‘Bastard,’ said Max. ‘Where’s mine?’
‘And Julie and I are getting married.’ There was something about telling his oldest friend the great news that made Jonathan ever so slightly nervous.
Max stared at him. ‘Married?’
‘It seemed like the right decision at the time.’
‘Was someone threatening to throw a baby off a roof?’
Jonathan sighed. ‘I want to be grown up. I want life to start properly. I want a direction.’
‘And I want ten million dollars and the gift of flight.’
‘I want meaning, Max.’
Max groaned. ‘What? A hundred years with Julie is going to give your life meaning? How dumb are you really?’
‘You never liked her.’
‘She’s fine, for someone. Not you. She’s got no sense of humour. She wants you to be normal in ways you’ll never be.’
‘I want that too.’ Jonathan felt exhausted suddenly. He put his head down on his desk and covered his face with his arm. ‘I really, really want that.’
‘No you don’t, Jay, you asshole. Why would you swap your weirdo brain for one identical to every middle-manager in New Jersey?’
Jonathan sat up. He looked sad. ‘I’m tired of being strange.’
‘Stranger than Julie? Stranger than Ed-fucking-uardo? Count your blessings, man.’ Max turned away in disgust.
Jonathan put his head down on his desk once more and wished that he and Max were still in the fourth grade and could go out to recess so he could give Max one of his chocolate cupcakes to make them friends again. Eventually, feeling infinitely tired, he left the office and went home. Julie was there already, making dinner.
‘So,’ he said, kissing her hello. ‘How’re the plans for the funeral coming?’
‘What funeral?’
‘I didn’t say funeral. I said how’re the plans for the wedding coming?’
‘You said funeral.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did.’ Julie composed her features. ‘They’re coming along fine.’
‘Aren’t there lots of decisions to be made? Like flowers and guest lists and stuff?’
‘The art director’s taking care of everything. I’ve made suggestions, but she’s basically on top of it – clothes, food, colour schemes, etc. She’s styled a thousand weddings and is looking for a special theme for us. She wants to talk to you.’
‘To me? Why?’
Julie sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. ‘It’s your wedding too.’
Jonathan felt pleasantly surprised. ‘It is?’
‘You’ll have to come down to the office one day next week.’
‘OK.’
‘How’s Tuesday? I’ll double-check with Lorenza and get back to you.’
Jonathan giggled.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I don’t know. Lorenza. It’s just one of those names. Perfect for the art director of a funeral.’
‘Wedding.’
‘I said wedding.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I did.’
They ate the rest of their meal in silence.
13
Dante awoke with a limp. Jonathan examined his feet and legs but could see nothing. On the way to work, the limp worsened; Dante winced whenever his left front paw touched the sidewalk. Jonathan stopped and called the vet. Iris answered.
‘Hello, Iris. My dog is limping. He seems to be in pain.’
‘I can give you an emergency appointment. Is it an emergency?’
Jonathan glanced at Dante, who stood with one paw lifted off the ground, then at his watch. He sighed. ‘Yes, I guess it’s an emergency.’
‘Can you come in now? Dr Clare is on emergency duty.’
Jonathan’s heart sank. Dr Clare, whose cold English soul dismissed the psychological subtleties of his dogs. Dr Clare, who lacked the imagination to see that dogs might suffer from weltschmerz. Sighing, he doubled back to Eleventh Street, walking slowly with the limping Dante, was shown in and only had to wait a few minutes for Dr Clare to appear.
‘Hello, Jonathan. What seems to be the matter?’
Jonathan suspected that her bland tone hid a snigger of scorn. He lifted Dante up on to the examination table. ‘It’s his front left foot. He’s developed a bad limp, just this morning. He’s been whimpering, not putting weight on it. I wondered if he might have broken one of those little foot bones. Metatarsals. Phalanges. Whatever they’re called. Or stepped on some glass. Do dogs get gout?’
Dr Clare felt the foot, squeezing gently at first, then more firmly, manipulating the toes, bending the leg into a series of ligament- and tendon-flexing positions. Dante bore it all with perfect equanimity.
‘He doesn’t seem to be in pain,’ she said, examining the pads of his feet with a frown. ‘If it were a sliver of glass or a thorn, he’d react when I pressed.’ She repeated her examination on the other three feet. Nothing.
‘Why don’t you take him down and let me see him walk.’
Jonathan lifted Dante off the table and trotted him across the examination room with his leash hand held aloft, the way he’d seen on TV at the Westminster Dog Show. Dante trotted beside him without a hint of hesitation.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said, defeated. ‘Half an hour ago he couldn’t walk.’
Dr Clare shrugged. ‘It could have been something caught between the pads. I once pulled a half-sucked wine gum out from between a dog’s toes. That can be terribly painful. Whatever it was, it appears to have resolved itself.’
Jonathan wondered what a wine gum was. ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’
She looked at him, surprised. ‘You haven’t wasted my time. Your dog was in pain. You did exactly the right thing.’
‘I did?’
She nodded. ‘You did.’
‘You don’t think he’s a hypochondriac?’
‘Of course I don’t.’ She frowned. ‘Dogs don’t think that way.’
Jonathan looked at Dante. Dante looked back, blandly.
Dr Clare entered information into Dante’s file on the computer. For a few seconds she tapped away at her keyboard. Then she stopped and turned to Jonathan. ‘By the way, how’s the dissatisfaction-with-life syndrome? You haven’t mentioned it this time.’
‘Well,’ Jonathan said carefully, wondering if the question might be a trap, ‘it’s actually much better. I take the dogs to work with me now.’
‘That’s fantastic.’ Dr Clare smiled at him.
‘It is. But certain things still worry me.’
‘Like?’
‘Like, they get up to things.’
‘What things?’
He looked at the floor. ‘Oh, just things. They eat my mail. Talk about me behind my back. Play sarcastic games with my girlfriend.’
‘Really?’
Jonathan nodded. ‘I sometimes think they’re not happy with my dominion over their lives.’
The vet blinked.
‘I think maybe they’d prefer a better owner. Someone more accomplished.’
She frowned again. ‘The whole thing about dogs is that, within fairly broad criteria, they love their owners. Dogs are loyal. Generally uncritical.’
‘Uncritical?’ He thought about this. ‘No. I don’t think so. Sissy, maybe.’ At the sound of her name, Sissy padded over and laid her head on his knee. He lowered his face to the soft fur of her head.
Dr Clare peered at him. ‘Jonathan? Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. It’s the dogs.’
‘Is it?’
He said nothing for a long moment. ‘Life is confusing and stressful. Why wouldn’t they suffer like the rest of us?’
‘Because they’re dogs,’ she said.
Jonathan considered this. Maybe she was right. Maybe she wasn’t. Life seemed more confusing and stressful than usual lately. ‘Thank you for seeing Dante on such short notice,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I appreciate it.’
?
??It’s my pleasure,’ she said. ‘Bring them back if you have any other problems. And Jonathan.’
‘Yes?’
‘Try not to worry so much.’
That was easier said than done, Jonathan thought. He wondered if she was genuinely concerned about his dogs’ psychological unrest or whether she was just happy it was better than before. He supposed it didn’t really matter. Even if she was just being nice, she was, after all, being nice.
He waited for the bill at reception but Iris reported that Dr Clare hadn’t charged him for the visit. He wanted to rush back and thank her for this unexpected kindness, but she was just closing the door behind her next patient.
He and the dogs set off, more briskly now, to work. Dante trotted by his side, limp-free.
14
Jonathan called his parents. ‘I’m getting married,’ he told them.
‘I’ll put your mother on,’ said his father, but his mother was already on the extension. He heard the click as his father hung up.
‘Married? Well, that’s not the call we were expecting,’ she said. ‘You’re still coming for Dad’s birthday this weekend?’
Oh shit. ‘Yes, of course. It’s just that – I didn’t want to spring the big wedding news on you in person.’ That sounded peculiar even to him. ‘I might have to bring James’s dogs with me.’
His mother tutted. ‘You can sleep in the guesthouse. Whom are you marrying, darling?’
‘My girlfriend, Julie,’ he said. ‘Whom on earth else would I be marrying?’
There was a click and his father appeared back on the phone.
‘We always suspected something like this would happen.’
‘Dad?’
‘Breaking your mother’s heart.’
‘But . . .’
‘Years of trying to create a decent family working my fingers to the bone and what happens? One goes off to live with Arabs and now this.’
‘I thought you liked Julie.’
‘Oh, Julie this, Julie that.’ There was a click as his father once more abandoned the conversation. ‘She’s a lovely girl, darling,’ his mother said. ‘We’re very happy. Can’t wait to see you.’ And then she, too, disappeared.
Jonathan hung up the phone with the usual sense of having been spectacularly wrong-footed. He could never pinpoint the exact moment at which things with his parents began to spin out of control, though he knew it was always shortly after ‘hello’.
He called his brother in Dubai. ‘James. I’m getting married.’
‘How are the dogs?’ James asked. ‘Are they OK?’
‘The dogs are great. I’m getting married, though.’
‘That’s fantastic news. Congratulations. Who to?’
‘Why does everyone keep asking that? To Julie. Who else?’
‘You never know these days. You might have met someone else. Whirlwind romance.’
‘Well I haven’t. It would be great if you could come. I’ll email the details.’
‘Fantastic. Good for you. Tell me about the dogs. Are they eating? Happy? Everything good?’
‘The dogs are great,’ Jonathan said. ‘We’re going home this weekend. Dad’s birthday.’
‘Oh Christ, I forgot. Better send a card. Are you staying in the shed?’
‘Yeah. It’s OK, though.’
‘Email the wedding details. Congratulate Julie for me. She always seemed like a nice person. I’ll definitely be there to make a brotherly speech. The dogs like her, right? If she’s good enough for them, she’s good enough for me.’
Jonathan didn’t have the heart to tell James the truth about Julie and the dogs. He felt certain they’d all come to love each other by the time the wedding happened. Or shortly thereafter. He wondered if he should invite Julie to his dad’s birthday but the thought inspired a crushing anxiety. It might be better to get everyone used to the idea first. Maybe she’d record a little greeting on his iPad. ‘Happy birthday to you! Looking forward to being part of the family!’ Or something like that. Ease into the whole marriage thing.
His parents had sold up and left Larchmont the minute he left for college, buying a condo on the outskirts of a pretty rural town near the border of Connecticut. It took just over two hours to drive if the traffic wasn’t too bad, and there were lakes and mountain trails and a state park nearby for the dogs to explore. The town consisted of a few quaint country-craft stores, a handful of old-fashioned restaurants and about a hundred antique shops. Julie would like it here in Antiquestan, he thought. But where did all the antiques come from? Were they shipped in from some little-known antique-rich part of the world where everyone preferred Ikea?
When James first acquired the dogs, his father built what he called a guesthouse in the back yard to guard against their mother’s legendary allergies. Though really it was more of a shed. Jonathan never quite believed the allergies were genuine – he’d seen his mother fail to sniffle in the presence of dogs for hours at a time. But it served the purpose of getting him out of the house when he went to stay. Twenty yards of distance was almost as good as a moat.
Jonathan rented a car and set off after work on Friday. He stopped on the way for a bottle of expensive-looking Scotch and arrived just before nine, shouting, Happy birthday to all and to all a good night! with faux-ironic good cheer. His parents greeted him and the dogs with red-rimmed eyes, probably signifying hours of handwringing and remorse for having had children in the first place, and showed him to the guesthouse-cum-shed, furnished with items from his and James’s childhood bedrooms. He recognized the faded blue sleeping bag draped over the bed as the one in which he’d lost his virginity to a girl at summer camp.
Going home, he thought, even when it isn’t any home you particularly know, is strange on so many levels. Everything seems familiar yet somehow alarming, like a PTSD flashback.
The dogs had no such ambivalence. Making up for all the nature they’d missed in New York City, they zigzagged frantically around in the dark, coming inside only reluctantly, after midnight. They now lay exhausted and content in their beds. Home to them was wherever he was.
The next morning Jonathan woke up early, made instant coffee on the shed’s camp stove and set out for a walk to the lake with his dad. The dogs seemed drunk with happiness, swept up in a mania of discovery, their noses in the air, along the ground, up trees and down holes, ecstatically digging away at the black soil as if seeking buried treasure, panting with joy, tails waving.
‘Are they vicious?’ his father asked.
Jonathan half-closed his eyes and counted to five. He exhaled and spoke slowly. ‘Do they look vicious to you, Dad?’
‘Not particularly,’ his father answered. ‘But I heard about a perfectly ordinary man who lived on the other side of town, and one time when no one had heard from him for a few days, they broke into his house and found him dead on the floor, half-eaten by his poodle.’
Jonathan looked at his father. ‘Did the poodle kill him?’ Why did his father always have some hideous story flagging up life’s most dubious scenarios?
‘No one knows. The police could only surmise.’
Jonathan said nothing. His father’s stories nearly always came down to some wildly unlikely surmise.
They walked in silence and just at the moment the subject appeared to have been dropped, his father said, ‘I’ve seen things in my life that have made me take a giant step backwards. By the time you get to be my age,’ he muttered darkly, ‘you’ll know what I’m talking about.’ His father was a 52-year-old tax specialist who advised small businesses. Jonathan wondered if he’d ever once seen something peculiar or eccentric enough to make him pause, much less take a giant step backwards, or if this was merely a misguided attempt at fatherly wisdom.
Jonathan picked up the pace. Soon there was just slightly too much distance between them to talk easily. He heard his phone bleep. It was Julie.
Feel bad about missing your dad’s birthday. Catching train to Dover Plains. Arrive 5:20. See you there? xJ
Jonathan felt happy and sick at once. Her text – with its little hint of self-doubt – touched him deeply. See you there?
‘Hey, Dad. Julie’s coming this evening for your birthday after all.’
His father looked panicked. ‘We’d better get back right away so your mother can order in extra provisions. She was only counting on the three of us.’
‘Extra provisions?’ It made Julie sound like some sort of bucket mouth. ‘It’s OK, Dad, honest. Julie’s not a big eater. And if necessary I can always pick up something when I go to the station.’
Jonathan’s father shook his head, morose. ‘If it’s not one thing it’s another.’
Julie arrived carrying a big bunch of flowers for his mother. Jonathan’s heart leapt to see her emerge from the train amid strangers, fumbling her overnight bag, looking stern, radiant and, until she caught sight of his face, slightly nervous. Jonathan kissed her, never more happy to see her than now.
‘Hello, almost-wife,’ he said.
She smiled, kissing him back. ‘Hello, almost-Jonathan.’
She also had a card for his dad and a box of expensive birthday macaroons that went over fairly well, despite being the sort of thing his parents normally considered iffy, on the basis of being foreign.
‘It’s lovely you were able to make it, Julie,’ his mother said, producing an elaborately frosted birthday cake with pink and green piped edges that might have been made in 1974 and stored in a cake museum. ‘Especially as you’re officially part of the family now.’
Jonathan wondered if being officially part of his family would be the kiss of death for poor Julie.
They all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and put on a moderately convincing show of acting normal throughout dinner. Jonathan hustled Julie away as early as possible to the shed.
‘She’s a nice enough girl,’ Jonathan’s father said. ‘Despite trapping our son into a poisonous marriage of convenience.’ His mother shook her head, sadly.
‘I see where you get your mental instability,’ Julie said, and Jonathan nodded. Julie’s father was dead, her mother remarried to a bond trader in Hong Kong. Jonathan had met Julie’s mother three or four times over the years, which intrigued Max, who usually didn’t stick relationships long enough to meet the parents.