Stepdog Read online

  I took her through the main gates of the arboretum, along the paved avenue lined by huge gorgeous trees of stunning crimson and yellow foliage, then off-road, up the slope by the demure lilac bushes, over the crest and down through the yellowing beeches, down by the stream, across Bussey Street to Peters Hill, where everyone let their dog off leash. We jogged happily together up to the top, and looked out over verdant treetops into Boston.

  “This is all right, isn’t it, Cody?” I said to her, and tousled the top of her head. She stared up at me with the expression she gave Sara right before Sara fed her. Around us, other people and their pets were also taking in the view. A dog walker was getting pulled across the hillside by five mismatched canines, none of them as good-looking as Cody, or as calm. A lanky bloke with a bald head in a dark cashmere coat, sitting on one of the squared-off rocks, gazed out over the vista with a slightly melancholy air, humming what sounded like a Leonard Cohen song (in other words, humming sort of tunelessly in a minor key). A moody-looking, androgynous teenager, skulking on the edge of the viewing area and smoking, was watching all of us more than the view.

  “You have a gawgeous dog,” said a sturdy young mother with a strong Boston accent. She was breathless in her anorak from pushing a strange-looking stroller to the top of the rise. It looked to be a regular stroller, with a regular toddler strapped in . . . but with a sort of skateboard attached to the back of it, and an older boy, maybe four, was standing on this. He had a riot of freckles and red curls, and he gasped with pleasure when he saw the dog, as if there were no others on the hilltop.

  The mother held her hand down and the dog trotted to her, tail wagging gently. Cody pushed her soft-haired muzzle into the women’s fingers, and was rewarded with a face scratch. She glanced up adoringly at the woman.

  “Doggie!” proclaimed the son, already with a thick Boston accent himself. He toddled off the skateboard to her and sank his fingers with fierce delight into her neck.

  “Careful! Gentle!” said his mum, glancing at me whilst grabbing his arm above the elbow as if she might want to tear it off. I shrugged reassuringly. Cody wagged her tail and looked adoringly at the boy even as he strangled her. The mother relaxed her death grip.

  “She’s so sweet!” said the mum admiringly. “You’re lucky. Our dog is a nutcase. Yours is so mellow.”

  “She’s not my dog,” I said quickly, on reflex. Then added, in a more measured tone: “She’s . . . my . . . wife’s dog.” I wasn’t used to saying “my wife,” but this seemed a good time to practice.

  The woman looked confused. “Doesn’t that make her your dog, too?” she said.

  Oh God, that couldn’t be right.

  “Well, we just got married,” I said.

  “Really? Congratulations!” said the woman, grinning.

  “Hey, congratulations!” said the dog walker, over his shoulder as his charges began to nuzzle their way down the hill.

  “Cool,” said the sulky androgyne, with an approving chin jut. “Congrats.”

  The tall bald man shifted thoughtfully on the boulder, nodded, and said, “Well done,” as if offering a benediction.

  “Thanks,” I said to all of them, feeling my cheeks burn, but in a good way. “So anyhow, I think of her as my wife’s dog.”

  “She’s your stepdog,” said the bald bloke, quietly pleased with his neologism. Cody, as if also pleased, suddenly ran toward him, almost whining with approval, and threw herself at his feet in tarty-dog pose.

  He smiled, with a certain reserve, then reached down and rubbed her belly. “How do you like being a stepdog?” he asked her, without the baby-talk cadence that almost everyone uses to talk to dogs. In response, Cody whacked her tail against his leg.

  “Stepdog,” I said after a beat. “I suppose that’s what she is.” The bloke gave me a confiding smile and winked.

  That was the beginning of something huge, but I hadn’t a clue of that yet, and it took a while to rise to the surface.

  Chapter 6

  And so began our winter routine.

  Mornings in the arboretum were great: not only did I stay in shape but I got used to referring to “my wife,” as several times a day I was told what a commendable dog I had, and I had to explain she was actually my wife’s dog.

  Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed bringing Cody out for a walk. We got along. She was the canine version of a top-shelf, graceful teddy bear, and exactly the right height to touch noses with the kids, which was great crack to watch. She was always gentle with them, even when they tugged on her floppy ears and screamed with ecstatic shrillness right into her face. She was the first close encounter of the canine kind for many of them. Occasionally, enamored parents would even take her photo with their kiddies, up there on Peters Hill. She made me appear, by association, the most superlative of dog-dads; any helicopter parent would have envied me for the endless compliments I received about my beautiful, sweet, well-behaved, adorable dog. But I thought of her wholly as Sara’s, and felt I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t correct people to explain that she was, really, just my wife’s dog. My stepdog.

  There were regulars, on our walk, I suppose because it was always the same time of day—that dog walker, for instance, was almost always crossing Bussey Street in the opposite direction when we were. In particular, there was a little cadre up on the top of Peters Hill, who always seemed to be planted there, or coming, or going, just as we arrived. I grew friendly with them because first, I’m a friendly bloke, and second, it seemed I was in the company of the park’s most popular dog. There were plenty of other dogs on the hill, but I rarely met their people—in general, dog owners introduced their dogs instead of themselves. Anyhow, Cody liked people more than dogs, and so did I, so we were drawn to the small but reliable dogless contingent.

  The three I saw most regularly, who I privately referred to in my mind as the Three Musketeers, had all been up on the hill that first morning. I wouldn’t call them intimate friends—we didn’t trade confidences—but it’s nice to have some routine and regularity when you’re as rootless as I was then, and they were it.

  First was the mother of two, Marie, who was from Dorchester, and who told me with enthusiastic brusqueness she was Irish herself. This is a thing the “Boston Irish” never really understand: if you were born and raised in America, you’re American. You can be Irish American, but you are not Irish, any more than an African American is actually African. I don’t care if your grandparents came from Ireland; I don’t even care if your mother did. If you grew up in Southie, you’re American, and what we have in common is that we both live in Boston, not that we’re both Irish, because we’re not. End of story.

  Marie was a lovely woman, salt-of-the-earth working class so familiar to me in sensibility, with a brash laugh that made me want to take her to see a football match (and scored her, in my mind, with a Cyndi Lauper sound track). Her little ones got their red hair from her, but she kept her own coif tucked under a hat.

  Marie didn’t just have two kids, she also had a husband who was on disability from an accident at work, something about driving forklifts. He was getting better, but in the meantime his mother needed more and more help every day because she refused to move into assisted living, so she had instead moved in with them. So Marie had cut way back on her housecleaning schedule to take care of her own household, and she loved her arboretum walks because it was her only chance to have time just for herself (except for the two boys). She talked loud and fast and had a hilarious lack of filter when it came to talking about what was on her mind. That’s why I knew so much about her private life without ever asking.

  The second Musketeer was Jay, the tall, slightly melancholy man who sat on the boulder in a long cashmere coat. When I say he was bald, I don’t mean his hair was thinning or he shaved his head. His head (when he was hatless) looked like it had been waxed, as if there weren’t even any hair follicles left to grow out of it. His coloring was nondescript, but his face looked like something described in a
Victorian novel, both soulful and aloof, both haughty and sad; if he’d a Brit accent he’d’ve easily passed as a ruined viscount or something. He dressed like he had money, but not like he wanted anyone to notice. Of course, I was fascinated by how a bloke like him could afford to sit on Peters Hill all day, but I didn’t want to be a nosey parker. The most I ever got out of him was that he had created something technical that he’d sold to some huge company for a lot of money, and was trying to sort out what to do next with his life. His sound track was Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” because he was nearly always singing it under his breath, and he even sounded a bit like Cohen when he did it. Cody really loved him and his grounded, understated alpha-male energy. If dogs have human emotions, I’d almost say she had a crush on him.

  The third Musketeer was Alto, the androgynous chain-smoking teen who was obviously playing truant from school. Nobody seemed to have trouble with this, and I certainly didn’t. Alto was trans—transgendered, either a boy becoming a girl or a girl becoming a boy; I wasn’t sure which at first (I eventually figured it out—the latter) and I would feel like an arsehole for asking, so I just put the gender thing aside (until I figured it out) and got to know Alto as a person. More specifically, as a troubled teen who got a lot of sustenance from seeing the same faces on Peters Hill every day, even for a few short minutes. Alto had dark, wounded eyes that believed they had survived more existential angst than a Beckett character. Nothing was going to get through that armor, even though Alto surely wanted something to penetrate, or else why would he keep coming back to spend time with people who were trying to penetrate it? (His sound track was the Janis Ian song “At Seventeen.”)

  I realized within a week that there were unspoken connections and confidences among the regulars, whose paths never crossed away from Peters Hill. Little moments, little haiku of connection in the midst of their novel-length lives. So every day, even if it meant waiting around for the opportunity, both Marie and Jay—and now me, too—would say one kind thing to Alto, even if it was just a comment on clothing or weather. I don’t know if they even realized they were doing it. Marie had so much on her plate with two kids, and Jay had so little that he often looked lost in space, but they both took time out from their preoccupations to check in with Alto, and that was pretty cool.

  It tickled me that these strangers knew I was married to Sara, when none of our actual friends did. They didn’t know it was a secret marriage (or for a green card, of course), but still I felt like I was sharing a secret with them, and that probably added to my fondness for them. I could brag on Sara until surely her ears were burning all the way to the museum, and I didn’t have to worry they’d try to give me relationship advice, because they all assumed we were just a couple, period, same as that. In fact, they assumed the permanence of our marriage more than we did. And maybe I needed them to.

  Because even as the trees grew glorious, the days continued to shorten, the windchill factor grew, and the apartment seemed to shrink. The marriage thing got tricky, took on a weight we should have anticipated but hadn’t. Sara and I started pretending we were just lovers who happened to be spending a few days together shacking up, with no long-term plans to cohabitate. This made the in-your-faceness of cohabitation bearable.

  We continued to spend time with friends together, eat together, sleep together, shower together, bicker over how much attention the dog was getting together, even contemplate holiday plans together (which was weirdly matrimonial). We trimmed Sara’s front steps with jack-o’-lanterns featuring treble clefs and eighth notes, and argued about putting the dog in a costume (I was all for it) and compromised on a Red Sox cap.

  And naturally we pursued the immigration process, since that was the only reason we were living together. This meant massive amounts of paperwork, but not all of it was government forms: Uncle Sam wanted affidavits from our friends stating they knew we had a bona fide marriage.

  Which was tricky, as none of our friends knew we had a marriage, period.

  “IT’S TIME,” SARA declared, a few days before Halloween. “You talk to Danny, and I’ll break the news to the museum crowd.”

  I tried to imagine those masters of arts and doctors of philosophy learning their beloved little Sara had married an undocumented construction worker.

  “Fair enough,” I said heavily.

  “They’ll be delighted,” she assured me.

  So I gave Danny a ring that Thursday afternoon to see if he could meet up for a chat.

  “Ay, surely,” he said. “I’ll see you in the Plough at half-four. I’m dying for a pint.”

  “Bit early, isn’t it?”

  “Ach, sure, it’s Little Friday, and sure I’ve been doing demolition since seven this mornin’. I’d murder a pint.”

  Fair point, I supposed. I got to the Plough and the Stars bang on half-four, and walked in as Danny was polishing off his pint as another was being set down before him by the barman. He turned to me with a wink and a grin, curled his tongue up, glided it across his top lip, and licked away his Guinness mustache. “Ahhh, lovely. You’re a gentleman and a scholar, Dermot,” he said to the barman, and then to me: “How’s it goin’, big man? What’s the crack?”

  “How’s tricks, Dermot?” I asked the barman.

  “Great, Rory.”

  “Can I get—” I began, but Dermot finished my sentence: “—cranberry and soda,” and already had the soda poured. Top barman. “Did you see United?” he asked, sliding it to me.

  “Ah, they were brilliant.”

  And off he went, anticipating another regular’s needs.

  “C’mon, we’ll grab a table, Danny, do you mind?”

  “Not at all, man.” He swiveled off the stool and planted himself on the bench that ran all the way down the length of the pub.

  I threw a tenner on the bar and grabbed a small stool, then sat on the outside facing Danny.

  “How’s wee Sara?” he asked.

  “She’s great. She said to give you a big hug, I said no fucking way am I hugging that big sweaty culchie bastard.”

  “Wanker.” We laughed.

  “Seriously, though, she sends her best.”

  “Ah, cheers, man. Be sure to tell her a big hello for me. How’s the wee dog of hers?”

  “It’s grand, y’know,” I said, wondering if I should allow myself to wander off topic, “but sometimes it’s a bit much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I grimaced. “Ah, it’s just how attached she is to it, way over the top. She talks to it like it’s her kid or something. When I first met her, the dog was sleeping on the bed!”

  Danny chuckled. “Ah, sure, the Yanks are mental that way, aren’t they? I remember back on the farm, I had a dog I loved more than my own brothers, but we never let her in the house.”

  “Is what I’m saying!” I said, relieved to hear somebody else talking sense. “In Dublin we never let the dog inside—sometimes he’d sneak in and it would be like some special holiday for him, just to see what the kitchen looked like!”

  “Aye, but they do things different here.” Danny sighed.

  “But having her in the apartment, you know, it’s not a big place, so she’s always underfoot, and she’s so needy all the time. She’s always looking at me like she wants something. I’m going mental, to be honest.”

  “Well, you did move in awful quick,” said Danny. “Maybe you should move out and sort of ease back into the living arrangement.”

  “Well, that’s the thing I wanted to tell you about, actually—”

  “What, you need to crash on my couch, is it? Until your renter leaves?” He shook his head. “Ach, I dunno, man, you’ll ruin my chances with the ladies.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” I said seriously. He was so surprised I didn’t respond with banter or slagging that he frowned a little, and then slid his pint an inch away, a symbolic gesture meaning I had his full attention.

  “What is it, then?”

  “You remember I was going to
marry my cousin’s widow for a green card?”

  “Laura, aye. Oh, I see it now—wee Sara’s upset about it.”

  “Well . . . she was a bit when I first told her. But then she made a suggestion that would, em, result in her not being upset anymore.”

  “That being?”

  “That I marry her instead.”

  His eyes bulged for a moment and then he started bellowing with laughter. “Marry your girlfriend? That’s a terrible idea!”

  “Why do you think we moved in together so fast?”

  He stopped laughing, and stared at me. “Ach, come on now, you’re not really going to do it, are you?”

  I grinned sheepishly. “Already did,” I said quietly.

  His eyes opened even wider—and so did his mouth. “Come on now, you’re full of shite!” he said with an anxious laugh. “You never did.”

  “We did. A few days after that dinner at Sara’s when you met the crew from the museum.”

  “You’re joking me!” he said, eyes still wide.

  “I’m telling you, we did.”

  He laughed and slapped the table hard. “And not tell me!”

  “We didn’t tell anyone.”

  “But me! You didn’t tell me! Aren’t I your best mate? Ya fucker! Rory, that’s mad!” He sighed heavily, with a disapproving shake of his head. But then, as I anticipated, he lifted his pint. “Here’s a toast to the most devious little wanker I have the pleasure to think of as a friend even if he doesn’t tell me he’s gone off and got fuckin’ married!” He drained his pint, licked the froth, and held up the glass. “Dermot!”

  Then back to me: “So you’re married,” he said, and grinned. “So . . . how’s it feel?”

  “Feels grand,” I said. “Except the fuckin’ dog.”

  “Ah, fuck the dog,” said Danny.

  “No thanks. Not into bestiality. Not that I’m judging you for the suggestion or anything.”

  He bellowed briefly again. “What’s the worst thing about the dog, then?”