Another day, another discussion. Tucker has arrived. He hands me a paper cup of coffee and we head into the house to take a look at the work in the front parlor. Two hundred years of flooring modernizations have been ripped up. It’s been like an archaeological dig, pulling up each generation’s “improvements,” from grubby worn wall-to-wall, to faded linoleum, to plywood subflooring, to the mother lode, twenty-inch-wide ship planks. “Just don’t grow trees like that anymore.” Tucker runs his hand along the planking, sighs with appreciation and with despair. The crew has excised the worst of the rotted planking with surgical precision, and the new planks, repurposed from a barn in New Hampshire, will be sistered in. But there has to be a reason the seaworthy original planks rotted. Somebody needs to go into the crawl space and take a look.
Frankly, I’m more interested in the plumbing project. “So, Tucker, when do you think the plumber will arrive?”
“Rosie, why don’t you call him?” He says this gently, but I get the point. This is my job, chasing after subcontractors—“subs,” as we call them in the business.
As if he’s sorry for mentioning my job to me, Tucker adds, “You’re okay, though, right? With water?”
“I think I probably stink.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Really, Tucker, this constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Go to my place. I’m never home during the day. I’ll even clean the bathroom for ya.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
I know that I must have this look on my face, a little bit horrified, a little bit tempted. “I’ll think about it.”
“Just let me know. I’ll give you a key.”
“What about your wife? Wouldn’t she be a bit surprised to find a strange woman in her bathroom?”
“Only if she deigned to visit my apartment. We’re divorced.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
The day has turned nice, warm enough the mud has already gone from black to brown; the big paw prints from yesterday have hardened into impermanent fossils.
Last night, I thought I heard a dog bark. I am sleeping only fitfully, still uneasy in the deep silence that surrounds this lonely place. I woke with the same kind of startle reflex you have when you dream of falling. I woke up listening, but I heard nothing except the faint sound of wind through the woods that surround this house.
Tucker catches me looking at the print. “I’ll bring back a proper composting bin when I go up the line to the Home Depot.”
“‘Up the line’?”
Tucker smiles, “Local expression.”
Despite Tucker’s offer to go to his apartment and use his bathroom—not bloody likely—I continue to rough it with water heated on the stove, and I have become proficient in the sink bath routine. I think back to the time in my life when I might have showered twice a day, lathering and rinsing with scarcely a thought for my parents’ hot-water bill. And college, my first experience of high-flow showerheads and the wearing of shower shoes. Charles’s South End condo had all the bells and whistles one needs when one is of pampered stock: Jacuzzi heads in the tub, a separate shower with a showerhead that made it feel as if you were in a rain forest. And, of course, the communal showering in prison. Plastic shower curtains with at least three missing rings, the ongoing combat to get into the shower before the inadequate hot water ran out. The hair pulling if you stayed too long. So, hey, maybe a quiet sink bath and an outside hose for shampooing isn’t all that bad.
With only the most primitive kitchen, my kitchenware comprising two saucepans of questionable cleanliness and a slotted spoon, I opt for visiting Cape Ann’s wide array of dining options. Seafood, obviously. Italian. Seafood. Pizza. Seafood. And, my favorite, Portuguese cuisine. It’s at the Azorean, where I run into Tucker, also dining solo.
My instinct is to duck him, to pretend that I don’t notice his presence. He’s seated at a two-top table, with his back to the window, the table set for one.
“Hey, Rosie. Join me?” Without his ball cap, with a pair of reading glasses giving him a rough-hewn professorial aspect, he doesn’t look quite as ursine as he does in his natural element of sawdust and debris.
“Oh, I couldn’t.” I’m not being polite, or coy. Whatever would we talk about? I have no conversation that wouldn’t veer off into revelations about my most recent history, which I have no desire to cop to. Besides, I can’t imagine sitting down in such close proximity with any man just yet.
“Oh, come on. Unless. Are you…?”
“What?”
“Expecting anyone?”
My mama told me never to lie. “No. Just me.”
“We can go over some details.”
Whew. A business dinner. Plenty of nice neutral subject matter. “Sure. Thanks.”
The hostess quickly puts a table setting in front of me, asks after my beverage preference. I notice that Tucker has a bottle of craft beer in front of him. I order—for the first time in, oh sweet Mary Mother of God, six years!—a glass of wine. House Chardonnay. No sense getting fancy. It tastes better to me than any of Charles’s high-priced, overdescribed, fancy-schmancy imported wines. I try not to guzzle it down before my Mediterranean salad arrives. Tucker has the kale soup. I have the frango assado and he has the grilled octopus. We talk about the project in between forkfuls. I nod and agree with much of what he’s saying because, after all, I have no idea how a project of this scope is attacked. If Tucker says strip the antique shingles off and get the roof done first, then, of course, I nod in sage agreement and bring up the state of the nonfunctioning bathroom only as an aside. We agree that there must be some simultaneous inside and outside activity in order to get the place habitable by the time cold weather sets. Habitable. I laugh at that word. I’m living in an uninhabitable house. And that’s just fine.
“I’m curious,” I say, and take another bite of the amazing chicken. “What’s with Dogtown?” Tucker’s business name plus a couple of other Dogtown references have had me looking for wayfinders for a hidden village on this peninsula of villages. A village of dogs, maybe. A place I would feel very much at home.
“Ah, Dogtown. It’s an interesting story.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You have to know a bit about Cape Ann history, how the first settlers came here. Out of fear of pirates and the native population, they settled away from the coast, calling the area ‘The Commons.’ They prospered, and every man—white man, of course—had a field and a woodlot. There were a couple of mills. A nice little village. Then, a couple of generations later, the threats were gone, and the lure of making a ton of real money on the sea had most of the well-to-do gravitating to what is now Gloucester proper. The rich people left, and the poor continued to try to eke out a living on this really rocky, deforested land. All that it was really good for, after the trees were gone, was sheep farming, and even that was hard because of the bogs.”
“The bogs?”
“Wetlands. Sheep-eaters.” He paused long enough to savor the last of his dinner. “Eventually, the houses deteriorated, and today you can see the cellar holes where they once stood.”
“But how did that become Dogtown?”
“Well, by the end of the Revolutionary War, pretty much the only people left in the Commons were widows, too poor or too eccentric to live elsewhere. They took in boarders, and the place ended up with an unsavory reputation. Needless to say, the women became known as one of three things: witches, cheats, or prostitutes.”
“And they were called ‘dogs’?”
“No, they kept dogs. The widows became known for keeping dogs as close companions—read familiars—and as protection against, well, probably against the drunken sailors who might prey on them. Some smart-ass probably started calling the place ‘Dogtown’ and it stuck.”
“Where is it?”
“Just outside your door.”
I saw paw prints again this morning. I was bent from the waist, cold water numbing my skull as I washed my hair. I saw it, and I put my hand down next to it to get its measure. As big as these prints looked, my hand was still larger—just.
Last night, I heard barking. I’m sure of it. Not distant barking, but close by. It woke me from a sound sleep. No, that’s not accurate; a sleep interrupted throughout the night, as most nights, with the taint of bad dreams. I am nearly a month beyond incarceration, and still I dream of boxes and immobility. If I am lucky, I dream of my dogs, Shark and Harry and my unfinished Lulu. I wake wondering how they are, if they are happy. Meghan has begun to slip away from our friendship. She hasn’t called as often, and she responds to my texts with a new brevity. I have to keep in mind that she is now a workingwoman, that her hours are filled in a way that they weren’t when we first met. And she’s kind of dating. Another veteran. I’m happy for her. I don’t take it personally.
The novelty of solitude is wearing off. It’s becoming plain old loneliness.
I keep thinking about Tucker’s story of Dogtown, and how the lonely widows, or witches, if you prefer, found comfort and companionship with their dogs. I keep thinking about what it would be like to have a dog. One that I wouldn’t have to give up. Or one that wouldn’t become the catalyst for tragedy.
“Absolutely not. We don’t have the time for a dog.” Charles was never one to mince words. If he thought something was a bad idea, then it was a bad idea, case closed.
Nonetheless, I kept persisting. “These are little dogs, nothing that’s going to take up a lot of space, and, Charles, I’d love to have a companion. Something to keep me company during the day.”
Charles had a way of becoming solid when he was unhappy with me. His jaw tensed; his whole body would set like concrete with the effort of containing his displeasure, as if he was holding it in, afraid of softening, of letting an issue or subject go. His eyes would go dead. Charles never touched me in anger. His violence was a withholding, the act of separating himself from me. I would find myself cajoling, then apologizing, explaining myself and my foolishness, admitting a fault I didn’t necessarily believe I had, all in order to get him to soften, to accept my apology. Hours, even days later, I would wonder why I couldn’t stand up to that rigidity; why it bothered me so much to be on the wrong side of that human wall.
This time, I decided that rather than chance a full-blown argument, a fait accompli was a good idea. I had the puppy already picked out, paid for, and ready to go. A Maltese-poodle cross, a designer dog. An armful of dog. “It was just a thought, Charles.”
“Keep it that way.” The tension loosed in his face and he smiled. “Aren’t I companion enough for you?”
“Are you suggesting that you’d like to be on my leash?” I joked back.
It went on from there to a logical conclusion, and all the time I was thinking about the moment when I would bring the puppy home: Charles, you’re going to fall in love with her. I was so certain.
I’ve been lucky so far; the summer warmth persists and I am comfortable in the unheated house even in the cool night, in my well-rated sleeping bag. The various interior workmen have made a little progress, at least as far as I can see. The remnants of the last occupant’s twentieth-century enhancements are gone—the rugs, the linoleum, a grungy old Barcalounger. The next step in the process, according to Tucker, is to remove the battered wallboard from the interior walls. He’s hopeful that doing so will expose fireplaces in both parlors. Then, once everything’s stripped to the studs, the electrician will commence rewiring the whole place. In the meantime, I have electricity in the kitchen, further confining me to that space if I want to read or listen to the radio. Without a suggestion of Wi-Fi, that’s my only source of entertainment unless I want to ding myself on data charges. Pete gave me the phone, yeah, but the bill is all mine.
And so it is that I am sitting under the standing lamp that I have set up in the corner of the kitchen where one of the two outlets is, rocking in the ancient rocking chair I saved from the same fate as the Barcalounger. I’ve got the radio on, tuned to a Boston station, but I’m barely listening. I’m deep in my book. I’ve been bingeing on bestsellers from the Sawyer Free Library—a name that feels apropos to a newly free woman—drunk on having a choice of current novels. One of the librarians, Shelley Brown, is getting to know my taste and has set aside some really good reads for me. No crime novels. No thrillers. Alone in my derelict house on the edge of Dogtown, it would not do to have my imagination stoked. I haven’t taken Tucker’s suggestion that I hike around what is now conservation land and see for myself the cellar holes and landmark boulders. I have no desire to walk alone in the woods. Some might take refreshment in being outdoors, but I am, at heart, a city girl. People get lost in the woods, and, from what Tucker mentioned oh so casually, it is a rite of passage for Gloucesterites to get lost in the Dogtown woods. No thank you.
It has begun to rain and a change of wind direction rattles the panes in the window. A whisper of colder air slips under the back door, swirls around my bare ankles. I shiver and pull them up under me. That’s when I hear it, a faint scratching. “Oh, geez.” All the time I’ve been living in the Homestead, I’ve worried about vermin—mice in particular. I’ve been diligent about food scraps, using Tucker’s composting can, and keeping the rough floor as crumb-free as I can. This is not the sound of mice. Rats? My toes curl at the thought. Louder scratching. I shut off the radio. I slip my bare feet into my sneakers. Scratch. Scratch. It’s not at the back door, but the one that leads to the dogtrot.
Woof. A deep, mellow request for admission. Woof.
Do coyotes bark?
The rain begins to pound in earnest, one of those coastal deluges that make you think of the end of days. A quieter Woof, as if the creature is shying away from his own request. Please?
I open the door.
At first, I think that maybe it is a coyote. It’s huge, gray, and wet. It looks at me with an expression that suggests I have taken way too long to open this door. He marches in, gives a great water-laden shake, flops down on the cheap braided rug that I found at HomeGoods, and commences doing what dogs do, licking himself dry.
“Hey, who the heck are you?”
He leaves off licking his nether parts. He’s one of those dogs that has what they call “furnishings,” bushy eyebrows and chin hair. But he’s no breed I’ve ever seen before. His coat is all wiry, like a wolfhound’s, except that he’s not quite that big. Maybe a greyhound mix, if there is such a thing. Doesn’t matter; he’s big and he’s got to be the maker of those prints. Which makes me feel better. Not a coyote, just a big stray dog. Collarless. Friendly, because he’s on his feet and greeting me in dog fashion, tail sweeping from side to side. It has a little hook in the end of it. His eyes are soulful, the little eyebrows giving him a very human expression. “Are you hungry?”
The tail swishes more dramatically. I think he must speak English.
I don’t mind sharing my leftover chicken breast with him. He eats slowly, unlike my dear Shark, who inhaled food and then looked around, as if surprised it was gone. I won’t make a habit of this; he’ll need a proper diet for a large-breed dog. Because, of course, I’m going to keep him.
It is still deep night, but the rain has stopped; the silence is what must have awakened me. I sense the warm presence of this other living creature in the room, listen for the soft breathing. He knows that I am awake, waits for me to pat the covers and invite him to me. “Good boy,” I whisper to him, which is ridiculous, because we are the only ones here. His tail wags. I am no longer alone.