Golden Days: Memories of a Golden Retriever

\ "Is she dry?" my mother calls in, not fully appreciating the enormity of the task she has assigned. To her, Amy always is a little girl who can be dressed up in ribbons and ruffles for tea parties, a sweet little girl all sugar and spice and everything nice.\ \ "Yup. As dry as she's going to get," I answer.\ \ "Did you get the chest? The chest is most important."\ \ "It's as dry as I can get it."\ \ I neglect to report that our beauty parlor patron is currently engaged in a rousing game of tug-of-war, with Marjorie manning the other end of the orange towel.\ \ Already the game is getting pretty intense.\ \ "Amy, you're a brute and you know it," Marjorie says.\ \ All golden retrievers like to fantasize that they can be fierce, and Amy redoubles her tugging.\ \ "Come on, one hand," I tell my sister. "Give her a chance."\ \ "Give her a chance? Give her a chance?" she hisses at me, hanging on to the towel for dear life. "This is not a retriever you brought back in. This is some kind of wolf dog that's loose in the house."\ \ And sure enough, Amy's lovely and loving brown eyes have assumed the frightening steely glint of the Big Bad Wolf's eyes in that split second when Little Red Riding Hood suddenly perceived that it was not Grandmama under the covers.\ \ "One hand, one hand, those are the rules," I remind her again. "She's only got one mouth."\ \ "Okay, okay," my sister mutters, letting go with one hand and instantly losing several inches of towel as Amy pulls back against the momentary slack.\ \ "I told you! She's not playing fair."\ \ "She's playing fair, and she's going to beat you if you don't watch out."\ \ Now thematch gets serious, and a gambling man in that dark room with the wind wailing about the eaves would have had a hard time knowing where to place his bet: on a Wellesley graduate sprawled on the floor, one end of a towel clenched in her hand, pulling for all she was worth, or on a wily retriever with the other end of the towel clenched in bared teeth, her eyes becoming more and more demonic, a low warning rumbling from her throat, watching, watching, waiting for that split second of weakness, a moment of exhaustion, a repositioning.\ \ Now!\ \ In a movement almost too quick to see, Amy lets go of the towel and pounces on it several inches closer to the middle, an ominous growl in her throat defying anyone to call that cheating; and is that a look of triumph in her eyes?\ \ "See! I told you! That's cheating!" my sister declares.\ \ Bully on you, Amy seems to reply as she repeats her tactic and lunges again at the towel, grabbing it inches from my sister's fingers.\ \ Marjorie lets go as if she touched a mouse crouched in the dusty dark corner of a cupboard and jumps back out of the way.\ \ "Good gods, Amy, you win. Okay? I quit. You win. You can have the stupid towel. It's yours."\ \ Amy already knows she has won without waiting for that gracious concession speech. She grabs my sister's end of the towel, lying over the rest of it, and begins a methodical ripping, viciously shaking a hunk.\ \ Game over, right? Amy has won fair and square, everyone is ready to concede that. But woe be unto whoever tries to retrieve that towel. This is the really hard part of the game.\ \ Left to her devices, Amy will make a great show of angrily ripping loose every thread of the hated towel, mash around a bunch until they're nice and soggy, and then swallow, which isn't good for the drying towel or for a golden retriever. Our mission impossible is to take the towel away and let it dry out for another rainy day.\ \ "Here, get the towel," I breezily tell my sister as if it's the simplest matter in the world.\ \ "Are you crazy? I'm not going near it," she says from the safety of the loveseat, her bare feet tucked under her. "You get it."\ \ Amy is waiting for just such an eventuality, her eyes challenging anyone who comes within five feet of her. Any closer and she lets go of the towel and assumes her protective position, huddling over it, trying to get a more threatening look in her eye, closer still and a warning snarl, then a wrinkling of the nose, a show of fierce retriever teeth, the hair on the back of her neck magically rises, and if any- one is foolish enough to lay even a finger on a stray corner of that towel, Attack! the most ferocious, fiercest, most bloodcurdling snarl and lunge at those misplaced fingers as if she meant to tear them out at the roots.\ \ Amy never actually connects with human flesh, perhaps because she doesn't really intend to and is merely training us to be fair. Or perhaps she is just having some fun bullying us (she always seems to chuckle to herself as soon as she snarls and, like the gracious winner of a heated tennis match, trots right over to shake hands). Or maybe under these circumstances of imminent peril, misplaced human fingers can retreat pretty quickly. But her response always is the same. And, upon reflection, it does make sense: she has won the game, fair and square. The trophy is hers. That is retriever fairness. And who could argue with that?\ \ But still there is the matter of getting the towel back while it still resembles a towel and not merely its constituent threads. As Mr. Darling in Peter Pan learned with Nana, all the sweet talk in the world will get you nowhere. Fair, after all, is fair. To the victor belong the spoils.\ \ It's time to play our trump card: cheese.\ \ Like old Ben Gunn marooned on Treasure Island, Amy dreams of cheese, long, sweet, deliciously repetitive dreams of cheese. For a good morsel of cheese, there isn't anything she won't do.\ \ We know it will work.\ \ "Would you like a little piece of cheese?" we ask as she glares at us, awaiting our next move.\ \ She looks at us, suspiciously, considering our offer, still holding the towel firmly in clenched jaws, not about to be fooled by the old Trojan Horse ploy.\ \ "No, really. A little bit of cheese?"\ \ It always helps to describe exactly what kind of cheese we're talking about.\ \ "We've got some of that new sharp Cheddar cheese. Yup, the strong kind. From Vermont. It's pretty good cheese."\ \ The towel is dropped, long forgotten, the last thing on her mind. Who wants a dry, tasteless towel when there's cheese being distributed?\ \ She's up. She's herding us toward the kitchen six inches from our legs, faster, faster. Must get that cheese.\ \ Into the bright kitchen she skips, as sweet and innocent as little Miss Muffet, her wolf mask put away. Straight to the refrigerator where fabulous stashes of cheese are stored. Out comes the slab of golden cheese from the back of the refrigerator door. It is laid on the counter. Two brown eyes watch in salivating anticipation, like Ben Gunn's, as it is placed on a breadboard, the wrapper opened, a paring knife taken from a drawer, a nice hunk neatly cut from it and, like a pirate's gold bar, divided into thirds.\ \ "What's that for?" my mother asks.\ \ "We had to promise her cheese to get the towel back," my sister explains.\ \ "Oh, don't be ridiculous," my mother responds. "She always lets me dry her, don't you, Amy? Amy, you have them buffaloed, that's what I think."\ \ A tasty morsel of strong Vermont Cheddar cheese, down the hatch in a gulp. And a healthy half of the other two pieces from the tug-of-war losers.\ \ Pots bubble and simmer on the stove. The smell of chicken roasting in the oven catches Amy's interest. She looks up at my mother, expectantly, as if to ask, "Is there anything I can do to help in the kitchen? Is it ready yet? Can I have a piece now? Amy knows by heart the answers to each of these kitchen questions, but her philosophy is that it never hurts to ask. And she knows, too, that at dinnertime, merely by resting her head in our laps and poking her nose into the stomachs of those pack members she can so easily dominate, she will secure all the chicken she wants, no hunting or skinning required.\ \ Our work is done. We're in for the night, cozy and warm. The orange towel is out of sight, having been secreted in the washing machine. Everyone is content. We three head back to the sunroom to resume our dozing and sleeping and reading, as outside the wind drives sheets of rain against the house as if the storm will blow all night.

\ Kirkus ReviewsA love song to a departed golden retriever, keen and tender, from Vanderbilt (Fortune's Children, 1989). Vanderbilt's parents had a dog much beloved by the whole family. Amy was her name, and she possessed all the best characteristics of golden retrievers: She was personable, emotional, enthusiastic, mischievous, always with an eye for fun. Vanderbilt was grown and gone by the time Amy entered the household, but his many summer vacations at the family place on Cape Cod allowed him to enjoy the dog to the fullest. Amy's exploits are the nub of this short remembrance: how she would make nightly rounds to check on her charges; nuzzle a rotting sand shark to partake of its evil perfume; herd the family back to shore when they went for a swim in the ocean; show a bit of her roots during a towel-tugging contest with a bristle and fierce growl; how she failed as a seadog (actually it was Vanderbilt who failed as a seaman) but knew how to throw a baleful look when she was not invited along on an outing, getting all morose and hurt. Vanderbilt twines her story with concisely rendered elements of Cape Cod history. One moment he will reconstruct in his mind's eye a grand hotel in Chatham, Mass., and the next tell the story of Squanto, the Native American who saved the Pilgrims during that first cold winter of 1621. Or he will delve into the natural history of the horseshoe crab while offering it up for Amy's inspection, then remember that it was off this particular beach in 1918 that a 213-foot submarine of the Imperial German Navy þbroke the glassy surface of the seaþ to fire upon a tugboat, the only enemy attack upon the US in WW I. Through it all romps Amy. Good dog, lovelybook.\ \