Creature Discomforts

excess of energy that I see as symptomatic of a new phase, I scurried around creating order in the cottage. I scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom sinks, took out the trash, vacuumed dog hair, and neatly stacked some ratty-looking magazines and Acadia brochures that Rowdy and Kimi had used as chew toys. To keep me company while I did housework, I turned on the radio, which must have been set to an N.P.R. station. An educated voice expressed gratitude for grants from the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, the John D. and Catherine T. Mac-Arthur Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, for reporting on biological resource issues, but not to the Pine Tree Foundation for Conservation Philanthropy. Did Pine Tree make grants? What exactly did it do, anyway?
    I’d just finished showering, drying my hair, and changing into clean jeans and a navy T-shirt with a dog team racing across the front when the call of the paternal moose (“Aaarrrg!”) sounded at the kitchen door. Before I’d even managed to shove past the dogs to open it, Buck charged in and, without even greeting the dogs, demanded to know why I’d rolled belly-up for that goddamned ambulance chaser my vet had taken up with.
    “If you mean Anita Fairley,” I said, carefully avoiding the point of his roaring, “she isn’t an ambulance chaser. So far as I know, she doesn’t do personal injury law. She must do corporate law, taxes, real estate, uh, that kind of thing. Conservation law. She’s the Pine Tree Foundation’s attorney. Admittedly, I don’t like her, but she’s perfectly respectable. She’s Malcolm Fairley’s daughter.”
    Raising his thick eyebrows, my father said, “It’s not like you to try to weasel out of something, Holly.” He didn’t go on to say that he was disappointed in me; he didn’t need to. “When I ask you a direct question—”
    “I have other things to think about right now,” I interrupted. “And Steve Delaney isn’t my personal property.” I paused. “Obviously.”
    “He was yours, last thing I heard.”
    “Well, your knowledge is out of date. And people are not each other’s property, anyway. We’re all free to—”
    “Cambridge!” he groaned.
    “It’s only dogs who are forever. If you want a permanent bond...”
    “Get a dog,” he finished. “And get married.”
    “Which of us are we talking about?” I demanded. “It must be you, because there’s no one I’m about to marry, and so far as I know, there’s no one interested in marrying me.”
    “How many times you turn him down?”
    “Who?”
    “Your vet!”
    “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “Maybe I never turned him down at all. Maybe he never asked.”
    That drew another groan.
    “You’ve seen Anita Fairley! She’s beautiful!”
    “When’ve I seen her?”
    For the second time within minutes, I reminded my father of something I assumed he already knew. “Anita is Malcolm Fairley’s daughter,” I said irritably. I’d presented that family credential once, hadn’t I? But Buck evidently hadn’t paid attention.
    “I’ve never even met this goddamned Malcolm Fairley, and when I do, he’s going to be—”
    “We’ve known him for years. You have. And I... I’ve known him...” My voice trailed off. “Or at least he's known us. ” The question popped out. “Hasn’t he?” Buck stared at me with fierce alarm. “What the hell is wrong with you? You haven’t been using drugs, have you?”
    “Of course not.” Aside from addiction to dogs in general and the Alaskan malamute in particular, this was true.
    “You know, Holly,” Buck said sadly, “the last thing I ever want to do is pry into your personal life.”
    In retrospect, I have a monosyllabic comment to make about the claim: Hah! But the anxiety in his face and voice touched me.
    “I have not been using drugs,” I assured him. As if announcing comparatively wonderful news, I added, “1 cracked my head on a rock.”
    As I have learned by observing other people’s families, normal fatherly behavior in this kind of situation consists of doing whatever it takes—requesting, cajoling, insisting, or even applying physical force—to get the child, including the adult child, to a hospital as fast as possible.
    Buck, in contrast, assumed that my injury was attributable to my having switched to an unsuitably strong breed of dog. “With goldens, it never would’ve happened,” he asserted before going on to suggest several