Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  "You need to get out of this place," Michael says. "You need to meet people."

  So I join a dog club to stave off middle age.

  The dog club meets at an armory. There are obedience classes and then a meeting. There are eleven people in the obedience class: eight women and three men. There are two golden retrievers, a Labrador retriever, a cocker spaniel, a Doberman, a boxer, two poodles, and three dogs that may he mutts for all I know. The cocker spaniel and one of the mutty-looking dogs are complete and total spazzes, which makes me feel better about Smith. Smith is a noodlehead, straining at the end of her leash until she strangles in her ecstasy of meeting other people and other dogs, but the cocker spaniel snaps at whoever comes near and the one mutty-looking dog is so oblivious to its owner that it might as well be deaf.

  I get far away from both the cocker spaniel and the mutty-looking dog when they line up, and the Labrador retriever ends up behind us. A very large lady in stonewashed jeans is in front of us. The lady has a tiny pink poodle-it is really white, but it's so white that its skin shows through its fir and makes it look pink. It has a pink collar.

  "It's probably named 'Angel' or 'Sweetie,"' the man with the Labrador says, sotto veer.

  The pink poodle barely comes to the middle of the woman's calf. It doesn't have a clue what it is supposed to do, and the giant woman is quite uncomfortable.

  "Jerk on the collar," the teacher says. The giant woman gives a tentative jerk that the pink poodle doesn't really notice. The pink poodle dances around on its tiny feet, looking up. Poodles have old faces, like midgets.

  "No," the teacher says to the giant woman, "you have to be firm. He has to know what you want."

  "Sit, Armand!" says the giant woman, and jerks, and the little poodle bounces tip off its tiny poodle toes and flies up to about the woman's thigh. The giant woman goes to her knees, stricken, and comforts Armand, who doesn't seem particularly concerned. Armand's tongue is pink, too.

  At least Smith weighs sixty pounds and is not likely to fly at the end of her lead like a tetherball.

  The teacher finally gets the pink poodle to sit.

  We are next. I reach into my pocket and say, "Sit." Smith, who knows what the hand in the pocket means, plops her butt obediently on the mat on the concrete armory floor.

  "Is it okay if I give her a cookie?" I ask.

  "No," the teacher says, "she'll learn to respond to you out of love."

  "Good girl!" I say, full of enthusiasm, and Smith smiles with her eyes on my pocket. Smith does love me, but she'd really like a cookie and I've implicitly promised one, so it is rotten not to give it to her, but at least Smith has sat on command. The teacher is pleased and moves on.

  I could sneak the dog biscuit to Smith, but there is nothing subtle in the way Smith cats a dog biscuit. Ah well, sometimes even dogs have to have their expectations dashed. I kneel down and ruffle Smith's cars and whisper that the world is not fair, but Smith doesn't care about philosophy and wants into my pocket.

  Behind us, the teacher is working with the man and the black Labrador. "Cruise," says the man, "sit!" The black Lab jumps excitedly at the teacher. Cruise is so black he shines like a wet seal under the fluorescent light.

  "Cruise!" says the man, exasperated. Cruise's tongue appears to be about a toot long, and he wants desperately to lick the teacher.

  "It's okay," the teacher says. He pets Cruise for a minute and then steps back.

  "Sit!" says the man. Cruise wavers, looking up, intelligence perhaps creeping into that walnut-sized brain, as Michael would say. "Sit!" Cruise drops his butt to the ground.

  "Good boy!" says the man, relieved. And Cruise lunges for the teacher, tail whipping, excited to death, all sloppy tongue and paws the size of dinner dishes. "Cruise!" says the man, bracing himself and grimacing; the shock of the Lab going to the end of the lead is almost enough to jerk him off his feet. the teacher goes on to the next student, and the man yanks at the leash. Cruise doesn't care. I know all about being yanked off my feet-Smith could happily strangle herself on her choke chain, apparently unconcerned that no oxygen is getting in. Michael always says it's because her brain is so small that it doesn't require a lot of oxygen.

  The guy is obviously embarrassed. Cruise hadn't been that bad. "He's a happy fellow, isn't he" I say. Cruise smiles at me with his long tongue and tries to leap on me.

  "At least his toenails aren't pink," the man says, grimly hauling on the dog.

  The man's name is Larry, and Cruise was named by his thirteen year-old daughter, who is in love with Tom Cruise and the vampire movie, Interview with a Vampire. Larry isn't wearing a wedding ring. "I see her every other weekend," he says. "She lives with her mother." He smiles in a self-deprecating way. "Her mother lets her see R-rated movies. I live with Cruise here."

  "Cruise is a good name fir him," I say, not thinking about the vampire movie, which I haven't seen, but of the movies with the fighter jets and the race cars. Tom Cruise has a kind of boyishness that fits black Labradors.

  Larry is okay. An ally in this class. One, because he is wicked in the right way, about things like poodles with pink toenails. Two, because Smith is better behaved than Cruise. I'm not sure I could have liked Larry if he'd had a perfect dog, which is petty, but there it is.

  "Maybe we could get together this weekend to practice," Larry says.

  "Okay," I say.

  "I'm living in an apartment," Larry says. "Do you have a place where we could practice?"

  "We could practice on my driveway," I say before I even think it through. "Edify the neighbors." Entertain Michael too.

  Michael is there when I get home. "Were you waiting for us?" It's hard to tell if Michael waits for people or not.

  "How was the first day of kindergarten?" he asks. He isn't dressed like Joe. This time he's dressed like Tony, khaki pants and loafers and cool, artsy black shirt. Married Tony.

  "Why the costumed history of my romantic disasters?" I ask.

  Michael doesn't answer.

  Smith runs to him, tail waving in ecstasy. Smith appears to have just met someone she loves who she hasn't seen for months. Sometimes, I can get her to go nuts by going outside, ringing the doorbell, and coming back in. But Smith does love Michael, even when she can't touch him. She dances around him, leaping and jumping.

  "You really should be dressed like Sharon," I say. Sharon was Tony's wife, and she haunted our affair much more than Michael ever did. I don't know what Sharon dressed like; I never met her. I only knew her through what Tony said. Tony said she went to a manicurist. "Class was okay," I say. I look in the fridge for a can of diet soda. "I met someone. A guy, named Larry, with a black Labrador named Cruise. We're going to practice together this weekend."

  I look over the fridge door to see Michael's reaction, but Michael is gone.

  Smith leaps onto the couch and sniffs. Did Michael leave a scent, an ectoplasmic remnant?

  I suspect that Michael is pissed about Larry.

  "He's divorced," I say to the still and empty air. "He has a thirteen year old daughter. I'm not interested in anybody with a kid."

  The air stirs, which sometimes means Michael, and sometimes just means a draft.

  "I'm not crazy." I say, meaning that I wouldn't be interested in someone with a thirteen year old girl.

  There is no reaction.

  Sometimes, at night, when I put the dog in her crate and go upstairs, Smith barks. Smith won't sleep with me; she's always slept in the crate, and if I bring her up to sleep in bed with me, she sits at the door and whines. But she's like a little kid, and sometimes she isn't ready to go to bed at bedtime.

  Smith barks, and then there's the sound of something thumping against metal. The sound is Smith wagging her tail and hitting the crate. A muted thing, ching, ching. A greeting wag. A happy wag. Michael is with the dog. I don't ever hear anything else, not the crate opening, not Michael saying anything. Is he inside the crate with Smith?

  Smith isn't the only one that Michael visi
ts at night. Not every night, not even most nights, but enough. I never see anything. He just sits on the bed, or I feel his knees behind mine, my back is to his chest, warming me. I go to sleep with his arm around me. He used to steal my covers when I was little. He was all elbows when we were kids. He was gone for years and years, from about twelve to sometime in college. But came back then, sliding in with me while Laurie, nay roommate the education major, slept unaware in the other bed. He is always my age. A ghost that grows older as I do. A ghost that was never legally alive.

  My stillborn twin.

  Larry drives an old Accord, and Cruise sits in the passenger seat next to him, pink tongue lolling. Cruise flings himself across the gearshift and across Larry's lap, and Larry can't open the door for a moment while he struggles with the dog, but finally they are both on the driveway.

  Smith is wiggling, alternately crouching and leaping at the end of her lead. Cruise lunges against his lead. "Hi!" Larry calls, and he lets Cruise drag him up the walk to the house, and the two dogs meet nose to nose, then head to tail, and then start to tear madly around, tangling their leads.

  I'm smiling, grinning, even though the two dogs are being such a pain and Larry is calling Cruise a "dumbshit." "Dumbshit" is said with such well-worn practice and deep affection that I know that Cruise thinks it's his name.

  "Come in," I say.

  "Are you sure you want me to?" Larry asks.

  There's nothing two dogs are going to do to my house that one dog hasn't already done. So he comes into my empty house. There is no furniture in the living room or the dining room, just Smith's crate. There's a couch and two chairs in the family room, but I don't have any end tables, just a lettuce crate, a real one, taken from behind a grocery store. Real crates don't quite have the panache of the ones that people buy for furniture. There aren't any pictures on the walls.

  "When I pulled up, I thought this neighborhood didn't look anything like I'd expect you to live in," Larry says.

  "I haven't lived here long," I say. I practically apologize. "I just bought this place." I feel compelled to explain that my mother died and left her house that I sold so I could buy this place, but I don't want to tell him that because he will feel compelled to offer me sympathy, and my mother's death was awful and I don't want sympathy right now, I want to train dogs.

  We train on the driveway, parading up and down and saying "SIT!" a lot. Larry is nervous, jerking Cruise roughly to get his attention. Not that this seems to bother Cruise, who sits on one hip, tongue lolling, looking around. Smith is in it flaky mood, more interested in chewing on the leash than listening.

  "You can put bitter apple on that leash to stop her from chewing it," Larry says.

  "I don't know, I mean, does it really matter if she chews it?" Is it bad? Are dogs not supposed to chew leashes? Smith always chews her leash.

  "I guess not," Larry says. This seems to make him obscurely happy. "I read some dogs actually like bitter apple anyway."

  "I spray it in the garbage can," I say.

  "That's a good idea," Larry says-

  Michael comes around the house, and Smith and Cruise both leap up and bound toward him.

  It's hard not to look at Michael. But since no one else can see him, I try not to when anyone else is around.

  "Shit," Larry is saying. "Cruise! You dumbshit! Cruise!"

  Go away, I think. Michael, don't play games, go away.

  Smith crouches, cars back, tail wagging, wheezing at the end of her leash. She is so sweet on Michael. Michael stops, watching the kids down the street. Cruise barks, but Michael doesn't seem to notice. I'm trying to watch him out of the corner of my eye.

  "What is it?" Larry asks. "What are they after?"

  "I don't know;" I he.

  Larry lets Cruise drag him toward Michael, but Michael won't stay, of course. Cruise bounds around, barking, barking. Smith wants to look around the side of the house, but when she doesn't see Michael there, she decides instead to go to Larry. I realize too late, and Smith crosses leashes and Cruise comes back to see what's going on, and every time I try to get around Larry to untangle Smith, Smith and Cruise follow.

  It should be funny, but it isn't because I'm upset about Michael. "Smith!" I keep yelling. "Smith, you damn dog!"

  "Hold still," Larry is saying. "Wait, let me- no, go that way-"

  He is too busy trying to get me to do it his way to see what I'm after, and I find myself thinking about how typical he is, while at the same time trying not to be angry. We're both entirely too polite when the dogs are finally untangled and Cruise is sitting on one hip, tongue lolling, watching the kids across the street, and Smith is belly to the driveway, trying to cool off.

  I get the dogs some water and bring Larry a glass of iced tea, and we sit on the porch and contemplate the day.

  "Caitlin's mother told me that her husband is probably going to be transferred to San Diego," Larry says.

  It takes me a moment to remember that Caitlin is Larry's daughter. "Oh no," I say, "they can't do that, can they?"

  "We'll have to renegotiate the visitation schedule. Maybe have her stay with me in the summer or something" Larry is looking at Cruise.

  I don't know what to say.

  "I think they've had enough of a break," Larry says. "Come on, you sluggard, let's whip you into shape."

  Cruise levers himself up, and we go back to the driveway. Smith isn't at all interested in heeling.

  Michael comes back around the house.

  The dogs erupt.

  "Damn it," Larry says. "Cruise!" and yanks the straining dog into a sitting position and smacks his back with the flat of his hand.

  Startled, Cruise cringes.

  For the first time this afternoon, Michael looks over at Cruise on his back, paws in the air, submissive, and then at me.

  He's not cruel, I want to say. You're cruel, you're causing this!

  I refuse to acknowledge Michael's presence. In the morning, Smith is rattling in her crate. I hear her before I get downstairs. Smith has her ball in her mouth and is growling delightedly. Dancing with her paws. Raugh-raugh-row-ru. Let me out. Let me out and play. Michael must be there, because Smith insists on believing that Michael can let her out. Maybe he does at night, how would I know? At the bottom of the stairs I can see only Smith and the crate. Smith looks over and sees me and happily switches her attention. Raugh-raugh-row-ru. No one else is there.

  After I drink my coffee and go upstairs, he is reflected in my bath room mirror as I brush my teeth, but I stoically brush without so much as flicking my eye in his direction. He leans against the door frame, silent and apologetic. He shoves his hand in the pockets of his jeans. At least he's not dressed like some old boyfriend. Is his hairline receding? But I avoid the temptation to really look. Perhaps its been receding all along and I just hadn't noticed, the way you don't notice the gradual change of something familiar. The way you don't notice things getting dusty until there they are, covered in dust.

  I rap my brush against the sink, all efficiency and business. When I turn around, he's not there. I undress and take my shower. I'm used to showering with Michael around. I don't think he watches.

  When I get out of the shower, the mirror is all steamed, and in the steam is written, "Without You I am not."

  I turn on the tan and open the window, and the words dry up and leave no trace. If I had written it, after it was dry you could see the smear of my fingers, but when Michael does it, it just dries away.

  I turn the fan off before I go to work.

  Larry calls me at work. He's called me twice before, once to get directions to my house and another time just to chat. He is interested in me, which I sort of like and sort of don't. I'm not really attracted to him, so in the end this will probably end up being more trouble than it's worth. He misrepresented himself He said he wasn't interested in dating, that he just wanted to spend a little time getting himself back on his feet, concentrating on his job. "I don't want to rebound," he said. I had the imag
e of him leaping up after a basketball, which, since Larry is tall, is not so strange.

  Larry wants to know if we could meet for dinner. "I'd ask you for lunch,' he said, "but I'm all the way downtown. I don't want to ask you on a date," he says and then stops. "I mean, it's not that I think you're not attractive or anything, but I really have the feeling that we're going to be friends, you know? And I don't have very many friends. I mean, it's not that I don't have friends, I'm not saying that. I really do have friends. I don't know why I said that. But I don't want to jeopardize our friendship, you know?"

  "Why don't we go Dutch," I say. "I like the idea of friendship and I'm not looking for a relationship either."

  He sighs on the other end of the phone, relieved. He is having trouble with his daughter, Caitlin, the thirteen-year-old, he says. "I don't know anything about thirteen-year-old girls," he says.

  "It's a pretty horrible age," I say, sympathetic.

  He laughs. "So there's hope she'll grow out of it?"

  "Well," I say, "if her only problem is that she's thirteen, then she's in pretty good shape."

  After work, I drive home to let Smith out of the crate. Out into the backyard, let the dog pee, throw a stick a couple of times, and then back into the crate. Smith isn't happy after having been in the crate all day.

  I don't want to go back and meet Larry. I have this feeling, this antipathy, before parties, before most social events. If I just go, it will be fine. Most of the time, once I get there I have a much better time than I expected. It seems like so much trouble to sit and listen to a man I hardly know sit and talk about his daughter.

  The air stirs, warns. Smith looks up, ears forward, nose working. The tip of Smith's tail twitches. I could stay home. I could stay home with Michael and Smith. It would be easy.

  I grab my jacket and run.

  Applebee's is crowded, and we have to stand and wait for a table. "We should have gotten here earlier," Larry says.