Dog House Read online

  The “Crusher” part was ironic, because Fluffy had the mildest of personalities. So mild, in fact, that it was next to nonexistent. Had there been a canine high school, Fluffy would have been eating lunch at the geek table. No cheerleader, no cool, lopsidedly grinning prom king, our Fluff. No grins or big, panting smiles from him at all, actually. Not like the ones you get from Labs or golden retrievers. No “Oh, boy, where have you been—I’m beside myself that you’ve come home at last—kiss me!” On the contrary, our elegant collie always seemed a little wan, a little dull. Lackluster, truth be told. Though not precisely Dry Toast. He didn’t remind anyone of dry toast. That was merely a name I’d always wanted to try out. Sort of like Barden.

  We took turns taking Fluffy for walks.

  Millard liked to go around the block so the two of them could check out our neighbor’s lawns and shrubs. Barden’s preferred route (walking not being his “thing”) was up to a mimosa tree about a hundred yards from the house. Mine was in any direction that didn’t include Louie, one of the few other dogs in the neighborhood and the only one that lifted its leg on my shoes. He especially liked me in sandals.

  Barden turned sixteen in our first house. He also turned into my closest, funniest friend. He was smart, and handsome in an exceptionally tall and formal way. During the seventies, for instance, when his classmates came to school in shredded hippy leathers and tattered jeans, Barden dressed each day in a three-piece suit and a pocket watch. (My father confided to me once that talking to ten-year-old Barden on the phone was like asking a banker for a loan.) He was entirely unaware of his odd courtliness; of how peculiar it must have seemed to his peers that he liked classical music and liked to spend time with his parents. He wouldn’t have cared, however. He was always purely his own person.

  And when he was sixteen, he also went away to boarding school.

  Millard was in the throes of starting his business manufacturing aircraft indicator cases (you don’t want to know; it’s a real conversation stopper) and had less time to be with me, so I was finding myself a little too dependent on Barden’s company. There was our shared interest in music. My overinterest in his homework. My too-thorough knowledge of the littlest details of his life—his friends, his teachers, his stereo. And I was so busy making myself so obliging, so lovable, so thoroughly a pal, that he loved to be with me, too. Eventually, however, I could see myself edging into some twilight of the vicarious, and I decided to break the bond.

  That’s the sad thing with mothers. We painstakingly mold our kids into people we really want to spend time with, and then, just when the conversation begins to get interesting, it’s time to let go.

  But right before he went away and left me with no one to care about what was for dinner, I persuaded Millard—who had always seemed wonderfully happy to be wherever he was. Millard—who had never spent a moment contemplating anything resembling Change and throughout our lives never would—to put our house up for sale so we could move into something a little bigger, with a den and a two-car garage, maybe. Something a little more interesting and a little closer to my store: this last because my partner had decamped to Maine, and I would be alone in the shop all the time now—except for the occasional appearance of the rare customer who wasn’t “just looking” and who was, therefore, interrupting my reading.

  I needed a project.

  Unfortunately, we found a buyer for our house immediately.

  “Unfortunately” because it dawned on us right away that we must have asked too low a price. And Millard couldn’t leave it alone.

  “Do you think we should have asked more? Maybe we should have hired a Realtor? Would they have taken the house if it had been five hundred dollars more, do you think?”

  Particularly “unfortunately” because we had no other house to move to.

  The night after we accepted the offer, Millard was so distraught that he went to the liquor cupboard and grabbed a treasured bottle of brandy and drank steadily and straight until midnight. I’d never seen him do that—before or after—and I’ve wondered about it for years.

  Recently, I’ve decided that it must have been because he dreaded Change more than anything else in life.

  After all, he still owned the name-taped clothes he’d worn at camp, and wore them, too. Which tells you both how plump he was as a thirteen-year-old and how slim he became as a man. (Barden wears them now.) The college sweaters and jackets he put on every day to go to work had pipe tobacco burns down the front and holes in the elbows. Sometimes he had me take them to the tailor to have leather patches put on. If one or the other sweater or jacket wore out, he’d buy one exactly like it—same color, same size, same style.

  I sometimes wonder if I had died first, what about his second wife?

  But if Millard reveled in salvage and repair, it was because he was good at it. (And to tell the truth, my business only flourished because I could buy anything broken and he could make anything work.) He did our sewing, fixed our shorted wires, sweated our pipes, hooked up the stereo he’d built from scratch himself. His proudest possession was his giant cache of well-worn tools—all the needle-nose pliers; Phillips-head screwdrivers; shiny, scary dental tools; Black and Decker drills; Sears saws; wood-handled awls; and paint-smeared hammers that had been with him since boyhood. Each, he once confided to me, had its own personality.

  We were putting together a stool.

  “You know, I love this screwdriver,” he said shyly, holding it up so it briefly reflected the fluorescent lights in his workshop: a medium-long screwdriver with a red-striped Bakelite handle. “It just feels so right in my hand, and the business end is worn down now, so it’s perfect. I got it when I was a Scout.” He smiled lovingly at the screwdriver, and I smiled at him.

  But Millard got very drunk that house-sale night, so drunk that he and Fluffy and I had to walk it off in the darkened streets, passing and repassing each of the four types of Tudor and three Colonials that comprised our tidy neighborhood. We talked and talked about our future and whether we could afford our future and how things had been for his parents and my parents, and why it was that our own lives didn’t seem to be as easy—as predetermined—as theirs had been. He was terrified; I could hear that in the dark. But he couldn’t say so.

  I was frightened that he was frightened.

  Every now and then, when I consider the anguish my Love of the New caused my husband over four decades plus, I ask myself why he’d married a woman—well, a girl—who was the very personification of the “novelty-seeking gene.” An original early adopter.

  Unlike my apocryphal dog-loving gene, science has actually discovered that such a thing exists and that it isn’t only real, it’s also hereditary. I have it, of course, as did my mother and younger brother, and it’s caused us all—and our patient spouses—endless trouble. But, frankly, after all these years, I’ve found it a real comfort to know I’m not actually to blame for my improvidence. It’s chemistry. Ah yes.

  Then, too, as much as Millard may have feared my dalliance with those sexy gods of the strange and new, I think he also liked it. For despite his own science and physics smarts, he was drawn like a moth to the right-brain life. In college, he’d actually made a point of taking music and Shakespeare and art history, subjects that didn’t come naturally at all. And that, he’d explain in his fading southern accent to anyone at all who asked, was why he hadn’t gone to MIT. (And why he’d only graduated magna, not summa cum laude; those Bs in things like nineteenth-century Romantic Poetry and American Art.) So while Millard never quite said so—as he didn’t say so many things—I think he truly liked my antiques, my music, my movie addiction, my Patrick O’Brian novels: the impractical but scary waltz my wayward gene and I were always going to lead him.

  I prefer to think that, anyway.

  Within two weeks of that memorable night, we’d discovered and bought the kind of house I’d longed for forever: a nineteenth-century sort-of Greek Revival that—crucially—needed lots of work. Bordering a publ
ic park in an historic and partially restored fairy-tale village on Long Island, it had its very own freshwater pond (where we kept cannibalistic trout fished by poachers over the fence that divided us from the park), an icy, tiny spring-fed pool on an uneven brick patio, a listing wooden pergola, and several small rooms on four small floors. There was a spiral staircase to the basement, a front and back parlor, and only one bathroom, so we had to dash up or down when in need. Neither of us had ever been a “pointer,” as in “do this, do that,” and we both knew how to work, so Millard was the hands and I was the design and some of the brawn, while Barden, smart boy, was the kid away at school. And that’s how, after eighteen years of marriage, we discovered a supreme joint passion and lucked, incredibly, into what would become our life’s work: painting and ripping up tiles and painting, building period fences and painting, repairing rotten clapboard and floors, laying brick and painting and planting and painting, all in addition to gluing, wiring, cleaning and regilding wounded antiques. And painting.

  Fluffy seemed happy in our new house. As the years had passed, he’d become kind of a perfect dog, with just a few small foibles.

  First, he drank from the toilet bowl. Now not all dogs do this, possibly because not all dogs can. I’m sure those little guys would if they could, since what dog wouldn’t prefer cold fresh water to some room-temperature stuff that’s been sitting around all day with, probably, a few bloated dog food pellets floating in it. Not that I begrudge any dog a cool drink, least of all a thirsty one. But the first time I happened into the bathroom and caught Fluffy with his nose in the bowl, I moved so fast I almost caught his head as I slammed down the lid. “Out!” I shrieked. “Out, out, out!!!” (My mother returns. She’ll be gone really soon.)

  And when, still quivering, revolted and indignant, I recounted this behavior at dinner, Millard and Barden fell all over each other laughing; a really crude display of guy-ness that made me mad enough to request they not only remember to put the cover down, but put the seat down, too.

  They did that for a day, maybe.

  And forever after, Fluffy drank where he liked. Leaving the seat wet for me. Which they also thought was fall-down funny.

  Along with that, Fluffy had intractable bouts of collie mania, a disorder manifested by a compulsive need to run in circles and bark when anyone left. (And that means anyone. Even distant, angry neighbors who’ve just come by to drop off a copy of Barking: A Cure.) Now this behavior might work with sheep, but it can be crazy-making for those of us who just want to go to the movies maybe, or to dinner, and who are truly tired of devising new ways to slip out the door without being seen.

  Of course there’s the old throw-a-biscuit-in-the-other-direction-and-run ploy. But Fluffy was never, as the dog gurus like to call it, food motivated. After one or two tries, it got so he wouldn’t even turn around to watch the tasty biscuit slide—like a small beige slap-shot hockey puck... way ... way ... under the sofa.

  We learned to escape through unguarded doors in the basement or to the patio. Whispering, occasionally hissing while attempting to squeeze through the smallest possible opening, we’d inch the screen door closed behind us so it wouldn’t slam until we were safely outside, and then we’d break like lightning for the car, being careful not to scuff a single pebble on the drive. Millard had a couple of choice under-his-breath swearwords for if I caught a heel, say; I had a brilliant come-back for when he dropped his lighter. Then we’d open the car doors—slowly, slowly ... and listen. Silence. We’d settle into our seats, buckling up, opening the windows, taking that first, deep, liberated breath, when—high above the hopeful catch of the engine—we’d hear that panicky barking.

  “My sheep have escaped! Oh no, my sheep.”

  At which point, Fluffy’s sheep would look at each other in guilty despair, turn up the radio, rev the engine, and like the poor little lambs we were, peel out to see something like Born Free, A Boy and His Dog or Animal House.

  Or else, because we were usually dirty from the weekend’s work, we’d just go to the diner and bring home a guilt-ridden doggie bag.

  It got so that anytime Fluffy heard anyone’s car keys jingle, he’d bark and run in circles.

  Ah, Pavlov, tovarich ... bravo!

  Harder than that was the hair.

  The collie breed has beautiful caramel and white, fluffy (yes) hair. Masses of hair. When the collie sheds—which he does pretty much all the time—the fallen hair starts out on the floor as a fine white drift and then, like spun sugar, begins to gather itself in bulk and size so that eventually, the largish clumps collect as milky soft tumbleweed—in the corners and under the chairs and on your sweaters and up the vacuum cleaner’s hose. Parents of allergic kids give up on their dogs, but men who dress in ancient crewneck sweaters and khakis don’t give a damn. Kids off at school couldn’t care less. But my mother’s daughter cared, and channeling her like crazy, I restricted poor Fluffy to the kitchen level of our four-story house. (In belated if ineffectual defense, you should know that on Fluffy’s level there was a dining room, sun room, den and back porch). But what this meant to our sweet, obedient, hairy Fluffy was that he couldn’t sleep near us anymore. And he minded that. Which bothers me these days. I liked Fluffy. I wish I’d loved Fluffy. Though never mind, Barden did.

  And that brings me to the last of Fluffy’s flaws: the sort of thing I couldn’t possibly have discovered on our five-minute date at the pound.

  He wouldn’t go out in the rain.

  Well, yes, he’d hated the rain when we used to walk him down our faux-Tudor streets, but how could he avoid it? We had the leash.

  In this wonderful new house, however, we actually had a rough sort of “dog’s yard” of grass and half-buried slates. But he wouldn’t go out in the rain there unless someone—me, for instance—got all raincoated up and stood in the yard with him. Where he still wouldn’t go.

  Now we’ve all seen that movie I keep referring to, so we know that that legendary collie spent a lot of time wet. You can’t herd sheep and not get wet. You can’t bravely ford rivers without getting wet. You can’t wind up all bedraggled when you’re scratching on your tearful owner’s door unless you’ve been really, really wet. What was with this?

  I empathized with Fluffy, though. I really did.

  Until one summer night, with Barden at home for vacation, with thunder and rain lashing the house and my nerves, I at last fell soggily apart.

  “No more ! ” I yelled at our reluctant dog, physically pushing him down the stairs and out into the yard, where he stood—and stood and stood and stood—while I watched stonily. Guiltily. While he didn’t “do” a thing.

  Barden came in and began to beg.

  “Let him in, Mom. He’s never going to go if it’s raining! Please. It’s not going to work, you know that. Just let him in.”

  But I was tired. Adamant.

  “No,” I replied in high, conflicted dudgeon, my voice going tight in my throat. “He can’t come in until he goes.”

  In fact, the rain was now pelting down so hard that going or not, I wouldn’t have been able to see. But I wasn’t merely tired, I was—as my mother said much too often, “sick and tired” of this. Sick and tired of contorting myself to suit, well ... a dog. And as I was taking a deep breath, about to launch into it all, Barden did a remarkable thing. He opened the back door and walked out into the rain. “Then I’ll stay out here with him till you let him back in.”

  If I’d been eight, I might have said, “Okay for you both,” and flounced to my room. But I was thirty-eight. Did I want my only child—these days, my largish only child—sitting out there in the rain with a dog when he might be doing something useful, like playing Pong, all warm and dry and depressingly obsessed?

  I didn’t give in immediately though. I spent a childish moment spying on the two of them huddled on the steps in the rain, Barden with his arm around Fluffy’s sodden fur, Fluffy looking off into the distance. Nobly.

  They were wretchedness made manifest, t
wo paragraphs out of Dickens. My self-righteousness curled into a ball and almost slunk away. But (I think) I’m proud to say that I lasted a full ten minutes before opening the door.

  At around seven minutes plus, I was standing in the kitchen, watching the clock.

  In life’s revealing aftermath, Barden says that it seemed a really long time to him, too, but what made it hugely worthwhile was his glee in provoking an avalanche of solid maternal guilt.

  I should never have made him sit in the store.

  As Fluffy neared ten, Millard took a fishing trip to Canada with some business friends, and Barden and I went to a Pittsburgh party. None of our regular dog sitters was free to stay with Fluffy, so I left him in a long-established kennel for that week.

  When we picked him up on our return, he seemed thin and sad and more than usually lethargic. Worried, I called the kennel. “Oh, he was fine while he was with us,” the owner assured me.

  The vet we took him to called it kidney failure, or it may have been that we lost him to simple old age. But on the bridge of Fluffy’s lovely nose there was a sore-looking bump that hadn’t been there before: the kind of bump a long-nosed dog might get from trying to push through chain-link fence for days and ages and eons. I don’t say it was the kennel, yet I know it was.

  We shouldn’t have gone away. I brood about that at three in the morning.

  Chapter Four

  Bitch

  She was our first dog-love. The first dog that Millard and I loved beyond reason.