Down To The Corner

Carmen came to us, visibly malnourished and just a bit bonkers, at the end of a day that had begun with my father-in-law suggesting at the breakfast table that he was “getting rid of the God-damned dog today.” Suzanne, who'd been out visiting her parents, called me from the road to ask how I might feel about getting another Golden. I suppose I hesitated for a second before saying that a new puppy, another Golden boy, might be good fun and that Atticus, then nearly four, would probably love the company. What if it wasn't precisely a puppy, she asked, and not exactly a boy? Nearly two years old, skinny and skittish with a strange, neglected growth protruding from her lower jaw like a fleshy tusk, Carmen had spent most of her short life behind a child barrier in the gloss-pink, mildewed basement bathroom of a ranch house in Rhode Island. My father-in-law, who had been secretly perusing puppy ads in the Journal for weeks, snuck off one day and bought her from a guy named Pedro in Central Falls.

   Within a few days Carmen completely overwhelmed my in-laws and was relegated to the bathroom, where she spent most of the next year and a half curled up around the toilet base, eating only when someone recalled she was there and remembered to feed her. Starved for nourishment and affection, having to make due with admonitions to settle down and hush, her boisterous displays of enthusiasm at their rare endearments served only to seal her fate and extend her solitary confinement. Other dogs might get downright giddy at the onset of a belly-rub or butt-scratch; Carmen grew to be reserved and aloof, content in her daydreams, her deep bond with Atticus and surprised by our human attentions, accepting them as though she felt undeserving of a fleeting gesture that might be withdrawn at any minute. 

   Despite all that, for the rest of her life Carmen would greet my mother-in-law with such lavish displays, such paroxysms of joy that you'd have thought we were the abusers and that deliverance from our torments had finally arrived. I confess that I always resented this love-fest and have been humbled more than once by a remarkable capacity for forgiveness so pure and profound that it shames my own pathetic efforts and might instruct a Pope.

   One sunny, spring morning I sat with my mother on our front stoop admiring the gleam and sparkle of my first real bicycle. I'd just been given the bike for my birthday and it stood, maroon and cream, belled and tasseled at the curb below us as I negotiated the boundaries of my first ride: just down to the corner and back or all the way around the block? My brother's bike had three speeds and a raccoon tail and he'd been riding wherever he liked for some time. I'd been limited to training-wheels and the stretch of sidewalk from here to Third Avenue that my mother could keep an eye on from her perch on the steps. A full circumnavigation would require close attention to a host of perils offered up by the long, busy blocks of both Second and Third Avenues: open iron bulkheads, the patch of sand and sawdust outside the saloon doors at Daley's on the corner, the barrels of beer being rolled in and out of those doors, the bottleneck at the pizza joint on 60^th Street between the trash can and the counter where men stood and ate their dripping slices. And the group of tough kids who hung around the candy store pitching pennies or Spaldeens, waiting for someone like me to come along.

   I'd just begun to have second thoughts about going all the way when an older boy I didn't recognize came ambling along toward us. He stopped by the bike, patted the tan, leather seat and asked if he could take it for a spin, just down to the corner and back. Unsure how to respond – the bike was brand, spanking new and I hadn't even ridden it yet - I deferred to my mother's judgment. Of course you may, she told the boy cheerfully, just to the corner and back. We waited for ten minutes. We waited for half an hour, craning our necks to see down the block. We sat on those steps for most of the afternoon hoping the boy would return. Finally my mother turned to me with tears in her eyes and said that the boy must have stolen the bike. Would I ever be able to forgive her, she asked, and we were both crying now. I remember my heart breaking, or opening, or unfolding in that instant.

 “I forgive you, Mom.” I said, as we walked slowly up the steps, hand in hand.