Walking the Dog (4 page)

TRYING NOT TO GO BACKWARD

Once my old cellmate at Clayton, DeLisa, who was back for a “second tour,” called me from the payphone. “Might as well come back, honey. You never leave here, no how. Every siren out there is comin' for you. Every shout you hear is to jump into line. And locks, man you hear a
click,
baby, or a
clank,
and you know you in for the night. Worst of all, that so-called freedom comes with you looking out the side of your eyes all the time. You don't know who the enemy is—except it's everyone. I didn't feel safe eatin' Sunday at Gram's with the kids whispering ‘killer killer killer' behind my back. There's no second chances, Carleen; it's better to be back here. It's all nightmare incorporated on the outside designed to make you think you goin' somewhere that's a hallucination. Life gotta be the familiar. For girls like us there's no direction but back.”

I thought about DeLisa as I sat in the family courtroom. Tina helped me pick out a fitted shirtwaist dress. “Respectable, but casual,” she said. “An honest-looking outfit.” I was changing sizes as fast as mood. Navy blue seemed an inoffensive color. Subdued, but not morose or dangerous. No jewelry. And my long white, black, and gray mane was woven into some modest but chic braid. We dyed out the purple. Definitely not hippie or leftist. I was already soaked with sweat. The room changed
from a square to a rectangle to a looming diagonal shape. There was a loud swooshing in my ears. And the pressure behind my eyes felt like I was going to have a seizure. I told myself that it was just a courtroom, years after the crime. This wasn't the murder trial. I shouldn't have been experiencing post-traumatic stress. There wasn't shouting. No cameras flashing. My hands weren't tied behind my back. I wasn't aching from the sprained and broken bones on my hands and face. I told myself that it was a different time. I wasn't going back. The judge wouldn't be Republican Harold Forger, whose hatred of me glared off his bifocals and onto the TV camera lenses of 1984 and 85. The jury wouldn't nail me with their curious, disgusted stares. I was falling backward in time. When it came to the murders, I asked myself again why I chose to go to trial alone instead of joining the others. They got off so much better than I did. I was the denim-dressed ringleader. But I didn't kill anybody. I was miles away. I couldn't stop the voices in my head. The images. The voices were laughing and condemning me. I bit my lower lip hard so the pain would get me out of this classic attack of the PBS special on PTSD. Commercials sang along in my head in single harmonies, warnings for the drugs for depression and bipolar disease. Side effects: lack of sleep, nausea, death. But then Leonard arrived with his lawyer, and an icy hit of reality instantly cleared my brain. I was jarringly in the 2000s and the utterly different present tense. I remembered that I was the one who had called this particular hearing. The bearded, pudgy, Orthodox legal-aid lawyer seated next to me was named Harry and had been my mediocre champion since the murder trials however many years ago.

“This is profoundly hopeless so early,” he sighed at me. “Carleen, you don't have a prayer. Not even one of mine. I don't know why you're doing this.”

“Because I do things,” I said. “I do them out of order. I'm not a linear person.”

Leonard was in his customary Brooks Brothers costume, accompanied by his wife of the last ten years—blond, sleek, Nordic. The two of them looked like a PTA meeting: wealthy, concerned parents. I tried to catch Leonard's glance because sometime ago—maybe it was when his darling Olympics wife came along—he began to hate me with such venom it resonated like someone hitting the inside of a piano with a shovel. In the beginning he'd been more forgiving, or let's call it tolerant. But then he forbade Pony to visit me or communicate, and blackmailed me into ceasing all attempts to get in touch with her. He said he would lie if he had to and would make my life more miserable in prison than I could ever know. I was so ill and confused at the time that I believed him. Truth was, he had no connections. I was the one who could make his life a legal carnival. But I'd lost my power and dignity and was dragged too raw to remember any of the truth.

Leonard Salin's lawyer was a woman better dressed than all of us. A chic suit, light brown suede heels. Her nails were done in what I'd learned is called a French manicure. Leonard's wife's white-blond hair was cut in a $300 faux hawk, but the lawyer had the real look: a shiny pageboy that flipped efficiently, but not too stylishly, when she moved her head. It was like one of those perky Revlon ads where the hair seemed to be manipulated by puppeteers. The lawyer was thin but not starving, and obviously ran or lifted barbells or kickboxed with oversized trainers. My God, I was speeding. Why was I nervous about a hopeless case? Calm. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I was going to file a petition every six months until I wore them down. In the fog that was my mental state I heard Harry address the judge.

“ . . . remarkable recommendations from the warden herself
at Clayton . . . consistent on-time visits to her parole officer, no demerits at her halfway house, a steady job, a continuation in her pursuit of a master's degree, volunteer work in Kenmoor's Veterans Hospital . . . ”

The list was true enough, if useless. I was just trying to get permission to see Pony once a month, even supervised, instead of living in this childless Siberian isolation to which I'd been condemned. Leonard wanted me not to exist. He had total custody as well as an order of protection. I wasn't allowed within three hundred yards of my daughter. He got very busy in the legal end of things when he found out I was about to be paroled. In some ways I agreed with him. No one knew how I'd turn out. But he couldn't believe I would lay a grain of harm on a little girl. And even in mischief I wouldn't dare try to get her to break laws or put herself in danger. I didn't even want to talk to her about my past. I was in search of potential.

I barely listened to Leonard's lawyer as she recreated the heinous nature of my crimes. I knew her shtick by heart: Drugs manufacture. The juvenile felonies. The mobster gang I put together in college. Miko, my psychopathic dead boyfriend. The robberies. Shootings. Death. Your basic light airplane reading. And then there's the early violent years at Powell Penitentiary. My drug use. My tendency toward confrontation. The “low life” quality of my employment. The dilapidated halfway house on the Lower East Side. My empty social life. My various and conflicting psychological diagnoses. How easy it would be for me to slip backward into a criminal way of life. Dealing drugs. Small thefts. What could I possibly give this sensitive, vulnerable little girl but confusion and pain?

I heard the blur, the variations of what I knew she'd say, the new conjugations, adjectives, and adverbs. I looked over at Leonard. He looked like a man watching a forest fire eat his
house. He punctuated each point with his chin. He was still a very handsome man to my taste. Curly, gray-black hair. A large but straight nose. Thin lips. Clean shaven. His long, thin fingers folded on the table were playing a nervous game of “here's the church, here's the steeple.” He was an expert carver, and I remembered that after our first date I discovered raw-oak statues of couples in romantic positions that spelled out “MORE” in the bathroom. Somehow he had transformed from a kind, slightly spineless hypocrite into a grown-up, rigid, two-faced bastard. But hey, he builds playgrounds all over the world and makes these magical toys for a living that he sells at some fancy toy store called Leonard's Land—sounds like the father of the year. I on the other hand . . .

During the recess I stayed alone at the plaintiff's table. I took a bag of M&Ms from my purse, poured a handful into my palm, and wolfed them down like heart medication. The smooth cover of the candy gave me a nice sugar hit, and the chocolate soothed me.

The judge was restating the heinous travelogue of my life when Leonard's perky lawyer interrupted her. The hair-shampoo actress noted in a nasal voice that she had an essential piece of evidence that she wanted to introduce. The judge said it was too late, but she'd listen anyway. Ah, the American justice system. The evidence was a note, and the lawyer had Leonard stand and read it out loud.

“To the members of this courtroom,” he read in a gravelly Brooklyn voice. “I have spent one extended luncheon at a restaurant called Sarabeth's with my birth mother, Carleen Kepper née Ester Rosenthal.” (
Née
. Where'd she get that word, and didn't any one of her coaches tell her she was using it wrong?) The letter went on.

“She was rather cold to me, and we had absolutely nothing
to talk about. I found her to be unkempt, shifty, and we shared little mutually. I was not hungry in her presence.

“She didn't scare me as my father warned me she might, but I don't see any reason for her and I to continue attempts to reconcile. I've seen her only once since birth, and I don't remember anything except the ugliness of the prison. I have love and support all around me and don't need her to have a meaningful life. Therefore, I personally recommend that she not be granted any sort of visitation rights. Sincerely, Batya Shulamit Salin.”

It felt like the inside of my head exploded. I was afraid I'd had a stroke. I wanted to leap across the table like the Incredible Hulk and tear Leonard, his wife, and their lawyer to shreds. Then I was fine. My wishes to reconcile with the chubby, red-haired eleven-year-old dissolved. I'd never have her as my friend in middle school, and I'd be sure to kick mud on her jersey during soccer. I'd steal her iPod and fill it with filthy rap and death metal before I returned it. I'd knock into her in the cafeteria line and outside her ritzy Dalton school. I'd plant a joint in her pink backpack and tell the security guard she was carrying drugs. What a priss. Where did she get that
tone
? From
Masterpiece Theatre
? I wanted out. No more petitions. There wasn't one atom of nice in that girl. Something had been implanted in her by Tea Party parental substitutes.

“Carleen,” I heard Harry cough. “Stand up. The judge is speaking to you.” I stood up though I didn't know if it was required.

“Carleen Kepper,” the judge said. “I want to impress upon you that I have, for a long time, been aware of your ground-breaking works with theater, art, and animals at Clayton Penitentiary. I admire your choice not to act out tabloid-oriented or pedantic, publicity grabbing behavior of any kind on your
reentry, but to slowly and carefully find your way back into the world. Nonetheless, you have only been paroled for eleven months, and we, the court, would like to observe your behavior for several more months before we allow you to spend time with an underage girl who has never known you as her mother. The court is concerned with relapses in drug-induced behavior and your, shall we say, somewhat notorious wildness of character. We therefore deny the petition to see your daughter, supervised or unsupervised, and we warn you to stay at the allotted distance. You obviously have maternal instincts, so we would hope you respect her loving, secure, growth-oriented surroundings. That is my judgment for now, but I encourage you to return in eight to ten months and see where we stand.”

Harry stood next to me and nudged my elbow.

“It's not news,” he said. “It's not like a headline that gave us a shock in the gut. ”

“One other matter,” the judge said. The smug goings-on at the victory table paused.

“The contents of the daughter's letter stinks of coaching.”

“She wrote it entirely on her own,” the lawyer said proudly.

“But I doubt she volunteered to write it,” the judge snapped.

Silence from the winners of the gold trophy.

“We involved in family law find it tasteless and destructive for one parent to denigrate another. It makes for a sick kid. Leonard Salin, you got what you wanted, but your daughter has been taught to despise a woman who has paid her debt to society. I will take this kind of smearing and brainwashing into account the next time we meet.”

I glanced at Leonard peripherally. His shiny face had turned gray and sullen.

“There are extenuating circumstances,” the lawyer said, “that we did not go into here. We've simply been protecting the girl from undue influence.”

What? What? Voices screamed in my head. What circumstances? What bare-naked scarred part of my past didn't they put in their freak show? Nothing came to me. Curiosity. What could they have against me the next time? Then the relief washed through me. There wouldn't be a next time. Life was bad enough without Wendy from Peter Pan or fucking sweet-faced spoiled Annie. I didn't need a prepubescent Jane Austen character to call my “daughter.” My ovaries didn't ache. My breasts didn't leak milk. My memory had just canceled the preceding hour as if I were in a video game. Inner mechanisms bleeped onto the exact present. I had forty minutes to get myself to Pookie or he'd trash his owner's place. I pulled myself up, didn't thank pudgy Harry, and took off for Barrow Street by foot. It took every ounce of inner strength not to deliver a full jujitsu kick onto Leonard's back. I needed a cigarette.

POOKIE THE TERROR

Pookie was a giant pitch-black standard poodle who lived in a ritzy, old town house with two gay men, Ralph and Evan. People who read
The New Yorker
often say that owners look like their dogs or that dogs reflect the character of the owner or blah blah blah. But Ralph, Evan, and Pookie either disproved the theory or were the exception to a folkloric truth. The two gentlemen were in their late thirties; both were quiet, despite wonderful and vicious senses of humor. Ralph was short, thin, and delicate. He combed his blond, thinning hair back, wore large horn-rimmed glasses and vests, and had a collection of wing-tip shoes. He was a world expert on French antique furniture. I couldn't think of anything more boring. His clientele were mail-order buyers and sellers, shop owners, collectors (why collect such shit?), musicians, and historians. Authors and filmmakers consulted him for authenticity, and auction houses brought him in to evaluate and price tables, chairs, armoires, beds with canopies, banquet dining tables, and who gives a fuck. I didn't have a clue as to how Ralph gained his expertise or recognition, but everything in their town house was a precious antique. Ralph had become very rich from this worthless profession. He knew I felt contempt for his life's
work and would simply lift an eyebrow and say, “As opposed to your essential contribution to the cessation of starvation in third world countries.”

He and Evan had been together twelve years. Evan was a dark twin of Ralph: Small. Delicate. With a slight potbelly and hairy arms. He drew maps of anything from the Alps to the ancient city of Pompeii for junior high and high school textbooks. He did travel manuals in Fodor's guidebooks and minutely detailed sketches of essential tourist spots all over the world. His precise lines depicting back roads, delicate waves of hills, miniature snow-capped mountains, and American battlefields could be considered great art, but he scoffed when I admired one of his sketches. “Technical blueprints, Carleen. Technical blueprints. One day when you've washed up from the dog feces, Ralph and I will take you to the Met and remind you of what real art is. The first canvases we'll visit will be yours.”

Evan didn't have to work. The town house was part of an inheritance. He had considerable sums of family money, but the obsessive concentration on miniworlds kept him from lapsing into paralyzing depressions. He had been in analysis his whole life and was on a regimen of antidepressants that competed with Ralph's generic diet of vitamins, minerals, herbs, and supplements. They both did tai chi, when Ralph wasn't morose, and took walks by their country estate in Connecticut, where they spent their weekends entertaining wealthy, intellectual dinner guests who, in turn, invited them to exactly the same kind of parties. They lived for each other's love, though they bickered constantly and would often go several days not speaking to each other. They were two halves of some exotic gourd-like vegetable. They didn't trust me with
their valuables, but felt pride that they used me nonetheless. Besides, I was saving them from their dog—with whom they had a sadomasochistic relationship.

Pookie was a disaster. They had decided to buy a dog when they had the flue in the downstairs living room cleaned out. “Aesthetically, we thought a large dog lying by the fire would complete a sort of queer tableau,” said Ralph. So they googled virtually every top breeder in the country and found a litter sired by ChauncyArgumentPeedbornHorseJumpyFlower (I'm making this up), some first-prize Westminster stud, and EtholRoundbridgeBridgewaterSlamot, an equally regarded bitch. Ralph and Evan ordered the largest puppy by mail. I don't know why two such retiring, delicate men settled on a big black poodle, but it appealed to the imaginary portrait they saw of themselves, photographed by Annie Leibovitz (an acquaintance but not a friend), by their fireplace. They nicknamed the puppy Pookie, after Evelyn Murkten, an elderly society lady whom they often entertained at their town house and with whom they attended various society parties and art openings. Evelyn, a frilly, rich widow, was known as Pookie to her close friends. She spent her days reading nineteenth-century romance novels and writing checks for hospital wings for children with craniofacial disorders. She died at age eighty-seven from surgical complications, having broken a hip after a bad fall.

Standard poodles are fantastic specimens. They were bred for bird hunting so they're not as hoity-toity as the dog shows would have us believe. There's no real scientific proof, but I think each color comes with a specific personality. White poodles are somewhat aloof and arrogant and often win at dog shows. Red to champagne poodles are of a looser class. They're friendlier, more athletic, and often solitary, and take
to a single human love, remaining loyal and otherwise sloppy. Brown standards tend to be obsessive. One brown I used to walk would do nothing but chase a ball, bring it back, chase a ball, bring it back, chase a ball, bring it back—for hours. At home they can be found parked by the front door in an absolutely erect sit waiting for God knows what. They are the only standard to go after other dogs in the street. This is called
fear aggression
and is almost impossible to train out of them. I had a client who broke her wrist when her dog, St. Luke, went after a tiny little shih tzu on the sidewalk and pulled her over. But the browns are affectionate and have a quality to their eyes that seems deep, ancient, and wide. I could stare into St. Luke's eyes forever, and he'd peer right back at me as if he knew exactly why my life turned out the way it had. I know that's bullshit.

Black standards are the manic clowns of the bunch, skinny nonstop seekers of joy. Outside, they are capable of jumping higher than almost any breed, and they will jump for a ball, a Frisbee, or nothing at all. When they are particularly gleeful they zoom around in circles chasing nothing but wind. They'll practically take your arm off rushing for pigeons. They demand constant, unequivocal love and will leap into your lap as if they were toy versions of themselves and are insulted when ordered to get off. They learn their commands instantly, but not because they are particularly smart. They're more like teenage boys who joined the army too soon and will do any discipline just to prove they can do it. They should be circus dogs. They live to love but have no particular loyalty to master or mistress. If you don't hold on to them, they'll jump up on an elderly woman with osteoporosis and hump her thick stockings until her seams pull apart. In other words, most black standard poodles are exhausting and best matched with adolescent boys diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

Although their love is bottomless, it is also petulant and vengeful. If you leave them alone they'll chew on your furniture and shoes, eat your glasses, and even open your drawers and toss your clothes around the apartment. They rip the covers off furniture, digging deep enough to get to the foam and shredding it, or they go after the down comforter and toss feathers around like a girls' sleepover. The only way to cure these heartbreakers is to lock them up in a heavily barred crate. Then they will howl and bark until the neighbors call 911 or have you kicked out of your building. They are joyous, firstrate rodeo clowns in the country, but unless you live by a huge dog park in the city and have three to six free hours a day, a black standard poodle, in my opinion, is not an ideal choice.

Evan and Ralph were, therefore, mad. They had no idea that by acquiring Pookie they'd invited Satan into their home. Neither man was particularly athletic (they sailed in the summer and skied the intermediate slope at Aspen in the winter). There'd never been such a mismatch in the history of man and dog. And yet, despite ripped maps of the Andes, a chewed-up dressing table from 1897, pulverized throw pillows, demolished inherited dishes, curried mayonnaise spilled on an ancient Persian rug, a broken wrist (Evan's), a cracked set of dentures (Ralph's secret), two sprained ankles (both of them), and chaos at the most intellectual of dinner parties, these two fruits adored her. They'd lie down on I-95 to stop traffic for her. They researched highly sophisticated diets that might calm her nerves and read advice on how to train her from monks. They paid for collars and harnesses to prevent collisions and knockdowns. They bought her the Hilton of crates made from a substance that was guaranteed not to contain mercury. They called and looked up every dog walking service in Manhattan as if they were the CIA. They didn't even consider PetPals,
but heard of me because Ralph happened to be appraising a canopy bed for Tess and immediately noticed how well her fluffy Afghans were behaving. She raved about me, so they called me directly on my new, cheap cell issued and monitored by Hubb. PetPals had a strict rule that all clients must come through them, and walkers weren't allowed to take on separate clients. You could get fired for “insubordation,” as it's written and misspelled in the employee handbook. But the second I heard Ralph's classical, somewhat-affected baritone, I sensed he and Hubb might not hit it off—especially if Hubb was doing crack that day and called Ralph a fag or doubled the rate because Ralph sounded rich. Hubb wasn't the quintessential businessman. It's a wonder he and Lucinda kept going so long. Attached to each other's missteps, they skimmed money off the collective tips and scheduled clients at the wrong time. They used a beat-up yearly calendar of half-naked female fly fishermen as their schedule. But they had great walkers.

On my first day, Ralph and Evan's town house was tidy but musty from all those French antiques. There was no sign that any monster lurked nearby. I heard squealing and scratching from a room in the back of the rather large house. Ralph and Evan led me past closed doors painted a perfect eggshell color with blue trim. At the end of a long hallway was an identical door, but it had a crack in it. I could hear persistent scratching. Whines alternated with indignant soprano barks.

We opened the door to find what it must be like when a surgeon opens a patient who's been eating the heads of Barbie dolls. There were over fifty toys torn to shreds. Stuffing was everywhere. Soaked newspapers covered the floors. The immaculate powder-blue walls had been scratched down to the sheet rock. A huge pitch-black nuclear missile barreled at Evan, knocked him over, and began kissing him all over.

“Daddy loves you too,” Evan said breathlessly.

Ralph ducked into the demolished room, knelt, and Pookie got on his back and humped.

“No no no, sweetie,” he said severely. “I'm gay.”

Then Pookie the psychotic show dog turned on me, leaped, and put her paws on my shoulders as if she had chosen to do the cha-cha. She had rich, joyous, crazy brown eyes. In a flash I pushed her paws down, chucked her under the chin, and said, “
Sit
.” She obeyed. Ralph and Evan gasped in unison.

“You can't live like this,” I told them. “She's the mad aunt hidden in your attic. She's going to destroy your house and set you on fire when you're in your pajamas. Let me place her with a good family in the country.”

“No, you don't understand,” Roger wheezed. “She's our Shango, our Coyote, our Crow, our Trickster from the mountains.”

“You're going to have to explain that to me,” I said. “I'm not up on the classics.” Evan sat on the floor cross-legged as Pookie leapt around her room, stopping every now and then to knock him over, wash him with kisses, and take off again.

“Here we are,” Ralph said, his back leaning tight against the door. “Two small-boned, highly intellectual gay men. Our lives are full of culture, acquaintances, travel, even love. But we've never had any trouble, not really. We've never had to conquer a diabolical force greater than ourselves.”

“We've never even been audited,” Evan said.

“She's so profoundly animal and raw. She's so unpredictable and passionate.”

“I spend hours just watching her,” said Ralph.

“But we can't live with her like this. We know that. I mean we're realists,” Evan said in an exhausted voice.

“However, to give her up,” Evan sighed, “is to admit defeat. To lose the one wild thing in our lives.”

“Why don't you go on one of those National Geographic safaris or boot camp vacations?” I replied.

I could sense that they were prickly, impatient, and I was the messenger of devastation.

“You've got to train her,” Ralph begged. “We'll pay double.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking how craziness on the outside feels so much like craziness in prison.

“What do you plan to do?” Ralph asked suspiciously, as if he envisioned electrodes and hypodermic needles.

First, I cleaned their apartment. Cleaning a place is how I introduce myself to it. I sanded the expensive, now-scratchedup parquet floor. I introduced the worried men to Nature's Miracle, known for getting rid of secret dog smells so they won't piss where they have before. It felt so good to be scrubbing until my hands were raw. The only reason I didn't take cleaning-lady jobs when I got paroled was because I fold clothes and bedding and towels like shit. I can never get a corner to exactly match another, or there's always a lump in the pants seam even if I think I've got it creased and smoothed out.

Ralph and Evan were intimidated but grateful for me. Pookie tried, at first, to win me over by prancing wherever I'd just scrubbed the floor, leaving dirty, wet paw prints. She leaned over and licked my face and tried humping my back, all while Ralph and Evan giggled at her antics. I completely ignored her. She was one of the sleekest, most gorgeous poodles I'd ever seen, but she'd taken advantage of those two sweet, dotty men and she couldn't be allowed to do that. In the weeks that followed I walked her on a chain collar, locked her in her crate except when it was playtime, and gave her a treat or a toy when she shut up.

At first it was all
La Traviata
and
La Bohème
with wails, moans, and silent suffering. She'd turn her back whenever one of us walked in the room. I know Evan and Ralph considered
firing me more than once, but fundamentally, they were relieved. Sometimes, bored with her own divaness and phony sorrow, she'd scratch politely on her double-locked crate. I'd let her out, and she'd approach one of the men and press her head against his leg. They were not allowed to kneel down to their queen—she was nearly taller than them as it was and I didn't want her getting off on her height. Poodles are indeed smart, and Pookie the socialite caught on quickly that, as long as I was around, her reign was over, or at least diminished. But she didn't hate me. We ladies have an understanding. And I let her run like an antelope free of it all at least once a day in any unsupervised park I could find.