A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

Once out of the ward, I dropped to my knees and hugged my dog. Her ears were still flattened in fear, but her tail began wagging, and she leaned into me, shoving her massive head into my chest.

“You’re safe now,” I said.

As happy as she was to see me, she caught a whiff of the ham awaiting and dug her nose into the tote bag.

Billie waited just long enough for Cloud to get a big mouthful, then slipped a muzzle on her and fastened it. “Let’s sign her out.”

In the crowded lobby, a young Hispanic boy came over and asked why my dog was wearing a cage on her nose and what I was going to name her.

“Her name is Cloud.”

“Cool. Can I pet her?”

I went to the desk while Billie stood with Cloud, but I heard her tell the little boy not to pet the dog, because it was dangerous. Coming from Billie, that comment spun me around. She believed that? Or she was following the rules.

A young man with a frightened-looking chow mix stood beside me, furious at the woman behind the desk, who told him that the fee to surrender a dog was $35. “Fuck that. I’ll tie the dog up outside.”

Billie told him to leave the dog, that she would pay the fee.

“Not again,” said the woman behind the desk. Because Billie knew her, she expedited the process, and in just minutes we were walking out the door with a freed Cloud. After the din inside, noisy East Harlem seemed welcoming. I waited for Cloud to relieve herself at the curb. Distracted by the world of normal smells, she seemed overcome with the information she received from the sidewalk, the fire hydrant, the occasional city tree. We say someone has “come to her senses” to mean that person has come around to acknowledge reality, but here a creature was literally coming to her senses, and it was deeply moving. I was in no hurry to pull her along; I took my cue from Cloud. I could see that she was torn between her interest in what was around her, and her desire to be in my arms. I crouched and Cloud simply leaned against me. Billie bent down and scratched Cloud’s ears and took off the muzzle, which earned her a lick and a lean.

I realized that I was laughing. Then Billie was, too, trying to stay upright while my enormous dog toppled us.

Billie started toward the car, but I said we should give Cloud a walk first. We turned east to walk to the river. The wind had died down, and there was a feeling of the coming spring, or so I imagined in my happiness. It wasn’t as if early crocuses had appeared, just that the air had a softness that had been absent before. A slight breeze off the river reached Cloud and her head lifted. I realized that my dog had not set foot on grass since the temperament test five months ago. A scabby park around the corner would do for now. It also had a long sand pit for broad-jumping. Billie found a stick and threw it, but Cloud was no retriever. She stayed in the pit and rolled on her back in the sand.

I opened my tote bag and took out her celebration dinner, the pound of Polish sliced ham. After she swallowed it in a couple of gulps, Billie offered her one of our scones. I brought out a bottle of water with a squirt top, and Cloud drank from the arc of water I squeezed for her.

A police boat was patrolling the river alongside us. Across the river was Wards Island, which housed the Manhattan Psychiatric Center and Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center. The light brown brick buildings were forbidding, with long rows of barred windows and the look of inherent desolation. They seemed a monument to suffering and despair, but they could not take the shine off this day.

We walked to the car and put Cloud in the backseat, which Billie had covered with a clean quilt. But Cloud insinuated herself into the front by pushing between the bucket seats until I could not see Billie at the wheel. Before she started the car, she took out her phone. “I know someone else who would like to be in on this.” She pointed the phone at Cloud, virtually in the front seat, and took a couple of photos. “McKenzie will appreciate these.”

And she would know.

We buckled in and headed up the FDR to the Willis Avenue Bridge — the way to beat the toll — to get out of the city.

Billie turned on the radio — Lolawolf.

“You know,” Billie said, “you ask yourself what you want. And you try your first choice first. If you can’t get away with that, then you go to the next thing you want, and try that. But you must try the first choice first.”

“I’ve taken risks. Just a different kind. I used to write poetry.”

Billie howled with laughter. “You make me think of what that guy said, that if it weren’t for poetry, eighth-grade girls in corduroy jumpers and black tights would have to make some friends.”

“I wasn’t that bad. I just liked to read, and I tried to write now and then. I tried it, is my point. When I saw that I wasn’t getting anywhere, that’s when I started the work I do now.”

“You’ve never told me what your research is about.”

“Pathological altruism.” Just saying it aloud centered me. It reminded me that I was working on something worth the attention, that I had a life that included work worth doing.

“Sounds like an oxymoron. How can altruism be pathological?”

“It doesn’t just do damage to others, it also damages oneself. Think: the tireless worker for others who doesn’t care for herself and gets sick. I think I have found a statistical link between excessive volunteerism and victimology, the pairing of accomplished, intelligent, motivated women who are preyed upon because of the depth of their compassion. It blinds them to a type of predator who is keenly aware of that trait; it predisposes the woman to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think predators seek out women with an overabundance of exactly what they lack. Predators feed off compassion.”

I looked to see how Billie had registered all that I had said. She did not say something flippant; rather, she looked as though she was thinking it over. Then she asked if I thought that she was a pathological altruist. Did I feel that she set herself up for being victimized in this way?

“It’s hard for me to see you as anyone’s victim.”

“Is this what Bennett saw in you?”

Could I give her an honest answer? But what would that be? I’d been turning the question over since Bennett’s death. “Maybe I’m not the best judge of that.”

She veered off onto the exit ramp for Cross River and Katonah.

“Where are we going?”

“We’ve got time. There’s a really nice spot about three miles up where we can give Cloud another walk. Off leash.”

Ward Pound Ridge Reservation. We passed the reservoir right off the exit, and when we made the turn to take the walk, we saw no other cars parked at the entrance. Cloud was delirious in her discoveries of country scents; we let her drink from the stream. I thanked Billie for letting Cloud have this intermission between shelter and sanctuary.

“There’s a part of me that wants to take her and keep driving,” I said. “Take her to some other state and start life over, away from everything that’s happened in New York.” I let my guard down just that much.

“But you would never do that.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I would.”

I returned my attention to my dog, who was loving her freedom.

A deer stood on the path several yards ahead of us. It didn’t bolt. Cloud froze, did not give chase. “Good girl,” I said. We stayed silent and didn’t move, until people talking on the path behind us startled the whole lot of us, and the deer took off into the woods.

“We should get going,” Billie said. “Better to arrive while there’s still light.”

We drove the rest of the way without music or talk to New Milford. Down the dirt road to For Pitties’ Sake, bouncing in ruts from melting ice, we pulled up to the raised ranch house and parked alongside other cars in front of the garage. Alfredo had heard the car and came to the door to greet us. He handed Cloud a biscuit, then another.