Another Three Dogs in a Row Read online

  “Hey, Steve,” he said, getting up from his desk to shake my hand. He was about my age, mid-forties, and very fit – he ran marathons and triathlons in his spare time. “How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good. I can do the New York Times puzzle every day—though I need a little help on Friday and Saturday.”

  “That’s excellent.” He sat back down and I took the chair across from him. “What can I do for you today?”

  I told him about my encounter with Joel Goldberg, though I didn’t tell him about Joel’s death. “It made me curious to know more about schizophrenia.”

  “You should know about it, because it often shows up in college age students,” he said. He sat back in his chair, his hands behind his head. “It’s a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks feels and behaves. Those who suffer from it might seem like they’ve lost touch with reality.”

  I thought about Joel’s behavior at the synagogue the day of the blessing of the animals. “Can they be dangerous?”

  He shook his head. “That’s one of the common misperceptions. Most schizophrenics aren’t violent and don’t exhibit aggressive behaviors. Only about a small percentage, ten to fifteen percent.”

  “What about if someone with schizophrenia feels threatened?”

  “In that regard, they’re probably like all of us,” he said. “The fight or flight response kicks in. What’s this about? Has this guy been threatening you, or someone else?”

  “Not as far as I know. It was just his behavior when I saw him, and the way that some other people responded.”

  “That’s a tough one. Even loved ones can get tired of someone who’s in the throes of a mental illness. And we’re always frightened of what we don’t know.”

  We talked for a while longer, and then a student came by to see him so I walked out. Was Joel Goldberg in that small percentage of schizophrenics who were dangerous? Was that why Rabbi Goldberg had been out of touch with his brother, because he was too much to handle?

  What if I joined the rabbi’s Talmud study group with Rochester, and Joel showed up again, further agitated? Would I be putting myself and my dog in danger?

  5 – Family Connections

  When I got home that evening, Lili was on the phone once more, again speaking rapid Spanish, but this time I figured out she was speaking with her brother, Federico.

  I fed Rochester and we went out for our evening constitutional. As we walked, I thought about my parents, and how sorry I was that they had never been able to meet Lili. They didn’t care for my ex-wife, Mary. But my mother had kept her mouth shut—I’d brought home a Jewish girl, after all, one who was smart and pretty, and that was a lot better than many of the sons of her friends and cousins, and she wasn’t one to tempt fate by complaining.

  My father, on the other hand, had made it clear in small ways that he thought Mary was too bossy, too sharp-tongued. “You need a wife who will treat you like an equal,” he had said to me several times. “That woman talks to you like you work for her.”

  “It’s a relationship, Dad,” I’d said. “Modern women have to work twice as hard to succeed as men, and sometimes Mary has a hard time leaving that attitude behind at work.”

  He had snorted. By the time Mary and I divorced, he was already suffering from the cancer that would kill him, and I was locked up in California. Our brief phone calls centered mostly around his health, though I could tell he was happy that Mary had moved on.

  My father had always appreciated a good-looking woman, and with her curvaceous figure, mass of curly hair and heart-shaped face, Lili radiated beauty. She also had a kindness that Mary lacked, that I was sure he’d have responded well to.

  Which led me to considering how I’d get along with Senora Weinstock, when we met in person. She seemed to have a lot of Lili’s fire and determination, though underlaid with a sense that the world was against her—conspiring to chase her from her childhood home and leave her to roam the earth unmoored. What would she think of me, a man with a checkered past, too old to give her more grandchildren, not wealthy enough to give her daughter the life she deserved?

  When I got home, Lili was still talking, though she’d slipped into English. “I have to go, Fedi. There’s only so much I can do in a weekend.”

  She ended the call with besos and abrazos for her niece and nephew. Then she turned to me. “Dios mio! I told Fedi that I’ll come down for a visit, and he jumped all over it. I feel terrible that the burden of all this stuff with my mother is falling on him and Sara.”

  “They want the burden, don’t they?” I asked. “You told me Fedi built a mother-in-law unit onto his house for her. That they want her to move in with them.”

  “I know. But I feel like it’s right for me to go down there. And I admit, maybe, that I’m feeling a little wanderlust. This is the longest I’ve lived in one place, with one job, in ages.”

  I was disturbed. “But I thought you wanted to settle down, after all that roving.”

  “I thought so, too. I still think so. I don’t know. I’m just confused.”

  “Well, you’ve been at Eastern for two years,” I said. “That seems to be your limit, doesn’t it?”

  She cocked her head and stared at me. “What do you mean?”

  “You were married to Philip for what, two years? And Adriano about the same? Maybe you’ve got an internal clock that makes you start to get restless after that much time has passed.”

  “Are you insinuating that I’ll leave you, too? Because the situation with both of my ex-husbands was very different.”

  I held up my hands in surrender. “Hey, I wasn’t implying anything. Just stating a point.”

  “A not very pleasant point.” Rochester kept dancing around between us, looking up at us and yipping, and it was difficult to concentrate on what Lili was saying with the dog getting in the way. “Why don’t you take your dog and go for a walk?” Lili said.

  “We just did that.”

  “Then call your friend Rick and go over there. I need some time to think without your dog barking and you making smart comments.”

  I chose not to take any of that personally. Lili was upset, and leaving and taking Rochester with me would give her a chance to calm down.

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” I said. I hooked up Rochester’s leash once again, and he was confused. Another walk so soon? But he wasn’t one to complain.

  I’d first met Rick Stemper when we were in a high school chemistry class. We weren’t great friends back then, but once I’d returned to Bucks County we had met up by chance and bonded over our divorces. He was a detective with the Stewart’s Crossing police department, and soon after Rochester had come into my life, Rick had adopted an Australian Shepherd. Our dogs were as close to each other as Rick and I were.

  Outside, I called Rick and asked if I could come over with Rochester and a pizza, and he was all over that idea. I called in a delivery order to Giovanni’s, in the shopping center in downtown Stewart’s Crossing. Luckily, we both liked the same kind—a thick crust with spicy Italian sausage crumbled and scattered over a base of homemade tomato sauce, freshly sautéed mushrooms and shredded mozzarella from an artisan cheese maker in New Hope.

  Rascal was in Rick’s backyard, where Rick had installed an agility course to keep his dog busy. I opened the gate, and Rochester rushed inside. The dogs greeted each other at Rick’s front door like long-lost brothers, jumping around and trying to hump each other.

  Rascal was about six months younger than Rochester but they were both the same size. The Aussie had a white chest and forelegs and a black head, back and rear legs. His muzzle was white with brown cheeks and his nose was as black as trouble—which was what he and Rochester got up to whenever they were together.

  I walked up to the front door and rang the bell, and Rick answered a moment later. Though we were the same age, he was graying faster than I was – probably all the stress of police work. He was a couple of inches shorter than I was, and m
ore muscular—I knew that he ran regularly and worked out at the gym a couple of times a week.

  “What’s up?” he asked, as I walked in.

  “Lili’s mother is on a rampage.” I explained the situation as he handed me a Dogfish Head Firefly Ale, from a Delaware microbrewery we both liked.

  His kitchen hadn’t been changed much since the house was built in the fifties; he’d put in a new fridge, oven and dishwasher, but the Formica cabinets were original, as was the big stainless steel sink and the brown and tan patterned linoleum floor. It was a comfortable room and I liked hanging out there.

  “Lili thought it was a good idea for me to get out of the house for a while, and I agreed.”

  We watched the dogs romp around the yard for a couple of minutes, chasing and nipping at each other, until Rochester scrambled up the arm of the teeter-totter. He got to the center, caught his balance and woofed once before the other arm lowered down. Then he raced down and began to chase Rascal again.

  His least favorite was the set of weave poles – he couldn’t seem to get the point of racing to and fro like a crazy dog.

  Maybe that’s because he was already kind of crazy.

  When the pizza arrived, the dogs rushed inside through the doggie door, and while I distracted them with some squeaky toys Rick put two bowls of food out on his kitchen floor. They both chewed noisily, and Rick and I dug in, There was no matching real, Jersey-style pizza from your neighborhood joint, where the mushrooms came from the farmer’s market and the sausage and cheese from local farms.

  “You should have seen Tiffany’s mom when she was on a roll,” Rick said. Tiffany was his ex-wife, a Puerto Rican wild child who still depended on Rick now and then. “She’d start talking Spanish a mile a minute and I could never tell if she was excited or pissed off.”

  “Lili has a brother down in Florida who’s been looking after their mom,” I said. “She’s lucky. So I am I, I guess. Otherwise we might have to have her move in with us.”

  When there was no more pizza crust for them to snarf down, the dogs went back outside, raced around for a few minutes, and then sprawled together under an oak tree that had turned gold. Rick and I joined them in the autumn evening, sitting on a picnic bench.

  “So I have some news,” Rick said. “I’m going to ask Tamsen to marry me.”

  “Wow! That’s great. Congratulations.” We fist-bumped and both laughed.

  Tamsen Morgan was the woman Rick had been dating for almost a year by then. She had lost her husband to the Iraq war a few years before, leaving her with a young son whom Rick coached in Pop Warner football. She had a big family in Stewart’s Crossing—parents, sister, cousins—and Rick spent all the holidays with them.

  “Have your folks met Tamsen yet?” They had moved to Florida a few years before I returned home.

  “Yeah. Remember when my cousin got married in Virginia and Rascal came to stay with you? Tamsen went with me.”

  “They all got along?”

  “What do you think? Tam’s beautiful and accomplished and she comes with a ready-made grandson. They were in love.” He sat back. “You think I can borrow Lili one Saturday? I need a woman’s advice on a ring for Tamsen. I can’t ask her sister for help because Tam would kill me if she found out Hannah knew before she did.”

  I clinked my bottle against Rick’s. “I’m sure she’d be delighted. You’re making a good move, pal.”

  “I’m not always sure of that myself, what with my history with Tiffany. But Tam’s different, and I feel like a different guy when I’m with her. Better.”

  “That’s the way I feel about Lili. She makes me want to be the guy she deserves. Even if she gets cranky sometimes.”

  Rick lifted his bottle. “To both of us being better men.”

  “I’ll toast to that.” Our bottles clinked once more, and this time the dogs jumped up and rushed over to us, eager to get into the celebration. They were part of our family, too, after all. I was glad that Rick and Rascal had been able to merge so easily with Tamsen and her family—would Rochester and I be able to do the same thing with Lili’s?

  When I got home, Lili was on the phone with another relative, and I had to wait until she was finished to tell her about Rick’s plan to propose to Tamsen, and his request that she help him pick out a ring. Lili was delighted to help, and immediately called Rick. I listened to her side of the conversation, how she thought Tam would like a diamond set off with her birthstone emerald because it matched her green eyes.

  I was fascinated by how happy Lili seemed with all the marriage and ring stuff, and I wondered if she was being completely honest with me about not wanting to get married again. She’d been through it twice—a city hall visit with her first husband, a ceremony at a palazzo in Venice with her second—and since both marriages had ended in divorce she’d always said she wasn’t eager to replicate the situation.

  But hearing her talk, I wondered if she was secretly harboring a desire for a proposal from me. I’d only been married once, in a big traditional Jewish ceremony complete with a huppah, monogrammed yarmulkes and the broken glass. I’d never formally asked Mary to marry me—we’d mutually decided that if we were going to move to California together so that she could accept a big promotion, it made sense for us to marry so that I’d get health coverage through her, at least until I found a job myself.

  Not the most romantic of situations, but then, our marriage had been like that—doing the things we thought we should, like buying a house and trying to have children. When I went to prison and she divorced me, I was sad and felt like a failure, but my heart wasn’t broken.

  If something happened to Lili, or we split up, though, I had a feeling the emotional fallout would be much worse. I had much stronger feelings for her than I ever did for Mary. We punctuated our conversations with “love you” all the time. When I saw sappy movies I felt a twinge in my heart that made me connect with those emotions on screen. Flipping through channels one day we’d landed on Grease, and when Danny and Sandy sang “You’re the one that I want” I felt my eyes well up as I reached for Lili’s hand.

  Despite that, I believed that a marriage license was just a piece of paper, one that often caused more complications than the joy it brought. Earlier that night, Lili had said she was feeling some wanderlust, and yet here she sounded so enthusiastic about marriage. Was putting a ring on her finger the way to keep her beside me?

  Women. Who could understand them? Good thing Rochester was a boy dog or I’d be completely lost.

  6 – Fog

  A cold front moved in that night, and Wednesday morning when I took Rochester for his walk around River Bend, fog lingered on the manicured lawns and the piles of fallen leaves. I fed Rochester, hurried through my own breakfast and skipped the crossword puzzle so that we could get to the Talmud study group on time.

  Lili was still asleep by the time my dog and I were ready to leave, but I lingered a moment in the doorway of the bedroom. She always scrubbed off whatever makeup she’d worn as part of her bedtime ritual, and in the clear light coming in through the window I could see every laugh line, every crow’s foot, a few strands of silver in her auburn hair. Those little imperfections made me love her even more, and as I blew her a goodbye kiss, I vowed I’d do whatever I had to in order to keep her by my side.

  Since there was little to see through the fog, Rochester slumped into the front seat beside me as we drove through what had been farmland when I was a kid but was now a welter of suburban developments. He perked up as I pulled into a parking space in the lot at Shomrei Torah, perhaps remembering the blessing of a few days before and hoping for another.

  Or thinking of Sadie, the female golden.

  The rabbi’s hybrid sedan was parked in his reserved spot, along with a half-dozen other cars in the lot. Aaron Feinberg, the synagogue president, pulled up and parked as Rochester was nosing a row of azalea bushes. “Your dog is a Talmud scholar, too?” he asked. He held out his hand for Rochester to sniff, but the big g
olden was too intent on pulling toward some other scent.

  “He likes to get his nose into everything.” At that moment the golden’s big black nose was down to the ground, intent on something ahead of us.

  Feinberg wore a dark blue pinstripe suit with a white shirt and a red power tie, and I worried that I looked like a schlep in my polo shirt and khakis. Saul Benesch and Henry Namias arrived together, and Feinberg waited in the parking lot for them as Rochester tugged me forward.

  He wanted to go in the wrong direction, though, toward the sanctuary, and I had to keep a tight hold on his leash and nearly drag him around the corner to the entrance to the rabbi’s study.

  There were three other men and two women sitting in a semi-circle of chairs in the room when we walked in, all of them in their forties or fifties. Rabbi Goldberg sat in his ergonomic desk chair facing them. His desk was in one corner, crowded with papers and framed photos of him and Sadie. On the edge of the desk was a bright green piece of malachite, with a depression in the center that made me recognize it as a worry stone, the kind you rubbed with your thumb whenever you were stressed. I should probably get one of those. It would come in handy when Rochester was getting into trouble.

  I sat beside one of the women and let Rochester off his leash. He immediately hustled over to Sadie to give her a good morning sniff. While I waited for the session to begin, I looked around at the walls lined with bookshelves, most of them half-empty, the gaps between books filled with menorahs, a statue of a fiddler on a roof, and other bits of Judaica.

  When Feinberg, Namias and Benesch arrived and took the last three seats, the rabbi introduced me to the group, and everyone seemed very welcoming. I was curious to know how such a study session would operate – had there been homework I didn’t know about? Would we be reading in English or Hebrew – which I could only sound out if the vowels were present?

  “This is an interesting time in the annual cycle of reading the Torah,” the rabbi began. “We’re wrapping up the past year and preparing for the new one. Since a year encompasses a great deal of events, so do our services in the month of Elul. As we prepare for the redemption offered us by Yom Kippur, we focus on what I like to call the three T’s: Torah, tefilah, and tzedakah.”