The Dog of the North

by Elizabeth McKenzie

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023

The darkly comic new novel from the bestselling author of The Portable Veblen

'Incredibly funny and very moving’ BELLA MACKIE

'A blissful novel that I want to give to everyone I love’ NINA STIBBE

‘Even funnier, even more romantic than McKenzie’s wonderful last’ KAREN JOY FOWLER

Penny Rush has problems. Freshly divorced from her mobile knife-sharpener husband, she has returned home to Santa Barbara to deal with her grandfather, who is being moved into a retirement home by his cruel second wife. Her grandmother, meanwhile, has been found in possession of a sinister sounding weapon called ‘the scintilltor’ and something even worse in her woodshed. Penny’s parents have been missing in the Australian outback for many years now, and so Penny must deal with this spiralling family crisis alone.

Enter The Dog of The North. The Dog of the North is a borrowed van, replete with yellow gingham curtains, wood panelling, a futon, a pinata, clunky brakes and difficult steering. It is also Penny’s getaway car from a failed marriage, a family in crisis and an uncertain future. This darkly, dryly comic novel follows Penny as she sets out in The Dog to find a way through the curveballs life has thrown at her and in doing so, find a way back to herself.

Release date: March 14, 2023

Publisher: Penguin Press

Print pages: 336

Sample

1

My plan was to catch the ten o'clock train from Salinas to Santa Barbara, seeing as I had no car and a few problems to deal with there. It is never convenient to be without a car in California, but I was pretty sure I would be able to borrow my grandfather's Honda station wagon once I arrived. And Burt Lampey would pick me up. Though I had to leave suddenly, the timing was good, as I'd been living in a motel for the past three weeks and was looking for a good excuse to quit my job. You might say the Santa Barbara crises had been timed perfectly for my circumstances. Extricating myself from Santa Cruz, the site of my most recent failures, was very welcome, actually a relief. So I took a bus to Watsonville, transferring to another that would take me through Castroville to the station, and, seeing as how chaotic things had been recently, the thought of being a passenger with nothing to do for the day but sit still while in motion was something to look forward to.


Even so, I was on edge. After all, I'd be facing two unpleasant situations through which great anger was sure to be directed at me. I was used to being the object of anger, especially recently, but that didn't make it any easier.

Adding to my general unease were thoughts of what I was leaving behind. In the past twenty-four hours I'd abruptly left my job, burning a bridge that I was happy to cross for the last time, and I'd confronted my husband, Sherman: I know all about Bebe Sinatra and the cocaine.

True, I took the cowardly way and wrote emails, but they were masterpieces of obfuscation. In no way did they reveal the depth of my disgust at what precipitated this rupture. They were the whimper rather than the bang at the end of my world, but I could not move forward if I were to permit myself the full brunt of my feelings.

As the bus neared Salinas, I started to breathe evenly. A hair glinted on my sleeve; I pulled it off and let it fly out the slightly opened window into the fields of brussels sprouts and artichokes flanking the highway. A rotten smell, like that from the neglected vegetable bin at the bottom of my last refrigerator, was blowing in. Despite the fact that I was finished with Sherman, I wondered where he was and what he was doing, and if I'd always wonder, no matter how humiliating the final days of our time together. For instance, last month, pouring Sherman's dirty clothes into the washer, I discovered a slightly worn pink thong. "Yuck, what's this?" I said.

"Oh. I found a bag of stuff at a bus stop. Thought maybe you might like it."

Repulsed, I held up the abbreviated scrap. "But the back part went up somebody else's buttock crevice."

"Can't you just say crack like everybody else?" Sherman said with disgust, peeling back yet another layer of his true feelings toward me.

"Sure. Whose crack was it anyway?" Nothing but anguish would compel me to say a thing like that.


Eventually I boarded the train and settled in. Just after the Zephyr left the station, the train door whooshed open, ushering in a cloud of patchouli oil and the sound of jingling metal objects. A woman came up the aisle and purposefully took the seat across from me. Small brass bells and coins had been sewn onto her billowy patchwork skirt. She then made eye contact and asked if I’d like to have my palm read for twenty dollars.

Twenty dollars was a lot to me, but there I was, heading off into a great unknown. Once I dealt with the issues in Santa Barbara, my future was up for grabs. I was like the strand of hair blowing out the window, uprooted, alone. If ever there was a time I might want my palm read, this was it. So I agreed to it and she took my right hand and began to study the fleshy side, tracing her finger along some of the lines. At last she said, "I can see that in your past lives you experienced many episodes of aggression. Here"-she pointed to a place where two creases intersected-"I can see that you were once beheaded, and also strangled." She looked up to gauge my reaction. Because I'm accustomed to disguising my feelings, she saw no reason not to press on. "And you are easily taken advantage of."

I can't quote the rest of her findings, as I was immediately consumed by the information already imparted. For a moment I wondered if she was mocking me for accepting her services, yet I wasn't willing to rule out that she had provided me with a valuable insight. The main problem was that the people sitting in front of me were talking loudly enough that I could hear them, and I'm unable to listen to two things at once, and quickly realized I'd much rather listen to them than this bleak history of bodily injury. I gave her the twenty and told her that would be enough.

The people in front of me were discussing everyday matters, but it was somehow pleasant to listen to them. They needed to replace their garbage disposal because their teenage son had fed avocado pits into it. They'd go to a favorite restaurant in L.A. that evening. They had a meeting with someone tomorrow about a tax issue, but didn't seem worried about it. Every now and then I heard them laugh.

I suddenly realized I was being transported to the backseat of our family car with my parents talking up front. Car trips always brought out the best in my mother, a geologist by profession, whereas at home she was often restless and moody. So, while I had some of my best memories of them from the times spent with my sister in the backseat, any pleasure I took was quickly obliterated by the cruel irony that on a long drive, some years later, they disappeared off the face of the earth.

My parents had already taken the step of vacating the northern hemisphere. They were creating a new life for themselves in Australia ostensibly because they liked the climate and the geomorphology, enjoyed the adventure, and got good returns on the exchange rate. But it's also possible to say that they went to denounce the American Dream and avoid the various unpleasant people who had damaged their lives. We, my sister and I, had taken their emigration in stride. In fact, my sister had joined them. But then they had to take it a step further and vanish altogether. My father, also known as my stepfather, also known as Hugh, was as detail-oriented and protective as a spouse could be. They were two people who would leave nothing to chance, who had planned every day of that trip, who provided us with an itinerary before leaving, complete with phone numbers and addresses of their stops along the way. The last known witness to see them alive, at a petrol station in Mount Isa, saw nothing to arouse his concern. Just a middle-aged couple filling up and checking the air pressure in their tires. My sister and I did not know for several days that they had failed to show up at their next destination. Nor was their car ever recovered. Search-and-rescue teams scoured the area for weeks and found nothing.

Though nearly five years had passed, I hadn't really been able to accept or even think about it.

In the late afternoon, I stood outside the Santa Barbara train station with my bag, waiting for Burt Lampey. He'd offered to pick me up and put me up for the night, and we were to have dinner to discuss the plan we'd execute the following day vis-à-vis my grandmother, Dr. Pincer. I had never met Burt in person but had spoken with him a number of times by now. As Pincer's accountant, he had become one of the few people she trusted. Little did Pincer know that Burt called me secretly every time he saw her to keep me updated on her condition.

The day was still bright and warm. As a child I'd spent weeks at a time here with my grandparents and, despite how things had turned out, still had fond feelings for the place. I'd visited over the years too many times to count, though never before by train. I paced in front of the station, scanning the parking lot and beyond, hoping Burt hadn't forgotten. Finally, an old, sea-green van entered the lot and pulled up before me. It had a number of gashes and dents on the body and looked slightly sinister. The man driving leaned over and rolled down the passenger window and called out, "Penny?"

It was Burt. Over the phone, his voice had filled me with confidence.

He threw it in park and jumped out. As he rounded the dented front end, I felt an unexpected jolt of terror. It was a jolt I experienced from time to time when I realized I was about to be thrown into an extended conversation with someone who might notice something about me they didn't like.

Burt reached for my hand. He was a large man with a significant mane of brown hair and a friendly face. He was wearing baggy green shorts, a white T-shirt with the name of a local brewery on it, and high-top white Nikes with black socks.

"How was the trip?" he asked.

I decided not to mention my encounter with the palm reader. I didn't want him to form the idea that I was someone who regularly squandered money. In fact, I was very careful with money, having so little of it. The palm reader had been a whimsical extravagance to celebrate my escape from Santa Cruz, and a good reminder that whimsical extravagances were mostly disappointing.

"Good," I said, in my typically conversationally stunted fashion. "I haven't taken a train in years," I struggled to add, hating small talk but knowing that this kind of comment was considered normal.

"Hop in," he said, holding open the passenger door.

He revealed with that gesture the seat I was to take, gamely held together with duct tape. Once I was in, he slammed the door so hard my eardrums buckled. Between us rumbled a large hump under a blue quilted vinyl cover. The engine, Burt said. I looked in the back, making out a tangle of objects-a hose, a bicycle, boxes, suitcases, an old ironing board, a musty, donkey-shaped piñata, a tire.

"Forgive my mess," Burt said, when he took his seat at the wheel. "I'm kind of between things."

I didn't know anything about Burt's personal life, so I said, "Oh, I see. That makes sense."

"Wouldn't want to do anything radical until your grandmother's squared away."

Radical? I wasn't sure what he meant, nor why my grandmother had anything to do with it.

We started down State Street in the squeaking van. I couldn't help thinking of my childhood days in Santa Barbara when we'd come watch the yearly fiesta and State Street was closed off and beautiful white horses paraded past, bearing pretty ladies with flowers in their hair. And the white rumps of the horses flashed in the sun. My grandmother and grandfather were still married then, but likely already hated each other. At the time I didn't realize such a thing was possible. The fiesta evaporated as we pulled into the parking lot of a modern office building, where Burt found a space.

"Here?"

"This is it. Hop on out."

I grabbed my bag and followed him into the building. At the center of the lobby stood an open flight of stairs made of cement slabs mounted on steel supports, under which a garden of ferns and other struggling houseplants had been assigned to simulate a grotto. I followed him to the second floor, down a hall to a door bearing his plaque: burton lampey, cpa.

As he unlocked the door and pushed it open, I came to the sudden and horrible realization that this was where he was living. I sputtered, "Oh my god, Burt, no! I'm really imposing. I can stay in a motel."

"No imposition at all," Burt said.

The air in his office was stuffy and ripe, a blend of masculine aromas. It looked like a dorm room-sleeping bag on the couch, pile of pizza boxes on the desk, plastic laundry basket filled with beer bottles, shirts on hangers hooked onto the bookcase, a stick of deodorant and a bottle of mouthwash on a shelf.

"The couch is all yours," he said generously. But how could I sleep in the same room with Burt Lampey? I began to panic. He was a trusted friend of the family, wasn't he? Certainly he wouldn't try to molest me in my sleep. But how could I relax? Did the window open, was there any fresh air?

"But what about you?" I managed to say.

"Back here," he said, pointing behind his desk. "I'll be on the floor and loving it."

I craned my neck and saw that he'd planned ahead with another sleeping bag and pillow.

"No reason to hang out here, let's go get something to eat!" he said.

With that, it seemed to be decided. I currently had a total of just under eight hundred fifty dollars from selling my 1987 Chevette, with nothing in savings because Sherman's business had proved to be an insatiable money pit. Anything I could avoid paying for, the better.

We walked down State Street to Burt's favorite Mexican restaurant and were lucky enough to be seated in a spacious booth. My spirits picked up. The restaurant was popular and festive and the smells emanating from nearby tables made me feel ravenous. Before I could say anything, Burt ordered a pitcher of margaritas. I supposed there was no reason to stop him.

"Well, we finally meet," Burt said. "How long's this been going on, a couple years now?"

"I can't tell you how much we appreciate how helpful you've been to her," I said.

"I'm a sucker for stubborn old mules," he said.

I nodded and laughed, wanting him to know that it was perfectly fine to call my grandmother an old mule.

"She's never turned on you?" I asked, recalling the ill-fated trip I'd taken with her a few years back.

"Only once," Burt said with a note of pride. It seemed he'd picked up Pincer to take her to lunch, but just after they drove off, she claimed to have left behind a letter she needed to mail and demanded he turn around and go back. Burt said he had another appointment after their lunch and there wasn't time, that he would grab the letter when he brought her home. At that point, she said if he didn't stop the car she'd report him for kidnapping. He tried to calm her down, but she kept on. She told him she'd never liked him, never liked the way he dressed, never liked the way he looked. She accused him of embezzling and said he was one of the ugliest men alive. She said she only ever put up with him because he was too stupid to know he was being used.
 
“She said my accounting skills were nothing to write home about and that she could do it in her sleep if she had to. And that not only was I professionally inept and unattractive, but the most boring man she’d ever met! She reamed me. I’d never experienced anything like it, even from my wife.”

“How did you manage to stay friends?” I wondered.

“Next time I saw her, it was like nothing happened. I feel sorry for the old bat,” Burt said. “Anyway, I don’t know if one day will be enough to make a dent over there. I still think she’s going to have to be forcibly removed and the place cleaned out with a bulldozer,” Burt asserted.
 
I knew I’d never want to forcibly remove her. “But her house means everything to her.”

“Bottom line, get the gun,” Burt said. “That’s the biggie. Until we have the gun, nobody can do anything in there.”

I nodded grimly. The urgency of the situation stemmed from arecent incident involving Meals on Wheels. On Pincer’s behalf I’d applied for their services, but the day they showed up, she threatened to shoot if they didn’t vacate the premises immediately. Someone had seen her wielding an object that looked like a bazooka. That led to a complaint to the police, which led to Adult Protective Services, which led to the involvement of a woman by the name of Ruth Perry, who warned me there would be swift consequences if we didn’t disarm her and provide for her needs immediately.

Now the pitcher came, along with our glasses rimmed with salt. Burt poured, and soon we were clinking the glasses together and saying cheers, with the camaraderie of soldiers on the eve of battle. The margarita was great. I was glad Burt had recognized the necessity of it. He’d also ordered nachos and guacamole as a starter and was digging into both with gusto.

Under the influence, Burt began to rhapsodize about my grandmother.“ She’s a great lady, whatever you say at the end of the day,” he said. “A great lady. I’ve learned a lot from her. She’s one of the world’s great people,” he said, to my surprise.