Stepdog (17 page)

This was as good a compromise as any, although it still gnawed at me that we could do without the house if there was no dog in the picture. The visits from Arielle and Henry would be so sporadic that we could easily accommodate them in the apartment. Let's face it. The house was really for Eddie.

“What do you want me to do?” Jim said when I needled him about having a house mostly for the dog. “He's a responsibility.”

We started our search in Montclair, where many colleagues lived. It would take a couple months to find the house, so Jim spent one weekend telling lies on the phone as he searched for the perfect temporary home for Eddie.

“He's a very sweet guy,” he told one boarder as I read the paper across from him at the dinner table. “His vet thinks he's a cattle dog, an Australian heeler. He's short-haired, forty pounds, and nine and a half years old, but very active.”

Pause. “Yes, he's up on all his shots.”

Pause. “He's a neutered male but does have problems with alpha-type male dogs, but with other dogs he's generally okay.”

I chuckled at all the double-talk. “Generally okay” meant it was a crapshoot; we all knew what “problems” meant.

“I hope to visit him on weekends, take him out for walks,” Jim said.

When he hung up, Jim looked at me wistfully, as if dreading the separation. For a second I wondered if he looked that miserable when I left California. He settled on Hal Wheeler's pet hotel, canine salon, and grooming academy in the Jersey town of Cedar Grove, which charged thirty-nine dollars a day but gave a ten percent discount for thirty days or more.

“They'll take good care of him, baby,” I reassured him.

My upcoming Eddie-free vacation put me in a great mood. I looked forward to sleeping full nights for a change and coming home to a normal-looking sofa, with cushions where they belonged. Once Eddie was in his new temporary home, we moved to the apartment in Washington Heights and it felt like I was finally in our New York home. The Hudson and the George Washington Bridge were as majestic as ever. Mike, the night doorman, had much gossip about my neighbors and my former tenants. The hood had come up, with new restaurants and a spiffed-up liquor store that now held wine tastings, a sure sign of gentrification even in upstate Manhattan.

We eased into our cozy home. I planned to have the kitchen redone, as soon as we got the house, to accommodate more cooking, since Jim was such a good chef. Our daily commute was a cinch—a twenty-minute straight shot to our Midtown offices on the express A train. Cab fare from Midtown was now almost thirty dollars with tip, up by almost eight dollars since I left, so we took the subway even when we stayed out late. On the way home, we were usually in the company of musicians from Broadway shows carrying their cellos, saxophones, and big basses after the theater let out.

I didn't miss Eddie, but Jim longed for him in the worst way. “I miss my scoundrel.”

The first reports back from the kennel were that Eddie was not eating. When we visited him the first weekend, Jim worried that Eddie would be mad at him and not forgive him. As we waited, a screen in the lobby showed the area where the dogs were kept. The confines were roomy and the dogs could see one another through the chain-link cages. Jim handed an attendant Eddie's leash and a few minutes later a door opened and Eddie appeared, pulling at the leash toward us. He sniffed us, jumped up Jim's leg, sneezed a few times, and seemed elated to see us. He wagged his tail forcefully, butt in full swing. He even jumped up to greet me with paws on my belly and snuck a lick on the tip of my nose—a first! I was relieved to see him so happy. We took him to the car for an outing in a park nearby and he whimpered in the backseat, trying to get to the front seat between us.

“Sit, Eddie, sit!” I commanded, but instead he licked my face.

Jim looked just as excited, steering with one hand and scratching his buddy with the other. “Did you give her a big, wet kiss?” he asked the dog. “Poor guy. He's lost in the world. Soon enough, Eddie, soon enough.”

I noticed something. “His paws are orange. Why is that?”

We couldn't figure it out. Eddie was also noticeably thinner.

We drove to a trail popular with dogs in the vicinity of the kennel. The afternoon was cold and it was drizzling, but Jim and Eddie were happily oblivious to the weather. When we got back to the kennel, there was no drama. Eddie went up the entrance steps eagerly, as if recognizing the place as his new home.

We asked about the raw paws and the keeper at the kennel told us they were orange from all the pacing dogs did while caged. I felt bad, but not bad enough to change my mind and bring Eddie with us to the apartment. Jim fed Eddie a biscuit from a jar on the counter and we said our good-byes. When the attendant came for him, Eddie went willingly. No whimpers.

I gained more respect for Jim's bond to his dog during those visits. I saw true love in their reunions.

“I just miss having my buddy around,” Jim said back in the car.

“What do you miss?”

“He wags his tail. He never talks back. He thinks my ideas are brilliant. He laughs at my jokes.”

Ouch.

Jim understood the hassles we avoided by having Eddie tucked away. But he felt it made life more difficult just the same. “There's six more things to do,” he said.

And, like your typical unreasonable dog owner, he was in denial. Eddie being a pest in the Bloomberg News apartment, he was convinced, was just a reaction to being in unfamiliar surroundings after the trauma of cross-country flying. Things would be different in our apartment. “He would be perfectly behaved,” he told me with a straight face. “He's our dog and he should be with us in our living space.”

I was not without empathy, but no. As we left Hal Wheeler's in the distance, I tried to lighten the mood. “Is this your way of saying I should wag my tail more?”

“Among other things.”

I kissed my husband's lips. We were good, mostly because even in his temporarily resentful state, Jim knew I was resigned to coexist with my nemesis. Their separation anxiety would last only a few months, after all. My cross to bear looked indefinite.

New Beginnings (A Dog Gets Old)

E
ddie had been the constant in Jim's life as everybody else relocated away from him. I was the first one to leave. While we were separated, Jim took Henry to his boarding school. He left him with a heavy heart after spending days meeting teachers and other students and their families, familiarizing himself with his son's new surroundings. And after taking Arielle to visit colleges, he took her to her new school in Maryland, where he got to know her roommates and shopped with her at Target for everything from comforters, sheets, and pillows to toothpaste, shampoo, and rugs. Then he moved to New York. With just the two of us, and Eddie, we no longer had to whisper when we argued.

I felt for Jim and recognized the importance of his dog—his spotted rock—through the rites of passage. Eddie was still the same Eddie, though, so while my husband looked for a convenient location to the city as we went house hunting, I looked for houses with a layout that could be easily dog-proofed. I used my veto power wisely, narrowing down the choices to houses with features that facilitated keeping Eddie contained and away from me—such as two floors and a staircase that could be gated. It didn't take long to find the perfect place on the southern edge of Montclair. The house was an Arts and Crafts–style four-bedroom, like a William Morris cottage, with rusticated brick outside and chestnut wood trim. Nice backyard, ample closet space, great fireplace and, best of all, a door to the upstairs. An Eddie-free floor at last.

Montclair was a liberal oasis surrounded by mostly white, mostly Republican towns where residents used McCain/Palin signs as porch décor. Leafy, pro-Obama/Biden Montclair, with its racially diverse population of about forty thousand residents, was particularly popular for its good schools and short commute to New York's Penn Station and the Port Authority.

Half the New York media world—and Stephen Colbert—went home to Montclair. We had so many friends and acquaintances there who worked for the
Times
, Bloomberg News,
The Wall Street Journal
, and other news outlets, I worried that I would have to hide in the ethnic foods aisle at Kings food market to avoid being seen shopping without makeup in my sweats. Most restaurants in Montclair were BYOB and nicely casual. Montclair State University presented A-list music and dance shows for fifteen dollars a pop. Our neighbors put on a block party every year. What's not to love?

The commute by trains and buses, that's what. You had to deal with fixed schedules and not-so-frequent rides. On weekends, the train to Montclair ran every two hours instead of hourly as it did during the workweek. The subway, by contrast, ran every ten minutes or less, depending on your timing. The pace of the burbs didn't slow us down as much as it required us to become better planners and more efficient. That was a bit of a challenge for a certain someone who lived up to the Latino stereotype—I was always late.

But we took to our new surroundings in no time, and so did Eddie.

The day we moved in, Jim went to spring Eddie free from the kennel. He came back beaming like a proud papa. The report card for “Eddie Sterngold” was impeccable, as it befitted a dog kept fenced in, away from other dogs and under constant watch with surveillance cameras.

The card read:

Temperament: “Friendly. Outgoing. Happy.”

Appetite: “Good.”

General Health and Appearance: “Good.”

Additional Comments: “Eddie did very well in the kennel. Happy and social. He will be missed by the staff.”

With any luck, the staff wouldn't be missing him for too long and would see him often.

I read somewhere to be mindful of how to introduce a dog to a new house. You are not supposed to let the dog loose in the house so he could check it out on his own and feel like he was in charge. When Eddie came home, I had him sit outside the front door in the screened-in porch while Jim and I went in first. We came out and put him on the leash and I took him inside, from room to room, only downstairs, giving him the message that I was granting him permission to be in the house, that I was in charge. The memories of our first day in the Palisades still stung. But my controlled tour was such a failure that I was soon buying plastic sofa and chair covers—and an alarm that gave out piercing beeps whenever it sensed motion from a spotted dog—to keep Eddie in check. (Plastic seemed more upscale than boxes and books.)

While I customized our new house, Jim picked a new dog walker. It was important to find one who could take care of Eddie overnight when we stayed in the city, or who would at least drive him to the kennel and back if need be. The lucky gal was Karin, who like all other walkers and sitters, had to go through a hazing to show her mettle.

It all started sweetly enough.

“Eddie pooped for me today. K.,” read the first note on the kitchen counter.

She had the habit of giving Eddie a biscuit at the end of each walk.

“Bye, Eddie. I love you,” I overheard her saying to her client. “See you tomorrow. Have a good afternoon.”

Another day, another note.

“Pooped again today. I guess he likes me.”

And another one: “Hi, Jim. Eddie pooped for me. May I take a picture of Eddie and use it on my website?”

Wait for it, wait for it.

Three weeks in, Karin kept Eddie overnight and he bit two other dogs she was boarding, a black Lab and some kind of terrier, both bigger than he was.

“Don't know what happened,” she told us. “He just went after them last night and this morning. No big deal. I just separated them.”

But when Eddie did it again during another stay, sweet Karin said enough. What she actually said, extremely apologetically, was: “I'm really sorry things did not work out at my house.”

Seasoned dad that he was, Jim understood. He left Karin Godiva milk chocolates on the kitchen counter.

“The chocolates are from Eddie,” the note read.

Then he asked me: “What's the canine equivalent of a misanthrope?”

Overnight stays were rare, though. We needed the walker mostly for midday, while we were both at work in Manhattan. Eddie's routine was pretty much what it was in L.A. A walk with Jim and a cupful of dry food in the morning. Repeat in the evening. New neighborhood meant new friends and foes. His first New Jersey friend was Linus the beagle.

“They were friendly and chewed on each other's necks a little bit,” Jim reported after their first encounter. “It was very sweet.”

Honey, a small setter and cocker spaniel mix, was love at first sight—Eddie peed three times while she was watching. Cody, some kind of terrier, a Westie or something, eventually became a friend also. But I was soon instructed to watch out for Daisy, some beige mutt. With no kids in the house, I had to pitch in more with dog-walking duties. The streets were mostly deserted when I walked Eddie and I usually checked e-mail on my phone while he meandered.

One morning, though, a guy startled us when he stopped his car in front of us.

“Is that a pit bull?”

My guard was up. It was hard to switch from my New York City state of mind. I was always on high alert for strangers on the street pretending to be friendly. Usually they just wanted money but I was once flashed by a pervert. I relaxed when I saw a four-legged passenger in the backseat panting and checking us out. The guy was either a dog lover or a dognapper. Either way, it was fine with me.

“No, he's a mutt.”

“Oh, because he does look a little bit like a pit bull.”

“Well, my husband says he's a mix of blue heeler and something else.”

“He's one hundred percent pure beauty,” the guy said, driving off as quickly as he appeared.

I told Jim about the encounter later that night.

“He was talking about you,” my hubby said.

“Thanks, baby, but no, that's what's sad,” I said. “Your dog, not your wife, stops traffic.”

The world just revolved around the dog.

“Hope everything looks good,” our twice-a-month housekeeper wrote on a note asking for stainless steel cleaner and Swiffer wet mopping cloths. “Eddie must not like the rain. He's in the doldrums this a.m.!”

Montclair allowed us a semblance of a California lifestyle, and Jim loved it. He could still mow the lawn and walk his dog at a leisurely pace along tree-shaded streets. And our house, on the border of Montclair and Glen Ridge, was seven-tenths of a mile from the nearest train station and bus stop. Jim biked to the station, happily pedaling with his briefcase in a front basket.

“Good-bye, Beaver!” I teased as he rode away.

I had to walk, and often ran if I was late along with the other laggards. At least we got the exercise. I managed to miss several annoyingly punctual trains before I was able to time my walks right.

The area had the feel to me of a weekend getaway more than home. Beautiful, peaceful, and not so boring. We had Russian spies! Soon after we moved in, news broke that an all-American-looking family living somewhere in Montclair had been caught in an FBI sweep that also snared a woman columnist for
El Diario La Prensa
. Kind of exciting. The case even inspired the FX drama
The Americans
.

Montclair was not the wild reserve the Palisades was, but there was still plenty of wildlife, including deer and coyotes. Eddie liked to loll about in our backyard, although there was not as much sunlight as there was in California. In the unpredictable, too-hot-or-too-cold East Coast weather, we seldom ate outdoors. Too many bugs too, although we loved the fireflies. Eddie resourcefully found a new pastime: digging. We were not sure what he was digging for, but we tried not to leave him to his own devices outdoors for too long.

Jim was also vigilant against a new potential hassle—Jersey squirrels. We read that squirrels didn't normally attack unprovoked, which meant they would bite and scratch the hell out of our provocateur. They seemed to travel in packs and they were not easily intimidated. In a typical encounter during one walk, Jim and Eddie turned the corner and a trio of squirrels stopped what they were doing to watch from the lawn of a house. They were just a few feet from Eddie, but they didn't scurry away. The three amigos were unflappable, Jim told me, and secure in their turf. They just stared him down, like Tony Soprano, and Eddie knew to move on.

Blotched-head, however, could be fearless when he should retreat. We discovered our dog was a stone-cold killer on a miserably hot summer night. It was ninety degrees and humid, and Jim was grilling on the back porch. Eddie was in and out, with the kitchen door open for a minute or two, as Jim tended to the chicken. All was well until Eddie shot past Jim like a rocket. Jim heard some strange growling, and by the time he looked up, Eddie was shaking his head with a skunk in his mouth.

“Drop it, drop it,” Jim screamed, but it was too late.

The smell was overpowering.

Eddie kept shaking his head even with a dead skunk in his mouth. Jim was surprised his darling dog had not been just curious or aggressive—he'd set out to murder. But this was no time for reflection. He grabbed a plastic bucket and threw it at the dog, who finally dropped his prey. Now the real fun began. Eddie started to run toward the house, and Jim slammed the door shut before the dog could get in. He was licking himself, with all this goo on his face. Jim got the leash and tied Eddie to the metal handle on one of the storm doors below the porch, leaving him to hose the backyard down to dilute the smell. He shoveled the skunk into a garbage bag and that bag into another two bags and put it on the driveway. That's when he called lucky me. I happened to be staying at the apartment that night because of an early assignment in the city the next day.

“How the fuck do I treat this dog?”

I Googled “how to remove skunk smell from dog” and gave Jim a de-skunking recipe that included hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and liquid soap. Jim didn't have all the ingredients, so he got in the car to drive to the store. He called me again.

“I suddenly have this vision that I'm going to get in the car, leave him tied up on the porch, and the skunks in the neighborhood are going to organize and attack him to get even for killing their friend.”

“Baby, skunks are not coyotes,” I said, not really knowing what I was talking about but fairly certain Jim was panicking and it was my job to calm him down. “Go get the stuff. Eddie will be fine.”

Dinner was history. Jim stayed up until midnight making batches of the mixture and alternating between scrubbing Eddie in the driveway and flooding the backyard. He went to bed exhausted and hungry. When I came home the next day, I wondered if Eddie would be a blond. He wasn't. His spots had survived the hydrogen peroxide. But he stank for days. Skunks always have the last word.

I felt sorry for my husband, but I'm not going to lie—I was relieved I wasn't in the house for this particular dog drama. There are times that define who the real dog owner is, and this was one of them. Jim made so many other sacrifices for his mutt. When we stayed in the city overnight on Fridays, he had to rush back to Montclair on the eight a.m. train from Penn Station so he could walk and feed Eddie. That meant getting up at six-thirty a.m. on a weekend morning.