An Idiot in Marriage

by David Jester

  “Don’t you have something cheaper?” I asked her at one point. There were so many dogs around, living inside the house and in kennels out back, that it seemed like a logical question. “Something a little older, a little uglier maybe?”

  Lizzie seemed caught in two moods, unsure whether she wanted to flee the house and her husband or wait for the ground to swallow her up. It was an expression I knew well.

  “Are you serious?” the breeder asked.

  “He is, unfortunately,” Lizzie chimed as I grinned at them both. Ben seemed amused, possibly sensing the tension, possibly feeding off the smile on my face, or maybe just reacting to the fact that we had taken him to an interactive zoo.

  “I only have labradoodle and cockapoo pups,” she explained. “A few of them have homes lined up, and none of them are ugly or old. I’m sorry.” She didn’t look sorry at all.

  “I saw an older one around here earlier,” I told her. “A fat thing, bigger than the others. He looked like he was well past his prime. You know the one—bald, a little odd looking, he was lying down. Ben tried to pull his tail.”

  She had a stern look on her face. “That wasn’t his tail,” she said, going some way to explain her sudden contempt for my child.

  “Wow,” I said, genuinely impressed. I turned to Ben and cringed as I noticed he was sucking on his fingers.

  “That’s Freddy,” she said.

  “He didn’t tell me his name.”

  She clearly wasn’t one for jokes. “Freddy is the father,” she said. “He’s not for sale. He’s my baby. I wouldn’t sell him for all the money in the world.” I’m not sure I wanted him anymore anyway. I could live with a bald dog and an old dog, but I’m not sure I could live with a bald and old dog that still managed to emasculate me.

  “The same goes for his mother, Angie,” she said. I hadn’t seen her, but she was probably hiding. Or, if Freddy was anything to go by, maybe she was in recovery.

  I was fairly sure she was lying. The fact that she was happy to keep them as breeding machines, constantly pregnant and churning out little half-breeds that she could sell for a profit, suggested she didn’t love them as much as she pretended.

  “Have you got any other animals?” I wondered.

  “Any other animals?”

  It’s amazing how people turn to repetition when they’re confused.

  “Ducks, cats … I quite fancy a parrot.”

  Lizzie covered her face with her hands, seemingly of the belief that if she couldn’t see it, then it wasn’t happening.

  “I have none of those, I’m sorry.” Again, I didn’t believe her. I was convinced that she had cats somewhere.

  “Okay, then I’ll guess we’ll take the dog.”

  “You guess?” She didn’t sound pleased.

  “Yes.” I took the money out of my wallet and handed it to her, rather reluctantly. “One dog please.”

  At that point, Lizzie spoke. I heard the words, “Oh my God,” escape her lips and slip past her hand.

  “Well, Ben certainly seems to like him,” Lizzie announced proudly as he took to the puppy like, well, like a baby to a puppy.

  “Of course he likes him. He’s an animated, excitable, drooling ball of fur. Take away the fur and two of the legs and they’re exactly the same.”

  “Did you just compare our baby to a dog?”

  “Not just any dog, a dog that costs as much as you make in a month.”

  She nodded firmly. “Okay then.”

  Despite my unease at having spent so much money on him—money I could have used to buy a pool table, a new Xbox, or something else that brought me fun and relief and didn’t shit on my floor and ruin my slippers—I found myself falling for the little bundle of excitement. He was hyperactive, but I was used to that with Ben. He was also lovable. We called him Eddie. I have no idea why and I played no part in the naming process, but the way Lizzie told me what we were going to call him, she made it sound like I did.

  There’s a certain joy in something that loves you unconditionally and will always do so, something that will not grow into a nervous and nasty bundle of hormones, lust, and hate. One of the things I had insisted on if we got the dog was that Lizzie had to walk it, feed it, and generally look after it. I was already cleaning up after one family member; I wasn’t going to volunteer for overtime. Lizzie agreed to that and she stuck to that agreement, but gradually, over the process of a few weeks, I began to fall for his charms.

  When she was at work and he was getting agitated at home, the idea was to send him into the backyard and let him do his business there, but he had learned where his leash was, and whenever I opened the back door, he ran to it. I was a sucker for animals, always giving them what they wanted, and I knew I had to take him. In fairness to him, it wasn’t much of a backyard, no more than a few square feet fenced in and surrounded by neighboring houses. I certainly wouldn’t want to empty my bowels on a patch of dead grass while half a dozen neighbors watched me.

  “Okay, I’ll walk you,” I told him. “But don’t tell your mummy. I don’t want to set a precedent here.”

  One bright day, with the sun belting down a ferocious heat, I felt content as I pushed the stroller with a smiling baby inside and an excited dog strapped to it. I took Eddie to the local park and let him off his leash, at which point he sat in front of me and wagged his tail. I had no idea what he wanted, and wasn’t sure whether he was waiting for me to play with him or to give him permission, but I did neither.

  I settled into a park bench with the sun searing above me. He was still hovering around my feet, which was a little creepy. Lizzie had said he was reluctant to go very far. He probably had abandonment issues, worried that if he let us out of his sight, he would end up back with the crazy woman who burned effigies of penises and smelled like feet.

  I took Ben out of the stroller, rested him on my knee, and then leaned back, soaking up the sun.

  “Ah, he’s so lovely!”

  I hadn’t seen anyone approach, but when I snapped open my eyes, I saw a young blonde woman standing over me. Eddie was jumping up and down by her side, desperate to hump her leg.

  “Is he yours?” she asked.

  “The dog or the baby?”

  “The dog.”

  “Yes, he’s mine.”

  Eddie continued to jump, and when she reached down to stroke him, he licked her hand. She seemed to enjoy that and let him continue, but would have acted differently if I’d told her what he’d been licking moments earlier.

  “And the baby?” she wondered.

  “He’s mine, as well.”

  She grinned and sat beside me. Eddie followed her and pestered her all the way, but when he realized that she was no longer paying attention to him, he wondered off to find someone else who would.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ben.”

  She reached forward and squeezed his cheeks, making the baby noises that everyone seems to think are compulsory. I try my best not to make them, worried that Ben will grow up thinking that’s how people talk. It did occur to me that if I’m the only one not talking like that, then my son will grow up thinking I’m weird. But that ship has probably already sailed.

  “He’s so gorgeous,” she announced.

  In my pre-married years, I would have tried to hit on her. She was sweet, pretty, but I was taken and as a result I had excused myself from the dating game. Ironically, that had made me more confident around woman, so although I had more chance of success, I had no desire for it.

  Relationships were hard work. I knew that better than anyone, and with Lizzie I had done all of that hard work. I had struggled through the heartbreak and the delight, and I had emerged with a happy marriage and a healthy kid. To risk that would be stupid and would mean having to start all over again. I also still thought that Lizzie was the most amazing woman I had ever known and struggled to see that perfection in anyone else. I had stopped telling her that since we’d married. It was okay when we were courting, but mar
riage was different—marriage was a battleground and you had save your ammunition for when it was needed the most.

  “Aren’t you lovely!” She pinched Ben’s cheek. “Just like your daddy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So how old is he?” she wanted to know.

  “He’s just over a year, coming on to fourteen months now.”

  A sympathetic look spread across her face and she stared deep into my eyes. “It must be so difficult doing what you do.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about so I just smiled. That usually gets me through.

  “You’re so brave.” She looked like she wanted to reach forward and pinch my cheeks. “My name is Charlotte, by the way.”

  “Kieran.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Kieran,” she said with a bright smile. “Do you come here often?” She winked.

  “I’ve actually only just started.”

  “Well, you should come more. Especially now that summer is here.” She stood, stretched, and then checked her watch. As soon as he saw her active legs, Eddie came trotting over and tried to hump them. “I have some errands to run. Maybe I’ll see you here tomorrow?”

  “Maybe.”

  I stayed for another hour or so, letting Eddie pester every passer-by. He chased an unfortunate squirrel and then engaged in a shouting match with a tree when the squirrel scuttled hastily up it. He finally did his business, but he chose to do it in front of a woman with a stroller, presumably because she refused to pay attention to it.

  During that time, I was visited by three more women. A couple of them were schoolgirls, no more than sixteen, but the attention was just as nice, and Eddie enjoyed wiping his groin on two more sets of legs. The third was an older woman with a cougar glint in her eye. She devoted more time to me than the others and sat closer than they did, but she didn’t try anything.

  I left when it started to get dark, and when I returned home Lizzie was waiting for me.

  “So, you caved after all, eh?”

  I was still smiling from my exploits in the park where I had inadvertently become somewhat of a local hunk. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “Well, I’m off work for a week now,” she told me as Eddie jumped into her arms and threatened to lick her face off. “So I can take over the walking duties for a while.”

  “No, no,” I jumped in quickly, too quickly.

  She frowned at me suspiciously.

  “I mean, it’s okay. It was fun. He was no trouble.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “He didn’t pester anyone, he didn’t insist that you play with him, and he didn’t try to shove his nose in every dog’s asshole?”

  “No,” I lied. “He was fine. He seems more relaxed with me. Maybe I should walk him more often.”

  She put him down. She was suspicious, and I wasn’t very good at hiding my guilt, but eventually she shrugged. “Okay, if that’s what you want, then you can walk him from now on.”

  I walked Eddie and Ben in the park every day, sometimes more than once. They both became minor celebrities, doted upon by every woman who saw them.

  “They’re so cute, I want to eat them up.”

  “They’re so cute, I’m going to die.”

  It’s amazing how when women see something cute, their first reactions involve murder, cannibalism, or suicide. A man might nod, smile, and get on with his day, but if you catch a woman in her prime, when the hormones are kicking up a fuss, then cuteness can be deadly.

  Simply being with two small and cute things made me adorable by association. Men tend not to enjoy being called adorable, but I loved it. I became just as popular as Ben and Eddie, with the difference being that I could take advantage of that popularity. I could chat, I could flirt. I had no intention of taking it further, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have fun. Lizzie wouldn’t agree, I was sure about that, but that would also make her a hypocrite.

  One of my oldest friends, Max, threw regular parties for his fellow businessmen and rich neighbors and we had tagged along to one of them. Even the bathroom attendant was better dressed than I was, but Lizzie looked like a goddess. She was swamped by aging party-goers all night, bombarded with compliments, and flirted with in the only way that rich old men can flirt.

  “Let’s have dinner in Paris, feast on some fine cuisine, and then, maybe, on each other.”

  “Let’s take a ride on the Orient Express, let’s see as much of the world as we can before we do the same to one another.”

  “Let me just pop in my dentures, take my pill, and we can go at it like rabbits.”

  Not all of those chat-up lines were genuine, but that was the gist of it. They bothered her all night, not knowing or caring that I was with her. They probably didn’t see me as a threat. Money was everything to them, and the person with the most money had the best chance. As I sipped from a glass of flat champagne, Lizzie flirted back, teasing, joking. When I pulled her up on it at the end of the night, she told me that she was just having fun, that it was harmless. And after all, that’s all I was doing at the park.

  One of the most regular visitors to the park were two teenage girls. They looked fifteen, but I told myself they were eighteen—it made me feel a little less like a pervert. But only a little. Their names were Eleanor and Pepsi. When it came to unusual names, I couldn’t help but search for the meanings and came to the conclusion that Eleanor’s parents thought they were giving birth to a ninety-year-old woman with gray hair, and that Pepsi’s parents were really committed to the Coke Wars. Parents can be cruel and some shouldn’t be allowed to name their children, referring to an advisory board or an Internet poll instead. But Pepsi could take solace in the fact she wasn’t named after another giant corporation and didn’t end up as Monsanto, Five Guys, or Virgin, although judging by the way she dressed and the way she flirted, at least one of those names would have been ironic.

  “My friend just had a baby,” Pepsi told me as she played with Ben’s cheek. “How stupid is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s only fourteen.”

  “Oh, then very.”

  “I mean, she should have at least waited until she was sixteen.”

  “Yes, of course. And what about the dad?”

  She gave me a bewildered look, as though that was the strangest thing she had ever heard.

  “What do you mean?”

  I wondered if she’d had the talk about the birds and the bees and if what I’d said was tantamount to letting slip that there was no Santa Claus. But this was clearly a girl that not only knew about the birds and the bees, but had humped a few of them in her time.

  “Isn’t the father on the scene?”

  “No. Well, I mean, maybe, but how would she even know who he was?”

  I stared at her for a few seconds, completely confused. Eventually she returned to pinching Ben’s cheek and playing with Eddie.

  They were two of the regulars, but not the two I liked the most. Just like the others, they assumed I was a single parent, and I let them assume that. I would have gladly—maybe—told them otherwise if they had actually asked, but they didn’t. The teenagers were the most surprised by it, but the older women, the ones I imagined my single self really going for, thought it was sweet.

  One of those was Charlotte, the sweet girl I had bumped into on the first day. She was an aspiring actress, a hard-working student who hadn’t had much luck in life or in love. She confided in me with stories of both.

  “First there was Neil,” she had said. “He was sweet, but he had this weird thing with his sister.”

  “Oh,” I said as that found its way into my head. I mulled it over for a few seconds, and by the end I was desperate to know, “What ‘weird thing’?”

  I wouldn’t have blamed her for not divulging that information, but she felt so at ease with me that she was happy to. “Well, when they were kids they used to share a bath together.”

  “Okay, well, that’s no
t—”

  “And they haven’t stopped.”

  “Oh, yes, definitely weird. Maybe they’re just trying to save water?”

  “You’re so funny, Kieran, that’s why I like you.” She giggled and shoved me on the arm. “And then there was Chris,” she continued.

  “He sounds like a dick,” I jumped in.

  She gave me a confused look and then nodded. “He was. He was very kinky in bed, which I don’t mind, but it got a little weird.”

  Again I decided to push my luck. “Weird how? He didn’t ask you to share a bath with him and his sister, did he?”

  She laughed and nudged me on the arm again. I laughed with her, even though the shoving was becoming a little annoying.

  “He was into whips, studs, that sort of thing. And when I said that wasn’t my style, he thought it was part of the game, that I was being submissive.”

  “That couldn’t have ended well.”

  “For him, no it didn’t. I gripped his balls and threatened to crush them if he didn’t put the whip down.”

  “Always go for the weak spot,” I said, instinctively folding my legs.

  “And then there was Matthew.” She sighed as she mentioned his name. “He was sweet and kind and, well, everything that I wanted at first, but it turned out to be a lie.”

  “Oh.” That made me feel a little uncomfortable.

  Could it be?

  “He was a womanizer,” she told me. “Only cared about sex, and with as many women as he could—” She paused and frowned at me. “Why are you looking like that?” she asked. “Do you know him?”

  Probably.

  I shook my head. “No, no, of course not. I was just worried for you. I was just thinking about what you must have been through.”

  Definitely.

  “Thanks.” She put her arms around me. “You’re the best. Ben and Eddie have done well to find you; it’s just a shame that their mother left and that there’s no one else waiting for you at home.” She pulled back and stared into my eyes. “A man like you should have women lining up.”

  As it happened, a man like me had exactly that, but only because this man was a liar. I broke eye contact—fearing that she might go in for the kiss—and then checked my watch. “Oh, would you look at that, I better get going. This little man needs his feed.”