The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

6. Obedience

Arthur had told me the story of Happy, the most beautiful dog in the world, and of her ruin by Mrs. Bellwether, who was insane.

One day several years ago, Happy had appeared at Jane's feet, collarless, playful; a large puppy, perhaps ten or eleven months old, almost completely white, housebroken, well-behaved, and breathtakingly lovely. The family made no effort to discover who had lovingly trained then lost her, and adopted her immediately into its tortured bosom, giving her her tragic and idiotic name. Wrapped in her extravagant fur, with her long, noble face and elegant walk, Happy was, in every way, the Anna Karenina of dogs, even expressing, Jane claimed, a distinct mixture of fear of and fascination with the trains they would have to stop for in the course of the marathon walks they took together. When Jane took Happy out, people slowed their cars to watch the dog's perfect gait, her leash superfluous, slack, vulgar.

Jane loved the dog and had cared for her well, letting her take the firm white remainders of strawberries from between Jane's own lips, unleashing her for three-hour chases across the Highland Park cemetery (since, she said, dogs love graveyards), and painting pink the collie's black toenails; unfortunately, however, Happy spent most of her days with Jane's mother, so, in time, the dog developed both colitis and a skittish fear of women, even of the sound of their footsteps, and her coat began to turn the tan that now, years later, had become a fragile, shifting brown.

Thus the dog became a genuine Bellwether, visiting Dr. Link, the veterinarian, as often as migrainous Mrs. Bellwether visited Dr. Arbutus, her internist; as eczematous Dr. (of Philosophy) Bellwether consulted Dr. Niyogi, his dermatologist; as imprisoned, fearful Jane went to weep before Dr. Feld, her psychotherapist. Though it may seem a silly conceit to view Happy's consignment to a doctor's care as an inevitable result of her adoption into the Bellwether family, it may seem less so when one learns that Jane one day descended into the basement to rummage among her father's abandoned five irons and woods, and found her mother administering blows to Happy's unbearably beautiful head with a ball-peen hammer, because the dog had managed to void her agonized bowels onto the basement floor.

Well, unhappy families may each be unhappy after their own fashion, but their houses are always alike, at least in my experience. The Bellwethers lived in the only ordinary-looking house in a wooded, wealthy section of Highland Park that was otherwise filled with period pieces, stylistic excess, and eccentric ornamentation. Peaked roof, red brick with white siding, white "lace" curtains blowing out through the open windows of the kitchen, azalea bushes, concrete driveway, a French horn of garden hose in the front yard. Nothing I'd heard about the Bellwethers prepared me for the discovery that the house in which Jane bad grown up looked exactly like my grandparents'. Cleveland parked the bike in the street, and as I swung off the seat and did a couple of stiff deep-knee bends, I sequentially settled on each of the neighboring houses as being the probable residence of the crazy Bellwethers, before Cleveland, with some amusement, grabbed me by the elbow again, as though we were still playing Crime, and tugged me onto the slate path of stepping-stones that made its typical way to the Bellwethers' front door.

"It's this one; this is the nice normal house where Arthur is living for the Bellwethers while they're 'on holiday.'"

I took my first good look at him. He did not at all have the face I'd expected. Wrongly but quite naturally, I'd assumed that he would look just like Arthur, blond and rosy. Not at all. He had, to a degree, the head of a biker: uncombed, red-skinned, heavy, with the chipped incisor. But his hauteur and his Clark Kents threw everything off; they made him peculiar.

" Cleveland," I said, as we walked up to the front door, "how did you know about my father?"

He turned his head toward me for an instant, and his eye was bright and crafty.

"Everyone knows," he said. "Don't they?"

"Nobody knows," I said, grabbing hold of his leather sleeve. "Absolutely no one."

He turned toward me and threw off my hand, so hard that it slapped against my hip.

"Your cousin David Stern knows."

"He isn't my cousin," I said. "We used to play G.I. Joe together. A long time ago."

"Well, he grew up into a real asshole."

"He has a big mouth." I thought for an instant, then said, "How do you know Dave Stern? You work for his father?"

"I don't work for anybody. The Sterns are simply associates of mine."

"It's nothing to brag about."

"I get to make my own hours," Cleveland said. He dashed up the steps, then whirled to face me. "And"-he gave me a menacing, humorous look-'"Nobody knows. Absolutely no one.'" He rattled the aluminum screen door like a maniac, and it came off in his hand. "Whoops," he said.

"Jesus," I said. "You're a monster."

"I'm walking destruction," he sang. "I'm a demolition man."

We went inside, where it looked nothing like my grandparents' house, and I relaxed. The most immediately memorable feature of the decor was the carpeting. A "soothing," embarrassingly synthetic flavor of sky blue, it illuminated the whole floor of the place, like a lit ceiling; and so from my first minute in Jane's house I felt subliminally but undeniably upside down. The furniture had been accumulated, rather than chosen. An empty wicker birdcage hung in the corner of the living room, its bottom still lined with newspaper and its water bottle a quarter full. They had partitioned the dining room from the living room with an ugly brown stack of metal shelves that held Jane's many golf trophies and pictures of Jane and her dad, who looked like a frail Alec Guinness. I liked seeing the photographs of Jane, with her strawberry of a face and her remarkably fine posture.

"Hey!" said Arthur, coming from the kitchen in nothing but boxer shorts. Wiping his floury hands on his bare, sunburned legs, he held out the right one for Cleveland and me to shake. " Cleveland!" He wore the only unfeigned look of surprise I was ever to see on him. "What the hell is going on?"

"What do you mean?" I said. "Didn't you send him to get me?"

"Hell, no," said Cleveland. "I thunk it up myself. Arthur was telling me about his new friend"-here Cleveland gave me a very complex sort of false leer, as though to say, "I know you two aren't making it, but then again maybe I don't know"-"Art Bechstein, who works at that shitty little Boardwalk Books on Atwood, which doesn't have a single book by Brautigan or Charles Bukowski, and I said to myself, 'Well, Art Bechstein; I know who that is! And I'll bet that at this very moment that late-afternoon emptiness of the spirit is stealing over him like a shadow. Like a shadow. ' " He shook his long black hair.

"You two know each other?" said Arthur. He was edging his way toward the blue staircase, and it occurred to me that there was someone upstairs.

"Only by reputation," said Cleveland. "Who do you have upstairs, Artie?"

"Someone. I was making our dinner. You don't know him."

" Cleveland kidnapped me," I said.

"I'd imagine so," said Arthur. "Look, could you fellas come back in about a half hour?"

"No!" said Cleveland. They played a game, fell into it instantly, sharpening on each other their abilities- Cleveland 's verbose and graceless, Arthur's cool and mannered-to manipulate situations, to see the motives behind motives, to note and expose the telltale flicker of a glance. They could, finally, put two and two together; most people cannot. "You'll just make him go out the back door feeling all sticky and naked and unloved. Why not get him down here? Who is it? Cousin Richard? No-no, I'll bet it's Abdullah. I'll bet you two were making up again. He has some paper about Andrew Jackson he needs you to write for him, and so he came over here with a pound of swordfish and made a big Lebanese kissy-face, and now everything is jake."

Arthur laughed and looked delighted. "Abdullah!" he shouted. "Come downstairs!"

"Where's the dog?" said Cleveland.

"Downstairs trembling, as usual. I think she's in heat." He turned to me. "Scary, isn't he? Actually, it was the Emancipation Proclamation and veal scallops. I'm making veal marsala."

Our stomachs were full of veal and asparagus and we had been drinking for a long time; the sun set and the neighborhood grew still. In between songs on the radio, I could hear a lawn mower off in the distance, a dog barking. The Bellwethers had no screens on their windows, and a cloud of gnats hung over the center of the living room.

Arthur laid great significance on the fact that Dudu was half Maronite Christian. This lent him a special charm. He had the thin veneer of civilized French manners and sullen-ness over the dark, hirsute heart of the Levantine (Arthur liked them swarthy); he was the dazzling Beirut hotel harboring an unexploded bomb. Their very casual affair had been going on for a long time and had fallen into a comfortable pattern. "Every week," said Arthur, "we have knock-down-drag-out sex and then a tender and passionate fight. " Dudu had sat chewing and scowling all through dinner, and left immediately afterward, telling us that he was "a fucky one," because he had forgotten that his sister depended on him for a ride home from her ballet class and would be waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the Y with a few choice phrases of French.

Arthur, after Cleveland had called him on the hidden boy in the bedroom, showed not a trace of embarrassment. Something changed in his behavior because Cleveland was there; he withdrew from his usual position at the center of attention and just laughed, in his underwear and shirttails. Cleveland drank and drank. My involvement with Phlox seemed already to be a foregone conclusion, despite the fact that I had barely spoken to her, and they subjected me to several minutes of intensive teasing. Cleveland said he had slept with her, embarrassed me with the strange details, gave me a few "pointers"-and then said that it had perhaps been with a girl named Floss and not Phlox that he had dressed as Batman and she as Robin and then rolled around on the floor of a dark garage. I changed the subject and asked about Jane.

"I'm in the Out column of the Bellwether Fashion Forecast," Cleveland told me, crushing another empty can and flinging himself out of the paisley recliner out of which-it was on page eight of the list-Dr. Bellwether had forbidden anyone to fling himself. As he catapulted his big self toward the refrigerator, the La-Z-Boy produced exactly the metallic groan I supposed Dr. Bellwether most dreaded.

"Does that include Jane too?" I said, trying not to sound hopeful. I didn't, truly, entertain any hopes about Jane; some questions just have a dangerous tone built in.

"Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't," Arthur said. "Jane and Cleveland have been in love for about three of the six years they've been in love." He grinned-another first. "Bring me a beer, Cleveland?"

"The problem," said Cleveland, tossing an emerald can of Rolling Rock right at the nook between Arthur's stretched-out feet, where it lodged perfectly, and then grinding back in the unfortunate chair, "is her parents. In their opinion, of course, the problem is me."

"Evil Incarnate," I said.

"Oh, yeah; I'm the problem in Arthur's mother's opinion too. In fact, however, I am not a problem."

"Only a little socially disturbed," said Arthur.

"I am only in love with Jane Bellwether," Cleveland said, and then said it twice again. "This is a reality that Nettie and Al will just have to accept. However unpleasant. I wish they would just die. I hate both them and their guts."

"When are they coming home from New Mexico?" I said.

"Soon," said Arthur. "And I'll have to move."

One of the big songs that summer came on the radio.

Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do? Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do? Subtle innuendos follow: "Must be something inside."

Before the next song there was a short silence and we could hear some shouting-not angry shouting, more like a cry of "Telephone!"-from inside the next house.

"The kid next door is really kind of unusual," said Cleveland. "He keeps pit bulls. Of course Nettie and Al hate him because of the dogs, which, as you've probably seen on TV, will eat helpless infants and the elderly. And Jane claims that Teddy is violent, and-what does she say?-lewd. I've known about him for a long time, but you know, I've never met him. Currently he's nothing but a joke. A Figure of Fun. In fact," he said, and he got up and went over to the open window and shouted, "Teddeeee!" and from inside the other house someone said, "What?" and we laughed. "Let's go out back," said Cleveland. "Fuck the fucking Bellwethers." Arthur went to put on his pants.

The two backyards were separated by some half-dead shrubs and that was all. They formed one big lawn, filled with fireflies.

"Hey, Teddy!" said Cleveland.

Teddy came out onto the grass with the dogs, three of them, at his heels, in a very obedient kind of arrangement, like a squadron of navy show jets. We waved.

"Hello, Teddy," said Arthur, his tone cool and condescending again.

"We think he's retarded," Cleveland said to me, sotto voce. I made an inquiring face. "Well, because Jane always refers to him as 'poor Teddy,' you know? See-his hair is cut too short, the way retarded kids' hair is, like no one asks him how he wants it, and he can't sit still for very long, so they just lop the hell out of it one two three." He lopped the air with two scissoring fingers. "Big shoes. Hey, Teddy, can we see your dogs?"

"Wait," I said. "Stop. You aren't going to torment a retarded kid and his pets."

"Wait," said Cleveland.

"No, I'm not ready for ugliness from you guys. Sordidness, maybe, but not something brutal, or cruel, okay? I don't know you well enough."

"Wait. Everything will be jake."

Teddy and the pit bulls came snapping through the hedge and crossed over to us.

"Where are the Bellwethers?" he said. "What have you done with them?" He smiled. It was immediately clear that he was not retarded. He was probably eighteen and bright, but his terrible haircut, his small nose and eyes, and his fat cheeks made him look younger and more stupid. Arthur asked him if he would care for a beer and then went back into the house to get him one.

"Terrific dogs," said Cleveland.

"I trained them myself," said Teddy. "They're perfectly trained."

They sat in a row, panting almost in unison, three tough little good-natured knots of dog muscle that attended every movement of Teddy's hands. He commanded them to stop panting, and blip! their tongues shot back into their mouths.

"Amazing," said Cleveland. He knelt down and patted the series of heads. Then he grinned a sinister grin. "Well," he said, "what should we have done with the Bellwethers?"

"Talked them into moving away."

Arthur came out with Teddy's beer.

"Say, Artie," said Cleveland. "Didn't you mention something about Happy being in heat?"

"Aw, no," I said. "Aw, no. Come on. Don't do it."

"It's one of the items on the list, " said Arthur, looking up as he tried to remember the wording. "Somewhere toward the end: 'Do not… do not be alarmed if Happy seems to behave strangely, as she is in estrus right now.' Good Queen Estrus. As if the dog could get any stranger than it is. Why?"

("Well, just look at these fellows," said Cleveland. "I imagine they're dying for some high-class tail. And they have a right to it. Isn't that so, guys?" he asked the dogs, speaking now almost as though he were their attorney. "They've probably had three little pit-bull crushes on Happy for years and years, sending her flowers and gifts and love letters that Nettie always intercepts and throws away. Think how many times these guys have had their hearts broken. "