The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Twenty-Nine

I’D LANDED, DRIVEN HOME, UNPACKED, AND WAS IN THE barn by the time Vijay called.
He apologized earnestly, but I was glad I’d made this choice; he clearly had not returned home until nearly 8 p.m. again.
No one was home, but I was happy to let the animals minister to me. I imagined my crew parading through the cathedral. “You would’ve been the most beautiful ones there,” I told them.
I wanted to ride. I hadn’t been on a horse since the broken ribs, and sitting in that saddle felt like coming home. This time I was well fed and clear-headed. It was near dusk, I was alone, and I’d forgotten a helmet—all reasons to walk once around the arena and get off, but it felt so healing. Moonshot’s free, swinging walk made me think of dancing.
Dancing. I wanted to dance.
I’d always wanted to dance.
ONCE NICK AND OLIVE HAD DROPPED GABRIELLA OFF AND I explained why I was home early, Gabriella said, “Men suck.”
I slid off Moonshot’s back and led him to his paddock. “Vijay doesn’t suck. He just didn’t have time for me, and I had more interesting things to do than wait around for him.”
Gabby leaned on the fence while I untacked Moonshot and brushed him. “Aunt Olive and Mr. Henrici just asked me to write something to read at their wedding.”
“Baby, that’s lovely. What an honor.” I scratched Moonshot’s tail. Ah, I’d missed this.
“What am I supposed to say?” Gabby asked the ground, putting her forehead on the fence. “That I give them less than a year? That I think the whole thing is ridiculous and meaningless?”
I stopped scratching. “You didn’t say that, did you?”
She lifted her head to roll her eyes at me. “I should have. We were at the restaurant. With Dad and Grandma Mimi. And Zayna.” She spat Zayna’s name. “I don’t even want to go to the wedding.”
I stopped scratching again, but Moonshot moved his rump at me so quickly, he almost knocked me down.
“That woman came here while you were gone,” Gabby said. “Moonshot’s owner?”
My heart stopped.
“Ginger something.”
“Ginger Avalon,” I said flatly. The porn star.
“Yeah, that’s it. Is that a cool name or what? She came out here Saturday. I was down in the barn already. She seemed nice enough, but Moonshot wouldn’t let her touch him.”
I breathed again. Good for you, old boy. Good for you. I scratched his tail with new vigor.
“Could she really get him back?” Gabby asked.
I nodded. I couldn’t find my voice to say, She really could.
I RETURNED TO ANIMAL KIND MONDAY MORNING, EVEN though I wasn’t scheduled—I wasn’t supposed to even be in town yet until that evening.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Aurora said. “I need your help with a diagnosis.”
She led me to the kennels and brought out a dog I recognized. “Booker!” I said. His fruit-bat ears stood up, and he wagged his whole rump.
“You know this dog?”
“Absolutely. Australian cattle dog. Belongs to Stuart Duberstein, right?”
Aurora’s face was blank.
“Dubey?”
She shot me a what the hell? look and led the dog to an exam room. She handed me the file. “Verdi,” the chart read.
“Verdi?” I asked the dog. He licked his right foot. His owner’s name was Susan Weiss. Mrs. Weiss had brought this dog here on Saturday. She said the dog had begun to have seizures and behave aggressively. She wanted to have him euthanized.
I lifted my head in disbelief. “Aggressive? This dog?”
Aurora nodded, arms crossed. We both knew this was a crock of shit.
“His name isn’t Verdi.” I made sure to speak in a neutral voice, not specifically addressing the dog. “His name is Booker.”
At his name, he looked up sharply, wagging his hind end.
I crouched down to pet him as I explained the story to Aurora—about the crazy cat lady and the cute man next door.
Aurora thought a moment. “I sensed she didn’t want a diagnosis. She’d already made up her mind. I convinced her to at least let me keep him until today for observation.”
“And what did you observe?”
“I took him home. He’s well mannered, socialized. He played with my two dogs. He likes to chase cats and is pretty damn quick. He presented no illness or aggressive behavior whatsoever. I did blood work, even though she didn’t want me to. All normal.” Aurora moaned. “If we refuse, she’ll find someone else to do it.”
I nodded, thinking.
The vet tech poked her head in the exam room. “Dr. Morales, your first appointment is here.”
“Thanks, Bridget.” Aurora turned to me. “This is her. Help me think of a plan!”
I chewed my lip. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting her euthanize him,” I said. “I’ll come with you.” I shrugged my arms into a white lab coat and followed Aurora into Exam Two without Booker. I wanted to tell this woman I knew what an evil, vindictive monster she was. Instead, I shook her hand and introduced myself. “Frankly, Mrs. Weiss, your dog presents with absolutely no health issues.”
Her spine stiffened. “Look. He has these seizures. They’re very frightening.”
Aurora reported what she’d observed . . . and what she hadn’t.
“He has them,” Susan Weiss said, her voice icy. “And they’re awful. He’s attacked me.”
I wanted to attack her. “We can’t euthanize a healthy dog, Mrs. Weiss.” It was the closest I could professionally come to calling her a liar.
She stood. “Would you please bring me my dog then? I’ll have to get a second opinion.”
“Let me keep him,” I said.
“No. I don’t want to do any tests or more observations. I just—”
“No, no. I mean, let me keep him permanently. Then he’s off your hands.” I worked to make my voice sincere, not condescending. “I’d like to have him, if you’ll agree.”
She squinted at me, considering. “You wouldn’t take him anywhere? Like, out in public?”
When I frowned, confused, she had the decency to blush—a faint ladylike tint high in her cheeks. “I’d hate for him to be in public, at music festivals or what not. What if he had a seizure and attacked someone? I’d feel responsible even though the dog wasn’t mine anymore.”
“Music festivals?” I was astonished she’d be so brazen.
“You know, like they have at Riverscape. Outdoor concerts, that sort of thing. The fireworks downtown when the Philharmonic plays.”
All the places where Dubey was likely to be. Places where he’d recognize his dog.
“No, I’d never take him to anything like that.” But your ex-husband might, you bitch.
She looked at her watch. “Well. All right. Do I sign anything?”
After Mrs. Weiss had signed a release and clicked out the door on her high heels, Aurora said brightly, “Well, he should fit right in with your crew.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “I’m not keeping him. I’m taking him to his real home right this second.”
When I got to Dubey’s house, though, a For Rent sign stood in the yard and no one answered the door. Booker whined.
We walked around to the back, just in case. I glanced at the cat lady’s house but was relieved to see only two cats on her porch.
I peered in the back-door window of Dubey’s house. The kitchen was empty.
Back in the truck, I dug in the glove compartment, past a syringe of horse wormer and some dog treats, to find Dubey’s original report. I called the phone number listed there, but it’d been disconnected. I called the Humane Society, but they had no other information.
Booker wagged his rump at me when I clicked shut my phone.
Great. Now I had an Australian cattle dog “with seizures.”
THE NEXT DAY, WE WERE SLAMMED AT THE CLINIC—TWO hit-by-cars coming in within an hour of each other—so we were performing surgeries long into what was normally our lunch hour. I had to bring Booker to the clinic, since I couldn’t leave him at home (he chased cats and I already knew that unlike Max, Booker would kill them).
It turned into the kind of day where I was scarfing down cold bites of sandwich between afternoon appointments. Even so, at every spare moment I made unsuccessful phone calls to the three Dubersteins in the phone book.
After I sent the last surgery patient home (an hour and forty-five minutes after usual closing time), I Googled Stuart Duberstein. I found several old notices about him performing at various places around town. Nothing to indicate an address or contact information.
I drove to visit the Davids with Booker panting in my backseat. I left the dog on the Davids’ screened-in porch, collected their mail and papers, and went inside.
Big David was cooking dinner. Davy stood with a Scotch, staring into the fireplace. “Where’s Ava?” I asked Davy.
“With Carol.”
“What number is that?” I cocked my head toward his Scotch.
“Who cares?” Davy asked.
I took his Scotch from him and set it on the coffee table, then hugged him. He put his cheek against my hair. I saw Big David in the doorway, watching. I gestured to him to come over. To my relief he did. I opened my arms to include him, too. I twisted myself so that the two men embraced and I was on the outside hugging them both.
“I’m so sorry,” Davy said to Big David. “I pretended not to see you cry this morning.”
“I know. It’s okay. I pretended to be sleeping so you wouldn’t know I was crying last night.”
“I . . . I wish I knew what to say to help you,” Davy said.
“I don’t know, either.”
The smoke alarm went off in the kitchen. “Shit,” Big David said.
“I got it!” I ran into the kitchen, snatched the smoking skillet from the burner, then waved a dishtowel at the alarm until it stopped. The chicken thighs were black on the bottom but, once extricated from the skillet, not really burned.
Eventually the Davids came into the kitchen and apologized.
“Don’t,” I said. “Think of all you saw me through.”
They invited me to stay, and, sensing they wanted a buffer, I agreed. We talked of my trip, I defended Vijay to Davy, they talked about Kim, and by the time Big David brought out the dessert—a perfect cherry pie from David’s Hot Buns—we’d even laughed a little.
As we lingered over coffee, Big David sorted the pile of mail I’d brought in.
“Wow, look at this,” he said. He’d opened a thick, creamy envelope. Was this Olive and Nick’s wedding invitation already? He handed us a card that read, “Join Cleveland and Caroline Anderson as they celebrate fifty years of marriage.”
Well, damn. We’d forgotten all about it.
“Dinner and dancing at the Hunt Club.”
Dancing.
How long had I been wanting to dance?
WHEN VIJAY CALLED THAT NIGHT, FROM HEATHROW AIRPORT, I said, “I’m finally doing it. I’m taking a ballroom dance class.” I’d spent the last half hour searching for classes rather than for Dubey. “Wanna be my partner?”
I’d been joking, sort of, and was surprised when he said, “Absolutely.”
“Right. Whatever. In all your free time.”
“I’m serious. When is it?”
“Mondays at seven.”
I heard clicking and tapping—he was checking his crackberry. “I could do that.”
“Vijay, be serious.”
“I can do it. I want to. I want to make it up to you for our botched weekend. I feel terrible.”
He said he’d come in for the weekends, or at least Saturday night, and fly out late Monday after the class. “We’ll learn to dance,” he said, “and then we’ll dance at your parents’ anniversary party. I got an invitation yesterday.”
“You did?” Hmm. My conniving mother.
Booker clacked into the office. Gerald growled.
“Will you be my date for the party?” I asked Vijay.
“I’ll be your date for every party. Maybe we’ll hit fifty years ourselves.”
My heart fluttered. What did he just say?
Just then, though, Booker dashed for Gerald, so I had to hang up. Gerald was fast, thank God, even on three legs, but when I got Booker by the collar and called Vijay back, he’d already boarded his flight and I only reached his voice mail.
VIJAY CALLED SATURDAY TO POSTPONE HIS TRIP. “I’LL BE in Sunday evening,” he said. “I promise.”
Sunday turned into Monday morning, and on Monday afternoon, I called Davy. “I need you to come dancing with me.” I explained and added, “This way, we’ll know what we’re doing at Mom and Dad’s party. All their friends at the Hunt Club know how to dance for real.”
“I can’t. I’ve got stuff to do.”
“What stuff? Drinking? Sitting around feeling sorry for yourself? You can do that later. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.” I remembered the Davids showing up and taking me to dinner after Bobby had left. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”
DAVY WAS READY, IN SPITE OF MUCH COMPLAINING. HE’D even shaved and didn’t appear to have been drinking. He got in the car and said, “Remember going to those dances as kids?”
My parents had belonged to a genuine hunt club with hounds, horns, and all that hoopla—galloping through fields and leaping over fences. Sometimes we stayed home with a babysitter for the parties afterward, but occasionally we were dragged along with the warning to be “seen and not heard.” I thought my mother looked like Grace Kelly, with that upswept blond hair and long neck, in her floor-length gowns. My father looked right out of a Fred Astaire movie, in his tux. And they could dance.
I’d been picturing that scenario when I’d imagined a dance class.
I was a wee bit disappointed.
We met in a big gymnasium at a recreation center. We signed in, Cami and David Anderson. The instructors, Opal and Vick, didn’t look glamorous at all—they looked . . . dowdy, really. Opal’s hair had that chicklike fineness that frizzed out of her bun. She wore pants, not a gown. Pants that looked like gabardine, along with very sensible black shoes. Vick was handsome but had a paunch that marred the picture.
Once this couple began to move, though, all my doubts were dispelled. They started the class—as if they sensed my skepticism—with a demonstration. They moved together fluidly, pot belly and frizzy hair forgotten. While they danced, they gazed at each other so lovingly it made my throat ache.
When they weren’t dancing, though, Opal was mean. She ordered Vick around, and her corrections to us were curt and impatient. Vick’s corrections were gentler but not as specific.
There was one couple around my age who looked like they were having fun and an older couple who already knew what they were doing. Most of the other couples, though, looked strained and uptight—the men, especially. Throughout the evening, as we made our way along the line of dance in fox-trot and waltz, I overheard hissed exchanges.
“God, you owe me. You know that, don’t you?” one man said to his partner.
One woman tried to coach her man, “Your left foot, honey, start with your left foot,” only to have him drop her hands and say, “You’re such an expert, why aren’t you teaching the class?”
Davy and I spent most of the night laughing—so much that Opal shot us scolding looks.
I predicted that probably half of this class wouldn’t return the following week.
I WAS RIGHT. THE NEXT MONDAY, THE CLASS HAD MORE room and we received more instruction. Vijay had actually made it in for the weekend, arriving Saturday at noon. On Sunday, he spent many hours on his laptop and BlackBerry, then came to me with that look in his eyes.
“You’re leaving.”
“I’m sorry. They need me back in Botswana.”
Davy called that evening. “What time is dance tomorrow? Wanna have dinner before we go?” He never even knew he’d almost been “bumped” from the class.
WHEN HELEN WALKED INTO MY BARN LOT ONE BRISK, sweatshirt evening, I knew what she was there to tell me. “We have a court date.”
My legs went weak. I sat on a bucket. Maybe I could hide Moonshot, move him somewhere and not tell anyone. That had happened to us on a few occasions when we’d gone to remove an animal after a court decision.
As if she read my mind, Helen said, “You gotta do the right thing, Cami. You’ve brought him a long way. You brought him back, really. C’mon, you’ve fostered a million times, and every time you’ve made their lives better.”
But he’d made my life better.
DAVY AND I TOOK TO PRACTICING DANCE A COUPLE OF TIMES a week. It kept me sane, and on dance nights I actually slept rather than stewing about Moonshot. Davy would teach the dances to Big David. Ava already knew them and would join in.
“Thank you so much for this,” Big David said, walking me out to my truck one evening.
“Are you kidding? Davy saved the class for me when Vijay had to bail.”
“I think the class saved Davy for me.” His face in the streetlight showed he wasn’t kidding. “We weren’t doing so hot, you know. You brought him out of his sorrow.”
I hugged him and he held me so tight, it hurt my old injured ribs. I kissed his cheek.
“You’re keeping that damn freckled dog, aren’t you?”
I punched his shoulder and got in my truck. “He’s temporary.”
If only Moonshot’s owner had been so hard to find.