I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship (3 page)

In essence, that's how our dysfunction started.

Gary and I adopted Marge from a city shelter because, as a happy new couple, we wanted a family. Marge was from a litter of fourteen, which was unceremoniously dumped in a large box in an alley. We were fed a bunch of lies about her—told she would grow to be only fifty pounds, whereas she topped out at nearly eighty-five; told she was a prime candidate for potty training since she always peed on the newspaper, though she would battle a leaky bladder for life—but we picked her largely because, out of the hundreds of abandoned dogs at the shelter, she immediately responded to our voices.

Our falsetto voices, to be accurate.

Gary and I often create characters—much like
Saturday Night Live
cast members do—to skewer the world around us. We did so that day at the shelter, after touring the facility with a hard-edged urban professional in a power suit, a redneck couple whose wife was so hungover she kept pulling her Busch beer bandana over her eyes to “squeeze out the damn light,” and a bosomy woman in a glitter tube top with a tattoo across her chest that read, “Big Enuf 4 Ya?” who was in the market for a dog to provide “a little protection.”

Thus, that day, Gary and I created Ne-ne (the successful, professional city woman), Connie (the hard-luck, hard-partying gal who couldn't hold a job), and Trixie (the town whore).

Standing in front of Marge and her brood, it was quite a while before we unconsciously began doing our characters, each of whom was defined by an oddly high-pitched voice and caustic, snarky, biting wit, almost as if Sarah Silverman had just ingested a helium-filled balloon.

Marge immediately took notice. And so did we.

“Mr. Tutwiler,” Gary said to Marge, as if he were Connie, “git'cher hands off the forklift and back on my ass where they belong!”

“Twenty bucks? Twenty bucks!” I screamed à la Trixie, licking cake-batter-flavored gloss off my lips. “That won't even get you a flash of my teats and a date to Taco Bell!”

“My God!” Gary screamed, as the tiny puppy scrambled up our chests and into our arms to kiss our faces, while the others hid. “She loves it! She speaks our language!”

It was a sign, because very few in either of our lives had, really.

My older brother, Todd, died when I was thirteen, and though he was the exact opposite of me—a true country boy who loved to fish and hunt and work on motorcycles—we had a special relationship, and often communicated via a secret language.

“If you ever get into trouble and I'm nearby,” Todd would tell me, “yell ‘Suzuki!' [his favorite motorcycle], and I'll be right there.”

And I did. Many times. And he was always there to protect me.

Gary lost every man he loved, in quick succession, all of whom used their words as weapons to wound Gary's heart, kill his faith in the power of love, murder his innocence and optimism until he was no longer needed, and he was left abandoned, empty, alone, unable to speak.

Yes—though Marge was just a puppy who couldn't even speak—it seemed nearly miraculous for both of us to stumble upon such an obvious, uplifting sign: Marge symbolized our language of love.

We immediately attempted to crate train Marge as a puppy—as the shelter, vet, and all our friends instructed—but her sad howling from the family room kept us awake for endless nights, until, finally, blessedly, there was silence.

But we verbal addicts mistook that sign of success as imminent death, much like Shirley MacLaine, and so Gary and I took turns sleeping on a blanketed air mattress outside her crate, to ensure that our puppy was, indeed, alive. We crammed cramped fingers through the openings in the gate so we could feel the air coming from her nose. We shook her awake when she seemed to be too quiet. We smiled when she would howl and then immediately quiet upon hearing our Daffy Duck–meets–Kathy Griffin impressions.

Only when I could no longer use my keyboard at work without flinching in pain and Gary could no longer blow-dry his hair did we remove our fingers and move Marge from crate to our bed, where we cooed and sang, and, slowly, began to create an even bigger cast of characters to entertain Marge—and one another—each of whom used a virtual pre-
Avatar
language, a bizarre lexicon understood by only the three of us.

Soon, it became the only language to which Marge would respond.

I began compiling this language, and its many terms, which we termed “Marge-ese”:

In addition to Ne-ne, Connie, and Trixie, we added Maria (which was Marge's given name, a sassy, sexy, but bitter Penélope Cruz understudy); Sasha (a proud but poor Russian woman forced to beg for bread); Anastasia (a rich European who only shopped in Prague, but secretly loved to down Sliders at White Castle); and Ms. Betty Lou Tuttlesworth (a bedraggled secretary who could never speak up for herself and whose boss used to always drop his pencil for her to stoop over and pick up).

Over time, our Marge-ese dictionary and cast list were given to friends and relatives as well as our vet, so they could communicate with our dog, understand her. But no one really took us seriously. That is, until Gary and I went on our first vacation since adopting Marge, and we gave our dictionary to the kennel where Marge was staying.

Three days into our stay in Puerto Vallarta, we received a call saying Marge had yet to eat, drink, or even sleep since we had left.

“Are you speaking her language?” we asked. “Or doing a character?”

“Ummm, we tried,” the owner said, more than just a hint of malice in her voice. “We've tried to get her to play with other dogs, but she doesn't seem interested. And we've tried hamburger and rice, and special biscuits. She's not responding to anything. Except cartoons on TV. She's just looking around for you.”

“Put us on speaker,” Gary said.

And, in the high-pitched, cartoon voices only she could understand, we told her to eat, drink, and potty. Which continued the next four days.

I thought of Xena, our puppy trainer, while trying—but failing—to relax in Mexico. She was right. We had created a nightmare. One, now, that would never end.

From that point on, Gary and I really never left Marge. Whenever we traveled—vacation, book tour, holiday—Marge was there, riding in between us. And if she couldn't go, Gary's parents—who were nearly as neurotic as we were—babysat, following our dictionary, word for word, performing characters left and right, as if they were doing improv on a Japanese game show.

Marge eventually—as dogs do—leapfrogged us in years. She is now thirteen.

She has seen us through our early thirties into our mid-forties. She has developed gray hair alongside us. She gets stiff after exercising. And, for nearly a decade and a half, this eighty-plus-pound mutt has lain—day in and day out—on my feet, as I wrote and tried to make sense of the world via words, my own language.

After four books, Marge is still the first person to hear what I write—yes, I read to her in falsetto—and she listens more intensely than any other reader or fan I've ever known.

Marge has helped shepherd me and Gary through a sea change of triumphs and traumas: a move to the woods of Michigan, a career as a full-time writer, along with the loss of my mother to cancer, and the loss of Gary's grandmother. But I feel more capable of handling life now, thanks to her. Though I realize that life on this planet is but a blink of an eye, and that time is not the vast ocean I once believed it was—endless and infinite—but more like a creek, a quick swim from one shore to the other, Marge has taught me to appreciate the beauty of each day, to not think about time or the future, only to sigh, and kiss and play, and love and laugh without limit.

Still, whenever I begin to become a turtle again, Marge coaxes me to get up and walk with her and talk to her. She forces me to pause and look up at the sky with her, to chase seagulls on the beach with her, to swim in icy Lake Michigan with her—our dueling, dog-paddling shadows on the sandy surface below giving me hope that everyone can find that special someone with whom to swim through life. She, like Gary, has retaught me that it is okay to love, no matter the risk.

Recently, one evening, after eating her dinner, after a day of playing in the snow and chomping at snowballs, Marge could not seem to get comfortable. She followed me and Gary around so closely that her nose became part of our thighs.

I bent down and looked Marge directly in her big brown doe eyes.

She let out a sad, mournful yelp, put a paw on my chest, and then dry-heaved three times. I felt her nose. It was ice cold.

“Call the vet!” I yelled à la Alvin.

Twenty minutes later we were at the vet's office. Diagnosis? A turned stomach, just like in
Marley and Me
. Prognosis? Fifty-fifty chance of survival, less considering her age.

As the needle slid into Marge's furry arm, and the vet scooted Marge away on a gurney, Gary and I looked at her and said, “Wuboo! Seepy weepy!”

Her tail lazily thumped the stainless steel a few times and then she was off, but not before I could grab the gurney—just as her eyes began to glaze over—and tell my mutt, in a bizarre falsetto and the only words I could muster, “You cannot leave me, do you understand? It is not time. I need you!”

Marge gave me one last kiss.

The vet called at three a.m., after four hours of surgery, and said, miraculously, that Marge had made it through. But the worst was not yet over. She had been open for a long time, and was now under heat lamps to warm her body temperature. Three hours later, the vet called again. Marge was awake, alert, and looking for us.

“I've never seen owners get a dog with a turned stomach into the vet more quickly. You saved her life. You really do speak the same language,” the vet said. “She's looking for you. Better come take her home.”

We picked Marge up—who was cut from here to kingdom come—and Gary said, in Marge's helium-filled vibrato, “I got the tummy tuck you boys will never afford!”

Day by day, as Marge recovered, we found ourselves in the same position as we had when she was a puppy. Lying on the floor, holding her, speaking bizarre words in a high pitch only the three of us could understand. When Marge would wake and hear us, or catch us staring at her, her eyes would immediately widen, brighten, and her tail would give off a pathetic but telling thump, thump, thump. I don't know how much time I have left with her, but Marge has taught me to cherish each day, each kiss, each falsetto word, rather than fear the final outcome.

Marge has trained me, you see, to be a stronger person.

Ironically, I happened to see Xena, Marge's puppy trainer, not long after Marge's miracle recovery, while doing a book event in our former city. She was in the big dog park, training two German shepherds, and I was talking to Marge as if she were Ne-ne and missed her days as a big-city career gal.

My falsetto must have been the key that unlocked some past trauma for Xena, for she approached me, after thirteen years, and said, “It is Marge, right?”

I nodded.

“And did she ever learn to sit properly?” she asked.

“It depends on what you mean by ‘properly,'” I said. “Itty-bitty-boo.”

And Marge sat.

“That's just . . . well . . . amazing,” she said, looking at Marge as if she were an idiot savant. “Amazing she was able to learn so much.”

“No, what's amazing is how much I was able to learn.”

Her face took on that bemused Eileen Brennan expression again, and I asked, “When did you lose Hans?”

“How could you tell? Everyone thinks my dogs all look the same.”

“Hans used to smile,” I said.

“Itty-bitty-boo,” Xena said, out of the blue, her expression suddenly bright. And Marge sat.

“That's just amazing,” she said once again.

Marge and I took off running through the grass, in the brilliant sunshine, me chatting to her in our bizarre lexicon. Finally, I took a seat in the shade of a giant oak, and my best friend put her paws in my lap and gave me a kiss. I cradled Marge's giant old head in my hands—because that's how we roll—and the two of us chatted about this strange world, this world of strays, of mutts and men, all of whom have to overcome great odds to find that perfect someone who loves us unconditionally, who embraces our quirks and neuroses, that special someone who, quite simply, speaks our language.

A Dog Day of Summer

W. Bruce Cameron

Dear Dog,

This is what happened.

You woke up this morning at seven a.m. It being a Saturday, I was still asleep. You became concerned that I might be getting too much rest, so you came over and shoved your wet nose in my face.

When I rolled over with a groan, you realized your intentions had been misunderstood. You watched me lie there, my breathing slowing, for a full minute before you barked in frustration.

“No barking,” I muttered. “Lie down. Sleep.”

You sifted carefully through this statement, completely comprehending that I had not used the word “bacon.” You barked again, and then again.

I rolled over and looked at you. “What? What is it?” I asked you.

You wagged excitedly.
Yes!
you thought.
Let's get up!
Now your barking and yipping took on a frantic note.
Time to get up! Time to get up!

“Okay, okay!” I said. I got out of bed and got dressed. You watched attentively. I went into the kitchen and started the coffee. You raced over to your favorite spot in front of the fireplace, stretched out on your dog bed, and
fell asleep
. I suppose you thought that as long as one of us was awake, the house was secure and the other member of the team should use the opportunity to catch up on some badly needed rest.