It hadn’t rained in weeks, and the backyard was dotted with dead spots where Rufus had peed, burning circles in the grass, turning it a brittle yellow, a natural, low-level chemical warfare. Emily kept his water bowl filled, providing him with an endless supply of ammunition. Six, eight, ten times a day he went. Henry didn’t remember Duchess having such an active bladder, or maybe, being female, her urine was milder, less of an herbicide. All of his efforts against the grubs and voles and dandelions and squirrels were squandered so long as Rufus used the lawn for his private toilet. Henry couldn’t walk him every time he needed to go, like his last outs before bed, standing by like an accomplice while he inflicted more damage—could only try to dilute the poison, uncoiling the hose and dragging it across the spotlit yard to soak the affected area.
“What in the world are you doing?” Emily asked from the doorway.
“I’m trying to save what’s left of the grass.”
“I’m going up,” she said. “I’ll see you when you’re done marking your territory.”
His idea was to cordon off the yard with string except for a corner behind the raspberry canes, turn the dead spots and plant new grass. By the time it came in, Rufus would be used to going in one place. Henry had bought four jugs of all-in-one seed rated for a mix of sun and shade. The key was watering often.
“I wish you luck,” Emily said, never taking her eyes from her book.
“You don’t think it’ll work?”
“I think you’re going to drive yourself and me crazy. Dogs pee. That’s what they do.”
“I’m not trying to stop him from peeing, I just need him to pee in one place.”
“You’re already driving me crazy. All I want is to read this one page.”
Rufus murmured as if they were disturbing him.
“Okay, Grumpy Joe,” Henry said.
“Shush.”
He wasn’t obsessed, as she implied, just focused on a goal and the best means of achieving it. An engineer, he had a respect for the practical that extended to every facet of living, and was happiest when he saw an opportunity to fix a problem. Not everything could be perfected, but his natural inclination—with machines or systems—was to look for design flaws and ways to eliminate them. The thrill was seeing the new iteration succeed, a victory they’d finally been denied with the Odysseus, testing it at Jackass Flats to prove it could fly yet never sending it into space. Nine years he’d worked on the project before Congress cut their funding. The prototype Henry had pictured navigating Saturn’s rings now rested in a crate in some desert warehouse, already a museum piece. Since he’d retired, he missed the challenge of the impossible and brought that same dogged curiosity and inventiveness to his household tasks. In place of titanium, he worked with white pine. Instead of tweaking the reactor, he tuned the mower. There were days when he was at the Home Depot four or five times. Emily joked with the children that the clerks knew him by name. It wasn’t true. No one cared who he was, just another old fogey who needed help finding the Gumout. Henry didn’t mind. Interplanetary travel or cleaning a carburetor, the satisfaction was the same. At the end of the day he liked to feel he’d gotten something done. There was nothing he enjoyed more than lying in bed, making a list of all he had to do tomorrow.
In the morning, as Rufus watched, Henry sectioned off the yard, using a packet of wooden shims as stakes, stretching the string taut, forming rhomboid plots on both sides of the flagstones. The string wasn’t knee-high, a single flimsy strand, yet for now, unsure what it signified, Rufus honored it like barbed wire. Turning the dead spots took longer than Henry had thought. By the time he spread and watered the seed it was midafternoon and the sun was behind the house. He surveyed his work like a farmer.
“Okay,” he said, “grow.”
The next morning he followed Rufus out in his slippers to check on the bare spots, as if grass might have sprouted overnight. Just mud. It was wet enough, and the weather was supposed to be warm. Rufus did his business behind the raspberries and came dashing back, ready for his breakfast.
“Good job,” Henry said to reinforce the lesson.
Later, after a frustrating round of golf, he stood at the French doors and watched a fat robin hop across the yard, stop in the middle of a muddy patch and peck at the ground. He rapped a knuckle against the glass. The robin ignored him until he opened the door, then settled on the peak of the garage, waiting for him to leave.
“Go on, get!” Henry shouted, bursting out, flailing his arms, and it flew off over the Coles’.
“You are aware,” Emily said, “that you look like a crazy person.”
“He’s eating my seeds.”
“You think he’s the only one?”
Sparrows, finches, pigeons, doves—all the birds that frequented their feeders were chowing down as if this were dessert. As much as he might want to, he couldn’t stand guard over the plot like a scarecrow. Emily suggested hanging flattened pot pie tins, but they only made the strings sag. He thought of fixing boxes of chicken wire over the spots, except then she would be right. He needed to be reasonable. In the end, he resigned himself to what he hoped would be acceptable losses, and still, every time he saw a bird on the lawn, he knocked on the window. When knocking didn’t work, he barked.
“You’re worse than Rufus,” Emily said.
“I’m not the one who ruined the lawn.”
“Oh my God, Henry. He didn’t do it on purpose. He’s a dog.”
Nights he set out the sprinkler, going barefoot, the cuffs of his trousers rolled, moving it from one side of the yard to the other while it was still arcing, spraying him in the face, wetting his shirt. After a full week, there was no visible growth. Had he overseeded? Overwatered? He was a patient man. All he wanted was some sign of progress.
The next morning, instead of new shoots poking through the mud, he found a paw print. When he reported it to Emily, she admitted that Rufus might have crossed the lines last night chasing a rabbit.
“You have to watch him all the time,” Henry said.
“I can’t stop him from chasing bunnies.”
“If you see a bunny, don’t let him out.”
“I didn’t see one. I can’t see in the dark like you.”
Once he got the water bill, he stopped sprinkling every night. He watched the weather, hoping the rain would save him. The scattered showers Channel 11 promised were never enough, leaving the patches blond as sawdust, and then one night it rained too much, a thunderstorm lighting up the sky, a downpour turning the mud into slurry, washing out spots. To make certain, he decided to reseed.
“So we’re starting all over again,” Emily asked.
“That’s correct.”
“How much does sod cost?”
“We can grow grass. There’s nothing wrong with our grass except someone peeing on it.”
While he tended to the new batch, she concentrated on Rufus. Among her many catalogs, she received one called Solutions, which featured harebrained yet expensive household gizmos he associated with in-flight magazines. Without consulting him, she ordered a flat rock impregnated with a scent that, by some occult principle, was supposed to entice dogs to mark it. While Henry was skeptical, he appreciated the support, and by now he was desperate enough to try anything. If it didn’t work, they could return it within thirty days and get their money back.
Emily placed the rock in the far corner behind the raspberries, in a mossy notch beside the downspout. At first she led Rufus to it and stood there pointing, encouraging him to go, which, after some prompting, he did—just a token squat in the grass, not on the rock at all. If Henry sometimes discounted Emily’s judgment, he never doubted her determination. To prove a point, she’d make Henry himself pee on the rock. Every time she took Rufus out now, she walked him to the corner. Grateful, Henry followed suit, and eventually, through sheer repetition, Rufus grew used to it, heading directly there before they stepped off the porch.
Within a week the new seed germinated, sending forth fine, needle-like blades. Henry gave them room to grow, going creakily to one knee to pinch up wayward pebbles and flakes of old leaves and the tender sprigs of baby weeds he’d accidentally encouraged. He misted his crop with the sprayer, careful not to overwater, and every morning admired its slow progress like a proud father.
“It looks good,” Emily said.
“It’s a start.”
Though he was hopeful, so far their gains were modest. The patches were sparse compared to the rest of the yard, which had grown thick and bushy and needed to be cut. He took down the strings and stakes and skirted the new areas with the mower, tipping it on two wheels so it didn’t crush the seedlings, clipping the scruffy fringes with Emily’s garden shears, in the process tearing open a blister.
In the end the real triumph was Emily’s, teaching Rufus to use the corner. Though the rock had nothing to do with it, when Emily told the story at coffee hour, she gave it all the credit.
“Where did you find it?” Dodie Aiken asked.
“It was from a catalog. I’m drawing a blank. Henry, help me. What’s the name of that catalog?”
His victory wasn’t as clear-cut. When the new grass finally filled in, it was a deeper green. After he’d waited so long, now it grew too fast, bristling higher like the hair on Rufus’s back when he heard the mailman approaching, and even after he removed the stakes for good and mowed everything the same height, the new patches stood out, the yard spotted as if diseased.
“I think it looks fine,” Emily said. “It feels nice.”
“It’s better than it was,” Henry said, but often, by himself, gazing out the French doors before dinner or looking down from Kenny’s old room, he thought he should have just ripped it all up and started from scratch.