Paws before dying

finally emerged, they were both crying so contagiously that I started in, too, and hugged them both. The dogs, of course, barged in, and all of us clung to Leah as if we’d never hear from her again. Then I drove her to the airport, where we met Arthur and Cassie’s plane. I hated to turn her over to them. I tried to remember that it was for only one more year.
    When I got home, the house was weirdly quiet. Miriam had left my sweatshirt, and no one had borrowed anything else. The phone didn’t ring. I vacuumed. I scrubbed the bathroom. No one undid my work. The dogs kept nosing around.
    “Don’t look at me,” I told them. “I didn’t throw her out. She had to leave. She had to go home.”
    Then the three of us went to Leah’s empty room. I sat on her bed and patted the mattress to tell Rowdy and Kimi that it was okay for them to join me. They did. I wasn’t really alone. No one with two Alaskan malamutes is ever alone. Or lonely. It’s just that we felt that way.
    Cassie sent me a perfunctory thank-you letter, and over the next few months, Leah called now and then, mostly to ask about the dogs. I made Rowdy and Kimi woo-woo into the phone and kept her up-to-date on their training. She said she was busy studying, taking all those tests, and doing her college applications.
    Then one day in November, the phone rang. At first, I didn’t recognize Arthur’s voice. I thought I’d got an obscene phone call.
    “You have completely blown her chances! Do you realize that?” The voice was enraged.
    “Arthur?” I asked incredulously.
    “I knew it was all a terrible mistake. I knew it, I knew it. The plane fare would’ve been cheap at this price. Her whole life! It’s her whole life she’s ruining!”
    “Arthur, slow down. Sit down. Take a deep breath, and then blow it out.”
    “Blow it out! Blow it out!”
    “Arthur, this is Holly Winter,” I said. “Cassie’s niece? Maybe you dialed my number by mistake.”
    He may actually have taken my advice about the deep breath, but the ensuing exhalation was no act of wordless, mind-clearing stress reduction. If he gasped in a lungful of air, all he did was spend a few seconds oxygenating his fury before he propelled it out, over the phone wires, and into my innocent left ear. Three words were clear: Leah, Harvard, and dogs. Then he started to groan and cry. During Leah’s stay with me, I had, of course, begun to reconsider and reevaluate my parents’ view of Arthur. Could such a mental and moral weakling have sired Leah? But this pathetic ranting made me realize that my parents may have been right, after all. The maternal stock must have been prepotent; Arthur’s get showed the traits of her mother’s line, none of Arthur’s.
    Cassie finally got on the phone. Her distress equaled Arthur’s, it seemed to me, but she held herself together enough to inform me of its cause. Until today, Leah had seemed to her parents to be submissively following the family plan of completing a successful application to that place down the street from my house. I should add that Leah was, in fact, complying with the application requirements. She had not only taken but had excelled on numerous acronymic tests of language and mathematical ability and other tests of achievement in English, math, chemistry, and, of all things, Latin. Her grades were high, her recommendations sensational, her extracurricular activities diverse. In other words, she was such a perfect specimen of the breed, virtually the standard incarnate, that the judges were sure to put her up. Or so it had seemed. Until now. And it was all my fault.
    Gaining admission to Harvard, it seems, is not exactly like getting a place in the ribbons at a dog show. In the breed ring, the dog has to trot around, hold a pose, and look happy while a stranger stares and pokes; and in obedience, he has to demonstrate a mastery of the exercises and complete attention to the commands of the handler. But to win? In either ring, he also has to show off, strut his stuff, hold his head up, put some energy into his step, and announce to the judge that he’s the obvious, unmistakable number one. Leah, it seemed to me, had done all of that, but, as I’ve said, there is one surprising difference between the requirements of Harvard and those of the American Kennel Club: Dogs are never expected to speak for themselves. Leah, though, had to submit a series of essays, and, at least in her parents’ view, she’d stubbornly and