The guy nods. “Got him at a pet store. He lives in our garage ’cause he kept peeing all over the place and chewing up the furniture.”
I don’t know a lot about dogs, but I can tell there’s something not great about this story. I mean, don’t dogs need training? Maybe not as much as poor Hazel, but.
I’m about to say something else when a woman who is walking past us with her German shepherd points across the way. “Oh! I think Brent’s about to have Hazel do Russian Bear,” she says. “Have you seen this?”
I turn and watch. She’s pointing at trucker hat guy. He is kneeling in front of Hazel like they’re having an intense conversation. Then he pats her on the head, stands, and puts his arms out wide. “Russian bear,” he says.
Hazel stands on her hind legs and slowly lifts her paws high above her head. She does look kind of like a bear, I realize, and begrudgingly I grin.
Aisha gasps. “I’ve never seen a dog do that!”
“Isn’t that great?” the woman says. She and her German shepherd have stopped walking.
When Hazel gets down from her pose, the trucker guy holds up a treat, which Hazel gobbles down while he affectionately rubs her head.
The woman who told us to watch smiles. “Brent is so good with her. Ever since his wife left him last year, training Hazel has become his one passion.”
“That was pretty amazing,” Aisha says.
Larry isn’t listening. “Fuck. Matty!” he yells, running over to him. Matty has taken down another dog, this one small and apricot with floppy ears. He is growling over it.
Larry grabs Matty by the collar and drags him a good fifteen feet. He then smacks Matty in the snout and says, “Stupid, fucking, useless mutt.”
“And some people, less amazing,” the woman says, matter-of-fact, and she continues her perimeter walk.
Larry puts Matty on his leash and heads toward the exit.
“You ever have an initial reaction to something and it turns out totally wrong?” I ask Aisha.
She tosses a ball high in the air, and Gomer leaps for it and catches it in his mouth. Then he drops it at Aisha’s feet and looks up at her. “All the time,” she says.
I’m about to tell her all the thoughts I had about Brent after he yelled at Gomer, and then I realize maybe there’s a better way to deal with this.
“Follow me,” I say to Aisha, and she slaps her leg and somehow Gomer knows to walk with us. I slowly approach Brent and Hazel, and as Aisha figures out where we’re going, she puts Gomer on a leash.
I stop a few feet away from Brent, keeping my distance in case he’s gonna get nasty again. “That was so cool,” I say.
“Yeah?” he asks, barely glancing up at me.
“We put our dog on a leash this time,” I say. “Don’t worry.”
“Thanks,” he says, and this time he does look at me and gives me a smile.
“How’d you teach her to do that?”
Brent studies us like he’s not sure what our angle is. Like we’re messing with him. But we aren’t.
“One day Hazel was trying to steal herself a treat that was on the kitchen counter. There was a stool in the way, so when I walked into the kitchen, there she was, looking like a big old white Russian bear.” He laughs. “I figured maybe I could figure out how to turn her bad habit into a good one.”
“That’s awesome. She’s an amazing dog,” Aisha says.
“Thanks,” Brent says, and that stern, nasty demeanor is gone. “Hey, listen. Sorry ’bout that before. I sometimes bark before I think. I know you didn’t mean any trouble.”
“I appreciate it,” I say, genuinely surprised that he even knew I was the owner of the dog he yelled at. “I get that you’re protective of Hazel.”
He nods.
“What about that other guy?”
He shakes his head. “That guy needs to stop bringing his dog here. Seen him a hundred times, and he never gets the message.”
“Fair enough,” I say, and I stick out my hand for him to shake. He does. “Catch you another time.”
When Gomer starts to pant and his tongue begins to hang from his mouth, we decide it’s time to leave. Aisha wrangles him back onto his leash, and we head for the exit.
“So is this heaven?” I ask as we get to the exit.
We turn and look back at the park one last time.
“For me it is,” Aisha says.
I take in the whole scene. Turk’s heaven on earth is filled with laughter and play and barking and roughhousing and dog pee, and as many different breeds of people as there are of dogs. And there are humans who get along, and others who don’t, and some who do the wrong thing, or at least the wrong thing according to me.
I smile. If you had told me two weeks ago in New York that I’d find heaven on earth in a grassy field soaked with dog urine, watching a fat guy smack his misbehaving dog on the snout, I would have laughed at you.
But it’s not two weeks ago. I’m not in New York, and everything’s different now. At least I am, because now I can stop judging everything for long enough to realize where I am.
A perfectly imperfect place.
“For me too,” I say, resting my head on Aisha’s shoulder. “Totally heaven.”
IT’S LATE EVENING when Turk pulls his rental car into the driveway of my dad’s place. A sense of dread seizes my chest. The party is over. Now it’s time for the reckoning. As much as I can’t wait even another second to introduce my dad and Turk, the uncertainty of how my dad will react to learning what happened to his dad makes me want to lock us in the car and never, ever get out.
We carefully navigate the steep driveway in the dark and walk around to the front door. Something about this reunion feels inappropriate for the back door and the kitchen.
My mother answers when we knock. Her face is tense, and her lips are tighter. Part of me wants to grab her and hug her so hard that it’ll wring all the anger out of her and me. Another part wants to run.
“Hi Mom,” I say. “Not sure how to do this, so. Um. This is Turk Braverman. Dad’s dad’s … significant other. Turk, this is my mom, Renee Warren.”
She sticks her hand out tentatively, like she’s not sure if this is an appropriate response to what I’ve said. Thank God for Turk, who gently takes her hand and then steps forward and hugs her tense body.
Then the three of us walk in, and I squeeze her shoulder as I walk by. It’s like a squeeze question: Are we okay? I’m pretty sure we’re not. She doesn’t respond in any way I notice.
“He’s resting,” she says, as I point to my dad’s bedroom door.
Turk turns to her as if to ask permission. She nods ever so slightly.
Turk and I walk to the door. He knocks, and it takes Dad a long, long time to answer.
He looks at least a year older than when I left. His unshaven face sags, sallow. I think, No. This is not the person I’ve been talking to on the phone.
I hug him as tightly as I feel I can without hurting him. He smells stale, unshowered.
“You came back,” he says, his words labored as he squeezes me. “Yay.”
“Dad,” I say, pulling back from the hug. “This is Turk Braverman. He knew your dad.”
My dad just stands there, like he doesn’t know how to react. Turk sticks out his hand. My dad barely shakes it.
“Would you mind if I came in and talked with you for a bit?” Turk asks.
My dad looks scared. He looks at me. I nod. He looks at my mom, who nods too.
Even with his frailties, I am used to Turk being decisive in every action, every movement. So watching the way he reacts to my father is stunning to me. I can feel his uncertainty. I see it in his tentative glances, and the way he avoids looking at my dad. How weird this must be for him, I think.