A Wolf at the Table

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A Wolf at the Table Page 15

by Augusten Burroughs


  IN THE END, my father didn’t come on the trip. My mother and I went alone. She wrote in her black notebook and I walked along the chilly gray beach. The clouds were not wispy, as I had imagined, but dark and pregnant with rain. We stayed for two days, not four. At Gay Head point, I wondered what it would feel like to fall.

  If you raised your arms above your head like you were diving and you aimed true for the waves, wouldn’t you experience perfect freedom? That the body would land broken on the rocks below didn’t matter, because you wouldn’t be there for the landing. So you would experience only that single moment of clean, pure freedom and grace.

  But then, that would be it. There would be no chance to remember that feeling and strive, for the rest of your life, to feel it again. Or to surpass it. Or to pull somebody aside and tell them what it had felt like.

  There would be nothing. It reminded me of when I wanted to find out about the universe and I’d asked my father, “What was there before there was everything?”

  He said, “There was nothing.”

  “But what is nothing?”

  “Nothing is nothing,” he said.

  It was so difficult to picture. Because wasn’t nothing something, too? Wasn’t the thick silence and blackness of nothing actually a place you could be?

  Son, I’m tired. Please just go outside and play.

  Is that what death was like?

  But no, it wouldn’t be “like” anything.

  I was desperate to discover what nothing felt like. It was the absence of something that attracted me. It was the start. Everything important originated with nothingness.

  At Christmas, the floor could be spread with gifts, but I would be concerned only with what I didn’t get. Not pouting because I didn’t get a sweater vest, but wondering, What would have been in the box that isn’t here?

  My brother inspired awe in me because he wasn’t there anymore.

  I loved my mother most when she was locked behind her door, writing. Because I couldn’t have her. And because I never hugged my father, it was his embrace I sought most of all.

  Where there is nothing, absolutely anything is possible. And this thrilled me. It gave me hope.

  In a way, if I wasn’t having a happy childhood right now, I could have one later.

  I knew I had an ugly life. I knew I was lonely and I was scared. I thought something might be wrong with my father, wrong in the worst possible way. I believed he might contain a pathology of the mind—an emptiness—a knocking hollow where his soul should have been. But I also knew that one day, I would grow up. One day, I would be twenty, or thirty, or forty, even fifty and sixty and seventy and eighty and maybe even one hundred years old. And all those years were mine, they belonged to nobody but me. So even if I was unhappy now, it could all change tomorrow. Maybe I didn’t even need to jump off the cliff to experience that kind of freedom. Maybe the fact that I knew such a freedom existed in the world meant that I could someday find it.

  Maybe, I thought, I don’t need a father to be happy. Maybe, what you get from a father you can get somewhere else, from somebody else, later. Or maybe you can just work around what’s missing, build the house of your life over the hole that is there and always will be.

  FIFTEEN

  MY MOTHER AND I returned from Martha’s Vineyard with sand in our hair and shoes. On the drive back, she had said almost nothing, fixing her gaze on the highway, her lips moving along to words only she could hear.

  Only once did she speak to me, saying, “Hand me my bag from the backseat.”

  I pulled the sagging brown leather purse between us and unbuckled the flap. Without taking her eyes off the road she rummaged through it for a bottle of pills. She handed it to me. “Would you please count out three of these?”

  She swallowed them with the dregs of the coffee in her white foam cup.

  When we walked in the front door, dragging our bags against the gravitational force of reentry into the denser atmosphere of home, vacation over, I was surprised that Brutus didn’t come running to greet me.

  This wasn’t normal. Brutus should have barked twice, leaped over anything in his way, and barreled to the front door, nearly knocking me over with the vigor of his rottweiler joy.

  “Brutus!” I called. “Brutus, come here.”

  My mother withdrew to her office, closing the door. The typing began almost immediately as she put on paper what she’d been writing in her head during the drive home.

  I wandered into the kitchen, then the living room and through the dining room. Where was he? I walked out on the deck to see if for some reason he was outside, but I didn’t see him. Glancing down, I saw the rot had spread to the sliding glass doors. Now, anyone who stepped outside on the deck risked falling through. The wood was cracked, splitting. I bent down and poked my finger into the wood—it went deep. The whole deck would need to be replaced. And all it had ever needed was a coat of stain.

  What had Grover needed? Probably something just as small. A certain vitamin, a protein missing from his diet. Or maybe he only needed somebody to stop him from eating something wild and dead, diseased, infected, contagious.

  I missed him.

  I missed Ernie.

  Could Brutus be downstairs in my parents’ bedroom? I ran down the steps, opened the door to their bedroom, heard the television.

  My father was propped up in bed watching a game on the black-and-white television and Brutus was on the floor beside the bed.

  “Hey,” I called out. “Here he is.”

  My father said, “How was your trip?”

  I told him, “It was fine. It was good. Nothing really happened, though.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s upstairs. She’s writing.”

  I took another step toward the bed and Brutus sat bolt upright, the fur along his spine becoming erect, as if injected with air. He growled, his lips curling back to expose his ivory teeth.

  My error was assuming Brutus had mistaken me for an intruder. “It’s me, Brutus,” I said. “It’s me.” I took another step forward, reaching for him to scratch behind his ears.

  He snapped, ripped a chunk from the air in front of my hand and I recoiled. “Dad,” I cried, “what’s the matter with him?”

  Now the dog was standing, his back parallel to the bed, his head turned to the right toward me. It was as if he was guarding the bed, blocking it with his body, but making it clear that he would, if necessary, turn to face me head-on.

  Without looking away from the television, my father said, “Don’t go teasing the dog. He doesn’t like it.”

  I backed away. “I’m not teasing him, I didn’t do anything to him at all. I just came down here and said hi to him and now he’s threatening me.”

  “He doesn’t know you’re only playing, he’s just telling you he doesn’t like it.”

  That night, Brutus did not sleep in my bedroom, like he always had. He slept downstairs with my father.

  While my mother and I were on Martha’s Vineyard, the dog’s allegiance had shifted from me to my father. Now, he followed my father from room to room. When my mother or I approached him, the beast stood, hackles raised, and growled.

  Just a couple of days after returning, my parents had a big fight in the kitchen. My mother began shouting and Brutus backed her into the corner against the cabinets. My mother screamed, “Call him off, make him stop,” but my father said nothing, he only smiled. Then he laughed as she began to cry, genuinely afraid as the dog rumbled like an engine and the lip of the kitchen counter pressed into her lower back. It was one of the few times I could remember hearing the sound of my father’s laughter fill the house.

  THE DOG WAS now a menace and had to be watched. My mother and I began to plan carefully when we needed to leave our rooms. If I went into the kitchen for a drink, I would stop into her office. “It’s clear, they’re downstairs.” And she would take advantage, run into the kitchen and bring three drinks back to her office with her, saving later tri
ps.

  If my father and Brutus were in the living room, we would stay entirely away from that end of the house. There was a prowling dark force in the home now, a set of snapping jaws to be avoided. My father enjoyed a new sense of power, he was untouchable. My mother stopped screaming at him; I left him alone, didn’t hunt him down and pester him with my questions or ask him to play with me. Brutus not only guarded his body, but his privacy.

  I wondered how my father accomplished this, how he turned the dog against us so swiftly and completely. It was like a magic trick.

  I STOOD ON the deck watching my father split logs. He worked until he achieved a pile, then he parked the blade in an upright stump of wood. He removed the square, white handkerchief from his rear pocket, unfolded it, and mopped his brow.

  “Excuse me?” A student crunched through the woods between our house and the Allens’ next door. Last year, the Allen family moved, leasing their house to graduate students from the university. My father complained that the students parked too many cars in the driveway, left bags of trash in front of their garage doors, played their music so loud we could hear it next door.

  Brutus, who had been napping beside my father’s pile of split logs, suddenly came to attention. His ears tensed to locate the sound. Instantly, seeing the unfamiliar young man exit the woods, Brutus galloped toward him.

  “Mr. Robison, I need to speak with you about your dog. He’s been coming into our yard and threatening us.” He stopped in his tracks when he saw Brutus heading toward him.

  Brutus froze, hunched forward. The hair along his spine was ruffled into a comb.

  “Can you call your dog off, please?” the man shouted impatiently.

  Brutus became more agitated hearing the increased volume of the man’s voice. His growl became more threatening, no longer just a rumble from his chest, and now his teeth were exposed.

  My father did not call the dog off. “Well, maybe if you didn’t let the damn trash pile up in front of your house the dog wouldn’t come over there in the first place.”

  “Call your dog off, please,” the student said, his voice pitching higher with anxiety. He took a step backward and that’s when Brutus sprung forward.

  The man shouted when Brutus lunged, his front paws easily topping the man’s shoulders. He snapped his jaws in the man’s face.

  “Dead, call Brutus, call Brutus!” I screamed. “Brutus, no!” I shouted uselessly from the deck.

  Brutus shoved the man to the ground and was standing on top of him, snarling and snapping, making hideous noises. I was certain that he was biting the neighbor, shredding his neck.

  Still, my father would not call off the dog. It was like he wanted to see what would happen. That’s all. He just wanted to watch.

  “Dead,” I screamed. “What are you doing? Dead!”

  Finally, my father called the dog. “Here Brutus, come here, boy.” And Brutus whipped his head around to face my father. “Come here, Brutus,” he said again and Brutus obeyed, stepping off the neighbor and running to my father’s side.

  The neighbor stood up, running his hands across his chest and checking his hands for blood. There was none. He ran his fingers across his face, his cheek. He shouted, “Jesus Christ, that dog is insane, you’re insane. Why didn’t you call your dog off? He could have killed me.”

  My father said, “I wish he had killed you, you son of a bitch.” And then he walked over to stand just a foot in front of the neighbor. “I have had it with you, frankly. You and those damn kids have turned that house into a real dump. With your garbage bags and your loud music and now you come over here complaining about my dog? I’ll tell you what, young man. You come over here again and I won’t call my dog off. You hear me, young man? Next time, I won’t call off that dog.”

  The neighbor briefly glanced up at me and I had to turn away I was so ashamed.

  THAT EVENING, my parents sat in the living room and talked about the dog. As his fate was decided, Brutus slept in oblivion at my father’s feet.

  “Aw, that would just make me sick,” my father said, “just sick.”

  My mother was insistent. She argued that there was no other option, the dog’s character had changed. Perhaps there had been latent aggression that was only now being expressed. Whatever the reason, the dog had to be put down. “Damn it, John, it’s unsafe to be in the same house with that animal.”

  “Christ, Margaret, you make that damn dog sound like an unholy monster. He’s not going to attack you or Augusten, for crying out loud. Augusten just has to learn not to tease him.”

  “Augusten doesn’t tease him, John,” my mother said incredulously.

  Until now, they hadn’t seen that I’d entered the room and was standing on the other side of the fireplace, listening. I spoke up. “I don’t tease him, Dead. He just growls at me whenever I come near you.” I advanced into the room and, as if to illustrate my point, the dog emitted a low growl.

  My mother pointed to the dog. “John, do you see? Do you see that? He’s growling right now. We can’t live this way anymore.”

  Resigned, my father acquiesced. “Oh, Christ. All right, all right. I’ll have the damn dog put down tomorrow morning. I just think it’s a real shame that the two of you hate poor Brutus so much.”

  I’d adored Brutus. He used to sleep in my bed with me and stand guard over me and I’d never felt so safe. Then we went away for just a couple of days and he’d become some sort of thick-necked devil, my father’s henchman.

  But then, how had he accomplished this? How had my father essentially brainwashed Brutus, taken complete control of his mind, in the space of a few days? Somehow, I didn’t think Milk-Bone dog biscuits would quite do it. No, my father had to have employed another method of training. Something that would make Brutus learn very fast.

  Electricity? A car battery? Or perhaps the fireplace poker? What had my father done to the dog?

  I had a hard time falling asleep that night, thinking about this, and what would have happened if Brutus had done more than just pin the neighbor on his back. What if he really had ripped into him? And why didn’t my father call him off?

  True to his word, in the morning my father drove Brutus to our vet, just down the street. He came back with Brutus’s collar and he placed it in the center of the kitchen table, like a bowl of fruit. It was our punishment.

  THAT EVENING I heard terrible noises from my parents’ bedroom in the basement. My mother screaming, my father’s most frightening monotone, not a decibel of emotion in his voice. I had always found his silence more alarming than her cacophony.

  I raised the volume on the small television and concentrated harder on the picture. But finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and I had to go downstairs to investigate.

  I thought my mother must have been shouting into her pillow, because I couldn’t make out any words. My father begged for something. What could it be? The tone of pleading was unmistakable in his voice. Was he asking her not to kill herself? Was he saying, Don’t leave me?

  I heard my mother gagging. And then she was coughing, spitting.

  “You fucking bitch,” my father said. Hateful, ugly. It was shocking to hear. Like putting your ear to a shell to hear the ocean and instead receiving a bite.

  My mother wept. “John, please. Please let me be.”

  Suddenly, my father was shouting. “You wanted the dog dead, I had him killed. Goddamn you, why won’t you ever show me a little fucking gratitude.”

  The sound of my mother’s crying warbled, she moaned miserably. “John, please,” she begged.

  I heard the springs of their bed creak, then a frantic, rhythmic squealing from the mattress as though it were screaming. My mother’s muffled cries. My father’s low, guttural curses: Bitch. Whore. Cunt.

  I crept back up the stairs, the sounds of their lovemaking sickening me. My father had done what she asked with the dog and now he wanted sex and she wouldn’t give it to him. I was pretty sure this was what was going on. I couldn’t help
but entertain the sickening notion that I was overhearing the night of my conception all over again.

  On my way to my bedroom, I passed by the kitchen and saw the dog collar, still there on the table.

  What was happening to us?

  SIXTEEN

  THE MOHAWK TRAIL was originally a footpath used by Native Americans to walk from what is now Boston to Upstate New York. Today it’s paved and carries buses packed with tourists, peering out the windows at the fall leaves. The highway winds through the mountains and is peppered with motels, fruit stands, and maple syrup houses, thick smoke pumping endlessly from their chimneys. There are tacky gift shops all along the trail, and one of them has a giant fiberglass Indian standing guard in front. He must have been twenty feet tall. And not once had we driven past him when I did not whine for my parents to stop.

  On this day, though, my mother couldn’t stop because she was in a hurry. “We just don’t have time. After we pick up my cards in Greenfield, we have to head straight home because I’m meeting Gayle at five.”

  My mother had sketched an image of a boy in a corduroy coat standing in front of a maple tree, lifting the lid on a bucket attached to the tree and peering at the sap inside. The boy was me and she’d found a local printer to turn the pen-and-ink illustration into note cards. She would pack twelve cards with envelopes into plastic sandwich bags and affix a round white sticker on which she wrote in pencil, “$3.99.” Already, the Jeffrey Amherst Bookshop had told her they would carry the cards—her Emily Dickinson series had sold nicely.

  Greenfield was about forty minutes from our house. There was something depressing about the town, with so many of its Main Street stores empty, for rent signs taped crookedly in the windows. But I liked Greenfield because its bones were grand. Main Street was wide and elegant. Homes in the town had rolling grass lawns, neoclassical columns, and old fruit trees in front. Greenfield reminded me of a beautiful grandmother that nobody ever visited, but she kept squares of lace on the arms of her sofa anyway.

 

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