Gaits of Heaven

amateur fashion, he’d insisted that the title should simply say what the book was about, and our editor had agreed, probably because ours was her first dog book. Because of Caprice, I now wished that I’d fought for a title that bewildered or misled potential buyers by making no reference whatever to weight loss. Dogs Forever! The Happy Canine. Feeding Fido. Anything but No More Fat Dogs!
    “Steve isn’t that kind of person,” I said. “And Leah’s with us for the summer. She has her own room here, and we have a guest room. Besides, with five dogs and a cat, we’re never alone.”
    Rowdy and Kimi were with us in the kitchen. Kimi, clearly remembering Caprice from the Harvard classes she’d attended with Leah, had greeted her with a peal of woo-woo-woos. Rowdy had given her his winsome welcome of honor by fetching his favorite stuffed dinosaur, depositing it at her feet, vanishing briefly, reappearing with a fleece chewman, giving that to her, and then planting himself in front of her and offering his paw. “Which is which?” she asked. “They look so much alike.”
    Harvard or no Harvard, she had no eye for dogs. For that kind of tuition, you’d think they’d teach these kids something worth knowing! Then again, an eye for a dog is like perfect pitch, inborn, so perhaps Harvard had wisely decided not to offer instruction in the unteachable. Rowdy and Kimi are, admittedly, about the same color, dark gray with white legs and feet, and they both have plumy white tails, but they do not look alike. In deference to Caprice’s bereavement, I’d contented myself with saying, “Kimi is the one with the dark markings, and Rowdy’s the one with the all-white face. He’s bigger than Kimi is.” I’d been on the ghastly verge of saying that Kimi weighed seventy-five pounds and Rowdy about eighty-eight pounds, but I’d caught myself in time. I also refrained from pointing out obvious anatomical differences between males and females. Caprice would have understood, wouldn’t she? Or did Harvard have to offer a course in remedial sex education?
    Anyway, Caprice’s response to Kimi’s musical welcome and Rowdy’s generous presentation of toys had been polite. She’d smiled at Kimi and taken Rowdy’s paw. Kimi was now lying on the floor with her chin resting on one of the rungs of my chair. Rowdy, however, had assigned himself the task of keeping an eye on Caprice. Literally. He sat next to her with his dark, almond-shaped eyes on her face. His expression was calm and watchful, as if he wanted nothing from her and intended to offer her nothing except the solidity of his presence and the warmth of his gaze. Although it was one o’clock and time for lunch, the dogs showed none of the usual bouncy, ears-up signs that they were expecting me to produce food that they could share or steal. Kimi, my food lunatic, had all but convinced me that she could read the part of my mind devoted to thoughts of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. I’d been disconcerted to realize that when I rose from the table to get second or third helpings, she didn’t bother to tag along, but when I’d finished eating and was taking my plate to the sink, she followed me.
    At the moment, Kimi was probably contemplating with disdain my awkward bafflement about what to offer Caprice for lunch. Like many other writers, I usually settled for the skimpiest of midday meals: a hunk of cheese with bread or a small serving of leftovers that I ate while I kept working. Every sandwich filling in the refrigerator was outrageously fattening: tuna with lots of mayonnaise, sliced ham, and cream cheese and olives. Left from last night was a bowl of fettuccine Alfredo. The only yogurt in the fridge was Greek-style Total, which tasted as if it had been made with heavy cream. Steve and I were blessed with the same high metabolic rate; we could get away with eating anything we wanted. Leah watched her weight by limiting the size of portions. Salad? It was obviously diet food, wasn’t it? I might as well serve two tablespoons of no-fat cottage cheese on a single lettuce leaf and try to pretend that it was what I always ate. It was not, of course, my job to help Caprice lose weight; it was presumably her own job and her therapist’s. For all I knew, their task was to help her accept herself as she was. It was even possible that she already did. Still, as I looked at her, I couldn’t bear to contribute to the disfigurement of her face.
    I rationalized