Dog House (9 page)

Cosi was adorable and fierce, but she was only human after all, and she'd begun to develop curiously human-type problems—bad breath being the most in-your-face, but hardly the strangest. The strangest was that she was going bald.

Along about the end of our first year together, I'd begun to notice black spots, like very large freckles, becoming increasingly visible on the piggy pink skin beneath her fur. As more and more pink emerged, I phoned her breeder in Texas (who, undoubtedly, like so many backyard breeders, had
never
planned on hearing from me again), only to have her swear up and down that she'd never seen such a thing on any of her dogs. Was I feeding Cosi the wrong thing? Had I traumatized her? Was she sick? (Did I have a receipt?) More to the point, was I being a rotten parent? Again?

So more usefully, I called our vet, who recommended that I take her to be examined in Manhattan, to the best animal hospital in the area—some said in the country—since she might have a thyroid issue.

A thyroid issue. That sounded dire. I tucked my balding Cosi under my arm, put her in the back of our newish station wagon with a few of what I hoped would be comforting blankets (all antiques dealers—even dormant dealers—drive station wagon—like cars with a blanket or two in the well) and left her loose behind the wire partition to enjoy an unobstructed view of passing gas station attendants. When I pulled onto the Long Island Expressway, it was a cloudless, sunny day.

 

 

To get to Manhattan from Long Island, you must travel under or over the East River. Ostensibly, the most direct route is through the Midtown Tunnel, which was then very long and very dark, with the requisite allegorical light only at its far-away end. About a minute into its maw, I noticed a definite smell in my car. I sniffed.

Potent.

Familiar.

Awful.

And I realized that Cosi had pooped hugely in the back and that I was about to be trapped in the car with it and with her lurching around in it as I maneuvered through midtown traffic.

Long afterward, I came to the conclusion that, to a little dog, when the car radio and the sun go out simultaneously, that's plainly The End of the World.

Anyone would poop.

Back then, though, I just felt sorry for myself: three useful blankets undoubtedly shot, and so much for that new-car smell.

Ultimately, though, it only reinforced my belief that she'd have been no good at all in the go-to-ground.

 

 

They never found out what was wrong, by the way, and we just got used to having an almost-hairless terrier. In truth, I grew rather fond of that rounded pink belly with its dappled black spots. Millard did, too. In fact, I'd never seen Millard love any thing or person the way he loved Cosi, balding or furred.

By today's parenting standards, Millard hadn't been much of a father, at least not in the caretaking, demonstrative sense. With the exception of their irregular weekend bondings, Barden's feeding, clothing, worrying-about, schooling, embracing and socialization had been all Mom's job. Dad did the pizza runs and bike-riding stuff, but babies and children, for some unfathomable reason, made Millard uneasy. And I was okay with that. Though if I occasionally hinted it was absolutely necessary, he
would
pick up a child. But he'd hold it gingerly, at a distance, the way you or I might hold a cute baby alligator. And I don't think I ever saw him spontaneously hug or kiss Barden, but then, he didn't hug or kiss me spontaneously, either. Though I yearned for him to.

In essence, Millard was a sweet-tempered, slightly socially inept, none-too-demonstrative man. But he always had a smile on his face and he was perpetually curious. He was also partially deaf from a childhood illness, which meant that you couldn't hope to talk to him if his back was turned, and you could never whisper. I used to kid him that if he'd ever been drafted and it was whispered from man to man along the trench that his unit should fall back, Millard would be the only hero. On the other hand, you should know that, as he aged, he was often mistaken for Harrison Ford. (We'd laugh about whether he ought to sign those autograph books or not, and it got us nice tables once or twice at Manhattan restaurants.)

Eventually, it became evident to me that he'd been saving up all his love for Cosi: so tough, so small, so undemanding, so—compared to a wife and son—complication free. He didn't begrudge me a little of her love, though, and I was allowed to love her in return. Thus, to planting gardens, restoring houses, tending ponds and Barden, we added one more mutual passion.

 

 

We'd been refining the Main Street house for ten runaway years when I got the itch again. This time, it was for a Gothic Victorian on the water a half mile away.

For me, it was key that the house was such a wreck.

What a project!

For Millard, it was key that the house was such a wreck.

What a folly!

In my favor:

It was a ruin so architecturally remarkable; so inexpensive; so on the market for months. (Of course it had been on the market for months, the broker told us much, much later. Husbands turned and fled in the driveway.) But it was so full of potential; so, well ... pretty.

In Millard's favor:

The money we needed to buy it.

In the years since, friends have accused me of pushing a screaming and yelling Millard into buying “that wreck.” Heel marks on the road and all that. But they were only partially right. Truth is, we put a deposit on the house in the fall, then spent the winter doing our semi-Socratic thing.

I'd argue the Pro:

“It's beautiful. It's romantic. It needs us. It won't be expensive, we can do it all ourselves. It needs us.” And oh, there was that water. And the little carriage house. And the falling-down boathouse. And the falling-down bulkhead. And the fallen-down trees all over the (strangely squishy) lawn.

He'd argue the Con:

“I love it where we are. I'm tired of fixing up. I'm fifty. I'm old. We can't afford it. That rotten porch. That dicey slate roof. That incinerator smokestack across the harbor. Those rotting hulks by the shore. That's a view?”

Then I'd argue the Con:

“Millard, if you don't want to do this
that
much, we won't. I never want to push you into anything. We just won't.”

And he'd argue the Pro:

“Carol, if you want this so much, we'll do it. I want you to be happy. We'll just do it.”

All winter, we worried the thing back and forth, and every time we went to look at the house again, he'd stop talking to me for a few days. Which was hard.

Until May, when we moved in. And oddly, there wasn't that much to do.

We were both disappointed.

 

 

To prove myself to Millard, however, and to justify this totally unnecessary move, I'd decided that, workwise, I would really outdo myself. So the day after we closed, I drove over to our extremely detached garage and, from its ceiling, hauled down a very tall ladder. Up in the old kitchen (well, not really the
old
kitchen, which was actually in the basement), the plaster walls and ceiling had once been canvassed over.

Now canvas was, and still is, the traditional method for stabilizing cracked and crumbling plaster, since plaster—what with movement and settling and the passage of time—is
always
going to crack. You can patch it, you can replaster it, still, the time-honored method for fixing implacable plaster is covering the walls with canvas. Unfortunately, however, humidity and steam heat and continued movement cause canvas to buckle and blister and lift, so that in my new old kitchen—a lovely room with tall windows, 1940s cabinets and forest green Formica panels below the chair rail—a triangular hunk of limp old canvas was currently hanging down from a corner of the ceiling. This was the kind of thing that scared off husbands, and this was why I'd brought the ladder.

Standing on its sturdy top step, I reached up, grabbed the offending flap in both my hands, and yanked. With a satisfying
rrrip,
it pulled down and away. And as I looked at my handiwork and stretched to my right to continue on, a few small chunks of plaster fell through my hair and shattered on the floor. Then, a few more. Then, suddenly, a scrim of plaster dust materialized around me in the morning sunlight.

And I watched, the entire exposed triangle of ceiling began to break apart and fall. The whole thing was going to drop. It was about to be a disaster.

But I would save the day.

My hair powdered with white, my tongue dry with panic and grit, I fairly slid down the ladder and flew to the garage. In the old woodshed attached to the outside of its far wall, I'd noticed a longish joist. I might be able to use it as a “dead man.” If I was lucky, its ten-foot length would reach both the ceiling and the floor and jam that canvas back in place. Grabbing one end of the grimy timber and struggling with its surprising weight, I maneuvered it out of the shed, through the garage, up the back stairs and, after some backings and forthings and swearings and bruisings, positioned it for entry through the kitchen door. Peering cautiously around the jamb, I could see, to my relief, that nothing more had fallen. So, holding the piece of wood like a battering ram, I entered the kitchen at an awkward trot and as swiftly as I could, eased it upright. Deftly, I caught the now-much-enlarged corner of hanging canvas with the timber's flat top and quickly slammed it into place. Incredibly, the other end of the joist just reached the floor. I was saved.

Panting, I wiped the sweat and dust from my face with my shirttail and left the kitchen, locked the house and, much subdued, drove home.

As the day wore on though, I began to feel increasingly pleased with myself. I was competent. Capable. Resourceful, even. There was no question that I'd be able to do a good deal of work by myself; which meant that Millard would be less burdened, have less to feel responsible for, have less to complain about and less reason to be pissed with me.

So I could hardly wait to tell him about my coup. (Actually, I didn't. I called him at work.) At dinner, I described the whole scene in great detail, making it as sound as melodramatic as I've made it sound above. I was Wonder Woman. I was Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. I was Lara Croft with normal lips but older, wiser ... and more modest. Too impatient now for Millard to finish eating, I dragged him to the car with his coffee cup in hand and sped over to the “new” place to show him what I'd done.

It tells you something about us, I suppose, that this was the kind of adventure that made Millard proud of me. In his usual nonverbal way, of course. And it tells you, too, that he expected no less of me. This had been clear from the day we met. Millard had always assumed that men and women were absolute equals. A woman could run a business, hoist a ladder, paint a house, climb a thirty-foot scaffolding, move a sofa, dig a hole. I was seventeen when we met, you'll recall, so I never knew I couldn't.

But as we parked in front of the new house that evening, it was just getting dark. In the gloaming, the house looked more ramshackle, daunting and brutally irreparable than ever and Millard's face, happy and expectant till then, went dark. He was going to stop talking to me again. Right now.

There were some twenty-five keys to this house and I kept smiling and trying to distract him as I struggled to find the right one fast enough to get him inside before he could look too long at the roof, the flaking paint, the sagging porch and on it, the stained sofa that our predecessor had left for the Salvation Army that they wouldn't take.

I got all babbly and coercive. I was selling an antique.

“C'mon, Mill. Wait till you see! Just let me get this door open.” (“I know this table has a few dents and nicks and is missing most of its hardware and has three legs replaced and woodworm, but it's just what you've been looking for!” Or not.)

Finally, I found the key, and we were through the door and safely standing in the hall, and I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the kitchen where triumphantly, I flipped on the light switch.

There was my dead man standing tall and true in the far corner.

There was the wedge of canvas, sticking to that corner like glue.

But the entire rest of the ceiling had fallen down.

 

 

And Millard loved it.

He loved being right about this money pit of a house. He loved knowing what I didn't know: that a broom and some drywall would put all to rights. And despite his inherent feminism, he loved my ineptitude. Most of all, he loved the egg on my face. In some major, mysterious way, it eased his angst AND ... it would give him a really good story to tell on his impulsive, impossible, maladroit wife.