Michael thought so, too. He knew that Chloe would come around, in time. The only problem, the glitch in the system, was Lady.
It wasn’t that Lady didn’t like Suzanne. She hadn’t growled since the first time, hadn’t chewed up her shoes or peed on her handbag. Occasionally, she’d even sit at Suzanne’s feet and permit Suzanne to scratch between her ears.
Nor was the problem Suzanne not liking Lady. Suzanne doted on the dog, bringing her home a treat every time she went to the market, scraping table scraps into her food dish when she thought Michael wasn’t looking.
The problem was the voice Suzanne used when she talked as the dog.
Over the years, Michael and Tina had established Lady’s voice as low and playfully gruff. It was the voice of a woman who’d known hard times and seen bad things, a little cynical, wised-up and knowing.
Suzanne’s Lady-voice was a lisping, babyish falsetto that was strange and so jarring that Michael had almost laughed the first time he’d heard it.
“Dada, me not want to go out in the rwain,” she’d said, as Michael was coaxing Lady into her raincoat.
“What?” he’d asked. “Oh, no, really, she’s fine.”
“No, Dada, me don’t want to get my pwetty fur wet!” Suzanne had said.
Michael had looked at Lady, who looked back at him with an expression that seemed to say What the hell?
“I promise, she’s fine,” he’d said, and grabbed his umbrella and hurried out into the hall. He’d walked Lady twice around Washington Square Park, trying to figure out what to say. You’re doing it wrong? Lady doesn’t sound like that? And also, I’m not her father, and I’m certainly not her dada, I’m her secret boyfriend?
On the third lap, he’d decided on a course of action. Back in the apartment, he’d hung up his wet things and Lady’s raincoat and used a towel to dry off her undercarriage. He’d found Suzanne in the living room, paging through an issue of The New Yorker.
“Listen,” he said. She’d looked up at him, her blue eyes round and guileless. “I know this is going to sound ridiculous. But Tina used to talk for Lady. And—”
Before he could go on, Suzanne had winced and grabbed his hand. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry!” she’d cried. “You don’t have to explain. I completely understand. I won’t do it again.”
Except she had.
“Dada, cawwy me!” she’d said two days later, when they were walking into the elevator. He’d looked at her, and she’d pressed her hand against her mouth. “Sorry, sorry!”
But that night, at bedtime, when Michael had patted the bed, giving Lady her cue to hop up beside him, Suzanne had said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Is what a good idea?”
“Having Lady in the bed.” Suzanne looked down, rubbing her fingers on the comforter. “It’s just… well, I once heard a terrible story about a rescue dog that slept with its owner. The woman rolled over onto the dog, and the dog just freaked out and bit her. She had to see a plastic surgeon.”
Stiffly, Michael said, “Nothing like that has happened in the twelve years Lady’s lived here.”
“Fine,” Suzanne had said, smiling. “But is it okay if I put a pillow between us?”
So if Lady freaks out she’ll bite me and not you? Michael thought.
“Of course,” he’d said. “Whatever you need to be comfortable.”
“And I promise I’ll stop using a voice for her. I know it was your thing with Tina.”
“I’d appreciate that,” said Michael, and Suzanne had scooched over to kiss him, eventually picking up the pillow between them and tossing it to the floor. He could feel Lady’s eyes on the two of them, dark and solemn, like she was taking it all in, reserving judgment until she had all the evidence in hand.
After that, Michael and Suzanne slept with a pillow laid between them. And, despite her promises, Suzanne kept using the babyish lisp for Lady. “Look, here’s the thing,” Michael finally said, one morning at breakfast, when Suzanne, as Lady, had said, “I wuv snausages! Dada give me some?”
“This is probably going to sound crazy, but Tina and I had a whole backstory worked out for Lady.”
Suzanne raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”
He gave her the brief version—the circus, the pregnancy, the heartbreak, the homelessness, Lady’s eventual arrival in their lives. Suzanne gave him a blank stare. Then, in the Lady-voice she’d adopted, she said, “Dada finks I’m a woman of woose virtue! But I’m a good girl!”
Ugh.
Meanwhile, Suzanne was glaring at him indignantly. “How can you think those terrible things about your sweet little dog?” Turning to Lady, she said, “How can he think those bad things about you?”
“They’re not bad things,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t as loud as it sounded in his own ears. Besides, you’re the one who thinks she’s going to bite us. “Look, we know she was pregnant and that she had a litter right before we got her.”
“Maybe she was widowed. Maybe she was in love. Why does it have to be that she was abandoned by some dog playboy?”
Michael forced himself to take a deep breath. “Okay. Maybe we can just forget her whole history. But the voice… maybe it could sound a little bit more, like…” He did his best approximation of how Tina-as-Lady had sounded. “I’ve been around. I’ve seen some things.”
Suzanne giggled.
“What?”
“Sorry,” she’d said, “but you sound like that actor, the one from Hairspray—Harvey Fierstein? And actually,” she’d said, before he could respond to that, “I read this book by a dog trainer once, and he said that dogs respond best to high-pitched voices. I’ve talked with all my dogs like this! And you like it, don’t you, Lady?”
Lady had wagged her tail. Not very enthusiastically, in Michael’s opinion.
“See? Lady says it’s just fine. Lady says”—Michael braced himself as Suzanne raised her voice to that hateful warble—“Dada needs to stop being such a meanie!”
Michael had taken several deep breaths.
“I think,” he’d said in a careful voice, “that maybe the best thing would be for you to just not talk as Lady at all. Please.”
Suzanne turned away, but he could see the flush on her neck, the hurt look on her face. “Fine,” she’d said. “I’ll stop.”
* * *
She’d promised him that she wasn’t angry, that her feelings weren’t hurt. But, after that discussion, there was a palpable chilliness between them.
Is it such a big deal? Michael asked himself, as he walked Lady toward South Street. So she doesn’t use the same voice that Tina did. Is that so terrible? Maybe I can get used to it. But it wasn’t three days later that Michael came back to the condo, five minutes after he’d left, realizing that he’d forgotten his checkbook. He’d unlocked the door and heard Suzanne’s voice in the kitchen.
“You like the way I talk, don’t you?” And then Suzanne-as-Lady in that baby-talk-y lisp. “Yes I do! Dada is a big meanie. I wuv you! You’re my favwit!”