East Montpelier
We sent Mother off in grand style last Saturday. Just a few hours after the presiding bishop of the American Episcopal church spoke beautifully at the royal wedding about the redemptive power of love, the folks of the Episcopal church in Montpelier, in a beautiful funeral service, expressed their loving memories of a many-faceted character. There were dozens of old friends from everywhere, as well as family.
Now the house is silent. The kids have flown home to Olympia, Wash., and Fort Smith, Ark. The dishes in the dishwasher are ready to put away. I’m looking for my corkscrew, favorite coffee cup and the pen that goes with my grocery-shopping list. No rush; they’ll turn up.
There are three of us still here in the living room: I; the dog, Kiki; and a white granite urn that I cannot believe holds the remains of all the incredible vitality and creativity that so enriched my life for almost 60 years. I’m reclining in my lounge chair. Kiki, heedless, snoozes between my lap desk and my feet on a fleece draped over my knees, now and then sighing and changing positions. Sometimes she hangs her head over the top of the desk — whether to sympathize with the distress she must sense, or to help with the crossword puzzle, I can’t tell — covering up the clues at the top of the page with her frowsy muzzle.
She and I have been cohabiting for just over a year now, and we’re starting to act like old folks. Each of us pretty much knows the other’s moves, around the clock. We differ on a few things: For example, we both know there’s a walk in the offing each afternoon; but I know the time and she doesn’t. I think she’s found daylight saving time and the length of sunlight confusing. In any case, beginning about 2, she starts jumping eagerly onto the desk. We leave, finally, between 3 and 5.
I’ve noticed also that she has several modes, none of which by itself defines her, but all together make her a fascinating companion. I have a name for each one. They might as well be in Urdu for all the impression they make on her.
She’s an irrepressible extrovert, a characteristic reinforced by the people she runs up to with tail awiggle. Oftentimes, though, her paws are muddy, and her attentions less than welcome. Either way, I call her Duchess, after Robert Browning’s poem about the late wife who gave her attentions too easily.
Her major activity, since she’s living with a relatively sedentary octogenarian, is cuddling, whenever he gets up from his word processor and moves to his lounge chair. Here her name becomes “SZ” after the late Hungarian character actor, S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, of whom it was said that when he came onscreen, people began smiling before he spoke.
The name “Hoomey” is reserved for the still-too-frequent occasions that she chews whatever fabric is nearest her active jaws. I come upon the scene of the crime, express a variety of unhappinesses depending upon the severity of the offense. The ears go back, she shrinks in fear. Who, me?
Her Aunt Martha gave her a plastic ball studded with spines like a hedgehog. Against all odds, it seems indestructible. She loves me to throw or kick it, but hasn’t quite figured out that she has to drop it within my reach for a repeat. So she tooths it for a while and drops it, hoping it’ll roll toward me. When it doesn’t, she goes into a protracted imitation of Aristotle soberly contemplating the bust of Homer. If I move anywhere in the house, she’s right behind me or even between my feet. Her name changes then to Shadow. When I prepare food, she becomes a sous chef, standing on her hind feet with her nose a few inches below the level of the countertop. If she ever learns to jump up there, I’m cooked.
It’s probably indicative of her feeling at home here that she protects it with a comic fierceness, firing out the back door and into the field with a growl and reminding me of my favorite character in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine: Guard Duck, a helmeted duck with an anger management problem. Since Kiki’s mission here began, there hasn’t been a single threatening alien anywhere out behind the house. Hubbard Park, where we walk almost daily, is notorious for its great number of dangerous predators. But they quail and fly before her swift circuits of our perimeter. I haven’t been attacked even once.
“Terrier” and “terror,” surprisingly, don’t derive from the same root. Webster’s describes Kiki’s family of dogs as bred to dig up small prey, from mice to foxes, making them vulnerable to hunters or their hounds. I explained to her when she arrived that the job description had changed; she was instead to be simply a cheerful lifelong companion to a not too unpleasant but lonely old man. So far, so good.
Willem Lange can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
