Walking the Dog (33 page)

AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

I was taking my lunch hour inside the
Queen Mary
fish boat on the Hudson. I'd been watching tugboats and freighters, when I heard footsteps. I turned and was surprised to see Batya. I couldn't help but feel my lips spreading into a small smile. But then I noticed she was by herself.

“What are you doing here?” I asked with anxiety. Maybe my maternal instincts had finally kicked in.

“Elisheva said this is where you ate lunch on Tuesdays, so I decided to try.”

“Are you alone? It's not good if we're alone, Batya. Social services, the court, your father, my parole officer . . . ”

She stayed on her feet.

“God, it's like you're in kindergarten. Jethro is going to tell Mr. Black and he'll tell the vice principal and she'll tell the Board of Education. I thought you were braver than that.”

I sighed. She'd lost some of her pudginess and was becoming a lovely shape. Her long, straight red hair fell down her back and she parted it down the middle, each side held back with a barrette. Each barrette was a turquoise plastic bird. Her green eyes were brighter. I think she was wearing eye shadow. Her teeth hadn't quite straightened out yet, and I liked the silver of her braces. It made her look simultaneously fearsome and
vulnerable. She was wearing a simple flowered dress, white with light purple flowers, and a cotton sweater that matched the flowers, and ballet slippers on her feet. She stood very straight, her hands in fists.

“Sit down.” I sighed.

She tried to find one of the metal benches on the boat that wasn't too rusty. I could tell she was worried about her dress. Finally, she gingerly sat herself down on a ledge.

“Do you get seasick?” I asked her. The boat rocked heavily with the wind and tide. She let out a sigh.

“
Lawls
,” she said.

“Lawls . . . what?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “It's just a figure of speech.”

I was quiet.

“Well, don't you want to ask me any questions?” Batya challenged.

“You're a minefield, lady,” I answered. “Anywhere I step could blow up.”

She liked that.

“Do you want to know why I'm here?” She was petulant.

“I figured we'd get around to it,” I replied. “But keep in mind, I'm never late for my clients, so if I cut you off it's nothing personal.”

“You're so confusing.” She was annoyed.

“The fact that you find that confusing is confusing to me.”

Batya looked down at her feet and swung them a little.

“I'm here to tell you that I know you've been really trying. But I don't want you to come to my bat mitzvah.” She spoke fast and nervously.

“Here's why. If people see you, they'll know it's you and it'll be, whoa, this big deal. Dad'll freak, but he'll work really hard not to show it, and there'll be this whole subtext going on in
the room that'll take away from the holiness of the occasion. And the whole thing will become about you when the day is meant to be completely focused on me.”

“You've conveyed all this once already,” I said, “and I shall obey.”

Her face was red and she was slightly breathless.

“Does that hurt your feelings?”

I thought about it.

“I don't know,” I answered truthfully.

“You don't
know
?” she asked angrily. “Your own daughter bans you from the most important day in her life and
you don't know
if it bothers you?”

“You've never pulled that card before,” I said with surprise.

“What card?” Batya was sulking.

“The ‘daughter' word. I'm a little taken aback that you consider yourself my daughter. Isn't that tall, blond Danish—”

“
Swedish
,” Batya practically spit. “She's kind. She's a housewife. She likes fashion. She does meals and goes to dinner parties. She's told me stories about Europe. She knows nothing about art, literature, music, or writing. She designs children's clothes. How spiritual is that?”

“She seemed to do until recently.”

“She left me alone,” Batya scoffed. “I think she's scared of me because I'm smart. She's always left Leonard to deal with the heavy stuff. With me, I'm much more complicated than bunny suits and tiny winter caps with attached earmuffs.”

“But she'll be up on the bema with you. She'll read a passage in Hebrew. She'll kiss you.”

“I hate when she kisses me. She sticks to me like chapstick. How do you know about the bema and the reading?” Batya asked defensively.

“I'm learning to google,” I replied.

“So you do care or ‘are interested.'” There was a slight mocking tone.

I was quiet.

“I don't know,” I answered.

Her face turned red and her nose began to run, but I have to give her credit, there were no tears.

“You're like some zombie!” she yelled. “You don't get your feelings hurt. You don't know if you care about anything.”

She shuffled as if ready to storm out on me, but I could tell she wasn't ready yet. When she tried to get up, the boat rocked more.

“Sit down,” I said rather firmly, and her face took on a frozen look. “Still scared of me?” I questioned.

“You
are
a serious criminal,” she replied snottily.

“Good thinking,” I said. “So you probably didn't come alone.”

“No.”

“Someone's waiting for you outside.”

Batya was embarrassed.

“Actually, yes,” she said. “Do you want to know who?”

“Not particularly,” I said. “As long as it's not a cop.”

“Hardly,” she smiled her silver smile.

“Whatever,” I said. “But this person has been waiting.”

“He said he'll wait as long as I want.”

I registered the “he” but didn't say anything. I made a difficult decision and became slightly anxious.

“Can you come a little closer?” I asked. “I promise I won't touch you. I want to tell you some confidential facts.”

Reluctantly, she moved to my bench, but the far side from me.

“When I was in jail, I got beat up a lot. I might have some brain damage.” A moment passed. “No . . . what—” I tried to
start over. “No, I think I was born this way. I'm like a clock that's set wrong. Or I have lifelong jet lag. I don't react to things too much when they happen. Sometimes before. Sometimes after. Sometimes even weeks or months after. Time is not my friend. It keeps me from people. I don't have emotions when I should. But I do know that this isn't normal and my actions do affect others who are normal and have regular emotions. And sometimes those actions are enough and they satisfy me. Like I know this visit will have a very big impact on me. I just don't know when or how or what it will feel like.”

Batya Shulamit was fascinated, but dubious. “So, what are you, autistic? Or that Asperger's thing?”

“I don't know. I'm going to google it and see.”

“So you think that's an excuse?” Batya went nasty again. “An excuse for your whole fucked-up life?”

“I don't believe in excuses,” I heard myself saying.

“I think you're just rationalizing because you never say you're sorry and you never
are
sorry.”

“I may be somewhat pathological,” I agreed.

Batya stood up and held on to the rocking boat.

“Be careful,” I said.

“See?” she hissed. “You said
that
on time.”

“It's not a regular phenomenon.” I tried to get the facts straight.

“I'm really glad you're not coming to my bat mitzvah because, according to you, maybe something that happened to you ten years ago will just pop up and,
oh
, you'll start taking your clothes off and singing a chant from Hare Krishna.”

“It's not like that,” I said tightly. “You're smart. You know it's not like that.”

Batya bowed her head.

“Well, I'm not sorry you're not invited to my bat mitzvah. You're mentally unbalanced and selfish.”

“You could be right,” I agreed again.

“God, I hate you,” she grumbled.

“I have something for you,” I replied. I held out the antique mezuzah with the amber stone. I'd gone back and bought it.

Batya Shulamit gasped.

“It's, like, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I love jewelry and this is so cool. It's so spiritual and ancient . . . but it doesn't change anything!”

I helped her put it on. When I touched her I felt the beginning of a kind of weeping in my throat. The boat rocked and she fell into me. I kept completely still.

“You'd let me fall and not catch me?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “I don't think you'd get hurt.”

Batya held the mezuzah as it hung around her neck as if she couldn't tell if the shape gave her strength or weakness. Then she spit at me. Actually spit.

“Just don't come,” she shouted. “Make sure you don't come.”

“I don't even know the date,” I told her. “Or the place. Or the time.”

She started climbing out of the boat. She looked at me. It was as if she wanted me to say something else, to say I was coming.

“Goodbye, bag lady, dog woman, psycho, never-ever mother.”

“Batya Shulamit,” I called out, but she didn't stop.

I spoke quietly, but loud enough so she could hear if she chose.

“I came to New York City with no hope I'd ever talk to you. Or even see you. Even from a distance. You've given me so much more. A powder keg of mixed blessings.”

THE SAVIOR'S ARM

I arrived at my office to find the area surrounded by ten or twelve tall piles of old cardboard boxes. Elisheva and David sat on the floor trying to gather the massive amounts of bubble wrap that had been ripped from inside them. I saw a corner of a twenty-year-old sketchbook. It set me into a flashback. I wanted to kick David and Elisheva in the head for uncovering them. I could feel in my legs the urge to lunge at them and the boxes. I heard screaming voices and the creaking of bars from above my head. Ugly laughter. Mocking words. Pain burned my joints. Fear and anger brought vomit to my throat. I struggled to the bathroom and sat down next to the toilet. I stood up and poured cold water on my face and hair. I resisted the urge to smash the face I saw in the mirror. A younger version of myself covered with bruises and scars. I was boxed in. It was an amusement-park ride. The walls were pushing in closer and closer—the floor lifting, the ceiling coming down. I was going to be crushed. But I couldn't call for help. I looked for an empty notebook. If I could fill it I might avert the physical abuse that was surely coming my way. I'd do bright colors, shapes, vehicles. Fits loved 18-wheelers. She'd open up the room but there were no sketchbooks. No paint. The room was closing in. I was suffocating. I blacked out.

I woke up later with my head on the toilet seat. I'd thrown up and cracked my forehead against David's expensive porcelain. Blood dripped down my face. David and Elisheva stood hopelessly in the doorway.

“Essie?” David asked. “Should I call a doctor?”

“I'm Carleen Kepper,” I hissed at him. “I don't need a doctor.”

“Well, I'm calling one,” Elisheva said, her voice mixed with panic, efficiency, and disgust.

“I'll give you the name of my gynecologist friend,” David said. “Don't make funny faces—just call.”

I was so dizzy. Vertigo gripped my feet and swung me around in violent circles. But I was returning to the present tense. David pressed a towel filled with ice to my forehead. I grabbed it from him and pressed it hard myself. The pain pushed me closer to wakefulness.

“How in fucking hell's name did those boxes get here?” I moaned.

“I don't think you should talk now.” He ignored my question.

We sat in silence for a long time.

My injury throbbed at an even beat. Rappers sang to the constant drum. Electric whines played descants. Gilbert and Sullivan joined in. A marching band. I was passing out again.

When I opened my eyes I was sitting up on my bed, and the gynecologist with severe black hair and large glasses was finishing stitches on my forehead.

“David,” I heard her say. “This woman belongs in a hospital. She could have a serious concussion. She's obviously unstable. She's trouble for you.”

“I'll take care of it,” I heard him reply. “Write down what you're supposed to do for concussions.”

“David . . . ”

“I'd like to pay you. And I must pay you for silence. Please, pick a watercolor.”

“But David they're worth . . . ,” the doctor stammered.

“Luckily I'm not Georgia O'Keeffe, so you're not stuck with something that looks like a vagina. Pick one that soothes you. I know this is all a little unsettling.”

The doctor picked a painting that was about eight by ten and quietly went toward the door.

“Lots of fluids.” She gaped at me through her thick-framed black glasses.

Elisheva was cleaning the bloody gauze and towels and changing the pillowcase. She appeared completely unruffled, but I think at that moment she was reconsidering the entire direction of her life.

“Elisheva, come here, please,” I said. I patted the bed. She sat down cautiously, more for my sake than hers.

“I'm starting to be able to explain some things, so let me tell you what you just saw. It was a flashback. Like you see on TV when all those vets have flashes about Vietnam and go berserk. I am learning to control them as well as possible.”

“I've never seen a look on your face like when you saw those boxes.” She shivered.

“They have dark memories for me. They represent a time I have to forget. In my subconscious. Think about me like I'm a vet. I'm back from a firefight where all my friends were killed. Like an Oliver Stone movie, okay?”

She still looked freaked out.

“Tell me how these got here,” I slurred. Elisheva snuggled a little more into the bed. She always liked to tell a good story.

“So the doorbell rings,” she started, “and it's FedEx, and I'm busy working on this month's billing so I let them in, and it's
these kind of musty cardboard boxes. And they keep coming and coming and coming. It's like those clowns that come out of a little car in the circus. They just don't stop coming! I always wondered how they did that. Trap door? So I have the deliverymen pile them in the hallway by the offices like you see, and I sign for them. And bam! The door doesn't close and about fifteen guys come in wearing bulletproof vests and shit, holding those
Hawaii Five-0
rifles, and I'm thinking, ‘Please, dear God, I don't want to die before having at least four children and a career as a star,' and then I'm so afraid I stop thinking. It's like I'm sweating on the inside and I say, ‘Wait, wait you guys—wait I'm twenty-six years old. I work for a dog walking service and I teach Hebrew. Can I see a paper or something?'”

“Good for you,” I said.

“So this bald guy comes up and he's holding a folder that's as thick as
Vogue
's fall fashion issue, and he says, ‘Lady, I got papers and papers,' and he pulls out a badge, ‘but why waste everyone's time?' So I'm sorry I didn't make them wait. I really thought I was going to throw up like you. I'm not good with conflict. The man told me some old lady in Ohio died and left instructions that these had to be transported to Carleen Kepper at whatever cost—directly with no interference. The local post office called FedEx and FedEx was nervous about those boxes. They looked at who they're being sent to and they recognized the name and called the FBI. So the FBI picked up the boxes at Kennedy and took them to their office in case they were bombs or drugs. There they searched out where you live. So the FBI put together this SWAT team to deliver the boxes to a terrorist cell or something. But it's this millionaire famous painter's loft with all the furniture so white that it makes them more suspicious. Then they check every inch of those boxes for drugs or illegal arms.

“I thought I'd plotz. But I wanted to be there to represent you when they opened the boxes. God knows why. They were so disappointed, man, when it was only sketchpads. 'Specially since each pad was wrapped like something dangerous in bubble wrap and masking tape. Whoever wrapped those notebooks was totally anal. Even with scissors and knives it took forever to open each one. And there had to be, like, I don't know, four hundred sketchpads. They flipped through all the pages to see if there were names or codes or telephone numbers or threatening letters or proofs of crimes and they took pictures and then at some point they just gave up, pissed as hell, and just left. David came home and found me in the middle of this resounding mess, and then you. Neither of us, I swear, looked long at the paintings. First of all, there are like four million of them and, second, someone should respect your privacy.”

“Elisheva,” I began. “You did right. Absolutely right. But I don't think you should be around me so much anymore. It's too much fear and drama. I can do my billing and appointments. You come in every month or two and check out that I'm not doing anything to get myself arrested.”

Elisheva picked at her skirt and looked both sad and relieved.

“I think you're right.”

“Good,” I said. My head was starting to send pain messages throughout my whole body.

“Here's the other part of the barter.”

“What barter?” Elisheva asked tearfully.

“You did more than your half already. Are you going to rabbinical school?”

Elisheva turned away a bit as if ashamed to look at me.

“Yes,” she said. “Because of my grades and work, I am starting
as a second year at Hebrew Union College rather than a first.”

“I thought so. Okay, so you know I'm rich? Right?”

Elisheva nodded. “But you've never touched a penny of it.”

“Because I have to live out more years of building back from the crook I was,” I explained.

“I don't disagree,” Elisheva said.

“Okay, so when you're a fully fledged rabbi—anointed, plowed, endowed, whatever—you call me on the day of your embalming or whatever it's called.”

“Why?” Elisheva's expression was slightly suspicious and worried, like I might do something to embarrass her.

“Because I'm going to build you a temple,” I said. “We'll find the right spot overlooking the river and I'll buy the land. Then I'm going to design it and draw it from my own visions. I'll collaborate with you, and I'll hire young carpenters with strong hands that you can go out with after they're done working for the day.”

“That's a dream,” Elisheva said with a sad and hopeful smile. Deep inside she thought I was mentally ill. Deeper still, she knew I wasn't.

“I rarely dream,” I told her. “It's not very practical and it doesn't get things done.”

“You'd do that for me?” she asked.

“I'd do it now except you don't have the proper beatification or coronation papers or whatever they are.”

“Why did you decide this now?” she asked, still thinking I was jabbering from my head injury or shocked at seeing the sketches.

“Lately I've been thinking . . . and I think this woman named Phyllis saved my life, though I don't know for how long or if it was for any good reason. I know I'm alive when I make things.
I know I'm alive when I walk dogs. I feel my feet on the grass or cement and the slight pull on the leash. And I know that, like me, they don't know why they're headed forward with this force behind, guiding their direction. Aside from necessary practical acts. Your temple tugs at me like a good dog. Like Doorbell, one of my favorites. That simplicity keeps me going. And you are the unusual person like Phyllis who deserves a pulpit. Don't ask me anything else. Just graduate. I want to walk dogs, build you a temple, and do a couple other things that aren't any of your business. In your world, you might call it gratitude.”

Nights later, I caught David leafing through the sketchbooks.

“If I wasn't medicated I'd take you in a choke hold,” I grumbled.

He jumped. Everyone will always remain slightly scared of me.

“What
are
these?” He couldn't take his eyes off the pictures.

I told him the story of Fits. My big, jowly, gay friend sat with his mouth open the whole time.

“Catching flies,” I said at one point. He closed it.

“There's so much going on here. It's an encyclopedia of psychosis.” He opened it again. “But in this whole bunch there must be fifty absolute masterpieces or more. I need more time.”

“I want to give you all my money except the dog walking profits, David. Tomorrow I'm going to contact my schmo lawyer Harry and move all my accounts and trusts and bonds over to you.”

“But, Essie,” he looked over at me, “I'm already rich. I certainly don't need it.”

“That's why,” I answered simply.

“Let's do it this way,” he said playfully. “It's our money. I'll
put in all of mine too, and we'll have joint bank accounts and estates and all that.”

“Sounds like fun,” I nodded.

“But I spend and you don't. You have to start spending.”

“I have plans.”

“Legal?” he asked nervously.

“Yes,” I snapped back.

“Well, I have to protect myself from your craziness.”

“Oh, absolutely,” I agreed. “Protect yourself away.”

“Where is all of this coming from?” he asked.

“My soul was locked in those sketchbooks. I want to see if there's any possibility of breathing better when they're out in the open. Pandora's box. The opposite of Pandora's box. Once the box is empty the mythological flies and gnats and maggots can be gone. That time of my life can recede from my nightmares.”

“But no happiness?” David questioned.

“I don't live in a country that has that word. It is not even a term that applies to my kind of creature.”

“And what is that?”

“Subhuman. Unfeeling. Criminal. I have one thing I want to do though, if you're interested.”

“Are you going to paint again?” David asked with too much hope. It grated me.

“Fuck no,” I answered. “I walk dogs.”

David was laughing and I liked to watch his face. He was like a traffic light or a stop sign in a big windstorm.

I made sure I was a half hour late. I hid in the back in the darkness of one of those corners or curves that large synagogues have. I'd brought Doorbell, all decked out in his jacket with the yellow training cape and stickers and stenciled letters so
no one would question us. I'd even attached him to a blind person's halter, though I made no effort to pretend I couldn't see. He looked ridiculous. I wore one of the flowered dresses Tina had picked out for me and a silk shawl. My colors were shades of blue. I wore ballet flats so I wouldn't make myself any taller than I already was. She couldn't see me during the service. I didn't like the tableau up on the bema, with Pony wrapped in a shiny embroidered cloth and a white yarmulke on her red head. Leonard stood behind like a modest hippie who was only now adopting the faith. A young rabbi with a Bruce Springsteen beard stood next to Pony, and on the other side stood Elisheva, dressed in a chic black dress, high heels, and an even more embroidered shawl than Pony's. Her yarmulke was more Muslim than Jewish and beaded from top to bottom in bright colors and Hebrew letters. “Go girl,” I said to myself. At least she was fighting the mortuary setting. I also saw Leonard's wife in basic parental black. This was the first time I'd looked at her and she was not unlikeable. She seemed to be completely out of place in her tall, slim model's body and platinum-blond hair. But she was making a go of it. They all chanted various Hebrew passages in varying bad accents, and Pony Batya Shulamit was the star.