Stepdog

by Nicole Galland

  “I am already completely physical.”

  She rolled her eyes and soldiered on. “We should get on the same car insurance. Open a joint bank account—”

  “A what?” I coughed, now really choking down panic. “For what? We don’t have any joint expenses. You’re taking this too far. My cousin and I weren’t bothering to do anything this involved. If we have to move in together, let’s at least ease into it.”

  “The more shared expenses there are, right away, the better. We need a paper trail. That’s why we should probably live together—not forever, but until you’ve gotten the conditional green card. Three or four months at least. Get our mail at the same place, share the utility bills, that kind of thing.”

  I was horrified. Getting married was one thing—but actually living together? We’d only been dating a few weeks. That’s not nearly long enough to get over the distraction of another person’s scent on the sheets, to become immune to the foreignness of each other’s bathroom rituals and daily tics. I loved waking up next to her, but then slipping away at dawn to return to a purely Rory-centric world. I loved the frisson that came of not knowing exactly when or where we’d see each other next. Living together would ruin that.

  “What do you want, frisson or a green card?” Sara asked, when I said so.

  I pursed my lips. Suddenly priorities became clear: okay, so we’d have to live together, temporarily. However, independent of my laundry peccadilloes, and the talking-to-myself, and the espresso at my local café, it would be a bloody pain to pack up and move my LP collection. “You should move to my place,” I said decisively, “because it’s bigger and closer to the T.”

  She almost spat from the laughing. “Are you serious?” she asked. “What about Cody?”

  As usual, the dog had slipped my mind. “There are plenty of dogs who just stay in all day,” I said.

  “They don’t allow dogs in your building. I saw a sign. So you’ll have to move in here or we’ll rent a new place together.”

  Internal alarm bells sounded so loud I got a sudden headache. “You sound terribly casual,” I said. Mentally I was trying to guess how many boxes I would need for the LPs.

  “I’m just trying to do this thing right,” said Sara.

  “I have lived in the same place for ten years,” I said.

  “That’s not really true, you sublet it several times to move in ill-advisedly with certain girlfriends,” she said. “Remember who you’re talking to? I knew your entire romantic history before I was ever close to being a part of it.”

  “But all my stuff was there. I knew I could always come home to my stuff,” I said. “Are you telling me to give up the place where all my stuff has lived for ten years, after us dating for a few weeks?”

  “I said we can move in somewhere new together if that helps. As long as it’s dog-friendly.”

  “It doesn’t help, and besides—the dog decides where we live?” I said. “It’s all about the dog.”

  “Actually, it’s all about the green card,” she replied without looking up from the form. “They want to know if you’re a communist,” she said, reading. “Or a Nazi.”

  “Don’t change the subject, please. This isn’t going to work if you keep making me feel like I’m beholden to you,” I warned.

  “I’m not doing that,” she said.

  “You are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You—” I grabbed a couch cushion, slammed it to my face, and briefly screamed into it with the frustration. God, that felt better. I lowered the cushion. “You are,” I said calmly.

  “I’m not. But I’m not willing to give up my dog so you can get a green card.”

  “You should have thought of that before insisting that I marry you,” I said.

  “You should have thought of that before marrying a woman with a dog,” she retorted.

  I moved in with her.

  No, let’s be clear about this:

  I moved in with them.

  Chapter 5

  I sublet my place (month to month). We told all our friends that we were shacking up together; my mates were shocked and stunned, to say the least, knowing me for being single so long, and going on about having my own place—and then moving in with her so fast. Her friends were “concerned but supportive,” she reported. Her last live-in relationship had been pretty awful. The museum crowd had seen her through it and now they were all—especially Lena—protective, and so they were a little anxious that it was happening so quickly. (Although for the record, Lena generally liked me, considering me the opposite of the evil ex—she referred to me as “the anti-Jonathan.” “That must mean Jonathan has a very small cock,” I said, to which Lena replied that that wasn’t a very funny joke for me to share with anyone but Sara. Prude.)

  Danny lent me his truck to drop off boxes, instruments, and a large suitcase.

  And then there I was, moved in with her.

  And it was, of course, awkward and weird and yet secretly exciting in its way, because I loved being around her. I digitalized all my music and brought it with me on my iPod, which made me feel very twenty-first-century despite my established history as a Luddite. I kept reminding myself that this was only temporary, for a greater cause, and that we would weather it as friends. And because we were so damn crazy about each other. Who knew, maybe someday we’d think about doing this for real?

  Maybe. Probably not, though. Everyone knows romance lasts longer if you don’t live together.

  Meanwhile, I became preoccupied with earning my keep. I paid for a cleaner to come weekly, after it was made clear that I did not keep the bathroom as neat as I imagined myself keeping it. I pretended to be Colin Farrell on her answering machine. I cooked meals for her, and I gave her foot massages and caressed her in bed. I serenaded her.

  And I promised her I would not scratch the very nice paint job in her apartment when I eventually started climbing the walls.

  The thing about out-of-work actors and musicians is that, besides being out of work, we can’t go job-hunting like normal people do. Between my expired visa and the government checking me out, I wasn’t supposed to be working at all. I taped an audition for Dougie to send to the producers, to get the ball rolling should the Irish-detective-rock-star series get off the ground. That was exciting, got me downtown to the offices of Boston’s best casting director, but took less than an afternoon. Meanwhile I had to turn down Timon of Athens, not that I was so excited about it, that character is sort of a prat, but still. I shouldn’t’ve even gone back working for Danny’s uncle under the table, but I’d snuck in a few days here and there. I had a bit of a nest egg, so money-wise I was comfortable enough, but I did have a lot of downtime and sometimes got itchy feet.

  The first week or so at Sara’s I spent getting used to the neighborhood and creating a routine. The ritual became: We got up together, had breakfast, Sara walked the dog around the block while I cleaned up from breakfast. We then deserted the tragically sighing dog, I’d stroll with Sara to the bus stop, then I’d duck in to City Feed to grab a coffee and paper for the crossword. That finished, I loved meandering around Arnold Arboretum. I’d bring a book, headphones, walk for miles, and then treat myself to an afternoon espresso up on Centre Street. I bought a single-speed secondhand bike, and sometimes I’d cycle up to the cemetery, by the overpass, or in the other direction to the village in Brookline, feeding the ducks in Olmstead Park. Sometimes I’d chat with the old folk who sat on the benches along the water, taking time out from their old folks’ home across the way. Late afternoon, I’d head back, pick up some groceries at Harvest Co-op, using the pearly-new debit card from our pearly-new joint bank account. Then I’d bring the groceries in, give the dog (half catatonic from her afternoon siesta) a treat, throw on some sounds, and prep the dinner. Sara would come home, and there would be happy hugs and kisses and nuzzles . . . for the dog.

  And then some for me.

  Sara
would head out with Cody for a long off-leash run in the arboretum while I continued getting dinner together. Once I’d indulged her sharing an hour of her limited free time with the dog, the rest of the evening, she was mine. I would entertain her with a few songs, a tickling match, a game of Scrabble using only proper nouns. For a week, our life was a romantic-comedy montage of people-being-playful-in-love scenes. Even though her place never really felt like mine, it was a lovely and manageable limbo. Everything that first week felt like a game, like we were somewhere on vacation, or at worst, we were kids playing house.

  But came the day when it was raining torrentially, and I was between novels, and I’d pulled a thigh muscle, and frankly, after walking Sara to the bus, all I wanted to do was go home and vegetate on my own couch all day while sorting out what to do with my sorry little unemployed arse. I was feeling heavy-duty nostalgia for my own space, for all the familiar energies and colors. But I couldn’t go home, as my home was now otherwise occupied. And I couldn’t go to my mates’, as they were all gainfully employed. And there’s only so much time you can sit in a café unless you’re writing a novel. But the prospect of lying about all day in someone else’s place . . . with someone else’s dog . . .

  It’s for the green card, I reminded myself, waving to Sara as she settled onto her seat on the bus while the rain penetrated my mop of hair all the way to the scalp. I headed back to her apartment.

  As I approached, I saw the dog inside, staring dolefully out the window up at the wet treetops. I wondered if I could lock her outside in the yard and have the place truly to myself, without feeling like a right bastard. I realized that probably, I couldn’t. She heard the key in the lock, and despite her doleful state, was prepared with her happy-puppy-welcoming-Mum-home routine by the time I’d opened the inner door . . . then she froze, halfway round her first circle, and cocked her head at me in confusion.

  “Hey there, Cody!” I said.

  At that moment, something clicked in her little canine brain. When I would arrive home before Sara in the early evenings, I was simply a Curiosity . . . but claiming ground in the middle of the morning somehow made me Significant. She leapt at me, joyful, her forelegs grappling against my lower chest, her tongue flicking out snakelike hoping to reach my face. She was frenetic, as if she’d just discovered a long-lost sibling on a passing raft in the Pacific. I pushed her off me and brushed away stray dog hairs; she continued to leap, to prance on her hind legs, to throw herself off balance by the ferocity of her own wagging tail.

  “All right, calm down,” I said, feeling both flattered and irritated by the attention. She immediately sat, her tail thumping the rug, and stared up at me expectantly.

  “Don’t stare,” I said. I took off my raincoat and hung it on a peg by the door, as she continued to stare at me expectantly.

  “Don’t stare,” I growled. I went into the bathroom to towel off my hair; came back into the living room and settled myself supine on the couch to the natterings of All Things Considered, and groped around the coffee table for the remote to the telly, hoping Sara had a sports package (definitely wishful thinking).

  The dog, with repressed wiggles, sauntered over to the couch, then sat down right beside me so that she could stare into my face close up, in case I might do something interesting. This made me very squeaky-bummed.

  “Sara didn’t teach you don’t stare?” I asked. She moved her head closer to mine and then nudged my shoulder with her nose. Twice. Then a third time, since I was being dense about responding to her and she wasn’t used to that.

  I pointedly ignored her, simply lay back and stared up at the ceiling listening to NPR since I couldn’t find the remote. Eventually she went back to treetop-scouting.

  I don’t mind an hour or so of NPR, but after a while it all becomes repetitive. I got up and turned off the radio. In the sudden silence, Cody jerked her gaze from the window to me, with joyful expectation, as if I had volunteered to replace Robert Siegel as the day’s entertainment.

  “Well, now,” I said. “It’s a bit of a situation here, isn’t it? How about I play you some tunes, and in exchange, you promise not to stare at me for the rest of the day?”

  She stared at me.

  But Cody, to be fair, was a gratifying audience, at least for the guitar (she went under Sara’s bed when I tuned the fiddle). In particular, she was fond of the opening riff to “Smoke on the Water,” instantly flopping into tarty-dog pose upon hearing it, as if she wanted nothing more than to be ravished by Deep Purple.

  It really wasn’t a half-bad way to pass the day.

  But one day turned into a spate of wretched weather: three days of heavy, torrential downpours followed by another three of driven drizzle. One of those cold damp weeks when the lights have to stay on all day because daylight never got above 60 percent.

  So what I thought was a one-off became a new routine. It was good to get back into the habit of daily practice, but that didn’t quite fill up the hours either, and being stuck inside with the dog was hard. She watched my every move, she followed me from one room to another, always expectant, always wanting something. Sighing when I didn’t provide it. Sliding into tarty-dog pose in a final plea for attention. Sighing while in tarty-dog pose when I continued, for my own sanity, to ignore her.

  And even as the rain began to clear, the mercury began to drop. I realized with a sinking feeling I’d be earning the green card by spending much of the coming dark New England winter being stalked by a dog in someone else’s small apartment.

  Sara green-lighted me on adding a sports package to the cable so I could at least catch some footy and watch Manchester United trounce Liverpool. It took the dog a while to get used to my shouting at the telly and dancing a jig when United beat Liverpool. Again. Over the years I’d grown to enjoy American sports, and all the Boston teams, but footy will always be and is my first love. And John Henry, Mr. Owner of the Red Sox, put me in a difficult position when he bought Liverpool F.C.—the playoffs were beginning, and although Sara was not into sports, everyone in Boston is into the Red Sox. There’s a rule or something. We agreed not to discuss it. But under my guidance, the dog developed a healthy respect for Man United. Not that I talked to her about it; only Americans and Brits discuss sports with their dogs. I talked directly to the television, loudly, and was gratified that she was interested in what I had to say to it.

  RAIN FINALLY STOPPED. And after what felt like an eternity, the sun came out. A gorgeous autumn was unfurling in New England. One benefit of being at Sara’s was its proximity to Arnold Arboretum. Imagine all the best parks in all the British Isles got dumped together into one place on the outskirts of Boston—and we lived walking distance from the front gate. I went back to walking there every day. The colors were starting, the air was loaded with cool autumn scents and full of thriving birdlife, almost like the rurals in Ireland.

  But the days were getting shorter, and that led to a new canine-related tension. Just a little one—we only ever had little tensions, which is mad when you think about it, because what we’d just done was borderline insane. To go from being casual colleagues to living together as a married couple in less than a month. Except for the dog, the only stressor so far was that I was not as clean in the bathroom as I’d given myself credit for all these years. And as I said, I was attending to that. Otherwise, I thought I was doing a brilliant job of waking up in somebody else’s bed every morning without going mental, and Sara was doing a brilliant job of waking up with somebody in her bed every morning without going mental either. (The cuddling helped.) Both of us had moments of needing to just get away and have space, but the arboretum, even in the rain, was unfailingly perfect for that.

  Speaking of which, our tiny conflict was this: before I came along, Sara would rush home from the museum and take the dog for a brisk long walk each evening. As the days got shorter, the urgency to get home quickly and then out the door right away increased. And once the clocks changed, Sara alerted me, dark simply fell too soon, s
o she’d have to get up extra early to take Cody for a longer walk than usual before work.

  I did not much fancy these scenarios, because they smacked too much of real life, as I was trying to pretend we were still playing house and prolonging our romantic-comedy montages. I fancied a rosy-tinted scenario in which Sara came home and found me cooking dinner, and we had a leisurely chat about the day over a cup of tea. And I also fancied a scenario in which she left for work in the morning at the last possible moment, slightly rumpled and hopefully smelling of me.

  So—strategically—I offered to walk the dog every day while Sara was at work. I made this suggestion as I was preparing chicken korma, just to make sure she noticed what a fantastic bloke I was. Her face lit up.

  “Do you know how many gold stars you’ve just earned?” she said, grinning.

  “You better believe it,” I said.

  Cody, staring between us as if she could follow English, joyously collapsed into tarty-dog pose in the middle of the kitchen.

  SO THE NEXT morning, as usual, I left Sara at the bus stop, ducked in for a coffee and crossword, finished, and came home. Then I mustered up enthusiasm for the dog, who had taken up a vigilant position by my guitar lest she miss “Smoke on the Water.”

  “Cody,” I said, and she started. “Want to go for a walk? A walk?”

  She knew that word. She loved that word. She was practically throwing herself at me before I could even grab the retractable leash.

  I put the leash on her, and we headed out, the dog dashing ahead like an escaped toddler, and then glancing over her shoulder at me in delighted amazement, as if concerned that I might change my mind about this. Walking Alone With Rory had never happened before, it wasn’t part of the routine of Being Sara’s Dog, and therefore it was seismic in significance. Each time she realized that yes, we were going to continue to walk, she would prance briefly with ecstasy, then return to straining at the leash. She reminded me a bit of myself the one and only time I’d done coke. I had not been on a leash then, but maybe I should have been.