Paws before dying

Charlotte.” I had the grace not to say: “Oh, and not with you?” But the question must’ve shown on my face.
    Jack leaned against the frame of the front door. “It’s unbelievable. My mother passes away last winter, cancer. She’s eighty-six, older than he is. You ask him, she dies of old age? No. Cancer? No. Her son married a shiksa. She died of a broken heart, he tells me. So now he’s here, he discovers Charlotte’s not keeping kosher. She hasn’t kept kosher since she left for college, but now he discovers, and now she’s a shiksa, and he won’t eat here, it’s all trayf, and he won’t eat from Charlotte’s kitchen, it’s all trayf, too, all dirty.”
    “Isn’t he getting hungry?”
    “He eats deli. He eats nothing but deli, breakfast, lunch, dinner.”
    “It’s probably very nutritious, anyway,” I said.
    “He has a lot to eat and a lot to complain about. He’s never been happier.” Jack beamed. “Eighty-five. Looks seventy. Acts fifteen. Myself, I want peace. Growing up in my family... they made the Knesset sound like a Quaker meeting. And now Don, my nephew, he says the word autopsy. ” Actually, I was surprised to hear Jack say it. He was hardly Orthodox—Orthodox Jews don’t believe in autopsies—and wouldn’t object on religious grounds, but maybe I expected him to share my own family’s taboo on uttering the word aloud. He went on: “Rose would care? I tell him, have I got news for you. Rose was not Jewish. Every year, in our home, she had a Christmas tree. But my father is ready to fight city hall, they did an autopsy on the wife of his son.”
    “He sounds very lively,” I said.
    “He leaves in forty-eight hours. Charlotte is counting them.” But I had the impression that if Jack’s father liked complaining, Jack himself enjoyed complaining about the complaints. There was warmth in his voice when he spoke his sister’s name and when he mentioned his nephew. Well, why not? He was happy to have his family back again.
     

Chapter 15

     
    “THIS doesn’t say anything about washing the dog,” insisted Leah, waving a copy of the AKC Obedience Regulations. “All it says is that they can’t be blind or deaf or ‘changed by artificial means,’ whatever that is. For all you know, soap is an artificial means.”
    All I knew was more than she did. “It means surgery and things like that. Bleaches. Dyes. It doesn’t mean not to wash the dog.” The rule doesn’t ban training with shock collars, either, but it ought to. If an electric shock isn’t an artificial means, I don’t know what is. “Believe me, no judge wants to examine a dirty dog. At a minimum, you’ve got to brush her.”
    Rowdy was standing on the grooming table in the driveway. In preparation for a match the next day, I was religiously stroking his coat with a slicker brush. I’d started grooming him as soon as I returned from Jack’s. Leah was sitting on the back steps with Kimi sprawled at her feet. Thick clumps of white undercoat grew like tumors from Kimi’s flanks.
    “But it’s boring! Why don’t we just wait until they’re both done shedding and then clean it all up at once?”
    “Because we live here, too, for one thing, and for another, I don’t want to be seen with her looking like that.”
    “No one will care! And it’s outdoors.”
    I gave in. “Okay. The agreement is that you’re responsible for her. But don’t blame me if the judge gives you a lecture about it, and he might.”
    “He probably won’t even notice. I’m taking her to the Square, okay?”
    “Fine. Good idea.” One of the reasons I love Cambridge is that when you’re training a dog, you want to work him in places that look, sound, and smell as much as possible like a dog show in Harvard Square, the human Westminster.
    “And do you think I could use the car tonight? There’s a party at Seth’s.”
    Kevin Dennehy appeared on the sidewalk, overheard, and demanded: “Do his parents know about it?”
    “Hi, Kevin,” Leah answered, ignoring the question.
    “Do they?”
    “Kevin, relax,” I said. “It’s Newton. Would you let me worry: about his parents?”
    “I would if you would,” he said.
    “Yes, his parents know about it,” Leah said. “They’ll be; there. See you later.”
    She and Kimi trotted away, and Kevin rushed off to meet some guys at the Y for a few hours of what Rita—but definitely not Kevin—calls male bonding. Leah and Kimi returned at five and left for Newton at seven,