by Chris Lynch
Oh, now there was a move. Chalk one up for Mikie. Genius. Mikie the dead genius.
Ma was getting more attached to the thing every second. Squeezing him harder and harder, to no effect. The dog just kept molding himself to whatever shape necessary, parts of him collapsing, parts of him squeezing between her fingers like a water balloon. I got closer and patted him. He felt like a knot of laundry hot from the dryer.
“I just figured, El, you’ve been kind of mopey and lonely...”
“Oh, I get it,” I said, stepping back. “This is from when you caught me in my room, isn’t it! Ma, you thought I was... jeez... which I wasn’t—so you bought me a dog? First, I wasn’t doing what you thought I—”
“It’s all right, it’s all right.”
She shut her eyes tight when she said it.
“They had a monkey. It was a cute little squirrelly thing. But it kept doing... well, doing what you were doing, so I figured that was no solution.”
It was okay to rant at this point, don’t you think?
“But a dead basset hound, that’s a solution, Ma? Oh, wait a minute. I think you’re right. I think it’s working. I think I’m cured. Let’s go watch Baywatch and see if I need to run to the bathroom and jiggle the handle.”
“Elvin!” Ma gasped.
That’s the move. Shock the old lady into submission.
“He is not dead!”
So much for the provocation.
“The man in Puppy Palace said he’d probably be a little shocky for a few days...”
“Shocky? Well sure. The world’s changed a lot since he went in that front window. There were still four Beatles last time this dog saw the sun...”
“He is going to be fine, Elvin Bishop.”
Ah, the full religious flowering of my name. Sure sign the discussion is over.
“I got him for a very good price, and it included a ten-pound bag of—”
“Methadone?”
Ma and dog walked away from me then—well, Ma walked, dog draped—toward the house. I could see, by the hunch of her shoulders, by the scuffing of her feet, but most of all by the complete absence of anything like a joke, that I had done what I hadn’t meant to do. What I never meant to do. Not to my ma.
What to do, what to do? Like I said, emotional territory, not where we Bishops tread.
I caught up to them in the driveway. I wrestled him away from her, the two of us tugging on legs, scruff of neck, various and ample folds of excess dog. Dog appeared not to notice.
I won. I pulled him close, then draped him around my shoulders like a fox stole. “See,” I said, “a very useful dog.”
She started walking away.
I pulled her by the arm.
“I love him, Ma.”
She stared at me.
“Love. Him. I love him so much. And I don’t even know what I would do without him.”
She smiled. I smiled. She went to the house. I went to the garage.
Dog went back to sleep.
Love Mites in The Air-Part One
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? In her round-the-twist way, Ma was right. Dog started helping me out with my relationship thing. Thanks to him, I saw her again. The girl.
The girl. The curlicue girl with the shining black hair, the round face, the eyelashes like two small Japanese fans waving out at the world, cooling the world just that little bit.
Except she made me warmer.
“Hi,” I said, and it was a struggle, coming out like ten or twelve syllables. I was standing there with Dog, in front of the Ark veterinary clinic where I was taking him to have his narcolepsy checked. She was coming out of the Indian restaurant next door, eating some yellow meat on a stick. “That looks good,” I said.
“Do I know you?” she asked, tilting her head like people do when they want you to know that they are not really puzzled at all but are, in fact, pretending to be for show. Only I didn’t care if she was faking or really confused or what, but when she tilted her head and closed one eye—boom, was the sound of that one eye closing—well all I could do was stand there trying to think up ways I could go on puzzling her so she’d look like that over and over again.
“This is my dog,” I said, holding Dog out like an offering of food. I realized I still had no name for him. Not that he deserved one. But people expect... “Grog,” I blurted. Pretty accurate, I thought, for a spur-of-the-moment christening.
“That’s a very nice name.” She didn’t really seem to think so. “But I asked,” she repeated, “do I know you?”
“Oh, yes, well sort of. We almost met at the dance last month. You were looking at me, and I was walking over to talk to you... come on, you remember...”
She tilted her head back in the other direction, closed the other eye—boom. It may have been that I had genuinely puzzled her this time, but it was all the same boom to me.
“Sure you remember. I was with a chunky guy. We were walking over to you... you were with a bunch of... other girls. But before I got there, my buddy bumped me...”
“Are you the guy with the scabies?” She pointed at me, aha style.
“No, I don’t have any—”
“Yes, now I remember. You’re the guy who gave scabies to poor Sally.”
“Now that is untrue. I can’t believe... no, that story has to stop.”
The girl waved at me and walked away, as if I had finished. I didn’t believe I had, though, so I pursued her. I put Grog down on the sidewalk. “Come on, Grog, come on,” I said, trotting on, until the leash tightened. I turned, and of course he was lying on the sidewalk like a basset-skin rug. I scooped him up and ran.
“No,” I insisted, catching up to the girl and walking alongside her. “Sally didn’t even have scabies, she had psoriasis.”
She shook her head. “Well, I don’t see how you could have given her that.”
“I didn’t. She gave me, that is, neither of us gave—”
“Did you catch it from him?” she asked, motioning toward Grog then quickly withdrawing her hand.
“What? Psoriasis? Dogs don’t get—”
“Scabies. Lots of times I hear people pick it up from their dogs. Is that why the two of you have to see the vet?”
Oh, she was good.
“I told you,” I said, “I don’t have scabies, and neither does he. He just doesn’t move, that’s his problem.”
She finished her yellow meat, offered the stick to Grog. To my surprise, he took it, but then just let it hang out of the corner of his droopy kisser like a movie detective with a cigarette.
Then she picked up the pace, as if the stick had been slowing her down. I struggled to keep up, carrying fifty thousand lifeless pounds of narcoleptic dog.
“Can you tell me your name, even?” I asked as she opened up a sizable lead on me.
She turned to face me while continuing to reverse out of my reach, out of my life. “Why am I of such interest now? It has been a month.”
Yikes. Do the questions continue to get harder?
“Or is it that your VD has finally cleared up so you’re back in circulation?”
Yup, the questions get harder.
Because she was right. See, you can know something for a minute, and then not know it again because... well because stuff gets in your line of vision. Or because stuff gets out of your line of vision. In this case, at that dance Franko bumped me off the beam. Sally got into my line of vision and this girl got out at the same time. Sally was lots of great things. She was beauty for sure and she was popularity, and she was all those things I thought were not that important to me but I suppose actually were. And then there was Frank buzzing in my ear and me the jerk totally unprepared for any of this and so.
So this one got bumped out and stayed out a whole month and I see her again and I’m thinking jerk again. Me, not her. Although it’s a very risky thing to do, sometimes Elvin needs to listen to Elvin. And I was telling myself the first time I saw this person, Yup. I said that. Yup. Yup. Yup. I knew it that time and now
I was knowing it again and I could be sentenced to an outcast social group or to Devil’s Island but if this girl would change her mind and pay me some attention I would be lucky enough and happier than a jerk has a right to be.
“Hello?” she asked. “What is that, like a trance thing you do? You and the dog, you had like the exact same expression.”
“That was all a misunderstanding, all that stuff about...” Then it occurred to me, and I got one more cheap little thrill out of the situation. “So, are they saying that about me, over at St. Theresa’s?”
She turned once more and hurried off down the street.
Jerk, I said to myself. This person would not be impressed by VD!
A little yip, sounded like a yup, came out of Grog. First sound I ever heard him make. Pretty sad little sound.
And then I made it too.
I forgot all about the appointment with the vet. Walked straight on home and then not only did I not do anything further to correct his behavior—or, his lack of behavior—I reinforced it by joining him.
“What is with the two of you?” Ma asked as she walked into the living room and found dog and boy both spread wide on the carpet the way sky divers look right after they deplane.
“We’re tired,” I said, convincingly, I think.
“How’d it go at the vet’s?” she asked, crouching down to stroke Grog and look into his one open eye. “Did they give you pills for him or something?”
“Ah,” I hemmed, “we didn’t exactly go to the vet’s.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I think he’s better. Y’know, we got all the way there, we were standing right in front of the place, about to walk in, and I swear, he made a sound. So I figure he’s cured, and we could save the twenty bucks.”
Now Ma looked at me very suspiciously. She left Grog and walked over to me on her knees. She stooped way down low, leaning on her elbows. Then she took her thumb and gently pulled one of my eyelids way open to scope my brain.
I braced myself for the joke. She had to. That’s what I would have done if I were her. But nothing like that came. First she pulled away from me, got to her feet. She stood, stared down in my direction, and smiled. No wiseguy smile at all. Almost an apologetic look, and surely unsure.
What she saw inside me she had never seen before.
No dope, my ma.
Love Mites-Part Two
DON’T BOTHER EVER PLANNING anything to go the way you want it to. That’s all I want to say.
I figured I slept for about a hundred hours. Fell asleep there on the rug, and barely remembered getting rousted by Ma and staggering to my bed. Grog, no slouch at the sleeping game himself, put up very little fight when she hauled him back to the garage.
“Ma!” I called when I woke up feeling mighty. She wasn’t around, and I needed to show mighty to somebody. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, hands on hips, waiting. Then the back door opened. Calmly, arms folded, lips curled in a friendly snarl, Ma appeared before me. I took a deep breath to start again.
“Ma!” I announced. “Ma! I feel like this is going to be a big day for me. I can feel it, something’s going to happen today.”
Her smile broadened. “Something already has. Come with me,” she said, backing through the doorway the way she came, then leading me through the kitchen, out the back door, down the driveway to Grog’s apartment.
I heard a small chuckle bubble up from deep in her throat just before she heaved up the garage door.
“Oh my god,” I yelled, “Do something. Those rats are killing Grog. I knew we shouldn’t leave him in the garage.”
I looked away. Ma grabbed my face and pointed it back at the scene.
“Jeez, he is so stupid!” I screamed. “Do something, Grog! Defend yourself!” I turned to my mother. “He doesn’t even know he’s being attacked. When do you suppose it’ll register?”
“Elvin?” Ma asked, prodding me.
“What?” I said. “They are rats.”
“Elvin? You’re in denial.”
I have superior denial skills. Watch.
“I am not,” I said. So much for that.
“El, what’s the big deal? It’s a pleasant surprise, that’s all—”
“Mother,” I snapped. “After a lot of years of confusion, I finally figure I’ve got all the gears grinding the right way... then this.” I gestured with an open palm toward Grog the miracle dog and his children. “You’re telling me now he’s had babies? Now what, I have to start over and try to figure the whole gender thing all over again?”
“We made a mistake,” she said calmly.
“Did we now?” My turn to be sarcastic.
She giggled as she spoke. “Well, Elvin, they told me it was a male...”
“They lied, I think.”
“Who could tell, with all the folds and the hair and everything...”
“You bought me a pregnant dog.”
“Not really... they gave it to me. I wanted to buy you the monkey.”
I stared hard at Grog. In amazement. In anger. This was too much. Not now. Not now. This was supposed to be my day, the day I changed everything, the day I started socializing in a big way. I really didn’t want to know about this right now.
“No,” I said.
“It’s a tad late to just say no, Elvin.”
“How could this be? Wouldn’t he have to... you know... move, to get this way?”
Ma covered up her mouth with her hand. She was laughing hard now. “That’s not the best part,” she said. “Go have a look up close.”
“I don’t wanna,” I said.
“Go on.”
Slowly I approached. I crept, I crept. I got close, tapped one of the offspring on the shoulder. It stopped dining to look over its shoulder at me.
“Oh my god!” I squealed, jumping up, jumping back, bouncing off a trash barrel and scurrying back behind my mother. “Ma, did you see that?”
She nodded, covering her lower face now with both hands. “Horrific, no?”
I could thank Grog for one thing. He gave me something to be distracted about while I sweated the approach of the single most important event of my life. The dance that would change me irrevocably, that if I botched I would not have any reason to ever leave the house again...
You see, I needed the distraction.
For a while neither of us could speak. I did a little shallow, noisy breathing, some stretching exercises, and a good deal of perspiring. Mike did nothing lifelike. I knew what was wrong with me. But I did not know what was wrong with Mike, because nothing was ever wrong with Mike. He was, as we neared kickoff, slipping into dance weirdness mode, just like the last time.
Fortunately I knew what we both needed. To talk about something else.
I tried to describe the situation to Mikie as we sat stiffly in the stands of our gym, waiting for our sisters to arrive so we could dance with them.
“What do you mean he had babies?” Mike asked. “Elvin, that’s impossible. And I’m very surprised your mother hasn’t had this conversation with you yet. Y’know, she leaves all the hard stuff for me to do...”
“I know how it works. Apparently, Grog is not a boy dog.”
“You’ve had him for almost a month, El. Y’know, you could have checked by now.”
“It’s not my fault,” I protested. “He’s got all that hair, the loose skin, the folds... even his ears sweep the floor, on the rare occasions when he walks.”
Mikie nodded sympathetically. “He did come with a lot of extra material, huh?”
“I knew he was a girl all the time,” Frankie said from his spot flat out on the bench. He was lying there, stretched out, facing the ceiling but with eyes closed, hands folded across his chest. He was concentrating. Frankie treated dances and parties the way starting pitchers treated the opening game of the World Series.
“Right,” Mike said. “How did you know?”
“Because I’m Frankie,” he said, and it didn’t even sound like a boast, just like
information, like info from the phone company. “If he’s a female, I just know it, that’s all.”
“Ya,” Mike popped, “and if he’s female, odds are you’ve dated him.”
Frank sprung up in his seat, the way dogs do when they hear something nobody else can. “That’s cold,” he said with a smile, carefully smoothing out the front of his shirt, then standing to do the same with the razor-sharp crease of his pants.
“And you guys should see how ugly these creatures are.” I added. “You can’t even tell what kind of animals they’re supposed to be.”
“See,” Frank said, starting his descent down out of the stands just seconds before the door opened and the girls filed in, “I’m cleared. If I really was Grog’s boyfriend, those would be damn handsome puppies.”
With Frankie and his bizarre yet enviable pride to lead the way, the entire freshman class walked down out of the stands, and stopped. We stood, in one fine, motionless row at the foot of the stands, on our side of the gym, across from them, the girls, lined up identically over on their side, as if we were all here for nothing more than a boys vs. girls game of Red Rover Red Rover.
Only this time was different. This time, we were experienced. We knew how short an hour could be when you were trying to meet some girls.
And, they weren’t girls anymore. They were a girl, and a bunch of other persons. A very different thing really. Scarier, even. Sweeter. Scarier.
“Cripes, Elvin, what are you doing?” Frankie wasn’t waiting for anybody, and when he started into their territory, I was close behind—because he had me by the shirtfront. Followed by a lot of second-and third-tier dancing fools.
“Yo!” Brother Cletus called before we’d gotten three quarters of the way across. Brother Cletus was the guy who was assigned to manage these things. We figured he was the most qualified because he had moussed-up hair and wore one of those gold Italian fertility horn pendants on a chain on the outside of his black holy-business shirt.
He was pointing at Frankie. “I’m watching you, Frankie. Keep that in mind. I’m going to be watching you.”
“Okay Brother, watch me,” Frankie said politely, without slowing down. Then he whispered back to me, “He’s gonna go blind watching me.”