Animal Appetite

knocking on her door, I went outside, stared up at her windows, and found them dark. If I tried to reach Steve in Minneapolis, his mother might answer, and I didn’t feel like talking to her. I contemplated trying to find out whether Gareth had acted violent enough to earn himself a hospital bed, but had no idea which hospital to call. McLean? Mount Auburn? The Cambridge Hospital? Some small private facility I’d never heard of? For all I knew, part of the family routine might consist of driving from one emergency room to another in search of the right—or wrong—match between Gareth’s rage and the sight of some poor psychiatrist’s face.
    Eventually, I found peace in what would strike a lot of people as a ridiculous activity: I wrote a belated letter of condolence about the death of a dog, an Alaskan mala-mute named Attla, who’d belonged, and always would, really, to David and Shilon Bedford, who started out as sledding enthusiasts, got carried away, so to speak, and now run a sled dog outfitting company, Black Ice, in New Germany, Minnesota. The name Attla was a tribute to the famous Athabascan musher George Attla. The canine Attla lived up to the legend. He was a big dog—a hundred and five pounds—and a little old-fashioned-looking for the U.S. show ring, but he earned his Canadian championship. Attla’s great strength, however, was just that: brute force. On a team, he drove so hard that his phenomenal power set the pace for the other dogs. Even running uphill, even with extra weight to haul, he wouldn’t break pace or change gears. With tears in her voice, Shilon Bedford had told me, “Attla had no mental wall! He was such an honest dog! He never gave anything but his best.” Attla had retired from his racing career a few years ago to lead an easy life in an honorable position in the Bedfords’ first kennel. Last spring, he’d shown the first signs of congestive heart failure. The disease progressed fast. In August, Attla had refused his food. “And when a malamute stops eating,” Shilon had said, “you know the end is near.” I’d learned of his death only a month ago.
    Attla died at the age of ten and a half. My letter to Shilon and David was little more than a note to say how much I’d admired Attla and how sorry I was for their loss. What assailed me as I wrote was a depressing sense of the painful overcomplications of human lives: Brat’s fury at her mother, Claudia’s crazy effort to impose normality on Gareth’s madness, the apparent hopelessness of his condition, the complex questions of Claudia’s love life and Tracy Littlefield’s truthfulness, the murders of Jack Andrews and Professor Foley, the death of Shaun McGrath, the chaotic mess of Estelle’s dreadful novel and her pitiful faith in its merits, the sad pretensions of Randall Carey, Jack’s seeming reincarnation in his posthumous child, the violence of Hannah Duston and her captors, the death by hanging of Elizabeth Emerson, Steve’s refusal to spend Thanksgiving with my father, mine to spend it with his mother... The list seemed endless.
    What finally brought me comfort was the rediscovery of my eternal refuge: My friends had loved Attla as intensely as I loved my dogs. How often is it possible to love so purely? How often is it possible to know exactly how other people feel? So if a letter of condolence about the death of a dog sounds foolish, go ahead and smile. But if you do, hope that you never love a dog.
    When I awoke on Friday morning, even before 1 opened my eyes, I could tell that Kimi had taken advantage of Steve’s absence and my unconsciousness to pursue a campaign she’d been patiently waging for months, a crusade based on her conviction that wherever people slept must be the prime spot. Her goal was to insinuate herself under the covers and between the sheets. Like a skilled dog trainer, she’d set out to teach me this new routine by breaking the exercise into its component parts and working on it one small step at a time. Months ago, she’d started by worming her way almost imperceptibly up toward the headboard. Once I’d mastered the head-on-the-pillow phase, she’d proceeded to the next step by waiting until I was asleep to slip one front foot under the top sheet. It is, I suppose, remotely possible that she whispered subliminal messages in my ear: You will let Kimi under the covers! Nothing will make you happier than to have a big, hairy dog nestled next to you between the sheets! At first,