A Three Dog Life (12 page)

There was a young man who had arrived at the Northeast Center angry and belligerent, as inclined to take a swing at you as not. He began showing up in Bill's studio and started to paint. Bill watched him become an artist, and gradually he stopped being at the mercy of his rages. He got well enough to leave the center and move to a group home. This is what he said to Bill before he left: "What is art, anyway, except not pounding on walls."

Every day I exchange money for goods. I put bills and coins into the hand of the cashier and gather my milk and bread. Sometimes I say no thank you, no bag, and stuff orange juice into my pocketbook. In one store I get a 10 percent discount for being sixty-three or older. That's where I buy my expensive olive oil. I go to Liberty House and greet my friends (it's difficult to shop because we are always catching up) but finally I choose some interesting large garments, push plastic across the counter, sign the curly piece of paper, and walk out with a shopping bag full of possibility. ("Shopping is hope, Mom"—my daughter's words have become my mantra.) Sometimes I choose a new lipstick and different shampoo or I stare for ten minutes at all that interesting toothpaste. Later I drive to the hideous mall with a view of mountains and go shopping for shoes for my husband. He wears size 12W "You have to go to the men's department for those," says the saleswoman, horrified, and I wonder if she is trying not to look down at my feet.

" These are our best sellers," says a young man, pointing proudly to a table full of New Balance sneakers. I suppose we don't call them sneakers anymore but I'm too old to bother with new concepts. "They are good for everything—jogging or running or walking," he says helpfully. My husband will shuffle in these shoes. But that's better than nothing. They will look familiar and comfort him and he will think he has just returned from a run or is planning one later in the day. When I get home I take them out of the box and breathe in their funny chemical smell. "Nothing like a new pair of running shoes," Rich used to say, lacing up. I allow myself a quick memory of Rich getting ready, bending stiffly from the waist for his warm-ups. When he came home he smelled like vinegar.

Or I buy a cappuccino and five chocolate chip cookies at Bread Alone and try not to bite into one if it's Thursday because I'll eat them all up in the car and they are for Rich, chocolate chips being his favorite. Or I sit in my red chair and contemplate venetian blinds for all my living room windows and wonder if I should get skinny or wide slats. If I act now I can save $150 on installation. But I don't act now. I take a nap and then I go out and buy chicken thighs and anchovies and red wine. I buy lavender soap. I buy wool and different colored potato chips.

Rich was a runner. He ran for the joy of it. He ran to clear his head. After he retired, running gave a rhythm to his days. Get up; drink coffee; eat cornflakes; read the paper; digest; get into running clothes (ancient T-shirt, spiffy new shorts), stretch (cursory), remark on the fitness of weather for a run; run; drink Gatorade and eat doughnut; rinse running clothes in sink; take shower; hang running clothes over shower rod; discuss quality of run with wife; drink more Gatorade; write in log; lie down for an hour, spent and happy.

Running organized him.

Rich organizes me. Thursday is the fixed point in my week. I get up, drink coffee, avoid the paper, vacuum rugs so his granddaughter, Nora, won't find the awful things that drop off dogs. Bake dessert or stick chicken in oven depending on weather and mood. Tidy the kitchen, close the door to my bedroom if there is laundry on the floor, round up dogs, if outside put inside. Drive to Northeast Center for Special Care. Try to find parking space close to the front so Rich won't have too far to walk. Sign in at desk in lobby, accept the sticker that says "Family" and fix it to my bag. Walk past a drawing of house with the words "I plan to move to PO Box 1325 in Glendale," go back and read again.

I take the huge elevator to the second floor and look around for Rich. He used to walk all the time but recently his gait is clumpy and uneven and he has difficulty getting to his feet. I go down the corridor, take a deep breath before knocking and pushing open his door. There he is, sitting in his chair, newspaper in his lap. I experience simultaneous feelings of joy and dismay. I have a sudden vision of life without Rich. It would not be like falling through space without a safety net, it would be like falling through space with a parachute but no planet to land on.

I bought myself a pair of costly running shoes long ago and for a brief period (two days) Rich and I ran together—or rather I attempted to run and he jogged at my side—and I made it about two blocks before collapsing. It was fun. I forget why we stopped, maybe it got too hot. Rich kept a running log for thirty years. His entries included the weather, time of day, where and how far he ran. If he felt strong he said so, if he weakened he made note of when. Rarely did other details make it into his book—this wasn't a diary, but on April 8, 1988, after the weather and other physical facts he wrote: tomorrow—marry Abby.

How's your love life?" someone asked me last winter. I hadn't seen this person since the eighth grade. We went to
Love Me Tender
the day it opened in 1956; it was sort of a date and I think his mother drove us. When the lights dimmed he leaned over and said, "This is probably when I should begin whispering sweet nothings in your ear." I had never heard the phrase "sweet nothings" and it charmed the hell out of me. Twenty minutes later Elvis appeared as a dot in a field and the whole audience began screaming.

"How's your love life?" I suppose it was a fair question.

"I'm married," I answered, not adding "buster," because I don't think that's what he meant.

Whatever he did mean, he didn't pursue it, but the subject was raised and I had to think it over. Did he assume I was lonely? Did he think I ought to be out in the world, prowling around for another partner? Even if I wanted to—and I don't—I couldn't face all the talking. The past is not as interesting to me now as it was when I was young, and it would certainly come up. There's nothing I want to relive—certainly not youth—and as for what's to come, I'm in no hurry. I watch my dogs. They throw themselves into everything they do; even their sleeping is wholehearted. They aren't waiting for a better tomorrow, or looking back at their glory days. Following their example, I'm trying to stick to the present. I'm not stranded here, I know where I've been; I can conjure up details of old haunts, even former states of mind.

Although the future is gobbling up my old city neighborhood. Where once there was sky on all four corners, there is a large charmless apartment building and across the street—we are talking about Broadway and 110th—there is a big hole where another new apartment building is going up. Gone is the West Side Market, Columbia Bagel, Dynasty Restaurant. Gone is the Ideal Bookstore and the little place that sent packages by UPS. I can still remember when we had three fruit and vegetable stands spilling onto the sidewalk within two blocks of each other. Now there is a hermetically sealed Gristede's (why does all that indoor fruit look so shiny?) and nowhere is the eye drawn to an outdoor blaze of color, all of it edible.

I spent some of my salad days in the West Side Market, and the long-gone Cathedral Market, I flirted with butchers and cheese mongers and the produce manager. I was in my prime moving among the oranges and eggplants and celeries and apples and artichokes in their boxes and pyramids on the street. I had an admirer, a older gentleman who wore a sombrero and a black string tie. He was a tall man, and often drank from something in a brown paper bag, and he murmured "pretty lady" when we passed each other on the sidewalk. On days I wasn't looking my best I'd cross the street lest he have to pretend, saying "pretty lady" when it was really sad lady or tired lady or no lady at all. He was gallant. It's easy now—it's middle-aged lady, nobody's looking, nobody notices. I go without lipstick if I feel like it, and I always wear my comfy clothes. It's a life with fewer distractions, but should something beautiful show up, a middle-aged woman is free to stare.

There was a husband and wife who used to have a drugstore on the west side of Broadway between 110th and 111th. It was a small, old-fashioned place, and we always shopped there instead of the discount chain that had opened across the street. The owners were Eastern
Europeans, and their forearms bore tattoos. Every evening they strolled out together, the woman's cheeks rosy, her silver hair held in place by beautiful combs. My memory puts them arm in arm. They were a shy, courteous couple, the husband bowing slightly if our eyes met, his wife smiling in recognition, nodding her head. They walked an old dog. The drugstore has been gone probably twenty-five years, I can't remember what replaced it or even what part of the block it occupied, but theirs was the kind of marriage I wanted, so comfortable you probably didn't even have to talk.

Rich and I don't make conversation; we exchange tidbits, how well we've slept, what was for breakfast. We are stripped down to our most basic selves, no static, no irony, no nuance. Once in a while Rich says something that takes my breath away: "I feel like a tent that wants to be a kite, tugging at my stakes," he said one day, out of a clear blue sky. He was lying in a hospital bed, but his eyes were joyous. In some ways we are simply an old married couple, catapulted into the wordless phase ahead of time. An old pal of mine used to extol the virtues of basic body warmth in the days when I was more into the heat, but now I understand. Rich and I sit together, we hold hands; we are warm-blooded creatures in a quiet space, and that's all the communication we need.

But I have to resist the impulse to create memories suitable for framing. I have to resist the impulse to preserve us at our most content. Rich is restless. Some days he can't sit still. He is unsteady, and needs help getting to his feet. We walk through the house together. Do you want a cup of coffee? water? the bathroom? No, no, and no. Rich just needs to be moving. And I ask myself what use is a destination anyway?

Recently someone asked about my worst fears—what were they? I couldn't come up with anything. To have a fear you have to be able to imagine the future, and I never think about the future anymore. It is no longer my destination. There are lots of things I don't want to have happen, of course. I don't want to have a flat tire or get lost driving at night or be eaten by wild animals. I don't want to lose my mind or my livelihood. I don't want to forget where I parked the car or the names of my children but I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it, as an old friend used to say. I did recently Google "fluid in the inner ear" and worried briefly about obscure ways to go deaf, because my left ear was clicking, but that went away—the fear and the clicking—after a Sushi Deluxe with Claudette at the Wok and Roll in Woodstock. But as for fears, I don't have any.

You do so, says my sister Judy.

I do not, I say.

Then why can't you get in my elevator?

That's a phobia, I tell her.

Phobia means fear! she says. Don't you know any Greek?

Maybe it's all semantics. My definition of fear is that it's a constant companion, a sidekick, riding you like a watch, going in and out of the days. I don't live like that anymore. The fact that I'm sixty-three has something to do with it. What I used to fear was growing old—not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking good.

I had a piece of good luck. I married Rich in my late forties and thus was eased into middle age while living with a man who approved of the way I looked. When after three years of marriage I lamented the fact that I had put on a good deal of weight, he said, "Don't worry. I love it all. You can get as fat as you want." Then, upon reflection, he added sweetly, "As long as you can still get up from your chair."

***

When Rich and I first met, we wanted to know every last thing about each other. The past was still damp and new, full of clues—it was the way to make sense and order of our lives, and to illustrate who we had become. Rich listened to stories of my marriages and my parents and my sisters and my kids, and I listened to his. We took each other's side in ancient disputes. Now, as my brother-in-law is fond of remarking, the past is in the wastebasket.

Besides, I'm okay alone. I don't always want to answer a question about why I'm coughing if I'm coughing. I like falling into
Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk
without being asked what am I reading. I appreciate not being interrupted in the middle of thinking about nothing. Nobody shoos my dogs off the sofa or objects to the three of them with sardine breath farting under the covers in bed at night. I like moving furniture around without anyone wishing I wouldn't or not noticing that I have. I like cooking or not, making the bed or not, weeding or not. Watching movies until three
A.M.
and no one the wiser. Watching movies on a spring day and no one the wiser. To say nothing of the naps.

Getting back to the question. How is my love life? Rich is my husband. We have been married seventeen years. We fall asleep together on the couch, trusting and comfortable and warm. That's my love life, it's all I want and I can have it anytime. All I have to do is drive to the Northeast Center, pick up my husband, and drive him home. But what with one thing and another—my icy driveway, big snowstorms, various colds—there were two months this winter when I couldn't. I chickened out every week, afraid I wasn't strong enough to help him with the steps, afraid of us both slipping and falling in the snow. When I was younger I never fell, and if I did, so what? Now I am brittle-boned, full of aches and pains, and I watch my step. Being cautious is new territory; my specialty was leaping, not looking. These days I pay attention. You can stumble uphill as easily as down. Ice comes in smooth and corrugated. Plastic bags are slippery underfoot. A big dog can knock you to your knees.