Gaits of Heaven

visit to Ted’s had ended so sadly that I felt a superstitious sense of unease as I parked in his driveway, made my way up the stairs, rang the bell, and slipped off my shoes, but it immediately became apparent that the residents of the house, Ted and Wyeth, were noisily alive. As Ted was thanking me for remembering to remove my shoes, Wyeth was shouting from another room. “Stingy bastard!”
    “Separation from parents,” Ted informed me in an undertone, “is an essential component of normal adolescence.” Then he called to Dolfo, who turned out to be in the kitchen, where Wyeth was slouched at the table eating a bagel. His hair was greasy. He wore a torn short-sleeved white T-shirt with yellow sweat stains. As I had on the day of Eumie’s death, I noticed the peculiarity of his body. Although he wasn’t overweight, he had the kind of potbelly that usually develops only in adulthood. His bare arms showed such an absence of muscle that his flesh seemed held in place by skin alone. The sink was filled with dirty dishes. Everything stank of old food and dog urine. On the floor was a gigantic dog dish filled with stale-looking kibble.
    “Coffee?” Ted offered. “Bagels. Cream cheese. Nova lox.”
    “No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of—”
    As if I weren’t even there, Wyeth said, “The store opens at ten. The one I have is a piece of shit. And you promised.” He pouted like a two-year-old.
    “I keep my promises,” said Ted, “and I never promised you a new computer.”
    “You did so.”
    “If I did, I’ve forgotten it.”
    “That’s not my fault.”
    “Wyeth, Holly has gone to the trouble to come here to help Dolfo. She is performing a mitzvah. You’re going to need to wait a few minutes, and then we’ll discuss things.“
    “With a monitor and a printer,” Wyeth said. “And a router, too.” I wanted to tell him that what he could really use were manners, exercise, and a bath. If he’d stopped with the request for a router, I’d have controlled myself. As it was, he persisted. “Pig Face has a new notebook,” he said, “and an iPod and a new cell phone, and what’ve I got? I’ve got shit.” Before the insult to Caprice had registered on me, even before Wyeth had stopped speaking, he stretched one of his sausagelike arms over the table, grabbed a slice of lox, and held it above Dolfo’s head. Lox is, of course, smoked salmon, a treat that most dogs find irresistible. In that respect, Dolfo was a typical dog. His eyes lit up, his nose twitched, and he rose on his hindquarters. His foolish face was the picture of delight. And Wyeth raised the slice of lox.
    Even then, I didn’t get it. In our household, we never feed dogs at the table, but we do train with food. That’s exactly what I assumed Wyeth was doing: teaching Dolfo to sit up or maybe to jump in the air.
    Dolfo bounced upward, and Wyeth rose to his feet and dangled the slice of lox just out of the dog’s reach.
    My temper snapped. I stood up, snatched the lox from Wyeth’s hand, told Dolfo to sit, and, when he obeyed, fed him the whole slice. I then addressed Wyeth. “Get something straight—you don’t tease this dog or any other dog ever again as long as you live. In particular, you don’t tease this dog with food. In fact, if I ever again even begin to suspect that you are thinking about teasing Dolfo or any other dog with food, I am going to put a choke chain around your spoiled neck and I am going to yank until your Adam’s apple bursts.” I turned to Ted. “And you. You’re supposed to be the grown-up here. What the hell is wrong with you? You heard what your son called Caprice, and I have no doubt that he’s called her that to her face. You saw him tease your dog with food. And you did nothing. And you’ve had the nerve to call me here on a Sunday morning to treat your dog’s posttrau-matic stress? Let me tell you something! The stress afflicting your dog is you! If I thought that anyone would adopt him, I’d tell you to find him a new home, but you’ve made the poor dog unadoptable. You’ve ruined a perfectly sweet dog, you’ve let Caprice get so fat that her face is deformed, you’ve turned your son into a cruel, insufferable, demanding brat, God only knows what happened to your wife, and if I’m traumatizing you by telling you the truth, good! It’s about time someone did. You deserve it.”
    With that, I walked out.
     

CHAPTER 28
     
    “The more I see of men, the more I prefer