Fifty Acres and a Poodle

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  Same way with worry, in general. You take it one meal at a time, and you put your faith in digestion.

  That’s what I was telling him, bouncing my fork in the direction of his plate of shrimp.

  “Okay,” he said. “So where are we going to get the money?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Then I changed the subject. Because, well, that’s another way of dealing with money. And really, the bigger worry in this whole scheme is: We’re going to buy a farm together? We have, neither of us, ever really expressed an interest in living together. He has his space, I have mine. Maybe that’s weird. Maybe after two years of dating, we should be further along than this. We spend all our time together, either in his space or mine. And why mess with a good thing? We both know where this relationship is headed. We both know that, one way or the other, we’ll grow old together. Don’t we know that? I think we know that. All the babes seem to know that. My family seems to know that. His kids seem to know that. But no, we don’t actually discuss the details of the growing-old-together arrangement. I can’t say why Alex hasn’t brought up marriage. For me, it’s just that I am really not the bride type. I am just not. I don’t know what type I am. I mean, I was thinking about this last night as we sat together. I was thinking maybe we could just elope so I wouldn’t have to do the whole bride thing. I was having an entire let’s-elope fantasy in my head. I had us there in Vegas, at some seedy purple altar with a fat guy in a pink tux as our witness and a big-haired lady with skinny legs playing the organ. I was going to tell Alex about this Vegas fantasy. I really was. I almost did. I almost said, “So, um—are we going to get married or something? Seeing as we’re thinking of pooling our finances together and plunking down a bundle on fifty acres?” I was going to say, “How’s the weather in Vegas this time of year?” But I don’t know. I looked at him. He had his Mister Exhausted face on. He seemed so stressed out by the whole farm scheme. He seemed in no mood for a whole new scheme. Plus, he hates Vegas. Plus, I hate Vegas. I may not be the bride type, but I am really not the Vegas type, and then, poof, the fantasy was gone.

  So instead I said, “Hey, there’s a gas well on the property!” I don’t know where that little brain blip came from. But that was a good move.

  “True,” he said, looking up.

  He loves that gas well. It seems to appeal to his handyman side. And I have to admit, the gas well has captured my imagination, too. An enormous pool of natural gas sits beneath Washington County. The first well was discovered quite by accident in 1882 when the Niagara Oil Company was drilling on the old McGugin farm, and at 2,247 feet they struck gas. The force was so great that it sent tools flying a hundred feet into the air. It was the largest flow of natural gas in the world. By accident, or mischief, the gas flow caught fire. The well burned for two years. Thousands of people came from miles away to picnic by the light of the “Mighty McGugin.” Eventually, they got the fire out, the gas was piped to Pittsburgh, and the great oil and gas boom of southwestern Pennsylvania was on, breathing new life into the region after the faded glory of the National Pike.

  The gas well at the farm in Scenery Hill is nothing to look at. Just a thin little pipe sticking out of the ground with a valve on top. But out of that pipe comes all the gas for the farm, heating the house, the barn, even a giant greenhouse if we built one.

  “Free gas!” I said to Alex. “Think about it!”

  “I’m thinking,” he said, looking down, and then he started smashing a tomato under his fork. Not a good sign. Things went downhill from there. He agreed that we would place a bid on the property, but he sure didn’t seem happy about it.

  He didn’t sound much better today when I called to say I was coming over so we could make the call. He was sort of quiet. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I’m so used to making my own decisions, following my own dreams, making my own plans. The truth is, I wanted to scream. I wanted to say, “Dude. Let’s make this work! Let’s take control.” I wanted to say, “My train has left the station—what the hell is the matter with yours?”

  But I didn’t.

  So, now I’m here. At his house. “Come on, Betty,” I say, opening the car door, and when I get up to his porch, I shout, “Yoo-hoo!” and step inside. This is a great old house, a remodeled Victorian with wonderful mahogany woodwork throughout. Marley comes bounding out. Betty tears toward him. They tumble all over each other, gleeful and carefree.

  Alex comes out of the kitchen, holding the cordless phone.

  “Oh, I know, sugar,” he says into the receiver, and that’s how I know he’s talking to Amy. He’s been helping her with her résumé. She’s recently moved to New York City, joining Peter there, the two of them trying to find their way. Amy wants to do something in publishing, and Peter, well, Peter is a brilliant engineer who could do anything he wanted but has no idea what he wants. “Okay, why don’t you read that last part to me again?” Alex says to Amy.

  Amy and her dad are close. Amy and Peter and their dad. This is a unit. A more complex unit than me and Bob, but a unit. Amy and Peter have welcomed me in. To tell you the truth, I think it was a little easier for them to accept me than Marley. “Dad, a poodle?” Peter said.

  “A standard poodle,” Alex said. “Not one of those little yappy things.”

  “Uh-huh.” Amy and Peter didn’t know their dad was a poodle person either. I think that poodle issue helped me bond with Alex’s kids.

  I sit on the couch, waiting for Alex to get off the phone. Marley is done tumbling with Betty and has commenced leaning on my leg. He’s a leaner, that dog. He’ll lean into you and then roll his neck back, his snout up in the air, as he tries to eye you upside down.

  “Okay, Marley,” I say, petting him. “What’s this? More burrs here? Oh, jeez.” I head over to the drawer to get the poodle comb.

  “Yep,” Alex is saying. “Fax me this version, and I’ll be able to read it all the way through. Okay? I think it’s good, though. I think it sounds really good. All right. Okay. Bye-bye, sugar. I love you.”

  He turns to me.

  “Is she okay?” I say.

  “Oh, God, yeah,” he says. “She’s just about got it done.”

  “Well, I got about five burrs out,” I say, fluffing the hair on Marley’s head.

  “More burrs,” he says. “Aw, Mar. You’re a mess, buddy.”

  Enough small talk. “So let’s make the call,” I say bluntly. No sense stalling. And he does have the phone in his hand.

  “You want to do it?” he says, holding it in my direction.

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “You know I’m too shy.”

  He hates when I say this.

  “You are not shy,” he says.

  “Well, I used to be,” I say. “Did I ever tell you I wet my pants every single day in kindergarten?”

  “If you tell me that again, I’m going to have to excuse myself and commit suicide.”

  “Ha! Listen to Mister Redundant Face! That’s the kettle calling the, or, the cook spoiling the—”

  “The kettle spoiling the broth.”

  “Right.”

  “All right, I’m going to make the call,” he says.

  “Good.”

  “But I’m going to bid low.”

  “Not too low,” I say.

  “Low,” he says.

  Oh, dear.

  I sit on the floor. I hold Marley. Betty is over by the radiator destroying Marley’s stuffed frog. Marley is so much better than Betty for calming people down. Something about his thick poodle curls. There is tension in those curls that you can pull, stretch out, then let go and watch them spring back. He’s got thousands of these little tension-relievers all over his body.

  “Hello?” Alex says. “Is this Fran?”

  Oh, jeezus. It’s her. I feel like we’re calling the Queen of England.

  “Yes, we came down to see your place a few weeks ago?” he says. “Uh-huh.”

  “ASK HER IF THE FARM IS STILL FOR SALE!” I shout. “DID SOMEONE E
LSE BUY IT?!”

  He is waving his hand at me, silencing me. Fine. I clutch Marley tighter. Afro-dog. We should have named him Fro.

  “That’s right,” Alex says. “It’s a beautiful place. Uh-huh. Oh, I know. That’s exactly what we said.”

  “WHAT? WHAT DID WE SAY? WHAT IS SHE SAYING?”

  “Uh-huh. Yes, well, Fran. Fran, we’d like to make an offer on the farm. Yes. And if you’d like us to come down there and we could talk face-to-face, or … Now? Right now? Over the phone?”

  Oh, jeezus. This is like having your best friend ask the cutest boy in school to the prom for you.

  “Oh, okay. Sure. We can, I mean, what I’d like to do is, well, actually, start the bidding, you know, lower than, well—”

  Oh, my God. JUST SAY A NUMBER!

  He says a number. Oh-my-God. He says a number that is a full twenty-five percent lower than their asking price. Oh, my God. He said he was going to bid low, but jeezus, that is way, way, way, way low. Oh, my God. She’s going to laugh in his face. I can’t believe this. Poor Marley. I’m twisting this dog’s ear off.

  Why did he say that low? He doesn’t mean that low. He means let’s get down lower to a place where we can negotiate. So why didn’t he say that? You don’t bid below the whole damn chart, forgodsakes.

  Unless, of course, you’re not serious with your bid….

  I should have done the bidding. Damn it.

  “Hello?” he is saying. “Hello?”

  Apparently, Fran is not saying anything.

  “Hello?”

  I am on the floor, curled up in a ball.

  “Uh-huh,” he says. “Okay, then. Well, good-bye.”

  He hangs up.

  I look at him. “That was really low,” I say.

  “Well, she said she’d have to call us back.”

  “Well, that was really low,” I say. I feel like crying. He can see it. “You don’t want the farm, do you?” I say.

  “I thought we should start the bidding low, so we have lots of room to negotiate,” he says.

  “Well, there’s low, and then there’s low,” I say.

  “Look,” he says, “she’s going to call back in the morning with a counteroffer. I gave her your number in South Side.”

  “All right.”

  THE NEXT MORNING I SIT BY THE PHONE. I SIT there waiting for that phone to ring. It doesn’t.

  I sit by the phone all day. I lie on that couch with Bob on my stomach, waiting for her call.

  Nothing.

  The day after that I live from pay phone to pay phone, checking my machine from the mall, the grocery store, the movie theater. Nothing. All weekend. Nothing.

  For an entire week. Nothing. Well, that’s weird. Is she going to call back or what?

  I sit in this limbo for two hideous weeks, three hideous weeks … six hideous weeks.

  Six weeks. Time seems to have stopped, but time hasn’t stopped at all. It’s now August. Mid-August! We are now heading toward my birthday. On September 22, I am going to be thirty-eight years old. Thirty-eight! That is a serious number. And my life, what is my life? Same old life. I check the paper and see the ad has been pulled.

  Apparently, the farm has been sold to someone else.

  I can’t believe this.

  I just can’t believe it.

  This couplehood thing sucks. I hate it. If I were alone, I would have made the call myself. I would have negotiated a fair price. By now I’d be moving to the country.

  But, well. Fine.

  It’s over.

  Done.

  Draw the curtain or roll the credits or whatever.

  She didn’t even have the courtesy to call us and tell us that she sold the farm to someone else. And Alex, he shouldn’t have bid so low. He didn’t mean that low, so why did he say that low? It’s his fault. For six weeks, I’ve been so furious at him I could cry. He blew it. Because he didn’t want it like I wanted it. His train hadn’t left the station. I should have taken care of my own stinkin’ train.

  Forget it. It’s time to say good-bye to Scenery Hill.

  Draw the curtain or roll the credits or whatever.

  FOUR

  OH, BOB, WHY ARE YOU COUGHING AGAIN? DAMN it, the vet did not say anything about coughing. Do not die now, Bob. No, I mean it. I am absolutely too upset for you to die now. I need you to hang on a little longer, Bob. That better just be a hairball….

  It’s September, mid-September. About a month after I gave up on Scenery Hill. Exactly ten days before I make the leap to thirty-eight. I am here at my house, and it’s still hot out, still hot enough to challenge this poor air conditioner. I’m here with Bob. My beloved Bob. He certainly looks healthy enough. I don’t know; maybe I should get another cat. Maybe I should get an insurance-policy cat. Because I don’t know how long Bob is going to last. I should call that vet. I should say, “Hey, how long is he going to last?”

  I don’t remember asking that. I don’t remember asking anything on that day last spring when that vet used the D-word. I thought: Dying? Dying? My God! I had sort of forgotten about dying. I hadn’t experienced a death since my Pop Pop Pete died when I was fifteen. “Dying.” I had so little experience with dying. I thought: When it comes to dying, I am a baby.

  So of course I wailed like an infant in my living room that day. Because I was an infant. And say what you will about pets just being pets, I say loss is loss and grief is grief.

  Well, that was Alex’s point. That’s what he managed to communicate to me through my heaving sorrow way back then, when Bob was diagnosed. It was a comfort. Sometimes you just need permission to feel as awful as you feel.

  I’m trying to apply that same simple lesson to the farm. Loss is loss and grief is grief. I am trying to drum up some entitlement here. Some permission for feeling as sad as I do about losing my dream. Even though it was just a stupid Green Acres dream. Barely even a dream at all.

  It was just a song I couldn’t get out of my head, Bob. Just a stupid, idiotic song.

  Bob seems to have finished with his coughing. Now he is bathing. He’s licking his paw, stretching his prickly tongue with all his might, then rubbing his paw over his eyes. He seems perfectly healthy. It’s not right. If he’s dying, he should look sick.

  Alex is outside. Through the kitchen window, I can see him working on the patio, beads of sweat dripping off his head. He’s laying the brick in a checkerboard pattern. I should go outside and marvel.

  “Wow!” I say, stepping out into the heat. “I love the way the bricks go! You want some iced tea?”

  “No thanks,” he says. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Well, this looks great,” I say. “I mean, really great.”

  He smiles. We’re doing better. We are done being angry. Well, I’m done being angry at him, so he’s doing better.

  My dreams are my dreams, not his. That’s one thing I’ve discovered. You don’t stop loving someone because your dreams don’t exactly align, or because your train schedules don’t match.

  I mean, I guess that’s the way it works. I don’t know. I am new at love. I need to get a love book. I need to get a boyfriend book. I need to get a dream book.

  Because the weird thing, the truly weird thing, is that Alex is having some kind of delayed reaction to the lady never calling back. I’m here trying to finish up with my grieving, and he’s just getting started. I don’t understand this at all. Sometime during these weeks of waiting to hear from her, he decided, yes, the farm. I was right. (“Thank you very much.”) We should do it. We should go. And if we can’t have that farm, we should start farm shopping again.

  I don’t know; maybe that’s the way he works. Maybe he needs things to be taken away from him to realize he wants them.

  No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s the way Alex works. I think maybe he isn’t much for planning, for big pictures, for schemes like I am. I mean, look at the way he’s building this patio. I would have sketched it out first on paper. I would have at least measured. I wou
ld have said, here’s the square footage, and here’s how much brick we’ll need.

  Not him. He just … starts. He just digs. And then he digs some more. And then he steps back and looks. And then he lays a few bricks, then a few more. He doesn’t see what he’s doing. He feels it. He intuits it. He applies these same problem-solving skills to many areas of his life. For instance, his East Liberty house. I mean, here we are, without the farm, with no clear future direction, and here’s Alex putting his house on the market. He up and did it last week. I couldn’t believe it.

  “But where are you going to live?” I said. Was he trying to say he wanted to move into South Side with me? No, it didn’t seem so. He didn’t seem to be that far along in his thinking.

  “Well, the house isn’t sold yet,” he said.

  “True.”

  Suddenly he felt it was time to sell his house. I mean, he has a good point. His once-delightful neighborhood of huge old homes is slowly deteriorating into a crowded neighborhood of rental properties. If he doesn’t sell soon, he may end up being an absentee landlord, like so many of the rest of his old neighbors. And anyway, he figures it will take a long time for the place to sell, so there’s no reason to panic about living arrangements.

  See, I wouldn’t do it this way. I would plan. I would say, “Where am I heading?” before I actually took off.

  “OUT OF THERE, BETTY!” I shout, seeing her go near the daylily bed. “Girly girl, GET OUT!” I don’t know why I have to tell her this. Does she want to get zapped?

  “Bettttyyyy,” Alex growls, in a deep bass voice. Betty hears this. She knows this is the sound of trouble. “Betty, you’ll be sorry….” She lowers her head, comes slinking over to us. She sits at my feet.