Up at the front, a string quartet dressed in formal wear, with silver stars spread across their faces, began to play. We rose and turned to see the sun and the moon walking toward us through the crowd. The bride wore a dress of palest yellow silk with layer upon layer of iridescent gauze catching the light. Her face was a dazzling circle of gold, framed with fiery rays. The groom wore a tuxedo, his face masked with a tall crescent of silver. They were beautiful.
Lexy leaned toward me. “I’m curious to see how they’re going to do the kiss,” she whispered. I reached out for her hand and held it as we watched the sacred joining of sun and moon, silhouetted by the falling dusk.
SIX
Ah, but I’ve already let it slip, haven’t I, that our first date lasted a week. It didn’t end there in that perfect sunset moment of the masquerade wedding. There’s more, there’s always more to tell, and I’m already getting caught up in the accumulation of moments that led from the day of that wedding to the day of Lexy’s fall.
But the more I think about Lexy, the more I try to sort it all out, the more I neglect my research. The truth is, now that I’ve arranged for a sabbatical and given myself all the time and space I could possibly need, I’m not sure how to proceed. My desk is piled with books on canine physiology and psychology, papers on language acquisition in apes and in children, studies of “the talking dog as motif” in folklore and literature. I have folders full of notes that I have compiled on famous dogs, ranging from Cerberus to Snoopy. Just yesterday, I spent several hours in the microfilm room of the university library, collecting clippings about the trial of Wendell Hollis and its star witness for the prosecution. The dog who sent Wendell Hollis to jail had been named Dog J by his captor, simply because he was the tenth in a series of alphabetically named dogs that Hollis had purchased from pet stores, picked up at pounds, or snatched off the streets, but after his rescue, the New York Post held a contest to rename him. Suggestions ranged from the cheerily naive Lucky to the wrongly gendered and grandiosely silly Harriet Pupman, but the name that stuck was Hero, and even the Post’s blaring headline of HERE, HERO! emblazoned above the famous photo of the dog being escorted out of the courthouse by a group of smiling police officers failed to detract from the dignity and the rightness of the name. This story fascinates me more than I can say, for reasons that should be obvious: This is a dog I would like to talk to.
So you can see I have been working; my desk is littered with the reading I have done, the tangents I have been willing to follow. But as I sit here, sifting through the paper, with Lorelei lying at my feet as inscrutable as ever, I realize that I have no idea where to begin.
I suppose the first step in teaching a dog to speak might be to teach her to “speak.” That is, to teach her to bark on command in the parlor trick usually referred to as “speaking.” I get a biscuit and call Lorelei over to me.
“Sit,” I say, and she does.
“Speak.” She just looks at me. “Speak,” I say again. Uncertainly, she lies down.
“Up, up,” I say. She stands.
“Good girl. Now sit.” We’re back to the beginning. She stares at me intently, her nose twitching at the nearness of the biscuit I hold. She sneaks a glance at the treat; hasn’t she already performed several tricks?
“Speak,” I say firmly. Then I start to bark at her. “Rrr, ruff!” I say, staring into her eyes. “Ruff, ruff! Speak! Ruff, ruff!”
Lorelei cocks her head to the side. This is unprecedented behavior on my part. Never before have I gotten down on the floor and barked at her. She waits to see what I’ll do next.
“Speak, girl!” I say, pulling my face closer to hers. Our noses are almost touching. “Grr,” I say, staring into her eyes. “Ruff! Ruff!” I’m nearly shouting. Finally, it works. Lorelei lets out a noise, not quite a bark, not quite a whine. It sounds, more than anything, like an expression of frustration—When the hell do I get the biscuit?—but it’s progress.
“Good girl!” I say effusively. I break the biscuit in two and give her half. She settles down to gnaw on it. I wait until she’s finished, then urge her back into a sitting position. I show her the other half of the biscuit. “Speak!” I say. “Ruff, ruff!” This time she gives a full-throated bark, and then another. “Good dog,” I say, “good speak!” I hold out the other piece of biscuit, but she ignores it. She stares into my eyes, her brow furrowed, and continues barking.
“Okay, now, good girl, quiet,” I say. I pull away slowly, sliding back on the carpet, still sitting. “Quiet now!”
Lorelei stands up, drawing herself to her full height. She has to lean down to continue barking in my face.
“Good girl,” I say soothingly. She’s making me nervous. I stand up; my books have told me that in situations like this I need to assert my position as alpha male. “Quiet,” I say more firmly. She looks up at me searchingly and barks again. She’s less aggressive now, but I can’t get her to stop. I reach out and gingerly pat her head. “Do you want a cookie? Nice dog, nice cookie.” Finally, she takes the biscuit. She retreats to a corner of the room, where she drops it on the floor and pretends to bury it, using her nose to draw the folds of the carpet over the biscuit.
“Good girl,” I call from across the room. I sink down on the sofa and watch her concentration as she goes about her task. I pick up my notebook. “Taught Lorelei the command Speak,” I write. “Results inconclusive.” I lean back and close my eyes. Across the room, Lorelei picks up her biscuit and takes it into a different corner to start over again.
SEVEN
I became a linguist in part because words have failed me all my life. I was born tongue-tied in the most literal sense: the tissue connecting my tongue to the floor of my mouth was short and thick, limiting lingual movement. It’s a common enough condition; the doctor simply snipped the membrane in the delivery room, and I grew to speak like any normal child, with no lingering impediments. But the image stays with me as a kind of metaphor for all my subsequent dealings with language: I was born with a tongue not meant for speaking, and despite all artificial attempts to loosen it, it has stayed stuck in place at every important moment of my life.
But that first day with Lexy, I found I had plenty to say. Waiting in line to congratulate the bride and groom, radiant now in their own faces, for they had taken off their masks to kiss after all, I chatted with the other guests, happily introducing Lexy as the one who had made all the day’s magic possible.
By the time we got through the receiving line, it was as if we were already a couple. As word spread that Lexy was the creator of the masks, a crowd formed around us, encircling us with such admiration and excitement that anyone looking on might have thought that we, and not Brittany and Todd, were the newlyweds. With my hand resting on the small of Lexy’s back, I took on the role of proud partner and promoter, bragging about her work and allowing her to play the humble artist, basking shyly in the praise. Flushed and smiling, she answered questions about technique and inspiration and gave her business card to those who asked for it, art collectors and fairy-tale enthusiasts and people who liked to throw elaborate Halloween parties.
As the crowd around us thinned, Lexy squeezed my arm. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re good at that.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I should tell you, I’m not usually so suave. It must be the mask.”