Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life (21 page)

After her march of misery, crossing the threshold of our back door cheered Ursula up tremendously. For one thing, the sky wasn’t yelling at her anymore. For another, I hadn’t yelled at her since the sidewalk. But best of all, there—in the corner of the dining room—was another dog. Ursula
loved
other dogs. At the inconsistent-but-fun domicile she’d just left, she had a best friend in the adjacent yard: a year-old golden retriever with whom she would spend hours on end alternately chasing, barking, and chewing each other’s legs—not what I look for in a friendship, but I’m sure Ursula didn’t want to get a pedicure and speculate about the hidden flaws of famous people, so we’re even.

When Ursula spotted Polly, she saw something like a life jacket in a fur coat.
So what if the humans seem to be trying to deprogram me from a cult
, she thought.
I’ve got a dog buddy here and it’ll be all chasing, barking, leg-chewing heaven from now on!
In a single leap, she crossed the room, landed next to Polly’s bed, stuck her butt in the air, and barked excitedly. Polly opened one eye and scowled. Something had dared awaken her from one of her more critical afternoon naps.

Ursula waited a beat for our dog to take off from her bed and sprint around the room. When this didn’t happen, she barked louder.

Polly curled one-third of her upper lip and growled warningly.

Ursula dropped to the ground in a submissive pose and wagged her tail furiously. She continued to bark in joyous abandon.

Polly took this as an invitation to flatten her ears against her head and growl an even more threatening growl than before, if such a noise were possible. Polly was really old, but arthritic hips and a weak bladder didn’t shake her resolve to throw down with loud strangers with boundary issues.

I didn’t think they’d end up as workout buddies, but I was hoping Ursula’s joie de vivre might endear her to Polly. But no, it now looked as if Queen Victoria was being forced to share a dorm room with a Teletubby.

When I took Alice to school the next morning, I popped Ursula into the car with us. I assumed Polly needed some quality time alone.

On the way home, I stopped in Griffith Park and took Ursula for a long hike, which she enjoyed immeasurably. I enjoyed it too. It was a refreshing change to have a canine hiking buddy who didn’t seek refuge under the first bush and refuse to take another step. Then I ran some errands, keeping Ursula in the car as needed, taking her with me when I could. I thought to myself,
I could do this
.
I could have a second dog that stays with me all day
. She’s unbelievably sweet. I’ll exercise and socialize her and Polly will have hours at home by herself when she can pretend Ursula is nothing more than a horrible dream. I do wish she’d stop licking my ear when we’re on the freeway, though.

Heading to pick up Alice, we made a detour for groceries and I grabbed a takeout lunch that Ursula and I could share at
an outside table. At the checkout, I ran into the mother of one of Alice’s schoolmates, Emily. I gave her the short version of Ursula’s wild ride.

“I’d love a third dog,” she said enthusiastically. “My fourteen-year-old son has been begging for a dog of his own.”

Hmm, this might work. They have dog experience. They have an energetic teenage boy, tall enough to tolerate full-body slams from a good-sized pet. They have developed a tolerance to dog hair on their clothing. Hmmm. I went to the car and brought out Ursula. She lay down on the sidewalk next to Emily’s mom and gazed up through her long black lashes with moist adoration. The woman fairly swooned. I was most forthcoming about Ursula’s charms and peculiarities, but I’m not sure how much she heard because Ursula was actively campaigning for the title of Most Precious Dog West of the Rockies. The love was fairly oozing in both directions.

Finally, she looked at her watch and said reluctantly, “I’ve got to do a couple more things before I pick up Emily. I’m going to think about this and talk to my husband. There’s no point in talking to my son, he’ll say it’s a great idea.”

“Okay,” I said. “See you at school.”

“Do me a favor,” she said. “If Emily sees Ursula, don’t tell her I’m even thinking about this. She’s going to love this dog, and I need to make up my mind without that pressure.”

When it came time to pick up Alice at school, I walked Ursula onto the outer playground. One fifth grader looked over and shrieked in delight, “DOG!”

Within thirty seconds, Ursula was swarmed by fifteen small, gleeful playmates. I’d never have done this without absolute
confidence in Ursula’s good nature, but she was even better than I hoped. She lay down on the ground, accepted all petting with pleasure, and licked whatever child body parts were near her tongue. I noticed Emily was one of the first kids to cuddle Ursula and one of the last to be peeled off when it came time for us to leave.

That night, I was making dinner when the phone rang. It was Emily’s mother.

“I can’t get Ursula out of my head,” she said. “And Emily came home raving about her without even knowing I was thinking about this. My husband thinks I’m insane, but Emily and I want the dog.”

I was delighted but cautious.

“Maybe we should have a playdate with Ursula and your dogs first?”

“No. We want her.”

“Okay, do you want to stop by this weekend?”

“Actually, we were thinking tonight, so that my son could have her right away. Could we come by in about an hour?”

It couldn’t be that easy?

“Uh, okay. I mean, yeah. Great! I’ll have her stuff ready to go. We even have a crate for her, and we’ll see you in about an hour.”

I hung up the phone and saw Alice standing in the doorway, frowning.

“Who’s coming over tonight?”

I said brightly, “Emily’s mom has decided that Ursula would be a great addition to their family, and they’re going to adopt her!”

It’s amazing how I thought presenting this headline in my best good-news voice would negate what I was actually telling her. Alice’s face crumpled.

“But…But, I wanted her to sleep on my bed.”

I swung quickly into, “I know it’s hard to give up a sweet dog like Ursula, but every quadruped in the house hates her…Her new family goes for lots of walks and has another dog that is closer in age to Ursula…And she’ll be with someone we know again, so we can visit her…A lot!”

I might as well have acted out the Mahabharata with spoons for all the good it did. Alice flung herself into her room, sobbing, and slammed the door. I followed her to the threshold.

“Do you want me to come in?”

“No. I want to cry!”

I tried saying supportive things through the door like, “I hear that you’re upset.” The parenting magazines suggest reflecting what the child is feeling back to them.

“JUST STOP TALKING!” she shouted, between sobs.

The parenting magazines have never provided me with a single relevant parenting tip. At this point, all I could think was,
if Alice and I had been driving down that street just five minutes later, I might have a peaceful house right now
. Then again, you never know. We’re an emotional people.

Emily and her mother arrived at seven on the dot. I liberated Ursula from her crate and she ran joyfully to them. Alice hid in the corner of the living room and sniffed. She didn’t want to be part of the good-bye, but she wasn’t going to miss seeing it. When Emily, her mother, and Ursula left, Alice collapsed in my lap and cried while I stroked her hair.

A week later, the woman who adopted Ursula sought me out at school. Turns out, their dog, who was supposed to be thrilled to have a new canine companion, didn’t feel quite up to having a roommate who wanted to play incessantly and sleep sprawled across his skull. After a week of threats and feints, the two dogs had come to blows over a bone, and Ursula’s third loving mother in three months realized it was never going to work.

Ursula arrived back at my house with her crate, three new chew toys, a huge bag of food, and the pleasant expression of someone who no longer attempts to understand what’s going on. I, however, knew exactly what was going on. I had signed on for a dog-life’s worth of the kind of close monitoring not seen in public since
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
.

I took Ursula everywhere, which usually ended with me apologizing. She went to the grocery store with me one morning and while waiting outside, entertained herself by chewing the wheels off a grocery cart. Any meal I ate at a restaurant was taken al fresco so Ursula could lick my toes and knock over the table when a potential play mutt appeared anywhere in a two-hundred-yard radius. At home, I even took her into the bathroom with me, reasoning that whatever performance anxiety a fifty-pound dog crawling into your lap might create, it was less stressful than flying out of the bathroom, pulling your pants up from around your ankles while trying to remove your cat’s head from your houseguest’s maw.

I stopped thinking in terms of
When I find her the right home…
My mind was filled with more practical musings such as,
Put Ursula in her crate so Lulabelle can come in and eat her dinner. Then put Lulabelle in the kid’s room, put Ursula in the back yard, and feed Polly her dinner. Walk Ursula. Then let Ur
sula have her dinner while I walk Polly.
My life started to resemble the riddle about the farmer, the fox, the chicken, and the rowboat. I always hated that riddle.

Sometimes, when popping Ursula into the car for a trip to the drive-through ATM, the drive-through pharmacy, and whatever vegetarian lunch I could grab at a drive-through, I would stare at her and wonder if this could have been avoided. What if I had left her on the street? But that was never going to happen because I’m one of the good guys. I might not be having much fun right now and my hair might smell of dog saliva, but this dog was better off because of me.

One afternoon, I crated Ursula in anticipation of taking Polly for her midday walk. Polly walked by Ursula’s crate and threw a quick “Yeah! Mommy loves ME!” sneer in Ursula’s direction. Ursula sighed deeply, put her big head on her paws, and looked doleful. I had a flash of inspiration. I’d let her stay in the back yard while I walked Polly, after which I would walk Ursula. It was a lovely day and the squirrels were looking especially plump and disrespectful. Within minutes, Polly and I were on our way and Ursula was standing under the squirrel tree, looking up and grinning wildly.

Polly and I walked around the block. As we returned toward the house I noticed a van stopped in the middle of the street and two men talking on the sidewalk. One of them, relating an anecdote, clapped his hands together sharply once, then pointed up the street, away from our house. Turning back, they noticed me.

“Hey,” the hand clapper called, “is this your house?”

He pointed to our yard.

“Yeah?” I said, acid flooding my stomach.

“Do you have a yellow dog?”

“No,” I said shakily. “I have a brown dog.” Because that’s what I do in moments of terror, I try to get out of things on a technicality.

“About that big?” he asked, putting his hand just about Ursula-height. I nodded dumbly. He sighed.

“I was just driving along here, and it jumped that wall and ran out in front of me. I tried to stop but it bounced off the front of my van,” and he clapped his hands together, “and ran off that way.” He pointed up the street. The driver was a big man with a tattoo snaking up from his shirt collar. He took a ragged breath and said, “I couldn’t stop fast enough. I tried. I really love dogs. It was just…” and he clapped his hands together again. His hands were large. The sound seemed to echo down the empty block.

I bolted into the yard, hoping that somehow another brown/yellow dog about Ursula’s height had run through our yard, scaled the fence, and gotten hit, leaving my charming ninny standing under the squirrel tree, but the yard was empty. I put Polly inside, carefully not looking at Ursula’s empty crate, grabbed her leash, and dashed back outside. For an hour, I walked the neighborhood, shouting her name and sobbing. I had broken my promise to keep her safe, and I couldn’t have been in any more pain if I had broken my arm. No one on the street had seen her. No one in the neighboring streets had seen her. In the days to come, no one responded to my signs. She had vanished as abruptly as she arrived.

Before we head down a particularly shadowy and unpleasant road, let me stop right here and introduce a psychiatric term: “compartmentalization.” For those of you who don’t freely
toss this word around when ordering a Frappuccino, here’s a brief definition: “Compartmentalization is the psychological ability to assign thoughts, beliefs, or life experiences into separate categories in your brain.” At its best, this means you can have a complete knock-down drag-out with your boyfriend over breakfast—one of those verbal brawls that ends in the phrase “Maybe we should see other people!”—and still manage a productive day at work. A compartmentalized brain would file the screaming domestic argument under “Home,” and because “Home” has nothing to do with “Work,” you can function at the office—that is until the day you find yourself screaming into the work phone over the custodial arrangements of copper cookware and your joint collection of snow globes.

That’s compartmentalization at its best. At its worst, you are me and for two weeks after the accident you’ve been worrying about Ursula’s welfare while at least once a day you’ve also found yourself thinking,
What is that odd smell in the front yard? Must be a skunk.
Because that’s what skunks do, they smell like death all the time, right? If you compartmentalize well enough you never, not even once, not even in the darkest most pessimistic recesses of your brain, wonder if the smell of death and the absent dog might possibly maybe somehow be related. It took Consort and his somber lucidity to bring things to a close.

One morning, I stumbled out of bed and headed for the front door to grab the paper. When I opened the front door there was Consort in his grubby crawling-under-the-house gear. I blinked in trepidation. For the first half hour of the day I fear any change in routine, and finding Consort up before me qualified as a shift in the universe akin to Oprah driving NASCAR.