Dog Crazy (9 page)

Clive holds up a forkful of eggs and peers at it, turning the fork in his hand so it catches the light. A speckled piece of egg falls to his plate. “Say, Anya, what kind of fancy tricks are they teaching you at that culinary arts class at City College?”

“It's a
photography
class,” Anya says. “And I'm not going.”

“You're not?” Henry asks. “Since when?”

Anya is staring at the camera that is tattooed on the back of her hand and doesn't answer. I remember her telling me that she doesn't take photographs anymore. What would it be like to abandon something you love, only to have to look at a reminder of what you've given up every day for the rest of your life?

Rosie taps a pale finger against her temple. “As long as you're still shooting in here,” she tells Anya.

Anya gives her grandmother a shimmer of a smile, and her tense shoulders seem to drop an inch.

Terrence turns to me. “Are you helping Anya look for Billy?”

Before I can answer, Clive cuts in. “Anya, I thought you said someone
stole
Billy,” he says. “One of those dastardly thieves that rove the city looking for smelly old mutts to nab. I hear it's practically an epidemic. Front page of the
Chronicle
week after week. ‘Flea-bitten Mutts Targeted by Crime Ring! Humane Society Paralyzed with Terror!' ”

I can feel the anger radiating off Anya. “Someone
did
steal him, Clive!” Her bony fingers with their blood-rimmed nails fan out on the table in front of her and I have the sense that she's about to launch herself across the table at her brother. “Some fucking
prick
stole my dog. And when I find out who did it, I'm going to rip out his rotten heart and
crush
it.” She swings one of her legs up so that her huge black boot lands on the table. A crust of mud falls off the bottom and lands an inch from my plate.

Everyone is silent.

I don't have siblings, so I never experienced the sort of fiery, combative banter that seems to be status quo for Anya and Clive, but I know every family has its own idiosyncrasies. I look around the table, trying to get a read on where Anya's outburst falls on the range of normal for this family. Clive is biting blithely into a piece of toast. Henry is glaring at him. Terrence is keeping a close eye on his grandmother, who, in turn, watches Anya, her brow knotted. Huan appears to be frozen in the act of staring at his own plate.

“Anya,” Terrence pleads, “your behavior . . . You have to get ahold of yourself.”

“It would be easier for her to do that,” Henry says, “if Clive stopped taunting her.”

Clive snorts. “She knows I'm only joking!” He looks at Anya. “Since when are you so sensitive?”

Anya slides her boot off the table. “Wow, Clive,” she says. “What a touching apology.” The flush has cleared from her face and her voice even has a hint of warmth in it. I'm amazed at how quickly she is able to shift from rage to sarcasm.

If I'm not careful,
I think,
I'm going to walk out of this breakfast with food poisoning
and
whiplash.

“Hey, Huan,” Clive says. He slides the platter of eggs down the table. “Have some eggs.”

Huan stares at the cold, black-flecked mound of eggs. Slowly, carefully, he puts a spoonful on his plate. He takes a bite, looks stricken, and turns to Anya.

“They're really good,” he says in a solemn voice.

Clive and Rosie both laugh. Even Henry is struggling to keep a straight face. With his serious expression finally lifted, I realize he is actually quite handsome—not a showy, manicured handsome like my ex-boyfriend John, but a subtler, more thoughtful version. He catches me looking at him and I quickly glance away.

“Thank you,
Huan,
” Anya says, shoving her empty plate to the center of the table. “The rest of you can go to hell.” She stands and gestures for me to follow her. “Let's go find Billy.”

I
follow Anya out of the dining room, feeling oddly invigorated. All of that verbal sparring, those undercurrents of anger and love bubbling up to the surface in ever-so-brief bursts—it's a therapist's dream, really, and it's more real-life action than I've seen in months. My enthusiasm quickly fades, however, when we step outside and head off in the direction, Anya tells me, of Buena Vista Park. Before we're even a block away, I look for Sutro Tower, and I feel better when I see it.

Anya charges down the sidewalk, her eyes darting back and forth as she searches each driveway we pass. For such a wiry little person, she makes an awful lot of noise, her boots crunching loudly against the sidewalk with each step. When the leaves of a hedge rustle, she whips her head toward the sound, but it's just a bird hopping out onto the sidewalk in front of us. Giselle bounds forward gleefully and the bird is gone.

“How have you been these last couple of days?” I ask.

She shrugs. “My boss told me not to come in to work anymore.” She barely glances at me as she speaks, her eyes still pegged to the driveways we pass.

“You lost your job?”

“I told a customer that he had shitty taste. He
did
have shitty taste—you should have seen the frame he picked out—but I get that that isn't the point. I work in the store that sells that crappy frame, so who am I to yell at a guy for picking out something I sell? It wasn't my finest moment. It also wasn't my
worst
moment. It was just the final straw. That's what Ray, my boss, said. Ray's not a total shit. He's holding the job for me, but I'm sort of on probation.”

Here's what I've learned this morning: Anya's parents died when she was seven years old and she's lived with her grandmother ever since, she is nineteen years old, she's
not
working at a frame shop, and she's
not
attending a photography class at City College. I wonder if she is taking other classes. Something tells me she's not. Does she have any friends? It's difficult to imagine her relaxing, laughing. I wonder what she was like before she lost Billy. How different is the person I'm meeting now from the person she was a month ago?

We stop at an intersection while a car passes. Giselle sits back on her haunches, her head cocked. All those obedience classes Lourdes took Giselle to when she was a puppy have certainly paid off.

“I bet she's photogenic,” Anya says, looking down at her. “Dark dogs are tough. They can end up looking like blobs. But she has good coloring for photos. Her fur has nice texture, too.”

It seems to me that Giselle adds some spring to her step as we cross the intersection. Her poufy ears bounce luxuriously along with her gait; she looks like she's auditioning for a shampoo commercial. “Maybe you could photograph her sometime,” I suggest.

Anya shrugs. I decide not to push the idea.

“I think she looks like Julia Child,” I say.

She looks down at Giselle and Giselle looks up at her. “You're right,” she says, and her lip does that little half-smile thing. I feel like I just won the lottery.

We turn into Buena Vista Park, and to keep my mind off the fact that we are walking up a path in a park that has “vista” in its name and are therefore surely headed toward the sort of expansive view that turns me into a pile of jelly, I ask Anya if she photographs people, too, or just dogs.

“I photograph everything,” she answers. “But I prefer dogs.”

We cut up the hillside through a cypress grove. The air has a damp, pleasant, earthy smell. Every so often I glance up from Giselle's back and catch a glimpse of the spires of a peach-colored church in the northern distance, the bay and green mountains of Marin beyond. Each time, my pulse spikes uncomfortably and I drop my eyes back to Giselle.

I have so many questions I'd like to ask Anya—about her parents' death, her relationship with her grandmother and each of her brothers, Billy's disappearance. But I remind myself to take things slowly and allow Anya to steer the course of our conversation. I don't want to push too hard and risk being shut out before I've even had a chance to help.

When we're halfway up the hill, Anya suddenly cuts to the edge of the path and peers down into the wooded hillside.

“Billllyyyyy!”
she screams. Her voice is piercing, an ice pick of anguish and grief and fear.

I race to her side, my heartbeat thunderous. I expect to see a dog—or, given the tone of Anya's voice, maybe the lifeless body of a dog—somewhere in the wooded hill below. But I don't. The park is still and silent, crisscrossed by empty paths. I can't shake the sound of Anya's terrible scream from my ears.

When she finally looks at me, her face is impossibly composed. “It's something I do,” she says. “It's primal. Cathartic. Keeps me off the drugs.” Before I can respond, she turns and stomps up the hill. I hurry after her, still rattled by her scream.

On the path, dappled sunlight glows between blotches of dark shade, little negative-image Rorschach tests everywhere. As we near the top of the park, I ask Anya how she feels about her boss asking her not to come in to work.

She shrugs. “It's fine. I can't focus on anything but Billy and it was driving me crazy to be there. I felt like I was going to explode. I guess I did explode. Anyway, I live for free at my grandmother's, so I'll be okay without a paycheck for a little while. I guess that's the upside of not having your life all figured out. It's cheap. Especially,” she adds, “if your shrink is free.”

“Well, remember,” I say, “I'm not your shrink.”

“Then what's with the interrogation?”

“We're just talking. Like friends.” I smile at her, but she looks down at Giselle.

“Are you going to let her off that leash?”

“She's a therapy dog,” I say quickly. “Well, she's going to be. I'm training her.” Lies have always left a metallic taste in my mouth.

Anya looks at me. “I thought you were just taking her out for exercise.”

“I am.” The metallic taste spreads from my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “Exercise is part of her training. It helps her focus.”

Anya squints at me, cocking her head. “You're strange,” she says, deciding. Maybe I should be disturbed by this pronouncement, but there's a note of surprise in Anya's voice and new warmth in her eyes, and so, instead, I find myself smiling.

“Aren't we all?”

“I don't know.” Anya shrugs. “But I'm fine with strange.”

A few minutes later we reach the top of the park—a small, flat circle of lawn. Even without looking, I sense that we're high above the city now.
Don't look don't look don't look,
I chant to myself. I'm doing a solid job of keeping my eyes on the ground until Anya strides to the edge of the lawn and releases another one of her bloodcurdling “Billy!” screams. I immediately look in her direction. Beyond the canopy of cypress trees, I can see much of downtown San Francisco, the steely line of the Bay Bridge above the glimmering water, the hazy curves of the Oakland hills in the distance. I'm practically blinded by the sparkle and grit of it all, the teeming mix of nature and city, the wild and the concrete pushing right up against each other.

The panic knocks me to my knees. My heart is a twisting, painful mass within my chest. My throat constricts; my breath has to find its way through the eye of a needle. I reach blindly for Giselle, gripping her fur in my hand, and take long, reedy breaths.

One.

Two.

Three.

“Are you okay?” Anya stands above me. I nod, but I can't seem to speak. Even through my panic, I'm humiliated, burning with shame. What has happened to me? Why can't I control this? I'm afraid of everything and nothing at once; rational thought darts away from me before I can pin it down.

I'm supposed to be the stable one here and I can't even stand on my own two feet.

Anya sits down beside me. She pulls a bottle from her bag and hands it to me. “It's water.”

My hands are shaking and I can't get the top off the bottle. Anya takes it back from me, unscrews the top, and then hands it to me again. I take a drink. I close my eyes and think about the path we just walked up. I try to make a map in my head—an imaginary line that links me from that bright, exposed spot on top of the city to my small, contained apartment. The panic ebbs from my chest, a full balloon that a moment ago had been on the cusp of bursting is now slowly releasing air.

“Every time I hike up that hill I have this feeling in my gut that Billy is going to be here,” Anya says gloomily. “Every single time, I'm sure of it.” I look over at her, waiting for her to say something about the fact that I'm shaking and mute and breathing quickly, but she only says, “He loves this park.”

After another few moments, I feel well enough to speak again. “My dog, Toby . . .” I clear my throat. “He would have loved this park, too.”

She glances at me. “What happened to him?”

“Cancer.”

“I'm sorry.”

I nod.

Anya stands. She kicks at the ground with one of her heavy boots. “Should we head back?”

I stand, feeling shaky but mostly just embarrassed now. I can barely bring myself to look at Anya. We begin walking back down the hill, listening to our footsteps and the soft, happy, hop step of Giselle's paws against the path. I keep waiting for Anya to bring up what happened to me at the top of the park, but she's quiet at my side.

As we leave Buena Vista, I take in a reassuring glimpse of Sutro Tower. “Why did you want me to meet your family this morning?” I ask Anya.

She shrugs. “I guess I just wanted you to see what I'm up against. They treat me like I'm nuts. Well, not Rosie. But my brothers all say I'm crazy for thinking someone stole Billy.”

“
I
don't think you're crazy,” I say carefully, thinking of the violent rage she'd flown into at breakfast, “but I am curious why you think someone stole him.”

“I told you, even if someone left a door open, he wouldn't run away. No one has come up with any other explanation.”

I'm wary of pushing her, so I just nod.

After a few moments of silence, she says, “I didn't have a lot of friends in high school. I spent a lot of time in the art room. There was a darkroom there, and I'd taken photography as a freshman and was hooked. Mr. Lane, the art teacher, let me use the darkroom whenever I wanted. If the weather was nice, I'd walk home after school and get Billy, and then I'd take him back to school and tie his leash to a tree outside the art room window where I
could keep an eye on him. He loved sitting there in the shade, trying to catch flies, or napping in the grass, or chewing on a bone I'd brought for him.

“When I was a sophomore, I was in the darkroom for a bit, maybe twenty minutes, and when I came out I looked out the window and Billy was gone. I ran outside and saw these three guys leaning against the wall of the school. They were all smirking and jostling each other and watching me. One of them was this dick senior who was always making comments to his friends when I walked by in the hall—he was one of those guys you just know, just by looking at them, is thinking all sorts of fucked-up thoughts.

“So I asked him if he'd seen my dog. He asked me how he could possibly have seen my dog when dogs weren't allowed on school property. I looked at him and that smirk on his face and knew he'd done something to Billy. So I started running. I ran all the way around the school and I finally found Billy tied up to a fence in the school parking lot, right in the bright sun where the pavement was black and practically boiling.”

She takes an angry, ragged breath. “He was fine. But, you know, the moral of the story is that people are pricks.”

“Not all of them,” I say. “But, yeah, they're out there.” No wonder she thinks someone stole Billy—it has happened before.

“Anyway, I walked back around the school and punched that kid in the face. I broke his nose. Broke two of my fingers, too, and I was suspended for a week and had to see the school counselor for the rest of the year, but breaking his nose was worth all of it.” Her eyes have a sly glint. “He told everyone he didn't hit back because
he doesn't hit girls, but the truth is he didn't hit back because he was writhing around on the ground, blubbering like a baby.”

Grief, I know, is a shapeshifter. Sometimes the form it takes is a fog so thick and gray that you find yourself forgetting the places where you once saw color. Other times, it's floodwater, dark and toxic and rising quickly within you. I think of Anya losing her parents at a young age. I think of the sadness and loneliness and anger that lives within her, waiting to be released.

In seventh grade, a boy in my math class used to tease me for having a crazy mother. Gossip about my mother's agoraphobia was rampant by then, the cat was out of the bag, and I often felt my classmates watching me, wondering if my bookishness was something more, whether I was crazy, too.