Dog Lived (and So Will I)

by Rhyne, Teresa J.

  As we listened, the noise got louder. More aggressive. And then faster. I jumped out of the tub, grabbing a towel as I went.

  In installing this giant tub in the bathroom of the townhome, the prior owners had taken out the closet from one of the bedrooms and incorporated that space into the bathroom. The rest of the spare bedroom had then been turned into a cavernous walk-in closet. Not that I was complaining.

  I ran to the closet-bedroom, where the noise appeared to be coming from. I flipped on the light and was confronted with the hind end of a beagle in the air, his head down, buried in a pile of my shoes. Digging deeper and more rapidly, Seamus came up with his trophy in his mouth and turned to me. Eyes widened, he dashed past me and headed for the bedroom.

  “Get him!” I yelled out to Chris, who had also gotten out of the tub but had not grabbed a towel.

  Chris met me in the hallway. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I hope he didn’t just catch a rat.”

  We moved to the bedroom door and turned on the light. Seamus was curled in his bed, wrapped around half of a sourdough loaf with the other half still protruding from inside his belly. Apparently he had a job to finish. As we walked toward him, he chomped down on the bread, attempting to swallow it whole. Chris moved toward him quickly. Seamus growled and gulped simultaneously. Back off, Food Guy, this one’s mine! Chris cornered Seamus and reached for the chunk of bread. Seamus clenched his jaw tighter around the loaf and curled his lip, exposing more of the bread and his teeth. Chris stopped his forward movement and looked back to me, eyes widened.

  Ooh, right. Not a dog person. He was naked; the dog was growling. I could understand the hesitation. I was impressed he’d even approached the dog.

  Chris turned back to Seamus and calmly, firmly said, “Seamus, no.”

  As Seamus quieted, I quieted, watching with a mix of alarm and respect not unlike Seamus himself. Chris stepped toward the dog again and reached down. Miraculously, he removed the remaining quarter of a loaf from the jaws of a seriously pissed-off beagle. Seamus did not snarl, growl, or snap at Chris, and he was much too bloated to chase after anyone.

  “Wow. I’m impressed. You just might be a dog person yet,” I said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a dog. He’s more like a reincarnation of some third-world dictator.”

  “Aww. But look how cute he is.” Seamus thumped his tail and looked up at us from his prone position on top of the quilt in his bed, soulful brown eyes conveying that he’d already forgiven us our transgressions.

  “That’s the problem—he’s diabolically cute. It might be time for a coup.”

  The next morning Seamus awoke hungry, as usual. Nonetheless, we scaled back his serving size, and it was Chris who doled out Seamus’s kibble after making him sit politely and calmly as I watched dumbstruck. There were new rules in this household of ours, and we were all learning them. We were, against all odds, becoming a household of three.

  Chapter 3

  A FAMILY OUTING

  I loathe Christmas.

  I loathe the entire month of December. (Let me get this out of the way: I also dislike chocolate and spa treatments, which once caused a friend to comment to Chris, “It’s like you’re dating a unicorn.”) I can recall only one Christmas that was distinctly enjoyable—I was six years old, and my parents gave me a black cockapoo puppy on Christmas Eve. I named him Tippit (quickly shortened to Tippy) after watching him run around our house knocking over the cocktail glasses my parents and their friends left on the floor next to their chairs. After that, though, Christmas was a series of arguments as my parents’ marriage fell apart and then a logistical nightmare over which parent’s house the kids would be at when. When my parents each remarried, we struggled with how to blend families and traditions while multiplying the logistics to now include step-relatives. My siblings and I spent most Christmases driving from one home to the next. Several times I had fast food for Christmas dinner. Once we finally grew past that stage, our luck changed—for the worse.

  I was away at law school when Tippy died—in December. A few years later, my brother Jay had a motorcycle accident on December 1 and wound up in intensive care, not expected to live. He spent a week in a coma and several more weeks in intensive and critical care and then a rehab facility. The family spent Christmas at his hospital bedside in the critical care unit of the General Hospital. He survived, with a twelve-inch scar down his chest, a few nuts and bolts in his body, and no memory of December. A few years after that, my father’s wife Faye died from a brain aneurysm while standing in her kitchen baking Christmas cookies on December 23. Her funeral was on her birthday, December 29. The following year, my sister-in-law Jennifer lost her mother to cancer on December 14. The funeral was December 23. The year after that my stepfather Ted lost both of his parents between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

  So, yeah, I loathe not just Christmas, but the entire month of December.

  Chris, on the other hand, loved Christmas and the whole holiday season. He told me how his mother decorated their entire house, starting the process in mid-November. He enjoyed the trees she put up (I noted the plural with dismay), the decorations (she collected nutcrackers), the parties (several that were lifelong traditions), the food (I can’t imagine family recipes not printed on a take-out menu), and, of course, the presents. Lots and lots of presents. He even loved watching all the holiday specials on television. He enjoyed the season, and he wanted to celebrate together. With his family.

  We’d only been together for six months—and “together” was a loose term. I was not ready to meet his parents. Initially, we’d kept things between us private. Not even our writer’s group knew we were dating. Mostly, we spent our weekends together in my house with only the beagle as a witness, and that worked out well. Of course, even I knew that the secretive part of our relationship made it more exciting. And “it” was how I referred to whatever “it” was that I was doing with Chris. If we met each other’s families, wouldn’t this then be a relationship? And if I pinned the word relationship on it, wouldn’t it just turn sour? Wouldn’t we immediately become disappointed in each other? Wouldn’t the sex just stop and the fighting start? (I was in therapy; there was work to be done.) But the longer we dated, the harder the secret was to keep. We began telling people on a “need to know” basis.

  Chris’s parents, I was sure, were the last ones who would ever need to know. I felt strongly that they would not approve of our dating. Or, more to the point, they would not approve of me. I was pretty confident a woman twice divorced and twelve years older than their baby boy was not going to be welcome news. I was more than those labels, I knew, but I still wore the marks and did not have confidence that anyone, least of all his parents, would see past them. There was no reason to upset them. When we had something to tell them—if we had something to tell them—we’d tell them, but not before. We agreed to this in the bathtub, of course, so it was a solid pact, sworn in bubbles and sealed with champagne.

  We compromised on the holidays by having a non-Christmas celebration the weekend before. Chris made a skillet of paella. We shared a bottle of Tempranillo and exchanged a few small gifts by the fire. We dubbed the occasion “Mas Chris” (“more Chris,” in Spanish). It was much less complicated than Christmas, to my delight.

  For the actual holiday, I once again fled the scene. I left Seamus with my mother and stepfather while I flew to Missouri to be with my brother and his family. His kids were still young enough to believe in Santa, so I thought they might be a nice diversion (assuming my plane didn’t crash). Once there, I stayed up late each evening to call Chris in private and emailed him regularly.

  Having avoided any Christmas disasters, I also played New Year’s Eve safe, home alone with Seamus. Chris spent it with his family in Florida for the Orange Bowl. He also sneaked off to call me late at night without his parents or his sisters, Kati and Courtn
ey, knowing. Or so we thought.

  As the winter transformed into spring, my rule about “every other weekend only” eroded. We spent most weekends together, but we stuck to our pact to disclose our relationship only on a “need to know” basis. Unfortunately, his mother was not part of the pact. She had a plan of her own, and it was another holiday that caused me problems this time. Shortly after Easter, she called Chris.

  “You didn’t show up for Easter brunch,” she said.

  “You guys were gone; what’s to show up for?” he deflected.

  “I told you I had brunch reservations at the club for you and your sisters. You didn’t show. And your Easter basket is still here.”

  “I can pick that up later.”

  “That’s not good enough, mister. What’s your problem lately? You haven’t been around. You’re not calling. We never see you. It’s like you don’t have time for your family anymore. And Kati says you were sneaking off to call someone every night we were in Florida. So, I’m just going to ask. Are you gay?”

  Chris assured me he was able to laugh.

  I was horrifically impressed with her ingenuity. She knew, of course, that he was not gay.

  Ingeniously coerced, Chris outed me instead. Much to my chagrin and horror, he told her all about me—including my age, my divorces, and that I lived in Riverside. Riverside! To the Newport Beach crowd, that’s like saying I lived in Hicksville, just south of Dowdytown and over the hill from Crime City. What was he thinking? Three strikes. I was certain I was out.

  “You couldn’t have lied to her? Or just made stuff up? Agreed you were gay? Or, I don’t know, not said anything beyond, ‘I’m almost thirty years old, I’m dating someone, and it’s none of your business’? Or, ‘I’ll tell you something when I’m ready to tell you’?” I said.

  “I couldn’t think that fast. She caught me off guard. I don’t know. I’m not in the habit of lying to my parents.”

  Well, there’s that. Although I liked to think of it as “managing” parents. “But she doesn’t have the right to pry into your personal life—or mine.”

  “Yeah. I know. But it didn’t go badly. It’s not as bad as you think.”

  “Oh, I promise you, it’s as bad as I think.” We were on the phone, so I couldn’t see his face to know if her reaction had been bad and he was just protecting me or if he honestly felt his mother was accepting. I wouldn’t have believed the latter anyway. “And, by the way, your mom still gives you an Easter basket?”

  “I wondered how long it would take for you to mention that part.”

  “It’s a lot to process. But, like, candy? Peeps? Fake grass?”

  “I love Peeps. And my mother would never use that cheap, plastic fake grass.”

  “This is the sole exception to the Newport Beach love of plastic?”

  Chris must have been emboldened by our laughter. “They want to meet you.”

  “That’s hilarious. And so wrong.”

  “I suggested brunch.”

  “What?” The happy little paradise we’d been building was coming under attack. The walls—our weekends—were crumbling. I patted the blanket on the couch next to me, and Seamus hopped up, snuggling into the crook of my arm. It’s you and me, dog. Hello, alphabet life.

  “I honestly think they’re going to like you. What’s not to like? You’re gorgeous, you’re a successful lawyer, you’ve got a beautiful home. And we’ve been dating almost a year now. My parents know that’s twice as long as I’ve dated anyone before. I can’t hide you forever.”

  I stayed quiet, petting Seamus and trying to get my mind to function. I was working on a valid excuse to not meet his parents while also trying not to be flattered by his description.

  “And I don’t want to hide you,” he said.

  Shit.

  For the week before the brunch, I obsessed over what to wear and what to say without ever deciding on either. On the morning of the brunch I dressed in black pants, black patent-leather high heels and a black cotton sweater. Then I tore it all off my body. It’s not a funeral. Try being less literal about your feelings.

  I changed from the black pants to a black skirt with a ruffled hem. Ah yes, very black widow at a funeral. That should make them comfortable. Why not just throw a wide-brimmed black hat and dark sunglasses on as well? I took off the skirt and sweater and threw them in a corner of my closet.

  I put on a white eyelet sundress. And I took that off too, tossing it in the pile. Who are you kidding? Virginal white? Hilarious!

  A fuschia wraparound dress came on and off next. What’s with the cleavage, whore?

  I spent another twenty minutes determining that every item in my closet either wheezed “middle-aged loser” or shrieked “slutty gold digger,” even though I had no recollection of ever shopping with those themes in mind. I was only distracted from my internal meltdown when I looked in the mirror and saw that my hair had been flattened lifeless—except in the places it was flying haphazardly outward from the static. I would have dropped my head into my hands in despair if I hadn’t been so worried about smearing the mascara that I feared I’d over-applied.

  With two minutes left to spare, I decided on an off-white outfit—linen pants and an off-the-shoulder blouse, both by Ann Taylor. I brushed my blond but not-too-blond hair back to life, leaving it straight and long but pushed back behind my ears, which were adorned with unobjectionable pearl earrings.

  I forced myself to stop fussing and head downstairs where Chris was waiting.

  “You look great,” he said.

  “I’m not feeling great.”

  “You look great. Really. You look great.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You look really great.”

  “Good to know you’re as nervous as I am.”

  “Pretty much.”

  We drove to the Mission Inn, a beautiful hotel in downtown Riverside with Spanish architecture including a surrounding pergola, arches, tiled fountains, and massive amounts of bougainvillea reminiscent of a California mission. Conveniently located halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs, at one time it was a hangout for celebrities. Their brunch is a sprawling, festive affair and usually busy. I thought it would be a suitably impressive place while still giving me the protection of a crowd.

  I grabbed Chris’s hand as we walked through the lobby toward my certain doom.

  We were on time, but his parents were already waiting at the hostess station. Chris led me toward them and greeted his father with a handshake and his mother with a hug.

  “Mom, Dad, this is Teresa,” Chris said.

  And there it was. I was meeting the parents. Something I swore I’d never do again.

  I inhaled and extended my hand. “Really nice to meet you both,” I said, trying to mean it.

  “I’m Trudi. It’s so nice to meet you after all this time.” His mother shook my hand.

  Chris looks a lot like his mother, I noticed. It’s from his mother that he gets his long-lashed blue eyes; thick, wavy, dark hair; and perfectly shaped nose. Her hair, though, was not salt and pepper like Chris’s, but perfectly colored and styled. She wore turquoise and white and, just as Chris had said, was accessorized to perfection, including a straw and turquoise clutch purse. I was immediately aware that her clutch was one-tenth the size of the suitcase-purse weighing down my left side. I liked her style, although I was simultaneously intimidated by it.

  I turned to Chris’s dad and shook his hand as well.

  He was smiling. “I’m Jim. It’s nice to finally meet you, Teresa.”

  I was caught off guard by Chris’s father’s size and coloring—he was shorter than Chris and of much slighter build, and his hair was light brown. He was not what I’d expected.

  “You too,” I said. And I returned a smile. Dads I can handle. My mothers-in-law
had both been disapproving of me, although they’d handled it differently (one passively, one aggressively). But I’d gotten along with both of my fathers-in-law. There were a lot of mothers in my lifetime of baggage—my porters would need porters to carry it—but no fathers. What moms objected to (my logical mind, my lack of sentiment, my career, my independence, my lack of interest in children, my complete lack of housekeeping skills, and, most importantly, my inability to see the world as revolving around their sons), dads could generally relate to, or they simply couldn’t care less. I didn’t worry about meeting dads. So, despite Jim’s deep voice and stern demeanor, I wasn’t worried about him. Just her. Just Trudi.

  We discussed the usual pleasantries over our eggs Benedict and mimosas—the weather, how Chris and I met, how much nicer Riverside was than they had known it to be in the past. I was beginning to think I could pull it off. I would pass as normal, presentable. Acceptable even. And then—

  “So, Teresa, has Chris met your family yet?” Trudi said.

  I could tell by the way she leaned in toward me, glanced over at Chris, and then re-focused on me, that the answer mattered. My mind didn’t so much race as come skidding to a halt. My gut took over. What was it that she wanted to know? Does she want to know if she and Jim had met me first or if somehow my parents were more important and had met Chris first? Or does she want to know what sort of family I come from? Or is she gauging how serious we were? What? What does she want?

  My mind fought for control. She merely asked a polite question. Answer her.

  My gut screamed back. But with what? What can you possibly say?

  My family is complicated, even by Southern California standards. I am never adept at answering questions about them. Even simple questions like how many brothers and sisters I had could stop me cold while I considered how much information the questioner could handle or likely wanted.

  I hadn’t grown up in a close or intact family. My parents had each married several times, and all totaled I had nine siblings of the step, half, and whole varieties. I’d had two sets of parents for most of my life. But those sets changed with the decades, bringing new supporting characters. I often said that we did not have a family tree so much as family ground cover—we spread outward and our roots are not deep.