Year of the Dog (20 page)

“Mom.” Where my life was headed after Beulah went on to a blind person or didn't, I hadn't a clue about or even minimal interest in at this minute, with her standing by my chair, and both of us wanting to get out into the bright sun and romp about. Past that, I couldn't get my mind around it. Maybe I'd sleep in my car or rent a room over the garage behind Curtis's mom's house. That would give the town something to talk about. “Mom, I don't know.”

Daddy coughed, to let me know he intended to get a word in. “Tell that boy of yours I enjoyed the photographs of the machines in the water-power plant. I bet they make a racket will take your head off, something that big. I put them up in the hardware on the bulletin, they're of interest to customers. I put a little sign under them, YOUR RUN OF THE MILL TURBINES, because that's a figure of speech, you see, but here
they are doing that exact thing. I mean they used to. Run the mill.”

“James will like hearing that,” I told him.

“Well, sweetie, on that topic,” Mom said, “you could move that boy along a bit, somebody like that, a studious type, they need a little prod sometimes to get themselves to notice that a certain marriageable person is about to get away from them.”

“He's taking students abroad this summer, Mom.”

“Well, we've got fall down here, remember. Tell him to come see our fall. Just because we don't put it in the paper and call our leaves
foliage.
”

35

BEULAH AND I went to the Dog Park every afternoon now that spring had truly come. Old enough to understand that the umbilical leash meant she could frolic about with the other dogs, she made her own canine social on the newly-mowed hillside near the lakefront. Sometimes puppies came up to her, walking under her like a stepladder, the way she'd once done with bigger dogs. Today, in addition to the usual labs and shepherds, a collection of other dogs leapt in the air after their watermelon-slice Frisbees or played, as Beulah did, fetching yellow tennis balls—a wolfhound, a boxer, a Bernese Mountain Dog much like the one James had borrowed the afternoon we met, a corgi, a cairn terrier, a pair of Jack Russells. James had got an email from the woman, Lucille, that said:
We would be glad to see you, James.
And gave him a choice of two dates in May, both Saturdays. After getting me to promise that of course I'd go with him, that I wanted to be there when he met them, he accepted the later date—an afternoon which fell exactly a week after Beulah's Companion Dog Trials. We could hardly talk about either event when we were together for being so anxious we were climbing out of our skins. Sometimes, we'd be walking downtown—musicians playing at both ends of Church Street, students in cutoffs and tees and headbands flocking together to celebrate the late
sunset and signs of summer—holding hands, in a daze. I'd look at him and mimic somebody going nuts; he'd look at me and roll his eyes and stick out his tongue. Sometimes we leaned our foreheads together and groaned, “Uhhhhh.”

Then, in a happy surprise, Aunt May called to say that now the warm weather had come, she wanted to make sure to see me before I left. “Janey, Kitty and I feared we would look up one day in May, and here it is in fact such a day, and find you had slipped out of town as swiftly as you slipped in. And I not too welcoming, I'm afraid, on your arrival. For various reclusive reasons, no doubt. At any rate, we do so want you to come for a last supper, please do not read anything religious in that unfortunate phrase, with us. Is this Friday too sudden for you?”

“That would be wonderful,” I told her. “May I bring James?”

Aunt May coughed. “I took the liberty of calling him when I could not reach you. He accepted at once and said he had news for us. I didn't pry.”

“Yes,” I said. “He does, but I'll let him tell you.”

“Certainly, you should.”

Dressing up for Aunt May's very welcome supper, with its prospect of good food and some much-needed talk, James trimmed his face-hair, left off his headgear, and put on his best blue-striped dress shirt, and sort-of-ironed khakis. I dug out a long cotton skirt, an old one, cut on the bias, a southern pale rose, and wore it with a pale new t-shirt, which felt festive as a ballgown after bluejeans all winter. And my clean hair rejoiced to blow about in the warm air, with nothing smashing it down. We brought a sack of fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, the stems still on. I tried to find a greengrocer in the market where I bought them, to ask him where they came from this time of year, fragrant as if fresh from the garden.

The black locust in Aunt May's yard had leafed out,
though it did not yet have the thick white flowers which smelled like gardenias. I'd be gone when they were blooming. She had a large round iris bed in the front lawn, last seen buried in snow—purples, browns, golds, like a Japanese painting. I parked on the edge of the yard, off the street, and got out of the car with our sack of tomatoes and Beulah on her long leash. I had the idea we'd walk her down the street between the two cemeteries a bit, then let her find a spot to get busy, before closing her in the car.

Aunt May stood on the front steps, and I stopped, leash in one hand, tomatoes in the other. I didn't want her to think I meant to bring the dog inside. So I turned, deciding to put Beulah back in the car, just as James said, “Your aunt has a
gun.
” I couldn't believe I heard him right.

But indeed there stood Aunt May with what looked to be a pistol in her hand, pointing it at a dog. The dog—it was a Rottweiler—bending over something on the ground, pawing it.
Kitty.

I quickly pulled the leash from Beulah's neck and told her to stay. “Don't let her move, James. Stand with her.” Even as I spoke, I began to run across the lawn, doubling the heavy leather in my hand.

Coming closer, I could see that Kitty must have tripped on a tree root—she lay facedown, cut peonies flung in all directions around her. The dog's scissoring teeth tore at the shoulder of her cotton sweater as I came near. “Back,” I yelled at him. “Back, Fritz.
BACK, FRITZ.
” In my fear, punctuating my words by snapping the leather in the black attack dog's face. I didn't try to pull him off Kitty or look at her, afraid he would turn on her again. When he stopped, his small red eyes watching me, his front paws still on her, I advanced, slapping the ground in front of him with the doubled-up leash the way you saw lion trainers hit the ground with their whips to make the giant cats back up. All the while Kitty lay still, not making
a whimper, not allowing herself to stir. Finally, when the dog, its panting mouth open, began to turn away and then run toward the trees at the back of the lot, I hurled the leash after him. Tearing off a sandal, I threw that at him, too.

First I helped Kitty to her feet, locating her glasses and gathering the cut blooms, then I turned to see about Beulah. Stalwart, she stood motionless beside James, but her ears and tail were up, as if she longed to come to my side. I retrieved the leash and tossed it to him, so that he could put her safely in the car, then walked Kitty to the front door where Aunt May stood, still holding the gun. “If you hadn't shown up when you did, I'd have shot it,” she said, her hand steady.

Inside, Kitty wiped her face, streaked with grass and dirt, a skinned spot on one temple, and accepted a glass of bourbon from Aunt May, who was still breathing heavily. Pulling off the torn sweater, the small woman poked at a tear in the sleeve of her light green dress, then, taking a sizeable swallow, she made a shaky smile and asked me, “However did you come up with
Fritz
?”

By then James had come in and joined me on the wide sofa. I felt sick with relief that Kitty was all right, and, trying to slow my racing heart, explained, “Our dogs learn to answer to their names, that's how you—get their attention. I thought maybe any name, just the tone of a name, would do it. I didn't know what else to try.”

Aunt May took my face in her cold hands. “How resourceful you were,” she said. “I should have shot it.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Come on, Bertie,” Kitty snapped, “put it in the story.”

“In the story,” Aunt May raised her voice, “the hairdresser
shoots the dog.
And I have the job of defending her.”

Kitty laughed and drained her glass.

James and I stared at one another.

“
You
?” he asked.

Aunt May shrugged and sat down heavily. “You two must have guessed,” she said.

“I thought it was Kitty.
Boisvert . . . Greenwood,
” I said.

“Well, yes.” She clasped her hands, looking amused. “I did appropriate her last name, it's true. And my first name is Bertha. Bertha Mayfield Mason, what could I do with that?”

Staring at my aunt,
Bert Greenwood,
it fell into place, as if I'd known it all along. She, the Judge, observing, putting it all together; borrowing from Kitty the bourbon, the dreadful dog attack, the wise librarian with the curly gray hair.

“Let's not forget supper,” Aunt May said, rising and leading us into the kitchen. “Drama is no substitute for food.” Glancing about, as if to reconstruct where she'd been when she heard Kitty cry out, she peered in the oven where she said a cut-up chicken roasted, and checked on the vegetables. She let James pour her, and us, a glass of wine.

Trying to collect myself, I read a newspaper item pinned on their bulletin board:

KENYA: MARRIED WOMEN SEPARATE. An 80-year-old woman in a Western tribe has divorced her young wife because of “cruelty and violence.” Some tribes allow women to marry when an elderly widow has not had a son and one is needed to perpetuate the family line.

Someone had written in the margin:
Not very civil union.

* * *

After a bit, we took our glasses to the table, set with four candles, yellow placemats, and a fluted vase with a stem of for-sythia in the center. James and I sat on one side, the women on the other. The baked chicken was delicious, and we had roasted new potatoes, asparagus with the stems half-peeled, and
curried squash in a kind of soufflé.
Spring! Home-cooked food
! We didn't say a blessing, but we raised our glasses to one another, and when Aunt May took Kitty's hand, James reached out for mine.

We had the salad course after, with the tomatoes, in a lemony dressing. Kitty, putting down her fork, spoke to James, her voice still a little shaky. “Janey has done her part, saving me not only from a marauding dog but also from a wild woman with a contraband gun . . .”

Aunt May reminded her dryly. “You don't need a gun license in Vermont.”

“. . . Now we understand you have something to tell us.”

James looked from one to the other of the women. The terror outside had quite taken the edge off his excitement, but he flushed to be able to give them his news. “I found—my real dad and mom. We're going—going to
meet them.
In New Hampshire, in a couple of weeks.”

“Is that good, then, do you think?” Aunt May asked. “Not to be unfeeling, and certainly excepting Janey, but some of us might like to have let ours stay lost.”

Kitty looked at me and then at him. “May wishes she'd been an orphan on a doorstep because she had that big southern family. She does not, however, wish she'd been raised by dingbats or crazies? Do you, Bertie?”

Aunt May shook her head. “I was out of line, James. Please. I'm still in a bit of shock, seeing that damn dog leap on her.”

Kitty said, “Tell us about them, James, these people of yours. Do they know you're coming?

He told the whole story, then, not all of it, naturally, but enough so that they could see how the moment he brought up the faces of Lucille and Owen on the computer screen, he felt his hopes had been answered.

Back in the room with the bay windows, Aunt May was
bringing us warm pudding with plum sauce for our dessert. But I had grown too antsy to sit a moment longer. What if Beulah thought, now, that every time I told her to “stay” it meant a dangerous dog was attacking? What if she'd lost her trust? What if she waited out there in the car thinking her person was never coming back? “Excuse me,” I said to the women, “after that awful Rottweiler, I have to, I just have to, be sure Beulah's all right.”

“Oh, for God's sake, May,” Kitty protested, “do let Janey bring the puppy in. I quite forgot about it outside.”

Aunt May set the plates down and looked toward the dark window. “Certainly,” she said, after a minute, “certainly your animal ought not to be out there alone.”

I ran to the car, nearly tripping myself, and covered her with hugs while I took her from the front seat floor and calmed her trembling with a little stroking.

Together, we walked through the front door of the large house with its dark wood floors, its scattered rugs and musty-book smell unfamiliar to her, moving down the long hall into the light windowed room where everyone waited. In the middle of the room, she stopped, looked all about, and then slowly approached Kitty. After a slight hesitation, she put her face on Kitty's knee.

“She was afraid for you,” I said.

“Oh, my.” Kitty spoke softly, patting Beulah's head. “It's not your fault, dear,” she said. “We can tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

36

LARRY AND ROLAND made a dozen trips down the back stairs and up the front stairs, loading their gear into Larry's car and Roland's truck. Their lease didn't expire till June 1, the same as mine, but they'd decided they had to either split or kill each other. Larry got the girl he'd been screwing upstairs to let him move in with her, on a sort of we'll-see basis, and Roland pressured his younger brother to let him have a room till the end of summer. Larry left me a goodbye sign on the now leafy, blooming lilac bush: LARRY WAS HERE. I gave them each a Magic Hat and waved them goodbye. And then it did seem time for me to go, too.