Seesaw and Jacob

We all knew someone who had set up a parent in the Sunset Bay Towers, where the residents ranged in age from the fit-and-fabulous fifties, to the get-your-hair-set seventies, to the put-me-out-of-my-misery nineties; only occasionally did the pendulum swing back to the celebrate-every-moment one hundreds, we should all live such a long life. Sunset Bay wasn’t a nursing home, just a well-staffed and affordable condo building where you could always find a foursome for canasta or a crispy-skinned group of yentas roasting like rotisserie chickens on the pool deck. It helped that the elevators and apartments had extra-wide doors so that walkers and wheelchairs could glide in and out, graceful as the rollerbladers circling Pinecrest Park a few blocks away.

Many of the residents were widows, and the occasional man spotted in the Sunset Bay mail room got loads of attention. A full head of hair, a non-expired driver’s license, and children who lived out of town were traits in high demand, and a man who could meet just one of these qualifications would have no problem finding a Saturday night movie date.

In the absence of male companionship, the women of Sunset Bay cherished their dogs. Specifically, they cherished their white and fluffy minis, too big for a purse, but small enough that they wouldn’t drag their owners off balance into a hip-breaking fall. Sure, there were exceptions—Mrs. Linsky had a shaggy golden retriever named Janis, a nod to her Woodstock days—but you were much more likely to meet a Pomeranian, a Maltese, a Bichon Frisé, or some poodled-up version of one of those breeds. 

The lobby of Sunset Bay housed a few amenities for the residents: a hair salon, of course, and a dry cleaner, but the most foot traffic came in and out of Chutzpaw!, a grooming, daycare, and boarding shop servicing all the pint-sized pups in the building. (“Such a clever name!” declared the pool yentas when it first opened.)

The owner of Chutzpaw! was Noam Haddad, a flamboyant Israeli who festooned his neck with thick gold chains. The necklaces rested against his smooth, tanned chest, a chai always visible in the gap left by a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned just a notch too low. His wife, Batya, took reservations by hand, a stack of Yurman bracelets clinking around her wrist as she wrote. Their twenty-something son, Asaf, who always smelled vaguely of yesterday’s cigarette smoke, handled the overnight shift for their multi-day guests. The family went all-in on a bright Miami theme, with a mural featuring golden starfish, blazing blue parrotfish, and hot pink beach balls, never mind that the canine clientele was, in fact, colorblind.

Noam and Batya greeted all of us—human and animal—with warm smiles that invited intimacy. Forget small talk; these two knew everyone’s business. They sheltered Seesaw when Debbie Frischman had to have her bunions removed and walked the beloved pup twice a day until Debbie could get around without the orthopedic boot. On the day Marlene Meyer’s daughter went into labor, she rushed her Hazel downstairs, and handed her off to the Haddads—you’ve never seen a seventy-two year old bubby with arthritic knees move so fast. “Give Becca our love!” Noam called after her. “And don’t worry, I’ll tell the girls you’re gonna miss mahjong today!”

Whenever one of the ladies dropped off a Westie or Bolognese for its monthly haircut, the Haddads would return the pooch with little pink bows for the girls or a sequined bow tie for the boys. Pizzazz, the Haddads called it, and they didn’t charge extra for the accessories. “Do you know the Hebrew for dog?” Noam liked to ask new customers. “It’s kelev, which means like the heart. True, no? And your dog, we treat like our heart.”

Among their most loyal customers was Yetta Goldstein. Both she and her dog were in bad shape: At thirteen years old, the snow-white, wavy-furred Havanese was half-blind, walked with a slight limp and had lost several of his teeth. The same could be said for Yetta. This dog had been Yetta’s most reliable companion since her husband, Jacob, died fourteen years before: She picked the puppy up from the breeder on the first anniversary of Jacob’s death, and named the dog Jacob, too, since she didn’t trust any of her three daughters-in-law to name future children after her husband. (She was right, you know, but that’s another story.)

The ambivalence of the daughters-in-law mirrored Yetta’s ambivalence about her family. As a college girl in the late ’70s, she aspired to be a surgeon. Mind you, this was at the tail end of the time when nursing and teaching were the career paths available to young women. Yetta excelled in chemistry and biology; she edged her way into the front row in giant lecture halls, her bell-bottoms pooling around clogs that added an extra two inches to her gangly build, her smooth and steady hand stretching up to answer questions as quickly as her professors could ask them. Whether they called on her was another story. They generally assumed that a woman in a science class was more interested in marrying a doctor than becoming one.

Just as she started to apply to medical schools (her grades put Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins all within reach; I’m telling you, Yetta was a smart cookie), an oopsie pregnancy derailed her plans. Her schleppy boyfriend, Jacob Goldstein, was nowhere near as smart as Yetta. He was a middle-of-the-road student at a middle-of-the-road law school, destined for a life as mediocre as Yetta’s might have been exceptional. But he was also a first-class mensch. They eloped at the limestone courthouse quickly enough to declare their first son a honeymoon baby.

Babies two and three arrived, and a steady trickle of drunk drivers and school-zone speeders made their way to Jacob’s strip mall traffic law office, but the small-potato cases didn’t bring in quite enough to cover the mortgage on the Goldsteins’ low-slung four-bedroom in Kendall. To supplement Jacob’s middle-of-the-road practice, Yetta picked up work as a receptionist for a well-known dermatologist, a patrician old WASP whose bifocals perched on the tip of his stately nose. Yetta took payments and made follow-up appointments for liver-spotted women, whose charts, encased in manila folders with color-coded labels, taunted her with the shadow vision of what her life could’ve been.

We could tell that Yetta wasn’t built for motherhood, and it was a testament to her force of will that she wasn’t outright terrible at it. The kids were fed (though she could never quite remember which of her boys liked what ratio of peanut butter to jelly in their sandwiches) and dressed (though she constantly mixed up their sizes and team allegiances). She showed up to school plays, trumpet recitals, and Little League games, often a few minutes late, but she made it. Friday nights, she’d cook a middle-of-the-road Shabbat dinner and consent to middle-of-the-road sex with her husband. In other words, she fulfilled the obligations of marriage and parenthood. But let’s be clear: To her, these were obligations, and her family could smell it—though, God bless Jacob, he remained committed. She appreciated him for that, and over the course of decades, her cool tolerance toward him grew into an affable fellowship. Still, as the boys started their own lives and their own families, they conferred upon Yetta the same kind of obligatory consideration that she gave them.

But the dog? The dog Yetta doted on as if he were a prince. No kibble for Jacob 2.0: For breakfast he dined on sardines and rice, and Yetta prepared ground beef and steamed carrots for his dinner. Jacob had a wardrobe to make a supermodel jealous: a rhinestone-spangled collar, a cable-knit sweater for the rare day that dropped below sixty-five degrees, and a flashy Versace raincoat, purchased with the gift card her kids gave her for her seventy-fifth birthday—really, what did she need from Saks, anyway? One day a friend emailed Yetta a link to a doggie highchair as a joke; Yetta clicked Buy Now so Jacob could join her for meals at the table while they watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy at full volume.

As Yetta hit eighty, we could tell she’d gone dotty. When she took Jacob on his thrice-a-day walks, she forgot her keys so often that the doorman kept a spare in his pants pocket. Some mornings, she’d come downstairs to check her mail still wearing her shower cap. Some mornings, she’d feed Jacob her oatmeal while she ate his sardines straight from the can. On those days, her fishy breath hinted at the mix-up to anyone lucky enough to have a conversation with her. Her kids called her on Sundays, a series of ten-minute phone calls not quite long enough to clock her diminishing mental state (though they all lived within a twenty-minute radius, they rarely came to visit). No matter: She was perfectly content cozied up with her dog on the couch, reciting the hierarchy of organisms at him— “domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, isn’t that right, my little Canis lupis familiaris?”—just to prove she remembered them, as so many other details eluded her.

Yetta took Jacob to Chutzpaw! twice a week. Even as Jacob got older, he loved sniffing his compatriots and cuddling up to Noam as he wrote out order forms for the paper towels and poop bags he bought in bulk. As Yetta got older, she boarded Jacob for one long weekend a month, giving herself a break from the increasing number of walks that Jacob required. (Neither Yetta nor Jacob had great bladder control, a problem that put them in direct conflict: Jacob reasonably preferred to do his business outside, but it behooved Yetta to stay close to a bathroom.)

On the Friday morning when Yetta dropped him off for the last time, the Haddads had no reason to think anything odd might happen. All day, Jacob enjoyed the pleasures of dog life: He splashed around in the kiddie pool with Pepito and Linguini, took a nap on the mushy turquoise couch next to Janis, and noshed on a milk bone or two.

And then, just like his namesake, Jacob dropped dead. One minute, chewing on a squeaky mermaid toy, the next minute, belly up in the middle of the cool tile floor.

Well, the Haddads knew how much Jacob meant to Yetta, and how very devastated she would be upon news of his death. The family convened to discuss how to tell her, deciding that Batya would be the best messenger, bringing a woman’s sensitivity to the painful task. They figured they could wait, though: No reason to ruin Yetta’s weekend—the dog would still be dead come Sunday.

The trio tried to come up with an explanation that would help soften the blow.

“I think we can tell her the truth, no?” Asaf asked. “That he just died out of the blue?”

“We could say he was in the kiddie pool,” Batya sniffled. “He always loved playing in there.”

“Kindest to just tell her he died in his sleep,” Noam decided. “Let her think it was peaceful.”

As they grappled with how best to comfort their client, Marlene Meyer rushed into Chutzpaw! with more terrible tidings: Debbie Frischman’s bunions had healed, but her heart had given out while she pedaled gently on the recumbent bike in the residents’ gym. MSNBC blared so loudly from the mounted TVs that no one noticed she had hit the ground until Mrs. Linsky almost tripped over the body on her way to the treadmill. Anyway, shiva would be at Debbie’s sister’s house on the beach, the mahjong group was chipping in for deli, but in the meantime, no one wanted to take care of the dog: Debbie’s kids had their hands full with multiple toddlers and the sister claimed to be allergic. Would Noam, Batya and Asaf keep an eye on Seesaw until they figured out a foster situation?    

What could the Haddads say? Of course they’d take care of poor Seesaw, the good-natured Maltipoo whose curly hair they’d trimmed and whose tippy-tapping nails they’d clipped for all of his four years.

“Too much tragedy,” Noam lamented.

“So young to lose his owner,” Asaf agreed.

“They say death comes in threes, it shouldn’t be us, pu pu pu.” Batya, always superstitious, knocked on her wooden desk, causing her bracelets to jangle once more.

The weekend passed quickly enough. The Haddads said Kaddish when they buried Jacob in their backyard, and they gave Seesaw extra tummy rubs and ear scratches to help him acclimate to life without Debbie. Sunday morning dawned, and all three of them developed shpilkes as Yetta’s mid-afternoon pickup approached. Would she crumple to the floor? Would she wail in grief? Noam remembered his childhood dog, a goofy mutt called Dudu who had been run over by a car when he’d slipped out of his rope leash to chase a stray cat crossing a busy Jerusalem street. Noam had retreated to his room, refusing to speak or go to school the next day. He tore his shirt and would not shower until his mother convinced him that one human day of shiva was equivalent to seven days in dog years.

Yetta arrived promptly at three to pick up Jacob, nattering about a weekend spent grocery shopping at Publix (or was it Whole Foods?) and picking up a new house dress at TJ Maxx (or was it Marshalls?), and buying Jacob’s favorite bully sticks at PetSmart (or maybe it was Petco), but wherever she went, she’d gotten a lot done. Batya inhaled, preparing to drop the bomb that would surely explode Yetta’s world.

“Yetta.” She cleared her throat and looked back at her husband and son, who stood solemnly behind her. “I have to tell you—”

As Batya began to release the words she’d been rehearsing in her mind all day, Seesaw bounded in from the back, yapping happily in a bow tie of muted black sequins, presumably because he was in mourning.

“Sweetie, my love, you look so handsome in your formalwear!” Yetta scooped the dog up with crinkled hands, nuzzled him to her chest, and kissed his black nose. “Oh, I missed you so much this weekend, Jakey! Did you have fun with your friends, bubbeleh?”

“Abba!” Asaf elbowed his dad. Seesaw’s hair was a little curlier than Jacob’s. His nose a little bigger. His ears had the slightest beige tint compared to Jacob’s pure white fur, which had been a perfect color match to Yetta’s hair. But half-blind Yetta didn’t seem to notice.

“Sha!” Noam whispered, swatting his son’s arm away. “Let me think!”

“Batya, dear, what were you saying?” Yetta asked.

Unlike Yetta, who had settled into an amiable tolerance for her husband, Batya and Noam had remained crazy about each other throughout thirty-three years of marriage, their lives, minds, and hearts woven together like the braided havdalah candles they lit in the Saturday twilight. Indeed, they had perfected the art of telepathic communication. The Haddads looked at Yetta. They looked at Seesaw. They looked at each other. And they knew exactly what to do.

“Ah, um, just that we are filling up quickly for grooming appointments,” Batya ad-libbed.

“So make sure you make an appointment for…” She hesitated. “For Jacob, make your appointment for Jacob well in advance next month.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Yetta said. “Just wonderful that the business keeps growing. Come now, Jakey, let’s go home. I got us a rotisserie for dinner.”

Yetta limped out of Chutzpaw! and into the elevator, riding up to her fourth-floor unit with an imposter, and none the wiser. Over the next few weeks, she marveled at his improved bladder control, his high energy, and was it possible for a dog to grow new teeth? If Seesaw had been a woman, we’d have wondered whether she’d had some work done, a nip and a tuck, just enough to make her look well-rested. And Debbie Frischman’s kids, well, they never bothered to ask about Seesaw’s fate, so busy they were with the diapers, the sippy cups, and the ever-mounting childcare bills. 

As for the Haddads, they didn’t feel great about the switch. “Did we bear false witness?” Asaf asked in a moment of doubt. But they didn’t feel so bad about it, either. “What false witness? We didn’t say nothing!” Noam responded. Batya looked down and twirled her tinkling Yurmans.

The newest Jacob spent Yetta’s waning years as her dearest friend, offering comfort as she trekked onward toward ninety, sitting calmly on her lap while an aide pushed her around the pool deck in a wheelchair. Yetta never questioned the dog’s miraculously long life, and in return, the dog never begrudged Yetta’s inevitable decline. So, in the end, the Haddads decided that they’d done a mitzvah, preventing an old woman’s heartbreak. Can you say they were wrong?