Walking the Dog (2 page)

LADIES WHO LUNCH

Sarabeth's was one of those brunch places for ladies who were the opposite of an ex-con. It looked as if Laura Ashley had designed it for the interior of a dollhouse. There were lace embroideries around every quilted, flowered pillow. You could catch a waft at different times of brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, or molasses. I felt like I forgot my bonnet. My daughter had chosen this place ostensibly because it was near where she resided with her father, stepsiblings, and stepmother in their town house—yes, town house. I'd never seen this proof of Leonard's success because I was considered unhealthy, perhaps contagious, to the family unit. And despite my nature, I'd cooled it with the stalking. Anything I did got me in twice the trouble of anyone else. Convict karma. My daughter had two stepbrothers, aged eight and six. I'd never known their names.

Her name used to be Pony. I named her that in the prison hospital with the hopes that she'd gallop through life, mane in the wind, unobstructed by fences, halters, bridles, and saddles. Last year, the year I got out, I received an anonymous note saying she had changed her name to Batya Shulamit. Batya was the princess who rescued Moses from the bulrushes. She explained this to me in impeccable square penmanship on graph paper:
I hope I will be able to act as bravely
and selflessly as Batya did toward her fellow man
. “Fellow.” “Man.” She didn't seem to be a feminist, at least linguistically. This was her only direct communication with me since she'd been born. I knew that Leonard, her father, had moved toward a new bond with his Jewish past. Perhaps it coincided with his thinning hair or soft belly. I didn't know. To be fair, perhaps it had helped him recover the belief in humanity that I'd destroyed. The new family belonged to a synagogue where the rabbi was called by his first name and where, during Shabbat, the congregants would dance and sing in the aisles as if participating in
The Pirates of Penzance
. I could never visualize Batya dipping and bobbing in any aisles. Apart from strict ballet lessons, my savior of Moses didn't seem to possess the free dancing spirit of the Hasidim on Purim. Perhaps the loss of me weighted down her feet. I knew all this because, as I said, I stalked her from time to time. Never for dangerous reasons. I didn't even know if I was curious. By the way, in her note, she'd informed me that she would not explain the second name, “Shulamit,” until she decided I deserved the honor. I liked that. Judge Judy of the Upper East Side.

I'd arrived fifteen minutes early to Sarabeth's to observe her entrance. This was the first time in the four months I'd been out that she'd agreed to meet me. I'd taken the luxury of showing up first. On her first and only visit to see me inside Clayton Prison, she had to wait for me in the dim and dark “family” room with its card tables and folding chairs. Neither of us benefited from my arrival in coveralls and shackles at the feet, waist, and ankles. Perhaps that was why she only came once, looked at me, turned around, screamed at the top of her lungs, and left. She was four at the time and already prissy as hell. She never wrote me or sent me bad drawings.

That day at Sarabeth's she was wearing lilac overalls. Her
white blouse had a round collar and the buttons were plastic yellow flowers. Her innocent apparel made me nervous. She had waist-length, straight red hair—the color of strawberries and red oranges. Her cheeks were chubby, but a lean young girl was emerging from the square awkwardness. Her brown eyes looked down. I always looked down or to the side, too. She was unabashedly shy, my biblical geisha girl. Her hair was held back in a headband. It was shiny and lit with a rainbow of cheap colors. For some reason, this accentuated my anxiety. She was Alice in Wonderland without the pursed lips or the flirtatious petulance. Her skin was pale and clear except for the tremendous blushing which rose onto her neck when the hostess noticed her. She had an overbite and a train track of braces. She tried to cover the hardware with her upper lip. This made her look like she was constantly thinking. She'd just turned eleven and was only on the verge of puberty. She carried her unhappy body along as if it were a second person. She didn't know why she'd made the decision to meet me. She'd already given back the one gift I'd tried to present her, a notebook with a horse sketched on the cover. I'd heard she loved to write. She was clear with me: “You don't deserve to give me presents.”

My red-haired Alice, my gentile-looking Batya Shulamit, delicately dipped into the bentwood chair directly across from me. Her taste in clothes worried me. Already somewhat grandmotherly. And so proper. Her posture was severe and upright. Maybe she was trying to hold herself together. “I mustn't stay long,” she said with a formality that made me want to bash Leonard's teeth in. Didn't he ever tickle her?

“Of course,” I said with the instant agreeableness of one who's up shit creek already, just trying to hold on and get her to see me again.

“I have a tutorial for my bat mitzvah.”

The waiter, an anorexic out-of-work actor, interrupted my impassioned exchange with this creature who happened to be my daughter. We both ordered tea and miniature pumpkin muffins. I couldn't stand either. At least tea took time to boil. That should buy me a few extra minutes with her.

“You have a tutor?” I asked dumbly.

“Yes,” she said, bored with me and the conversation. “We study Aramaic and Torah. She is helping me prepare my portion and my Haftorah.”

“You like her?” I asked, obviously the stupidest choice of questions when I could've inquired after Aramaic, Torah portions, or Haftorah. But alas. Batya Shulamit leaned her squarish little chest forward a bit.

“I love her,” she said, with no small amount of venom toward the nontutor across from her.

“She looks like an ancient Moroccan Berber queen and she's been to Israel and she sings and has written a musical about Rachel and Leah. She is also in the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater Company and leads a spin class on the Upper West Side where Chelsea Clinton has been known to go.”

“Why is that important?” I asked. I genuinely wanted to know and hoped it would open up many roads of conversation.

Batya took her pink backpack off her chair, folded her napkin, and tapped her lips. I'd desecrated the teachings of the twelve fathers.

“
What
has
that
got to do with
anything
?” Her face was flushed. Could a preteen have a stroke? She was clearly pissed.

“I didn't mean to offend you,” I replied.

She stood up with great purpose.

“This isn't working out,” she said.

“I'm sorry. I wasn't making fun.” I was shocked at how I was begging the little snit. “Let me try again.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But not at this moment.” She deftly took a five-dollar bill from her backpack and dropped it on the table.

“That should be approximately half,” she said. “I'm leaving. Elisheva will be at the house.”

Elisheva? Had I busted out of the pen and landed in Ancient Egypt?

“Please,” I said.

“Another time, perhaps.” My daughter was a step from the table. “There will be no goodbye handshakes or kisses.” I watched her leave. She walked quickly through the restaurant as if she were Audrey Hepburn and had just been slapped.

“Steal a fucking teddy bear,” I said under my breath.

BEYONCÉ AND ARETHA

The keys hung off the loop of my jeans and pulled the frayed-denim waist down. I liked the weight of the metal even though it reminded me of all those guards at Clayton and how you'd immediately tense up when you heard the jinglejangle. Transformers: Those cars that'd turn into angular robot monsters. Those Japanese warriors that'd turn into humanoid steel gargoyles with superpowered weapons and glowing eyes. A somewhat appropriate description of a guard if you were left alone with him.

I hadn't bought a chain to put the keys around my neck, nor had I bought one of those little Velcro dyke packs to snap around my waist. It felt appropriate to have my jeans falling down. The heavier the weight, the greater measure of my success. It meant they're giving me more dogs. My fat-faced junkie boss said the clients were “in affirmation with your style. Don't fuck up.” Then he nodded out. His woman Lucinda, who was locked up for being his mule, seemed to be staying clean, but she was snotty to me because I was requested by more dog owners than she was. I guess it was because I took the time to play with each dog and, in some cases, I did training. I wasn't required to do this. We were supposed to just do the walk, dump, and pee patrol, but New York dogs . . . they have such
weird lives. Everyone should have two dogs, not just one. The potential isolation of eight hours alone while the owner's at work gave me an ache. I would've liked to keep them with me all day, to hold them and protect their innocence.

There was this very tall, somewhat Finnish or Danish, fashionable chick named Tess who ran the Foundation for Zambo Sneakers. An oxymoron. Zambo made over-the-top running shoes, and their profits could've run a third world country. Of course, they used children in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam to make the sneakers for two cents an hour in sweatshops that'd make the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sound like a luxury corporate office building. Tess traveled the world planning rock concerts with Bono and the like to raise money to feed the kids her corporation starved. She had no concept of the paradox. She was home three weeks or so out of every month, and Edward, her handy man and lover, would sleep there when she was gone. I'd walk Beyoncé and Aretha, her Afghan hounds, two times a day—sometimes three if she was “really stuck” at one of those openings at a Soho gallery for painters who specialized in squares or dots. Zambo made sneakers that would go with evening gowns and could cost up to $1,800 a pair. Tess's Afghan hounds were as beautiful and superficial as Zambo sneakers. So was Tess. She truly loved her “poo poos,” and paid me thirty dollars extra under the table to brush the shit out of them once a week. They were spectacular looking—a combination of couture runway models and George Lucas planetary hookers—but I don't know what category of brains they were made with. After a month of bribing them with steak tartar, they started to delicately bounce to me when I called. But sitting or lying down was so beyond them one would compare it to a dyslexic child taking a math SAT. If I commanded “sit,” they'd cock their coiffed heads. “What?” Never mind.

I eventually figured out how to reach them. They now walked absolutely by my side as if I were a pimp. They did the same for Tess which, when she wore her knee-length Humphrey Bogart leather trench coat, high-heeled matching boots, and Burberry subtle but multicolored woven scarf, made her look like a casual full-page shot in an expensive Italian fashion magazine. Pedestrians slowed down when they saw the combination, as if she was famous but they couldn't place her. Tess had no desire to be famous. When we occasionally crossed paths, she'd talk about a Prada boutique that was miraculously opening in Croatia or the banquet they'd held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Abu Dhabi for the new roller coaster they were building there. Then she'd switch to the horror of clitoridectomies and tell me that Zambo would hold a benefit fashion show to send doctors to those barbaric countries that cut off “labias” so the doctors could restore sexual pleasure. In the midst of all this, Beyoncé and Aretha lay, bored as teenage girls, on Tess's giant shabby-chic couches as she downed a half bottle of Vitamin Water Zero and rushed out.

Afghan hounds may not be as stupid as I think they are. They could just be vain and cold. I am a big-boned ex-con in jeans and a sweatshirt. Beyoncé and Aretha would pull slightly away from each of my thighs as if they didn't want to be seen with me. This could've been my imagination since I was the one who didn't want to be seen with me. But with Tess they were as coordinated, light-footed, and fluffy as back up singers to Diana Ross. One credit I had to give those two drag queens (don't Afghans remind you of drag queens?): they'd always walk calmly and balanced. They'd never favor one side or the other or throw their extremely tall Finnish mistress off-balance in her fashionable high heels. This was important because she only had one leg. She'd lost the left to cancer when she was eighteen. Luckily she was a runner, skier, skater, and athletic
goddess type, so physical therapy was, though not easy, able to give her the gift of a walk that didn't click or limp. She also had a prosthesis that was designed by scientists in Israel to give maximum flexibility and strength.

I knew all of this because one day I picked up Beyoncé and Aretha an hour early—prearranged—but Tess had forgotten. I rang the doorbell, announced myself, and simply opened the lock as I always did, and there was Tess, in a Beverly Hills Hotel–type bathrobe, hopping around her stainless steel and glass kitchen. Beyoncé and Aretha didn't bother to greet me. They never did. But Tess let out one little cry and froze in place like a flamingo on her gorgeous, smooth, muscled right leg. I probably should've backed out, but I was mesmerized.

“Oh, I forgot. I forgot,” she said with her alto voice, which had an indecipherable accent of some sort. “You're here for my honeys,” she said.

“I'm sorry—we'd scheduled for . . . ” My apology was awkward and not very caring. I'd seen a lot worse.

Tess immediately regained her composure. She'd obviously been through the trauma of hundreds of cocktail parties and could ace any surprise attack.

“This . . . ,” she said, pointing to the stump hidden by the robe, “is my most profound secret.” Her dramatics were almost convincing. “Now you have possession of my two precious doll-dolls and my life's lie. You mustn't tell a soul. Some demon will blackmail me and I'll lose my position at Zambo.”

“Listen, Tess,” I said. I almost stood at attention. “I'm an ex-con. I'm on parole. I'm just trying to pay for my room at the halfway house, eat, and keep out of that life. I really don't give a shit about what the other dog owners or walkers know or don't know. I just want to get all your dogs home on time, hopefully having defecated in a way that proves they're healthy, and
come back on time the next day to fulfill my duties as their play partner, trainer, or exercise supervisor. This is the first conversation you and I have had in the five months that I've been walking Beyoncé and Aretha, and it stays on the inside.”

“That's right. You were in jail,” Tess perked up as if comforted. “This must be all trivial bullshit to you.”

“Not losing a leg,” I said. “But gossip couldn't be less important.”

She slipped her stump into a flesh-colored contraption that gave the appearance of half a mannequin's leg and half science-fiction creature.

“Well, I shall live in terror of you for the rest of my life,” she said cheerfully. “You can blackmail me, kidnap me, and steal my leg, or sell my story to the
Enquirer
for extra cash. I could also have you murdered. But I don't know any assassins. Do you? Being an ex-convict and all?”

Stupid as an Afghan, I thought. “Don't you think I should take Beyoncé and Aretha out?” I asked her. I hooked up my reality TV stars to their halters as they reluctantly abandoned their separate chairs, took their time stretching their long legs, and slunk to my side like sullen teenagers. “Queens,” I said under my breath. They rewarded me with swishes of their tails.

“This didn't happen,” Tess said.

“It certainly didn't,” I replied.

I don't even know if it did.