Authors: Susan Conant
“The point,” Althea continued firmly, “was to prevent the woman from talking to sympathetic strangers. To prevent her from speaking of the past.”
“But—” I began.
“Forgive me for interrupting. I have a bit more to cover, and we have little time. We need to turn to the matter of Geraldine R. Dodge. Please take what I am about to say in the spirit in which it is intended, Holly. Each of us is inevitably locked in her own perspective. I, in mine. Sherlock Holmes. Puzzles. Cryptic messages! A touch of the dramatic. You in yours. Dogs.”
“Guilty,” I admitted. “But no more than Mrs. Dodge was guilty on the same count.”
Althea folded her hands in her lap. “From an
objective
viewpoint,” she said, “the central fact of Mrs. Dodge’s life was
not
her passion for show dogs. Nor was it her apparently transitory membership in a eugenics society. Nor was it her acquaintance with dog experts who had the misfortune to live in Nazi Germany. Rather, it was her extraordinary wealth, the wealth that allowed her to pursue her passion for art.”
“Art,” I said. “Well, yes, she did collect art. She was … Well, I like to think of her as the Isabella Stewart Gardner of dogs. Among other things, she commissioned, oh, I don’t know how many portraits of her dogs. Now, a lot of people don’t exactly think of dog art as
art
, but—”
Althea shook her head. “Holly, when Elmira College tried to take advantage of this unfortunate woman’s mental failings, the object of the shameful episode was not to lay claim to dog pictures.”
“No. No, I see what you mean. Mrs. Dodge collected bronzes. Paintings. Gold coins. Jewelry. I get the point. She owned Houdon’s bust of Benjamin Franklin.”
“A marble bust,” said Althea, “a bit over twenty inches high depicting, you will recall, Franklin and Franklin only,
unaccompanied by a canine companion. The work now belongs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which according to one of these, uh, Web pages you left with me, paid three million dollars for the work.”
“Althea, I never said that dogs were the only thing she spent her money on. I mean, she had a lot of it to spend. The Dodge Gateway at Princeton, in memory of her son. She and her husband donated that. The Madison, New Jersey, town hall. In memory of her son. Sometime in the forties, she bought a house in the East Sixties, in Manhattan, from some woman named Pratt. The house was rented, I think, by the Soviet Consulate General. I don’t know why Mrs. Dodge bought it, but she did. She paid two hundred thousand dollars for it. I
have
wondered about the Russian connection there, of course.”
“There is no hint in the material you have presented,” Althea said sternly, “that Mrs. Dodge had any interest whatever in politics, left, right, or center. There is overwhelming evidence, however, that she was an avid collector of extremely valuable art. And
that
is the point you have overlooked. Only connect! You observed an odd character at the Gardner Museum and subsequently at Peter Motherway’s funeral. Where was Peter Motherway’s body placed after the murder?
At the Gardner vault.
Just what did B. Robert Motherway teach?
Art history.
His stepfather, the presumed Mr. Motherway, collected, you tell me, in a small way. Your Mr. Motherway, too, collects art. He collects Early American furniture and paintings. On the income of a prep-school teacher? I was one! And I have no such collection. In the thirties, this man led student tours of Europe. Tours of dog kennels? Of course not! Museum tours. Art tours. Art, again. Everywhere. Art.
Valuable art.”
I
’VE NEVER BEEN
much of a science-fiction fan, mainly because I see parallel universes all the time in the here-and-now. To take a randomly chosen example, consider the world of purebred dog fancy, a so-called subculture that mirrors the supposed mainstream in more ways than you would dream possible unless you happen to belong to it. Speaking from the inside, let me assure you that if a phenomenon exists, it exists in the world of dogs, a proposition that is true of everything from nail polish to politics to social class to madness to undying love.
The principal difference between these parallel universes is that the dog equivalent costs ten times as much or is ten times as intense as the human version. You can get a hair dryer for yourself at any discount drugstore by plunking down just about exactly one tenth the price you have to pay for the sturdy forced-air blower you need for a show dog. To trim your own nails, you need a file or an emery board. For a dog, you need either manual nail clippers, costing maybe ten dollars, or an electric nail grinder, say, fifty dollars. On my own hair, I use a comb and brush. On Rowdy and Kimi, I use undercoat rakes, wire slicker brushes, natural boar-bristle brushes, finishing brushes with stainless-steel pins, and a variety of combs specially designed not to damage the dogs’ hair. The dogs absolutely require a grooming table. I stand on
the bathroom floor. The same goes for everything else: ten times as expensive, ten times as intense. Dog politics? The jockeying for power within the American Kennel Club makes the Knesset look like a Buddhist monastery occupied by a lone monk who’s taken a vow of silence. Madness? You haven’t met a lunatic until you’ve met a real dog nut. As to social class, why
breeding
is what it’s all about, my dears.
To demonstrate the omnipresence of parallel universes, let me add a couple of examples that have nothing to do with dogs, namely, head lice and human mortality. The proposition we’re considering is, I remind you, that if something exists in one universe, it exists in others. So, on to politics in the world of head lice. The National Pediculosis Association is now, as we speak (as we itch and scratch?), vying publicly with a rival head-lice organization that has obviously won the first round of the battle for America’s scalps by discreetly calling itself Sawyer Mac Productions, instead of, say, The American Louse and Nit Foundation. Imagine the graphics on the letterhead stationery. Anyway, it’s easy to see that just as national political parties divide themselves into conservatives and liberals, so, too, do external human parasitic parties. Truly, the National Pediculosis platform calls for the traditional, conservative reliance on a fine-tooth comb, supplemented in emergency cases of all-out war by the pesticide-shampoo defense, whereas the liberal Sawyer Mac agenda demands immediate, global comb and pesticide disarmament and proposes instead the near-pacifist policy of dousing louse-ridden heads in olive oil.
Human mortality. Delicacy, compounded by a profound and blissful ignorance of exactly what undertakers do to dead bodies, restrains me from pointing out what I am sure are exact parallels between the preparation of show dogs for the ring and the grooming of deceased human beings for open-casket viewings, but I am sure that the parallels are there. Ah, but politics? Cremation versus burial? Funeral services: In the conservative approach, a member of the clergy says flattering things about someone who may have been a total stranger. The liberal preference is for spontaneous eulogies delivered by family and friends, who are encouraged to celebrate
the life of the departed by relating cheerful anecdotes of generous deeds, amusing pranks, revealing witticisms, and lovable quirks. A strength of the conservative approach is that the clergyperson usually admits aloud that the subject of the eulogy is dead.
Have I digressed? No. Parallel universes. If it exists, it exists in nations, dogs, lice, and human mortality. Politics. Grooming. Social rank. Art! Dog art. The art of head lice? Indeed. The
letterhead
stationery? And mortuary art, as is evident at Mount Auburn Cemetery, where the alert visitor may admire everything from immense stone edifices like the Mary Baker Eddy Monument, to quaint, homey cottages like the Gardner family vault, to intricately carved angels, crosses, and sheepdogs, to unadorned granite slabs. Old money rests peacefully in or under, as the case may be, the vaults and statuary on the artificial hillsides and next to the miniature man-made lakes of Mount Auburn’s grand neighborhoods. Mature trees of exotic species soften the landscape. The section occupied by deceased parvenus suffers by comparison. With its skimpy, adolescent trees, its newly paved streets, and its unadorned slabs of rock, each barely distinguishable from all others on the block, it is the tract housing of death. There lay Christina Motherway and her son, Peter.
When I pulled up near the Motherway plot and parked behind a battered black Ford pickup truck, Jocelyn was kneeling by the brand-new headstone of her mother-in-law and, to my surprise, of her father-in-law, too. The stone was a thick, substantial double model reminiscent of twin beds shoved together to form a king. Christina slept on the left, at least according to the name carved there. B. Robert’s name had already been carved on the right. His late wife’s headboard had two dates: birth and death. His had no date at all. The omission seemed odd. He didn’t know exactly when he was going to die, but his birth date wasn’t going to change, was it? If something is figuratively carved in stone, why balk at the literal? In contrast to his mother’s grave and his father’s grave-to-be, Peter Motherway’s final resting place had no stone. I assumed it hadn’t been delivered yet. Although Mount Auburn must have strict zoning codes to ban the headstone
equivalent of hovels, I had the feeling that Peter’s grave marker would be a thin and vaguely shoddy single-bed slab. I toyed with the idea that if Jocelyn were buried in the same plot, she wouldn’t get so much as half a gravestone for herself. She might not even get a separate grave. Rather, Peter’s would be opened, and his wife would be laid to rest directly above him. I imagined Jocelyn’s posthumous astonishment at the radical transformation in her conjugal relationship. In life, I suspected, she’d never been on top.
Delayed by trouble in starting my car and then by commuter traffic between Newton and Cambridge, I’d taken a shortcut by turning off Greenough Boulevard, zipping uphill, and going straight ahead on Grove Street until reaching the gate that served as the cemetery’s back door. Since I’d had no time to take Rowdy home, he was in his crate in the back of the Bronco instead of in his usual sneaking-into-Mount Auburn position flat on the floor, but no one stopped me to enforce the no-dogs rule. Maybe a dog crated in a car was perfectly welcome.
Before leaving Althea’s, I’d sealed the photocopies of the mysterious mailings in a big manila envelope I’d taken with me. Now, getting out of the Bronco, I held the envelope prominently in my right hand as a reassurance, a false one, of course, to Jocelyn. I might as well not have bothered. Like the tattooed man at the Gardner kneeling before the John Singer Sargent portrait, Jocelyn was on her knees before Christina’s half of the gravestone. Her hands were tightly wrapped around a wicker basket that held an arrangement of pink tulips and white daffodils. Her eyes were closed. Her lips moved in what could only have been prayer. After a moment or two, she placed the basket on the new turf in front of the stone. Her late husband’s fresh grave was bare. Any wreaths, sprays, or bouquets left there after the funeral on Saturday must have withered and been cleared away, or had perhaps been moved to other graves by mourners doubly stricken by grief and poverty. In any case, although it was Peter Motherway’s barren, unmarked grave that seemed to call for flowers, Jocelyn paid tribute only to Christina.
When she rose, I could see tears running down her cheeks.
Without handing her the envelope, I said gently, as if speaking to an injured animal, “Jocelyn, I don’t know the details of the situation you’re in, but I know you need help. I have a good friend who will know what to do. I want you to come home with me. We’ll find a safe place for you.”
My offer succeeded only in provoking another freakish smile. “The only safe place,” Jocelyn said bitterly, “is right here with Christina.” Like a dog snatching an unguarded steak from a kitchen counter, she grabbed the envelope from my hand, dashed to the old Ford pickup, and drove away.
With no reason to linger, I returned to the Bronco, which started on the first try. Heading for the main gate, I reached the old part of the cemetery, where I slowed to a safe crawl to avoid endangering the birders, fitness walkers, and other visitors who were taking advantage of the early-summer evening to enjoy the garden cemetery as its founders had intended. When I neared the main gate, I could see Jocelyn’s old black truck, which had halted with its brake lights on and its left-turn signal blinking. One of the buses or trackless trolleys that run along Mount Auburn Street must have discharged a throng of passengers; pedestrians were passing along the sidewalk in front of the truck. When the sidewalk cleared, Jocelyn edged ahead, but had to wait for a break in traffic. Tonight, Mount Auburn Street was jammed with commuters heading home to Watertown, Belmont, and Newton, and after-work shoppers going to and from the big Star Market a block away from the cemetery gate, on the opposite side of the road. A group of tourists clutching maps of the cemetery crossed in front of my car.
As I started to move forward, an ordinary-looking beige car emerged from one of the cemetery streets that join at the main gate. It pulled in back of Jocelyn’s truck. With the pavement ahead of me clear, I added my Bronco to the little two-car line. I signaled for a right turn, thus activating the windshield wipers. Now that I was directly behind the beige car, I could see that it was a Mercedes. Its left-turn signal was blinking. Its wipers were not embarrassing its driver by sweeping nonexistent rain off a dry windshield. I confess to the impulse to shove my foot on the gas and slam my dented,
malfunctioning Bronco into the nearest vehicle that had cost more than my yearly income, a vehicle conveniently located about a yard ahead of my front bumper. And the rich S.O.B. had a car phone, too! He was using it right now. The Mercedes probably had a fabulous sound system instead of a tape player that ate tapes. Posh upholstery. Air conditioning that did ninety degrees to sixty-five in ten seconds. If so, the driver evidently had it turned off or was wasting gas and money by running it while a window was open. The driver had ended his call and was now stretching. His left hand and forearm appeared through the window. On the arm was a large tattoo. The driver had dark, curly hair. Easing ahead, I strained to look into the rearview mirror of the Mercedes. I managed to catch sight of the driver without locking eyes. His head was turned to the left. In fact, he seemed to be admiring the tattoo, or maybe just the muscles of his arm. I was too far away to see the tattoo in detail, but even at the Gardner, when I’d taken a close look, I hadn’t been able to tell what it was supposed to represent. But I recognized the man, the art student, as I persisted in thinking of him. I’d seen him at Mount Auburn before. Once, he’d been alone. The second time, he’d been at Peter Motherway’s funeral. Now, his car was directly behind Jocelyn’s truck. Like Jocelyn, he was signaling for a left turn. I rapidly switched my turn signal from right to left. Jocelyn finally pulled into Mount Auburn Street, with the Mercedes on her tail and my Bronco close behind.