twenty-two
ON BORROWED TIME
Not long after I got back from England, Stephen came over with one last load of bull-terrier-abilia. I didn’t think it was possible there could be more. He produced a rather good watercolor portrait of Harry with his bowl, and a rather bad oil painting of Violet. There was a photograph of Harry relaxing on a couch and others of Violet smiling. In one she’s wearing a tutu, obviously competing in a Halloween costume contest for dogs. In another, she’s draped across Santa’s lap with a big red bow tied under her chin.
Stephen handed me a folio bulging with things Carol had collected God knows where. A couple of old black-and-white photographs in wood frames of unidentified, long-dead bull terriers. Framed pages from antique dog books with illustrations of bull terriers as they looked in the nineteenth century. A brass bridle ornament for a horse with the head of a bull terrier on it. What was that about? Bull terrier memo pads, a tacky plastic bull terrier hanging from a key chain, a carved wooden bull terrier bookmark, a necklace with the name HARRY spelled out in black laser-cut letters hanging from a chain, broken between the H and the A and glued back together. Best of all, a bull terrier postage stamp from Karachay-Cherkessia, a small Russian republic in the Caucasus Mountains not far from the Black Sea.
Every time Stephen showed up with more of Carol’s stuff, I was amazed all over again not only by how much of it she had squirreled away, but by what it all was. “Carol wanted me to have the painting of Harry,” he said, “but I’m giving it to you on long-term loan. You should have it.” I thanked him.
Each time he arrived, Harry went wild, jumping, wagging, licking. The two of them played on the floor. When Stephen finally got up, he said, “I have a confession. I never told Carol this, but I didn’t really like Harry very much. Now I do. He was always driving me crazy with the bowl and balls, for hours sometimes, nonstop. Annoying. He seems so much calmer, less neurotic. And you know what? He’s all that’s left of Carol. I really miss her. He’s kind of become Carol for me. Does that sound weird?”
“No, not weird. I understand. I really miss Carol, too, and whenever I look at Harry, I think of her. But for me, it’s memory that keeps her alive. All of her things that I’ve got now, like Harry’s biker jacket or the one with all the funny pins or her Adirondack Days book that Lissa gave me. They exist in her image. They look like her sense of humor.” I thought, She touched them with her magic wand.
EVERY OTHER DAY, I put on a pair of purple surgical gloves and gave Harry his Palladia pill. My au pair did it if I was out of town.
Harry handled his chemotherapy pretty well, but slowly, over six months, I realized in retrospect the treatment had taken its toll. Or maybe it was age catching up with him. He was happy with Minnie and me. That was obvious, but I wondered whether he missed Carol. I hardly noticed the change in him at first. He played with his bowl and balls less. He and Minnie didn’t roughhouse as often. His hind legs seemed a little stiff sometimes. His cracked foot never got better. I stopped taking him to the farmers market. He had trouble walking that far.
But I loved petting him and caring for him and giving him foolish nicknames. I probably shouldn’t admit calling him Hairy Harry because he shed a lot. Maybe that’s why Carol named him Harry in the first place. He never did learn to like the beach, but when I took him to South Carolina, I loved his delight in curling up in his own patch of sunlight on the deck. I loved feeling him against me in bed at night and listening to him snore soft dog snores. I loved looking in his serious, dark eyes. I loved seeing Minnie and Harry together, even their conspiratorial stares as they worked me over for treats, the expectation on their faces as they watched me cook dinner, the bull terrier stubbornness in their eyes when they didn’t want to do what I wanted them to do. How many times had Carol warned me that when Harry was tired of walking, he would simply lie down, until I agreed to turn around and go home? I loved that about him too.
MAY 5, 2017, was Harry’s twelfth birthday. I sang “Happy Birthday” to him and gave both dogs marrow bones and lots of treats. Harry’s special present was a memory-foam bed like Minnie’s with his name on it.
In mid-May, an envelope arrived from a law firm. Inside, I found a check for seven thousand dollars, money Carol wanted me to have to help pay for Harry’s care. I was touched. Anything left over when Harry died, she instructed, should be given to the bull terrier welfare fund operated by the Bull Terrier Club of America. Left over, if only! I think I spent seven thousand dollars on Harry just getting his tumor diagnosed and removed. Then there was the cost of his chemotherapy, not to mention his other medical bills. I remembered Carol’s email describing Harry as “a money pit.” I’ll say, but I didn’t care. Her boy was my boy now.
When she’d told me she intended to leave me money, I said it wasn’t necessary. She insisted, but I never believed it would happen. By the end of her life, she didn’t have any to leave, only a pile of debts. The money for Harry, I learned, came from the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. They had finally approved her claims.
BEFORE LONG, A year had passed since Harry came to stay. On Halloween, I dressed him in his unicorn costume and sent pictures to Stephen and Lissa. Lissa sent me back one of Annabelle in a T. rex costume, but her message was about Carol. “I think about her every day, and time hasn’t lessened how much I still miss her.” I hadn’t stopped missing her either.
IN MID-NOVEMBER, FOR the first time that fall, I dressed the dogs in their jackets to go out in the morning. A front had blown through overnight, driven by strong winds. It was bright and cold, the sky a dazzling, perfect blue, 9/11 blue, I caught myself thinking. As we set off for Chelsea Piers, I looked across the street toward Clement Clarke Moore Park. The parked cars were covered with ginkgo leaves, blankets of them on roofs and windshields, pools of them underfoot. They were tender still, green and yellow. On the sidewalk, alongside the wrought-iron fence, there were so many, and they were so deep, people stopped and looked down for a moment in wonder before sloshing through them noisily on their way to somewhere else.
It was at that same spot almost exactly a year before, according to my cell phone photo file, at seven A.M. on November 20, that I had tied the dogs to the fence, so I that I could photograph them standing on a carpet of color, yellow and red trees tall behind them. I sent the picture to Carol, my attempt to give her one last autumn, even if she couldn’t touch or smell it.
I wanted more than anything else to do it again, to photograph these new ginkgo leaves, freshly fallen and beautiful, before they were trampled and flattened, but after Carol died, I stopped taking my phone with me on walks. There seemed to be no need.
I CAN’T REMEMBER now exactly when it was, but around that same time, Harry was diagnosed with kidney disease. He was lethargic, had lost weight, and was drinking too much water. Dr. Farber changed his diet to new and different kinds of prescription dog food. Kidney disease, ultimately, is fatal, but can, in some cases, be managed for years. I told myself Harry would be one of those cases. He liked his new food. I cupped some in my hands for him to try. He ate it all and licked my fingers till they were slimy. He regained the weight he’d lost and began acting like himself again, although his hind legs had been getting stiffer over the last few months. He needed help climbing stairs and sometimes had trouble getting to his feet on hardwood floors.
IN SOUTH CAROLINA, a few days after Christmas, it was warm. I left the back doors open so the dogs could go out on the porch or down to the deck. I knew Harry would sun himself. Suddenly, I heard loud, frantic barking. Minnie. Then her little legs scrambling up the stairs to the porch. More barking. I wondered what her problem was. The door was open. She could get in. Something had to be wrong. When I reached the porch door, she was waiting for me, barking so hard her whole body shook. As soon as she saw me, she turned and raced back outside. I followed and saw Harry sprawled spread-eagle on the bottom two steps, looking up at me terrified, unable to move. It took all my strength to lift him to his feet and help him up the stairs into the house.
“Oh, Harry, Harry, please stay with us,” I whispered into his fur as I hugged him. Minnie was at his side, concern on her face and in her body language. I’m sure I’ll be accused of anthropomorphizing, but I simply can’t buy the idea that dogs don’t have the kinds of feelings humans do. Minnie saw that Harry was in trouble. She came to me and demanded I rescue him. There is no other explanation. When Harry met Minnie, they loved each other.
I BROUGHT THE dogs back to New York in early January. On Monday, February 26, 2018, after a terrible, sleepless weekend, I had Harry put down. By then, he couldn’t stand. He couldn’t walk. He was in terrible pain.
I watched him crash. Hour by hour, he seemed to lose strength. And naturally, it rained, just as it had when Carol was dying. Rained and rained from Saturday afternoon till Monday morning, a cold, constant, hard rain. Harry couldn’t hold still. He fussed and kept trying to reposition himself. To get him outside, I had to lift him up, carry him down the front stairs, and steady him on the sidewalk. His hind legs buckled when he tried to pee. We got soaked. On Saturday night, I boosted him into bed beside me. I couldn’t sleep as he thrashed and turned, unable to settle in one spot. Around midnight, he heaved himself around and fell to the floor, landing with a thud. I rushed to him and held him as he panted, his distress and my anguish equal, there in the darkness. I let him rest. Eventually, arms under his belly, I managed to move him to the dog cushion at the foot of my bed, where his giraffe rug, the one that had traveled back and forth with him between Carol’s apartment and mine, was spread out. I brought him a bowl of water and held it close to his mouth, so he could drink. At two-thirty, he seemed to want to go out. I held an umbrella over him. When we did it again at three-thirty, he collapsed in a muddy puddle.
By Sunday night, I was using a bath towel as a sling to stand him up and support his back legs. Why, why was this happening when I had to travel for work within hours, to the Florida Keys on Monday, back late Tuesday night, to Oakland, California early Wednesday morning through Friday? So far away. I wanted more than anything to stay home, to be with Harry, but I doubted anyone would understand if I backed out of a story at the last minute because of a dog. For a child, a spouse, a parent, maybe, but not a pet, no matter what that pet meant to me.
All weekend I tortured myself. Should I take Harry to the twenty-four-hour emergency vet, the specialty-care facility where his oncologist was? How would I get him there? Car services for pets don’t come on short notice. They have to be scheduled. I had learned the hard way, on a previous occasion, that the emergency vet didn’t have the ability to run more than routine tests on weekends or at night. No one would be able to do much of anything until Monday, when I had to go out of town. I knew I could leave him there. He might get something for his pain, but was I just prolonging his agony? What if he got worse? What if Harry died, alone? I couldn’t bear that. He had slipped so much in just a few hours.
I got down on the floor and stretched out beside him. With my arms around him, I could feel him tremble. As I held him, I heard myself keening, moaning. I couldn’t stop the sound. I thought about Carol. What would she do? What would she want me to do? Our poor Harry. Was it fair to let him go on suffering? Had he lost his dignity? And what about his kidney disease? Lying there on the floor, I decided that I would take him to Dr. Farber. He had known Harry since he was a puppy. He’d known Carol. He knew me. I would ask him what he thought, whether he could save Harry. “Please, say yes,” I said into Harry’s fur. I would hear Dr. Farber out, but deep down I knew what was going to happen.
I remembered the extra pain pills Harry hadn’t needed after his cancer surgery, angry at myself that I hadn’t thought of them earlier. I gave him one. For the first time in two days, he relaxed and slept. I didn’t. I listened to him breathe. I listened to the rain, sick inside that I knew what Harry did not, that this would, probably, be the last night of his life.
In the morning, I made breakfast for Minnie and Harry. The irony didn’t escape me that I was feeding a dog who would most likely be dead in what, three hours? I said to myself, “I can’t let him die hungry,” and then, “But maybe he has a chance.” I took him to Dr. Farber. He said it was possible that Harry had a tumor on his spine or that he had the equivalent of a bad back. “Even if his cancer hasn’t spread, he could be like this for months and in pain.”
I asked what he thought, whether it was time. “Yes.” I told him I couldn’t watch Harry suffer. He said, “I’ll give you as long as you need alone with him.” The hardest part of my decision was knowing that I was making it for Carol, too. Would she agree it was time? Did she want him back?
Nobody ever says anything, but when it’s likely that your pet will be put down, the vet techs take you to an exam room away from the others, to the one with a stainless steel platform that can be raised or lowered. They’d put a blanket on the platform for Harry and set the height so I could sit with him.
One of the receptionists came in the room with forms to sign or something. I don’t remember why he was there. I looked up. “Will you do me a favor?” I asked. “I don’t have any pictures of me with Harry. Could you please take some?” Unspoken between us, the words before it’s too late. I handed him my cell phone, and we posed for the camera, Harry and I, our heads together. Hairy Harry, Handsome Harry, Harry the Ham till the end. Sometimes I can’t look at those pictures. There are eight of them.
I held Harry in my arms, my face against his, for ten minutes, fifteen, I don’t know, talking to him, saying how much I loved him, kissing him, before Dr. Farber came back with two syringes, the first injection to sedate him, the second to stop his heart. When his head drooped, I said goodbye, told him that wherever she was, Carol needed him, and started to cry.
I TOOK HARRY’S collars and his red bootie with me when I walked home. I sat with Minnie for half an hour. Oh, Minnie. I wondered whether she understood. She saw me take him away. How would she endure losing him? I wondered. How would I? I hugged her as hard as I could for as long as I could until the car service came to take me to the airport. On the plane, I tried to hide my face, so that no one would notice I couldn’t stop crying. Driving from Miami to Key Largo with a colleague, it was harder. At least she was driving, looking straight ahead at the road, not at me.
The next day, we were shooting at a dolphin sanctuary for a story on animal intelligence. I interviewed a scientist about identifying the unique whistles these mammals use to communicate, but what viewers commented on was the end of the piece, when two lovely, shiny dolphins rose out of the water together and gave me a kiss as I knelt on the dock. It’s a trick they’ve been trained to perform on command. My colleagues thought the whole stunt was “a hoot, so fun,” but being touched by an animal made my sadness bearable. Two days later, in California, at the Oakland Zoo, Donna, the elephant, who can look at a picture of a banana and then point to the real thing, caressed me with her trunk.
EVERY DAY, MINNIE smelled Harry’s giraffe rug all over, as if she were checking to see whether he’d come home. She refused to set foot on his memory-foam bed, walked around it to get up on the couch in the den, and wouldn’t go for walks. Finally, in the spring, she consented to come with me to the farmers market again.