again, you’re right. I’m a dog expert, not a flea expert, and viewed as a dog, Oona is an open book, as you so graphically suggest. Oona is a sailor. Obsessed with water. A Chesapeake Bay retriever? No, a Portuguese water dog. No harm in that. And Pia? A poorly bred standard poodle. High strung, dependent, yes, but not nippy. We’re down to two, kid. Eric and Wilson.”
I remembered Ceci’s account of the childish quarrel between Eric and Wilson at Newton Police Headquarters. Eric had wanted to use Wilson’s cell phone. Wilson had refused. I can just see that Eric as a little boy, Ceci had commented, and Wilson, too, the pair of them, silly, selfish children fighting over their toy trucks instead of this foolish cell phone, neither one of them wanting to share his toys.
My view differed only slightly from Ceci’s. Being who I emphatically am, I saw Eric and Wilson not as silly, selfish children, but as badly behaved dogs, the kinds of dogs who’ll bite you if you try to take away their toys. I knew more than I wanted to know about dogs that inflicted fatal bites. According to my article-in-progress, the typical fatal-attacker was an intact male, improperly socialized, untrained or harshly trained, given inadequate nutrition and veterinary care, and—rather obviously—allowed loose or tied to a chain, not kept safely confined. Unsocialized dogs. Eric, untrained by his mother. Wilson, harshly treated by his ridiculing mother-in-law. Emotionally malnourished. Both, in effect, chained to Sylvia’s money. Intact males. Dangerous? Fatally so.
Chapter 31
Subj: Update!
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] ----------------------------
Rita, you were right, I do like E-mail! Tired as I am of E-business, E-commerce, and E-everything E-else, it is miraculous to be able to stay in touch with Harvey while he is in the Netherlands without waking him up by mistake. You'd think that they wouldn't have given us our doctorates without making sure that we could remember which way the time zones worked, wouldn't you? Boston is earlier than here in the Bay Area, isn't it? Or is it later? Well, hurrah for E-mail! Now I don't have to struggle to work out the planets spinning, the sun rising in the east, and all the rest of that boring scientific crap.
Sorry you couldn't make it to the Berkeley Countertransference Conference. The only person from your part of the country was Vee Foote, and I have to tell you, I was NOT impressed! Her presentation was banal and IMHO (aren't you impressed by my mastery of the jargon!:) In My Humble Opinion!!) probably unethical. How could any responsible therapist possibly try to justify using (abusing?) a patient to treat her own phobia? I was not really surprised. After all, Vee IS a psychiatrist! Honestly, psychologists are the only people who get any training at all in doing therapy. Thank God we didn't waste our time and creativity by going to medical school. Besides, I never have liked Vee.
Have to fly! Bowlby wants his walkies.
Liz
PS Don't show this to anyone!
Chapter 32
Subj: Re: Update!
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] ---------------------------
Hi Liz,
Could I beg you for details about Vee's presentation? I referred a friend of mine to her—there are possible neurological issues—but I must confess that I'm now having second thoughts.
This may sound odd, but did Vee's case have anything to do with dogs?
Rita
Chapter 33
I see the world through dog-colored glasses. And just exactly what’s that supposed to mean? If you have to ask, you’re wearing the wrong spectacles.
Once I looked at Sylvia’s murder from an unabashedly dog-centered perspective, everything fell into place. The profile of the fatal attacker pointed to the solution, and the solution felt right. Or the solutions, I should say. Plural. There obviously remained the trivial question of which of the men, Eric or Wilson, was actually guilty of the murder. Could they have acted together? Considered as dogs, Eric and Wilson did not constitute the kind of affiliated pair that would hunt as a pack.
The phone interrupted my thoughts. The caller was Althea. ‘Tea at four!” she reminded me. I had completely forgotten. “Ceci has splurged on raspberries,” Althea continued. “And she wonders whether you would like to take the dogs to the park first. That’s why I’m calling. She’s run
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