The Dog Who Knew Too Much Read online

  “Not a word. How about you?” I asked.

  “Not a word,” he said. “I’m only half Chinese, in case you were puzzled by the name.”

  I shrugged one shoulder, as if to say, hey, you wanna be half Chinese, what’s it my business.

  “An identical cousin,” he said. “Another swimmer?”

  “Dog paddle. Olympic quality.”

  “You hide your grief well,” he said.

  “Thanks. According to the Talmud, the deeper the sorrow, the less tongue it hath.” I emphasized the th.

  “Ah, another scholar in the family. That’s just the sort of thing she might have”—he took a swig of juice—“said,” he said, studying me.

  I studied him right back.

  I remembered a trick Ida had shown me, the time she asked me to bring my family album to a therapy session. She had placed her hand over the top half of people’s faces, my mother’s, my father’s, Lili’s, and mine, to show their smiling mouths. Then she’d slid her hand down and covered the mouths, exposing the tops of the faces. Without the smile, something else showed. I looked afraid. Lili looked defiant. My mother’s eyes looked angry. My father’s eyes looked sad beyond belief. Like Paul Wilcox’s dark eyes.

  He handed me one of the glasses of rust remover and led the way to one of the little bistro tables next to the juice bar.

  “My cousin and I weren’t close,” I confided. “You know how it is.”

  “For sure.”

  “Funny, you don’t sound half Chinese.”

  “Born in the USA.” He smiled, showing me his dimples. “Flushing.”

  I skipped all the obvious cheap shots and got down to business. “The reason I called, Paul, is that I was wondering if you could tell me about Lisa. What she was like, you know, as an adult. What might have made her”—suddenly feeling the weight of what I was saying, I lowered my voice—“make the decision she did.”

  He scratched Dashiell’s nose-tackle-sized neck.

  “He’s huge, your boy,” he said. “What does he weigh?”

  “Is this where you met my cousin?” I asked.

  “What is this all about? Lisa never mentioned you, and I don’t mean to be rude, but what’s the deal?”

  “It’s my aunt Marsha.” I lowered my eyes. “She’s not sleeping well. She needs—we all need—answers. Did you ever meet her, Lisa’s mother?”

  “No. I never did. Lisa said she wouldn’t sic her relatives on a dog.” He shook his head. “No offense meant.”

  “None taken,” I told him.

  He took another swig of the sludge in his glass. “You’re not drinking your juice,” he said.

  I nodded. He was right. I wasn’t drinking it.

  “So you never met them?” I asked.

  “What’s the point of this, Rachel? She’s dead.” He began looking around as if he were bored.

  “Look, I’m sorry to stir things up. But my aunt asked me if I could find out what the hell was going on that made Lisa, you know, kill herself. It’s so hard to—”

  “Swallow,” he said. “Isn’t it though? Lots of things in life are difficult to swallow. Don’t you find that so, Rachel? Is it Rachel Jacobs?”

  “Alexander. That branch of the family. Not the Jacobs branch.”

  “And the Alexander branch resembles the Jacobs branch.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How homogeneous.” He drained his glass.

  I picked up my glass of juice and set it right down again. If Lisa’s boyfriend saw the family resemblance, perhaps the person at the desk would, too. Lisa’s membership card to the Club was in one of the pockets of her calendar. Clearly my clever interview technique wasn’t winning Paul Wilcox over. Maybe my dog paddle would.

  “Did Lisa swim here?” I asked. “Is that how you met?”

  Paul was looking away, and for a while he said nothing. “Maybe she got dizzy. It can happen when you exercise. Maybe she went to the window for a little air, and—”

  “There was a note,” I said softly.

  He turned and stared at me. “A what?”

  “A note.”

  He covered his face with his hands. They were clean and strong looking, his fingers long and graceful. He moved them to his lap when Dashiell got up and laid his head there.

  “What did it—”

  “‘I’m sorry. Lisa.’ That’s all. No one told you?”

  “‘I’m sorry. Lisa’?”

  I nodded.

  Suddenly the top and bottom halves of Paul Wilcox’s face were in concert.

  “No way,” he said, his fist hitting the table so hard the top jumped and then continued to vibrate for another minute. Dashiell backed up a foot and barked until I signaled him to lie down.

  “No fucking way. Lisa Jacobs never apologized to anyone in her life.”

  “Is that a fact?” I said, cool as a Borzoi.

  “Look, cousin, I found the first news difficult to believe, and now this. Give me a break.”

  He pushed his chair back and got up.

  “Wait a minute here,” he said, leaning over me, so close I could see his tonsils. “Are you telling me my name was on it?” he whispered. “That it was addressed to me? Is that why you’re here?”

  “No. Should it have been? Addressed to you?”

  He just shook his head.

  “Paul, were you and my cousin still going together when this happened?”

  “No,” he said, pushing the chair back against the table so hard it moved the table closer to me. He began to walk away.

  Good, I thought. At least one of us was telling the truth. His name hadn’t appeared in Lisa’s calendar since January 11.

  And that time, it had been crossed out.

  “When did you break up?” I asked his back.

  But he didn’t bother to answer me. Without turning around or saying good-bye, he disappeared down the stairs that led to the pool.

  7

  How Long Will It Take?

  At ten thirty that night, after I had practiced the form alone in the garden, Dashiell and I headed back to Bank Street T’ai Chi. Avi opened the door before we reached the landing, his finger to his lips. Without speaking, I dropped my jacket onto one of the couches, changed into Lisa’s black cotton shoes, and followed him onto the floor.

  Standing behind Avi, I could see the strength of his movements, as if he were moving not through air but water—not springwater, cleansed of all impurities, but ocean water, thick with salt and life. It was as if he were swimming in the air.

  After three hours of work Avi stopped, and we walked to the couches in the area between the office and the studio and sat opposite each other.

  “How did you and Lisa meet?”

  “So late, and still your head is full of questions,” he said.

  “You said, first the t’ai chi, then the questions.”

  Avi sat silently.

  “You didn’t mean after I learn the whole form?”

  Was he meditating, looking straight ahead like that at nothing, as if he hadn’t heard my question?

  “Or not even then, right? When I get to the end of the form, you’ll tell me we need to do corrections, that I am not good enough yet to ask you questions. Is that it? I am working so hard, staying up all night learning t’ai chi, and you will never help me learn what I need to know.”

  He lifted his big hand like a stop sign.

  “A student once asked his teacher, ‘Master, how long will it take me to learn Zen?’ ‘Ten years,’ the master told him. ‘But what if I work extra hard, then how long?’ Twenty years,’ the master replied.”

  “Avi, I—”

  “You are so busy thinking about the destination, you cannot keep your mind on the journey.”

  “Avram, my aunt and uncle have asked me to help them understand the death of their daughter. They are in pain.”

  “And they will not be in pain when you tell them why she is gone?”

  Now I was the one who was silent.

  “
Avram,” I said after a moment, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t have ten years for this.”

  “Then we should stop wasting time. Tomorrow come earlier, come at seven.”

  I stood and picked up my jacket.

  “I am only trying to help you make room for Lisa,” he said, “so that you will understand her.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “It’s like dog training.”

  “Like dog—”

  “Some people approach a dog so full of themselves, there is no room for the dog. They are full of ideas, full of answers. They think they know everything there is to know. And without looking at what is in front of them, they are sure that when the dog misbehaves, it’s out of spite. They are so busy grabbing, punishing, being angry, that they never wonder, Who is this dog, what is he feeling, what does he understand, what confuses him, and why is he confused, what are his special abilities, and how can I use these to teach him what he needs to know? They are so sure they are right, they never examine their insubstantial conclusions. No matter what the dog might be able to tell them, they cannot learn it. There is no place inside them to put the information.”

  “So tomorrow, when you come, you’ll wear your Everything I Know About Zen I Learned from My Dog T-shirt?”

  “I didn’t say I knew anything about Zen. I was only talking about dogs. I used to be a dog trainer,” I said, “until I came here.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  He stood, reached for the jacket, and helped me into it. He put his warm hand on my cheek and looked into my eyes.

  “I’ll be here,” he whispered.

  Then he walked to the door and held it open for me.

  “Lisa was here every day. This was her life.”

  He stopped and blew his nose.

  I didn’t breathe for fear he’d stop talking.

  “There was nothing more important to her, nothing that took precedence over her studies. We spent many hours together, studying, talking, or silent, working on the form. One never stops trying to perfect one’s ability to do the form. We do not think, Ah, now we have learned it. We pay attention to one detail at a time, taking pleasure in each. We do not think about what isn’t. We pay attention to what is. Now, go, child. I will see you tomorrow.”

  He closed the door.

  Here I was, obeying him again.

  Well, he was the master, wasn’t he?

  I heard the lock turn.

  So what did that make me? I wondered as Dashiell and I headed down the stairs.

  And more important, what had it made Lisa?

  8

  I Took the Stairs

  When I woke up it was afternoon, three thirty to be exact. If I was going to be at Bank Street T’ai Chi by seven, I had to move. I cleaned and medicated Dashiell’s ear, gave him his monthly heartworm preventive, and spent an hour in my office paying bills, now that I could, and taking care of paperwork.

  Since I had to repark the car anyway, I drove five blocks to Lisa’s street and in only forty-five minutes was able to find a legal spot. Waving to the concierge, I passed the elevators and took the stairs to the second floor. Paul Wilcox had made me more than curious about the strong resemblance to my cousin, and I wanted to look more carefully at the pictures of Lisa that were among the books in her living room.

  I picked up one of the photos and took it over to the window, holding it so that the light would fall on it. lisa’s eyes were as blue as the Caribbean; mine were more the gray-blue of the Atlantic. Her skin was white, like her mother’s. Mine was fair, but not pearly or translucent, not as delicate looking as lisa’s.

  Lisa’s hair was very much like mine, darker, but about the same length and also curly. In the photo she wore a little braid on one side. I put the picture back on the shelf and, taking a small strand of hair on the left side, braided it as Lisa had done; then, holding the end of the braid, I went into the kitchen, where I had seen some lavender string on top of the refrigerator. I secured the end of the braid, then looked for scissors to cut off the piece of string.

  I ran upstairs and opened the closet door, zeroing in on a sheer black silk shirt, black velvet leggings, the Chinese-style quilted jacket, and those fabulous pink high-tops. Leaving my own things in the closet, I put on Lisa’s clothes and shoes. Everything fit, so I took some soft black pants and a black T-shirt for t’ai chi as well, folding them carefully and putting them in a nylon mesh tote bag I found in Lisa’s closet. Halfway down the stairs, I turned back. I needed a bathing suit, didn’t I? Before leaving, I also borrowed some jewelry to go with my new clothes, a jasper heart necklace from Tiffany’s and a pair of silver earrings that sounded like small bells when they moved. I left my small gold hoops in their place.

  I dropped the clothes off at home, and once again Dashiell and I headed toward the heart of the Village, Washington Square Park. Radiating out from the fountain at its center were paths that led north, east, south, and west, to the hanging tree, an old elm once used for executions, to playgrounds, to enclaves of the down-and-out asleep or sitting up and smoking on the benches that were the closest things they had to home, and to the dog run. Dashiell began a hip-hop ballet with a broken-coated Jack Russell terrier, and I took myself to the southwest corner of the run and, listening to the crunching sounds of the dogs playing on the pea gravel, faced north, eyes on the horizon, and became meditation in motion in Lisa Jacobs’s beautiful, expensive clothes.

  Near the dog run, a mounted policeman was putting his horse through its paces. A nurse was pushing an old man in a wheelchair, a plaid blanket over his legs. A nanny pushing a baby carriage walked by, a handsome young man was headed in the direction of the NYU law library, people sat on the grass reading. No one was imitating Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin, and it was a bit early for the drug dealers. Later in the day, if I asked Dashiell to “find the grass,” he’d go nuts.

  It was quiet, so I stayed for a long time, watching Dashiell play and thinking about Lisa Jacobs. At six I stopped at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame for a burger, then headed over to school.

  I took the stairs. Avi had said it would help me do the form. Lisa, he’d said, always took the stairs, never the elevator.

  Avram looked startled when he opened the door, but said nothing. I slipped off Lisa’s jacket, put on her black cotton shoes, and followed Avi into the studio. Dashiell had already taken his usual spot in the sitting area, his big white paws just touching the wooden floor where we worked.

  As is tradition, we did the form without speaking. Then Avram began again, and I followed him. This time, as I continued, he came near me to make corrections, gently moving an arm or a hand or readjusting a foot by placing his next to where mine should have been and leaving it there until I’d lifted mine and placed it next to his.

  Most of the form is done with knees bent, as if you were in a low-ceilinged room. Avi helped me to sink lower, until my legs felt as if they were on fire. He had explained that the burning meant that the blood was seeking new pathways, and so my legs were getting stronger. Unfortunately, so was the pain.

  Suddenly I was flushed with heat. All I wanted to do was hang out the window and get some air, but Avi kept on working.

  “Did you ever notice how clumsy people can be?” he asked, leaving me with all my weight on my right leg.

  “When your step is empty, no weight at all in it,” he said, taking the same posture he had left me in sometime back in the Iron Age, “you are steady before shifting your weight.”

  He flexed his knee, lifting his left foot off the ground. Then he placed his foot back down, heel, toe, and shifted his weight forward, as slowly as honey oozing off a spoon.

  “Remember that t’ai chi is a martial art, Rachel. You must always be connected to the earth, both figuratively and literally. You do not want your opponent to be able to push you over.”

  It was long past dark, but neither of us stopped to put on the lights. Lit by the bright light o
f the moon shining in through the big windows, reflecting in the mirrors, and shining on our faces, we continued to practice, mostly in silence.

  “Okay, shake out your legs,” Avi finally said.

  We stood quietly for a moment, neither of us speaking. Something was bothering me, jabbing away at the edge of my consciousness. I turned and looked at the windows. Then I looked into Avram’s face.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “The second from the left,” he said. He turned and walked back to his office, leaving me alone.

  I walked over, unlatched the window, and pushed it out, letting the cold, damp night air hit me in the face.

  The street looked very far away, and just looking down made my knees turn to water.

  The door had been locked, I thought, but the chain hadn’t been latched.

  I felt a wave of nausea as I pictured Lisa looking down, just as I was doing, then climbing onto the sill and falling into nothing.

  I thought about the second curious thing in Lisa’s calendar. All those appointments. All those plans. The days after her death were filled with things to do.

  No handprint on her back, Marty had said.

  Most jumpers were men, I thought, looking down. Female suicides usually used carbon monoxide or some other form of poison, not something that would disfigure them, like a gunshot wound. Or defenestration. Vanity at play, right up to the very end.

  I thought about all Lisa’s pretty things, about those roses, dozens of bouquets, hanging upside down from her ceiling.

  I thought about her pretty face.

  I thought, No way did Lisa Jacobs jump out of this window.

  There was a reason none of this made sense. Lisa Jacobs hadn’t killed herself. Someone had done it for her.

  I leaned out and looked down.

  Then, quickly, I straightened up and stepped back, bumping into Avram. He leaned past me, pulled the window shut, and latched it.

  In those black cotton shoes, he had been so silent I hadn’t heard him approach me.

  I began to shiver. I had stood in front of an open window in a dark room in the middle of the night with a stranger behind me, a man strong enough to lift me and toss me out the window as if I were a sack of trash he was tossing into a Dumpster.