The Dogs of Babel

EIGHTEEN

I think I may finally be making some progress with Lorelei. I believe I am on my way to teaching her her first word.

Here’s the way it happens: Lorelei is lazing on the carpet in a patch of sun, lolling on her back, and I’m observing her from across the room. As she lies there, she lets out a yawn, and as she yawns, she makes a noise that sounds like wa. I jump up from where I’ve been sitting.

“Good girl!” I cry. I run to the kitchen and pick up her water bowl. It sloshes dangerously as I run back to the living room. Lorelei is sitting up now, roused by my sudden activity. “Good girl,” I repeat, and set the bowl down in front of her. She looks up at me, then at the bowl. Lazily, she sniffs at the water, then gives it a single lap with her tongue.

“Wa,” I say. “Wa.” I remove the bowl and put it aside, up on the coffee table. I sit down on the floor next to Lorelei. I have to get her to repeat the sound.

“Roll over, girl,” I say, pushing on her flank. She resists. “Come on, girl,” I cajole. “Roll over.” After a few tries, I’m able to roll her onto her back. But how to make her yawn again?

She’s eyeing me warily. I remember a time, years earlier, when my nephew was an infant and I was watching my sister hold him in her arms. As I watched, my sister looked down into the baby’s face and fluttered her eyelids slowly up and down. She looked as if she were having trouble staying awake.

“Are you tired?” I had asked. “Do you want me to take him?”

“No,” she said. “I’m trying to get him to fall asleep. Sometimes this works.”

To my surprise, after watching my sister do this for a moment or two, the baby let his eyes droop once or twice. In another minute, he was asleep.

Perhaps the same tactic would work on Lorelei. I stretch out on the floor next to her and look into her face. I let my eyes flutter shut, then open them again as if it’s a very great effort. I close them as if they were made of lead. When I open them again, Lorelei is staring at me, her eyes open wide. I try a few more times, with no luck.

Trying another tack, I yawn grandiosely. “Wa,” I say, yawning. “Wa.” I reach over and retrieve her bowl from the coffee table and set it down in front of me. “Wa,” I repeat, then lean over the bowl and pretend to drink. I sneak a glance at Lorelei. She looks, if this is possible for a dog, surprised. Just do it, I think. Don’t think about Lorelei’s tongue and the other places she puts it. You’ve got her attention; just go all the way. “Wa,” I say again, and plunge my tongue into the bowl. The water tastes stale. I lap it up and drink two big swallows.

“Wa,” I say. “Wa.”

Lorelei stands up, shakes herself, and walks out of the room, leaving me sitting on the floor in her patch of sun, the taste of dog water fresh on my tongue.

Sighing, I get up and pick up the dish to take it back to the kitchen. I empty it into the sink—if I’ve learned anything from this little exercise, it’s that I owe it to Lorelei to change her water more often—and wash the bowl with soap, something I haven’t done in quite a while. I refill the bowl from the tap, but as I’m about to put it back in its regular spot on the floor, I stop. What if I make Lorelei ask for her water? I flinch slightly at the idea. One of the cardinal rules of dog ownership is that you never withhold water. Every dog book I’ve read contains this rule, set apart from the text in bold letters: Always have fresh, clean water available for your dog to drink. But I’m not talking about long-term dehydration. I’ll simply watch to see when Lorelei goes looking for a drink, and I’ll take the opportunity to work with her on the wa command. If it doesn’t work, I’ll give it to her anyway. I’m not heartless. I place the full bowl on the counter and wait for Lorelei to get thirsty.

In the meantime, I go into my study. I take out my laptop to continue my task of listing the titles of the books Lexy rearranged. The books on the second shelf from the top are arranged as follows:

You’re Out! A History of Baseball (Mine.)

And Your Little Dog Too: Hollywood Dogs from Rin Tin Tin to Beethoven (Hers. I came across it in a used bookstore and thought she’d be interested. She seemed to like it.)

Cooking for Two (Ours. Wedding gift.)

Gray Girls (Mine. A collection of interviews with women who were in the audience of The Ed Sullivan Show for the Beatles’ first appearance.)

Don’t Close Your Eyes (Lexy’s. She had a weakness for horror novels.)

First Aid for Dogs and Cats (Lexy’s.)

Put Me in the Zoo (Lexy’s. A picture book she’d had since childhood.)

Where to Stay in Northern California (Ours. We’d been invited to a wedding in San Francisco, and we talked about taking a side trip to the wine country. But the wedding was canceled at the last minute—we never quite got the whole story, but there was some kind of scandal involving the bride and the father of the groom—and we never made the trip.)

A Feast for the Eyes (Lexy’s. It’s a big, glossy cookbook with complicated recipes and beautiful pictures. Neither of us ever used it.)

Thrill Rides of North America (Lexy’s. She loved roller coasters; she always said she planned to ride every single one in this book before she… well, that’s what she said. Before she died.)

Clay Masks from Around the World (Lexy’s.)

I’m Taking My Hatchback to Hackensack and Other Travel Games (Ours. We bought it on that first trip to Florida before we set out for the long drive back.)

As I write down the last title, I hear Lorelei padding down the hallway on her way to the kitchen. I get up and follow her. I watch as she sniffs around the corner where I put her bowls. She licks her empty food dish, perhaps finding some microscopic particle left over from her breakfast. Then she sniffs the floor where her water bowl should be.

“Wa, Lorelei?” I say. “Do you want some wa?” She looks up at me and twitches her tail in a miniature wag.

“Say ‘wa,’ Lorelei.” I massage the folds of her throat. She lets out an impatient whine. The sound it makes is more mmnnnn than wa, but it’s progress.

“Good girl,” I say. “Now say ‘wa.’”

She turns away from me and goes back to sniffing around the empty bowl corner, as if a dish of water might have appeared there in a moment when she wasn’t looking.

Maybe she’s not thirsty enough for this to work. I decide to up the ante. I take a bag of potato chips from the kitchen cabinet and give her one, then another. The sound of her crunching fills the kitchen. When she’s finished, I turn on the faucet. She looks expectantly toward the sound of running water.

“Wa, Lorelei,” I say. “Wa, wa.”

I stand and wait. Lorelei watches me for a moment, then turns and walks out of the kitchen. I start to follow her, but by the time I’m halfway down the hall, I can hear the unmistakable sound of lapping coming from the bathroom. With a heavy heart, I turn into the room. There’s Lorelei, her head in the toilet, drinking long and deep from the bowl.