A Word From the Weiss

        Honesty is not only the best policy, it’s also in the Ten Commandments, along with all that mishegas about honoring thy father and thy mother (my obvious personal favorite as NiceJewishMom.com), keeping the Sabbath (which I keep meaning to do), and not coveting thy neighbor’s house, wife, male or female servant, ox and/or donkey (no specific mention of iPads, perfect bodies, or Kate Spade pocketbooks, thank God).
        It’s also the policy in this country that we are deemed innocent until proven guilty. And although I’m far from perfect in any way, I’m scrupulously honest and do nothing remotely skeevy enough to land me on the front page of the newspaper, let alone in jail.
        Why, then, do I so often end up feeling guilty, or fear that others will think I am? Sure, as we all know, inflicting guilt is the age-old specialty among nice Jewish moms. Yet we’re supposed to inflict those feelings on others, rather than ourselves. Aren’t we?
        Maybe it’s that long before I became an NJM, I had one myself. Not just one, but generations of ’em, imposing pangs of guilt on me. What goes around comes around, as they say, and as honest as I may be, guilt – or the appearance of it – keeps coming around to me.
        As it did yet again, to my infinite distress and duress, during the past week.
        As I have mentioned before, my husband and I are the parents of not just two grown children, but also one young and very high-spirited Portuguese Water Dog. Latke, who turned 1 last month, has begun evolving into a sweet-natured and civilized little critter at last... provided that she gets her daily dose of exercise and socialization.
        Without a vigorous play date or two, she soon becomes a nuisance and destructive menace. I don’t just mean that she gets a little hyper; I’m talking Doggie Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. She has chewed up my husband’s Bluetooth, not just once, but twice. She also noodges us relentlessly, nips at our heels and clothing, and litters the living room rug with shredded items, ranging from decimated dog toys to plastic containers that she filches from the recycling bin and plenty of perfectly good stuff that we still actually want.
        So after managing to finish raising two fairly civilized human offspring, I now find myself back in the business of desperately seeking playmates for my furry little toddler.
        This involves prowling the neighborhood and nearby parks for canine companions, then plying perfect strangers for their names and phone numbers so that we can arrange to meet them and their dogs again sometime.
        The closest friend Latke has made so far in this manner is Duke, a wheat-colored, 1-year-old Labradoodle who lives a few blocks away. With the exceptions of fur color and gender, these two are nearly identical in every way: size, age, temperament, and interests (they both favor snout-to-snout combat and are mad about mud). Together, they cavort with abandon like wild savages, barking and biting, battling over twigs, and wallowing ecstatically in murky puddles. If only my husband and I were close to this compatible.
        It isn’t just a matter of genuine puppy love. They’re a match made in doggie heaven.
        The same thing cannot quite be said of Duke’s mom and me. “Becky” is about two decades younger than I am, with three youngsters still at home. She’s also a presumed WASP who once asked me when we Jews would be holding our Passover “cedars” this year because she feared that they would conflict with a fundraiser she was sponsoring.
        Yet she’s truly one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, surprisingly friendly and unpretentious, considering how pretty she is. And as the fellow parent of a canine hellion, she shares my eagerness to secure camaraderie for her own furry little fiend.
        So almost daily, Latke and stroll over to her house hoping to see Duke outside. Their huge yard happens to abut a golf course, so the dogs have plenty of room to play. Although their property isn’t enclosed, Duke has an Invisible Fence that keeps him contained, and Latke tends to stay in close proximity while they’re engaged in combat.
        Our house has no such physical or electronic barrier yet. So the dogs only play there.
        And since mine is the only dog with the freedom to bolt, I am the only one who keeps watch.
        Last week, only minutes after we arrived, Becky came outside and said that she had to run out to the gym and to do some errands, but that Latke and I were welcome to stay for as long as we liked. She was simply going to leave her garage door up and requested that, before leaving, I put Duke into their house via a door inside the garage.
        She also apologized profusely that she never seemed to have any time to talk to me because she was always on the run, but she promised to do it one of these days.
        I said that all of this was no problem and readily agreed to put the dog inside.
        The fact is that I don’t really expect her or any of the dog owners we visit to linger outside and socialize. It’s bad enough that one of us is stuck standing outside in the snow and cold cooling her heels (literally) for an hour or more. Why should two people have to do it?
        Also, to be honest, who knows how much I will have to converse about endlessly with any of these people while our dogs frolic together? For many years, I used to take a long walk five mornings a week with our previous Portuguese Water Dog, Zoe, her best friend Maggie, and Maggie’s owner/mom. “Marta,” as I will call her, didn’t read books or go to movies or the theater. She wasn’t Jewish, didn’t have children of her own, and didn’t want to hear about mine. There was only one topic that we really had in common – our dogs.
        On the other hand, I must admit that it feels creepy standing in Becky’s back yard by myself. Although she has assured me that we’re always welcome, I feel like an intruder.
        I also fear that the rest of Becky’s family isn’t nearly as receptive as she is. Once, when my husband and I rang the doorbell and asked her husband if “Duke can come out and play,” he looked at us askance and said that this just wasn’t a good time. Another day, one of her children, upon seeing us there, anxiously ordered their dog to come in.
        I also must admit that, on that day last week, I felt even more uncomfortable about the notion of opening their door and putting the dog inside. I worried that Duke might not come when I called. It also seemed a little risky for Becky to leave her house unlocked after I would leave.
        Yet Latke won’t ever give me the uninterrupted peace and quiet that I need to write unless she has had enough activity to render her all tuckered out. So I had little choice.
        Despite the bitter cold, we stayed for over an hour, much of which I passed by chatting with a friend on my iPhone. Unfortunately, the phone eventually died. I had intended to call my husband, who was home, to help put Duke into the house in case he refused or, even better, to come and take over watching the dogs until Becky’s return. Now I had no way to contact him, so I stuck it out until I could hardly feel my feet.
        Then, to my surprise, Duke came instantly when called and ran right in. So I left.
        Latke and I were halfway down the block when Becky drove up in her SUV and rolled down her window. She asked if I had observed anyone going into her house during the time I’d been there.
        I assured her that I hadn’t seen a soul and asked why.
        Her purse was missing, she explained.
        She hastened to add that she had noticed muddy footsteps leading up to the front door and asked how recently I’d left and if any of the workers who had been completing an addition on her house happened to have stopped by. Again, I assured her otherwise, insisting that I was the only one who’d been there. Then, before I could say another word, she sped off, saying that she was going to check if she had left it somewhere during her travels.
        And by the time she had managed to reach the corner, the full implications of the situation sank in.
        I had been the only person there when her purse had mysteriously vanished. I also had been well aware that the house was open. Might she possibly come to suspect me?
        And even if she didn’t suspect me, might her husband plant that bug in her ear? The fact was that only a day or two before, she had left me alone with the dogs while he had accompanied her to get her car serviced. Initially, she had proposed the same arrangement – that she’d leave the garage open and have me put Duke inside when I left. Then her husband had summoned her for a hushed chat, after which she’d said that on second thought they were locking up instead and I should just leave the dog in the yard.
        Now I began wracking my brain, wondering if anyone could have slipped in while I was there without my noticing. The fact was that it’s a large house with a circular drive. And I had been on the phone for quite a while. But I was confident no one had come.
        I felt glad that Becky had driven by before I had managed to reach home, hoping that she’d noticed I was carrying only one thing –  the short, spare leash that I always leave on Latke when the dogs play, held carefully away from my body because it was so muddy.
        But when I got home and blurted out this sorry tale to my husband, I couldn’t help voicing my fears that I was not a citizen above suspicion. He told me I was totally nuts, and that Becky would never suspect me any more than I would have suspected her.
        Was I? The fact was that she was so busy that we’d never had more than a fleeting chat while she was coming or going. She once had walked me home with Duke, possibly to check out my house and get some insight into what sort of people we were. But beyond that, and the pleasantries we often exchanged, she didn’t really know me.
        Or how honest I really am.
        OK, other than criminals, almost everyone probably considers themselves honest. And far be it from me to ever toot my own horn. But the fact is that when I say that I’m honest, I mean that I can be brutally honest. Almost excessively honest. Some might call it honest to a fault.
        It’s not just that I don’t cheat on my taxes, and when playing tennis, if I’m not quite sure whether the ball was in or out, I automatically call it in favor of my opponent. When I pore over restaurant checks, it’s to make sure that they’re accurate for both parties, and if I discover that I have been undercharged, I always call it to the wait staff’s attention.
        Once, after taking my daughter out to lunch, I noticed when I got home that the restaurant had forgotten to charge us for a bowl of soup, so I drove back with her in the pouring rain to make amends. Granted, I was trying to set something of an example for her. Another time, though, I bought some groceries at a store near my hair salon and realized when I got home that they had forgotten to charge me for a pie. My salon is some distance away, though, so the next time I had my hair done, six weeks later, I went in and told them about it and insisted on paying for the pie then.
        They clearly thought I was a little crazy. I think that my integrity is not worth $7.99.
        But Becky had no way of knowing this about me because we’d hardly ever talked.
        The more I thought about the predicament I was in, the more distraught I became. My only hope was that she might find the purse by retracing her footsteps, or discover it misplaced somewhere in the house. And since she was unlikely to report this back to me, the only way I was going to find out that this had happened was if I gave her a call.
        I also hoped that placing such a call would indicate my total innocence to her (although I also began to worry that it might sound suspicious, like I was too interested).
        I didn’t have her number, but I knew my husband had it on his cell phone, along with all the countless other numbers of dog owners he had collected. And when he showed it to me, I realized that until that moment I hadn’t known Becky’s last name.
        The fact was that I had never even been exactly sure of her first name, or what I was supposed to call her. She was one of those “name users.” I don’t mean a name dropper, as in someone who peppers her conversation with the names of celebrities and other influential people she knows in order to impress you. I’m talking about someone who inserts your name into almost every sentence while she’s talking to you. “So good to see you, Nice Jewish Mom!” Or, “You see, Nice Jewish Mom, it’s like this...”
        I had long awkwardly avoided reciprocating this habit in any way or directly addressing her because I hadn’t been paying enough attention when we’d first met.
        Did she expect people to call her by her full given name, “Rebecca,” or did she prefer Becky, or even Becca? I didn’t want to make a stupid mistake when I called her. So I resorted to the only recourse I could think of – I Googled her.
        And that’s when I learned not only her name, but all the things we had in common.
        For years, she had been an editor at one of the largest publishing houses in NYC, much as throughout my mid-20s I had worked as an assistant editor at New York magazine.
        Then, according to the wedding announcement I found in The New York Times, she had gotten married when she was 29, the exact same age at which I had tied the knot.
        After this, she evidently had continued to work in her publishing job for many years, but ultimately, just like me, had chosen to stay home with the kids.
        My first reaction was enormous excitement. We not only would have plenty to discuss, but maybe she could offer some advice about the book I intend to self-publish soon.
        The more I thought about it, though, it might seem skeevy that I had Googled her. Even worse, might my suddenly knowing all sorts of information about her lead her to suspect that I actually had stolen her purse and taken a good look through her wallet?
        Either way, when I phoned her, all that I got was her voice mail. So I simply left a cheery message (a little too cheery, perhaps?) saying that I remained concerned about her purse and hoped that she had found it, and to please call me back either way on my home phone number, which I supplied.
        Then I spent the remainder of the day fretting because she didn’t call me back. Nor did I hear anything by the time I had to leave for my weekly Zumba class that night.
        I never have been much of an exercise enthusiast, and if it weren’t for Zumba, my physical exertion probably would be limited to whatever calories I manage to burn walking the dog. I love this class so much, though, that I almost never miss it. The music and Salsa dance moves are so lively that they help me unwind and make working out – dare I say it? – actual fun.
        That night, though, I couldn’t unwind there, and it wasn’t at all fun because instead of losing myself in the Merengue, Mambo, and other Latin-inspired moves, all I could think about was Becky’s purse.
        I remained so nervous that she might think I had stolen it that I left the class early. Then I rushed home, unable to wait to find out if she had finally called.
        But she hadn’t.
        Neither had she called by the next afternoon, at which point I really began to obsess. By then, my imagination was running wilder than any naughty puppy at play, and I had begun to expect the worst.
        My husband continued to call me insane, but I quickly reminded him of what had happened last year, when our portable generator had been stolen from our driveway after a major storm. “Do you remember the first thing the police asked us when they came?” I inquired.
        “Whether you stole Becky’s purse?”” he asked.
        Argh! No, they had demanded to know the names and numbers of everyone who'd been at our house that day so they could contact them and ask if they'd seen anything suspicious. We’d been obliged to call our lawn service and cleaning woman to assure them that we didn’t suspect them, but they could expect to hear from the police.
        Wouldn’t Becky experience the same thing if she reported the theft?
        Throughout that day, I jumped every time the phone rang, wondering if it might be Becky -- or the cops. And when late that afternoon the doorbell did ring, my heart raced.
        Then, to my horror, I peered out and saw a burly young man with a badge.
        I opened the door barely able to breathe. He said that he needed to speak with me.
        Then he asked if I was interested in switching my TV service from Comcast to AT&T U-Verse.
        If only I could have switched off my mounting anxiety. I began to mull over the things I might say to Becky, provided we ever got to speak again, that might subtly indicate that I’m not the sort of person who would ever steal anything, let alone a neighbor's purse. As it happened, a friend had given me a gift certificate for my birthday to have a facial, and I had scheduled it for that very afternoon. To me, this was the sign of a privileged life.
        It was not the sort of thing I normally gravitate toward. I rarely if ever even get my nails done, let alone indulge in a facial or massage. Face it: I'm just not the spa type.
        But someone who was pampered enough to go for micro-dermabrasion clearly wasn’t in the habit of pinching pocketbooks. Was there a way to work that naturally into a conversation (assuming that I’d get to talk to her)? “I really have to run. I’m late for my facial appointment!” or “I hope my face doesn’t look red or flushed. I just came back from having a facial!”
        Or should I tell her about the three different stories I had written as a newspaper reporter about home thefts, including one that had appeared in both Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Digest about the time that I’d accosted a young intruder while he was trying to break into a neighbor’s house? (The whole block had hailed me as a local hero, but the police had been livid that I’d taken matters into my own hands instead of calling them first.)
        Either way, the moral of the story was that I was someone who curtailed burglaries, not committed them.
        I didn’t dare go to Becky’s to let the dogs play, though, fearing that I was no longer welcome. But by dusk, after that spa treatment, I could stand it no longer and decided to take Latke for a walk.
        We strolled down the block in their direction, and as I rounded the corner, I saw that Becky’s garage door was down, usually a sure sign that the dog was not outside.
        We continued toward it anyway, though. And just as we passed her driveway, a big SUV rounded the bend and turned into it, and I saw that it was her. I froze in my tracks.
        When she saw me, though, she stopped short, rolled down her window and waved. It was not just a friendly wave. It was a “come hither” wave. A wave that said, “Let’s talk!”
        And when I had gotten within earshot, her lips curled into an enormous grin. “You’ll never believe it!” she called to me. “It was at the gym!”
        The only thing I really couldn't believe was that this ordeal was finally over.
        “Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, nearly crying with joy. “I’m so relieved!”
        Then I did nervously blurt out my anecdote about the home theft I had intercepted.
        I did not mention anything about my new insights into her personal life, however. The fact that I'd gone to the trouble of Googling her still sounded a little intrusive, I suspected.
        Not to mention skeevy.
        When I mentioned my phone call, she hastened to explain that she had wanted to call me back, but hadn’t had my number, she said. Perhaps the end of my message had gotten cut off. Yet she now entered both of my numbers into her phone and readily gave me hers so that we could arrange our future doggie dates more easily. And she restated that I was welcome anytime.
        We agreed that it was too close to dinnertime for the dogs to play right then, considering that Latke, at least, always needs to follow up these mudbaths with a 20-minute scrubdown in the sink. But Becky invited us to return the next day, which we gladly did.
        Then, once again, she reiterated her eagerness to stop and chat with me, and said that she just needed to finish cleaning something in the house and would be right out.
        But once again, Latke and I stayed for nearly an hour, and she never did come out.
        Nor has she stopped to talk since.
        Who knows?
        Maybe one of these days we will get to have that conversation, and we will realize how much we have in common and decide to start a small press together, and -- despite our differences in age and disparate backgrounds -- she will become my new best friend.
        Or maybe she will come out in the yard and we will discover that we have virtually nothing to sustain more than five minutes of idle chitchat, other than our distant pasts… and our dogs.
        Whatever. I’m beyond relieved that once again I’m a citizen above suspicion.
        I’m also beyond relieved that, as you can see, my facial didn’t leave my face red or flushed (although I’m not sure I'll ever choose to indulge in one again).
        But mostly I’m relieved that Latke and Duke are free to frolic, romp, kick up their padded little heels and revel with abandon in the mud and muck once more. Because all I ever really wanted in all of this (aside from my good name and a clear conscience) was to have a regular canine companion for my devilish little dog.
        Honestly.