Gaits of Heaven

startled awake at 3 a.m. on that same Friday night.
    So, curled up on an area rug on Monty’s bedroom floor, I hear the ring of the phone. Monty utters a monosyllable that no self-respecting golden would repeat. He clears his throat, picks up the phone, and grumbles, “Yes.” The rug, as I see it—I, Holly, the fantasizer—is an ethnic one of some sort, perhaps Polish or Afghani. I, Holly the invisible dog, cannot see it; Monty does not bother to put on his bedside light.
    After listening for what I, the golden retriever, find to be a frustratingly long time, he says, “I know the middle of the night’s your pattern, but it’s a pattern you’re going to have to start breaking.” And I, Holly, she who is conjuring up the dog, make a mental note to myself: like therapists and dog trainers, participants in twelve-step programs need to establish boundaries and set limits. And just how do I, Holly, know about the twelve-step program? The golden tells me. She is very intuitive.
    “What you’re doing,” Monty continues, “is that you’re not going to meetings and calling me instead. The meetings are the heart of the program. If you show up at them and then you still need to call someone, okay. But you’re not doing that. There’s no substitute for the meetings. And I know we’re in the same dilemma. And not everyone else is. But close enough.”
    Monty listens and resumes. “Look, it’s not just guilt. It’s shame. It’s both. And it’s easy to think that it’s people like us, parents, who really feel it. Take me. The idea is that I go to my daughter and say, ‘Well, honey, Daddy needs to tell you that he knows he’s been shortchanging you on time and attention and everything else, but he’s got a good reason. He’s hooked on Internet pornography, and he’s been protecting you from knowing that Daddy’s a pervert.’ And then I undo the harm I’ve done? Then I make amends? I’m not there, and I’m not going to get there. I’d do anything to protect my daughter. But it’s hard for everyone else, too. Show up at the meetings. You’ll see. We’ve all got. the same problem.”
    Well, okay. I have to confess that on that Friday night, the actual one, I had no idea about Monty’s secret and that I later learned it from a human being and not from an invisible dog. The admission is disappointing. Still, I did learn it in time to credit the elderly golden with intuiting it, and I’m always happy to do a favor for a dog.
     

CHAPTER 25
     
    “We had quite a scene here last night,” I told Leah at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. She had the day off and had slept late. She was standing at the kitchen counter buttering an English muffin. Her red-gold curls were spilling from a knot on her head. She wore at least two black tank tops and had more earrings in both ears than I wanted to count. Sammy had plastered himself to her left thigh and was drooling so profusely that he was leaving a spot on her jeans.
    “I know. Caprice told me. She heard me come in, and we talked for a while.”
    “Steve was... he was quite blunt with her. He said things I wouldn’t have.”
    Leah poured herself some coffee and took her mug and the muffin to the table. When she sat down, Sammy was her shadow. “Oh, she’s ready to drop out of therapy and see a vet instead.”
    “I wouldn’t have mentioned her weight. But it’s strange. I think it bothers me more than it does Steve. It’s not that... what I really want... I do not think that everyone has to be thin and good-looking. I don’t. It’s the way her face is distorted. That bothers me because it’s just such a tremendous disadvantage.”
    “You get used to it.”
    “Easy for you to say! Leah, what I want is for her to have your advantages.”
    “I sweat over chemistry. She takes physics courses for guts.” Harvard slang: easy courses.
    “That’s not what I mean.”
    “Maybe it should be.”
    “Look, before Caprice gets back... that was one of the effects of Steve’s, uh, directness. She got up at eight, and she’s out walking Lady. And she had boiled eggs and cantaloupe for breakfast. But while she’s out, I want to tell you... Kevin says that the police found rat poison in the trees in Ted and Eumie’s yard. Someone put it there to kill the squirrels.” Leah’s face fell. Her eyes filled with tears. “Who?”
    “I have no idea. Someone who wanted to keep the squirrels out of the feeders, presumably.”
    “That’s vicious! It’s