Dog Lived (and So Will I) (7 page)

“No. I never did. I’ve always been good with dogs and never with children. It’s not the same thing. I have vastly different feelings about dogs and children. I wouldn’t be good being a mother.”

“Oh, I think you would be. But I understand.” We fell quiet again, and both of us leaned back. I watched Chris though. I could see he was thinking deeply, and I was certain I didn’t want to know more just then. I had the dog to think about.

Chris and I stayed at his Brentwood apartment the night before the surgery so we could drop Seamus off early in the morning. We snuck Seamus into the “no pets allowed” apartment and hoped he wouldn’t bark at each new noise or smell. He did not. He slept calmly and contentedly on the recliner in the bedroom with us, using my clothes as his pillow. He only howled when we left the apartment without feeding him. No food or water was allowed for the twelve hours preceding surgery.

We arrived at the Veterinary Cancer Center just before nine in the morning and were taken into the exam room immediately. They were certainly efficient.

Even though I’d heard it before, and Chris had confirmed it for me, I still needed to hear the prognosis again. I still hoped I’d misunderstood. When Dr. Tracey came into the room, I asked, “Did I understand correctly that even with surgery and chemo and maybe even radiation, it’s likely he only has a year to live? Is that true even if you get clean margins?”

“Unfortunately, tumors in this area are usually very aggressive. Even with clean margins, and again, that’s only what we can see with today’s technology—so it may not be clean—chances are still high that the cancer is still there. Chemo may get it. It may not. That’s what tough about these. We’ll do the best we can.”

Once again a staff person brought me an estimate for services, which was a detailed list of everything possible in the surgery. The estimate included a FedEx charge of $45 so they could ship the test results to a lab in New York. I signed and handed over my credit card. I’d begun to think of this card as Seamus’s card. With a lot of airline miles building up. The estimate gave a low of $2,023 and a high of $2,193. The difference was the doses of anesthesia, antibiotics, and pain relief injection. I didn’t know whether to hope for the high or the low estimate. I also signed for “advanced resuscitative efforts (primarily applies to patients weighing more than 50 lbs; including surgical & machine support; potential added cost of $150 to $400).” Seamus wasn’t anywhere near fifty pounds, but I wasn’t taking any chances. We’re giving this everything we have.

I hugged and petted and kissed Seamus until Dr. Tracey took him from the exam room and back to the hospital area. Seamus followed willingly and happily, sniffing around for more treats as he went, his nails click-click-clicking on the tinted cement as he trotted down the hall, his tail held high and swishing back and forth. Chris led me the other way down the hall.

I drove home alone and lonely, leaving Seamus at the surgery center and Chris in his apartment. At home, I sat on the couch, staring at the wall, swirling but not sipping a glass of wine. I waited.

Dr. Tracey called me at six that evening to tell me the surgery had gone well and she was hopeful for clean margins. Seamus was resting comfortably, she assured me. This brought me little comfort. I continued to hear “aggressive…one year…chemotherapy” echoing in my thoughts.

The next day, the oncology center phoned me in my office just after noon. Seamus was doing great, he was alert and eating, and I could pick him up anytime. I looked at my watch. Even if I left right then, which I was willing to do, there was no way I could get to Los Angeles and back without encountering heavy traffic. I calculated the time it would likely take. Maybe an hour and a half to get there, with a little luck. A half hour at the clinic…it would be three or later when I left. The worst possible time to get on a Los Angeles freeway. I’d be lucky if I got back home by 6:00 p.m. And Seamus, with stitches in his rear end and on pain medication, would be confined to a crate all that time.

I called Chris hoping he’d know some magic driving route that would help me avoid what I also knew was inevitable. There were not a lot of people in my life who I trusted enough to ask for advice and even fewer whose advice I’d likely take. Despite my lingering concerns about Chris’s youth, I had begun to count on and enjoy his intelligence.

“You know, I can go pick him up now and bring him to you tonight,” he said.

I had not thought of that. He was already in LA, which would shave off a few hours of driving time. But this was my dog. “No, I need to see him. I’ll go get him.”

“Really? I’m not sure it makes sense for you to drive all the way out here and then turn around and drive back when I’m headed out your way anyway. They said he was fine, right?”

Yes, they said he was fine. But he was my dog. I needed to see him. And wasn’t I supposed to be there to pick him up? Wasn’t that my obligation? Of course, it was also my obligation to pay for the surgery, so a few more hours at work would definitely be a good thing. If Chris left now, he’d probably be able to get Seamus home several hours before I would.

“Are you sure?” I was asking myself as much as I was asking Chris.

“Yes. They can just charge it to your card. I’ll get him. Besides, the Moose and I have kinda bonded. I want to see him, too.”

And that was true. They had bonded, and it might not have just been the food anymore. The more time Chris spent at my house, the more Seamus seemed to prefer cuddling up next to Chris, sometimes even choosing him over me. “The Moose” (derived from the first nickname “Shay-moose”) was a favorite of the many nicknames Chris had bestowed on the dog. And his theme songs included “Scala-moose, Scala-moose, can you do the fandango” (sung to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”) and “Do You Know the Muffin Dog, the Muffin Dog, the Muffin Dog? Do you know the Muffin Dog? He looks a lot like me” (sung to, of course, “The Muffin Man”), the latter created as Seamus stood drooling at our bedside begging for the blueberry muffins we were eating.

I called the clinic and let them know to charge my credit card and release the dog to Chris. They knew Chris, since he’d gone to the appointments with me. They probably thought of Seamus as “our” dog, even if I didn’t, so naturally the receptionist had no issue releasing the dog to Chris.

“That’s great he can get here so quickly. We’ll be ready for him,” the receptionist said with no fanfare whatsoever. She had no idea how big this was for me. I’d let Chris be responsible for my dog. I was trusting him with my dog. My sick, recovering dog.

When I arrived home that evening, Seamus was on the couch, snuggled in next to Chris just as he did nearly every night with me. Seamus had even thrown his left front paw over Chris’s right thigh. Everybody seemed to be doing fine—dog and man were both relaxed and happy and seemed as unaware as the receptionist had been that I’d just allowed my relationship with Chris to deepen. I’d just had an emotional growth of monumental proportions, and no one seemed to notice.

Seamus leaped from the couch and came to greet me. I could see his rear end was shaved on the right side, and there were stitches again, but he was wide awake and didn’t seem to be in pain. His front lower left leg had a green Ace bandage wrapped around it.

“They sent home some pain medication and antibiotics. I gave him the pills for tonight, and the bottles are on the counter. I was thinking we’d order pizza? Moose says he wants pizza too,” Chris said.

“I’ll bet he does. And that sounds good. I’ll order.”

“Seamus wants pepperoni. And sausage.”

“Probably also chicken. And extra crust.”

The three of us went upstairs to bed by ten o’clock, which was much earlier than our normal bedtime. All three of us were night owls, but this had been a long, exhausting twenty-four hours, and we were tired. Seamus climbed into his own bed, spun around, moved the blanket back and forth until it was bunched up perfectly, and then flopped down with a loud “harrumph.” He sighed deeply, letting his jowls flop in the wind he created. We did not put the cone on his head.

I was happy we were all together and relieved the surgery was behind us, but still, I did not fall asleep. I lay in bed thinking alternately about the Thanksgiving dinner ahead and then getting the pathology report back. I tried to focus on the fact that Seamus made it through surgery and that Dr. Tracey thought it had gone well, but I couldn’t maintain that positivity. Instead, I spent a restless night worried about clear margins and family judgments, while Seamus snored loudly and Chris slept soundly.

Seamus betrayed me by recovering from surgery quickly and with no drama, such that I had no excuse to avoid Thanksgiving dinner with Chris’s family. As though meeting the aunts, uncles, and cousins wasn’t going to be difficult enough, we were meeting at his recently deceased grandmother’s house in Pacific Palisades—a place that makes even Newport Beach look like Haiti. And as though that weren’t going to be difficult enough, one of the aunts (the one in charge of the dress code, apparently) had decided we all needed to wear the sports jerseys of our favorite team—because Grandma Dugi would have liked that. Now I had to dress in a manner acceptable to meet the family, but also somehow wear a sports jersey of my nonexistent favorite team and do it fashionably enough that I was allowed through the magnetic force field that keeps the riffraff out of Pacific Palisades. Had the edict been “wear a shirt representing your favorite dog breed,” I would have had an ample selection of beagle-adorned shirts and sweaters to choose from; I could have even risen to a “wear your favorite alcoholic beverage on a shirt” occasion, and these seemed no less ridiculous themes to me. I borrowed one of Chris’s vintage San Diego Charger jerseys, not because it was my favorite team, but because it was light blue and gold and I could look good in those colors. Also, it was one of his smaller jerseys—only an XL instead of an XXL. Chris wore a Barcelona soccer jersey, which, it just so happened, was one of his favorite shirts. I looked like I was in a costume; he looked like he was going out to breakfast on any normal day.

Not even the traffic helped me out. There was none (like a bad joke: When is there no traffic in Los Angeles on a holiday? When I would like there to be traffic!). We arrived early, and Chris ignored my pleas to drive around the block for a few hours—or days.

His grandmother’s home was classically beautiful—bricks and tall white columns—and sat on a corner lot, which, Chris explained to me, was one of the largest lots left in the Palisades, the rest having been subdivided and populated by the modern McMansions of the many sports and entertainment industry multimillionaires who had descended on the area in recent years. Grandmother Dugi’s house, in contrast, was once owned by Mary Astor and was on the famous San Remo Drive (oh to live on a street featured in a novel!). The front lawn was huge, with stately magnolia trees, manicured shrubbery, and white roses everywhere, even in November. The house and yard looked like they’d been picked up out of Atlanta in a bygone era and dropped down in the midst of modern west Los Angeles. The estate was regal and serene. I was in a man’s old, faded football jersey and functioning on about four hours’ sleep per night for a week running.

We parked in front, but Chris led me across the expanse of lawn around to the back where we passed the pool and the carriage house and entered in the kitchen (like family or servants? Or one of each?). I expected that we would be the only ones in jerseys, that somehow this was a prank and when we arrived they would all be in formal attire (in my disturbed and moderately paranoid mind, pearls and hats were involved), and they would point and laugh at us.

Well, at me.

I met his aunt Peggy first. Peggy was in a USC jersey, which offered some relief but came as no surprise—she was, in addition to being a past Wimbledon doubles tennis champion, an avid sports fan and, almost as relevant, the aunt who had decreed the dress code. But then I met Uncle John and his wife Tina, also in jerseys, so I began to relax. Aunt Barbara and Uncle Ed and their three daughters—with matching “M” names and blond bobs, clean-cut husbands, and clean, glowing, well-behaved children of their own—wore identical USC jerseys. I smiled, nodded, and tried to remember names as best I could and put faces to the stories Chris had told me. Seeing the jerseys, albeit worn over dresses or outfits that implied the jerseys were temporary, loosened my shoulders (they were no longer up in my ears). That is, until I realized they were all in cardinal and gold jerseys—all of them. And there I was in blue and gold—the colors of the crosstown rival, UCLA.

“Why didn’t you tell me I should have worn a USC jersey?” I whispered to Chris.

“Because you went to UC Santa Barbara. Why would you wear a USC jersey?”

“Because everyone else is! I’d forgotten your family is all USC fans!”

“Not all of them. You’re fine. My grandmother went to UCLA. In fact my grandmother was the first female student body president at UCLA.”

Wow. That shut me up. I was fine. I was in Dugi’s school colors! Sure, it’s a Chargers jersey, but the colors were close. Maybe someone would notice and I’d get extra points (because I was certain they were keeping score).

“So what’s with all the cardinal and gold? Why wouldn’t they be in your grandmother’s school colors?” His grandmother had passed away months before, and the property was listed for sale. This was the last Thanksgiving the family would have together in the home Trudi and her siblings had grown up in. So why wouldn’t they have been honoring Grandma?

“My grandfather went to USC. And so did Ed. And Barbara. And…”

I stopped listening. Chris’s parents and his sisters had arrived. When I saw his sisters, my brain finally kicked in and thus I registered the thought right along with Chris’s intonation: “Of course, my sister Courtney is there now, and Kati’s getting her master’s there.” I should have remembered that. I should have known that. I should have planned ahead. Could I just go home to my dog now? Please?

But his mother and father and sisters were not in USC jerseys. They were not in jerseys at all. His sisters were in dresses and impossibly high (and fashionable) heels. His mother was in black pants and a black silk blouse with white stripes and cuffs, with a large, pearly necklace. His father was in the male all-purpose “going out” outfit—khakis and a button-down shirt with loafers. I began to spin again. We’d gotten it all wrong. I looked ridiculous! Who wears dress pants and heels with a jersey tied in a side knot over a simple cotton top? Who does that? On Thanksgiving! I’m an idiot. I wanted to let out my own Seamus howl.
Take
me
home! Noooow! Fookers! Take me hooooooooooooooome!!!
But I’m not a beagle. I couldn’t cry, or howl, or escape through a doggie door. I sat. I stayed.

I was rescued by his “M” cousins, who each took the time to introduce themselves, their husbands, and their children and to sit and chat with me for long stretches of time.

Thankfully, Chris’s parents and sisters donned their jerseys in time for dinner (and removed them later), and although his sisters and mother wore USC jerseys, his father wore his US Naval Academy sweatshirt.

Trudi approached me with an offer to refill my wineglass. (Should I? Would I be judged an alcoholic if I accepted? Would I affront her if I declined?)

“So what do you think of all this? Crazy, isn’t it?” she said.

“It’s certainly memorable. I can’t say I’ve ever had a Thanksgiving quite like this. I didn’t realize the family was such sports fans.”

“Well, we are, but not like this,” she motioned, wineglass in hand, to her jersey-clad siblings in the living room. “This would have my mother rolling over in her grave.”

“So this isn’t a tradition?”

“Oh heavens, no. I don’t know what Peggy was thinking. We’ve never done this.”

Chris joined us, keeping his promise that he’d not leave me alone with either parent for longer than two minutes. “Never done what?”

“Dressed like this for Thanksgiving. Chris, please make sure Teresa understands we’re not usually in costume. You don’t want her thinking your family is crazy.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mom, remember when Grandma Dugi had us all wear hats for Christmas dinner?” Chris said.

“You mean, like the English paper hats in poppers? Those hats?” I said.

“Oh, no. Hats. Dugi’s hats. Big hats, baseball hats, straw hats, fishing hats…you name it and my grandma brought them out and had us all wear them. Insisted.”

I looked to Trudi, expecting she’d be mortified at this disclosure. But she was laughing.

“Oh that’s right. I forgot about that. But, Chris, I think the dementia had already set in then, we just didn’t know it.”

“The hats were a big clue. Or should have been.”

I don’t know what would have been more difficult for me, the hat Christmas or the jersey Thanksgiving. I have hats, so I would have had a selection, but then I would have had hat hair too. It didn’t matter though. I was there, charging forth in my Charger jersey.

“Well, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m just glad everybody else really is in jerseys.”

“Did you worry we were playing a joke on you?”

“I did. A little.”

“Oh, no. No joke. This is for real.”

“Well, at least I don’t have to worry about spilling anything on my blouse.”

I helped carry dishes from the kitchen to the dining room, and once we were all seated I made small talk and recalled, I believe, which utensil to use when, all while keeping my elbows off the table. I made it through dinner and began to relax.

After coffee and dessert, Chris asked how I was doing.

“I’m good. Surprisingly good.”

He smiled. “I told you so. And everybody likes you.”

Maybe so, I thought. Maybe so.

We stayed late playing cards and a dice game around the dining room table that comfortably sat eighteen. I came close to winning one round of the game, and I happily noted several family members rooting for me. I didn’t mind when a six-year-old cousin won instead and I gave her a high five. We had been among the first to arrive and were nearly last to leave. No one was more surprised than me.

“That may have been one of the nicest Thanksgivings I’ve had in a long time,” I said to Chris on the drive home. “It’s nice that you can all get together in one place. In my family we would have made three different stops by now.”

“See? I told you. Nothing to worry about. They loved you.”

“Well, I don’t know about love, but they weren’t avoiding me. Your cousins made a lot of effort to get to know me, and Ed mostly was interested in the fact that I had gone to law school. So I gathered I was all right by him. I like a low standard.”

“Ed’s standards are not low at all, but yes, he cares about education. My mom spent a fair amount of time talking to you, too.”

“Yes, she did. That was nice. She wanted to make sure I was comfortable and had met everyone. So that was good, I suppose. She wasn’t hiding me or claiming I was the help.”

“Very funny. But it’s over. You did fine.”

“Thanks. Still, I’m looking forward to us being home with the beagle.” In the car ride home, I was even able to catch up on a little sleep.

The next day Dr. Gilbert called. The surgery was a success. The margins came back clear—according to both the surgeon and now the pathologist. Now Seamus just needed to heal enough to start chemotherapy.

At my mother’s house, Seamus had been subjected to the cone again since he’d resumed biting his stitches. Back home with Chris and me, in his efforts to remove the stitches, he’d taken to scooting his rear end on the carpet, sometimes leaving trails of blood. But I was deliriously happy with the surgery results and so once again followed Seamus around repeatedly shouting “Seamus, no!” and spraying stain remover.

On Saturday Chris went to his parents’ home for their annual family Christmas photo. I stayed home with Seamus. I had laughed when he told me that he had instructions on how to dress (he was thirty years old!) and that they’d done this every year for as long as he could remember. I couldn’t fathom that. I doubt my family had ever been together in one photo, let alone every year. Part of me wanted to go, just to watch. A bigger part of me wanted to be home with the dog, the fireplace, and a good book—the part of me that won. It was an easy argument for that part of me to win, however, since I hadn’t been invited to photo day.

I was asleep on the couch—fire going, book on my stomach, Seamus asleep beside me—when Chris returned home earlier than I expected.

I sat up, and he plopped down on the couch between me and Seamus, causing Seamus to stand up and move, cone and all, over Chris to settle down between us. Seamus always needed to be in the center.

I maneuvered over the cone for a kiss from Chris but settled for kissing Chris’s cheek as he stared straight ahead.

“You’re home early,” I said after a few minutes.

“So you were right,” he said, standing up. He headed to the bar and reached for his bottle of Maker’s Mark whiskey.

I was pretty sure there was nothing I’d said lately that I wanted to be right about. And there was an intensity and strain on Chris’s face that I’d never seen before. “We should have worn USC jerseys?”

“That wouldn’t have helped.” He sat back down, glass in hand. He moved the glass toward me in a mock toast. “I’ve been instructed to break up with you. Apparently my parents think they raised me better than this.” He extended his arm, sweeping it across the expansive view of my sleek and elegant cougar den. “They think they raised me better than you.”

My stomach churned and dropped. My jaw simply dropped. “I thought they liked me?”

“At this point, I don’t think they fucking like me.”

But Thanksgiving had gone well! Hadn’t it? How could I have been so wrong? How could I have let my guard down and opened myself up to this sucker punch? How could I have been so stupid again?

“What happened?” I couldn’t imagine—I didn’t want to imagine—such a conversation.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It kind of does.”

“No. It doesn’t. They’re fucked up. I’m not listening to them.”

It was my turn to head to the bar. I stood up, but I only made it halfway across the room before I turned back to face Chris. “I knew this would happen. I fucking knew this would happen. Every. Single. Time. This always happens to me.”

Chris’s face fell. And then it tightened. “You know, this isn’t about you.”

“How is it not about me? We’ve been together for a year and a half now. They must have just thought you’d grow out of this. That somehow, I’d just go away, and in the meantime they’d fake being nice to me. All along they were thinking you’re better than me? They’re better than me?”