School Days

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SUSAN WAS AT a shrink conference in Durham, North Carolina, giving a paper on psychotherapy, so I had Pearl. She was sleeping comfortably on the couch in my office, which had been put there largely for that purpose, when a good-looking elderly woman came in carrying a large album of some kind and disturbed her. Pearl jumped off the couch, stood next to me, dropped her head, and growled sotto voce. The woman looked at her.

"What kind of dog is that?" she said.

"A German shorthaired pointer," I said.

"Aren't they brown and white?"

"Not always," I said.

"What's her name?"

"Pearl."

"Hello, Pearl," the woman said, and walked to my client chair and sat down. Pearl left my side, went and sniffed carefully at the woman's knees. The woman patted Pearl's head a couple of times. Pearl wagged her tail slightly and went back to the couch. The woman put her large album on my desk.

"I have kept this scrapbook," the woman said to me, "since the day my grandson was arrested."

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