by Mary Miller
“Layla! Girl!” I said. “Dog! Come here, girl. I got bacon for you.” I held the flap open and she stood on the other side: a standoff. “Come on out.” I stuck my hand through and gave her a piece, which she swallowed without chewing.
“This is a doggy door,” I said, flapping it back and forth. “Now come on out and see your new yard.”
“It’s a nice yard. It’s real nice out here.” The bugs were swarming. It was lovebug season.
She stayed safely within the yellow light of the kitchen, looking unperturbed.
“Come on out and try it. Just step your foot over, like this.” I grabbed her black foot and pulled but she backed up. I gave her another piece of bacon and she extended her neck to get it. I closed the flap and opened it, closed and opened it. “You step right through here,” I said. “I guess it’s for a smallish dog but you’ll fit.”
Her eyes said she loved me, that she heard everything I said and understood, but she had her reasons.
CHAPTER 2
MUCH AS I liked the dog, she wasn’t very bright and didn’t make a peep unless she was gagging. The gagging annoyed the hell out of me, but it usually only lasted a couple of minutes and when it was over we’d pretend it hadn’t happened and never would again. So much of life seemed to be this way.
As it turned out, I had no idea how to train a dog. She would sit and lie down and roll over, a little bit of everything when I opened the refrigerator to take out the bologna, but she didn’t know the difference between sit or lie down or roll over, only that I wanted her to do something. I didn’t need her to sit or lie down or roll over, anyhow. What good were these things? This ain’t no dog-and-pony show. But she couldn’t catch, either, which was unfortunate. When I tossed the bologna into the air, it landed flat on the tile. Every time I tossed a slice I thought of my old dogs and how high they’d jumped when the pancakes flew. It didn’t matter how badly I tossed them; they never missed. Because the floor was seasoned with bologna, she spent a lot of her time licking it, and my feet stuck to the tile in a way I found highly unpleasant.
On top of it all, she didn’t take to the doggy door despite numerous demonstrations. She was smart enough to know I’d give her the bacon, anyhow. And she didn’t whimper or scratch or give me the cold-nose so I had no idea when she needed to use the bathroom. I let her out every couple of hours, just to be sure; when I opened the door five or ten minutes later, there she’d be, calm and patient as a stone, and walk back inside to resume her floor or foot licking.
It was tough but I tried not to be irritated because I didn’t want her to feel bad about irritating me. She must have been abused. I repeated this to myself and it made me want to rise to the challenge. I imagined her chained to a pole in a dirt backyard, her bowl of food turned to mush in the rain. I conjured a picture I’d seen of a dog with the saddest eyes in the world, the saddest eyes in the whole goddamn world: When Bruno realizes he’s been abandoned and his family isn’t coming back for him. That dog’s eyes haunted me. I felt like someone—perhaps Maxine—had shown this to me on purpose. I told myself I would do right by Layla if it killed me. I also felt a strange need to entertain her, be interesting. Lucky for her I was an interesting man.
She was sensitive, just as Harry Davidson said. I was sorry I’d never see him again, though I’d disliked him on sight. I could conjure the smell of his breath and his eyes with the whites all the way around, the way his body shuffled as he walked.
I thought I might drive by his house to see if the sign and the balloons were still there. What other dogs did he have? Had he given me the lemon? Had he spotted me pulling up and pegged me for the sort of man who would agree to take the lemon? I felt sure I’d gotten the lemon and yet I didn’t think I’d have taken a different one. No, she was the right dog. I’d known it immediately. There had been a reason I’d taken that route and it wasn’t because of Ellen, who had not, so far as I knew, put a Salt Life bumper sticker on her car. And it wasn’t Harry Davidson I wanted to see but his wife, a woman I had never laid eyes on and who might not even exist. That had just occurred to me—Harry Davidson had made up his wife in order to have someone to blame, a story to tell. The new wife, allergic, had to get rid of them. It would’ve made more sense if he’d been asking for money but he hadn’t asked for any money. Maybe I should have offered him some and he’d have brought out other, better dogs. I supposed I didn’t look like the kind of man who had much. If I had reached for my wallet, he might’ve brought me a dog that could catch a goddamn slice of bologna.
There was a knock at the door and Layla trotted over to it. It was the quickest I’d seen her move yet. She sniffed the UPS man’s leg and went back to her blanket.
After he left the box, I tried to teach her how to bark, show her how it was done. I thought I had a pretty good bark, reasonably authentic. “Ruff!” I tried it an octave higher and then an octave lower to see if anything registered. I attempted a growl but wasn’t as impressed with my abilities there and the dog seemed confused, like she hadn’t realized I was also a dog.
“I’m just going to have to accept you the way you are,” I said. “It’ll be a lesson for me.” I cursed at her a while, but she had no idea what I was saying. I could call her all manner of names so long as I used my nice voice.
I opened the box: a six-month membership to the cheese-of-the-month club along with a wedge called Ossau Iraty. I picked up a flyer that said IN PURSUIT OF CHEESE in enormous letters at the top that told me about this month’s selection: Ossau Iraty is made from 100% sheep’s milk from the famed brebis sheep that graze in the valleys of Ossau and Iraty. These small creamy-brown sheep have helped make several well-known cheeses, including the famed Roquefort.
I hope you enjoy this early birthday gift! the card said. Love, Maxine.
“Small creamy-brown sheep. I’d like to eat one of those, instead.” I liked cheddar and mozzarella and those were the only cheeses I’d ever liked.
“What’s that girl thinking?” I set the box on the floor. The dog sniffed it and turned up her nose. I would have to call Maxine and thank her, but I wasn’t going to do it today.
The newswoman I liked, Christy Something-or-other, blond, large-chested, was interviewing a woman from the local animal shelter. This had to be a sign. Sometimes you were humming a song and it came on the radio. One day you accidentally adopted a dog and then your favorite TV girl was talking about the importance of adopting unwanted animals, and Layla was nothing if not unwanted. With my newfound riches—my inheritance would arrive any day—I might be able to get a nice young girl like Christy to give me half a chance. She could teach me a few things. I’d give her a credit card with an unlimited balance and let her show me what life could be like.
The other woman patted her lap and out trotted a scrawny brown animal barking its head off. Layla sat up and let out a single bark.
“Good girl!” I said, “good dog!” But she looked as surprised and humiliated as a person jolted out of sleep by their own fart.
“Try it one more time,” I said. “You just gotta get used to it. For some it don’t come natural.” And then I petted her head and rubbed her belly, which was starting to smell like a Frito, and what popped out of me was a corn chip song I made up on the spot. It was repetitive and catchy. She loved this corn chip song, watched me straight on and wagged her tail. Right after I stopped singing it, though, I had no idea how it had gone, couldn’t remember it at all. Oh, a corn chip! You smell like a corn chip! I sang, but I couldn’t recapture the glory of the corn chip song for the life of me. I picked my nose for a while and fell asleep. When I woke up, she was licking my shoe. I was wearing shoes inside, which was unusual. I took them off so she could lick my feet. Her tongue was wet but not too wet and it excited me, in a way. I figure the dog wouldn’t mind if I got a bit excited; I wasn’t going to do anything untoward.
I had never been anybody’s whole world before. There had been people in my life—first one family and then another—but there had
been so many problems among the individual members that it had never felt much like a group, just a bunch of people trying to redirect their issues by pointing out the shortcomings and faults of the others. That worked alright until they caught up with you.
I had some eggs boiling and was opening a can of tuna when I heard my former brother-in-law pull up.
Frank lived a few streets over and had taken it upon himself to check in on me every now and again. He’d stay for ten minutes and hold a beer, but he never finished it. Sometimes he brought his leftovers from Chili’s. The man loved Chili’s better than anybody I’d ever seen and he’d made me a fan. Steak fajitas or a Fresh Mex Bowl, occasionally there’d be half a burger and some fries gone cold. I always took them begrudgingly but ate everything the minute he left. There was something about leftovers that made them easy to eat. In the restaurant, what might seem like an overwhelming amount of food was a mere snack once you got it home.
Frank was a fine man, dull and fine. He liked to paint pictures of landscapes—trees and barns, sometimes a lake with some ducks on it but ducks weren’t his specialty. The pictures weren’t half bad. I had a couple hanging on the walls in my study. They were the kind of pictures that were simply pictures; they never caught your eye, you never noticed them.
I opened the door for him and went to turn off the burner. And then I heard a lot of barking and Frank yelling and I thought a dog must’ve attacked Layla and Frank didn’t know what was happening because he didn’t even know I had a dog. But that’s not what happened. It was Layla snarling and shaking Frank’s pant leg.
He was still yelling as I called her off.
“Down, girl! Down! It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s just Frank. Frank’s our friend.” I was so proud I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.
I touched him on the arm and said, “This is Frank,” and she stopped snarling and let go. She was a guard dog, after all. She knew how to bark but only when she needed to. She wasn’t going to bark at every bird or cat like some kind of animal.
Frank was understandably upset. His pants had been torn and she’d bitten him.
“Did she break the skin?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, “but she got me pretty good,” which meant he was going to be upset about it anyway. “Look at those teeth marks,” he said. “Do you see ’em?”
“I see ’em,” I said. His ankle was a little red but I didn’t see any marks.
“Whose dog is that?”
“It’s my dog, Layla.” I tried to explain that she was a humble, docile creature, and I’d thought the commotion had come from a stray or a neighbor dog attacking her. “I’m sorry, Frank,” I said. “She must’ve thought you were dangerous.”
“You ought to put that thing down.” He was shaking he was so angry. I’d never seen him angry before, not even after the time Ellen and I had had a fight and she’d fallen and hit her head—an accident. It really had been an accident and Frank had understood, though the police hadn’t. That was a long time ago, decades, the single night I’d spent in jail. You didn’t forget something like that. I could still feel the helplessness that comes when you put your hands in your pockets and find them empty. As drunk as I’d been, I knew exactly what had happened: what I’d done, what Ellen had done, the officers at the door—I could have written a transcript, drawn diagrams—but it still felt like a dream. I resented Frank for reminding me of it. It had all been Ellen’s fault, anyhow. She’d fallen without any assistance from me.
“Bad dog!” I said to Layla. “Bad!” I said it a few more times for Frank’s benefit and felt terrible—when he left, I’d give her two pieces of bologna. A whole pack.
“I’m real sorry, Frank.” I wasn’t going to apologize a third time and hoped it would be enough.
“That dog is dangerous,” he said.
I made some neutral-sounding noises to let him know I’d heard him and was considering what he had to say. The whole thing was curious. Layla had seen me open the door and should’ve been able to figure out that he was okay. Frank was the least dangerous man I’d ever known. He didn’t like dogs, though, and maybe Layla had sensed this, or maybe Frank was a real asshole, a psychopath, and the dull and sober routine was just there to throw everybody off. How better to escape notice than to be as calm and nonthreatening as possible? To visit shut-ins and paint landscapes? I made a mental note to do some research after he left—how to tell if someone is a psychopath, the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. I’d get out the iPad Maxine had given me for my last birthday and charge it, hope it still worked. An iPad one year and a cheese-of-the-month club the next!
“I dropped your dinner,” he said.
I went to the door and looked at the box face down on the walkway. “That’s a shame,” I said. “What was it?”
“Fajitas. There was a lot left, too.”
“What kind?” Tuna was a nonalternative now. I’d have to call Domino’s.
He looked at me funny. Then he said, “The combo—chicken and steak. It was really good.”
“That’s a shame.”
“The steak wasn’t chewy at all. Sometimes it’s too chewy.”
I sat in my chair with Layla at my feet. Frank sat on the couch and bent down to examine his ankle, asked me to turn on the overhead.
I got up and turned on the light and then, since I was up, went into the kitchen. The dog followed. I had this thing I liked to do with her ears, flap them fast as I could like she was gonna take off and fly. I did that for a minute and quietly fed her a piece of bologna.
“Hey, Frank!” I called. “Can I get you anything?”
“Do you have any frozen vegetables?”
“I don’t have any vegetables. But there’s an eye mask I use for my neck sometimes. It was Ellen’s.”
He didn’t say anything so I said I’d bring it. “You want a beer?”
“Do you have Coke?” he asked. We were both talking in overly loud voices—shouting practically.
“I have Pepsi or Dr Pepper. The Pepsi’s flat.” I wanted to tell him I’d been on my way to get a fresh two-liter when I’d gone rogue and gotten the dog but decided against it.
“I guess I’ll have a beer,” he said. “I don’t need any caffeine, anyway. I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”
“You?” I said. “Trouble sleeping?” I handed him the beer and the eye mask. “I would’ve figured you slept like a baby.”
I watched as Frank attempted to secure the mask around his ankle but it was awkward so I stopped watching. He propped his ankle on his knee and held the mask in place like that.
“Just keep that thing away from me,” he said.
“Layla,” I said, using my serious voice. “Get on your blanket.” The dog looked at me; she knew I was putting on. The dog and I were strangers to each other and yet I felt like we were together in this thing, partners. That no one had ever known me better.
He continued looking at her warily. No, he could never be a serial killer. A dangerous man wouldn’t be so afraid of a thirty-five-pound dog. I wasn’t sure how much she weighed, though. When Frank left I’d have to weigh myself and then pick her up and get back on the scale and subtract the difference. She might be forty-three or even forty-six pounds. It was hard to tell, and I’d never been good at eyeballing things. I was reminded of how Ellen and I had gone to the fair every year—first to take Maxine and then, after Maxine left, we continued going just the two of us—and Ellen would have the man guess her weight. She always won. She was compact in a way you couldn’t predict unless you tried to lift her; to lift her was to move mountains, same as Maxine. He’d guess twelve, fifteen pounds less than her actual weight and she’d gloat and eat a funnel cake and a corn dog and free biscuit after free biscuit topped with molasses. One year, she’d eaten so many they stopped serving her and she’d gotten a kick out of that. It had been her goal: How many do you think they’ll give me before they refuse?
So many years we’d gone to the fair and this
was the first time I’d miss it. So many biscuits we’d eaten. The biscuits, light and fluffy, were easy to swallow, and my wife and the biscuits—the perfection of those biscuits—were all tangled up together.
“You want me to put her in the bathroom?”
“That’s alright,” he said. I knew he wanted me to put her somewhere and I should have done it but it was my house and the dog wasn’t going to bother him again.
After that, we sat in silence. I was grateful he wasn’t asking me the usual questions, at least. Had I heard anything from Maxine? What was going on with my father’s estate, and had I talked to that lawyer, Lucky? The lawyer was a child with the name of a child—nothing more than a kid who thought he was better than me. And then he’d ask if I was keeping myself busy, and how, always the same series of questions that I didn’t want to answer because he didn’t really want to know. The only question he might’ve wanted to know was whether my inheritance had come through, if it had all been settled and how much I’d netted, and I was never going to give him that information. And what if I told him the truth about the rest of it? That I’d spent the day in my chair napping, watching back-to-back episodes of Naked and Afraid? What happens when you put two complete strangers, sans clothes, in some of the most extreme environments on Earth? I could tell him what happened—no sex, no romance, all of the good parts covered up, and yet I held out hope. For what, I wasn’t sure. Why did these people, who were often married, who had families and jobs, go on this show? And the women lost weight but they never looked any better, bit up as they were, hair a mess. I didn’t know why I liked it so much, though watching them struggle reminded me of my relative comfort—a/c on full blast, plenty of beer in the refrigerator—but Frank didn’t want to hear about that, or how often I thought about the guns locked up in my study. How I’d take them out and clean them and consider putting an end to it all.
After his questions, we’d talk about the news and commiserate over the farce that was the government of the United States of America. Ha! What a farce it all was! The right and the left and the people in between. The gays and the transgenders and where they might take a shit. And Frank would say we ought to secede again and I’d agree even though the state was so broke that we needed the federal government a lot more than they needed us, and then he’d go home where he lived with his wife, who was nearly as dull but not quite. Claudia was red-haired and nice-looking for a woman of her age, and when I was feeling generous I liked to believe they were happy. She didn’t have much to say, though I suspected she had a lot of thoughts in her head and maybe she even shared some of them with Frank. Perhaps they had a whole world full of fluffy biscuits that I couldn’t imagine even in my most generous and agreeable moments.