DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS Peacemaking is hard, especially at home
Cooper, Rand Richards
DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS War & peace in the neighborhood Rand Richards Cooper This past year our country has been preoccupied with questions of violence so distant and vast, a citizen hardly knows...
...It deals in the actual dog, not the hypothetical one...
...It's not always easy to be friends with the person you're paying money to for your roof...
...Turning the other cheek isn't about being a masochist...
...Your apartment's small, and with the cats and birds it's already pretty crowded...
...That wasn't true, Patricia insisted...
...You can be "right" on the face of things, but if the other person is walking away insulted, you didn't win...
...a possibly warmaking statement had been softened, its emphasis shifted from confrontation to conversation...
...The dogs can play...
...I've found myself trying to think about war and peace at the individual level in our lives, where every day we choose whether to take our personal disputes to the battlefield or the negotiating table...
...That isn't easy to do...
...It seems like you and Molly are so dead set against this...
...It's about being a magician...
...Just ask her, 'Hey, Patricia, what's up with your plans for Coal these days?'" Her rephrasing showed me how ill-judged my own approach had been, with its scolding tone...
...I knew that Patricia's real complaint had to do with our covering up the chairs, which in turn was our way of signaling that we didn't like her housing the cats in the basement without asking us or explaining why...
...Flustered, she turned red, and when our phone happened to ring at that moment, and I had to go inside and answer it, she seemed relieved...
...It had felt terrific, out in the yard, to finally let Patricia have it to aim my indignation at her and let fly...
...as if all conflicts can be resolved, if people will just see the issues fairly and objectively...
...Didn't that surely mean she was getting ready for Coal...
...I tried to keep the peacemaking tone in my voice...
...When we were "at war" with Patricia, we didn't want to hear how much she wanted this dog...
...I could imagine how she ended up being less than forthcoming...
...She was big, she was rambunctious "Coal's not rambunctious," Patricia interrupted again...
...She gave a little laugh, then fell quiet again...
...Trashed...
...To Patricia we were the owners, the enemy, the yuppie scum...
...And so the conversation finally happened...
...I'll move...
...To a defensive woman who felt that as landlord I held all the cards, I was going to come off as overbearing...
...It was a form of aggression masquerading as help...
...I found I now could see and understand the conflict Patricia had been facing, trying to maintain a value (honesty) while meeting a need (her bond with the dog...
...The situation we now found ourselves in will be familiar to anyone who's ever been mired in an ongoing conflict...
...Actually, I'm thinking of becoming a dog trainer...
...I remembered the notorious case of dogs in San Francisco that attacked and killed a neighbor...
...I just get the feeling you two are seeing everything only from the point of view of owning the house," she said with a shrug...
...Patricia was walking Coal more frequently, she pointed out...
...We cleaned them up, then placed boxes on top of them to keep the cats off...
...I could imagine how a new commitment might spring from symbolically putting an old part of your life to rest...
...There was also the fact that the dog was part rottweiler...
...I remembered now how grief-stricken Patricia had been some months earlier, when a third cat of hers had died...
...Patricia's apartment was small, she already had two cats and two birds, and adding a big, ill-trained, rambunctious dog to the mix seemed like too much...
...And she's totally housebroken...
...my sister asked...
...Inexpensive renter's insurance might be a possibility...
...Lets talk about this...
...The two dogs started frisking on the lawn...
...This is not easy...
...It's actually kind of an antirush...
...Once my sister reworked my words, I could hear the difference, clear as a bell...
...So we sat, and I waded in...
...Well, I'm sorry about the misunderstanding," Patricia said...
...I mentioned our other neighbor's comments about the dog's aggressiveness, and about its being half-housebroken at best...
...We wanted to focus on how underhanded she was being with us...
...I mean, I would have told you before I took her...
...We both sat back in our chairs, and silence took over...
...Patricia, it turned out, had been keeping Coal for a few days...
...So what's the point...
...The courage of the peacemaker is a mystery, which is why religions in general, and Christianity particularly, regard him or her as someone especially blessed...
...What is it...
...Her abruptness surprised me and irritated me...
...Maybe it's better if I move...
...I always think of that car as something marketed to yuppies...
...But interpersonal conflict remains remarkably consistent over time...
...A Bon Appetit contributing editor, Cooper lives in Hartford, Connecticut...
...I told her about my mother's dog, which spent the first two years of its life gnawing on furniture and tearing off wallpaper...
...I wasn't entirely sure I believed this...
...The two dogs continued romping on the lawn...
...From then on I resolved to lodge that softer sound in my ear the sound of peacemaking and try to let it guide me...
...it spent nights in a cage in the basement...
...One day I let our bulldog, Bert, out the back door, to find Patricia out in the yard, playing with Coal...
...I could talk to our insurance guy about that...
...Nevertheless, Patricia approached the owners and asked if she could help care for Coal...
...Coal was a friendly dog...
...Well, I got a pretty clear feeling about where you two were with it...
...One day a few months after Molly and I bought the house, I ran into Patricia out on the porch, and raised the subject...
...When you already had the dog...
...When were you going to tell us...
...I angled a pair of patio chairs toward one another...
...She was training the dog, bringing it around to our yard...
...The dirty little secret of making war is that it feels great: the rush, the heat, the release of built-up tensions, the action...
...Distraught over this neglect, Patricia talked about intervening...
...Look, Patricia," I said...
...We hoped not...
...I sympathized, but as far as I could tell, the dog wasn't being beaten or starved...
...By now, I told her, there seemed to be little doubt about Patricia's plans...
...Now Patricia was our tenant...
...And so our in-house border dispute simmered away, both sides warily waiting for something to happen...
...in everyday life, the next war tends to look a lot like the last one, yielding lessons worth keeping in mind...
...An orientation toward interests, on the other hand, seeks primarily not to resolve right vs...
...I'm not saying as your landlord that you absolutely can't do this," I told her...
...It begins from a recognition of what the other person wants...
...This difficulty is exacerbated by what might be called the liberal /Enlightenment temptation: to proceed as if what's at stake in a disagreement is truth, not interests...
...Sometimes something has to give...
...Molly and I hadn't known anything about that part of Patricia's life until she had tearfully confided her plan to drive the cat back to New York and bury it there...
...And in doing so, I allowed her the possibility of being more than a set of grievances...
...We'd see her in the other family's yard, playing with the dog...
...sniping insults and counterattacks...
...It looks like you've been putting a lot of hard work into Coal," I said to Patricia...
...Making war is intensely pleasurable...
...It's a truism of military history that we're often caught fighting the last war, that our battle strategies don't keep pace with changes in weaponry and communications...
...On the porch...
...This was where things stood last year when Molly and I bought our house from the second-floor owners...
...grudges accumulate...
...A two-minute conversation, six months ago...
...An initial grievance creates proxy grievances...
...Molly and I have a few concerns, and " Patricia interrupted...
...frantic last-ditch diplomatic efforts...
...Since we're into recriminations now, then let me say that we really haven't appreciated your planning all these months to take the dog and not even once talking with us about it...
...I felt awkward, addressing her this way...
...The rhetoric had been altered...
...The plan is to adopt her...
...We talked about it," she said, frowning...
...Patricia seemed to be committed to the most hopeless interpretation of our motives...
...As for the apartment, maybe we could work out an extra security deposit...
...Now the chairs were covered with cat hair...
...In our marriages and family relations, in problems that arise with neighbors or at work, we face a recurring choice: opt for diplomacy, or reach for weaponry...
...And now look at them playing...
...The colleague who throws up obstacles to sabotage another's success...
...I'm just saying we'd need to talk about it...
...Making war, on the other hand, means obliterating his point of view, reducing him to his transgressions the list of things he has done to you or might do to you in the future...
...Molly and I were clearly opposed, and meanwhile she hadn't even arranged things on the other end...
...of being more than my enemy...
...Over the phone I talked about the situation with my sister, a therapist used to dealing with people's conflicts...
...Elements of classical statecraft guide our personal conflicts: propaganda and advantage-seeking...
...That's the downside of an orientation toward truth...
...Applying for homeowner's insurance, I'd been surprised to learn there are certain breeds of dog whose aggressiveness makes insurance more costly...
...I can see that," I said...
...but this particular dog was a lot for a small apartment...
...You don't have to be a professional conflict solver to see that daily life fairly bursts with little dramas of war and peace...
...If I have to, I'll go somewhere else...
...But who knows...
...She looked at me as if I were from Mars, then gave a glum shake of her head...
...After a few minutes, the silence seemed to take a slight, softening turn...
...Now, months later, it occurred to me that she had begun her involvement with Coal right around this same time...
...more darkly, it was probably just a rhetorical cover for legitimizing our opposition to this dog, the actual dog that she wanted...
...And that's hardly a peacemaking mode...
...So my alacrity in clearing space for her was really a way of not allowing her any legitimate grievance of being sure that we stayed in the right while she was in the wrong...
...I'm sure it had felt good for her to call our new car a yup-piemobile...
...And it was true, I could...
...Why bring it up until then...
...calculation of interests and cultivation of allies...
...Let's sit for a few minutes...
...Like many men, I've had to learn that it's not just about the issues, it's about the person...
...the problem festers...
...You mean last winter...
...This is why Patricia was so suspicious...
...Making peace, on the other hand, doesn't give you such a rush...
...The peacemaker alchemizes the base metal of indignation into gold, pulling generosity like a magic rabbit out of the hat...
...Maybe she could get the family to let her walk Rand Richards Cooper reviews movies for Commonweal...
...It takes discipline to maintain the attitude of peacemaking when you're in an argument...
...It's just that I hadn't even worked it out with Coal's family yet...
...I sighed...
...I envied them the directness of dogs, who announce their affections and aggressions so plainly...
...What...
...I think she's adopting that dog," she said...
...One is resisting the urge to prevail utterly to be the winner...
...I've been working really hard with her...
...Patricia gazed off into the yard...
...It wasn't a big deal just a sore spot in our life that got rubbed a little more raw each time we came back to it...
...That car parked at the curb, with a couple inside, berating one another...
...And is there an ultimate plan...
...Meanwhile, Patricia had resumed her on-again, off-again involvement with Coal...
...Another neighbor who had cared for Coal for a few days while Coal's family was away told us that the dog had snapped unexpectedly at him...
...This was more than my just being a nice guy or responsible landlord...
...For a while the family accepted her overtures, then suddenly and brusquely told her to butt out...
...After that, things went underground...
...At some point," I said, "we should sit down and talk about that...
...From our point of view, the onus was now on Patricia if she made any plans to adopt the dog, she should raise them with us first...
...The peacemaker resists the temptations of an anger that, to paraphrase Ephesians, gives a mighty foothold to the devil, and finds instead the courage to deliver, at the crucial hour, a message of conciliation...
...She really has calmed down a lot...
...Where I was with it was that you were going to keep us posted, Patricia...
...I asked her...
...Well, if she wanted war, fine...
...Our friendliness grew from the casual solidarity of corenters (the couple who owned the house lived on the second floor), and from time spent together in the backyard, talking about books or about pets our dog, her birds and two cats...
...I'm trying to train her," she said...
...Let's talk principles" can become "Let me show you why you are wrong and I am right...
...I nodded...
...From her point of view, my assurance was pointless at best...
...In the past Molly and I had joked with Patricia about our landlady we'd laughed about how she'd raised our rent and then shown up with a flashy new sports car...
...Too often I've been the guy winning the rhetorical argument while losing the human one...
...Rancor was pouring out of me, and with an effort I turned off the faucet...
...wrong, but rather to accommodate people...
...DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS War & peace in the neighborhood Rand Richards Cooper This past year our country has been preoccupied with questions of violence so distant and vast, a citizen hardly knows how to get a handle on them...
...In my case, while I'm affable by nature, those who know me will point out a certain prosecutorial zeal that takes over in a discussion...
...And I could sense her doing the same with us...
...It's far easier to vent...
...She ventured a sidelong glance my way...
...Patricia didn't respond...
...When she didn't, I assumed she'd backed off the idea...
...Molly and I weren't opposed to Patricia having a dog, I explained...
...An edifice of mistrust was rising between Patricia and us, and no one stepped forward to topple it with an authentic peacemaking gesture...
...But I wouldn't have just moved her in...
...OK," I said...
...Molly and I wondered whether she still considering adopting it...
...Molly suspected otherwise...
...she had to take Coal for a walk...
...But somehow that didn't matter...
...From where she stood, I had the power and not only that, I wanted to be right, too...
...If courage is grace under pressure, as Hemingway said, then the peacemaker is the most courageous one of all, defying the pressure to retaliate resisting the rush and finding instead the grace to offer an invitation when the other dishes out an insult...
...Molly and I occupy the first floor of a three-floor house in a middle-class neighborhood, and the woman I'll call Patricia lives alone in the small third-floor apartment...
...She would work on that, and on the dog, too...
...She's really learned a lot...
...Your enemy is the person whose stories you cannot abide: his hopes and commitments, his loves and losses...
...I mean, we were worried Coal wouldn't get along with Bert...
...Well, yeah," she said, avoiding my gaze...
...I wasn't getting much help from her...
...Eventually she was little more than an obstacle in our path...
...Now Molly and I were the ones collecting rent, and it just so happened that we pensioned off Molly's junker car and bought a new PT Cruiser...
...And you and Molly seemed so dead set against it...
...With her next rent check, Patricia included a curt note about her lack of basement storage space...
...it simply wasn't being loved in the way Patricia or Molly and I considered right...
...Then there was the night one of the family members from up the street knocked at our door looking to collect the dog...
...Making peace means recognizing the other's point of view...
...I quickly went down and reorganized things...
...I've bonded with this dog...
...Which leads to the fundamental lesson of war and peace in daily life...
...I nodded again...
...Look, Patricia, all I'm saying is that sometimes even a nice dog can cause a lot of damage...
...She didn't have time, she told me...
...Come on," I said...
...I went on...
...We were angling to prevail, and deploying arguments to make prevailing sound justified...
...I'm not a particularly devout person, but you don't have to be a churchgoer to see the wonder and the wisdom in that...
...We just wouldn't want it to get trashed...
...There was the issue of the dog's breed and our liability, I said...
...all-out battles and fragile truces...
...then, when the time was right, she'd show us how far Coal had come...
...For several months my wife and I had an ongoing disagreement with a neighbor...
...The incident bolstered Molly's certainty that we were being kept in the dark...
...So what are you going to say...
...Then I'll move...
...The dog, a mixed rottweiler/black Lab named Coal, was kept in a small pen in the yard, where it stood all day long, whining piteously...
...In assuring Patricia that Molly and I weren't opposed to her having a dog in principle, I'd sought to show that we weren't being unreasonable...
...the dog, maybe even adopt it...
...The thing is, Rand, I don't just want any dog...
...Really...
...This was a pet she'd had for seventeen years, dating back to a time when she'd had a lengthy relationship with a man in another state...
...I thought I felt the slightest shifting of terms between us, a new guardedness on her part...
...If she was considering taking Coal, I said, we needed to discuss some concerns...
...War disguised as peace...
...Once we made peace, however, and in the ensuing weeks began trying to work out a solution, I was able to think about the Coal situation in a broader way...
...I said I'd begun to feel cowardly, not confronting Patricia about it...
...A teacher in her early fifties, Patricia is a shy and private person, but we've always been friendly...
...I'm going to say, 'Patricia, I can't help noticing you've been spending a lot of time with the dog, and it makes me wonder if you've made some decision we need to know about.'" "Why don't you drop the I-can't-help-noticing stuff," my sister suggested...
...In other words, I could imagine being Patricia...
...The cats had set up shop on some chairs we'd bought, extras from a new dining room set...
...Maybe that way, I thought, I could actually help solve this conflict rather than just add to it...
...My cheeks flushed hot, and I felt the peacemaking impetus slip away...
...The problem with this temptation is that the search for truth can be self-serving...
...I'm surprised," was Patricia's comment when we drove it in...
...Patricia sat next to me, both of us twiddling our thumbs, neither looking at the other...
...If an aggressive dog living in our house bit someone, might we be legally liable...
...Had I noticed, she asked me a few weeks later, that Patricia's cats were now living down in the basement and not up in her apartment...
...He is the author of two works of fiction, The Last to Go (Harcourt) and Big as Life (Dial Press), and his stories have appeared in Esquire, Harper's, the Atlantic, and many other magazines...
...If I were she, I realized, I might have done exactly the same thing...
...A devoted animal lover, Patricia became upset about the plight of a dog owned by another family in the neighborhood...
...And then the next thing we know, your cats are living in the basement, you're running obedience school for Coal here in the yard, and you still haven't said anything...
...Look, I'm just telling you what we're worried about," I said...
...I would have told you first...
Vol. 130 • December 2003 • No. 21
