A. Rich: The Hand That Feeds You

Yes or no:

I want everyone to be happy.

I know what people need without their having to ask me.

I have given blood.

I would donate a kidney to save a close friend’s life.

I would donate a kidney to save a stranger’s life.

I generally appear sincere.

I give more than I receive.

People take advantage of me.

People should generally be forgiven.

Today I would not answer any of these questions the way I did a year ago. And I’m the one who wrote the test. I was going to be the person who changed the definition of a predator by identifying what makes a victim. The test: it was part of my master’s thesis in forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. A philosopher once said, “The threshold is the place to pause.” I was on the threshold of having everything I wanted.

Here is the question I would ask today:

Can I forgive myself?

• • •

The lecture had been about victimology. Does a symbiotic quirk in the brain of the abuser also exist in the emotional makeup of the victim? The model the professor used was battered woman syndrome, a syndrome that the professor pointed out appears nowhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-5 ), but does appear in criminal statutes. Why? I thought I had the answer.

The morning had galvanized me; I couldn’t wait to get home and back to my research. I felt a little guilty about wanting my place to myself again so I stopped at Fortunato Brothers and bought Bennett a bag of pignoli cookies.

My apartment was on the top floor of a clapboard row house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I didn’t live with the hipsters; my block was old-world. Italian women perpetually swept their sidewalks, and retired wiseguys played chess at Fortunato’s. At a headstone store a block away they also sold loaves of bread. Bennett called it Breadstone. Rumor was the man who ran it used to work for one of the big mob families. His crew, no one under eighty, sat out front on plastic chairs smoking cigars. The ice-cream truck played the theme from The Godfather. There was a saying: “It’s not HBO, it’s our neighborhood.”

Sixty-eight steps spiraled to my front door. As I climbed, I smelled the ethnic potpourri: sizzling garlic on the first landing, then boiling cabbage on the second, then frying chorizo, and finally my floor, where I never cooked anything.

The door was open. Bennett must have gone out and forgotten to jiggle the broken knob as I’d asked him to. The dogs could have gotten out. I had three: Cloud, a Great Pyrenees that I called the Great White Canvas, and Chester and George, two goofy, needy pit-bull mixes that I fostered. The dogs were the only bone of contention between Bennett and me. He wanted me to stop trying to rescue every stray at the expense of my work, but I suspected he really couldn’t bear dog hair on his sweaters. Bennett was always cold, even in summer. He claimed he had Raynaud’s syndrome, in which the veins in one’s extremities constrict, resulting in cold hands and feet. Bennett feared the advanced form in which one’s fingers and toes can atrophy. But his hands were never cold on my skin. By contrast, I ran hot. I was the first to wear sandals in spring, I never wore a scarf, I never caught a chill in air-conditioning. This was not because I carried any bulk.

As I shouldered open my front door against the delirious, wagging greeting waiting for me on the other side, I noticed rose petals strewn across the foyer. Had Bennett scattered them? It seemed cheesy, unlike him. A man who remembers everything you tell him doesn’t need to resort to a cliché. Bennett saw and understood me in a way I’d not known before. It wasn’t just paying attention, it was that he knew before I did what I would want, whether it was on a menu or a screen or a disc. Of course, this knowledge extended into the bedroom.

I bent to pick up some of the petals and saw that they were paw prints. So: not a tired romantic gesture after all. What now appeared to be an abstract floral stencil across the hardwood floor led all the way to the bedroom. The fosters, Chester and George, had gotten into the garbage? Dogs track leftover puttanesca sauce throughout an apartment — another cliché I rejected. Chester and George were gentlemen, though Bennett was irritated by the half-chewed bones they left strewn about the apartment. His tripping over bones and squeaky toys was another reason he wanted me to find them a permanent home or give them back to the East Harlem Animal Shelter I’d rescued them from. A donation I had made to a local animal-rescue organization had apparently landed me on a mass e-mail list, and ever since I’d received near-daily photos and profiles of dogs with hours to live if I did not take action.

The pit bulls, Chester and George, had been on death row, waiting to be euthanized. In the photo they leaned in to each other and each extended a paw in greeting. It was more than I could resist. When I went to the shelter, their kennel cards identified them as “no concern.” A kennel worker told me that meant the best temperament of all. They’d done nothing to anyone except give love and want it in return. I filled out the paperwork, paid two adoption fees intending only to foster, and the next day, Cloud and I picked them up in a Zipcar.

Bennett couldn’t tolerate the constant chaos of three big dogs in a small apartment, and maybe he was right, the dogs were taking over my life. Were these rescues a form of pathological altruism? This was the basis of my research, a test to identify victims whose selflessness and hyper-empathy were so extreme that they attracted predators.

Bennett needed order to function, while I needed messy, lovable bedlam. When he visited from Montreal, he hung his oxford-cloth shirts and chinos, while I left my leggings, vegan-leather vest, and layers of tank tops crumpled on the bed. He emptied the dishwasher he had filled and run, while I left my dirty dishes in the sink. Hardest for me, he didn’t like the dogs sleeping on the bed with us. He didn’t like the dogs and they knew it. Dogs do. They obeyed, but Bennett gave his commands more harshly than was necessary. I had told him so more than once. How were we all going to live together?

Cloud was the first to reach me. She used her bear size to muscle out the boys. She not only failed to greet me in her normal exuberant way by putting her giant paws on my shoulders, she was clearly agitated and frightened. Her ears were flat against her head and she circled at my feet. One side of her looked as though she had leaned against a freshly painted wall. But I hadn’t painted, and if I had, I would not have chosen red.