“Usually they came back in a fluster because they’d had an adventure—seen a deer grazing, or Minnie had taken off over the hills and Leland had had to chase her. He never seemed to mind. They loved each other, and whenever he sat down on the couch, she’d follow and climb right onto his lap. He was very sweet to her, and sometimes when I was out of a room I’d hear him talking to her as if she were human. I liked that too about him—liked knowing he enjoyed the dog as much as I did and didn’t see her as any kind of imposition.
“And then she… died.” My throat closed quickly and I had to stand up. My chest heaved and in a second I was crying hard. “She just died.”
Wyatt got up and put his arms around me. Such a nice man, but no arms would have done any good then. All I could think of was that dear, dear animal and what a good friend she’d been. How she brought her chew bone to my feet and said with happy eyes, “Let’s play! Throw it!” Or the time she was sleeping on the couch and, shifting, slid slowly down and onto the floor without ever waking. How slobbily she ate food but didn’t like to be watched when she was outside doing her business. How gentle and sweet she was.
“That sunny morning she had staggered through the door, blood pouring out of her mouth. She collapsed on the floor and had one last, agonizing seizure. It was over so fast.
“As Leland ran in shouting for her, she twitched a few times and then was still. She’d been nosing around something, he said, but then she’d put whatever it was in her mouth and began eating it. Seeing that, he went after her to get it away, but she ran off toward home, delighted to be naughty right in front of him.
“Poison. Poisoned meat. The veterinarian in Klosterneuburg, the man who’d given her her rabies shot and told me what to feed her, pulled off his rubber gloves and threw them onto the examining table in total disgust. Sometimes it happened. Sometimes an animal hater bought a nice piece of meat, laced it with poison, and put it where he knew it would be found.
“I was destroyed. Yet even in the darkest, saddest moments I thanked God Leland was there. He took over everything and gave me all the space and time I needed in which to grieve. And though he was wholly there, most of the time he stayed invisible. But somehow he also sensed when I needed him in the room with me. Then he’d hold my hand and talk to me, and from the things he said, I knew her death was as terrible to him as it was to me. I had nothing but pain inside, so he supplied all the other necessities for both of us—love, strength all around, and a solidness that I couldn’t get enough of. What must it be like to lose a child? How in his own fear and failing health did he find the strength and goodness to keep me afloat? Are there really such precious people on earth? Here was one. He was proof.
“I thought I’d loved him before, Wyatt, but after Minnie died and he saved me, whatever I felt before was absolutely nothing compared to this. Do you know what a shochet is?”
“A what?”
“A shochet. That’s a kosher butcher. You know, the Jews do their slaughtering very differently. The whole procedure is done in a way so the animal feels no pain. They use a knife called a chalef, which means ‘sharp-no-nick.’ Another way of translating it is ‘that which from life to death transforms.’
“What are you talking about, Arlen?”
I could see concern in his eyes, as if he were afraid my sanity had begun to wobble.
“They’re important words, and they’ll mean a lot when I’ve finished telling you the whole story. ‘Shochet’ and ‘chalef.’ ”
“Shochet and chalef. Okay.”
“You know the saying ‘Never get comfortable till you hear the other shoe drop?’ I was still staggering from Minnie’s death when Leland came in a few mornings later with the mail. There was a large manila envelope from my uncle Len Mira in West Lafayette; he was my mother’s brother, and I hadn’t heard from him in years. Inside was a small, thick leather book with the word DIARY in gold letters on the cover. There was also a note from Len saying it was Mother’s. Dad had sent it to him years before, right after Mom’s death. He said he was getting on now, and though he’d never read it because he didn’t think it was any of his business, he thought I should have the book.”
“Why didn’t your father keep it?”
“Because Mom and her brother were extremely close, and Dad probably thought it was the one thing of hers he could give Len that mattered. Len’s a shy man and I believed him when he said he hadn’t read it. But I did and instantly suffered another death—my own. How about some coffee?”
I started to get up but Wyatt pulled me back down. “Come on, Arlen, you aren’t leaving after that. What are you talking about? Forget the coffee.”
“All right. My mother and I were real pals. She died when I was a teenager and it was one of the worst traumas of my life. I never got over it. There were so many things I needed to do with her and tell her. But one day she was just gone. I wasn’t even around—I was away at school. I loved and trusted her more than anyone because, most important, she was my friend. The Girls. That’s what Dad called us, the Girls. We were always together, and I think he was often jealous. But she died just when I was beginning to become a woman. You remember what those first teenage years were like—so much coming at you at once and you had no idea how to handle it. Sex, figuring out who you are, what you want to do—all the biggies. Suddenly my only guiding light was dead, and who was there to turn to? Definitely not my father, who was a good guy but very straight, and totally blind to who I was. My friend Rose became a good substitute later on, but for a few years I was on my own after Mom’s death, and I did a lot of wrong things.
“I’m getting off the track. I thought we were as close as a mother and daughter could be. At least that comforted me when I thought about her dying so young: at least we loved and appreciated each other when she was alive. She was my biggest supporter and believed in me no matter what. In return, she knew I told her everything and was as honest as I could be. It was a good relationship, Wyatt. I don’t know many kids who get along so well with their parents. When I was still famous, an interviewer once asked me what I’d wish for if I could have one wish and whether I’d give up my career for it. I immediately said yes, because my wish was to bring Mom back to life. That would have been worth ten careers.
“So you can imagine what a wonderful, unexpected treasure it was to suddenly have her diary in my hands. It was that great woman alive again. Now I could hear, across all the lost years, what she had to say about things we’d known and shared. It was a remarkable thing to possess, a real gift from God. And coming so soon after Minnie’s death, it instantly lifted a whole ton of the weight off my soul. I would read it in little bits, savor each piece, do a page a day, and that way stretch it out a long time.
“The first entry I read said, ‘The best thing about fall is that Arlen leaves for school and I don’t have to be around her for a while.’ ”
“What?” Wyatt sounded as surprised as I felt the first time my eyes read those words on the diary page.
“That was the first entry. It almost didn’t bother me. I thought she must’ve been depressed, or whatever, and didn’t really mean it. I could remember times when she got on my nerves. So what?
“But this was different and she meant it, all right! Because there were other sections, too many of them, that said the same thing. I’ve memorized them. Like ‘My daughter keeps telling me things about her life that I don’t want to hear and that make me like her even less.’ And ‘How many times have I written in here that I would give anything to leave my husband and daughter, go off, and start again? Have a second chance to try and make another life that means something?’ ”