set the puppy down while I stood up. Then we squeezed the breath out of each other. Ever since roughly the middle of Clinton’s first term, when hugging seems to have become acceptable mainstream practice among straight or straight-acting men, we’ve always hugged upon greeting and saying goodbye.
“So who’s the new dog? Why didn’t you email me? I mean a puppy—that’s an event.”
“Nothing I could have written would be like Betsy in person. Isn’t she just a little—aren’t you Betsy?” Dad dangled his hand near the puppy’s mouth and little miniature Betsy leapt up to chew on it with her clean new teeth.
“Doesn’t look like a mutt,” I said. Usually it was only mutts—the only true dogs, according to dad’s former idea—that he rescued from the pound.
“Sometimes, Dwight, you reach a certain age—you just want a yellow lab. You’re willing to buy one. You’ve worked all your life, you’ve raised two ungrateful children.” The friendliness of his cynicism was the nice, but not the consistent thing about it. “You’ve at last divorced the woman you love. The woman well-lost . . .”
A serious reader, dad had gone through many volumes in his office, and from his tone of voice more than from my own strictly limited erudition I could sometimes tell when he was alluding.
“I’ve lost something too,” I said, or more mumbled it maybe.
Together we drove to the club, dogs and puppy panting away in the backseat. And probably here is the place to explain that when I was a kid we had another dog: a large fit golden retriever named Mister, very regal in the face, with a pale coat flaring in cowlicks all across his back and an attitude of stoical sadness that only being played with or petted could placate for a while. Mom and dad were physically shy with me and Alice except when spanking us, and we were also shy with each other, unless sumo wrestling or playing karate, so that all of us showed Mister an affection that was plainer and more extravagant than anything that passed between us actual humans except in times of crisis. Yet this attention to Mister seemed also to be the emblem of our basic mutual filial thing, implying as it did what large volumes of love-grade emotion must get trafficked invisibly between us if this was how we treated—I mean, nice as he was— our dog. Our feeling for Mister kind of took the measure of our hearts, is my guess.
“Only nine holes,” dad assured the dogs when we left them with windows half down and a biscuit each.
Out on the links, typically we’d discuss which club for me to use, then I’d whack the ball. Then dad would hit his own ball. Then we would walk in the direction of the errant ball and the well-placed ball, discussing things in general, such as money, sports, and current events. I think one time we used Tiger Woods for all three.
Though I didn’t golf so well, I did enjoy dressing golf-style, since to me all uniforms—and, in this particular case, some pistachio-colored pants and a pink-and-mocha sort of argyle sweater that had fit me a lot better in the Third Form—seemed to loan the body a rare sense of purpose.
It was a nice morning, heating up, with voluble birds happy in the trees. You could distinctly feel our whole part of earth easing itself down toward summer.
First hole, dad peered weirdly—stagily—into the little cylindrical hollow. Before scooping out the ball he said, “Burns spared this one,” and chuckled. I wasn’t sure whether I should know what he was talking about. When he made the same enigmatic comment at the next hole—“Spared this one too”—I was like, “Huh?”
“Pardon me,” dad said, because he and mom—one item they agreed on—didn’t like it when I’d say huh? They considered it a shame to waste all that money on a young man’s education if he still put his elbows on the table and said huh?
“I mean what. Regarding Dr. Burns?”
So dad related the scandal. Burns had been a community
“So who’s the new dog? Why didn’t you email me? I mean a puppy—that’s an event.”
“Nothing I could have written would be like Betsy in person. Isn’t she just a little—aren’t you Betsy?” Dad dangled his hand near the puppy’s mouth and little miniature Betsy leapt up to chew on it with her clean new teeth.
“Doesn’t look like a mutt,” I said. Usually it was only mutts—the only true dogs, according to dad’s former idea—that he rescued from the pound.
“Sometimes, Dwight, you reach a certain age—you just want a yellow lab. You’re willing to buy one. You’ve worked all your life, you’ve raised two ungrateful children.” The friendliness of his cynicism was the nice, but not the consistent thing about it. “You’ve at last divorced the woman you love. The woman well-lost . . .”
A serious reader, dad had gone through many volumes in his office, and from his tone of voice more than from my own strictly limited erudition I could sometimes tell when he was alluding.
“I’ve lost something too,” I said, or more mumbled it maybe.
Together we drove to the club, dogs and puppy panting away in the backseat. And probably here is the place to explain that when I was a kid we had another dog: a large fit golden retriever named Mister, very regal in the face, with a pale coat flaring in cowlicks all across his back and an attitude of stoical sadness that only being played with or petted could placate for a while. Mom and dad were physically shy with me and Alice except when spanking us, and we were also shy with each other, unless sumo wrestling or playing karate, so that all of us showed Mister an affection that was plainer and more extravagant than anything that passed between us actual humans except in times of crisis. Yet this attention to Mister seemed also to be the emblem of our basic mutual filial thing, implying as it did what large volumes of love-grade emotion must get trafficked invisibly between us if this was how we treated—I mean, nice as he was— our dog. Our feeling for Mister kind of took the measure of our hearts, is my guess.
“Only nine holes,” dad assured the dogs when we left them with windows half down and a biscuit each.
Out on the links, typically we’d discuss which club for me to use, then I’d whack the ball. Then dad would hit his own ball. Then we would walk in the direction of the errant ball and the well-placed ball, discussing things in general, such as money, sports, and current events. I think one time we used Tiger Woods for all three.
Though I didn’t golf so well, I did enjoy dressing golf-style, since to me all uniforms—and, in this particular case, some pistachio-colored pants and a pink-and-mocha sort of argyle sweater that had fit me a lot better in the Third Form—seemed to loan the body a rare sense of purpose.
It was a nice morning, heating up, with voluble birds happy in the trees. You could distinctly feel our whole part of earth easing itself down toward summer.
First hole, dad peered weirdly—stagily—into the little cylindrical hollow. Before scooping out the ball he said, “Burns spared this one,” and chuckled. I wasn’t sure whether I should know what he was talking about. When he made the same enigmatic comment at the next hole—“Spared this one too”—I was like, “Huh?”
“Pardon me,” dad said, because he and mom—one item they agreed on—didn’t like it when I’d say huh? They considered it a shame to waste all that money on a young man’s education if he still put his elbows on the table and said huh?
“I mean what. Regarding Dr. Burns?”
So dad related the scandal. Burns had been a community
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