Getting Over Mr. Right

by Chrissie Manby

  “Where is he?” I roared as I pushed open the kitchen door so roughly that it slammed against the wall behind. The dog ran under the kitchen table for cover. “Where’s Lucas? I’m going to rip his head off.”

  “Watch the paintwork,” said Mum, “or I’ll rip your head off, too. Whatever’s the matter with you?”

  “Ask your son,” I said.

  I headed on upstairs to his bedroom. Lucas had a guest. He was trying to impress some art-school girl with his indie vinyl collection (most of which had once belonged to me). As I burst into the room, they were sitting side by side on the bed. Lucas was pushing the girl’s lank fringe out of her eyes. They jumped apart. I could tell that I had interrupted Lucas’s killer seductive move.

  “What the …? Piss off,” Lucas told me.

  “I will not,” I said.

  “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

  “How about YouTube,” I snarled. “A certain epic-escape adventure filmed inside my bedroom.”

  “Oh, that,” said Lucas, trying to stay cool in front of his intended conquest.

  “That really cool voodoo-doll thing?” asked the girl adoringly.

  “It wasn’t cool,” I told her. “It was cruel. And I reckon you want to think twice about getting involved with such a dishonest, sweaty little creep as the infant who made it.”

  “Oh, I …” The girl looked a little scared now.

  “Yes, infant,” I said to Lucas. Turning back to the girl, I added, “Did he tell you that he wet the bed until he turned fifteen?”

  “Hey!” Lucas interrupted. “That’s not fair.”

  “And filming my personal private property is? Making me a laughingstock for the amusement of your art-school friends is perfectly fine, right? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “You didn’t think I’d find out, more like.”

  “How did you find out?” Lucas seemed confused.

  “I’m on your mailing list, you muppet.”

  “You are? I thought I took you off it. Shit.”

  “Indeed. Now what are you going to do about it? I want you to sort it out immediately.”

  “But I’m in the middle of …” Lucas indicated the girl, who was sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin like a fearful child.

  “I should probably be going anyway,” she said, unfolding herself and sprinting for the door. “I can see myself out.”

  “Lucy!” Lucas called after her. “I’ll call you.”

  “Yeah. Whatever. That’d be great,” she said without looking back.

  I continued to stand over Lucas with my hands on my hips, waiting for his response.

  “I was nearly in there,” Lucas whined.

  “She had a lucky escape. What are you going to do about that film? You’ve got to destroy it.”

  “I can’t destroy it. I made it for my course work. Look, Ashleigh, I can understand why you’re angry, but really … I thought it would cheer you up about that idiot of an ex-boyfriend. I thought you would find it funny.”

  “Nothing about my relationship with Michael is funny,” I wailed. Then I threw myself down on Lucas’s beanbag and wept into my hands.

  Lucas promised that he would sort the matter out, but of course it was too late. By the time he’d logged back on to YouTube, some two and a half thousand people had seen the clip. One of those sites that rounds up the best of the blogs tagged Mini-Michael as the funniest YouTube video of the day. After that happened, there was no stopping the damn thing. It went viral. I soon lost count of the number of times the link to the clip reappeared in my in-box, forwarded by someone who had no idea (I prayed) what agony they were heaping on me. It was just a matter of time before Michael got to see the clip and guessed exactly who was behind the grimacing doll.

  It was devastating. Any little shred of self-respect I had was ripped away. I told my brother that as far as I was concerned, he was dead to me.

  “You have to talk to Lucas,” said Mum the following week. “He’s your brother. I can’t stand this atmosphere around the house. You can’t just keep ignoring him.”

  Mum had no idea. As far as I was concerned, I never had to talk to my brother ever again. Lucas had sparked a lifelong feud. It was perfectly possible that I could go for the rest of my days without addressing a single word in his direction. When I’d gotten back on my feet jobwise, which was more urgent than ever now, I would move out of Mum and Dad’s, and once Lucas and I were no longer sharing a bathroom, I wouldn’t ever have to see his face again. I no longer had a brother.

  I could tell that Mum was very distressed. She hated the frosty atmosphere in what had been her happy family home. She hated the way that every time Lucas walked into a room, I would get up and walk straight out. But she couldn’t seem to understand the depth of my brother’s betrayal. There were now people all over the world who knew how badly I had reacted to my breakup with Michael. I fell asleep at night to the sound of laughter in a hundred languages as my Mini-Michael danced across computer screens in Texas, Taipei, and Teignmouth. My friends had seen it. My former colleagues must have seen it, too. The only way on earth that Michael hadn’t seen it was if he had spent the past week holidaying in a closed order of monks. And there was fat chance of that while Miss Well-Sprung was around.

  “I have no brother anymore,” I insisted.

  Though I have to admit that Lucas was making an enormous effort to patch things up. Since I wouldn’t speak to him, he sent a hundred apologies by email, text, and hand-drawn postcards covered in careful calligraphy, which he poked under my bedroom door. But my heart was frozen. I poked the postcards back under his door with “Return to sender” scribbled above my name. I was going to keep up the big freeze forever.

  But then the unexpected happened. Or rather, the long-expected happened. Ben the ancient spaniel went walkies for the very last time.

  I was unfortunate enough to be the one to find him. It was a Sunday morning. For once I was first up. I knew that something was wrong as soon as I got to the top of the stairs. I looked down to see Ben’s familiar brown body stretched out like a draft excluder along the bottom step. But all was not as normal. Ordinarily, the moment I set foot on the creaky board on the top step, Ben would lift his head and look up at me. Then he would thump his thick tail on the floor in greeting. That morning it didn’t happen. It occurred to me for a second that perhaps Ben was giving me the cold shoulder on Lucas’s behalf, but of course the stupid old dog wasn’t that clever. Something was definitely wrong.

  By the time I got to the fourth stair from the bottom, I was sure.

  “Ben?” I whispered. “Ben?”—a little louder. “Come on, boy. Time for breakfast.”

  He lay as still as the sheepskin rug beneath him. I crouched down on the step and peered at him. I dared not get closer, but I was close enough to see that there was no rise and fall of the barrel chest that always longed to be tickled. I stretched out a hand and gave him a poke in the side.

  Nothing.

  I put my hand to my mouth.

  “Oh, Ben,” I sighed. “Oh, no.”

  I didn’t wake Lucas. Fortunately, he had been out late the night before and would have slept through the “1812 Overture” played by a full orchestra at the end of his bed. With cannon. I got up Dad instead.

  “I think Ben’s dead,” I told him.

  Dad’s face crumpled like a tissue when he saw that I was right. Though Ben had often smelled like the wrong end of a donkey, he had been dear to everyone.

  “What should we do?” Dad asked.

  “I was hoping that you would know,” I told him.

  “I’ve never touched a dead body before.”

  “Not even a goldfish?”

  “It was your mum who always flushed them down the loo.”

  “Ben’s not going to fit around the U-bend,” I said.

  Together we wrapped the dog’s corpse in a blanket and carried him into the conservatory, wh
ich was cooler than the rest of the house. Neither Dad nor I had any idea how long we had before Ben started to smell worse even than he had in life. Dad thought that perhaps we should put Ben into the chest freezer while we considered our next move. I told him that I thought Mum would file for divorce if he pulled that stunt. Mum confirmed my view when she came downstairs in her pink dressing gown.

  “But what are we going to tell Lucas?” she asked, her eyes welling up with tears.

  “We could tell him that Ben ran away,” said Dad. “Like we did when the next-door cat got his rabbit.”

  “He was only eight. I don’t think he’ll fall for that this time.”

  “I suppose we could just tell him the truth,” I suggested.

  “But he’s going to be so upset,” said Mum.

  “The dog’s dead whether we lie to him or not,” said Dad.

  Throughout these discussions Lucas remained sound asleep. Breakfast was a quiet affair. Mum, Dad, and I sat at the kitchen table with our backs to the conservatory, but at some point each of us was compelled to twist around and look at the dark bundle on the conservatory floor. It was such a sad shape. Mum was so overcome that she forgot to have a go at Dad about using the velvet throw from the back of the sofa as a shroud.

  “Oh, Ben,” she cried, when she realized she had absent-mindedly left him a piece of crust that he wouldn’t be begging for. “How could you do this to us?”

  It was almost midday when Lucas eventually came downstairs. I could see Mum’s bottom lip wobbling as she heard her son call out, “Benny, boy. Where’s my favorite Benny?”

  But that morning there was no skitter of claws on the kitchen tiles as Ben raced to present himself for attention.

  “I can’t tell him,” she told me.

  “I’m not doing it,” said Dad, who was wiping his eyes.

  “I suppose I’ll have to do it,” I said.

  So that is how I ended the feud with my brother. I intercepted him at the kitchen door and took him into the living room. “There’s something you need to know,” I said. “You should probably sit down.”

  I could tell from his face that he knew what was coming. Not once in the lifetime they had spent together had Ben failed to greet Lucas at the bottom of the stairs in the morning. Lucas had not missed the implication.

  “Ben’s dead, isn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, Ashleigh!” Lucas sank on to the sofa and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook violently as he began to cry. I had expected him to be sad. I had not expected to see his actual heart breaking.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. I don’t suppose he felt a thing. He was a happy dog. He had a happy ending. He had a good life.”

  “He was my best friend!” Lucas sobbed.

  The whole house went into mourning. Mum didn’t open the curtains in the front room that day. Dad agreed that such a level of respect was appropriate. Ben wasn’t just a pet. He had been part of our family. Lucas spent that afternoon sitting in the conservatory with Ben’s body. He refused to eat. He just sat in one of the wicker armchairs with the squeaky toy that had been Ben’s favorite. From time to time we heard a mournful wheeze and an eek when Lucas squeezed the toy, as though he hoped the familiar sound might bring Ben back from dog heaven. While out in the garden, looking for some sage for Mum to add to that night’s chicken dinner, I stepped on another of Ben’s toys and was horribly moved by the pathetic sight of the abandoned plaything. For the first time in months the tears that sprang to my eyes were about something other than bloody Michael Parker.

  Lucas didn’t join us for supper. Dad pushed away his plate half finished. As he turned from the table, he went to scrape what remained of his chicken into Ben’s bowl. My mother choked on a sob.

  “Move it,” she said to my father, as though the earthenware dish were a photograph of a beloved child.

  At nine o’clock Lucas finally came into the kitchen and announced that he wanted a cup of tea. I made it. As he warmed his hands around it, I was struck by how young he looked. I could see the six-year-old who tormented me. I had to refrain from ruffling his hair.

  “I feel so sad, sis,” he told me. “Ben really was my best friend. After you left home, he was all I had. He was like a brother to me.”

  “I guess you’ll have to make do with just having a sister now.”

  I put my arm around his shoulders, and he pulled me in for a hug.

  “Are we friends again?” he asked me hopefully.

  “We’re better than that,” I said. “We’re siblings. You couldn’t lose me if you tried.”

  The following day I helped Lucas bury Ben in the back garden.

  “Can’t you do something to make him look his best first?” Mum asked. “You must have learned that on your dog-grooming course?”

  I told her that dog grooming for funerals was a separate module her thousand pounds hadn’t paid for.

  Anyway, we marked Ben’s grave with the squeaky rabbit, proper memorial pending. I knew it wouldn’t be long before Mum got over her grief and wanted the rubber toy out of her flower bed.

  When the burial was over, Lucas finally gave me what I took to be a heartfelt apology for the anguish he had caused me with his little film.

  “It was funny, though,” he added.

  I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t, but I couldn’t keep a smile from my lips. “It was quite funny,” I admitted grudgingly. “But you’ll never do anything like that again, right? I just want to forget all about it.”

  Fat chance.

  The worst thing about Ben’s death was that there was no longer any reason why Mrs. Charlton could not bring her standard poodles, Roxy and Satin (aka Rocky and Satan), with her when she popped around for a cup of tea. And suddenly Mrs. Charlton seemed to be popping over for a cup of tea all the time. She had recently set up a local branch of the Neighborhood Watch and was trying to persuade Mum to act as treasurer.

  Mum wasn’t the only person Mrs. Charlton was trying to persuade to work for free.

  “Oh, it may be September but it’s still so hot!” she said one afternoon with a sigh. “A real Indian summer. I don’t know if Roxy and Satin will be able to cope with this for much longer. I had them trimmed in August,” she said to my mother, “and that was supposed to be it for the year. On my pension …”

  I saw the anguish in Mum’s face and knew it was only a matter of time before she collared me. She caught me later that day as I tried to sneak from my bedroom to the kitchen for a cup of tea and perhaps a piece of toast.

  “You’ve got to do something about those dogs,” she said, “or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t gotten my certificate.”

  “Well, they’re taking their bloody time with that,” Mum pointed out. (As far as she was concerned, I had finished the dog-grooming course six weeks earlier.) “But I’m sure Mrs. Charlton doesn’t care whether you’ve got your certificate or not. All she wants is for someone to give those dogs a free trim before they expire from heat exhaustion.”

  The pressure continued as I boiled the kettle and waited for the toast to burn.

  “In any case,” said Mum, “don’t you think it would be a good idea to keep your hand in? As soon as your certificate comes through, you’ll be able to start applying for jobs. Wasn’t that the whole point?”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “But I won’t be insured,” I tried helplessly.

  “Insured for what?” my mother asked. “How wrong can a quick poodle trim go?”

  “They don’t want anything fancy,” said Mrs. Charlton as she led Rocky and Satan into my mum’s pristine kitchen.

  A good thing, I thought. I said, “I’ll just give them a basic,” as I covered the floor with old newspaper. The only tools I had at hand were some kitchen scissors and a pair of beard clippers left over from the year Dad decided he might look distinguished
with a goatee. Mother had quickly vetoed that, and so the clippers had hardly been used.

  I figured that all I had to do was set the clippers to a reasonable length and approach trimming the dogs as though I were giving some bloke a buzz cut.

  “But I’d rather you didn’t watch,” I told Mrs. Charlton.

  “Why not?” she asked. “The dogs like to know where I am.”

  “I’ve found,” I said, “when I’ve been practicing on live dogs for my course, that they are actually better behaved and calmer with their owners out of sight. It helps me establish a new pack hierarchy,” I explained.

  I had no idea what I was talking about, but Mrs. Charlton seemed convinced. She allowed my mother to persuade her back into the conservatory with a newly opened packet of biscuits.

  I was left with the dogs. Two standard poodles the size of small ponies, with tongues lolling out like great slices of ham. As I pondered which end of a poodle was safe to start on, Satan let out a tremendous fart that filled the room with a stench worse than nerve gas. Then he sat down and refused to get back up. I would have to start with Rocky.

  Distraction seemed like a good idea. I liberated a packet of prosciutto from the fridge. (I would later find out that Dad had been saving it for his Thursday-evening cordon bleu course.) I dangled a thin strip of the stuff in front of Rocky. As she wolfed it down, I clamped her body between my knees and made a start.

  My plan to use the clippers got off to a fine enough start. I was astonished when I managed two very neat strips from Rocky’s bottom to the top of her head. But that was all I had time to do before the dumb animal finished the prosciutto and realized that all was not well. She turned to nip me on the knee. Added to that, two stripes of poodle contained more hair than a year’s worth of the average man’s beard. The damn clippers were clogged up already.

  I tossed Rocky another strip of prosciutto while I tried to unblock the clippers. That gave me less than ten seconds before she was at my other knee, trying to free herself from between my thighs. Satan, meanwhile, had belatedly decided it was time to come to his partner-in-life’s assistance. While Rocky struggled and menaced my knees, Satan was worrying the bottom of my jeans and my ankles in equal measure.