Dewey (9 page)

One week I picked Dewey off Crystal’s tray and put him inside her coat. She didn’t even squeal. She just stared down at him in awe. She was so happy. Dewey was so happy. He had a chest to lean on, and it was warm, and he was with somebody he loved. He wouldn’t come out of her coat. He stayed in there for twenty minutes, maybe more. The other children checked out books. Dewey and Crystal sat together in front of the circulation desk. The bus was idling in front of the library, and all the other children were on it, but Dewey and Crystal were still sitting where we had left them, alone together. That smile, that moment, was worth the world.

I can’t imagine Crystal’s life. I don’t know how she felt when she was out in the world, or even what she did. But I know that whenever she was in the Spencer Public Library with Dewey, she was happy. And I think she experienced the kind of complete happiness very few of us ever feel. Dewey knew that. He wanted her to experience that happiness, and he loved her for it. Isn’t that a legacy worthy of any cat, or human being?

The list on the opposite page was written on a big orange piece of poster board and hung at the Spencer Public Library circulation desk for Dewey’s first birthday, November 18, 1988.

DEWEY’S LIKES AND DISLIKES

Chapter 9

Dewey and Jodi

T
he relationship between Dewey and Crystal is important not just because it changed her life but because it illustrates something about Dewey. It shows his effect on people. His love. His understanding. The extent to which he cared. Take this one person, I’m saying every time I tell that story, multiply it by a thousand, and you’ll begin to see how much Dewey meant to the town of Spencer. It wasn’t everybody, but it was another person every day, one heart at a time. And one of those people, one very close to my own heart, was my daughter, Jodi.

I was a single mother, so when she was young Jodi and I were inseparable. We walked our cockapoo Brandy. We went window-shopping at the mall. We had sleepovers in the living room, just the two of us. Whenever a movie came on television we wanted to see, we had a picnic on the floor.
The Wizard of Oz
—over the rainbow where everything is in color and you have the power to do what you’ve always wanted and that power has always been with you if only you knew how to tap into it—came on once a year, and it was our favorite. When Jodi was nine, we went every afternoon, weather permitting, to hike in a nearby wilderness area. At least once a week, we hiked all the way to the top of a limestone cliff, where we sat and looked down on the river, a mother and her daughter, talking together.

We lived in Mankato, Minnesota, but we spent a lot of time at my parents’ house in Hartley, Iowa. For two hours, as the cornfields of Minnesota turned into the cornfields of Iowa, we sang along to the old eight-track, mostly corny 1970s songs by John Denver and Barry Manilow. And we always played a special game. I would say, “Who’s the biggest man you know?”

Jodi would answer, and then ask me, “Who’s the strongest woman you know?”

I would answer and ask, “Who’s the funniest woman you know?”

We asked questions back and forth until eventually I could think of only one more question, the one I had been waiting to ask. “Who’s the smartest woman you know?”

Jodi always answered, “You, Mommy.” She had no idea how much I looked forward to hearing that.

Then Jodi turned ten. At ten, Jodi stopped answering the question. This behavior was typical of a girl that age, but I couldn’t help being disappointed.

At thirteen, after we had moved to Spencer, she stopped letting me kiss her good night. “I’m too old for that, Mommy,” she said one night.

“I know,” I told her. “You’re a big girl now.” But it broke my heart.

I remember walking out into the living room of our two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot bungalow, which was only a mile from the library. Of course, half of Spencer was only a mile from the library. I looked out the window at the quiet, square houses on their nice square lawns. As in the rest of Iowa, most of the roads in Spencer were perfectly straight. Why wasn’t life like that?

Brandy tottered up and nuzzled my hand. Brandy had been with me since I was pregnant with Jodi, and the dog was clearly feeling her age. She was lethargic, and for the first time in her life she was having accidents on the floor. Poor Brandy. Not you, too. I held out as long as I could, but eventually I took her to see Dr. Esterly, who diagnosed an advanced stage of kidney failure.

“She’s fourteen years old. It’s not unexpected.”

“What should we do?”

“I can treat it, Vicki, but there’s no hope for recovery.”

I looked down at the poor, tired dog. She had always been there for me; she had given me everything. I took her head in my hands and scratched behind her ears. “I can’t afford much, girl, but I’ll do what I can.”

Several weeks of pills later, I was sitting in my living room with Brandy on my lap when I felt something warm. Then I realized it was wet. Brandy was peeing all over me. I could tell she was not just embarrassed; she was in pain.

“It’s time,” Dr. Esterly said.

I didn’t tell Jodi, at least not everything. Partly to protect her. Partly because I didn’t want to acknowledge it myself. I felt as if Brandy had been with me my whole life. I loved her; I needed her. I couldn’t bring myself to put her down.

I called my sister, Val, and told her husband, Don, “Please come by the house and pick her up. Don’t tell me when, just do it.”

A few days later I came home for lunch and Brandy wasn’t there. I knew what that meant. She was gone. I called Val and asked her to pick Jodi up from school and take her to dinner. I needed time to compose myself. At dinner Jodi could tell something was wrong. Eventually Val broke down and told her Brandy had been put to sleep.

I had done so many things wrong by this point. I had tried to treat Brandy’s pain. I had left her to die with my brother-in-law. I hadn’t been completely honest with Jodi. And I had allowed my sister to tell my daughter about the death of the dog she loved. But my biggest mistake was what I did when Jodi came home. I didn’t cry. I didn’t show any emotion. I told myself that I needed to be strong for her. I didn’t want her to see how much I hurt. When Jodi went to school the next day, I broke down. I cried so hard I made myself sick. I was so distraught I couldn’t even drive to work until the afternoon. But Jodi didn’t see that. To her thirteen-year-old mind, I was the woman who killed her dog and didn’t even care.

Brandy’s death wasn’t a turning point in our relationship. It was more a symptom of the gulf developing between us. Jodi wasn’t a little child anymore, but part of me still treated her like one. She also wasn’t an adult, but part of her thought she was all grown up and didn’t need me any longer. Even as I realized, for the first time, the distance between us, Brandy’s death pushed us further apart.

By the time Dewey arrived, Jodi was sixteen, and like many mothers of girls that age I felt we were living separate lives. Much of that was my fault. I was working very hard planning the library remodeling I had finally pushed through the city council, and I didn’t have much time to spend at home. But it was her fault, too. Jodi spent most of her time out with friends or locked in her room. Most of the week, we interacted only at dinner. Even then we rarely had much to talk about.

Until Dewey. With Dewey, I had something to talk about that Jodi wanted to hear. I’d tell her what he did; who came to see him; whom he played with; what local newspaper or radio station called for an interview. A few staff members alternated feeding Dewey on Sunday morning. Although I was never able to get Jodi out of bed for those Sunday-morning visits, we’d often drop by the library Sunday night on our way back from dinner at Mom and Dad’s house.

You wouldn’t believe Dewey’s excitement when Jodi walked in that library door. The cat pranced. He would literally do flips off bookshelves just to impress her. While I was alone in the back room cleaning his litter and refilling his food dish, Dewey and Jodi played. She wasn’t just another person spending time with him; Dewey was absolutely crazy for Jodi.

I’ve said Dewey never followed anyone around, that his style was to retain some distance, at least for a while. That wasn’t true with Jodi. Dewey followed her like a dog. She was the only person in the world from whom he wanted and needed affection. Even when Jodi came to the library during work hours, Dewey sprinted to her side. He didn’t care who saw him; he had no pride around that girl. As soon as she sat down, Dewey was in her lap.

On holidays, when the library was closed for a few days, I brought Dewey home with me. He didn’t like the car ride—he always assumed it meant Dr. Esterly, so he spent the first couple minutes in the backseat on the floor—but as soon as he felt me turn off Grand Avenue onto Eleventh Street, he bounced up to stare out the window. As soon as I opened the door, he rushed into my house to give everything a nice long sniff. Then he ran up and down the basement stairs. He lived in a one-floor world at the library, so he couldn’t get enough of stairs.

Once he ran his excitement out on the stairs, Dewey would often settle in beside me on the sofa. Just as often, though, he sat on the back of the sofa and stared out the window. He was watching for Jodi. When she came home, he jumped right up and ran to the door. As soon as she walked in, Dewey was like Velcro. He never left Jodi’s side. He got between her legs and almost tripped her, he was so excited. When Jodi took her shower, Dewey waited in the bathroom with her, staring at the curtain. If she closed the door, he sat right outside. If the shower stopped and she didn’t come out quickly enough, he cried. As soon as she sat down, he was on her lap. It didn’t matter if she was at the dinner table or on the toilet. He jumped on her, kneaded her stomach, and purred, purred, purred.

Jodi’s room was an absolute mess. When it came to her appearance, the girl was immaculate. Not a hair out of place, not a speck of dirt anywhere. Put it this way: she ironed her socks. So who would believe her room looked like the lair of a troll? Only a teenager could live in a room where you couldn’t see the floor or close the closet door, where crusty plates and glasses were buried under dirty clothes for weeks. I refused to clean it up, but I also refused to stop nagging her about it. A typical mother-daughter relationship, I know, but that’s only easy to say after the fact. It’s never easy when you’re going through it.

But everything was easy for Dewey. Dirty room? Nagging mother? What did he care?
That’s Jodi in there
, he said to me with one last look as he disappeared behind her door for the night.
What does that other stuff matter?

Sometimes, just before turning in for the night, Jodi would call me to her room. I’d walk in and find Dewey guarding Jodi’s pillow like a pot of gold or lying over the top half of her face. I’d look at him for a second, so desperate for her touch, and then we’d both start laughing. Jodi was silly and funny around her friends, but for all those high school years she was so serious with me. Dewey was the only thing that made our relationship lighthearted and playful. With Dewey around, we laughed together, almost like we had when Jodi was a child.

Jodi and I weren’t the only ones Dewey was helping. Spencer Middle School was across the street from the library, and about fifty students were regularly staying with us after school. On the days they blew in like a hurricane, Dewey avoided them, especially the rowdy ones, but usually he was out mingling. He had many friends among the students, both boys and girls. They petted him and played games with him, like rolling pencils off the table and watching his surprise when they disappeared. One girl would wiggle a pen out the end of her coat sleeve. Dewey would chase the pen up the sleeve and then, deciding he liked that warm, dark place, he’d sometimes lie down for a nap.