Cookie || Richard Pels

“All points are turning points. 

All points might not be tipping points.” 

Louis Menand 

I didn’t say I ate the cookie, and I didn’t say I didn’t. 

Sandy said, “There were thirteen now there are twelve.”  We weren’t getting anywhere, which was sort of okay with me. 

I asked, “What’s the difference… twelve, thirteen?”

“Because thirteen was enough, and now there aren’t enough.” 

“Enough for what?” I asked. She didn’t answer. 

My infraction was trivial. I tried to be objective. If it was important to her, I suppose it should be important to me. But what about it was important? There was a time when a cookie was just a cookie, and if it went missing it was no big deal. 

Sandy said, “You never remember anything I tell you.”  

“I thought the dog-shaped cookies were for the wake.”  It was an innocent mistake, really. I had concluded incorrectly that the circular cookies were up for grabs. There would be plenty of dog-shaped ones going into the oven soon. I would like to have mentioned it had been a really good cookie, by the way. But now I couldn’t. 

There were no places in this apartment where I could be invisible like in our old place. The bedroom was no better than the living room. I remained on the uncomfortable couch I planned to replace once I got work. 

The point of the cookies was Fanny’s death. That put the family more out of sorts than it already was. I felt self-conscious about using the word “grieving” about the death of a dog that wasn’t even our dog. But Fanny had been a friend of the family ever since the kids were small. She had resided in the building from which we had been economically exiled. 

The wake was scheduled for the next day at 11 AM. 

I wondered if Fanny had been cremated or had a coffin. Another person who lived in Fanny’s building had a father who was in jail for being a mob hit man. She told me, when she was little, her dad made dog coffins in their basement as a hobby. Maybe she had an extra one lying around. He paid her college tuition with a suitcase full of cash. 

I wondered about what kind of suitcase her father had used for the cash. Initially I imagined one of those cheap vinyl bags that come in lusterless brownish grey or dark red. You’ve seen them, always over-stuffed, the last things picked up on airline carousels, with a belt or duct tape around them. But her father was a wealthy felon. He had shrink-wrapped money hidden under rocks behind a country house, like in the movies. So it was probably an Italian calfskin duffle bag big enough to hold two thousand twenty-dollar bills. 

Such thoughts helped another hour go by. I expected Sandy to let the cookie incident go. Apparently, years of disappointment had undermined her cookie forgiveness. All those crumbs swept under the carpet until we trip over them. 

Hands covered in flour, she stomped back into the living room, which was easier to do in the new apartment, because life here was squeezed into a smaller space. “So you lied,” she spat out. She was vibrating. The flour on her hands formed little clouds around them. I stared dumbly at her hands. 

The theme of our collapsing prosperity was that I “lied” about our finances until it was too late. But I thought it would be easier to find work. If I had gambled away our savings instead of foolishly spending it on apartment maintenance, mortgage and insurance payments, at least I could have gone to rehab. This way I was just a liar.

Sandy’s interrogation had lasted a good two hours and was only getting started. I reflected on a drink I might otherwise be having, and on how fucking exhausting it is to be interrogated. How do tortured people stand it? I thought about saying, “It was just a fucking cookie,” but the infraction was symbolic. The punishment would also have to be. 

This cookie was a bomb, like the ones people stumble over in a forgotten battlefield. Think of it, the war’s over, peace declared. The bomb’s still armed and these poor fuckers get blown up anyway. That’s the power of anger. Even from people long dead. The explosion is not subject to negotiation or resolution.

Crumbs of the cookie were still hiding in my beard while Sandy continued with the third degree. Her anger pressed on those crumbs so hard, they were on the verge of catastrophic collapse. They could become small Black Holes and ingest my beard, me, the entire earth, then Mars and Mercury, Venus, the very Sun itself. What about the cookie I consumed? What dark mischief was it doing inside me?  

Sandy was making more batter now. How many cookies can this dog wake consume? She doesn’t get close to dogs. She’s allergic to them. It was a good friend’s dog, and the friend is serious about the wake, so Sandy is serious about the cookies. Or maybe dough is anger that requires being kneaded and pulled and beaten with a rolling pin. 

Of course, thirteen cookies didn’t have a special meaning to Sandy, except that there were now twelve, and she was angry. Angry with me for not remembering. Angry that I was confused. I felt sad. I appeared irresponsible but felt responsible. 

The dog’s owner, Laura, was, everyone agreed, a truly sweet human being. She confided to me long ago that in her youth she was “difficult”, which is why she is making it up to the world now. The world is full of difficult people. Laura deserves a merit badge in congeniality. She told me she was glad Fanny had her own friends. 

Fanny was named after Fanny Mendelssohn, Sister of Felix. A sonata written by Fanny in the 1820’s was attributed to her famous brother for almost a hundred years because it was considered too good for a woman composer.  The thought of that deaf, aging Boston terrier who rolled on her back and grinned when you entered the room having composed a sonata mistakenly attributed to the cat would make me grin back at Fanny. I’d have to suppress that urge during the service or lock myself in the bedroom with the cats.

Laura became a minister by sending twenty dollars for a certificate from the Universalist Life Church, but she took the ordination seriously. As seriously as she takes her piano. She spent decades becoming a great pianist after her allegedly difficult teen years. She played with acclaimed orchestras. Since her postal ordination, she devoted more time to writing and performing animal funerals, including original songs and incidental music. She’s sincere. 

We have no dog of our own because of Sandy’s allergy, and no cat because of mine, so Tommy and Kay were reduced to having hamsters, Misty, Tina, Snoopy, George and etc. When they died, the kids demanded closure, a funeral sendoff. I would stuff the stiff little corpses into toilet paper cardboard tubes and wrap them in stolen hotel washcloths. 

By virtue of our address, we had a key to Grammercy Park, a coveted treasure. On the key was stamped, “Do not copy.” We’d proudly show it to friends, who were always impressed. We lived on the actual precious two-block rectangle encircling the ornate iron fence of the impeccably groomed, stodgy, private park. We would solemnly but furtively carry the hamster, a family procession, past our elevator operator, past our doorman, unlock the park gate and carefully close it behind us. We would let the kids dig a small hole in a flowerbed with a spoon while Sandy and I made sure the groundskeeper, Uriel Gomez, rake gleaming in the sun, tidied up another corner of the park. What we were doing was so unthinkable in that manicured sanctuary that I banked on people walking by outside the fence imagining the kids had to be park beautification volunteers.

Tommy and Kay started walking Fanny when they were too young to do it alone. I would take the kids into Laura’s apartment cluttered with memorabilia from her long career and lots of dog and cat toys. Fanny was usually asleep on a couch that had seen generations of pets. She’d smile sweetly when she saw us, eyes half closed. 

In the winter, Fanny had long underwear, olive drab and waffled with a subtle split for the business end. Then a pumpkin-colored sweater, and if it were inclement, a bright red raincoat. If there was snow, Fanny would wear red rubber booties. On the street, people who knew her would say, “where’s Laura?” The kids would proudly explain they were the dog walkers.

Yes, I thought, I ate the cookie. But I just couldn’t to listen to Sandy once again say “You didn’t listen. I specifically, explicitly said don’t…” 

In Bob Dylan’s memoir he says in his house anyone could do whatever they wanted without being yelled at, even play basketball. I figured he was stretching the truth. But there, taking a cookie by accident would be okay. 

I drew a chart with Dylan’s permissive house-rules on the right of the horizontal axis, and some ancient law, prescribing cutting off a miscreant’s hands for stealing a cookie on the extreme left. Sandy was trending left. The vertical axis charted to what degree the problem might be a symptom of something else. That axis went off the page into infinity.

But there was a new twist I thought might deserve another axis for perversity. Sandy started interrogating the kids, whom she knew very well didn’t take the cookie. 

“Do either of you have an explanation for the missing triple fudge nut cookie?” A long pause ensued while she made eye contact with them. It was painful, not in the least because it was following the script of “The Caine Mutiny”, except the kids were not my co-conspirators contemplating removing the dangerously incompetent ship’s captain who ranted about someone stealing his jam. Savvy middle-schoolers, they wanted no part of this and knew as well as I did who took the cookie. It was diabolically clever on Sandy’s part. A triple layer of shame to complement the fudge.

First Kay said, “You know I have a nut allergy.” Points for factual evidence, and for turning the prosecutor into a witness.

Tommy said, “I helped you bake them. I could have had one then.” The kids were embarrassed that I was left holding the bag, but it was a dog-eat-dog situation. If only we had a dog, I could have put the blame there. I could see that even Sandy was aghast at what she was doing, at what I was allowing her to do. 

I said, “Maybe you miscounted. Maybe it was only a dozen. Besides, I’m trying to get this straight in my head. What’s the importance of thirteen cookies versus twelve?”

Not an outright denial that would make me a black-hearted liar, but a question of accuracy. Was there a photo of the thirteenth cookie? People put everything on Instagram these days. Sandy didn’t, so those cookies came into the world undocumented. 

The kids looked uncomfortable. Tommy said, “Maybe it fell behind something…”

The loose ends of the family compass swung wildly in all directions. It described a circle, a point, a cookie. A cookie resembles a point even when the cookie is gone. The cookie had become a memory, a theoretical point, an imaginary crumb. 

Merwin said “The point of disappearance could be considered a kind of beginning.” But he never met my family. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up. If I were a cat, I’d have been on the ceiling, claws sunk deep in plaster.

“I’m making more cookies,” Sandy said. 

I said, “I saw them. They look beautiful,” which they did. That only presented another opportunity for her to complain, “These aren’t made yet. If you’re referring to the dog shaped cookies, I was making those anyway for the wake. These are extra. If someone didn’t take one of the fudge cookies, I wouldn’t have to waste my time making more.” 

I imagined saying, I didn’t realize your time was so valuable.  But nobody wants another World War.

Confessing was impossible now. There was no available positive rejoinder. If I were given two consecutive life sentences, I’d feel like I do now, no place to go short of shattering my shaky little universe. 

The wake was in Laura’s apartment. The kids and I had gone there the previous week to say goodbye to Fanny, who was lying unresponsive in a folded yellow blanket on her couch. She was like a ragged, much loved stuffed animal. Her breathing was hard. The small edges of lip and eye not covered by fur were alarmingly pale, like calamari. 

Fanny didn’t seem in pain and Laura wanted her to die naturally. I have seen dogs put down. It was an experience worth avoiding if possible. Here Fanny was laid out at home with visitors, friends, and curious cats who’d swing a paw at her occasionally, hoping for a response that would no longer come. 

Funeral seating, including Fanny’s couch, was arranged in a semicircle facing an antique porcelain jar standing on Laura’s cluttered desk. In most cluttered homes, pushing something aside didn’t seem like a big deal, but in this apartment, you might be mistreating historically significant correspondences from George Balanchine or Herbert von Karajan.

A young blond woman was recording everyone’s reminiscences. She held a microphone in our faces. Her accent sounded Dutch or maybe Eastern European. She said something about recording this for NPR and asked for permission. 

Laura had everyone say something. Mostly mundane stuff about play dates with their dogs, funny quirks. Our kids’ stories were sweet and sincere. A retired veterinarian spoke. A neighbor. I talked about Fanny’s long underwear. 

Sandy didn’t bring up the cookie. I didn’t think she would.

Finally, everyone, a little tearful, gathered their things. After bidding goodbye to Fanny’s urn, I turned to the table where the comfort gifts had been arranged. Sandy’s cookies were untouched. 

I paid my respects to Laura, cradling her hand in mine. Her last two fingers, like an injured wing, were taped together to ease arthritis. 

I said to Laura, “When I die, would you do a service for me?”

She looked surprised. “You’re fifteen years younger than me. Are you not well?”

“I’m okay.”

“In that case, if you die first, I’d be honored. I can see you miss Fanny a great deal. Thank you for that.”

Then, to my absolute horror, she suggested we take the cookies home with us. “Everyone brought so much,” she said apologetically. I hadn’t considered that. I clutched an oak bookshelf, knocking off a catnip mouse. A prowling feline pounced on it. 

The relief I felt seeing the cookies under new management was gone. If I were vindictive, petty, I’d have taken them. But I patted my chubby belly and said, “Perhaps someone else might want them.” That simple declination proved sufficient. I glanced at Sandy helping the kids with their coats. 

We drifted through the door with the rest of the guests. Outside we turned towards the uptown subway, a small family procession, past the doorman, past the tall iron fence of the park where Misty, Tina, Snoopy, George etc. rested.

Sandy sighed, “Did you see? People were passing around Pepperidge Farm.”

Tommy said, “Milano’s are like crack.”

The three of us assured Sandy, sincerely, that everybody would have preferred the triple fudge nut. Nobody bothered to ask how I could possibly know.