“Sure, let me grab my coat.  Do you have a poop bag?”

Seth nods and pushes open the kitchen door. Maisie scampers out. At ten she’s the youngest, with a coarse buff coat, the head of a tiny terrier, and the legs of a giraffe. Black-and-white Sclepi, short for Asclepia, the Greek god of healing, tumbles out next—the dog door is a snug fit, so she prefers we hold it open for her. Our daughters say she has some fancy Japanese lap dog in her, but I think she most resembles the animated footstool from the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast with a curled and plumy tail. She was small and sick when she came to us—a terrible case of mange that the shelter could not manage—but Seth healed her.  Diva, blind and deaf, curls up in her bed, resolute, determined not to leave the house. Also black and white, but leaner and silkier than her sister, she is a lady of a certain age. When Seth scoops her up she growls, and Seth croons, “You don’t mean that; it’s good to get fresh air.” Animals, children: he is a whisperer.

At the back gate, I bend down to snap on Sclepi’s leash. She knows the drill and obediently stands still. Maisie is a pain in the neck, scooting away and zooming around the yard. “We’ll leave without you,” I tell her, and she finally returns.  I wonder, sometimes, if she has a dog version of ADD.

Seth gets Diva organized, her stumpy tail waving back and forth in delight now that she remembers the outdoors is full of smells, and we head down the driveway.

Our black cat, Tonio, another one of Seth’s rescue pets, sits at the foot of the driveway as if to say, “Exercise? Really? How bourgeois.”

We live on a circle. When I walk the dogs, I always turn right; Seth always turns left. He hands me Diva’s leash, keeping Sclepi and Maisie’s leads. Guiding this sightless dog reminds me of the summer theatre program for high school students Seth and I started almost forty years ago. On the very first night, we had the teenagers partner up; one would blindfold the other with a bandana and take the blindfolded partner on a trust walk—no talking! It was a great way to build the kind of trust that kids need on stage, and it was a big responsibility to shepherd someone who could not see. I always worry that Diva will head smack into a tree trunk or fall off the curb if I’m not watching every second. It’s worse than managing a toddler, because I sometimes forget that Diva can no longer see at all.

It’s October, the darkness closing in a little earlier each night, but the sky is lovely; golden light still, the blue deepening, like a saturated drop of watercolor spreading across paper. We walk among a spill of tiny golden leaves cascading from the thornless honey locust trees. Seth found out what they were called after I wondered for years. He is always precise.

“How was your day?” Seth asks, and I consider my answer. Some days I report a litany of events that occurred at school and then grow exasperated when he asks questions. I made myself clear, didn’t I? But over almost four decades together, I have learned that sometimes I start in the middle, and remember that, while we are often able to anticipate each other’s thoughts, Seth has not been in my office with me all day. Some days, I can’t bear to talk about school. I just want to be with my husband and our pets, insulated from the tensions or conflicts that come with leadership.

“Fine,” I answer, lying.

We pass the front door of the school I lead.

“Hi, Ms. Klotz. Hi, Mr. Orbach,” call several middle schoolers waiting to be picked up after sports practices. “Can we pet your dogs?”

Seth shows a child who is nervous how to hold her hand low in front of the dogs; I move Diva slightly away from the girls; I don’t want her snapping if she is surprised.

Teddy, charcoal on paper by Nancy Murray

We keep walking, waving at the cars, whose drivers wave at us. We are well known on the circle.

For many years, our two cats followed us on our walks: Sebastian, sleek and gray, and his glossy black brother, Cesario. Both are gone now, and we still miss them, sometimes expect them to dart ahead or loop back behind us. We were a spectacle then—three dogs, two cats, and one married couple.

“How was Seeds?” I ask as we pause for Diva, who is almost always the first to poop. Seth works with adults trying to pass the GED every morning at Seeds. It has offered him purpose. I love hearing his tales about the people he has come to know—many older than he is at 65, many deeply Christian, which for my husband, an atheist Jew, is an interesting experience. He’s a remarkable teacher—patient, dedicated, able to explain concepts many ways, and he likes feeling useful.

“Good. I worked with a new man who counts on his fingers.”

They have lots of reading tutors at Seeds, but fewer who feel confident with math. Seth was a math teacher after being a lighting designer and a theatre consultant.

We chat, walking, pausing, letting the dogs sniff, letting Maisie leap at every squirrel she sees.  It’s chilly but not too cold. Perfect fall weather.

A year ago, waiting for back surgery, Seth couldn’t walk, and the darkness of depression almost swallowed us all. Ten months later, he is in much less pain and he’s back—that’s how I think of it. When he’s depressed, it is as if he’s gone away even though he’s here. But recently—a few weeks after we dropped our son at college—he has been good with me, present, capable.

We discuss the possibilities for dinner. We’ve already eaten pizza and pasta this week, and one night we settled for rice cakes with a slice of cheddar cheese on top. Our children are convinced we are incapable of taking care of ourselves. Seth and I roll our eyes at each other when they call to excoriate us for poor nutrition. We like rice cakes.

“Should we start ordering again?”  Seth asks. For a time, we had subscribed to one of those meal-in-a-box services. Our son had noticed during his junior year of high school that I was always the one to make dinner.

“Dad and I could help more,” he said, signing us up.

“It’s true,” I’d answered. “If you can read, you can cook.”

And for a time, they did. Until they didn’t.  Atticus was busy with senior year; Seth wasn’t able to stand long enough to prep a meal. I loved cooking with them when they joined me in the kitchen. But when I am tired and lonely, I resent having to dream up the meals, prepare them, and clean up afterwards. Still, I decline Seth’s offer. All the ordered-in meals sort of taste the same.

“As long as you help, I’m happy to figure out what we eat.”

“OK,” he says.

Sclepi pulls him to the curb. I guide Diva away from a fallen branch, admiring a neighbor’s fall chrysanthemums and hydrangeas—deep maroon against the lavender night.

We are aware that the walks we have left are limited. In a year and a half, we will leave this home where we have raised our children for two decades. We will leave the school I lead. When I start to spin about the future, Seth says, “Let’s focus on right now, honey.  Let’s stay present.”

He is right, of course, but it is hard for me. “Who will I be when I am not the head of a school? When I am not a teacher?” I bleat to him at night.

“You will be you, and I’ll be with you,” he soothes.

We are almost all the way around the circle. We admire the neighbors’ Halloween decorations, all of which I attribute to the lawn décor Seth began to install in our front yard about a decade ago. Before that, this prim neighborhood eschewed blow-ups, spider webs, and gravestones. But Seth, my resident lighting designer, has set the bar. We have new blow-ups every year, spooky music, bones scattered over the grass. In fact, one year, a science teacher confided that he thought our skeleton—a gift from my former school—was real.  We were horrified and retired it immediately. Why, we wondered, did that school give us a real skeleton? It’s in storage now; we’re not sure what the etiquette is for disposing of real bones.

Working outside grounds Seth, helps him keep depression at bay, and, secretly, I think that around Halloween, he basks in the adulation offered by the little girls at school. Our house has a gothic look and a hobbit door, and when children ring the bell to trick-or-treat, fog emerges and scary music sounds as I creak the door open, doing my best witch imitation as I hand out candy.

“It’s really just Ms. Klotz, right?” the littlest girls have been known to ask, eyes wide.

“It really is,” I answer, dropping out of role and waving my stuffed bat in a friendly way.

Seth and I love Halloween, even though our nest is now an empty one. When our two daughters were little, we always made elaborate costumes for them, held parties in our tall NYC apartment building. Our son, though, was a suburban child, who preferred store-bought costumes and went trick-or-treating with his Dad outdoors. Two different acts in the same show. Perhaps because we made plays together for a long time, Halloween feels like a great one-night run. He does the set and lights, and I get to be onstage.

We approach the house, Sclepi pulling away. She does not like our walk to end.

I look at my husband. Though his hair is gray now and he limps slightly most days, I see him as he was in college; dark-haired, broad-shouldered, slender, strong. Isn’t it wonderful that we see each other both as we are and as we were?

I marvel sometimes that we fell in love so long ago and love each other still, even when my stories don’t start at the beginning, even when his darkness threatens to overwhelm us both, even though our kids are mostly grown up and perhaps, soon, some of these sweet dogs will leave us.

But tonight, I am glad that there will be more walks around this circle before we go, more time to imagine a future with tiny dogs in another landscape, the two of us side by side.

Georgia, charcoal on paper by Nancy Murray

Tears and Trombones

by Nanci Lee Woody

Readers will admire young Joey’s mother, Ellie, as she navigates around poverty and her abusive, philandering, alcoholic husband to help her son achieve his impossible dream of becoming a classical musician. She wasn’t sure what a symphony was and had never set foot in a concert hall, yet without her husband’s knowledge, she managed to scrape together enough courage and money for standing-room only tickets to a San Francisco Symphony performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Joey was in awe of the violinist and the orchestra and sat transfixed throughout this concert that set him at nine years old on his long journey to a musical career. Ellie is deeply proud of her son and does what she can to protect him from his father’s verbal abuse and attempts to dissuade him from a career as “some sissy horn player.” Joey uses his creativity to passively get even with his dad for his cruelty, but his self confidence suffers. He does have Ellie’s backing always, knows she will be there to rescue him if needed. She models for her son loyalty, persistence and hard work and allows no excuses when times are hard. Readers will follow Joey through high school where his musical talent grows. He falls deeply in love with a curly-haired beauty and is torn between his love for her and pursuing his musical dream. He chooses to marry another girl who courts him and offers to work to help him through college. This decision to marry puts Joey into a seemingly endless triangle love affair, even as his professional life explodes. He auditions for the Sacramento Symphony and is offered a position. He plays his horn in Hollywood with studio musicians, performs with The Beach Boys, Dorothy Dandridge and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Will Joey ever be able to right his love life? What will Ellie advise him to do? Nanci’s short stories and poems have been published in the California Writers Club Literary Review, A CWC Anthology, October Hill Magazine, The Fault Zone, Sacramento Poetry Society’s Tule Review, Your Daily Poem, The Monterey Poetry Review, the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and many other online and print publications. For reader reviews and samples of her writing and art, visit nancileewoody.com. To listen to the music in Tears and Trombones, from Shostakovich to Johnny Cash, visit bookcompanion.com. Watch on Amazon for Nanci’s new book of poetry coming out this fall. Tears and Trombones is available from Amazon, Bookshop, and your local independent bookseller.

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