After he left, I lay down on the living room carpet and looked into Blister's eyes. Since the attack we'd had a special bond, and he tended to stick close to me almost all the time, as if he were still looking for the protection I had not, at the crucial instant, been able to offer.
“What am I going to do, Blister?” I asked him. “I'm in trouble with the Dutchman again.”
Blister wagged his tail, once, and gave me no answer, which was understandable. Being in trouble with the Dutchman was my own personal code, one I shared with no one, not even Genevieve, my closest friend at work. I'd met the Dutchman just before Phil and I got engaged. I was in school for the summer session, and he was in one of my classes. I called him the Dutchman as a joke — he'd been born in this country, the same as I was— because his hair was so blond, his cheeks so round and red, that he looked like a grown-up version of that kid with his finger in the dike. His name was Albert, and when he sat down next to me in class, my whole skin registered his presence. I could feel when he was looking at me and when he wasn't, and at breaks, in the hallway, we talked and made jokes about the professor and the whole time were really talking about something else, we were talking about each other. Class met Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and for me it was as if the rest of the week didn't exist. I wasn't even alive on those days. But when I saw Albert I was. He knew I had a boyfriend, but he could also tell how I felt, and so he was confused, and bided his time. And I was this close to cheating on Phil. I mean my body was already cheating. It had already made the decision to be attracted to someone else, and the rest of me was only postponing the inevitable.
At the end of July, before the inevitable happened, Phil proposed. I loved him then, as I do now, and I said yes. When Albert asked me out a few days later, I said, “I'm engaged,” and we stopped talking in the hallways.
Ever since then, whenever I've fallen victim to these few passing crushes and summertime barbecue attractions, I've said jokingly to myself, I'm in trouble with the Dutchman, and remembering the romance of Phil's proposal, I've been able to shut it off with no problem, as easily as turning a faucet.
This was not like that at all.
We received a notice in the mail that a date had been set for the dangerous-dog trial. It was at city hall, with a judge and everything, and Phil offered to take a day off work to go with me, but I told him I was fine. Ever since the attack he'd been treating me like a delicate vase he was carrying from one room to another, something too decorative and valuable for everyday use, and it was driving me insane. I dressed with care, wearing loose pants that could be rolled up, if necessary, to show my ugly scar. I'd expected the trial to be in a regular courtroom, like on TV, but it was just a conference room full of tables, with the judge sitting behind one at the back of the room. She was a well-manicured woman in her late thirties, wearing a yellow wool suit. The animal-control officer was there, and Jean-Michel and his brother's wife and their daughter, and their lawyer. Jean-Michel's brown eyes flashed when he saw me, and I knew that whatever I was feeling, he was feeling it too.
The animal-control officer acted as the prosecutor. Jean-Michel's family, the Chevaliers, had hired a cheap lawyer from the look of his suit; he slouched there with his fedora on the table in front of him, next to his briefcase. The little girl, Mireille, glowered at me. The judge explained to all of us that the hearing would be held in confidence, and that we would have to leave the room when other people were testifying. They began with Mrs. Chevalier, Jean-Michel's sister-in-law, and the rest of us filed outside. Mireille put her small hand in Jean-Michel's.
The lobby was filled with prostitutes and petty criminals and drunk drivers in to pay their fines, still reeling and wasted from the look of it. Everybody's eyes were red and their clothing disheveled and too bright. It seemed natural that the three of us, being the only more or less normal people, would stick together. We sat together on a bench, and the girl looked at me and said evenly, “You are an ugly woman.”
“Mireille, parles pas comme ça,” Jean-Michel said. He picked her up and sat her in his lap, his long fingers at her hips. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the fine dark hairs on his forearms, and I wanted to touch them, but didn't. “How is your leg?” he said.
“It's okay.”
“My sister-in-law, she is very angry.”
“Yeah, she looked pretty angry in there,” I said.
Jean-Michel shook his head. “She hires this lawyer. But he is not a trial lawyer. He is an immigrant lawyer who helped her and my brother come into this country. He does not know anything about dangerous dogs.”
“I see,” I said.
“She also hired an expert witness. She will be here shortly.”
“What kind of expert witness?”
“A dog psychologist.”
“You're kidding,” I said.
Jean-Michel laughed. “I wish, but no,” he said. “She is going to testify that Sweetpea is not really a dangerous dog, only bored, and that with more activities she will not bite anybody ever again. My sister-in-law is going to arrange these activities.”
“Activities?” I said. “Like Scrabble?”
He shrugged. “I don't know,” he said.
In his lap, Mireille squirmed in my direction and scrunched up her face. “Is your dog dead?” she asked me.
“Blister? No, he's doing fine.”
“Too bad,” she said.
Jean-Michel apologized for his niece's behavior, then scooped her up and walked over to the other side of the room. It looked like he was giving her a good talking-to, which she certainly deserved. The door to the trial room opened and his sister-in-law came out, looking as if she'd like to hang me upside down by my toenails. The bailiff called my name.
I was put under oath and the animal-control officer asked me to explain, as simply as I could, what happened, which I did; then he asked me to show my leg to the court, and I did that, too. The scar was red and raised. “Ouch,” the judge said. Then the immigration lawyer stood up. He was a mournful, thin man, wearing a pink shirt and an ugly tie. It made me feel sorry for the Chevaliers, that this was the best lawyer they could find to protect their dog.
“Ms. Grunwald, will you look at these two pictures for me?” he said. He held two color photographs in front of my face; one was of Sweetpea, the other of a dog I didn't know, around the same size and color. “Can you tell me which of these dogs attacked you?”
I pointed at Sweetpea.
“Is it possible you're confused? These dogs look quite alike, and one of them is Sweetpea, and the other dog lives two doors down.”
I shook my head, and he looked disappointed. I saw that he'd hoped to stymie me with this line of questioning.
“Give your responses out loud, please,” the judge said.
“That's Sweetpea on the left.”
The lawyer put his photographs back on the table, next to his fedora. He looked defeated. Was that his best hope, the trick with the dog photos? It was pathetic.
“Ms. Grunwald, have the Chevaliers paid all your medical expenses and those of your dog?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you really think they deserve further punishment?”
“Objection!” the animal-control officer said, and the judge rolled her eyes.
I leaned forward and looked into his mournful face. “No,” I said.
As I left the room I saw the dog psychologist, a portly middle-aged woman in a green dress. All her accessories were canine: dog-shaped earrings, dog-tag necklace, a brooch in the shape of a bone. She was consulting some notes in a nervous manner. I looked over at Jean-Michel and shrugged to indicate, I did the best I could. He smiled, and driving home I kept thinking about that smile.