Mothers, Tell Your Daughters

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

  The dog approached and pushed his nose under my hand.

  “Don’t try to play nice with me after everything you’ve done.”

  I got up and put his dog dish up on the counter where he couldn’t reach it, and, after some thought, took away his water dish, too. He could drink out of the toilet if he was thirsty. “Did you really think I’d take you back? Forgive you for all your crimes?”

  He leapt up toward where I’d put his food. When he realized he wouldn’t be able to reach it, he did a kind of foolish little turning-around dance that ended in him falling on his butt on the floor, but I refused to laugh.

  “You’re not as cute as you think you are, mister,” I said. “You could always sweet-talk your way out of trouble before, but not this time.”

  At length I reminded him of some of his worst behavior, starting with the venereal diseases and working up to his frolic with that mean librarian. Oscar always denied the encounter, but after the evening in question, the woman continually renewed his books so he never had to pay late fees, while she required of me the strictest compliance. She even let him check out reference books, for crying out loud. “And you thought I wouldn’t notice you had a second fiancé? You’ve been very, very bad,” I concluded.

  Roscoe didn’t respond, but finally closed his mouth and whined.

  “Ha!” I said. “At last you admit your guilt!”

  He could no longer explain away all those hours he’d claimed to be at the nursing home with his grandmother, and he certainly couldn’t deny dirty-dancing in that hayloft. And because he couldn’t reach the doorknob, he couldn’t storm out in an indignant huff as he might have done in the past. He gazed at my finger with regret, until suddenly his head whipped around and he gnawed at his back leg, pretending to bite a flea.

  “Look at me when I talk to you,” I said, grabbing his nose. “You can’t avoid me, Oscar, Roscoe, whatever you call yourself. Now that I’m loved by a man who is true, I know how badly you treated me.”

  After some consideration, I tied the little mongrel outside on a piece of clothesline and informed him about the surgical castration in store for him in about a week.

  When Pete asked later why I put the dog outside, I told him it was because Roscoe still had fleas and needed another treatment. Pete gave a few worried glances into the yard during the evening, and before going to bed he carried the dog’s food and water dishes to him.

  “Maybe you should put some flyers up to see if you can find his owner,” Pete suggested the next morning. Though it was Sunday, he was heading out for a three-day job in Ann Arbor, with overtime. But I had worked the business over like a chew toy all through the sleepless night and decided the solution was not to get rid of him—after all, he’d always been happy to abandon me to my anger. My plan was to finally make him pay for what he had done to me.

  As I was heading out to work on the first full day of Roscoe’s banishment, he watched me with those passionate eyes I knew so well. As I walked to my car, he sighed and rested his speckled nose between his speckled paws in the dry leaves. When I came home, he jumped up with joy, leapt right up into the air in his excitement to see me. And soon enough my heart began to soften. Sure, Oscar had betrayed me plenty, but he had taught me plenty as well, and his bad behavior didn’t negate the depth of his love for me. He and I had grown up together, after all, and if Oscar had lived, he probably would have turned his life around and behaved better eventually. I pulled the bag of treats out of the kitchen garbage can and gave him a few. When I poured some water into his dish, he lapped up a pint. But to give in now, when I finally had the upper hand in our relationship, seemed foolish.

  That evening I fed and watered him and tried not to reveal my weakening resolve as I tucked a blanket around him, and then I couldn’t sleep for thinking of him out there. In the morning I discovered he’d pushed off the blanket and was shivering—obviously he wanted to suffer to prove his love. The way he looked at me, I could tell he’d never felt so much regret for his actions as he did now. I didn’t know what he’d been through since he died, but he was paying a steep price for his crimes by having to come back to me as a helpless animal.

  That evening it was raining when I returned from work. Roscoe was shivering under the porch, but he came out to greet me and stood there, soaking wet, until I untied him and invited him inside. After eating and drinking a good amount, he gazed at me with eyes full of pure gratitude.

  “I guess I can give you one more chance,” I said. “But this is going to be your last chance forever. If you blow it, it’s over between us. Do you understand?” I was pretty sure I’d never before given him an ultimatum with such force, or at least I’d never meant it the way I meant it now.

  As I was getting ready for bed, I heard a ruckus in the utility room, and then Roscoe appeared with a dead mouse in his teeth. He laid it at my feet.

  “Well, you are proving yourself useful, Roscoe.” I relieved him of the mouse and tossed it out in the yard for the crows. When I returned I said, “Now tell me how sorry you are for everything you did wrong over the years.”

  He whimpered.

  “I mean really sorry, not like before when you just wanted to shut me up or go to bed with me.”

  He whined and then punctuated his whining with a couple of yelps. When he saw me start to smile, he began wagging his tail. The frantic wagging told me he was sorry more than words could have.

  “I always told you that you couldn’t live without me. I guess you couldn’t stand to be dead without me, either, could you?” I smoothed the fur on his head and felt him shiver with sincerity and gratitude. I patted the couch cushion beside me. “Come up here, big fella.” The dog jumped onto the couch and laid his head on my stomach. He watched my face for a while and then focused his attention on the television. I pushed him away only when his drool soaked through my nightie.

  I’d never liked sleeping alone in the king-size bed, so that night I called the dog up beside me and reminded him of our first sweet trysts in my brother’s tree fort and in the shed behind the bus barn. I recalled the prom, where he danced with a cheerleader most of the night. After rehashing the good and the bad, I couldn’t deny the passion I still felt for my own first love. For months I had been dreaming of Pete and our new baby, but now I wanted a break from those thoughts.

  I needed advice, but I couldn’t confide in my husband. Pete knew I’d been betrayed by Oscar, but he didn’t know the depth of my love for the man or how intensely I’d grieved Oscar’s passing. And especially Pete didn’t know that, as he and I sank into the routine of our marriage, I was beginning to long for some of the old excitement and uncertainty of my youthful romance.

  THE NEXT MORNING at work the clock on my desk seemed to slow as it approached ten-thirty. My sister Lydia was allowed to make one call at this time every Wednesday. After a quick hello I told her that Oscar had come back to find me.

  “To haunt you, you mean, like a ghost?” she said. The prison phone line always sounded staticky, as if my sister herself might be a ghost. “I wish I could come to your house and do a banishing spell while your Pete’s out of town. Otherwise you’ll have to dig up Oscar’s dead body and sprinkle salt on it and burn it. But I guess that’s not practical, is it?”

  “No, I don’t want a banishing spell, Lydia. It’s more complicated than that. He’s not exactly dead,” I said.

  “He died in the farming accident. I went to the funeral. I held you sobbing in my arms.”

  “He fell out of a hayloft, but he’s reborn in a new form. He’s a dog now.”

  “He was always a dog.”

  “A real dog this time. Woof-woof. And he caught a mouse last night and brought it to me to prove he’s changed his ways and wants to be helpful.”

  “Sarah, this isn’t good,” Lydia said. “I’ve been worried sick about you since yesterday. I did the tarot for you and got a disturbing reading.”

  “I thought they took your cards away,” I said.

  “
I made a new deck, out of toilet paper. It’s only temporary. Listen, the Lovers appeared prominently, upside down. I drew it last night, too, with the Fool.” The Lovers card was not necessarily bad, of course, but it suggested temptation, choice, the struggle between sacred and profane love, and upside down it warned of the wrong choice. “Don’t you worry, though,” she said. “I’ll put a curse on Oscar to get him out of your life for good.”

  “You don’t understand,” I protested. “As a dog, he might be much better than he was as a boyfriend. And I think he’s really sorry for how he treated me. You should see the look on his face. He’s so contrite. And cute.” And I told her about the potato chips.

  “What about Pete?” she asked with alarm in her voice.

  “He doesn’t need to know anything. He doesn’t believe in this stuff.”

  “It sounds to me, little sister, like you’re about to betray your husband. You’d better get a grip!” she shouted into the phone loudly enough that I had to hold it away from my ear. My sister was usually an open-minded person, so I was surprised by her harsh tone. “Your Pete is a light shining above the rabble. You have found true love with a good man, and now you’re going to have a baby, so shut up about Oscar and shut up about that damned dog. In fact, get rid of the dog. It’s too dangerous to have him around.”

  I clutched the phone in silence, wondering if maybe they’d slipped lard into the crust of her vegetarian potpies again.

  “Are you saying you don’t think it’s Oscar?”

  “What has the dog done? Whined at you and looked up with sad eyes in order to get food? He’s a dog, for crying out loud. That’s what dogs do.”

  “Are you saying you don’t believe in reincarnation?”

  “I’m saying you ruined your life for eight years with that guy. And your potato chip test is stupid,” she said. “If I could bust out of here, I’d steal a car and drive over there and kick your ass.”

  “Well, I’m not sending him out to live in the street,” I said. “He needs me and loves me. You never understood what Oscar and I meant to each other.”

  “And if it really is Oscar, that’s more reason to send him to the pound.”

  “Thanks for being so supportive. Next time I’ll call the Psychic Friends Network.” I hung up before telling her I would deposit money in her jail account and that I’d bought her a book about improving the feng shui of very small spaces.

  “I SHOULD’VE FIGURED she wouldn’t understand,” I told Roscoe when I snuck home at lunchtime to bring him a treat and take him for a walk. “It’s always just been me and you. Nobody else can see what keeps us coming back to each other. Nobody else understands our animal magnetism.”

  That evening, I stopped at the butcher’s and bought a pig’s ear—Oscar had always liked pork rinds, so not surprisingly the ear was a hit. As we lay on the couch together afterward, I marveled at how much my old boyfriend had changed, mostly for the better. Oscar had always been a prime-rib and filet-mignon man, yet Roscoe dutifully ate his Waggy Meals and Chew Bites in both beef and poultry flavors. To my relief, he had also mellowed in his television habits—Oscar used to roll his eyes whenever I turned on my ten o’clock police and lawyer dramas, but Roscoe seemed content to watch with me now, never suggesting that he’d prefer news or wrestling. On the negative side, while Oscar had been fastidious about his personal cleanliness, Roscoe didn’t miss an opportunity to rummage through neighbors’ recycling or to roll on the carcasses of squirrels hit along our road. Roscoe had also pulled one of Pete’s dirty work socks out of the hamper and chewed it to pieces. I stuffed the evidence in the kitchen garbage, and then, upon consideration, carried the garbage bag outside to the dumpster.

  That night I began to wonder what deal Oscar had made with the universe to return to this world as my dog. Was there a set of circumstances under which a kiss or incantation would turn Roscoe back into Oscar? My husband worked a dangerous job. What if something happened to him while he was installing electrical cable on the twelfth floor of a new office building? What if he were shocked with twenty thousand volts in a freak power surge? Would Oscar be able to transform to console me?

  PETE RETURNED home on Tuesday night. When he climbed into his side of the bed, Pete saw Roscoe was lying on the rug by my side, looking more melancholy than usual, and I was leaning down to pet him.

  “Fleas all gone?” Pete asked.

  “Every flea. Roscoe was a great comfort to me while you were gone.”

  “I guess he’d make a ruckus if anybody came to the house, wouldn’t he? I hate leaving you alone when I work out of town.”

  “He’d defend me to the death,” I said, though I wondered if he might be distracted from that duty by a squirrel, either a live one that needed chasing or a dead one that needed rolling in.

  Pete’s work clothes were laid out on the chair on his side of the bed. The timer on the coffeemaker was set, the doors and windows were all checked and locked. The bills were all paid. Living with Pete had seemed safe and sensible all these months, but lately the security was making me feel a little restless.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t get him neutered,” I said.

  “What?” Pete looked away from his paperback of Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time.

  “Is it really fair? What if he wants to have a family? What gives human beings the right to impose their wills on other species?” I was thinking that castration might be one of those things that would stick with Roscoe even after his transmogrification back into a human, should that take place. And our future life together would be tainted by his knowledge that I had done that terrible thing to him.

  “Sarah, you’re not imposing your will on him. You’re rescuing him. If not for you, he’d probably have gotten hit on the road or gassed at the pound already.”

  When Pete fell asleep, I invited Roscoe onto the bed, and the following morning, early, I left a message for Dr. Wellborn canceling the Friday surgical appointment.

  THURSDAY MORNING, ROSCOE whined to go outside earlier than usual, while Pete was showering. I dragged myself out of bed and fiddled to straighten the leash and noticed that Roscoe had thoroughly chewed up one of Pete’s brand-new Red Wing work boots. Pete had just paid hundreds of dollars for a new pair to replace his five-year-old pair. I thought about the dozen pairs of leather shoes that used to perch in Oscar’s closet, shined and stylish, ready for dancing or going to any sort of restaurant. I hadn’t thought I wanted to go to restaurants back then, but dating Oscar had kept me on my toes—a gal had to look smart to feel worthy of walking beside a well-dressed man like Oscar—and now I missed my old stylish self a little. Thinking about those shoes reminded me of how much Roscoe had lost in this new life, reminded me that I was all he had now.

  I held up the work boot, stuck my finger through one of the holes in the leather, and imagined Pete telling me the dog would have to go as punishment. I would have to choose between the two of them. I took a big breath and sighed, imagined holding my head high as I headed out into the morning with my old love on a leash, leaving my husband in the doorway, shaking his ruined boot at us. And Roscoe would know I had chosen him over Pete, and he would finally love me the way he should’ve loved me before, absolutely and without deviation. For the moment, though, the main thing was to make sure Roscoe didn’t piddle on the carpet. I snapped the leash onto his collar.

  As I opened the front door, a leg cramp took hold of me. In my moment of inattention, the dog banged against the screen door, which was not latched, and he was off. He pumped his legs faster and faster across our yard, dragging his leash around the basswood tree, over our neighbor’s pumpkins and through his Brussels sprouts, dragging down several stalks in the process. There was no doubt about where Roscoe was headed. Last night he’d nearly broken my arm when we were at the old highway, tugging me toward the kennel where a female black chow was coming into heat, as evidenced by a half dozen other male dogs jumping up on the chain-link. I’d told him he should be ashamed, but he’d be
en too carried away to hear me.

  My slippers slowed my pursuit until I kicked them away and continued barefoot through the frost-tinged grass. I’d had a sweet vision of Roscoe and me trekking side by side, covering countryside, having adventures and cooking meals over campfires, communing with each other and nature, feeling sad about all we’d left behind. (Though Oscar hadn’t cared much for nature or camping, surely Roscoe would.) But this morning’s chase was no doubt a harbinger of things to come if I chose a life with Roscoe.

  “Come back here,” I shouted, panting as I ran. “This is your last chance to be faithful, dog. I swear, the very last chance. If you don’t stop, I’ll never forgive you.” Even moving at this brisk pace, I was reflecting on how I’d said this sort of thing dozens of times before, and how I’d always gone on to give him another chance.

  Roscoe took the road at a shallow angle. If he’d been paying attention to anything other than his desire for the bitch in the kennel, he’d have noticed the approaching menace of the blue car, which braked and swerved, but couldn’t avoid slamming—whomp—into him. His body flew through the air and landed on the dirt shoulder. In pursuit, I didn’t hesitate to run right in front of the car, which halted a foot from me. My heart stopped, and the world took on a greenish tinge as I realized I had just risked extinguishing not only my own light, but also the five-month-old flame inside me.

  Roscoe’s lifeless body lay like a twenty-pound sack of flour in the gravel, and a stain of blood was blossoming across his spotted haunch. I kneeled beside him and laid my hands on his body. Though my vision blurred with tears, I could see, through the opening in the fence, the kennel attached to the garage end of a ranch-style house, and I knew that inside it perched the object of Roscoe’s desire—that black female chow with lush fur and a ridiculously curly tail. She was now rubbing her rear end against the side of the pen. Three other male dogs scratched and whimpered at the chain-link.