It's All Relative (13 page)

And he was blind, like one of our favorite singers, Stevie Wonder, whom I had, ironically, been listening to on my iPod when our neighbors called.

Those were the lyrics to “Everybody Needs Somebody” that Stevie was singing when I saw Gary trudging back through the woods with this dying dog.

Never name a pet you don't intend to keep. That's the first mistake. It bonds you to it emotionally, in a way that seems forever.

But I couldn't help it.

Wonder
.

It fit.

This wasn't the dog I wanted.

In fact, I didn't even want a second dog, much less one that was malnourished, mangy, and blind.

There were too many cute puppies out there. And we already had a very high-maintenance mutt, Marge, who was the love of my life.

Gary had wanted a second dog for a long time but I had nixed it, saying the timing wasn't right, or Marge wouldn't do well with another dog in the house, or it was too expensive, or this or that.

I am good with excuses. I am good at planning. I am good with spin.

In my former life I was a PR person. I can change the outlook on anything, make something awful sound good, make something good sound awful. What I've never been good at, however, is facing
my own truth, dealing with my own emotions. I am a good burier, like—to pardon the obvious analogy—a dog with a bone.

Gary rushed Wonder to the vet after we found him, and when he returned he was crestfallen but hopeful. The dog was 40 percent underweight and had fleas, an infected paw, and, worst, the early stages of heartworm. Everything, he was told, however, might be curable. The vet wanted to see Wonder for a complete physical Monday: blood work, X-rays, a battery of tests to see just how deep his health issues were.

“This dog is a survivor,” Gary said. “He will be saved.”

Always the optimist.

I told Gary all the reasons why we shouldn't keep the dog. They were obvious. Too obvious. It just wasn't logical.

I told Gary the dog might not live through the weekend.

And then Gary spent the weekend ignoring those reasons. He took the dog to a groomer and had him washed and blown dry, Wonder standing under the dryer, his eyes shut, sighing as his matted yellow fur turned to fluffy gold.

By Saturday the dog was eating well, drinking water (too much, actually), and wagging his tail when he heard Gary's voice.

By Sunday, Gary had taught Wonder to navigate our stairs, to make his way around the house, to come to the sound of his voice.

Wonder could find Gary, walking directly to him—into his knees, actually—leaning his body into Gary's and sighing and wagging and smiling.

He would live.

When I woke Monday morning, I had made up my mind. We would keep Wonder.

That's the thing about living with an optimist: You realize you
are one, too, somewhere deep down. You realize life and love is all about risk and doing the illogical sometimes.

Why must I always be the rational one, I thought all night. The sane one. Why do I always fight everything? I too often see the impossibility rather than the possibility. Why do we too often have to be adults, and see not the path but the obstacles? Our childhood wonder is knocked from us at too early an age. Act like a grown-up, do the logical thing. Even when your heart is telling you otherwise.

This was a dog that had lived a nightmare of a life and still never whined or howled or cried out of pain or discomfort. You don't make a sound, I learned from Wonder, when no one ever comes to see how you're doing.

So I decided: Gary and I would do everything in our power to give Wonder a few wonderful years. We would install a tether line so he could go to the bathroom and install gates by the stairs so he would be safe, and we would clear paths in the house so he could navigate. He would become part of our family, just like Marge.

On Monday we dropped Wonder off at the vet, me, for once, the optimist, thinking about what might be: Wonder by my feet, lying in front of the fireplace on cold winter nights; Wonder snuggling against me on the screen porch; Wonder feeling the sand in his paws when we walked him on the beach.

And then the vet called Gary a few hours later and gave us his report after viewing the dog's lab work: Wonder's kidneys were failing, his organs collapsing, his prognosis beyond bleak. He had a few weeks, a couple of months, tops.

We still considered taking him home for those final weeks, until we were told he was in pain. He may have been silent, but he was screaming inside.

So we did something we never thought we would: We put an animal to sleep. We took responsibility for someone else's irresponsibility.
But we also gave Wonder a few days of peace, of home, of love. He did not die alone, abandoned.

When we arrived at the vet's office, we walked Wonder around outside for a final few minutes of talking, comforting, hugging, kissing, petting, and crying. He smelled the grass that was just coming to life, a few crocuses that signaled spring.

We reluctantly went back in, still crying, and into a private room with a nurse who asked if we were ready.

We said no.

“Do you know this is Prevention to Cruelty of Animals Month?” the nurse asked.

“I feel bad enough already,” I said.

“No, no, it's just so sad that it comes to this. Over one hundred thousand dogs are abused every year in the United States. You didn't make Wonder this way.”

Staring at this dying dog, it certainly felt that way, however.

And then the nurse brought out the needle and eased it into Wonder's fluffy arm.

At first Wonder fought the anesthesia, bobbing his head back and forth, “chasing the tennis balls,” the nurse said. And then he closed his eyes. He fell asleep. He stopped breathing.

It was so quick.

But much too slow.

Gary and I kissed Wonder on the snout, crying, convulsing really, and I told him to go find my late brother, and that he would take him fishing, run with him through heaven.

Before we left Wonder, Gary leaned down and whispered into his ear, “It's spring, buddy. You've been reborn now. You're finally free. You can finally see again.”

But really it was me who could.

I
went through a brief bohemian period after graduate school in Chicago when I considered myself an artist. I was going to be a writer, nine to five be damned. I would
not
work for the Man or have anything whatsoever to do with the Man.

And then I got a call from the Man—my father—who explained in no uncertain terms that I wasn't earning enough to pay my phone bill, much less my rent, car, groceries, and utilities.

It seemed my job as a “serious writer” (read: freelancer who wrote five-hundred-word advertorials on car wax and home financing and got paid roughly a penny a word) didn't really qualify as a job.

So my dad told me in a very authoritative tone that this was a lesson in “trickle-down economics.”

“The faucet,” he said, “officially shuts off the first of the month. The gravy train is empty.”

“You're mixing metaphors, Dad,” I told him.

“And you're getting a real job,” he replied. “Metaphors don't pay shit.”

My bohemian period was over.

•  •  •

Though I did not want to work for the Man, the Man came calling.

Thanks to the parents of some friends of mine—parents who knew important people and who, more importantly, had deadbeat children themselves—I was able to snag an interview with a behemoth PR firm, an agency that was termed “the Wall” by the local media because reporters were unable to secure any information about anyone or anything of value until this firm commented or approved first.

I arrived at my interview to find myself confronted by an army of perfect pod people, petite blondes with tight chignons and tailored navy suits clutching too many pens, and tall, stone-faced anchormen with chiseled jaws, deep, serious voices, and really white eyes and teeth.

It was like being interviewed by an army of attractive wolverines.

Now, this was in the days before I was out and proud, when instead I was closeted and fat, so I arrived at my interview wearing the only nice clothes I owned that still fit: a blue blazer with loose gold buttons, a button-down white shirt that was beginning to pill and yellow at the collar, a pair of khakis the pleats of which were rendered invisible by my thighs, a scuffed pair of brown tasseled loafers (I had Scotch-taped the tassels on so they wouldn't fly off when I walked), and a red tie with yellow dots that looked like one of those 3-D card tricks where the woman looks old until you hold the card at a distance from your face.

Despite my interviewers' initial looks of shock at my appearance—“fraternity weight gain,” I told them—I thought the half-day interview was going well: I had a credentialed background, great degrees from top universities, quality writing experience, and I engaged in thoughtful yet snappy repartee that elicited hearty laughs.

The snafu, it seems, came at lunch, a “required element” of the interview process at this firm, in which you dined on a preselected lunch at a private room near the top of the building. The lunch—which consisted of multiple, tricky-to-eat items such as salad with tiny diced vegetables, soup, and sauce-soaked pasta—was basically a
white-collar boot camp that forced newbies to prove their mettle in front of a series of hard-edged scouts.

Still, I felt highly confident, especially since I had taken an etiquette class, when I was young and lived in the South, from an elderly woman who smelled like mothballs and constantly told our class of little boys and girls that each of us “needed to do all we could for the war effort.”

As a result, I not only learned who Rommel was but also ascertained which silverware to use with each course, how to wrap my pasta in the big spoon, how to fold my napkin cavalierly on my lap, and how to chew with my mouth closed while smiling and nodding.

Everything in my interview, I thought, seemed to go swimmingly until lunch ended, I said my good-byes and thank-yous, and was waiting for the elevator. It was then that I noticed a trio of my PR lunch inquisitors—two men who looked like Charlie Sheen from
Wall Street
and a young woman who looked like a very angry Kate Hudson—doubled over in laughter, looking at me and pointing at their mouths.

Inside joke, I thought. Blowing off steam before getting back to work.

But when I returned to my car and pulled down the visor to check my reflection—just to see if I had survived the interview without becoming “too dewy”—it was then that I saw it: A shiny spinach leaf had tightly wrapped its way all around my front right tooth, making it look as if it were simply missing. In fact, I resembled a toothless extra from
The Grapes of Wrath
, or a fat boxer who couldn't protect his face.

I was humiliated, to say the least. I had done everything right—secretly shot spit between my teeth to clear potential peppercorns, rubbed my tongue over my teeth to remove foreign objects—but this single piece of spinach had somehow managed to adhere to my tooth like a bright, green cap, making it impossible to tongue-detect.

I never heard from the firm again. Not even a rejection letter. Which was the galling part: I realized that if a highly regarded PR agency didn't even bother with standard etiquette, I was pretty much
unemployable, except for jobs that required no human interaction, minimal counting skills, or a series of vaccinations.

And then while desperately scouring the local paper, just days away from my father shutting off the faucet of gravy, I happened upon an ad for a junior account executive at a small integrated communications firm that did a mix of PR, advertising, and marketing.

“Great writing skills a must!” the ad proclaimed. “Outstanding opportunity for a hungry young college grad.”

It seemed a perfect fit.

I mailed my résumé and list of references (i.e., friends and parents of friends who said they would lie for me) on a Sunday afternoon, and was called midweek by a woman who sighed after nearly every sentence.

“Are you Mr. Rouse?” Sigh.

“We received your résumé (sigh), and would be interested in speaking with you about the job (sigh).”

Although I became severely depressed midway through the call, I arranged an interview for Friday.

The firm was located in an old brick office building in a decaying section of downtown, one of those streets a few blocks off the main city strip that is lined with Rent-A-Centers and Quik Cash stores, storefront windows decorated with impenetrable steel bars.

I entered an empty lobby encased in decaying wood. I located the list of companies in the building, mostly small personal-injury-attorney firms, and found the agency.

I buzzed and heard a sigh.

An ornate but barely functioning elevator scooted me up to a midlevel floor, where I was dumped into another rotting wood lobby that smelled like floor wax. A huge airplane fern sat in a coppery container, the majority of its limbs picked clean of their leaves, cigarette butts smashed into the soil.

I opened the door and heard a sigh.

“Can I help you?” Sigh.

A middle-aged woman with helicopter-high silvery-blonde hair and one of those poorly drawn cartoon faces that would remain blank even after witnessing an airplane crash in her own backyard stared at me.

“Yes?” Sigh.

She was obviously no Angela Lansbury.

“Hi. I'm Wade Rouse. I'm here for the interview. You just buzzed me up.”

Sigh.

She punched a number into her phone, the headset literally in her mouth. “Your nine o'clock is here.” She looked at me and sighed. “You can have a seat.”

I smiled at her with one of those too-toothy smiles, those big, creepy Garfield kinds of smiles, wondering if she might have been pretty back in the day before massive doses of honey buns and bleach did her in.