I stood rigid as she peered up into my face for a long moment, no longer barking, and I felt an unexpected calm run through me as I met her eyes. For one strange moment, my anxieties about the evening ahead of me faded, and without even thinking about it, I reached out and rested my hand gently on her head. This is the beginning of
our
story, mine and Lorelei’s, a story separate in many ways from the one Lexy and I would begin to create that night. For the first time, I looked into those earnest eyes and touched that rough-soft fur. For the first time, I felt a hint of tenderness for this dog who has, through time and the earthly miracle of canine trust, come to be my own. All that we are together now, the sum of our grief and our play, the daily movement of man and dog through an empty house, following the passage of sun from room to room until it’s gone, all of it began that moment on the porch, with Lexy standing in the background.