Creatures of Habit (10 page)

“Rest,” she says. “Just rest.” She waits for him to close his eyes and for his breath to fall into the rhythm of sleep, his fingers still linked through her own. She knows she needs to call. She knows he is not hers to keep even though she would like nothing better than to believe that at the end of his long journey, after all was said and done, that what he wanted more than anything in the world was to come home.

I
F
I
WERE
a dog I would have been put down by now. Put down. Euthanized. Sent to the country (the euphamized euthanized). Gassed.

I once dated a boy who had the nickname Mad Dog, but it was because he loved his wine, and what an unsophisticated drinker he was: Ripple, Boone's Farm, T. J. Swann, Mogen David—MD 20 20 some called it—he called it Mad Dog. But that was long before I thought of myself as a mad dog. I dated Mad Dog over five years ago when I was in high school and had my whole life ahead of me. He was back before the mistake of my two-month marriage to an ice sculptor who left as soon as I got pregnant, saying he was sorry but that his profession required a lot of concentration and focus.

That mistake was back when my friend Marissa took on the notion of her superior wisdom and when I might have been described as a well-tuned instrument, physically and mentally. I could play a concerto and I could also flat-out fiddle, but then my strings got wound so tight that they started popping all over the place and making a mess. Thank the good Lord my baby, Richie, was smarter than his father. That child, even before birth, became my lifeline, my reason for working hard to establish my own business. There are people who tell me that I have become a nicer person since having Richie and since working with the dogs. They don't say if this is the result of Richie or of canine companionship or some combination of the two.

I don't mean to imply that I'm rabid. Rather, I am of the frightened aggressive variety of mad dog. The type is well known to animal behaviorists. I will bite you before you bite me. I am like the dog that even the dog psychiatrists can't cure. They might try Prozac. They might even try a muzzle, but I can bite through steel when I take on a mood. Woody (with whom I was involved, I am ashamed to say) discovered this about me fairly early on. When he first hired me at the Dog House he said he liked a challenge. He said he could train me without breaking my spunk. (I wasn't sure if he was teasing or not.) He slapped me on my butt when he said this
and he said it in front of a whole roomful of clients sitting there with their little charges on their laps or at their feet. And of course I knew he had a lot more in mind for me than pulling off ticks or treating some retriever's pernicious ear infection or hosing down the concrete runs out back. I'm sorry to say I smelled the desire on him and I do have to also say that at first meeting I was kind of turned on. Let's just say if you've never gotten right up in a pit bull's face, you might be curious.

I should explain. I am in the boarding and grooming business and I had plenty of work experience, mainly with dogs, long before I took up with Woody. I once accidentally killed a cat by giving it a dog flea dip (poisonous, I now know, to felines) and have the irrational belief that cats everywhere have heard that news and are ready to make me pay. So, I am known as the Dog Girl, a title I take great pride in. I do good work, and trust me, it isn't always easy. For instance, those little hairless breeds get blackheads. I have one Chinese crested client I call Miss Clearasil (not in front of her owner, of course) and a Westie with eczema I call Little Leper. There is a Labrador who passes a big white tube sock each and every time he comes in for a visit. His owner, an elderly woman with a hearing problem, was so ashamed when I told her that Ellery appeared to be eating up her
husband's socks she cried. Her distress, however, has not curbed Ellery's appetite.

This establishment—the Dog House—is, along with Richie, my life. I am stashing money away, and all the while building up a clientele that would follow me when I am able to move on. I favor the pair of basenjis who come in once a month for a little weekend visit while their owners—a good-looking couple who drive up in a convertible, their overnight bags already on the backseat—take a romantic trip. I used to say to Woody, “Wouldn't that be wonderful?” and he said, “What, and leave all this luxury behind?”

You can imagine what my line of work smells like. When I get home at night, I leave my clothes and sneakers outside on the deck to air out. Woody has said “I like how you smell, Dog Girl” many times. The first time he said it, I liked it, but it's gotten old. Now I'd like to smell like the basenji owner. Her long hair carries the medley fragrance of oils and lotions as if she lived in the cosmetic section of a department store. Do you know basenjis are nearly mute? Instead of barking, they make a little chuckle sound deep in their throats, which makes me sad, but the skills they lack in the vocal chords are more than compensated for in their agile little paws. I have seen that pair scale an eight-foot chain-link fence in ten seconds flat and escape. An admirable talent, I think.

I
CONSIDER MYSELF
a New Age survivalist. I do some yoga and ingest a little Saint John's every now and again. I have some crystals and my astrological chart and a book on feng shui. I have everything I might need to survive a crisis—batteries, water, freeze-dried entrees—everything but a firearm. I don't believe in firearms even though Woody tried to frighten me into getting a tiny purse pistol. What he really wanted, I think, was to scare me into letting him move in and live here. I refused that. I did
not
want to repeat the ice sculptor affair. I would wait and decide when I saw where our relationship was headed. It didn't take me long to understand where he wanted the relationship to go. He was not interested in the tête-à-tête so much as the crotch-à-crotch. There were some days I believed I might have to turn a hose on him just as I often have to do when we are boarding a large-breed bitch in heat. Some dogs leave me no other choice.

“I worry about you, Dog Girl,” Woody whispered and pinched my breast with no respect whatsoever for Richie, who was asleep right there in a Snugli strapped to my chest. “Bad things happen to women who are all alone in the world.”

“Well I don't believe in firearms,” I told him and flicked his wandering hand off me. “I tell you what I do believe in
though.” He waited for me to finish, his hand poised and ready to strike again. It is a shame how much cuter he is than he is smart, but that happens. You see that in quite a few breeds.

“For protection, I believe in dogs and baseball bats,” I told Woody. “If you come in here uninvited I'm prepared to beat you and to ask the dogs to assist me in handling the situation.” I told Woody that again after the collie incident, and that time he didn't laugh because I had a Louisville Slugger in my right hand and the leash of a mistreated Akita in the other. I like to think I gave him fair warning.

P
ETS ARE OFTEN
a good way to keep unwanted guests away. Dogs. Snakes. Cats presenting half a bird or mouse, a squirrel entrail. Birds who fly around and relieve themselves at will. All of them are a positive force if you don't wish visitors. That's what I told Woody. But his heart was not at all in the business. I don't believe he even likes animals but bought into the Dog House only in hopes of earning more than his fair share of the almighty dollar. Woody is probably one of those boys who kick at a dog if it runs up beside their bikes; he is probably one of those who try to run over cats with lawn mowers. I prayed that Richie
would have no memory of Woody there in my bed in his bikini underwear.

I said to myself, “When Woody leaves I'll replace him pound for pound with
dog.
” I had no respect whatsoever for him. When he moved out I got myself a little shepherd mix and a Great Dane. Bubba and Bjorn. They weight the bed just right. And my little papillon, Princess, accounts for the five-pound fluctuation Woody got on the weekends from pizza and those creme horns he loves. Princess likes to doze up on Bjorn's great big head like a little hair ornament. It tickles Richie to death to see them there like that. They are his family.

M
ARISSA, OF ALL PEOPLE
, has said to me recently, “Why don't you grow up? You have a child to tend to.” She said, “Adults don't have a house full of pets.”

I said, “Well, Marissa, I don't know that my habits are worse than yours—faking every bad illness known to man in hopes of meeting a doctor.” I wanted to remind her that I was there in junior high all those times she accidentally on purpose spilled a Kotex from her purse so boys would think of her as a
woman
. But I held my tongue. Friends cannot say everything they're thinking.

I said, “I
am
a grown-up, Marissa. I have a child to raise on my own. I have a profession, a calling. I have a
career.
And it just so happens that what I always wanted in life was relationships with dogs of all sizes and shapes and colors. A whole universe that I could teach to get along with one another, share, be family. I've done that. If only the world could take note.” I said, “Tell me why your obsession with antibiotics and the cataloging of diseases you always think you might have is a better calling.”

“My sensitive medical issues are not a calling, as you so weirdly call it,” she said. “I am a professional designer, which is a grown-up thing, unlike you always talking about the Westie's eczema or those wrinkled dogs' respiratory problems. That is not a grown-up thing.” Marissa got red in the face. “And neither is marrying an ice sculptor.”

“Well, he was one of the very best ice sculptors around,” I said. “He once did a swan for the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta. Besides, I never claimed my marriage was a great thing but you know what? You know what?” I backed her into the corner and made her look at me. “Richie is a good thing. So which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

“I agree about Richie,” she said and tried to move out of the corner but I wouldn't let her. We have known one another since elementary school and she knows that I can take
her on and beat her with both hands tied behind my back if I need to.

“So I like dogs. So what?” I yelled. “What in the hell is wrong with the fact that I like to talk about different kinds of dogs the same way you like to talk about different kinds of chairs:
Here is a wing back. Thomas Jefferson sat here. And here is JFK's rocker, perfect for those going off of theirs. Oh yes, and here's the club chair like they use on all the late-night talk shows; the club chair is just what every little woman in Stepford needs so that when the man gets home she can lean back and say ‘Heeeerrrreee's Johnny!'”

“Will you stop?” She pushes me away, and I step back and let her go. She clicks down the hallway just exactly like a poodle all coiffed and painted up. What a bitch. I can look at a person and tell you immediately by looks and personality what breed that person would be. I don't think Marissa would be interested, though. But, for instance, I think if Marilyn Monroe had been a bitch she'd have been a yellow Lab. They'd have dressed her up like a poodle again and again but deep down she was definitely a Lab and who better for a Lab to hook up with than a fella with balls. And where has Joe DiMaggio gone? Dead. Like so many of the best dogs.

O
THER THAN
M
ARISSA
, I don't have a whole lot of people friends. Go figure. I'd like to suggest they stop their yapping and go for a good long walk. Chase after something other than their own tails. I wish I could tell them that their depressions and neuroses are simply the by-products of the wrong diet and training. Think of the fortitude it takes to eat and pass a man's tube sock.
Try that as a cathartic,
I want to say.

Woody had me wearing a choke for a couple of months there. The kind with spikes. Figuratively, of course, though if he could make a woman companion wear one legally he'd do that. He's got a woman right now that he jerks around any way that he pleases. Bless her heart, she looks like a Chinese crested with that poof of frizzy hair like a pom-pom and her bad complexion. And Woody? He wants to be a pit bull of a man but he is a Chihuahua.

He thinks I am hurt when he parades his little poochie past me. He believes I have separation anxiety. He doesn't know that I have saved enough to open my own little place and that I will soon be his fiercest competitor, that I will soon go public with the truth about the beautiful collie who died of old age and for whom Woody promised the family a proper burial complete with flowers and the dog's favorite squeak toy inside the lovely walnut box he billed them at a
couple of hundred dollars. I will divulge this: how, while Woody, two hundred dollars the richer, was in his office with Miss Chinese Crested, I took a trash bag of dog hair down to the Dumpster only to discover the collie lying there, all awkward, stiffened limbs covered over with soiled newspapers from the kennels.

There's a lot I can forgive in the world but not that. I climbed down in there and pulled Bonny out, not an easy feat for a woman of my size, I'll tell you. I went and got the display coffin, the only dog coffin that Woody had in the place, and I lifted the heavy body up and into it, put it on a dolly, and rolled it out to the field behind the kennels and their runs. I spent the rest of the afternoon digging a grave and burying Bonny. I was sickened that such a beautiful life could ever be left to the hands of somebody as stupid and careless as Woody.

S
OMETIMES WHEN
I am feeling particularly mad— I'm stressed, I'm crazed, I'll bite your head off—I sit down and write myself a letter about how things will get better. I make out a list of what I should and should not do: do not bark and growl and flip off the crossing guard over at Richie's day care center—this will not get you anywhere; do sit tight on the photos you took of the dead collie and the pictures
you took of the kennel runs when Woody was in charge; do not breathe a word about how he has cheated on his income taxes for the past five years; do wait until it's time to let go of that tube sock you've swallowed. I tell myself, there is no shame in being a bitch in heat, no shame in wanting a litter.