Gaits of Heaven

smart.
    In more ways than one. While Steve was inside checking on India’s limp, I poured out my story of Ted, Eumie, and Dolfo, and Rita said, “Them!”
    “We wondered whether you knew them.” To Leah, I said, “They’re therapists.” In normal places, therapist might mean a physical therapist or some other kind of therapist. In Cambridge, psycho goes without saying.
    “They’re crazy,” Leah said.
    With Rita right there! “Leah, really!” I said. “Rita is a therapist, and she—”
    “I know their daughter. Not their daughter. Hers. Caprice Brainard. She was in one of my classes this year. She’s a freshman. She used to come with us to Bartley’s, which is the last place she ought to go. Caprice has a major weight problem.”
    HarvardCollege was founded in 1636. The Cambridge location was chosen because of its proximity to Bartley’s Burger Cottage, which was already producing the gigantic, greasy, delicious hamburgers and sandwiches for which it once received an official certificate of condemnation from no less a person than the late Dr. Atkins himself.
    “Is that all you have to say about her?” I asked.
    “No. Not at all. I like Caprice. It’s just that she’s very needy. What she is, is unhappy. And obsessed with her parents. That’s why I know about them.”
    I was suspicious. “Was this a psychology course you were in together?”
    Simultaneously, Leah said, “Yes,” and Rita said, “What’s wrong with psychology?”
    “Nothing’s wrong with psychology,” I said. “What’s wrong with Ted and Eumie Green?”
    “Brainard-Green,” Rita said. “He’s Green. Her previous husband was Brainard. Ted Green is a psychologist. Eumie is a social worker. She was his patient, and he left his wife to marry her. After she divorced her husband. That was in New York. They moved here maybe four years ago.”
    Until I met Rita, my image of social workers was based on Jane Addams, Hull House, and genteel ladies who delivered baskets of food to the poor. Rita, however, explained to me that clinical social workers do therapy, sometimes with the poor, sometimes with the prosperous, the latter presumably on the grounds that the rich deserve help, too.
    “With his awful son,” Leah said. “Wyeth. He goes to Avon Hill. I think he’s a junior. Caprice says he’s a spoiled brat. She can’t stand him. She’s living with them this summer.“
    “Where’s her father in all this?” Rita asked.
    “New York.”
    I asked, “Why is she spending the summer with Ted and Eumie and this stepbrother if she can’t stand them?”
    “It’s just Wyeth she can’t stand, really. With her parents and Ted, she’s overinvolved.”
    “Enmeshed,” Rita said.
    “Preoccupied. Just because Ted and Eumie live in Cambridge, it doesn’t mean that Caprice has to go there all the time, which she does. She should’ve gone away to school.” Leah paused. “She could’ve gone to Yale.” Then, with profound Harvardian doubt in her voice, she said, “Or Princeton, I guess.”
    Rita rolled her eyes. “Princeton,” she said. “Otherwise known as the University of Outer Mongolia.”
    “Also,” said Leah, “Caprice’s therapist is here.”
    “Who’s her therapist?” Rita asked.
    “Missy something. Zinn. That’s it. Missy Zinn.”
    “She’s quite good," Rita said. “At least someone in the family is getting help.”
    “They all are,” Leah said. “They’re all in therapy.”
    The door to the house opened, and Rowdy, Sammy, and Lady ran down the stairs. Steve followed. When I was alone with the dogs, there were strict rules about who was allowed to be loose with whom. Rowdy and Kimi were fine together if there was no food around. Lady, who was no threat to anyone, got along great with all the other dogs, but under no circumstances were Kimi and India to be together unsupervised, and the same went for Rowdy and Sammy. Kimi and India had never actually had a fight, but I’d seen Kimi deliberately provoke India, who was capable of retaliation. As for Rowdy and Sammy, they were both intact male malamutes, and dog aggression certainly does occur in this breed, especially same-sex aggression. Under my tutelage, Rowdy had learned to behave himself with other dogs, but his bred-in-the-bone inclination was to tolerate no disrespect from anything canine. Sammy, however, even in the throes of raging adolescent hormones, was one of the few malamutes I’d ever known who acted oblivious to challenges. If other