Free Lion's Share by Rochelle Rattner Page A

place he frequented.
    â€œNot one dog—Kathe had sixteen when I met her,” Ed said, turning his attention back to Jana as soon as the waitress left. “And they weren’t pets, they were an obsession.”
    â€œYou’re kidding. How could someone have sixteen dogs?”
    â€œKathe bred them. She had as many as twenty for awhile there.” Ed’s voice became animated as he eased into the story: Kathe went with a friend to a dog show, met a guy, and fell passionately in love with him. Kathe, the guy, and all his dogs spent two days together, leaving his RV only for meals. Then he was gone, promising to write and call, but he never did. Kathe started attending dog shows in the area, hoping to run into him. When she finally did, he seemed distant. She reasoned it was because they didn’t have enough in common, so she started breeding and showing Yorkies.
    â€œI discovered Kathe with a pack of caged dogs in her living room. Yap, yap, yap all night.” Ed yapped himself. “She was thrusting her motherly instincts onto puppy after puppy. I watched her hair grow uncombed while the dogs were treated to Brillcreem. A tiny red or blue bow above each ear became two bows, then three.”
    It was the wrong time to laugh, but the image Ed was presenting of this woman with the uncombed hair was too vivid. Besides, laughing prevented Jana from thinking about how, in teenage rebellion against the suburbia that threatened to engulf her, she’d let her hair go uncombed for days on end. Her mother once spent five hours brushing the knots out. It happened once, and it could happen again, but next time her mother wouldn’t be around. If she continued to live by herself, no one would be around to give a damn next time. She might end up an old woman with uncombed hair and sixteen dogs. Or sixteen stuffed dogs and one stuffed lion. Even if the dogs were live pets, she doubted she’d care enough to brush their fur and cart them off to shows. She’d more than likely stay cooped up in her apartment with the yapping, paint-stained dogs and a hundred cityscapes.
    â€œGo ahead, laugh,” Ed said, interrupting her thoughts. “At least now I can laugh, too. But at the time, I had myself convinced that all Kathe needed was someone who would care about her. And it worked for awhile. She gradually stopped going to dog shows. After a year, she had only two dogs left. You could sit down in her apartment without getting hair all over you. I honestly thought I was helping her.”
    â€œIt sounds like you did help her.” Jana reached across the table and gently squeezed Ed’s hand.
    â€œI don’t know. Sometimes my being with her was more detrimental than anything else. I remember once she arranged to sell a dog to a woman in New Paltz. We drive sixty miles, drop him off, stay and chat with the woman, then drive home. Later that night Kathe became hysterical—the woman mentioned having an ulcer, and Kathe worried it might interfere with the care she would give the animal. The next day we drove back, returned the money, and picked up the dog.”
    â€œSo having the car made it too easy?”
    â€œSure. If Kathe’d had to traipse back and forth by train, she might have thought twice about it. And if I hadn’t been with her, she probably wouldn’t have spent time chatting with the woman to begin with. She’d have never found out about the ulcer, and the dog would be fine.” Ed took a long sip of coffee. “I wanted to help, but I couldn’t live her life for her.”
    Jana stared at him. She could easily imagine him chatting away with some woman to whom he was delivering a dog. Ed enjoyed talking, enjoyed learning about people, and easily drew them out. His sensitivity on the phone with Kathe entranced her. But maybe he was fed up with nurturing love-starved little girls who worked out their frustrations through dogs or paintings instead of with