Nelson’s Column. From this vantage point, he gives the dogs of the world a choice—to join him on the dog star, where they can all live forever in bliss; or to remain on Earth and take their chances with humanity.
Pongo—one of the heroes of The Hundred and One Dalmatians—takes a walk through the National Portrait Gallery in hopes of settling upon the right answer. He’s especially moved by the plight of all the lost dogs, creatures who surely must feel that Sirius’s offer is alluring. “Today we have hardly felt like lost dogs,” one says. “Because in a way, all dogs have been lost.”
In the end, the dalmatians decide to remain on Earth. “Perhaps one day, Sirius,” thinks Pongo, “we shall be ready to join you and accept bliss. But not yet.”
* * *
Thanksgiving 1979. My grandmother, sitting in a green wing chair by the fireplace, rattles the ice cubes in her empty highball glass. “Voka,” she says. My father takes her glass and heads out to the kitchen. In a love seat upholstered in white linen sit my grandmother’s friend Mrs. Watson and my aunt Gertrude. Mrs. Watson has a hard time hearing anything, which sounds sad but actually works out for her pretty well. Aunt Gertrude is looking wistfully at the Cable-Nelson in the corner. “I wish I knew how to play the piano,” she says. “I’d play it for you.”
“You do know how to play the piano,” says my mother. “You’ve been playing the piano since we were children!”
“Do I?” says Aunt Gertrude, always interested to learn things about herself.
“You don’t remember anything!” shouts Gammie. “Hildy, get her something to drink.”
My mother hates being called Hildy. “Can I get you anything?” she asks her sister.
“Maybe …,” said Aunt Gertrude, but then her sweet face is overcome with uncertainty and worry. She’s overwhelmed by her choices. “Maybe some prune juice?”
My mother looks at me. “Jimmy, could you get your aunt some prune juice?”
“Sure,” I say.
“And put some voka in it!” shouts Gammie.
“I don’t want anything to drink!” says Aunt Gertrude, worried.
“How would you know?” asks Gammie.
“Jimmy, you’re not going to put anything in my drink, are you? Promise me you won’t!”
It hurts my feelings that Aunt Gertrude thinks I’d dose her, because I wouldn’t. But my aunt has decided that I cannot be trusted. My mother leans forward and whispers in my ear, “Maybe you could just give her a little.”
“You know what’s interesting?” says Gammie, pulling her latex breast prosthesis out of her bra. “This looks exactly like a real boob!” She’d had a mastectomy the year before. We’d been worried about her, but Gammie now appeared to be perfectly okay. “Science is just something,” she says. “That they could do this!” She waves the boob around. “Science!”
It is impressive—science, that is. “Here ya go,” says Gammie. She hands the boob over to Mrs. Watson. “Maybe you could get one, Hilda.”
“Whoop? Whoop?” says Mrs. Watson, which is her all-purpose response when she can’t hear what’s going on. When I was young I thought Hilda’s deafness and her constant mantra of Whoop? Whoop? Whoop? was very funny. But now that I am old and have hearing aids myself, I’ve come to appreciate the utility of Whoop? Whoop? Whoop? It says what it means.
Hilda holds Gammie’s breast prosthesis in her hands thoughtfully and considers the situation she’s in. She was a World War I army nurse, widowed young. When she isn’t going Whoop? Whoop? Whoop? she has a gentle Yorkshire accent. She has been my grandmother’s best friend for decades. They used to live next door to each other when they both had apartments in the old John Wanamaker mansion on 2032 Walnut Street off Rittenhouse Square. This was the only house I was ever in that felt more haunted than the one my family had moved into. It was a crazy Jacobean Revival–style mansion, once owned by the department store magnate, that had since fallen on hard times. Once, my grandmother took me into the basement, which was stuffed with statues and old wedding dresses and steamer trunks. In one corner was an actual stuffed fucking bear, standing on its hind legs. The bear was dusty. “The people who owned this stuff are dead,” my grandmother announced with a strange satisfaction. “Dead!”
“I’ll be back,” I say, taking Aunt Gertrude’s glass and heading into the kitchen. My mother holds up her thumb and forefinger in the universal symbol for “just a little.”
In the kitchen my father is sitting quietly