by Rica Keenum
***
This is love...
I’m standing near a chain link fence outside daycare - or maybe it’s preschool - my little hands pressed against the warm metal. I’m watching the cars materialize in the lot, rumble into the carpool lane then squeak to a stop. Doors fly open and parents wave to the teacher, who is stationed like a flagpole amid an army of students. One or two kids break free from the crowd and skip to the car. Another car pulls up and this one isn’t mine either. My hands are sweaty, and they slip off the fence then drop to my sides, limp as doll arms.
Where are they, where are they, where are they? I’m desperate for the golden whale, the Mercury Grand Marquis my grandpa maneuvers same as his massive sled dog named Egor — dramatically, lurchingly. The car is boxy and long, the color of brass with plush interior and a polished grille that glistens in the sun. When I climb in, I will click my seatbelt into place and smell my grandma’s perfume. The radio will be playing AM 920, The Carpenters We’ve Only Just Begun or something by Sinatra. I will exhale and reset.
These people are warm and safe. Grandpa wields fists full of peppermints and butterscotch discs. “Which hand?” he prods, then fakes amazement when I choose the right one. Somehow I always do.
Grandpa wears baseball caps with crepe paper poppies twisted around the strap in remembrance of the soldiers he won’t speak about, the war that’s locked in his memory. A row of curls loop around the base of his hat in soft silver chunks. His friends call him Curly, a name my grandmother hates since curly is also a pet name assigned to bald men, same as cueball. Grandma refers to him as Arthur. “Oh Arthur,” she says with scorn when she spies his threadbare socks.
“They’re my church socks,” he mocks. “They’re holy.” This makes me laugh. In fact, mostly everything he does makes me laugh. And he couldn’t be prouder when I do.
For all his playfulness, Grandma will return the same scornful headshake, tone, phrase, “For God’s sake, Arthur.” She won’t crack a smile when he teases or laughs but even I will know that it’s there. Like the sleeping sun beneath a clot of gray clouds, her amusement remains out of sight. But it’s there. It is, like their mutual love and admiration of one another, always, always there. It’s a palpable love, the kind that can anchor a heart. The kind that sends my internal clock ticking, counting the hours, minutes, seconds until I can hop in the backseat again, click on my seatbelt, smell her perfume. And the Carpenters will play on the radio, or maybe Sinatra. I Get a Kick out of You.
As we idle at a stoplight, Grandpa will beam as the lyrics catch up with his chorus. He will turn to Grandma and croon with Old Blue Eyes, “I get a kick out of you,” thrusting out the “you” then holding it in his palm like a gift between them. I will almost see it shimmering there like some tangible thing, a tiny diamond or a foil-wrapped chocolate morsel.
Looking back, I realize this memory is a part of me, a thread sewn into my heart. After love ravaged me, I dare to say it was the thread that kept my heart from ripping clear out of my chest. Love is possible, I think. And I, as much as anyone, deserve it.
***
I’m wearing a pink cotton dress and a smile that feels like someone else's. When I see the photo we took on this day, I remember the nerves. I sit at a table with Wes’s family. We’re at a restaurant on the beach and the air is a salty vapor. I order smoked fish dip and crackers, then set down my menu and gaze at the rickety pier and the boats streaking in the distance, leaving frothy trails in their wake. My hands in my lap, my self on display. I wonder what they think of me and damn this wind, which keeps flinging tufts of hair into my mouth, eyes, nose. Every orifice is under attack and I am fighting with my own ridiculous mane. Wes puts his arm on my shoulder to both comfort me and showcase my quality. Every so often his face turns to mine and he sings me a song with his eyes. It floats between us and drowns out the sounds of silverware and small-talk. As the years pass, his family will become my family. When we visit, they’ll teach me how to give and receive hugs. They’ll pour me red wine and say, “I have a nice piece of salmon for you.” On summer weekends, we’ll go on beach vacations with them and meet up early on the sand to take long walks before breakfast. On Christmas Eve, we will pile wrapped gifts in front of his mother’s fireplace and then pass them around after the meal. I will find a little box in my lap that contains a silver engraved bracelet. When I hold it up to the light, I’ll choke down tears as I read: Be you, love you, all ways, always — a gift from Wes’s adult daughter.
***
It’s Wes’s turn to meet my family — the boys. Sym does just fine. He’s friendly, even offers the kind of handshake you’d give at a job interview. He stands up straight like he does in his martial arts class, when his voice booms with a “Yes, ma’am” for his sensei. I’m glad to see he didn’t bury his manners behind cutting glances and layers of sarcasm. He is 15 and impressed with Wes’s car. He immediately Googles the model to learn the value and then sits on the sofa with his phone in his palm, skimming car sites and looking glazed. In exactly a year, he’ll have his turn behind the wheel. I’ll behave like a cat being bathed, screeching and pawing at the dashboard, so Wes will be the instructor who ultimately teaches Sym to drive. In my humble Kia Spectra, the two will navigate the city, Wes patiently prodding, “Let’s try that 3-point-turn again. You ready?”
KJ is less eager to meet Wes. He told me he’d behave but he’s not making good so far. We’re at a Denny’s in Orlando and Wes has booked us all a hotel so we can hang out and be tourists in our own state. We have a helicopter ride planned and maybe we’ll swim, shop, sleep late and eat omelets tomorrow morning. Right now, we’re perusing our menus and I’m on high alert. KJ is loud and wide-eyed, a picnic fly at the table. He takes sips of his water and slams it down. I try to fill the silence with chatter but KJ interjects. It’s as if he’s been waiting to say this, saving the seed for just the right time to plant it. He looks directly at Wes. “What are your intentions for my mom?”
This is more a challenge than a question and Wes finds it slightly humorous. KJ leans forward, arms latched across his chest, awaiting some retort.
Wes laughs. Sym laughs nervously, an attempt at adding levity. I signal to the waitress, “Please... we’re ready to order.”
When the food comes, KJ slings insults in between bites as we eat. Wes is unfazed.
In the car, KJ says Wes is bad with directions. “My dad never gets lost,” he snorts as we weave through traffic toward our hotel. I turn my face to the window and consider banging my head on the glass. Hard. Again and again.
I watch Sym text a friend at the hotel: My brother is a jerk. I can’t believe my brother.
***
A lot has happened, and nothing has happened. KJ is 20 now and we are having dinner at a table in our new home. I am looking out at the backyard where green vines have sprung up along the fence and oak trees sway like dancing women. Wes sits at the head of the table and KJ is our guest. Our frequent guest. He lives across town in a little house he shares with his new wife, Anna, who works third shift at the hospital. But twice a week or more I see him standing on the hooked rug near the door, keys jingling in his hand.
“You making dinner?” he asks. “Smells like something…” His nose shoots up like an antenna.
“Why don’t you move in, KJ?” Wes calls from the sofa.
“Hell no,” I say. “I can’t tolerate those feet.”
Everyone laughs, moves to the kitchen to pour drinks and pile food on our plates.
At the table now, I wonder how we got here. There were no great debates or interventions, extravagant plans or schemes I invented to get my men to play nice. No books or blogs read on the topic of blending the family. Just momentum. Boxes in and boxes out; dinners cooked and consumed. And it was not at all like when KJ was 5 and I held up a loaded fork pleading, “You’ll love this if you just try it.”
***
Expanding the family...
It’s been five years since we lost our lit
tle dog Carlo to Rudy. Christmas is approaching, and I decide I need something special this year. I need a dog.
“If you want a dog, let’s get a dog,” Wes says one Saturday afternoon.
Wes has seen me gawk at mutts on the street. He’s heard me baby-talk to excited beasts in the tone mothers use on their blushing infants and wobbling toddlers. Carlo had taught me to treasure the sweet serenade of dog yelps upon arriving home. I thought how happy Wes and I were with each other, with all our domestic rituals: tickling each other's feet while watching nighttime television, lying on beach towels in the backyard, the warm sun thick as honey on our skin. So happy we are, and yet we could be happier still. Happier with a dog.
I understand there are two kinds of people in the world: those who love dogs and those who simply haven’t met the right ones. Wes is stuck in the latter group. It’s not his fault. His time has not yet come, so of course he has preconceived notions, territorial rules and non-negotiable terms. Silly man.
“No dogs on the bed,” he declares as we work out the details of our plan. “And the couch is off limits too. I don’t want to walk around with pet hair all over my clothes.”
“Of course,” I assure him as I conjure memories of Carlo on the couch, Carlo on the bed, Carlo on a dining room chair, one wily paw on the table, ready to stake his claim. I see no reason to debate my views with Wes. There are things he simply can’t understand, having never experienced true dog love. Explaining these grand and glorious mysteries now will only confuse my poor man.
We spend a week scouring adoption sites in search of the perfect pup: a small breed, a Carlo clone. I land on a scruffy contender named Snoopy, a wiry-haired weirdo with a Tina-Turner style hairdo that is comical and endearing. But when we show up at the shelter, he is no longer available.
“What now?” Wes asks. Later he confesses he was relieved. Snoopy didn’t strike him as the pickup-truck-riding type or the kind that would spook an intruder— not that we were in the market for a security system. But it is a perk he’s considered.
Snoopy aside, we observe the other dogs vying for adoption, the howling faces of labradors, hounds and terriers. The groaning gets wilder and more desperate as the tour commences. I hone in on all the droopy eyes and flaccid tongues. The cages rattle as dogs hop up, bark and pace. The smell of dingy fur and mud-pawed holes billows in the yard. Wet noses worm through fence holes as we pass. Which nose is ours? Each seems decent enough in terms of size, shape and sniff-ability. And then I see it. The mutt of my dreams, the cherub of pit bulls, pink-bellied with a dancing tail and ears like crisp white teepees. She watches me. Her eyes are pleading domes, black as a shade of grief. Her gaze is voodoo, and I know instantly she is ours. I know the way you know anything profound — with a tingle and an ache. I think for a moment she could be my Carlo reincarnated, but in reality she could clean her teeth with Carlo. Still, I sense she is gentle and loving and perfectly equipped to teach us to aspire to unconditional love, which is the duty and role of all dogs. When the handler unlatches her pen, we slip inside the cement square. The 50-pound babe bounds toward me, jowls slapping against her teeth. I bend down and she puts a paw on my knee, her tongue on my face and works it up and down like a painter glazing the canvas.
“Oh my! Someone made a friend,” the handler says as she tugs on the dog’s collar. “This is Lady.”
Lady: Bull-legged, beefy-necked and drooling. Hardly a lady.
“I need her,” I say.
After Lady is vet-checked, microchipped and deemed suitable for adoption, we rescue her from the pound. She seems to know this fact. When she scurries to the truck, Wes hoists her onto the leather seat in front of the window and the shelter fades to memory as her new life clicks into view like a colorful View-Master reel. With his cell phone, Wes records her elated face. Later, I will watch it and think how foreign she was to us then, like a postcard or a photograph of some place we’d yet to go.
“Lady” becomes “Mia Sophia,” and a few weeks later we tack on “Princess,” making her “Princess Mia Sophia,” a title she easily earns. We buy her an engraved collar that bears her new name (pink with tiny hearts), and as we get to know our girl, our collection of names for her grows. Wes calls her “Bug,” as in “Lady Bug.” When she is nose-deep in hibiscus or skulking near the fence, he wails, “Bug-Bug,” while patting his thighs to entice her. Upon hearing it, her ears flip up like wild puppets and she barrels toward the sound of his voice — oafish and slap-happy, a pig at the sound of “Sooey.”
***
Some women use their wiles. I can’t say what spell Princess Mia brews on a Saturday afternoon while I grocery shop. The house is quiet when I return and what I see is this: limbs flung on a mattress, two chests heaving, one pillow puckering between the faces of my dog and man. I stand there for a moment and listen to Wes and Mia breathe in unison. They are nose to nose, taking a long, delicious nap. The first of many together. No dogs on the bed, I think, smiling. He’s been voodooed.
But there are things we didn’t know about our Mia. Storms set her off. Separation makes her anxious. Wes and I come home one afternoon to a splintered door frame and a closet door ripped clean from the hinges. As thunder roars outside and lightning flickers at the windows, we navigate the minefield of gnawed wood in the hallway leading to the bedroom.
“Bug-Bug,” Wes calls as we give each other astounded looks and make slow-motion gestures — pointing in silence at a blood-streaked wall, mouths wide. Inside the spare bedroom, we flip on the light and find our girl trembling beneath a heap of wet blankets, stinking of urine. It is the first of many storm-fueled outbursts. During other storms, Mia proceeds to rip down two more door frames, mangle her wire pet crate into modern art, and chew, claw or eviscerate various objects.
On New Year’s Eve, fireworks crackle and pop outside our bedroom. With a few Rieslings and a cheese platter weighing us down, Wes and I crawl into bed and fall asleep. But the neighborhood gets lively and sometime before midnight, a paw appears on our bed. Then a panting snout. With one eye shut, I see her frenzied face with every snap and burst of a firecracker. Her breathing intensifies and soon she is on our bed, pawing at our throats as if she could climb inside us. I bear-hug her, but with every new explosion she spirals. She circles the bed like a crazed wolf.
“This is too much,” I say. “What are we going to do?”
Without a word, Wes sits up, grabs his pillow and leads Mia into the closet where he coaxes her to the floor and shuts the door. I lie in bed and watch the colors splatter the sky: orange, green, red. They pop and splinter, particles fading to nothing. At some point my eyes shut and we sleep all night, Mia and Wes in the stifling closet, me on our king-sized bed. When I wake up the following morning, I think how I love that man, how I love our life, our family.
***
Dogs make you do things you should do but probably wouldn’t had they not insisted. Since we adopted Mia, we have taken her for countless walks — in the early mornings when the dew clings to the grass and the whole neighborhood is fragrant. At night when we’d rather be watching television but discover instead there is a marvelous moon, a diamond in the black boundless sky. Walking a dog is not so much a chore as a privilege — the ritual of watching her head cock at the mention of a walk, the tap-dance of her paws as she rushes to the door, beaming. However long she takes to sniff the weathered mailbox posts or meander up the street, it is never too long. More than a physical exercise, it’s a discipline. How far can we stray from our phones, laptops, never-ending lists? Together, we learn to step away and admire the deep purple flowers crowning the crape myrtle branches.
Chapter 14
Petals of Rain
Drip
I am a twenty-something mother of two when KJ starts school. He meanders onto the playground and into the whirling sea of child-monsters who are yelping and leaping on the concrete in front of the building. I am having one of those slow-motion moments in which a data file of emotions — heartbreak, fear an
d anxiety — downloads into my consciousness. I feel it all sink in as I see his small body, sporting new jeans and a collared shirt, swimming in the bulk of his backpack. He is going somewhere I cannot go. I feel my hand squeeze his a little tighter. I watch him pull free and march away like a battery-operated toy. I’d stocked his cartoon backpack with all of the requisite items: 2-ply Kleenex, a pack of sharpened pencils, wide-ruled paper, Elmer’s glue, a box of jumbo crayons and all of the other essentials on the kindergarten list. But these things are not enough.
Panic sits in my throat and I consider taking him home, walking him right back to our house where he belongs because he is not ready for school. But I know the truth is that he is plenty ready — and I am not. I hadn’t anticipated it being so hard, had not imagined I would be one of those nervous moms. I am an off-brand diaper mom, a cereal-for-dinner mom. Somehow a sharp prong of fear has perforated my sanity and strung me up like a largemouth bass.