Authors: Mad Dash
“Let’s go to the cabin for the weekend.”
He finally looked over at me. “The cabin?”
That’s all, two words, but as soon as he uttered them I knew we weren’t going. And even though the idea had just occurred to me, I was suddenly convinced of the rightness of it, the urgency. It was the answer.
“Oh, Andrew, let’s go. Just us. It’ll be romantic.” I squeezed his arm, but he felt brittle to me, untouchable. My fault; I’ve been so rotten and moody lately. “We could drive down late, come back whenever we feel like it.” What I really wanted to do was go
now
, turn the car around, get on the Beltway and drive and drive and drive.
“Hm,” he said with feigned thoughtfulness. “I’ve got exams to grade. Plus all the journals.” He made everybody in his Colonial America class keep diaries, as if they were living during the Revolutionary War or something.
“You could do them down there. Peace and quiet.”
“There’s no wood,” he pointed out, turning onto our street from Columbia Road. “We said we weren’t going back before spring.”
“We could buy some fake logs on the way down.”
“You can’t burn them in a woodstove. Chemicals.”
“We’ll get Mr. Bender to bring us a load of wood. Or you could chop some.
I
could chop some.”
“Don’t we have something, a party on Saturday—”
“Just Amy and Dan’s, and it’s an open house, they’d never miss us.”
He made his
long
humming sound, “Hmmm,” which he thinks I think means he’s taking the subject under advisement but really means it will never come up again unless I raise it, and then raise it again, then again, till we’re both so tired of it it’s a relief to forget the whole thing.
“Oh, never mind.” I flopped back against the seat. “I’ll just go down by myself.”
He chuckled, not taking that seriously. He was right, I wasn’t serious. Then.
We usually come and go through the front door, not the back, because we park on the street—no garage—and the back door doesn’t lead to anything except the alley behind our block of town houses. That night was trash night, though, plus we were running late for the Weldons’, so we’d hurried out the kitchen door with a plastic bag of garbage each, dumped them in our spot in the alley, and walked around the corner to the car.
Which is all to say—what if we’d done that again for some reason, parked and then gone into the house from the back? What if we had? We’d have tripped over a dead dog on the front porch the next morning, that’s what.
Andrew had the door key, so he saw it first. “What—” he said, and started back, scaring me. I saw something black, the size and shape of a soccer ball, wedged between the storm door and the door. We’d forgotten to leave the porch light on; we only had the streetlight to see—an animal, a sweater, someone’s purse…
“It’s a dog,” Andrew exclaimed, bending close. He took off his gloves and touched it. “A little dog. I don’t think it’s alive.” He handed me the key, scooped his hands gingerly under the lifeless black mound, and lifted it. I felt frozen; I squinted instead of looking at it directly, the way I do at scary movies.
I think of that, how squeamish Andrew took it up in his bare hands, dead for all we knew, while I, the great animal lover, shrank back in fear and distress. All I could do was unlock the door.
I turned on a lamp while Andrew set the dog on the rug in the living room. It lay perfectly still—but then it moved, shivered or twitched or something, and after that I could act. Silly, but once I knew it wasn’t dead, I was all right.
Its eyes were open but not fixed on anything. “Is he hurt? Is he just cold? Andrew, who could
do
such a thing, put a dog in somebody’s door on a night like this and leave it there? I think he’s freezing. Should we take him to the vet? He’s not even shivering. No, there, he just shivered. Are you calling?”
“They won’t be open, we’ll just get the answering service.”
I sat on the floor and pulled the puppy into my lap. “Call and leave a message, then.” It could hardly raise its head. The blue-black eyes finally focused on mine, but only for a second before the dog dropped its heavy little head,
thump
, on my thigh.
We had a dog when I was young, a stray we named Tramp. My mother let me keep him even though Daddy had just died and she was working two jobs and I was only nine and not that responsible. What a softy she was. Sitting there on the floor, I had a wave of longing for my mother that was so intense, I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from crying.
Andrew was talking on the phone in the kitchen. Huddled over the puppy, trying to warm it with my body, I didn’t notice Hobbes till I felt his wet nose on my cheek. “Hey, Hobbes,” I said loudly, so he could hear me. He’s deaf. “Hey, boy. Look here, we’ve got a—”
Hobbes finally noticed the puppy and jumped back—much as Andrew had on the front porch. Hobbes, Andrew’s father’s fourteen-year-old cocker spaniel, is the only furred creature I’ve ever known Andrew not to be allergic to. Which is interesting since, in so many ways, Andrew is allergic to his father.
“I left a message at the vet’s,” he told me from the doorway. “They’re supposed to call back. In the meantime—”
The phone rang.
“Wow. Fast,” I said, and Andrew went away again.
Under my coat and my amusing red cape, I had on velvet pants and a fancy silk shirt that buttoned down the front. I unbuttoned the shirt and put the puppy next to my skin, noticing in the process that it was a female. I pulled my clothes around her, coat and all, making a cocoon, and after a little while she wasn’t a deadweight anymore. Her soft, solid body twitched, her little toenails grazing my skin, the breath from her cold nose tickling me. I got up from the floor and carried her into the kitchen.
“I don’t know,” Andrew was saying, “lethargic, yes. I think so. Did it shiver?” he asked me.
“She’s shivering right now.”
He reported that to the vet, a man we’ve gotten to know well because of Hobbes’s arthritis. “That’s a good sign? A good sign,” Andrew relayed. “It means only mild hypothermia.”
“But what should we
do
?”
He held up his hand. “Yes. Right, right. Four teaspoons in a pint. But first—okay. Yes.”
Finally he hung up. “That’s the first thing he said to do, put it next to your skin.”
“Really?” I hugged the puppy closer, feeling relieved and gratified and smart. This was going to have a happy ending.
Fill bottles with warm, not hot, water, the vet advised, and lay them next to the puppy’s body, especially her chest and armpits. Don’t overheat, and definitely don’t use a hair dryer. Try to feed her a little sugar water.
We did all that. She went through a phase of violent shivering—an excellent sign, Andrew reported; shivering increased metabolism and generated heat. Gradually that subsided and she began to relax, sprawled out on a towel in my lap, her silky belly rising and falling with natural breaths. She had short, woolly soft black fur all over, except for that one white foot.
I was asking Andrew if he thought it would be a good idea to let her sleep between us tonight so she could get nice and warm, and running names by him like Lazzy, short for Lazarus, or what about Feeney for Phoenix—when he sneezed.
“Of course we can’t
keep
it,” he said between honks into his handkerchief, as if I’d suggested adopting a wild boar, a baby python. He was getting out the little enamel pan he heats a cup of milk in every night just before bed.
I’m married to a man who drinks warm milk.
The horror of that closed in on me, like being sealed in an envelope, like being buried alive.
Mama!
I thought—I did, I had that very conscious thought. I wanted my mother back, and Tramp, and my youth, my freedom, I felt like running away so fast and so far that nothing looked familiar.
I should’ve left right then. The die was cast, and it would’ve been easy—I still had my coat on. I’m not sure why, it seems a bit mad to me now, but I was beyond angry. I had skipped that step and gone directly to finished.
So I should’ve left, but instead I stayed to say hurtful things about Andrew’s father’s dog, already snoring again in his smelly bed beside the refrigerator, and how convenient, no, how
bogus
Andrew’s allergies were. Which naturally led to his hypochondria, and somehow that led to a rant about the colossal stupidity of a world order that would let a horrible old man like Edward Bateman draw
one more breath
after my sweet, loving, tenderhearted mother was gone.
Andrew thinks I’m a drama queen, he was sure this was just another pointless emotional flare-up that would die out sooner if ignored, so he didn’t fight back, even when I gave him a dog-or-me ultimatum.
“Dash, sweetheart,” he said, “you’re upset. We’ll let the dog sleep here with Hobbes tonight, and tomorrow we’ll find it a good home. A really good home. Now come to bed.” Then he leered at me. Andrew Bateman, who is not a leerer, leered at me, I can only assume because my white cotton brassiere under the blouse I’d never rebuttoned had inflamed him.
“Maybe when pigs fly!”
The rest is a blur. I said some more regrettable things, then left. That felt great—I loved the whole flouncing-out part, finding my purse, wrapping the puppy in a chenille throw, hauling open the front door and slamming it behind me.
Andrew immediately opened it and called out from the porch, “Have you completely lost your mind?”
If I had, it’s still missing. None of the rationalizations I’ve come up with to explain what I did that night really work. It seemed like a good idea at the time. (But so did proclaiming myself “Dash” at age thirteen, because I despised “Dot,” short for Dorothy.) The puppy—I think if I went to a shrink he might say, or she might say, taking the puppy out from under my shirt to save its life was like a ritual birth. In the last six months I’ve lost my mother, and I’ve virtually lost my daughter. Andrew was trying to rip away my last chance to have something belong to
me.
That’s all I could come up with as I sped down I-66 at midnight, caught between competing urges to keep driving forever and turn around and go home, where I supposedly belong. It beat Andrew’s explanation, at least, made me sound more thoughtful and complicated than irresponsible and idiotic.
But it’s just as likely his diagnosis is correct and I’ve simply lost my mind—that’s still better than perimenopause. Although I don’t suppose they’re mutually exclusive.
two
M
y cell phone rings as I’m merging into traffic on I-66. Overnight the snow turned to rain, which is good, but traffic’s still crazy and it’s not even rush hour anymore.
“Dash?” an unfamiliar male voice says. “This is Mike Warner.” I don’t know anyone named Mike Warner. No, wait—it comes to me just as he says, “Barbara’s husband?”
“Oh, hi, Mike. How’s—oh, no, is everything—”
“We just had a baby.”
“Oh my God!”
Mike, whom I’ve never met, has a raw, breaky voice, as if he’s been yelling. “Yep, a boy.”
“Oh my God! Congratulations!”
“Thanks. Thanks. Um, so Barb asked me to call and tell you she can’t”—Mike starts laughing—“she can’t come in today for the shoot.”
“I guess not!” I join him; we both have a good laugh, although his is more sincere than mine. My mind is skipping ahead—who am I going to get to help me at this late hour? My phone book’s in the office and I’ve only got a few numbers on this cell.
“She went into labor yesterday about four in the afternoon and she told me to call you last night, but I forgot. So it’s my fault this is such short notice.” He’s trying to sound repentant, but he’s too tired and too excited to pull it off.
“No problem, don’t worry about it. This is so great! Give Barb a big hug and a kiss for me. And the baby! What are you naming him?”
“Clive Otis.”
“Oh!” That’s all I can think of to say to that.
As soon as Mike hangs up, I call my best photographer friend in Washington, who thank God is in her studio, I don’t get her answering machine. “Elaine! My regular assistant just gave birth, and I’ve got a studio shoot at one o’clock this afternoon!” Elaine shrieks in sympathy, and we go down the list. Neither of us has a full-time assistant, but we often use the same freelancers. She gives me two numbers and wishes me luck. “If you strike out with them, I know of one more,” she says, “but I can’t say how good she’d be—”
“Can she hold a light meter?”
“Well, she’s had a year of photography school, so she must know
something.
”
“You’d think. What’s her number?”
S
ock does her business three times on the two-block walk from where I finally find a parking place to the studio. “Good girl,” I lavish on her all three times. I think it’s working; she’s only gone in the house once in two days. I really think she’s getting it.
My studio is over a jewelry store on Ontario Road. The sign on the side of the building says Bateman Photography, and has for about fifteen years. If Andrew and I really split up, should I change it to McGugin, my maiden name, or would that just confuse people? The red brick facade and faded awnings don’t promise much, but I like to think the interior is a happy surprise. Somebody once told me people actually prefer seedy-looking photo studios, and the iffier the neighborhood the better. Whatever you charge, they think it’s a deal, plus you seem more like a fine artist than a commercial one. I wave to Mr. Federman, the jeweler, through his shop window, and unlock all the locks on the door to the stairs. That always takes a while, and by the time I finish, Sock’s got her leash wound around my legs twice. She’s scared of the steep steps; I have to pick her up and carry her.
I turn lights on in the lounge, the echoey studio, my little office. The answering machine is blinking like mad, which is good, means business, but it’s probably just clients making sure their prints will be ready before Christmas. After the holidays, things will slow down a bit and not get hectic again till Valentine’s Day.
I make a few calls, tidy up the lounge and the bathroom, start getting the studio ready for the shoot. I keep checking my watch. One of Elaine’s freelancers didn’t answer and the other one said he was busy and couldn’t make it, but the third one, the one Elaine had reservations about, naturally she was free and promised she’d be here by a quarter to twelve. Greta Cantwell is her name. She sounded very young, and like I woke her up, but also eager and grateful and enthusiastic—which are the things you want in an assistant anyway, I’m telling myself, more than a look at her portfolio or her degree. With Barb out of commission indefinitely, it’s
better
if this Greta person is unformed; that way I can mold her in my own image, so to speak. All photographers operate differently, and I want an assistant who operates like
me.
Greta shows up at twelve-thirty.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she keeps saying as she strips off her wet coat. “My car’s in the shop and I missed the bus and then I just missed the subway, and then I had to walk from Dupont Circle because there weren’t any cabs because of the rain. I’m really, really sorry.”
“Never mind, that’s fine. Can you bring your coat over here? I like to leave the lounge area clear for customers’ stuff,” I say, leading her through the studio to the office.
“Oh!” She spots Sock on her pillow in a corner of my office. “Oh, a puppy!” She drops down on her knees, and Sock licks her nose. “What a
beautiful
dog. How old is he?”
“She. I’m not sure, a couple of months, I think. Okay, so are we ready?”
Greta jumps up, coloring a little, as if she’s suddenly remembering she’s a professional. She’s got on a short, tight skirt, no stockings, and platform boots. She’s blonde, I can tell by the roots, but she’s dyed her hair a dazzling, comically vivid carrot orange, done up in cornrows tied off with beads. She crosses her bare arms in front at the wrists. I can see gooseflesh; I think,
Honey, why didn’t you wear a sweater?
We go out to the studio. I start to explain the layout I’ve got in mind. “It’s twins,” I tell her, “six-year-old boys, and it might get a little dicey because of the grandmother.”
“Oh,” Greta says, “the mother’s dead? My mother died when I was six, too.”
“I’m sorry. But—no, the mother’s not dead, but it’s the grandmother who’s commissioned the portrait, so she’s the one bringing the kids. And I don’t think there’s—well, we’ll see what happens, but when I did the preshoot consult, I didn’t notice a lot of affection between the boys and their grandmother. But we’ll see.”
“So you met the kids already?”
“Yeah, I always do that.”
“Wow.” She has squinty blue eyes, pale-lashed and pink-rimmed; they look intelligent but myopic. I hope she’s wearing contacts. “I love what you do,” she says. “I think it’s the coolest job.”
“Why?” I ask, amused.
“Well, working with kids and all, plus you’re an
artist.
”
“Ha. Sometimes. But there’s a lot to it that’s not all that artistic.” It’s good to hear she wants to be an
artist
, though. A lot of the young ones these days are only in it for a quick buck, and because they think it’s easy. God, I sound old.
Very quickly I show her where the basics are: the hair light, the fill, the key lights, what props I expect to use. “The bathroom’s over there, the kitchen’s there, that’s a little dressing room. I can do most of this by myself, and I usually do, but since it’s twins…”
“Oh, sure. Double the trouble.”
“Right, plus the whole grandmother deal. This isn’t a Christmas shot, by the way. It’s for the kids’ birthday, January fifteenth, so that’s why we won’t be using Christmas props.”
“Gotcha.”
“What else? Mrs. Thorpe, the grandmother—when I asked her what the boys were into, she said chess. So I got a chess set and we can put it on this table, these chairs—but you know, I just doubt it, they didn’t seem like chess guys to me. But, again, we’ll see.”
The doorbell buzzes.
“Damn, they’re early. Okay, Greta. Are we okay?”
She takes a deep breath; her skinny shoulders go back, little breasts stick out. “I’m ready.”
“Good. Oh—no, never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” I started to give her the most important instruction, which is, basically, keep quiet and in the background so everybody focuses on me. Makes things much simpler. But in Greta’s case, I don’t think it’s necessary. Unless I’m mistaken, this is her first pro shoot. Her problem’s more likely to be taking initiative, not taking charge.
Mrs. Thorpe is a ghastly woman on almost any level I can think of. Why Mrs. Thorpe the
mother
didn’t come today with her children and protect them from her I can’t imagine, unless she’s as scared of the old lady as they are. She should’ve come anyway: These children need her. Grandmother Thorpe looks particularly humorless and formidable, like a Cold War Russian soldier in a full-length sable coat she won’t take off—my studio’s too cold, she says—matching hat, and knee-high leather boots. It’s not going to be easy keeping her out of my way.
The twins, Kevin and Eugene, are identical, but I can tell them apart by Kevin’s slightly darker crew cut and Eugene’s glasses. They’re six, going on seven. When I greet them, they give no sign of having met me before, but they’re cowed little guys; they don’t meet anybody’s eyes, and even though their sullenness is a cover for fear right now, any minute it could morph into really bad behavior. Already I don’t like how this is going.
I have to roll the backgrounds down myself because Greta has never seen a motorized lift before. What are they teaching in photo school these days? We set up the chess scene with a background that looks like wood paneling; Mrs. Thorpe is going for that two-gentlemen-in-a-library look, I presume. Greta takes flash meter readings like a pro, thank God. We get something preliminarily okay for the lighting, but it doesn’t work. Kevin and Eugene, especially Eugene, can’t relax, they look like mannequins, like firing-squad victims.
“This isn’t what I wanted
at all
,” Mrs. Thorpe tells me in a loud aside. “This is just not right. I’d heard good things, but frankly…” Her blonde pageboy doesn’t move when she shakes her head. “I must tell you, Dash,” she says, and my name sounds sillier than usual in her society-lady voice, “this was by way of a test. If these pictures were good, I planned to have you photograph my very
favorite
grandchild for her birthday in April. But. Frankly.”
The twins pretend not to hear, but they do, they must. I happen to catch sight of Greta hovering behind the soft box. She’s wincing, her teeth bared in sympathy for these poor children. Right then, we’re a team.
We try again with the chessboard. I act goofy, say something to make the twins giggle. “Don’t grin!” Mrs. Thorpe orders. “Kevin! We discussed this!”
I must not have heard right. “Did you say, ‘Don’t grin’?”
She looks at me coldly. “They’ve just lost their front teeth, both of them. Of course they mustn’t grin. Toothlessness is not cute. Smile, yes, with lips closed, but I don’t want bare gums in these photographs.”
That’s when I banish her. It’s never easy, but sometimes it’s necessary, and with Mrs. Thorpe it’s essential. Her son is a congressman—she told me that early on to impress me, intimidate me, who knows. It’s true, I want more clients like her—who wouldn’t? I’m a low-volume high-dollar photographer, and they can afford my premium fees—but I can’t let her stay. I use fake confidentiality, trying to disarm her. “They’re high-strung,” I say, guiding her casually into the lounge, holding onto her furry arm. “Such bright boys, so intelligent, and this is, really, let’s face it, an artificial environment. Forgive me, but when you’re here, their
anchor
, their
compass
, they can’t—naturally!—focus on anything else. I never do this, I hardly ever do this, because it’s necessary only in the most special circumstances, really extraordinary children and their families—but Mrs. Thorpe, I really must insist, and I know you understand—you must go.”
She does! It’s amazing! She doesn’t just take a seat in the lounge, either—she
leaves
, exactly what I was hoping for but not expecting. “I’ll be back in one hour.” She points a finger at me, as if this is her idea. Up close, her face is puffy around the eyes; she looks more frazzled than formidable. She’s glad to get out of here, I realize; small children make her crazy—they probably always have—and her only defense is becoming a shrew. “See you later,” we say to each other with mutual relief.
“Okay!” I shout, clapping my hands. I’ll turn cartwheels to change the mood in this place. “Let’s have some fun!” I don’t have long to get the twins out of the funk they’re in and up onto the Happy Plateau, and they’ll only last about thirty minutes, max, once they’re up there. Time’s a-wastin’.
The only thing that’s piqued either one’s interest so far is the camera, my brand-new Canon. They want to play with it; I’ve had to shoo them away from it twice already. It gives me an idea.
“You know what, I’m tired of taking pictures of you guys. I don’t suppose you’d like to take some
for
me for a change?”
They look at me with suspicion. Eugene glances at Kevin, who’s the leader. “You mean like Polaroid or thomething?” Kevin asks.
“Yeah, like Polaroid.” Good idea.
“We’ve done that before.” Eugene squirms in the three-piece suit Grandma dressed him in. “Our dad leths uth blow on the picture.”
“Tho it’ll come out fathter,” Kevin explains. They have identical snub noses and stick-out ears. Fabulous-looking kids. They have identical toothless gums, too, and by God, I’m going to photograph them.