Gaits of Heaven

same dreadful thought, namely that Eumie had been rich before her death, although probably not so rich as she’d have liked, and, by most people’s standards, more than a little strange. I could feel nervous laughter rising in my chest and was terrified of making a spectacle of myself. Fortunately, as so often happens, I was saved by a dog. Dolfo, who’d stationed himself in front of Barbara and me, squeezed past my knees and began to sniff and circle. I was all action. With Ted presiding over his wife’s memorial service, there was no one to object to my restraining the dog, so, having stashed a few essential tools of my trade in the pockets of my dress, I leashed Dolfo, helped myself to a pair of sandals from a supply by the door, and unobtrusively led the dog out onto the deck and down the steps to the yard. The trip outdoors was justified. I had wanted somehow to express my gratitude to Eumie for the CD and for her desire to help me. No one’s memorial service should be interrupted by canine bodily functions. My thanks were heartfelt, if peculiar and even grotesque. Still, I had offered posthumous dignity.
     

CHAPTER 19
     
    In the manner of a public park, the Brainard-Greens’ yard was equipped with a small covered trash can and a weatherproof metal box that dispensed doggie clean-up bags. Having availed myself of one of the bags, used it, and deposited it in the trash can, I walked Dolfo around for a few minutes. Probably because he’d been spending time next door with Barbara and George, his demeanor was calmer than usual, which is to say that he wasn’t acting like a yo-yo at the end of the leash or trying to jump on me. Since Dolfo was for once in a highly trainable state, I couldn’t resist taking him to the far end of the yard and working with him for a few minutes. I started by “charging the clicker,” as it’s called, clicking and immediately treating him to a tiny snack of liver as a reminder that the click meant that food was on the way. Then I used a bit of food to lure him into a sit, and I reinforced the behavior with a click and treat. We practiced for a few minutes. He didn’t hold a sit for more than about five seconds, but I felt proud of him anyway.
    When Dolfo and I got back inside, Ted was talking about Sylvia Plath. Like Plath, he said, Eumie was beautiful, sensitive, and gifted. Within my hearing, at least, he didn’t refer explicitly to suicide, but he didn’t need to; it was sufficient to mention Sylvia Plath at all. I half expected Caprice to stand up and protest, but she didn’t, and Ted moved immediately to a new topic, which was the special role that each of us had played in Eumie’s life. “Let’s get started by going around the room and introducing ourselves and saying a few brief words about who we are in Eumie’s life,” he said. A few brief words. I hate that phrase. At best, it’s redundant. But what irritates me is that it’s misleading. What are brief words? Words that take less than a second to speak? Words under three syllables? But there’s another phrase I hate even more. “In your own words,” Ted said, “tell us about your role.” I mean, whose words would we be likely to use? Wouldn’t our own be the likely choice? Or was there some weird warning embedded in the phrase? Don’t quote T. S. Eliot or else! Anyway, Ted assured us that we’d have time to speak at length after the introductions, and he got us started by saying, as everyone already knew, that he was Ted Green, Eumie’s husband.
    As a person who has attended hundreds or maybe thousands of classes, workshops, seminars, and other gatherings, I’m used to the initial ritual of having participants introduce themselves by saying their names and a few words—of any length—about themselves: I’m Holly, this is Rowdy, and we’re just getting started in rally obedience. Those are my words, obviously. Rowdy’s principal spoken word is the syllable urn, often melodiously repeated— woo-woo-woo —and thus, now that I think of it, laudably brief and his own, unless he filches it from other malamutes, many of whom do, I concede, say exactly the same thing. I am, however, used to relatively small groups, even when you count the dogs, as I certainly do, whereas there must have been eighty or a hundred people in this one. Fortunately, the introductions moved speedily along. Here in the People’s Psychotherapeutic Republic of Cambridge, therapists had no hesitation about presenting