THE BERGAMASCO SHEPPARD

 

 

Pina decides to keep her birthday to herself, but a flurry of phone calls come from old friends, and she feels pleased to be remembered, if guilty for being so out of touch since the plague began. She hasn’t spoken with her old chum Olga once in the last months and is sorry to hear how the Coronavirus has turned Olga’s life upside down. Her elderly parents both died in April from the virus and Olga’s lost all of her work as a yoga instructor. On top of that, Stephen, Olga’s longtime boyfriend, recently moved in with his boyfriend Geoff, a relationship he’d been having on the sly for years.

“I’m waiting to get cancer,” Olga says. “It’s been suspiciously quiet around here lately, although pretty soon I will be evicted and have to move into my parents’ house in Modesto, which will represent death on the installment plan.”
“Why didn’t you call?” Pina asks.
“The same reason you didn’t.”

Pina wonders what that reason is, but isn’t curious enough to probe the question. She and Olga had been best friends during college and for years after, but after Marco died, Pina pulled away from many of her old friends, preferring solitary grieving to the cloying pity of others. Olga was a friend she later reunited with, but the friendship didn’t resume as it had been.

Pina doctors her Bloody Mary mix with Worcestershire, Tabasco, and smashed garlic. She’s been on a sobriety kick since Sylvie called her a noisy drunk, but today is her birthday, for God’s sakes.

“So what’s it like spending all those months in the country?” Olga asks.
“I wouldn’t exactly call Sonoma the country.” A jigger and a half of vodka, and voilà.
“Compared to a funky apartment in the Lower Height, it’s the fucking wilderness. So, what’s the deal with you and Vince? Have you found that you enjoy each other more being separated?”
“I think that’s about right.” She’s resolved not to say anything about what’s happened to Vince, but for some reason she tells Olga about Charlie and can sense her friend’s gossip consciousness springing to life.
“Is it serious, Pina?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s he like?”
“Like nobody I’ve ever known. He’s kind of a wizard geek dude.”
“A wizard geek dude. What the fuck is that, Pina? Does he have a particularly big wand?”
“Don’t talk dirty, Olga.”
“Why the fuck not?”

Olga, always one of the most straight-laced of Pina’s friends—she was raised a Christian Scientist and evolved into a devout practitioner of Transcendental Meditation—has discovered the value of obscenity, pitching fucking this and fucking that everywhere now that both her parents have died and the Coronavirus has turned all of us into existentialists. Pina takes a bite of her Bloody-laced celery.

“Are you eating, Pina?”
“Yes, I’m eating my Bloody Mary.”
“That sounds good. Okay, describe a wizard geek dude, Pina.”
“Oh, he’s indescribable.” Pina wanders out to the deck and sees Sylvie in her garden. She waves furiously to Sylvie until she’s spotted and points to her phone and shrugs. Another night survived; the suicide watch is lightening up.
“Come on, Pina, tell me about Charlie.”
She walks back inside. “Okay, for one thing, he’s not only trained his parrot Roscoe to talk, he’s trained him to think.”
“Get out.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“So you’re having an affair with the wizard geek, parrot master in your husband’s condo.”
Pina swirls what’s left of her Bloody around in the glass. “Vince isn’t really my husband and Charlie and I spend most of the time over at his place.”
“Technicalities. You’re hiding behind technicalities, Pina.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Vince knows?”
“No, no, no, no, no. And I don’t want any gossip from you, Olga.”
“Wouldn’t think of it. So, tell me, can I come up and meet the wizard geek? I’ll wear my mask.”
“You sure you’re willing to venture into the wilderness, Olga?”
“I’m ready for anything.”
“Then come on up next week.”
“Do you think the guy knows another wizard geek dude?”
“I’ll enquire.”
“Alright, Pina, now that I know you’re going to have a happy birthday, I can let you go.”

 

The next call is the one that really takes her by surprise.
“Happy birthday, darling.”
“Vince, where are you?”
“Not to worry. I’m where I’m supposed to be, at Harmony Acres in Nicasio. They gave me my phone back the other day, but I thought I’d wait for your birthday to call.”
He sounds normal, whatever that means. “It’s good to hear your voice, Vince.”
“And yours, darling. Of course, all I want to do is apologize to you, Pina. I sure as hell went off the deep end and I’m so sorry to have put you through hell.”
“You’re the one who went through hell, Vince, and I hope you don’t go back.” Pina walks briefly back out onto the deck, squeezes the Thai basil and admires the majesty of the Japanese eggplant. Sylvie is nowhere to be seen now.
“I don’t intend to go back to that madness, but they say that being here is the easy part.”
“What’s the place like, Vince?” Pina mixes herself another Bloody Mary, a bit sorry to be drinking alone.
“The grounds are nice and they let you go for walks in the morning. There’s a dairy farm nearby and I walk by everyday and talk to the cows. They’re about the best company I have. Almost all the clients are half my age or younger. Some of them even call me gramps. They’ve gotten a bit kinder since I’ve started cooking dinner.”
“You’re cooking dinner?”
“Yeah, they found out I could cook so that’s become my job. Dinner’s gotten a lot better, I must say. Otherwise, we have three daily meetings, meet individually with a counselor, and write heaps in our notebooks everyday. Shame seems to be the subject I keep swimming through. It’s a real cesspool. The big news is I’ve gotten back to writing poems. I say back as if I’d taken a brief sabbatical, but it’s been more than forty years since I’ve written a poem.”
“That’s wonderful, Vince.”
“Yeah, look what it took me to get back to writing. But I wrote a poem for you, Pina. I wonder if you’d be willing to let me read it.”
“Of course.” Actually, Vince doesn’t really sound normal. There’s something different about him she can’t put her finger on. It’s as if a bit of humility has crept into his personality, but she reminds herself that it may only be a new manner he’s adopted.
“It’s called Calves. For Pina.”

        It’s good to see the heifer calves
        run free on a dairy farm.
        They’ll likely have a full life.
        The bull calves have another fate.
        Do you remember the day
        we came upon a village of calf huts
        on the road to Point Reyes?
        You asked me to stop the car
        at the side of the road.
        The calves, chained to their huts,
        could only move a few feet.
        They lay on their haunches
        and had already given up their spirits.
        Why, you wondered, why do they keep them like that?
        We both knew it was to prevent them
        from building muscle.
        Tenderness is what’s treasured in a calf,
        and in a lover.
        I watched you cry
        as if they were human children.
        Compassion has always been your strong suit.
        It’s never come naturally to me.
        I am trying to discover that quality in myself
        and believe it exists less between my ears
        than in my heart.
        That’s a staunchly defended territory, hard to reach.
        You should know that a lifetime
        of bad habits and lazy reckonings
        are tattooed to my psyche
       What can I promise you?

 

Pina waits for more lines, but the poem is over. “Gosh, that’s powerful, Vince.” She got tangled in the lines, though certain phrases haunted her: Tenderness is what’s treasured in a calf, and in a lover; Bad habits and lazy reckonings; and What can I promise you? Now she wonders what more can she say about his poem. “It sounds like you’ve been digging deep Vince.”

“Do you think? I’m not so sure. It all might be mood making. I don’t trust myself, and when I realize how much my shtick is a part of me—a load of flim flam competence—changing myself after all these years seems impossible. You know what they say about old dogs. But it’s become a very clear choice for me, Pina: I either tilt the windmills of sobriety or go off like a mad dog into the night.”

Mad dog, she thinks, pronouncing the words in her mind. Pina, carelessly, pours down the rest of her Bloody Mary and her throat catches fire.

“Forgive me, Pina, for laying all this shit on you. This was supposed to be a birthday call.”
Pina gasps before she is able to respond. “So when do you get out, Vince?”
“Ten days. It’s very scary.”
“Can you sign on for another month?”
“I might be able to, but I want to get back to the real world and take on the challenge. I spoke with Bernard the other day and he’s arranged for a couple people to clean out the damage I did to the house. It will be two guys in Hazmat suits and cost a small fortune. Can I see you, Pina? Can we try to start over?”
“I’d be happy to see you, Vince—from a distance. That’s all I can say for now.”
“From a distance,” he mumbles, and now, in his new humble voice says, “I understand. I perfectly understand. Send me good thoughts, Pina, and enjoy your day.”

 

Before she can make herself a third Bloody Mary, Charlie arrives at the door with a large package for her. She’d forgotten that she’d told him when her birthday was, many weeks ago. She welcomes him inside and offers him a Bloody.

“I better stay with coffee.” He’s still wary of drink after his recent three-martini night. He takes her into his arms. “Happy birthday, Pina.”

She can’t get Vince out of her head and tries to force herself into the present. “You didn’t have to get me anything, Charlie.” She takes the box with her and leads him into the second bedroom, where he settles into the leather La-Z-Boy.

When she comes back with coffee and a glass of rosé for herself, he says, “Three guesses what’s in the box.”

She makes a show of shaking it; it’s denser than she expected. “I don’t have a clue.”

“Here’s one.” Charlie breaks into song:

        “How much is that doggie in the window?
The one with the waggly tail
How much is that doggie in the window?
I do hope that doggie’s for sale.

        I must take a trip from California
And leave my poor sweetheart alone
If she has a dog, she won’t be lonesome
And the doggie will have a good home.

 Charlie’s voice wobbles back to careful speech. “My big sister Alba sang that to me when I was a child, but I never got the dog. Open it, Pina.”

She rips the paper and lifts the lid from the box. It’s a stuffed animal. A charming and densely hairy dog, its coat, woven of browns and grays, covers its eyes. She sweeps away the hair on each side and is delighted to find its deep brown eyes.

“It’s a Bergamasco Sheppard, Pina. Didn’t you say your people were from Bergamo? This one may have wintered in Bergamo, but he was native to the Alps.”
“Where did you find it, Charlie?”
“That’s my secret.”

And then she discovers the discreet label: Fialdini’s, Bergamo.

“You sent to Bergamo for this?”
He smiles at her, pleased with himself. “Let’s just say, I didn’t re-gift it.”
Pina’s squeezes the animal. The girl in her—when she allowed herself to be the girl—would have loved this large dog, and she adores it now.
“What are you going to name him, Pina?”
She sweeps the hair from its eyes. “Giovanni. His name’s Giovanni.”
“Perfecto.”
“How does that song go again?”
Charlie sings it even more sweetly than he did the first time.

        “How much is that doggie in the window?
The one with the waggly tail
How much is that doggie in the window?
I do hope that doggie’s for sale.

 She thinks of Charlie never getting his dog and then of Vince, turning into a mad dog. Be with the one you’re with. She smiles at her wizard geek. “You can share Giovanni with me, Charlie. He can be ours.”