A Dog’s Luck

by Liora Barash Morgenstern

  “Don’t be condescending!”

  The tones began to scale.

  “I’m a simple man.

  Tell me straightforwardly:

  Where are you going with this?”

  Mom couldn’t understand how he had “the audacity to lecture her about straightforwardness,” when he himself was “beating around the bush”:

  First ignoring.

  Then evading.

  And finally putting it all on her shoulders.

  And she could not grasp how it was at all possible that he, who in his kindness, without thinking twice, would have taken in any stray dog, but when it came to her own father applied such a “double standard…”

  I was not the only one.

  Dad also didn’t understand what this was about.

  And I understood even less when he made the distinction between not turning back on the turned off switch of a respirator and pulling the plug on that same machine that “sustains the life of a dy…”

  “Ido, what can I say… what can I say…?!

  Deathly ill, just what I needed right now…” she sighed.

  The apology was of no use.

  His willingness to take back his words only fanned the flames:

  “What is this?!

  What’s happening here?!

  Words are bounced checks:

  First you issue and then you cancel…?!”

  From my current viewpoint, against my will I linger on the metaphor “words are bounced checks,” and struggle not to wander to other realms. And go back to being attentive to the heavy silence that panted on the other side of the wall.

  “You argue with one goal: to win.

  And then your logic overshadows the emotion.”

  And with a small voice added:

  “With me…” she paused, “it’s actually exactly the same, but the other way around. And that’s not always for the best either.”

  I was lost even before that.

  It was more than enough for me.

  I turned my back to the wall. Champion and Sue fell asleep before the argument broke out.

  On one of those nights they spoke in one voice about fits of forgetfulness that could happen at any moment, day or night.

  She would not hear about a nursing home.

  About bringing in a stranger, as a daughter, and as an expert in human resources—there was nothing to talk about.

  And Dad had no other suggestions.

  “Should I understand from this that you’re vetoing the suggestion?” she demanded to know.

  Dad spoke about Grandpa, that his condition—which kept her awake at night—was affecting me. Him. Their relationship. “And it doesn’t benefit Dad’s health. Nature takes its course. And if…” they were fortunate to grow old together, they too would make every effort neither to cause grievance nor to burden me. And he wanted to hope that I would be levelheaded enough to understand that’s “The way of the world.”

  “There are all kinds of worlds…” she muttered, “and there are all kinds of sons and daughters…”

  On that subject... even from her he would not hear a single word!

  I was not the only one who woke up bleary-eyed. Champion, running back and forth between them, only irritated them more with “his unbearable restlessness.”

  The tension did not alleviate in the evenings either: the First Palestinian Intifada was at its peak. The confrontations with those who threw stones and Molotov cocktails spread “like wildfire,” as I learned from the conversations at the dinner table, during which they always made sure to discuss only matters on which they saw eye to eye.

  Time flew by, until the evening when Dad shared their decision with me:

  We will build a second floor.

  And every now and then offer Grandpa to stay over.

  During the renovation the contractor installed a multi-level scaffold.

  Champion climbed up and down it like a circus acrobat.

  Once they cast the staircase and the floor was completed, we went up loaded with packages.

  To Dad’s whistle, Sue ran up.

  Champion froze in his tracks.

  I walked down with Dad.

  His fur bristled like that of a petrified cat.

  Sue stuck her head out.

  Barked whimsically.

  And he did not react.

  “Something happened to him…” Mom diagnosed. “He probably slipped in our absence, got a good scare, and now he’s afraid of his own shadow…”

  Dad slid his arms under the Champion’s stomach.

  And pulled him up.

  He shook.

  And slumped back down.

  “Let him be,” she begged:

  “There’s no other way with anxieties…”

  Sue darted downstairs.

  He rose.

  Pinned her underneath him.

  Tossed her on her back and barked:

  “In this house,” as if making his point in an unequivocal language, “what I can’t do, you won’t do either.”

  Ever since, she did not climb the stairs in his presence.

  At Grandpa’s she continued to go up and down the stairs like an angel on Jacob’s Ladder. In time, when she was in heat and we removed him to a kennel, she went back to prancing along the staircase like “a doe set free” at home as well.

  Chapter 2

  Slowly slowly the voices begin to fuse.

  The silences, too.

  I wait until the last of the echoes dies out.

  The room is dark.

  And it suits me.

  The chill, too.

  Especially the stillness.

  The pen, my baton, an inseparable part of me.

  A natural extension, empowering and clarifying.

  And I, who begin to see that which is before me, recoil.

  I want to take a breath.

  To pause.

  And everything presses.

  And everything is accelerating:

  Onward!

  Onward!

  Sliding or perhaps tripping between scales, my mind is set on the house. From the moment it stopped being a construction site, our lives resumed their normal course: Champion stopped barking at the workers, at the cement mixer and at every passing truck. Sue recovered from the half-melancholic-half-depressive apathy she had been afflicted with throughout the entire renovation. And Champion went back to tyrannizing her as usual.

  In no time, my parents forgot that their bedroom had once been downstairs. And I enjoyed my privacy in the renovated, refurnished room.

  We were all in my room when Sue rose to her feet. And I noticed with panic a blood stain left behind her, which spread across the light colored carpet.

  Mom, and with slightly more elaboration, Dad, let me understand that it was a sign that from now on she could have puppies. But, she was too young, and had yet to fully develop.

  “And the time has not yet come…”

  Champion went haywire:

  As if with the touch of a magic wand his whims were forgotten.

  At once the tables had turned.

  And a new balance of power was created.

  He became her shadow, literally:

  Wherever she lay down, he sniffed.

  Wherever she stood, he stooped.

  Wherever she went, he climbed on top of her.

  Without a shred of passion.

  No sensuality. Courtship.

  Kinship.

  Intimacy.

  It was necessity.

  A force of nature.

  Fatal attraction.

  Sue, for her part, did not cooperate:

  Did not yield to him.

  And she did not yearn for him.

  On the contrary, she treated him as a nuisance:

  When he chased her, she would duck.

  When he lay in wait, she would sit down.

  And when pressed, she bore her teeth.

  Only then did we learn that she knew how to stand, or rather sit, her
ground.

  And he, more aroused than ever, would wait for the next opportunity.

  “As if possessed…

  He won’t let go!

  He won’t let her be!”

  Mom was tormented.

  “It’s torture for him,”

  Dad felt sorry for Champion.

  On the eighth day, before ovulation began, we removed him to the kennel.

  When he was brought back, he resumed his lordly ways.

  Two or three times she went into heat. And then it was as if she was fading and losing her joy of life: fat, cumbersome and bent over, she tailed the one with the straight back, the perked tail, the one as proud as a peacock.

  “She’s isn’t that happy here with us anymore,” I shared with Mom, who wondered how I had arrived at such a far-reaching conclusion. And she went on to talk about Champion, who was lucky, because another dog would have put him in his place long ago.

  “Why is Sue so down?” I asked as we sat around the table.

  “Dad will let you in on a secret…” Mom said, perhaps manipulating him, perhaps giving him the go ahead.

  “It’s not that exactly, but rather…” she transposed the tune to him.

  “…She’s pregnant, and will soon whelp,” Dad said, clenching his jaw and running his fingers through his hair.

  “How soon is ‘soon’?” I was beside myself with joy.

  Pregnancy is a process that takes a little over two months, she explained. To be precise: sixty-three days. And they had wanted to shorten my wait. Now, when it was a matter of days, they had made up their mind to tell me.

  I immediately phoned Adi, who was no less excited than me.

  When Robert crowed the next day, I had already completed my morning chores and had one leg out the door. Adi had also arrived early to school, and said that she was given permission to come home with me so as not to miss the whelping.

  At the sound of the bell we sped home.

  As always, Champion jumped on us at the gate.

  Licked my neck.

  And did not neglect Adi.

  Sue waddled heavily behind him.

  The next day she also dragged her feet.

  When she reached the gate, she barely offered a wag. And instead of burrowing in the herb garden, whose chill granted her shelter from the heat wave brought on by the whims of late summer verging on fall, she took refuge in the shade of the fig leaves at the entrance of the grove behind the kitchen.

  Champion tasted her food.

  And devoured his.

  Sue—would not even touch her water.

  Finally another school day ended.

  Once again she shuffled to the gate. And returned to her new spot.

  Ignored the water.

  At the sight of her food she buried her head in the sand.

  Right away I called Mom:

  “Her nose is moist,” I reported.

  Once her mind was put at ease, she told me how she had suffered during the heat waves when she was carrying me, much earlier in her pregnancy than Sue, and without a coat of black fur.

  The air was fresh and crisp after the first rain that fell during the night, but throughout the day it became extremely hot.

  Mom, coming home early, parked the car on the side of the road.

  When, with Adi’s help, we finished clearing, cleaning and sterilizing the garage, to which there was access from the kitchen as well as from the yard, darkness had already descended.

  That night we got them acquainted with the new place. Had it not been so spotless, we wouldn’t have noticed the trail of mud Sue left behind. Champion’s paws were spick and span.

  In the morning Sue woke up full of energy, and did not even stop to sniff the slice of pastrami, her favorite food then as it is now.

  Salivating, Champion lingered between my legs.

  Grabbed.

  And devoured.

  “Enough is enough,” Mom ruled.

  The puppies in her womb are consuming whatever is vital for their development. And if things carry on like this, she’ll weaken. And so close to the whelping, this is, to say the least, undesirable.

  She asked me to update her upon my return home from school. And if there was no change, “Doctor Yehoram will see her today.”

  Absentmindedly, she touched her nose again before leaving for work.

  And went on her way.

  With the sound of bell, we snatched up our backpacks.

  And ran.

  Champion greeted us as usual.

  Sue waddled like a fattened goose.

  Mom walked in shortly after us.

  And Dad followed.

  The vet didn’t answer.

  Cell phones were still rare and expensive at the time, and Dad left him a message to urgently call home or the beeper.

  The beeper caught us in Netanya. We squeezed into a public telephone booth for Dad to call him back, and heard about a Golden Retriever that had been injured in a car accident:

  “So there’s no way you can make it before eight,” Dad repeated, so we too could hear the vet’s reaction.

  The sun was close to setting when we opened the gate.

  Champion welcomed us with leaps.

  “Where’s Sue?!” I shouted.

  “Sue! S-ue! S-u-ue!”

  With his characteristic calm, especially in stressful situations, Dad asked me to maintain my composure.

  “She’s probably where she was in the afternoon,” Adi guessed:

  “There, under the fig tree.”

  “S-ue! S-u-u-ue!” I screamed.

  Dad asked me to control myself.

  “Sue always answers.

  I’m telling you:

  Something happened to her.”

  “Come on already. Move!” Adi rushed me.

  My feet were rooted in place.

  Refused to uproot.

  Wagging his tail, Champion continued to circle us, even when I finally managed to move my feet.

  Adi ran forth.

  And I followed in her footsteps.

  Dad bent over the pit.

  Short of breath, Mom caught up with us.

  “Congratulations, Sue.” As if through the veil of a dream, a monotonous tone reached me: “And to you too, Champion. Sue gave birth. Sue has puppies. Don’t touch Sue.”

  Adi ran to the garage to bring a sheet. And in the silence that prevailed, feeble bleats emanated from the pit, like kittenish yowls.

  “Sue is a good dog. Sue is a great dog. Sue is a mother now. Congratulations, Sue. And to you too, Champion.” Dad spread out the sheet, and continued to talk in the same rhythm, without changing his pitch or volume: “Everything is okay. Everything is okay.”

  The teeth she bore shone in the dim light when he laid a hand on the sheet.

  Held it there.

  Slowly slowly began to gently smoothen the sheet.

  Slid his hand in deep.

  Fondled.

  Groped.

  And in her weakness, she was about to bite him.

  “Everything’s fine. Sue is just protecting her puppies. Open your hands.”

  Lifted a kind of shoelace.

  And placed it in my arms.

  And another—in Adi’s hands.

  Crouched again.

  And straightened up carrying Sue, the fringes of her sticky fur curdled with blood.

  In her complete weariness he laid her down on the blanket Mom had spread out in the garage. And by her side, he placed what Adi and I had been holding: tadpoles with enlarged stomachs and stringy legs and the tails of field mice in a murky, unidentifiable color.

  Sue stood up.

  Wobbled.

  Lay back down again.

  And moved about restlessly.

  Dad disappeared.

  And rushed back with five others, slightly larger, from the same dubious family: they bore no resemblance to their mother, who had transformed from a ball of wool into a beautiful silken teddy bear. And I couldn’t understand how such a capt
ivating mother like her and such an elegant father like him could have produced such ugly puppies.

  Dad took off again.

  And returned equipped with the new video camera and the old still camera.

  “They’re completely bald.

  And their tails… long as a shoelace…

  Maybe you got mixed up?”

  He pointed at Sue who pressed against the pups:

  “I can get mixed up. She—can’t.”

  Moist-eyed, Mom explained that in the womb the body temperature is more or less steady. And in order to ease their acclimation Sue was warming them. And she reminded me that when we had gotten Sue she was six weeks old. And she was confident that in no time I would see the tiny ones look like a real “copy of their parents.”

  Back and forth Champion measured the borders of the blanket, as if calling our attention to the fact that he, too, was present.

  I extended my hand.

  And he came running.

  He did not go near the pups.

  Nor did he approach Sue, who acted as if he did not exist.

  “Enough!

  You took photos.

  You filmed.

  You have enough!

  I feel sorry for her…”

  Mom begged for mercy on Sue.

  “It’s for Madam Lauren!”

  He stopped clicking and settled for filming.