by Larry Levin
Three days later, we got our stork call.
As one of my cousins described it, the boys literally, and on many levels, brought new life into the family.
When I became a father, I felt about as ready for the responsibility as would someone with a degree from a culinary school who has just been hauled on deck and told to steer a ship. As it turns out, the only way to learn how to be a father is to become one. I am grateful that my father inculcated certain core values that have proved to be beneficial guides, but I recall no open, candid conversations with him about serious personal issues. However, I can remember several moments when I learned how not to act — such as how damaging and counterproductive it is when a father loses his temper. My most disappointing moments as a father have been when I felt that I had acted too authoritarian and interjected anger into the moment. I would feel keen disappointment that I had become my father. His anger had driven me away; it had created a wedge between us. I desperately did not want my children to be afraid of me.
And certainly nothing that I have learned over the past thirty years of being a lawyer is of any use in being a father. One of the things drilled into new lawyers is never to ask a question to which you do not know the answer, because it could potentially damage your case. Of course, as a father you don’t always have that luxury. Sometimes you have to ask questions you don’t know the answer to, even if the answer might well be something you really would prefer not to hear.
When Noah and Dan were born, they were named by their birth parents, respectively, Thaddeus and Basil. (One of our friends suggested that they were given these names so that when they were adopted and given “normal” names, they would be eternally grateful.) One day in fifth grade, it was Noah’s turn to be Star of the Week. Sooner or later, every kid in his class was given the opportunity to tell the others about his or her life: siblings, pets, what Mom and Dad were like, what their parents did for a living. So, Noah being Noah, I figured his birth story would be a part of what he told people. When I picked them up at school that day, after they had climbed into the backseat and gotten buckled in, I asked, “So how was your day, boys?”
“Great,” Dan said immediately.
“Fine,” said Noah curtly, almost dismissively, looking out the window. So I knew, or at least had a sense, that he was going through something. And then came the moment — the first time I had to ask a question when I had no idea what the answer or its ramifications would be. But I wasn’t looking to prove a point or buttress an argument.
I asked, “Do you guys feel differently from your friends because you’re adopted?”
“Not at all,” said Dan.
“Yeah, sometimes I do,” Noah said.
“Really?” I asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror. “How do you feel differently?”
“Well, sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if we hadn’t been adopted.”
Dan immediately reached across the backseat and punched Noah in his left shoulder. “Well, for one thing,” Dan said, “you’d have been Thaddeus and I’d have been Basil.”
This cracked the ice as the moodiness dissolved in laughter.
Before I became a father, I relished my solitude. At the start of Labor Day weekend of the boys’ senior year of high school, our plans to go to the Jersey shore to relax and shut down the house there were interrupted when an unexpected preschool project came up that required Noah to stay home. As Dan did not want to go without Noah, and Jennifer felt uncomfortable leaving them both alone, I went by myself.
My folks had bought the place back in the mid-1960s. It is a three-bedroom cottage, the smallest house on our end of the island and one of only two houses on the block that remain from the day they moved in. Since they had sold the house I grew up in thirty-five years ago, the shore house had become the repository of a lot of memories. I started spending time there as a junior in high school, and the summer freedom it represented had always been an integral part of my life.
Now I was uncomfortable being there alone.
Closing down the shore house always causes me to wonder about what will have happened in my life before we reopen it for the next summer. Seeing one of Oogy’s chew toys in the living room made palpable the tenuous hold we have on what is dear to us. This was the start of the boys’ final year at home, and image after image of them kaleidoscoped before me: running, laughing, standing on the rock jetty as the surf exploded around them, digging holes in the sand, making sand castles, cavorting in the surf with Jennifer. I remembered putting them in the car when they were toddlers and driving around so they would fall asleep. I saw them on the jetty as a storm rolled in, each wearing one of my hooded sweatshirts that reached to their ankles. I could see and hear them playing outside as they showered off the sand before coming into the house. I recalled my mom making us dinner, remembered putting them to sleep on the sofa bed, relived the smell of the clean sheets and the scent of their skin. I could see their sun blond hair, feel the heat of their bodies. They appeared before me, utterly exhausted, suspended in the sleep of the pure.
I had been part of an instrument of joy for them, and it made me feel complete. Laughter resounded within these walls, like distant thunder. It was still so odd for me to contemplate, after all that had happened in my life: How lucky was I?
CHAPTER 4
Doors
two months after the boys turned twelve, in January 2002, Buzzy, our black-and-white cat, began dying, an irreversible decline. It was like watching a slow-motion movie of a car crash without the power to alter the ending.
I had worked hard his entire life at keeping him alive. We had rescued Buzz when he was only five weeks old, and at the time no one thought he would survive. He had infections in both eyes and was so flea-ridden that we ended up having to hire an exterminator to bomb the house to get rid of the infestation. He weighed so little that we could have mailed him with a first-class stamp. He was not even the cat I had wanted. I had envisioned a white cat with black spots, and Buzz was the inverse of that. The first time I picked him up at the animal rescue, he climbed onto my shoulder and went to sleep, purring away as if he were being paid to be cute. To this day I do not know why, but I decided, He’s not exactly what I want, but if he’s here tomorrow, I’ll take him. I came back to the shelter the next day, he was, and I did. He filled the house with his appreciation. He had been a loving friend, a boon companion, as they say. Buzzy never met a lap he did not like. The boys’ great-aunts and -uncles would become electrified whenever Buzz jumped onto their laps, curled up, and started purring. He would ride around the house on my shoulder.
But now he was fourteen, and the end was facing us. When I came home from work one Friday, he was lying in his own waste underneath the dining room table. He had lost the power to move. A small hole opened in my heart. I cleaned him off with a warm, damp cloth and some pet shampoo. I wadded up a blanket from our bed that had our scent and placed Buzz on it in the dining room next to the radiator. Jennifer and the boys and I had made plans earlier in the week to go to a movie that evening, but about halfway through the film, I realized there was no way that I could stay. I was worried and sad and could not concentrate. I needed to be with Buzz; I was convinced that on some level, he would know I was there. I went home and sat next to him, reading a book while he slept. When the movie was over, I drove back and picked up Jennifer and the boys. We returned to the house; I put a pillow and blanket on the floor next to Buzz and curled up for the night.
I called Ardmore when they opened the next morning and told them I was bringing Buzzy over. The boys said they wanted to come to the hospital with me, knowing it was their last chance to say good-bye to the cat they had known all their lives. I was both surprised and moved by their willingness to confront sickness and death; it evidenced a remarkable strength and maturity. It was also a testament to their deep connection with him. I put the blanket in the cat carrier and placed Buzz inside. I put him on the passenger seat next to me while the boys clambe
red into the middle seats. I kept one finger touching him the entire ride. I wanted to reassure him. I thought if he could feel me stroking him, he wouldn’t be afraid.
At the hospital, one of the technicians gently removed Buzz from the carrier and took him into the treatment room. Dr. Peters, one of the two doctors on duty, said that Dr. Bianco would give us a call Monday morning. And then, just as we were getting ready to leave, another one of the staff members emerged from the back of the hospital with a pure white pup on a leash. The dog was so eager to go for a walk that he was straining to get out the door, pawing at the floor. The dog was a visual oxymoron. The right side of him was adorable, but the left side of his face was all flamingo pink scar tissue; it looked as if it had melted. His head appeared swollen, distorted. His right ear was flopped over itself. His left ear was a jagged stump of flesh a thumb’s width high. The back of his lower left lip drooped below his jawline. As soon as he saw us, he started this strange little dance. His head wagged one way and his butt the other; his tail whipped around as though he were trying to take off, which he was. His forepaws whirled on the floor as he tried to gain traction.
The dog strained toward us, and Noah went down on one knee. With a sudden explosive force, the pup tore the leash out of the technician’s grasp and rocketed into Noah, knocking him over. Noah fell backward and lay stretched out as the dog stood on his chest, licking his face without pause. The boys started laughing as Dan reached over and began to pet the dog, who wriggled over to him and lapped at his face. I converged on the entanglement, and when I touched the pup, I felt that I had never met an animal with such soft fur. He was a plush toy come to life, as smooth as butter. I stood and cradled the dog in my arms as he licked my face and neck. The boys crowded around; the pup covered us with kisses. We fell instantly and completely in love with him. Seeing what was going on, the technician removed the leash from around the pup’s neck.
The dog had run to us as though he had instantly recognized that we were his family and he had been waiting all of his life for us to arrive. He knew who we were to him. The union was instantaneous and complete.
I asked Dr. Peters, “What happened to him?” It seemed rather obvious to me that the dog had been badly burned in a fire.
Very matter-of-factly, as if he were telling me the score of a game, Dr. Peters stated, “He was a bait dog.”
“What?” I asked. I was buying time to try to comprehend the enormity of his words. “What’s a bait dog?” I had never heard that term before, yet I had a sense it was nothing pleasant.
“He was used as bait for a fighting dog. That’s how they teach them to fight. They’ll use anything they can get. Poodles, cats, you name it.”
“Where do they get them?”
“Strays. Petnapping.” He raised the first two fingers of each hand. “‘Free to good home’ ads. Wherever and however they can.” He shrugged resignedly.
It was impossible for me to accept what had happened to this pup. To allow it to have happened under any circumstances — to have caused it to happen — was deplorable and repulsive. And there was something so radiantly special about this dog.
The pup had a muzzle that narrowed to a large black nose; his broad forehead, I later discovered, was the result of all the swelling from his injuries and the subsequent surgery. I thought he might be the kind of dog that General Patton had had.
“Is this a bull terrier?” I asked.
Dr. Peters laughed. “No, he’s a pit bull.”
“Where did he come from?” Dan asked.
“He was brought into the ER sometime over the weekend after a police raid. They found this guy bleeding to death in a cage. The SPCA told them to bring him here.”
“Why here?”
“We’re the only hospital around with an after-hours ER facility,” Dr. Peters explained. “Otherwise, the hospitals on the Main Line get injured animals on a rotating basis.”
“Do you know where this happened?”
“I don’t. All I know is that Dr. Bianco operated on him for hours and managed to save him.”
“Do you know how old he is?” Noah asked.
“Somewhere around four months. We can’t really be sure.”
“Of course,” I said. “How long has he been here?”
“He came in in December, but I don’t recall the date offhand. About a month.”
By this time, I had put the dog back down on the floor, and Noah and Dan and I were kneeling and petting him. He was prancing back and forth among the three of us, licking away. But the assistant needed to get him outside to do his business, so we said good-bye and watched them head out the door for their constitutional.
“Who does he belong to?” I asked, certain that an animal with such charm and personality and with so much affection, and who had been at the hospital for several weeks, would by now have found an owner. I was hoping against hope that this might not be the case, and when Dr. Peters told me, “No one,” I felt amazingly fortunate and gratified.
Then I said to the boys, grinning, “Guys? How about it? Should we adopt him?”
They both agreed without a moment’s hesitation.
“Well,” I said, “now that that’s settled, we have to get approval from the CEO.”
“Mom?” the boys asked in chorus.
“Sure. I’ll call on Monday,” I told Dr. Peters. “Don’t let anyone else put in a claim for him until then, okay?”
“I promise,” he said.
I felt giddy. I could not wait to get that dog into my house. When I took the boys back home, and we told Jennifer about the dog, she was less than enthusiastic. In fact, she said no.
She had her reasons. Our previous dog, also a rescue, had bitten a friend of the boys in an unprovoked attack; it had taken eleven stitches to close the gash in his face. Although that had happened over a year and a half ago, Jennifer was understandably fearful that an abused pit bull presented a realistic chance that someone, or someone’s pet, might be brutalized. We asked her to come meet the dog and experience his personality, to talk to Dr. Bianco about it. To my surprise, she agreed. But she also said that she was going to ask Dr. Bianco if he could guarantee that the dog did not pose a threat, and if he gave her any response other than an unqualified no (which, she told me years later, she never thought he would be able to do), she would refuse to allow the dog in the house.
“This really is Mr. Happy Dog,” Dr. Bianco told her the following Monday morning. “This little guy is one of the happiest dogs I have ever met.” And then he added, smiling, “I can’t imagine what he’d be like if half of his face hadn’t been ripped off.”
Dr. Bianco, Jennifer, and I were in one of the examination rooms with the pup, who lay on a steel table while Dr. B stroked his flanks. I was lazily rubbing his head, which he held erect, his dark eyes following us, his tail beating the table in a slow, steady rhythm. I reached down and touched his neck, began to massage behind his missing ear. The pup put his head down on the table while I stroked the softness just behind the scarring.
“We’ve already been through having a dog that bit someone,” Jennifer said. “It was beyond horrible. A ten-year-old boy almost lost an eye and needed a number of stitches to close the wound.”
“Luckily, his parents were remarkably cool about it,” I said quickly, trying to steer this conversation in a more positive direction. I explained to Dr. Bianco that the boy’s parents had accepted the incident as collective bad luck, since they understood we had rescued the dog just days before, and they had not initiated a lawsuit against us. They knew that we could not have known the dog was a biter. To this day, the boy has remained friends with Noah and Dan.
The rescue organization from which we had adopted that dog had told us he was a retriever/Airedale mix. We later learned he was mostly chow, and according to what we were told, the chow considers anyone besides his caretaker as fair game. We took the dog back to the shelter we had adopted it from the same day the boy was bitten. The shelter was a no-kill one,
and we understood that eventually the dog went to live on a farm with an elderly woman who received few visitors.
“What I want to know is,” Jennifer continued, “since this animal is an abused pit bull, how can we be sure that it’ll never hurt anyone?”
Dr. Bianco looked into her eyes. “This dog doesn’t have a mean bone in his body,” he said matter-of-factly, without any hesitation. He shook his head. “He will never, ever bite anyone.”
He is really going out on a limb for me, I thought. There’s no way he can guarantee this, is there?
Based on Oogy’s weight (thirty pounds), his size, and his breed, Dr. Bianco estimated his age at four months, confirming what Dr. Peters had told us.
“How big will he get to be?” I asked.
“Fifty to fifty-five pounds,” he told us with a shrug.
Much to my surprise, Jennifer said she would agree to give it a try. Then she left for work.
I looked at the dog. I said, “You’re coming home with us, pal.” He cocked his head. His tail repeatedly whapped the steel table. It was clear that he understood something was going on. I gently rubbed the velvet in between his shoulders.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Dr. Bianco explained. “We’ve already neutered him. He’s up-to-date on all his shots. Diane has been taking him home to foster him. She has two little kids and half a dozen different animals in the house. We want to make certain he’s safe around other animals and kids. Diane’s also going to crate-train him for you and make sure he’s housebroken. When she feels comfortable with his behavior, she’ll give you a call and make arrangements to get him to you.”
Then he added, “You’ve got yourself a great dog, Larry. The staff knows how much your family loves animals, and we’re really glad you’re taking him. We’re excited for all of you.”
