Animal Appetite

perfectly clean park bench leafing through the Times and listening to me describe Brat Andrews. Rita wore a wool skirt, a good sweater, and leather pumps. I was on my hands and knees uprooting dead annuals. I had on torn jeans, a dirt-smeared sweatshirt, and a pair of the heavy leather boots with reinforced toes that I wear when I split wood.
    “In most cases,” Rita pronounced, “that particular defense against loss doesn’t take quite such an extreme form. It does happen, though. Now and then, you hear of a man whose wife dies, and all of a sudden, he appears in public wearing a piece of her clothing, with no apparent awareness of the incongruity. It’s a testimony to love, really. It’s the best way he can find to keep her alive.”
    “Well, besides trying to turn herself into a man,” I said, shaking the dirt off nasturtium roots, “what Brat’s doing is keeping herself Daddy’s little girl. When she refers to Jack, that’s what she calls him: Daddy. And she’s really got it in for her mother. She never calls her anything but Claudia, and she spits the name out, too. Daddy was perfect. Everything bad was Claudia’s fault.”
    “Polarized,” Rita commented. “Really, it all sounds like an effort to preserve the moment just before this traumatic loss. What a shame that she never had a chance to work herself free of this extreme idealization of the father! Every child deserves the opportunity for disenchantment. Speaking of idealized figures, how is Hannah coming along?”
    “Hannah! Well, damn, it’s—”
    “No, don’t tell me! She owned a darling little lapdog, and—”
    “No, she did not. That’s why I picked her to begin with. The New England colonists had dogs—some of them did—but not as real pets. They were superstitious about dogs. They thought they were creatures of Satan. God spelled backward.”
    “Is that true?”
    “Yes. I mean, I should’ve known there’d turn out to be something radically wrong with her! Rita, those so-called Indians she killed? Six of them were children. Hannah Duston murdered six children. I am really disgusted.”
    Folding up the Times and rising, Rita said, “Well, if you set out to do research, Holly, you’ve got to be prepared to suspend judgment.”
    “Not,” I insisted, “if your previous research has consisted almost exclusively of documenting the perfection of dogs.”
    As Rita departed, my phone rang, and I dashed inside. I was hoping for a call from a professional portrait photographer named Violet Wish, who had long ago abandoned a successful career immortalizing children. She got fed up with mothers and switched to show dogs instead. With dogs, Violet claimed, she got very few complaints that there was something wrong with the mouth. When I’d dialed Violet’s number, I’d heard only the recording: “Violet Wish Studio! Dogs only! No, repeat, no children! Leave a message!” Before the beep sounded, a pack of little dogs sang out a cheerful chorus of yaps. Violet has papillons. I’d left word for her to call, but on a Saturday afternoon, she and the dogs were probably at a show. There was one in Fitchburg, a conformation show with no obedience. I hadn’t entered. Kimi wasn’t the judge’s type. Rowdy wasn’t, either, and in any case, he was still lame from his pad cut.
    In fact, the caller was a woman who wanted information about adopting a malamute. Alaskan Malamute Res- ‘ cue is my unpaid job. I help to find adopters for homeless dogs. This woman’s wonderful-sounding golden retriever had died recently. After I explained that malamutes are big and powerful, shed plentifully, clown around in the obedience ring, steal food, and exhibit a pronounced wild streak, she asked whether I happened to have the number of Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue. I did. Gee, and I hadn’t even mentioned songbirds.
    For most of the afternoon, in between sprinting to answer the phone, I worked on the unsplit wood I’d hauled home from my father’s. My part of the house, the first floor, is an updated version of Cambridge student housing, but I renovated the second- and third-floor apartments when I bought the building, and Rita and the couple on the third floor expect the outside of the house to look decent. To my prosperous urban tenants, the pile of logs dumped at the far end of the driveway would suggest the imminent arrival of a rusted, doorless refrigerator and a flock of mite-infested geese. Splitting wood, like training dogs, is a