“This,” I say, “now this was foolish, bringing her. You know that.”
Tighty looks at me darkly. “I raised her, I made her the perfect creature, the good dog she is. She’s mine.” He kneels beside her then and, as he feels her nose for fever, says quietly, “She rode in front with me all the way. I never let her out of my sight.” He strokes her head and, for several minutes, coaches her with the words of a lover. He spreads one hand like a starfish across her abdomen. “Damn,” he says. “Sideways.”
From the kitchen, I hear the sound of the sliding door and Louisa’s voice, impatiently calling my name. But the first face in the doorway is Zip’s. “Oh!” he gasps. “What—oh.”
Louisa pushes past him. “This is a farce,” she says. “This is pathetic. This is just ridiculous.”
“Quit complaining,” I say. “Quit acting so Ivy League above it all.”
Tighty couldn’t care less about what Louisa thinks. He says to me tersely, “Gloves. There are latex gloves in my shaving kit.” He points toward the bathroom.
As I look around the bathroom, I notice—in the shower, of all places—a short stack of canvases facing the tile wall. But there’s no time to snoop. I see Tighty’s kit on the counter by the sink.
When I return, he’s wrapped himself around Tallulah, his arms and legs a cradle. He performs a complicated massage on her belly. Tallulah whines, but she tolerates his meddling, trusts him like a father. “Down you go,” he whispers, “easy and over … Just turning the little guy over, babe, just a hair more—this way, sweetheart, here we go … I’m right here.” He mutters amorously on, sometimes grunting, sometimes pausing to kiss Tallulah’s left ear. With long patient fingers, he steers the unborn puppy.
“How about calling your clinic?” Louisa says to me. Zip, kneeling behind Tighty, is transfixed, mute as a mannequin. For once, he has no prescriptions.
“How about you mind your own business and let Tighty do what he’s done for years?” I say to Louisa.
“Three, two—good girl!” says Tighty, and the first puppy slides out, slippery and smooth, pink as rhubarb in its opalescent casing. Talullah nudges Tighty’s arm aside, stretches down and roughly, gently, roughly, licks this still object into a struggling four-legged creature: blind, okay, but ready to tackle the planet.
“Now that calls for a toast,” I say. “I mean, wow. Canine Lamaze.”
Tighty lies back on the lavender carpet, eyes closed, face flushed and gleaming with sweat. He sighs. “Business as usual.” That’s when Zip, still kneeling, utters a small sob.
“Hey.” I reach toward him, alarmed.
“Birth,” he says. “The first one I’ve ever seen. Actually seen.” I put an arm around him. It’s clear that for once the world has caught him completely by surprise.
Back on the patio, Zip opens a bottle of pinot gris. The ocean murmurs complacently. The stars are so bright they flicker.
Louisa sits across from me but talks only to the men. She leans her shoulder against Zip’s. “What do you want out of life, do you know?”
I expect to hear something about cosmic understanding, worldwide forgiveness, but Zip says loudly, “A dog. Right now, what I want is a dog!” He looks at me sadly. “We never had animals when I was a kid. My mom said she was allergic. Now I think she might have made that up.”
“Well,” I say, “there’s something else we do not have in common.” He’s heard about the foxhunting, the horses and hounds, the countless barn cats, but tonight I tell him how, when Louisa and I were Girl Scouts, Mom enlisted Tighty to teach the classes for earning an “animal husbandry” badge—as if any of us, in suburban Rhode Island, would grow up to breed hogs or harvest eggs. Those who had dogs learned to teach their pets some manners, those who had ponies learned the finer points of grooming, and those who had cats learned all about clipping nails and warding off fleas. Tighty gave lectures in our living room: about responsibility and respect for fellow citizens of other species. We cut wild animals from magazines and made a book called Family Album: Planet Earth. The year he taught my troop, Hurricane Agnes ransacked the coast. Dad was gone for three days, salvaging smithereened yachts. A heartsick elm fell through Tighty’s roof, so he stayed at our house. He and Mom were up till all hours at the piano. I remember lying awake at two in the morning, unable to sleep through the endless renditions of “John Peel,” complete with live hunting horn. A brutal song if you listen.
When I get to this part of the story, Tighty looks grim and goes into the house. He has refused to tell us what drove him to flee. When he re-emerges, he dumps half a dozen boxes onto the table. “Hungry? Speaking of Girl Scouts. A little green delivery person stopped by today. Seems my mother placed an order.”
I paw through the packages. “Samosas? Nothing but Samosas? No mints, no butter cookies?”
“I guess she’s crazy for coconut,” says Tighty.
Out of Tighty’s view, Zip slips a Girl Scout cookie to Hero.
“Samosas,” says Louisa. “Where did they get that name? Not to be confused with mimosas. Or with Samoans, natives of Samoa. Or Minoans, builders of Knossos, lovers of bulls.”
“Lovers of bull? Louisa, you need a call-in trivia show. You’re like The Source,” I say. “You’re shameless.”
Zip leans across the table and says to me, “You are just as smart. You could show off a little more.”
“Believe me, I’m not in a league with you two—you two were made for each other. Me, maybe I belong with Hugh, the guy who keeps his emotions in mothballs.”
Louisa stares at me. “I didn’t come out here to make you mad.”
“Well, what did you come out for? I mean, you really came all this way, spent all that money, because your husband wants a little indulgence from life? How big is your universe?”
“You’re right. Why would I come here when you’re just like him? What kind of cloud am I living on anyway?”
“A cloud of your own making, no doubt about that.”
Louisa stands up and says primly, “Fuck you. Fuck you and your nihilist, amoral, homophobic, fuck-the-world attitude.”
Tighty goes around the table and stands behind Louisa. He wraps his arms around her from behind and presses his cheek against the top of her head. “Girls.” His voice is mournful. “Girls, if I told you your mother would love this, could you please stay friends?”
Louisa sits down and looks up into the trees. She’s trying not to cry.
“Listen,” says Tighty, “I’m the one in the hot seat here. I’m the one with music to face. And it sure ain’t Brahms.” Despite the bravado, he looks deflated. The whelping took a lot out of him, but it’s more than that. After nearly a week of pure rage, he can’t keep it up any longer.
“We’ll get you out of this fix,” I say. “We have to.”
Tighty touches my hand. “Clement, sweetie, I haven’t a single excuse.”
Louisa rubs her hands over her face as if to wake herself up from a dream. She sighs with determination. “Now this,” she says, “is a ridiculous plan. But here goes.”
It’s Louisa’s idea that since our mother has such awe for genetics, we tell her there’s manic depression in Tighty’s mother’s family and he may just have had what Louisa calls his first “break.”
“Lou, you’re a mad genius,” I have to admit.
“He promises to pursue treatment,” she says.
“Are you out of your minds?” says Tighty.
“Well, you’ve certainly behaved as if you are,” I say, “and do you have anything better to offer? Do you really want Mom to fire you? Or, as she keeps saying, to skin you and serve it on toast?”
“That’s a repulsive image,” says Louisa.
And then Zip, who’s usually immune to anything other than the truth, whole and nothing but, supplies a few textbook symptoms of manic depression that he recalls from his social-work training. It begins to feel as if we’re all back in high school, planning some outlandish prank.
All of a sudd
en, Tighty leans down, hands on his knees, face toward the ground. At first I think he’s going to be sick, and then I realize it’s more like he’s caving in. He gasps “Oh God” several times, and then I hear him breathing deeply, regaining control of himself. Zip stands beside him, stroking his broad back. And then, just like that, Tighty straightens up and goes into the kitchen. He comes back with a phone on a very long cord. His face crazes into a grin. “Speakerphone, shall we?” He punches the buttons with cavalier glee.
My mother’s voice is painfully loud in the clear, quiet air. Tighty barks, “Hello, love!” and chews loudly on another Samosa.
The icy silence is no surprise, but then out flows a torrent of insults, and as my mother carries on, the hounds grow rapt, harking to the disembodied voice of their leader, their alpha. Tails slap the flagstones around us.
Then her voice turns cold. “Titus, you are more than fired. You are blackballed. You will never work in an organized foxhunt on this continent again, so help me. You will never again dare to show your face in respectable sporting society.”
“Well,” he retorts, “guess I’ll learn to train Seeing Eye dogs or bomb-squad beagles. Bet the benefits aren’t so stingy.”
I shake my head at him, but he won’t look at me.
“You’ll be mucking out stalls again if you’re lucky,” Mom says. “That’s all you were ever cut out to do in the first place.”
Belligerent tears hover in Tighty’s eyes. I wave a hand in front of his face and maneuver myself closer to the phone just as my mother starts in with empty threats involving the Providence mafia. “Mom! Hello, Mom, it’s me. Listen. You don’t understand. I’ve just had a long talk with Tighty. He’s in a terrible crisis. He’s been in this awful state. He needs your help.” The mental illness defense, which I deliver astutely, broadsides her anger.
“Well,” she says, “no matter what, honey, there’s going to be a hearing. I don’t own this hunt, you know, or those mistreated hounds. I do not make all the decisions.”
“Let’s be philosophical, Mom. The hounds are having a blast. They got to see America. They got, like, a joyride. They look great.”
“I’ll give him philosophy. Socrates! Arsenic! … What is that echo? I feel like I’m talking to Rhodesia. And listen, that sister of yours, is she there? I just talked to Hugh. Poor Hugh.”
Louisa recoils, but I motion her over. “Quit hiding,” I whisper.
“Have you jumped ship, honey?” Mom barks at Louisa. “You’ve broken Hugh’s heart. Running off like a lunatic. Everyone is AWOL! What’s going on? I feel like we’ve collided with a comet but nobody’s told me!”
“What’s going on with me and Hugh is going on between us,” says Louisa.
“I’m your mother,” says Mom. “I know all about marriage.”
“All about yours,” says Louisa. “Leave mine to me. Please.”
“Running away never solved anything, honey, believe me.”
“I’m not running away. I’m … resting.”
“Resting! Resting! Marriages have been annulled for less!”
“Last time I checked, we weren’t Catholic,” Louisa says sharply. “And Socrates poisoned himself with hemlock, in case you forgot. Rhodesia’s been Zimbabwe for years.”
The look on her face is pure murder, so I intervene again. “Mom, hello Mom, time out here, okay? Now listen, you’ll like this. This makes sense. Louisa will help Tighty drive the hounds back, okay? She’s volunteered. It’s very generous. Everything’s going to work out fine.” I avoid looking at Louisa, who’s performing frantic semaphore.
Mom sighs angrily. “Well, I suppose it makes as much sense as anything can right now.” Then she asks about Tallulah.
I take a deep breath and say, “Six future Bryn Mawr champions, all normal, I promise.” For one sweet moment, I hear only the clockwork drone of the ocean.
We order pizza and stay up till all hours naming the puppies. We are drunk, silly-drunk, not so much on the wine as on pure oxygenated relief. Punchy as robbers dividing their loot after the perfect heist.
At Figtree Domain, names are all-important. Leaf through the national foxhunting stud book and you will find pedigree listings for Plumber, Bozo, Crabcake, and Tootsie, but Mom finds such names belittling. Even risky. A name is a prophecy, a talisman. A hound should be named with panache, dignity, romance.
“May wants the litter named for their mom,” says Tighty. “So think T, everyone.”
We sit around his mother’s table, reciting hundreds of bad names to come up with six that will make the grade. In poetic parody, we call out Tarnish! Turpentine! Trainwreck! Tarantula! Tarmac! Toupee! Breaking a rare silence, Zip says, “Tutu.” Renewed hilarity.
“I’m serious. For Desmond,” he says.
But the rest of us are ruthless. He shrugs. We’re all, for just a few hours, happy.
In the end, Tighty writes down Talleyrand, Troubadour, Tremolo, and Troy; for the two little bitches, Tahiti and Tosca.
I slip inside to check on Tallulah’s nest and use the bathroom. I tiptoe through the dim, cool bedroom. Tallulah’s sleeping now, the puppies against her belly.
I close the door to the bathroom before I turn on the light. The paintings stashed in the shower had slipped my mind. I can’t say I’m really surprised—shocked, but not surprised—when they turn out to be a series of nudes depicting my mother. The dates penciled on the stretcher bars span the last fourteen years; maybe that part surprises me. I don’t look for long. Poor Tighty, I’m always saying, and now I know why: because Tighty will never see the talents he’s blessed with, only the ones that he yearns for.
“What will you name your puppy?” I ask Zip when I return to the patio.
Before speaking to Mom, I decided that the seventh puppy—or the first one; the reluctant sideways leader—would go to Zip. It’s a male with a knuckled crook in his tail and a round black spot on his head resembling a rakish beret.
Zip looks at Tighty, who’s falling asleep in his chair.
“Titus,” he says.
I say, “Well, of course.”
At the end of a yawn, Louisa smiles. “That’s perfect.”
A Door to the Sky
1989
Why are you sleeping so much?”
“How much am I sleeping?”
“Too much, that’s how much. Nearly twelve hours.” I point to the alarm clock on the table between the beds. I watch my husband’s legs, the legs of a human stork, straighten beneath the quilt; he’s in no hurry. He’s never in a hurry. I now see this quality as a kind of resistance, though I used to name it as one of his virtues.
He yawns. “It’s the weekend.”
I am standing in the doorway of the room that was mine for so many years that the words my room will always, till I’m a fetal hunchback and have forgotten nearly everything else, signify this room and no other. Even if my parents now call it the guest room. Even if my desk was banished to a consignment shop, my high-minded posters to landfill. The place where I wrote all the clever compositions that earned me a fancy, mostly underutilized education is occupied now by a television set, and on the wall where I tacked up self-portraits by Modigliani, Foujita, van Gogh, and Rembrandt, my mother’s hung “real art”: two watercolor seascapes bartered by a local painter for her daughter’s riding lessons. These paintings are upstaged, however, by a very large photograph that recently took the place of the mirror in which I struggled with hair and fashion woes, scrutinized my body in all its thrilling betrayals. It’s a portrait of my mother on Kingsley, her all-time favorite horse, a Thoroughbred gelding who flunked out at the track. They are perfectly groomed for a foxhunt on Thanksgiving Day, the foliage behind them bold as gossip.
Hugh lies in one of the creaky twin beds, the one in which my girlfriends slept when they stayed overnight, when we whispered and giggled till dawn, discussing our crushes on movie stars and our crisply focused plans for an independent, productive, uplifting future. Now, in a smudged version of that f
uture, it is eleven o’clock on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and I have been up for hours, awakened by my parents’ heedless chatter in the kitchen.
Hugh sits on the edge of the bed and knuckles the sleep from his eyes. He seems to be ignoring my presence. These days, nearly everything about Hugh strikes me as a matter of seeming, requiring emotional guesswork. Last week, a friend asked me if Hugh likes his job, and I heard myself say, “He seems to.” Just as he seems to be happy with me or seems to enjoy walking on the beach. People who meet Hugh for the first time assume he’s shy, but it’s more that he’s clandestine. Whatever feelings he has, he keeps them in the shade. Or so it seems. Seems!
“You know, I really wonder about you,” I say. What I really wonder, for an instant, is why I didn’t say worry about you. I wonder if, when it comes to Hugh, I am past worrying. That in itself is a worry.
Hugh looks at me for a moment as if he’s waiting for an answer. At last he says quietly, “So what exactly do you wonder?”
“Stop throwing my questions back at me. Please get dressed. Dad left for work ages ago, and Mom expects us to meet her at the beach club for lunch in an hour.”
“That’s fine,” says Hugh. “I don’t need breakfast.”
“I’m going back to the hayloft. Your striped shirt is on a hanger in the closet. Mom says to please keep the showers short. It’s barn laundry day.” I resist the temptation to tell him that the day’s events do not revolve around him and his need for meals. The truth is, I’d be a lot happier if the day, or anything—like my heart or my soul—did revolve around Hugh.
My parents’ barn is twice the size of their house. This is why they bought the place thirty years ago. With room to spare, it currently shelters two horses; a makeshift greenhouse for my father’s floral pursuits (his dream is to graft and name a rose of his own); a large, accidental population of cats; and, in the hayloft, two facing fortresses, one of baled hay, the other of boxes containing ancestral photographs, old clothing and uniforms, sabers and medals, books, toys, school papers spanning at least three generations, stuffed animals, outmoded polyester curtains, outmoded stereo equipment, glassware too delicate for everyday use, screws and doorknobs and tools of indeterminate provenance and utility. The good thing about their being up here, out of sight and mind, is that for decades it has prevented a war between my mother, who is practical and unsentimental, and my father, whose family motto must surely be whatever’s Latin for You never know when it will come in handy! Not that you could find it if it ever did—or remember you had it, whatever it was.