A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

“What did you spend on that casket?” Vanessa asked her mother.

Lisa shushed her, so their mother didn’t have to.

“Seriously,” Vanessa said. “You need a new furnace.”

Renee said, “Drop it.”

Then the priest approached. Father Bernard greeted the family and nodded my way when Renee introduced me. He held Renee’s hands and spoke softly to her, the time-worn words of solace. When he turned from her to walk to the pulpit, I debated whether I would kneel along with the congregants during the service or keep my seat. I wasn’t Catholic, but I didn’t want to draw any more attention in the small town. Even if I knelt, I would not be able to take communion. Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t.

The funeral mass was in Latin — Renee told me she had asked for that — and I let the sounds wash over me without meaning. I found the rituals soothing, even though they were not my rituals.

The last funeral I had attended was Kathy’s, a “green” funeral. No coffin, no headstone; we carried her shroud-wrapped body on a handcart deep into a forest in her native Virginia to a designated area where we, her friends, dug the grave. Kathy weighed practically nothing at the end. We lifted her off the cart and laid her in the ground. After we filled the grave, we scattered leaves over the freshly turned earth and brushed away our footprints with branches.

After this service, the priest summoned several young men from the congregation to carry the coffin out of the church. It was customary for the family to follow before everyone else, but was I family?

At the graveside service the priest invited the mourners to make “a suitable gesture of farewell.” Renee, crying quietly, threw a single white rose onto the lowered coffin. Lisa threw a handful of dirt into the grave. Vanessa looked down on her brother’s coffin. I had the terrible feeling that she was going to spit on it. But she simply turned away without doing a thing. I wondered if she would yank me back if I stepped forward to say a farewell. I had nothing to say, and nothing to scatter on his coffin.

Vanessa helped her mother leave the graveside. Lisa stood off by herself crying.

I was not a good enough actress to convince Lisa that I shared her loss, but I tried to express something along those lines anyway. She thanked me and said she would miss him, even though she’d already been missing him all those years since he had left the family. And then she said it upset her that his death was so violent.

“Can I ask you something? Was he ever violent?”

“What do you mean?” Lisa seemed surprised by my question. “Was he violent with you?”

I told her that the Boston police think he murdered a woman.

“No one told us that. Who do they think he killed?”

“His fiancée.”

“Then who the hell are you?”

“He had more than one.”

“I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

Vanessa noticed her sister’s agitation and left their mother surrounded by friends. She came over to ask what was going on.

“She says Jimmy’s a murderer,” Lisa said. “That he killed his fiancée. His other fiancée. How do you like that?”

“I don’t know who you are or what you want from us, but you can leave right now,” Vanessa said.

She looked and sounded so much like Bennett that it felt as though he were ordering me to leave his own funeral. It was the last time I would obey him.

Before I left for Maine, I had contacted animal sanctuaries that might take Cloud, starting with the gold standard — Best Friends, in Kanab, Utah. I wanted Cloud as close to me as possible, and I thought they might be able to refer me to a suitable place in the Northeast. But every place I tried had a wait list up to a year. And since a “dangerous dog” would be kept by itself and not allowed to play with other dogs or socialize with people other than the handler who would take the dog out to eliminate, it would be a life of solitary confinement. I knew people in the rescue world who felt that there was something worse than euthanasia, and this was what they meant. Dogs went crazy in such a situation, and the manifestations of their misery were many. Could I subject my dog to this? Was choosing the lesser evil the best I could do for Cloud? What was the lesser evil? I wanted McKenzie’s opinion.

I was still sleeping on Steven’s foldout. I made myself coffee and phoned McKenzie’s office.

“Laurence McKenzie’s office,” a familiar voice answered.

“Billie?”

“Yes, may I take a message?”

“It’s me, Morgan.”

“Morgan! We were wondering where you’ve been.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Helping out. His secretary quit on him.” She was making herself indispensable to him.

“When will he be back?”

“Faye, stop clicking your teeth,” Billie said to McKenzie’s dog. “Sorry, what did you ask me?”

“I wanted to talk to McKenzie about Cloud. Every sanctuary I contacted has a waiting list.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m wondering if George was the luckier one,” I admitted.

“You weren’t asking that two weeks ago.”

“I need to talk to McKenzie. Can you ask him?”

“He’s right here. I’m in the outer office. I’ll get him for you.”

Before I could register this, McKenzie was telling me it was good to hear my voice.

I told him why I was calling and asked if he would meet me at Crown Vic’s after work. The former police-car service station on South Second Street was new, thus neutral, ground. I hoped he would not bring Billie; I wanted time with him alone. The thought was obscene under these circumstances. We were going to talk about what makes a dog’s life worth living, and jealousy had no place here. But even with my dog’s life at stake, I entertained petty thoughts and was hurt that he preferred Billie to me.

He was sitting at the bar when I walked in. I was glad he’d chosen a seat close to the fireplace; I was freezing. He jumped down off the stool and greeted me with an outstretched hand. Quite a change from the hug he’d given me the last time I’d seen him. He slid his glass over to me. “Try this,” he said, a surprisingly intimate gesture after the handshake, I thought. “It’s called Angry Orchard Keeper. Whiskey with hard cider.”

Dutifully, I took a sip. I nodded yes, and he ordered one for me, too.

It was still early enough that the dinner crowd hadn’t come in. I liked sitting on a barstool next to him, warmed by a fire. I let myself relax into it for just a moment, before putting my moral dilemma on the table.

“You know your dog better than anyone,” he said. “There’s no clean right or wrong decision here.”

“Maybe George was the luckier one,” I said, testing.

“For what it’s worth, I think that we owe our dogs the best life we can give them, and when that life isn’t good enough, we release them with love. I don’t mean to suggest that that is an easy moment to identify — when it isn’t good enough.”

I saw that he refused to be prescriptive, and I was grateful for that. He was just vague enough that I could make the sentiment my own, if I chose to do so. I also saw that he would not judge me for whichever choice I made. I was grateful for that, too.

“Have you had to make a choice like this?” I asked.

“I had to decide whether I would live. After my wife died.”

“Steven told me about the diving accident.”

“I’m the one who persuaded her to take up diving. She was willing to conquer her fear of deep water for me.”

I wanted to be the kind of listener he was for me. No judgment. No easy consolation. I let him talk.