I am widowed. Benjamin lost at sea. I must apply to his sons. I do not think that they will have me.
Called out to attend Mrs. Lynch’s lying-in. On the day that my husband is reported dead, a new life enters the world, and I am reminded to lift mine eyes to the hills, from whence shall my help come.
Mr. Baxter has already informed me that he expects me to vacate the house by month’s end and is self-pleased to have given me as long as that to find new accommodations. Certainly he expects Ben’s sons in Marshfield to have the keeping of me. I have heard nothing from them. A childless widow is without protection. Even one such as I, with her own way of making a living, is not to remain under her own roof alone. Unless she is one of those war widows in Dogtown.
They warned me against tending the citizens of Dogtown when I first arrived here in Gloucester twenty or so years ago, a new, albeit aged, bride. Dogtown is a dangerous place. The residents will cheat you. Don’t expect payment; each is a charity case. I tend them anyway. Old women, mostly. In Dogtown there are no babes to bring into the world, just poor souls to see out of it.
I have set aside all the other books that I have stacked up on the kitchen table—otherwise known as my command post. This journal is fascinating. Whoever Susannah Day was, she reveals herself in the tiniest and most mundane of entries, and then she drops a bomb—for example, that her husband has died at sea. And then goes on to mention some household accomplishment. It’s taken me a few days to decipher her handwriting, which is at once old-fashioned and very idiosyncratic. It isn’t copperplate script, and blots and places where she’s scratched out words give the whole thing a feeling of her personality. I imagine her to be a lovely woman, if weary. I can so picture her here in this house, maybe even using the rocking chair that I’ve commandeered from the upstairs storage area. Now that Tucker has revealed the parlor fireplace, I see her rocking gently, staring at the fire, mourning her lost husband, annoyed with her unfeeling stepsons. What this journal has done for me is to imbue this old place, despite all its flaws, with a feeling of family. Tucker has told me about “old Mrs. Baxter,” whom he remembers from childhood, but it isn’t the house’s most recent tenant who keeps me company in my imagination; it is nineteenth-century Susannah Day. Maybe it’s because all of the twentieth-century “improvements” have been ripped out of the house, but it is just easier to see it through the eyes of its more distant residents. Even the attached barn means something to me now, and finding a rusted milk can forgotten in a corner of it immediately conjures Susannah and her cow.
Speaking of modern improvements, Bob the Plumber and his crew have gutted the bathroom ell. I’ve tucked my little composting toilet in a discrete corner in the barn. I’m left with the kitchen sink as my only water source. I feel like I’m regressing into a past life. What’s next? Carrying buckets from a stream? Bob the Plumber promises to be quick about it, but he’s held up by the fact that we need to order fixtures. Nothing can be reused; nothing meets modern code. At some point in the house’s life, the original claw-foot bathtub was replaced by a drop-in one, and that has a giant crack down the center. And the toilet is, well, let’s just say it’s off to Home Depot today. Oh, and that all of the pipes under the house have to be replaced. When Bob came back up from the crawl space, he looked like he’d been on an archaeological dig. “Swear those gotta be the original pipes from when they brought in indoor plumbing.” Which suggests that I’m drinking water from lead pipes.
Bob had a guy with him, nameless and completely silent. They were here for two solid days and I never heard a word out of him. I wondered if he might be deaf, but I saw him with a phone to his ear; plus, Bob talks to him. As I usually do when there are men here, I made myself scarce once I knew that they didn’t need anything from me. I didn’t want to get in the way and I’m still not entirely comfortable around strangers. Maybe I was concerned about Silent Plumber because he reminded me of one or two of the prison guards. They were silent, too, until they weren’t. Fortunately, I have Shadow, so I fear no evil.
I haven’t told anyone—anyone being Meghan—about my embarrassing crying jag in front of Tucker. It was just having his innocent and natural question come so close to that call from my mother, when the line went dead, that set me off. I can’t believe she’d dial and then hang up, and as hers isn’t a cell phone, but an old-fashioned landline, it is crazy hurtful to think she’d do it deliberately, that it wasn’t a butt dial. Maybe she thought she could speak to me but then she lost her nerve. I still offend her.
I fled from my parents’ house knowing full well that I would never see my father alive again. What I never imagined was that I wouldn’t ever again see the rest of my family after his funeral. I pushed past the priest and my brother and got myself back to South Station in time for the next Acela to Penn Station. I didn’t call Charles. I didn’t text. I sat in my seat, face to the window and the ever-changing scene from urban to suburban to urban, and tried not to think about my epic failure as a daughter and as a fiancée. I had pleased no one. The one thought that I had that comforted me was the idea that I would swing by the dog sitter and pick up my puppy, Tilley. In the two months since I brought her home, the poor thing had spent more time with the dog sitter than with me. Every step forward I had taken in her training had gone backward from my repeated absences, Paris, Long Island, Boston.
I had believed that a fait accompli was a great idea. Charles had said no dog every time I brought the subject up. I had pleaded, cajoled, bargained, and still he was firm in his convictions, which I thought of as simply the reluctance of someone who had never had a pet and didn’t know how wonderful it could be. In my naïve stubbornness, I had convinced myself that all I had to do was bring the dog home and he would fall in love with her. Who could resist the appeal of a tiny ball of white fluff, big brown eyes full of charm? I’d put a deposit down on the puppy even before she was born and was almost sick with nervousness on the day I picked her up. I was gambling on seeing a side of Charles that I wasn’t sure even existed—his softer side.
“What the fuck is that?” Charles dropped his expensive leather backpack to the floor.
“Our puppy. Matilda. Tilley.”
“Not ours. Take it back.”
“I can’t.” I should have said “I won’t.”
“Get rid of it. I said, no dogs.”
“I need her, Charles. I need the company.” This wasn’t the way this conversation was supposed to go. He was supposed to melt. I lifted the puppy up, offering her to him. “Just touch her.”
“I will not.” He snatched his backpack up off the floor, and for one horrible moment I thought that he meant to swing at me. He reached into a side pocket, extracted his phone, which I hadn’t heard ringing, the high hard whine of anxiety already in my ears. He left the room. I sucked in a lungful of air.
I had defied him; there was a crack in the mold into which he had poured me, that of grateful, obedient, presentable girlfriend.
Charles would have nothing to do with her, and made me keep her out of his sight, so I had to rely on a dog sitter. I’d been lucky, and found a good one, who also sat for the neighbor who had turned me on to Tilley’s breeder. So now, on the train back to New York, my arms longed to hold that little white bundle of wriggle, to feel her soft pink tongue against my cheek. I needed comfort, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get any at home. Charles was certain to be angry at my failure to convince my family of his well-meaning offer. What I had come to figure out was that he had a lot riding on this particular venture. The new position in New York had been predicated on his success with such a major real estate project in Boston. I didn’t think he’d be sent, like a failing pitcher, back to the farm team, but Charles had made promises. As I rode that train back to New York, all I could think about was how my failure with my family meant his failure with his firm.
“Charles? Are you home?” I pushed open the apartment door, flung my overnight bag into the room, and set the puppy down on the hardwood floor. Her little legs scrambled as she scurried around the place, sniffing corners, reclaiming her stuffed mouse. I moved quickly and got her onto the training pad before her excitement caused a problem.
“Rose. You’re home early. Are things better?” Charles came out of the room he used as his home office, or, as I referred to it, his “man cave.” Untouched since his grandfather’s time, it was done up in the style of an earlier age, the way I imagined an Edwardian-era man of the house might have kept his private space. Books on shelves, worn leather club chairs that had, indeed, belonged to his father and his father before him, as had the apartment. Buffed with the generations of male Foster backsides, they were in the center of the room, facing the tall French doors that led to a Juliet balcony and thence over a thick slice of Central Park. A glass-topped table sat between them, Charles’s late-afternoon drink in its cut-glass tumbler sitting on it beside his tablet.
“No.” I had no words for the story I needed to tell him. In the hours since I’d left my parents’ house, it was possible that my father had passed; and I had obsessively held my phone in my hand for the entire journey.
“Don’t make me ask the question, Rose.” He could have meant had my father died, but I knew that what he really wanted to know was whether they would finally accept his offer.
So I gave him an answer that was true in both ways. “Not yet.”
He didn’t say anything. I wanted to read a little compassion in his eyes, but I think that what I saw was disappointment. “I wasn’t expecting you, so I made plans to have dinner with a couple of the guys from work. Will you be all right here on your own?”
“I will.”
“I’ll get you a drink.” Kindness itself.
I sat in the right-hand leather club chair, slipped off my shoes, and took in a deep breath of books and leather and whiskey. Charles handed me a tumbler with a quarter of an inch of twelve-year-old scotch, not the good stuff, which was far more aged and trotted out only for special—male—guests. I really don’t like hard liquor. But the bite of it and the fumes on the back of my tongue had the effect of finally relaxing the tension I’d held on to for hours. It didn’t make anything better, but it soothed. I thought that perhaps I’d have another taste after Charles left. I’d sit here in the coming gloom of night with my puppy on my lap and let the whiskey work its mellowing magic. Wouldn’t everything look better if I were a little drunk?
“Are they at least thinking about it, the offer?”
“My father is past thinking. My mother is quite preoccupied.”
“What about your brothers? Does any one of them speak for your parents?”
“No.” I could have added “any more than you speak for your mother,” but I didn’t. I was too tired to be witty, too whiskey-mellow to want to provoke a fight I had no energy for. “Where’s Tilley?” I just wanted her on my lap.
“Didn’t you crate her?”
“Not yet. We only just got home.” I meant that she needed a little free time. I never crated her when Charles was out.
“I have to get changed.” Charles swallowed the last of his drink, dropped a kiss on my forehead, and left me to my own ruminations. I picked up the carafe and added a touch more whiskey to my tumbler. I forgot about the puppy’s whereabouts as I studied my phone, hoping that maybe I’d missed a call or text from one of my family. I’d texted each one of my brothers to see what was going on but hadn’t gotten a response from anyone. It was as if a door had been shut, a prison gate, and I was on the other side. I thought that I had been locked out, but what I had been was locked in, locked into a fate of my own making.
“Just look what this fucking dog has done!”
Charles stood in the doorway, one shoe in his left hand, the puppy in his right hand. The puppy looked pleased. The shoe, one of a pair of beyond-expensive bespoke Italian loafers, was shredded. He flung them both at me. The shoe bounced off my shoulder, but the puppy landed in my lap.
“Get rid of her, or I swear to God I will.”
Late that same night, I got a phone call telling me that my father had passed. It was Brenda Brathwaite, not my own family calling. “They asked me to call, Rosie. I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t tell if she meant she was sorry about my father’s death or about my increasing estrangement from my family.
Two days later, we drove to Boston to attend my father’s funeral, where I was iced out by my family, my mother stiff-arming me as she pushed past to greet some long-lost cousin.
One of the things I like about Home Depot is the fact that Shadow can come in with me. He obviously likes the massive place, with its acres of wood and plastic and metal and porcelain, and greets everyone like he’s king of the hill. He seems to know that we’re not in some gigantic outdoor space with a roof and puts on his best inside manners. For the most part, I haven’t had to train him. Even off-leash, he knows to heel. When on-leash, he has great manners, never pulls or decides what route we’re going to take. Shadow sits, stays, and downs like a champ. Even if I leave him outside the library, I don’t worry about him wandering away. I say “Stay,” and he does. I am a dog trainer. It’s what I expect. I believe that he has an innate sense of propriety and obedience. I don’t allow myself brain space to consider that someone might actually have trained him to perfection before I came into his life. He’s mine. I haven’t even had to deal with bad habits. He really doesn’t have any, unless you count his insistence on resting his muzzle on the kitchen table. As I use that table for everything from work to reading the newspaper to eating, it’s an understandable habit. I’m thinking about going beyond basic training skills and getting into something fun, like agility. There’s plenty of room on the Homestead property to build a few jumps. It would just be for our pleasure; I’m not ready to join any groups or anything. Dealing with Tucker and the various workmen is social enough for me for right now.
I’ve consulted with Tucker and with Pete and we’ve come up with a budget for the fixtures in the bathroom. I’m beginning to catch on to the whole ethos of keeping as much of the house as original as possible, and I manage to find a pedestal sink and bathtub that at least blend with the age of the house, even if they aren’t exactly retro. If I really went with authenticity, I’d have to be shopping for chamber pots and a tin tub. This being without a shower has gotten very old very quickly. I talked Pete Bannerman into having the Trust buy me a membership at the YMCA, which has helped. Plus, I like the machines. I can grind out the miles on the stationary bicycles or incline and come away clean and feeling like I’m finally getting my youthful vigor back. I have my earphones and listen to audiobooks or podcasts. It’s like my desiccated brain is sucking up culture and information. Both my legs and my brain are getting toned. What exercise equipment there was at Mid-State was very limited and hogged by the jocks, who liked deadlifting and giving you the dead eye at the same time.
I make quick work of the fixture purchases, which Bob the Plumber or Tucker will pick up. Then I buy a dozen of those tall, thin sticks that people use to delineate their driveways for plowing. I think that they’ll make a great weave course for Shadow’s agility training.
“That’s some dog you got there.” The middle-aged woman behind the checkout counter fishes a dog biscuit out of a plastic jug. “Can he have one?”
Who am I to say no? Shadow politely takes the treat.
“What is he?”
Ah, the most popular question, asked by many, answered by few. Each time I seem to have a different idea. “I don’t know. He’s a rescue.” Technically speaking, I rescued him, didn’t I? “Maybe part wolfhound.”
Shadow has his attention focused behind me, where an older man in a tracksuit stands with his hands full of plastic plumbing parts. His tail sweeps from side to side, almost like he knows the man. He’s been mostly aloof with the men who come to the Homestead. Tucker is the only one he greets, and I think that’s probably because Tucker is there more consistently. I thank the woman for the treat and gather my rods.
“He’s a lurcher. That’s what he is.” The man speaks with a decidedly British accent. Not a plummy one, more Onslow than Hyacinth.
“A lurcher?” I’ve never heard of it, and it sounds kind of derogatory.
“Useful farm dogs, common in England. Poachers’ dogs. Deerhound mixes, whippets. Fast, skinny dogs mixed with collies or terriers.”
“Not a recognized breed, then?”
“Suppose not. Good hunters. All-around dogs. Don’t see many over here.”
“I suppose that he’s just a coincidental blend of all the right parts to come up with what you call him. Lurcher. Okay, Shadow, we’ll say you’re one hundred percent lurcher from now on.” I thank the man, wish him success with his DIY plumbing project, and head out, my lurcher at my heels.
Goody Mallory has passed this day; more accurately, at the dark moment before dawn, before even the birds announce themselves. She was one possessed of a dog, a great gray cur of no known breed. Not shepherd, not hunting dog. Some amalgam thereof, I would have to say.
What was interesting to me—and without my Ben to listen to my whimsy, I write it here—what I observed was the way the beast nestled himself beside Goody on her corn-husk mat, and, more important, the way her crabbed hand clutched at the dog’s fur, taking final comfort from the feel of it. Her other senses flown, this last sense was engaged into the harsh coat of her familiar. She smiled and gave up her last breath. The dog, for his part, remained in her dead embrace, his eyes closed, as if—no, it is a blasphemous thought—but to my eyes, it appeared as though the dog was prayerful. I could not bring myself to interrupt, as if I took him as her chief mourner, which, I suppose, he is. He did stand after a bit. Then he sat over her body and broke my heart with a single ululation. Not quite a howl, but clearly a lament.
I woke from a restless sleep and lighted my candle to add one more thought to this page. Goody Mallory was a war widow, her husband lost in the last war, her livelihood gone, her fate to scratch out an existence partly on charity, partly on fortune-telling and chicanery, but she did not die alone. I am so very alone.
I read that entry and thought about how lucky I am to have Shadow in my life. I don’t know what I’d do without him by my side.