Stepdog

by Nicole Galland

  “The dog is fine, it’s the way Sara treats her that sends me round the bend. She talks to it like it can understand her, she’s constantly touching it, patting it, scratching its ears, she keeps telling me what’s going on inside the dog’s head as if she could know, and I want to say to her, ‘That’s not what the dog is fuckin’ thinking, all the dog is thinking is feed me.’”

  He shrugged. “Sure all girls are like that with dogs.”

  “And our lives circulate around the dog—we have to be home to feed it and walk it, we never can go away for the weekend, she plans her week around when the dog needs a bath. She doesn’t plan her week around when I need a bath.”

  “Well, in fairness, Rory,” said Danny. “You’re not so dependent on her as the wee dog is.”

  “She encourages the dog to be dependent,” I said. “It’s maddening to watch, to be honest.”

  Danny looked confused. “Are you saying that if she convinced the dog to be less dependent, then the dog could somehow give itself a bath?” He grinned and raised his glass again. “Now that, I’d pay good money to see.”

  I GOT HOME before Sara, and of course the dog, as always, greeted me with her usual delirious joy, as if she thought I had been abducted by aliens and my safe return warranted a tribal dance. And maybe a treat. No sooner did I calm her wriggling than she heard Sara’s key in the door, glanced at me—checking to see if I wanted to turn in circles with her, I suppose—and then threw herself ecstatically at Sara as she entered. I waited for them to have their moment, which lasted longer than my moment with Sara when finally she gave me a hug and a kiss.

  I boiled the kettle for tea and we sat with our mugs at the counter, reporting on how the news had gone over in our respective camps.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Steve was so excited I think he wants to throw us a party, and Elliot was, you know, cautiously approving. I got a little speech about the meaning of marriage and all that, which I can understand after all they went through for the right to wed.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What about Lena?”

  Sara brushed her thick bangs off her forehead with one hand, then nodded with her lower lip protruding a little, a tic of hers when she had tricky news.

  “What?” I said. “What?”

  “No, it’s fine. She just wanted me to tell you that she’ll lock you into Queen Hatshepsut’s sarcophagus if you’re taking advantage of my good nature.”

  “I promise not to take advantage of your good nature,” I said solemnly, “as long as I can take advantage of your obvious desire to give yourself to me on the counter. Right now.” I grabbed her round the waist with one arm suddenly, pushed both mugs out of the way with the other, then reached down to lift her legs up toward the countertop. She shouted with surprised laughter, pretending to fight me off, but I got her fully supine on the counter with little effort, and leaned over her. I reached toward her chest, to slip my hand under her bra, and dove toward her lips for a kiss, which I got, the tart. But before my hand had touched flesh, I realized that the dog was leaping up and down behind me, trying to find purchase on the countertop with a forepaw. Finally she stood upright enough to land a paw on the counter right at Sara’s head, and was (barely) able to peer over. She glanced up at me, terribly pleased with herself, tail wagging, and then right at Sara, whose face was only inches from the dog’s eyes.

  “Hey, puppy.” Sara laughed. “Whatcha doing up here? Who’s a good dog? Who’s a good dog?”

  “Oh, well,” I said, and pulled away, leaving my wife and her dog grinning at each other like a couple of eejits.

  For the record, there was a lot of that kind of thing. Who’s a good sport? Who’s a good sport? Rory is.

  WE FILLED OUT the governmental forms on Halloween while waiting for the kids to collect our homemade cookies. Cody did look comical in her Red Sox cap, which she kept trying to shake off. Sara had sewn herself an eccentric costume that I think was supposed to be an elf (as in Santa’s, not Tolkien’s). She modeled it for the first time Halloween evening and looked very cute in it.

  “That,” I declared, taking a bite of a healthy cookie, “admirably reflects both your efficient hands-on midwestern competence and your quirky Greenwich Village quirkiness. Not to mention your sexy legs.”

  “You said ‘quirky’ twice.”

  “Well, it’s pretty quirky,” I said sympathetically.

  “Where’s your costume?”

  “I don’t need a costume,” I said, arms wide. “I’m already a real-life alien!”

  “I should have seen that coming.”

  “You’d think so, given how long we’ve been married and all.”

  We settled by the coffee table with a plate of biscuits, two biros, and all the forms. I lay on the couch, a territory I had claimed since moving in, as it was the only thing that resembled my place. Sara, as usual, took the armchair, and Cody, as usual, rested her chin heavily on Sara’s thigh. Without moving her head, the dog glanced with hopeful eyebrows between the bowl of cookies and Sara.

  “No way, puppy,” said Sara. “Bad for your tummy.”

  The dog sighed, tragically.

  There were so many bloody forms. There was Biographic Information, there was the Affidavit of Support, with sixteen pages of instructions for Sara, making her financially responsible for me. Then the Petition for Alien Resident, again for Sara, saying Rory O’Connor was her husband so could they please not deport his arse. There was the pivotal Application for Employment Authorization.

  Then came the big one: Application to Register Permanent Status. This was only six pages, but Sara commandeered it, partly because she’s a little controlling but mostly because she didn’t trust me to read it thoroughly. I can’t say I blame her—so far my contribution to taming the paperwork had consisted mostly of serenading her with James Taylor songs and spoon-feeding her Ben & Jerry’s. Since Sara had cornered the market on Serious Attitude, I suppose it was a kindness—to her—for me to add a little levity. She had been a good sport about it, but I found her reluctance to trust me with the most important form reasonable enough.

  “I don’t think you really want to be trusted,” she said sagely, her keen green eyes glancing up from the form. “I think you like relying on me to be the grown-up.”

  “I think you like my relying on you to be the grown-up,” I corrected. “And I think you like my being silly as well. So actually, you’re benefiting from this arrangement doubly-o. I’m getting a green card, but you’re getting two of your deepest psychological needs met. No, please, you don’t have to thank me.”

  She squelched her smile, and looked back at the form. “‘Have you ever’—that’s all caps, in bold—‘have you EVER,’” she read, “‘in or outside the United States knowingly committed any crime of moral turpitude—’”

  “You’re kidding me! Moral turpitude? That’s not on there.”

  “‘—any crime of moral turpitude, or a drug-related offense for which you have not been arrested?’”

  I erupted with laughter. “Really? I can’t get a green card if I admit I ever got stoned in the privacy of my own flat?”

  “Mr. O’Connor,” said Sara, wagging a pointy elf shoe at me. “Please take this seriously.”

  “I’ve committed a morally turpitudinous amount of drug-related offenses, but not in many years.”

  “I’ll mark it no, then,” she said.

  The other questions I could answer with complete honesty—although Sara, earnest as she was, could not ask many of them with a straight face. No, Uncle Sam, cross my heart, I’d never been a prostitute, hijacker, kidnapper, or assassin, nor had I engaged in any other form of terrorist activity. I’m glad they asked, because the asking of that question would foil all those terrorists and assassins and hijackers and kidnappers applying for green cards.

  We were interrupted by a buzz of the bell, and stepped out into the hall together to receive a large trick-or-treating gaggle of zombies, ghouls, and Harry Potter characters. A few protectiv
e parents hovered outside on the step pretending to admire our jack-o’-lanterns. When they saw the Red Sox–capped dog, most of the kids squealed and reached toward her.

  “Cody!” said one shrill, delighted four-year-old Ron Weasly. It was Marie’s son, Nick; I quickly scanned the parent gaggle and saw Marie herself. The dog took a moment to steel herself, and then maneuvered like a veteran celebrity through the group, making sure everyone had a chance to pat her, and delighting Marie’s son by pretending to lick his face. He was awfully chuffed with himself for the being the only kid who knew the dog personally; it made him king of the under-fives.

  Marie, meanwhile, grinned and waved at me. “’Dat your wife?” she asked, meaning Sara.

  “The one and only,” I said, feeling strangely exposed. “Sara, Marie, Marie, Sara. I know Marie from the arboretum,” I explained to Sara.

  “Congratulations!” said Marie. “You’re a lucky woman, and he is so in love with you.”

  “Thank you,” said Sara. She looked really pleased, which made me feel like a million bucks, as the Americans say.

  “And you have the world’s best dog,” Marie added to Sara. She went on: “And I know you get all the credit, because he’s always saying it’s not his dog, it’s his wife’s dog.”

  That made me feel even more exposed. “He sure does,” Sara said, her smile freezing a wee bit. “Always.”

  After the gaggle moved down the block, we returned to Sara’s living room (sorry, our living room) so she could continue to interrogate me on behalf of Homeland Security. No, I did not intend to engage in espionage or overthrow the government. I’d never tortured anyone, denied anyone’s ability to practice their religious beliefs, or served in a guerrilla group. “Never too late to start, though,” I mused. Sara threw her pen at me.

  “Here’s that medical form,” she said, holding it out. “Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record, you have to take it to a government-approved doctor to determine that you do not have . . .”—she pulled it back to read—“tuberculosis, syphilis, malaria, mental illness, or drug addiction.” As I began to retort, she said firmly, “No more jokes about moral turpitude, please. You don’t get to derail your own immigration process with puerile humor. Also there’s another form here you have to take to someplace in Rhode Island, and have them measure your pupils or something.”

  “That’s so Blade Runner,” I said approvingly, reaching for the forms.

  There was another buzz from outside; Sara dropped the paper to the table and we both rose, which brought the dog dutifully scrambling up again. As we moved to the door, my cell phone rang as well. I glanced at the screen.

  There it was again, that Los Angeles number.

  “Dougie,” I said quietly.

  Her eyes widened, and she gestured broadly toward the back of the flat. “Go, take the call! Cody and I can handle the little ninjas.”

  I changed trajectory toward the bedroom as I answered.

  “Rory!” said Dougie. “The Irish-detective-rock-star series got the green light!”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said, suddenly terrified as I stepped into the bedroom and closed the door.

  “And guess what, buddy: the producers loved your tape and I got you an audition with the studio!”

  I did a triple take in the dark. “A what?”

  “An audition. For the studio.”

  “. . . When? Where?” I asked, my stomach turning somersaults.

  “It’s in New York, at the studio. Date’s not set in stone yet. We have to sort out the test-option contract, that’ll take a while, I’ll get you a good lawyer.”

  “I . . . I have to have a lawyer to audition?”

  “I mentioned it before, Rory. It’s a fifty-page contract, it’s going to be more of a headache than your immigration paperwork.”

  “Just to audition?”

  “You’re not just auditioning. You’re promising the studio that if they want you, they can have you for as long as they say. I’ll e-mail you the details tomorrow, but I wanted to give you a heads-up. Also . . .” He hesitated, but was deliberately trying to keep his voice upbeat. “I don’t think it will come up, but don’t tell them you don’t have the green card yet. If they ask, tell ’em you have it, you just don’t have it on you.”

  Oh, fuck. I had been down this road before: three times I’d been cast in major films and then had to excuse myself for lacking the right paperwork. Turned out not even Ben Affleck could make me legal.

  “Dougie, tell me, mate: Can I not do this without a green card?”

  “Well, they can’t hire you without a green card, and the contract is essentially a mutual agreement about potentially hiring you, so if you want to get technical, it would be better if you already had the green card, but I think we can fudge it until you actually get it. Just, you know, if you can do anything to expedite the process, that would be great.” He was so forcefully chipper I felt exhausted for him.

  I found it hard to breathe for a moment as I fumbled for the light. Outside, a little girl shrieked with joy, “Doggie!” A cascade of giggles and happy-parent-cooing followed.

  Chapter 7

  The next day, Dougie sent me an e-mail with a sample test-option contract. He was not exaggerating: that contract was to my immigration application what a Ph.D. thesis is to a primary-school book report. The United States government, for all its fussiness, was readier to give me a work permit than the television studio was to give me an audition slot. Immigration services made fewer demands of my immortal soul than did Redstar Entertainment. After days—weeks, I think, in the end—of faxing (via Sara’s office) and tweaking and e-mails, repeat ad nauseam, there was a contract saying that if I took the part, I would be their chattel for up to seven years. When I finally signed it, I felt a rush of exhilaration, as if I’d hit the big time by simply being allowed to audition.

  One anxiety-ridden fortnight later I borrowed Sara’s MINI Cooper and left at dawn. I drove like a maniac, listening to the scenes Dougie had sent me—I’d recorded them onto my iPod and plugged it into the MINI’s sound system. I’m a fast study and I’d already nearly memorized the whole thing. To be fair, the writing was good even if the premise was ridiculous.

  I somehow avoided morning rush-hour coming into New York from Connecticut. Since that is an impossible feat, I decided it was a day for miracles.

  In the city, I parked in a painfully overpriced surface lot on the West Side, rushed eastward on foot, with guitar case slung over my back and fiddle case tucked under my left arm. I paused for coffee, and then sauntered in, as if I’d come from just around the corner, to an off-duty soap-opera stage near Lincoln Center. It was sort of like a black-box theater, with the vibe of a rehearsal room or backstage: high-ceilinged, dark, cool, the sound dampened somehow, the peripheries cluttered with lighting equipment and prop tables; marks taped on the floor; the faint smell of makeup and hair spray and gaffer’s tape lingering in the air, saturated into the paint or something. Like a theater: an incubator for a fake reality.

  There were four or five blokes dressed in casual black, one with a stubbly beard. By the time I got there, I’d convinced myself this was just like any other audition. Two of the blokes were whispering to each other. One then pointed to me as I set down my guitar and fiddle cases.

  “Oh, right,” said the other one, recognition lighting up his face. “You were what’s-his-face.”

  “I certainly was,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said happily. “Yeah. In, you know, Lear.”

  Hmm. I’d played Lear’s fool once, but it was a shite production.

  “The bad guy,” he said. “You know, the bastard.”

  “Edmund!” I said, and now my face lit up, too, because that had been a fantastic production, the best summer of my life—I’d been Edmund the Bastard in King Lear, in rep with two other equally great shows in some little barn in Nowheres-ville, upstate New York, only time I’d left Massachusetts as an actor, took the gig to forget about some Bo
ston girl who’d dumped me. The pay was shite but I’d sublet my apartment for the whole summer, and as well as Edmund, I’d been Feste in Twelfth Night and Didi in Godot. Best summer of my life, creatively.

  “I saw you in everything,” said the bloke who’d been whispering. He had a proprietary glow delivering this announcement, and that was fine with me. “You were phenomenal.”

  “Aw, shucks, I bet you say that to all the bastards,” I replied, with a flirtatious little swish. “You little motherfucker, you.”

  Nothing breaks the ice like being adorable and foulmouthed at the same time. I blew him a kiss. He looked very chuffed.

  In fact, I sort of flirted with all of them, in the sense I made myself excessively charming and gabby, which comes to me naturally when my adrenaline is pumping and I know I’m on my game.

  After I read, they asked me to sing (I’m a tenor but can reach baritone when I need to), and do accents. I did accents from Ireland—north, south, east, and west—then leapt around Europe, America, fumbled terribly on Australia, and steadied myself in England, moving south to north, and played the fiddle and guitar for them (this was a cinch). It was all a little surreal and strangely effortless, and it was gas seeing the delight on all their faces. Is this really all it took to break into prime time? I should have gotten married years ago.

  “I love that he’s the real deal,” said one of the blokes. The others all shook their heads in agreement. Then one of them said, “You have a green card, of course.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I lied, shocked at my own offhandedness. “If I wasn’t so nervous I could recite the number off by heart. When you call me back, I’ll sing it for you as an aria.”

  Usually I’m brutal in auditions, but this one I had nailed. I know you can never be certain, but I was more confident about being offered that role than I was of getting legal.

  “I knew you’d be great, Rory!” Dougie crowed over the phone afterward as I hustled back to the car. “I’ll let you know about callbacks. Get that green card.”