THE OLD LADY FROM QUEENS WHO LOVED LIVERWURSTCatherine was the old lady who lived on the furthest corner of my suburbanblock when I was a child. She had this thing about my dog. Whenever our beagleRocky had managed to schedule one of his periodic reprieves from "family life,"and we kids were asked to go looking for him, we always knew to check Catherine'shouse. We thought she "talked funny," and I later learned she came toPennsylvania from Queens. Looking back, I guess she sort of had an unexcitingmarriage, as when we saw her she was usually doing crossword puzzles in a ratherdark living room, or just poking in her gawky old lady manner around her yard,talking to a peony blossom or warning a squirrel. There was a t.v. in her housebut it looked as though it had been used for decoding secret messages during WorldWar II, then politely and permanently shut off. And we never even heard music froma radio or a record player from her house, ever, and that was something everybored housewife in the suburbs clung to the way their kids clung to pot. She and John had no children, no pets, and we never saw anyone visitingthem. They did have a beautiful miniature apple orchard which covered one slope oftheir rather large yard but that is long gone days. Not even the birds in my oldneighborhood would believe you if you told them that beautiful orchard onceexisted, though their great great grandparents made love in those floweringbranches. We knew Rocky would turn up at Catherine's house sooner or later on hiswalkabout...it was just sure money. That's when we would collar the fugitive, butnot before allowing the ritual to take place.... Catherine would feed him at her back screen door, usually liverwurst,olive loaf, or some other scary meat that old women with hair on their chins soloved. (I don't know what the preferred meats of the chin-hair contingency aretoday.) Rocky would lap it up as though he were a starving refugee and not a fat,spoiled dog who could remember hunting about as well as Catherine could probablyremember feeling what it was like to scramble a boy's brain just by whisperingsomething stupid about her underwear.And she would talk constantly while he ate, and laugh like the villageidiot with such delight, patting him on his litttle funny-shaped head as hechomped, chomped, chomped..."that's a good boy...him loves it...look atthat....that's the way to eat...hah hah hee... Then sometimes she would eat apiece of whatever it was she was feeding him, to show us how good it was, gigglingthe whole time. It was all rather goatlike-ravenous and strange. It got quitecreepy sometimes. She had that odd laugh...like the twenty-foot fat lady atop thefunhouse in an amusement park, trying to suck you into her real mouth, wheresomeone took your tickets, below. But Catherine was not fat...she was skinny. Shelooked as though she had probably been bony her entire life.

Sometimes we tried to talk to her during this ritual, but she would onlyhalf-hear us, not really look at us, but continue staring at Rocky and giggling,obsessed with watching Rocky chow down like the cliched skinny kid from theMidwest in every army unit in the movies. She just went into another world.Patting his head, stroking him, shaping his tail. I guess her husband reallyneglected her. He was from Iowa or someplace taciturn like that. We never saw themspeaking at any length. Sometimes, she sat in a lawn chair outside while he prunedtrees or mowed the lawn. They just sort of changed their configurations in spaceevery now and then, like characters in a series of paintings.We always let Catherine have her time with Rocky, and she never lostinterest in his visits, even after she lost her mind to Alzheimer's disease. Wewere more understanding by then--we were older too of course--and understood whenshe would signal with her hands more to explain things. But Rocky always made herlaugh, even at the end. I'm glad that dog outlived her is all I'm saying. GoodDog, Rocky. Her husband made a valiant effort to keep her in the house. He neverreally talked to us kids but one day as we were riding our bicycles on his street,he came walking fast up to us and said she had awakened in the night and thoughthe was a stranger in her bed and had begun striking at him. He was clearlyspooked, if he was telling this to children he never really talked to before. Whatcould a ten year old make of that? We probably said "Gee." That was what you saidback then when you heard things like that. "Gee." Still he kept on. He did his best for a couple years. We'd see her sittingin the yard looking rickety on a rickety lawn chair and we'd wave and she'd wavesometimes, or sometimes look away and back to her magazine quickly, as though wemight be people sent to abduct her. Then one day she was just gone, you justdidn't see her anymore. And the flowers bloomed like crazy and nobody warned thesquirrel so I guess he turned renegade. My mom and I stopped by one evening to drop off a meal. John was doingcrossword puzzles in the dark living room. He invited us inside and the t.v.looked deader than ever. I looked to the right where the kitchenette looked sosad, as though it were haunted by the ghost of liverwurst. He said things like"dear Catherine" when referring to the past in his conversation with my mother. Icould never have imagined him saying that phrase while she was alive, not any morethan I could have imagined a squirrel standing up in their yard and reciting theentire text of Alice in Wonderland and then dropping to all fours and going off insearch of acorns.I said nothing. I just kept looking around me to see what life looked likewhen it was done. It was a strange, unfinished shape...I realized your furniturestill has expectations concerning you when you die. It spooked me a little.