Sometimes the Best Presents Can’t Be Wrapped

by B. G. Thomas

Ned thought after getting inside and situated in the living room that he might have misjudged the yappy Pekingeses’ enthusiasm. They didn’t seem to like him. Not at all. Of course, they never had because they sensed his dislike of them—he knew now that dogs could sense such things—but today it was worse.

  It wasn’t barking. It wasn’t yapping. It wasn’t snarling.

  It was something combining them all, and it was low and scared and a bit hostile.

  They know. They can’t know what I am. But they know something is up. Something is off. They know I’m not…. Not what?

  Not like them.

  Because he wasn’t.

  But he was enough like them to know that dogs can sense all kinds of things. Wasn’t it said they could even sense the supernatural?

  Was he something supernatural? His mind hadn’t even gone in that direction prior to today. After all, wasn’t turning into a dog weird enough without wondering if it was something paranormal?

  He supposed it very well might be. It certainly wasn’t science that had done this.

  Ned was tempted to come on full force and scare the literal pee out of both of them—just look at those beady eyes and smushed little faces growling and whining and futzing—but he knew just how much Lillian loved Cinnamon and Nutmeg—aka Cindy and Megan—and instead he decided on something else.

  He stared into their eyes. Deep into their eyes. And then he thought, It’s okay, guys. Everything is fine. It’s just me. Uncle Ned. I bring your treats every time I come over….

  With that they both sat up and perked their ears and let their tongues roll out. Wobbled from front foot to front foot.

  Sorry, though… nothing today. No hands.

  Cindy let out a whine, and Megan gave a bark of irritation.

  But I’ll play with you.

  Whoa…. Had he just offered that? He’d never been willing to so much as toss a dog toy for them before.

  “Sure you did” came the Voice. “It’s just been a long time. You just started getting annoyed that they didn’t want to stop.”

  Ned sighed. The Voice was right. He used to want to play almost as much as they did. But then he got tired of it.

  “You lost your patience. And be fair. You spoiled them. Why wouldn’t they think you wanted to play forever? You used to.”

  Enough! Ned sent back.

  Then he stood. Raised his face high. Sniffed. Sniffed deep and long. Moved his head side to side. Smelled what he was looking for. And ran.

  He came back a moment later with a small furred toy snake.

  Cindy and Megan leapt to their feet and barked excitedly in a chorus.

  Then he thrashed his head back and forth and let the toy fly.

  “What’s that dog doing?” he heard Lillian ask.

  Megan and Cindy flew after the toy and then came running back, with Cindy playfully nipping to get it away from Megan.

  Ned darted his head in, snatched it away—

  “Is he stealing their toy?” asked Hubert.

  —shook his head hard and sent it flying.

  “Oh my gosh!” cried Lillian. “Is he doing what I think he’s doing?”

  Ned spared the three humans a glance. He knew the Pekingeses would be back any second. Jake was grinning, and oh, that smile turned an already sweet face into a thing of beauty. If only I was human again. I wonder… would I have a chance with him? Or have I already nixed that? He did tell me he thought I was—Ned was—sexy as hell. And manly—at least as a man. And that I’m the first guy he’s looked at since Bruce left him. But of course I’m not a man anymore.

  Cindy and Megan were back, and this time, Cindy had the toy. Ned playfully reached for it and Cindy growled as fiercely as a hound of hell… then suddenly dropped it, tail wagging at near light speed. So Ned picked it up and once more sent it flying.

  “He’s playing fetch with those dogs!” Hubert exclaimed. “He is, isn’t he?”

  “Yup,” Jake said, his smile huge now, his gorgeous dark eyes flashing with joy. They all laughed.

  “That is one weir—” Lillian stopped what she was about to say. “That’s one wonderful dog you have there. Don’t you dare let him go.”

  “I don’t plan on it,” Jake said, and Ned’s heart raced like a greyhound going for the win at the tracks. “But you know, if they—when they find Mr. Balding, if Boy is his dog, he’ll want him back.”

  Lillian let out a long sad sigh. “I so hope Ned’s coming back. I so hope he’s okay. But Jake….” Her eyes had taken the sheen of readying tears.

  “No,” Jake said. “Don’t think that way.” He pointed at Lilian. “Anything could have happened. Maybe he just needed to get away for a while, you know?” He nodded. “I’ve really been thinking about it. Maybe his husband divorcing him… maybe he just had to run away from home for a while.” He nodded again, this time more emphatically. “He’ll come back. I know he will.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Lillian said, and Ned thought it at the same time.

  Hubert came up behind his wife, a tall man compared to her, with hair combed over the broadening patch where he was going bald. He squeezed her shoulders. “He’ll come home,” Hubert said. “We just have to trust.”

  Lillian nodded. So did Jake.

  And Ned threw the toy once again.

  17

  DINNER WAS wonderful. Lillian made doggie plates! Ned and Megan and Cindy got the full works. Not only turkey and stuffing, but even sweet potatoes and creamed corn. The only thing missing was the crispy onions on the green bean casserole—she had actually made a small separate casserole dish for the dogs—because, Lil noted, onions were possibly toxic to dogs. Ned didn’t mind. It was all so incredibly good, he didn’t even care that his plate was on the floor, and he vowed never to make fun of pet owners who fed their dogs people food ever again. For the first time in weeks he felt, however briefly, like a man again. What he was, he realized, was thankful. And how surprising was that? When was the last time he was grateful for what he’d been given instead of finding fault?

  In the end, there was even pumpkin pie and pumpkin-pie-flavored ice cream. God bless people who let their dogs eat people food, he howled. And meant it.

  Like Tiny Tim, he thought. God bless us every one.

  After dinner, they watched It’s a Wonderful Life and then laughed and laughed as they made Scrooged the second part of a double feature.

  And to Ned’s astonishment, he could see the films! He hadn’t been able to watch Jake’s TV. At first he’d thought there was something wrong with it. The images flickered in and out, on and off. But Lillian’s big flat-screen was clear as could be! In fact, it seemed more like a window than a TV. Ned was fascinated. He couldn’t stop watching. It looked so real, even if the black-and-white movie had a yellowish cast. Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed looked like he could reach out and touch them.

  Then he remembered that Hubert had insisted that he and Lil replace their old flat-screen—which was only a few years old—with a new one because the technology had changed. Gotten much better, Hubert had decreed. Ned had to listen to Lil go on and on about it.

  “Apparently, flat-screens used to be LEDs and now they’re something else. Or maybe it’s the other way around. And the LEDs, whatever those are, can burn out, and then you have those little pinholes in your picture?” She waved it all away. “Nonsense. There was nothing wrong with our picture.”

  She was talking about the new quantum technology, Ned remembered thinking. But he didn’t mention it.

  Could all that be why he could see what was on the screen? Was there something about a dog’s eyes that made him unable to see “regular” TV?

  But none of that mattered as much as how Ned was spending the evening.

  It seemed the Cobbs had no trouble with dogs on the furniture. Cindy and Megan both sat by and on Lillian and Hubert as well as their couch. And he? He got to sit on the love seat with Jake and it was squinched enough that his head rested on his human’s knee while he got petted a
nd scratched behind the ear.

  In the last few years, he’d stopped enjoying cuddling and would push Cliff away, even in bed, even on a cold night. But now? Now, although there could be nothing between them as dog and man—

  Boy! It’s a boy and his dog!

  —there was nothing he wanted more than to be right there against Jake.

  Jesus, he thought. No wonder Cliff left me. And if he left me for a man who showed him affection and gave him attention—even if it was a man who was much younger and more masculine and muscular and, dare he say, handsome than Ned had been as a man—then quite suddenly, he was okay with it. Ned found he couldn’t be angry with Cliff anymore. The man who had once been the center of his life deserved so much more than he’d given him the last several years. Ned could only wish him well. And doing so actually made Ned feel better than he had in so long. Startlingly, with the thought, a weight seemed to lift from him, and his only real regret was that he couldn’t tell Cliff how he felt.

  He felt Cliff slip away in that moment. Slip away quietly and easily.

  And although there was sadness, Ned knew it was good.

  Be happy, my love, he thought. Be happy….

  And wow, how easy that had been.

  “Because,” said the Voice, “it was over. Now you know it. Move on….”

  Easy for you to say, old man. You’re not stuck as a dog.

  Silence was the answer.

  18

  FOR THE next week, Jake made cookies. Lots of cookies. Ned couldn’t believe all the cookies! It reminded him of Christmastime at his grandmother’s house. It was always Grandmother and never Granny or Nana or Grandma. She always looked at Ned and his brother and sister as if they were changelings left on her doorstep, but every year, by about the third day, she was laughing and playing with them as if she had to warm up to them or remember—yes—that she had grandchildren.

  Ned came to discover that not only was his mother her only child, but that she came way late in life; Grandmother at forty-two had been very surprised to discover she was pregnant. And Mother had always seemed angry with the three of them during the holidays because Grandmother showed them affection. It took Ned some time to understand that Grandmother had always looked at her daughter in that changeling way. That she’d never seemed to accept that she was really hers. It was only with her grandchildren that she showed any warmth at all.

  “It’s because she knows you’re going to go away,” Mother would say as they drove home each year at the end of their annual trip. “It’s because she only has to put up with you a week a year.”

  “Hildy!” Father had said. “Don’t say that!”

  “Well, it’s true!”

  Ned never found out if it was true or not. He just held his breath and tiptoed a lot the first couple of days or so after they got there each year and was thrilled when Grandmother warmed up to them.

  The cookies Jake made brought good memories because the whole family would get involved around that magical and mysterious third day or so.

  Jake made all the standard cookies, plus some chocolate chip and peanut butter blossoms—the cookie with the Hershey’s Kiss pushed down on top. Oh God, Ned had wanted some of the latter, but Jake was empathetic about keeping him away from them.

  “Chocolate will make you sick,” he told Ned. “It can even kill a dog! But I’ve got some others for you. Don’t worry.”

  He let Ned have a peanut butter cookie or two, and a sugar cookie, but not one of the ones he spent hours decorating with icing and candy sprinkles and those little silver balls that always reminded Ned of BBs as a kid. They were the cookies Ned wished most he could help Jake make. But with clumsy paws instead of hands, how could he?

  Jake made shortbread cookies and white powdered-sugar wedding cookies and thumbprint cookies with jam and molasses cookies and rum balls and bourbon balls, along with something called guiguileni—which he explained was the traditional name for sesame seed cookies—and glazed chocolate balls made with cloves and walnuts, which Ned also desperately wanted. Was it for sure the chocolate killed doggies or just a possibility? Would it be worth the chance?

  But the cookies that took Jake most of a Saturday and Sunday to make—thank goodness Wilma came over and helped—were pizzelle, or Italian waffle cookies, which he could only make two at a time with a pizzelle iron. It made the whole first floor smell like anise. And while Ned wasn’t crazy about black licorice, this was heavenly, and Ned eagerly awaited the ones that didn’t turn out right, because—well—he got to scarf down several of those, and that was twice the heaven.

  It turned out that Jake made cookies for everyone. The neighbors, friends, and finally—and oh, they were excited—the people at work. And then in a gross act that could have gotten Jake fired—might have if Ned had been there—Jake took Ned to work! He dressed him in a Santa Claus suit (one more simply insane irony), and Jake dressed up as an elf (the tights showed he had beautifully muscular legs and a very round bottom) and they walked around the whole plant.

  Ned couldn’t have been more thrilled. He saw so many people he hadn’t seen in weeks and was surprised as hell how deeply he had missed them. Especially Yvonne Delany, his executive assistant.

  “Oh look at the sweet dawg,” she said, her Boston accent slipping in again in her excitement. “It shu-wah is a good thing Mr. Bawding isn’t here today to see this cute thing!” And then in the midst of her hugging Ned tight—irony number three hundred and twelve—she looked up, eyes wide in horror, turned a blazing red, and all but burst into tears (tea-yas). “Oh! I am soooo sowry! I didn’t mean that! I wasn’t thinking! Oh my Gawd!”

  As it turned out, she seemed to be the only one who really did appear to miss him—besides Lillian and Jake of course. The plant was running fine and smooth. And to Jake’s complete shock, Patricia was there. She was using his office, and throughout the hour or two Jake toured the plant, he saw her in a half-dozen places.

  My God, Ned thought. Is she running things?

  It looked like that was exactly what she was doing. And everyone seemed to like her. A lot.

  And here I thought I was the only one who could run the place.

  It was an extremely humbling feeling.

  I’m replaceable.

  I’ve been replaced.

  He wanted to ask Jake when all of this had happened, but, of course, how could he? He was a dog.

  What’s more, she was delighted to meet him and didn’t ask Jake one question about why he had a dog at work.

  I’ve not only been replaced. I’ve become redundant.

  Ned left Balding Adhesives that day feeling a lot less festive than he had when he got there.

  19

  IT WAS the night before Christmas, and Ned’s father was lighting a fire in the fireplace. He looked startlingly young. Way younger than Ned remembered him looking the last time he saw him. In fact… whoa… his sister, his brother—they were kids!

  Ned looked at Patricia all goggle-eyed. She was wearing her glasses. He hadn’t seen her wear them in so many years, he’d forgotten about them. Had her LASIK failed?

  She hasn’t had it yet.

  Well, that didn’t make any sense.

  And Patricia being a teenager makes sense?

  He looked at Perry, who—good God!—looked no more than ten. Perry was rocking from side to side, literally sitting on his hands. He was chewing—chewing hard—on his lower lip.

  Stop it, Ned tried to beam to his brother. If Father saw him doing that, he would hit Perry, no doubt about it.

  Perry chewed his lip until there were scabs, and it infuriated the man. But as Ned looked to see what Perry was so focused on, he saw the Christmas tree in its accustomed corner, huge, covered in hundreds of tiny shimmering white lights and what seemed like countless ornaments. Glass ones from Father’s childhood, ornaments that had come from his mother and Wales, where Grandmother was born. Then there were those odd Styrofoam ones that were covered in thread. The animated kind from Hallmark
that Mother loved so much—Ned and his siblings did too, of course—that you plugged into the strings of lights. Carousels and Fantasia dancing hippo ornaments and Mickey Mouse riding a small train around a Christmas tree and skaters on the ice and dozens and dozens more.

  There were even the ones he and Perry and Patricia had done in school, made of macaroni and Popsicle sticks and artificial flowers. The tree took days to set up and take down.

  But of course what Perry was staring at was what was under the tree. At least at Christmas there was no skimping on gifts, and on the night before, they were allowed to open one present. Perry was working himself into a near fit of anticipation. His lip would be bleeding soon.

  Stop it. Please!

  The newspaper under the logs was catching. Ned never knew why his father used it, because the smoke filled the living room with that burning paper smell that worried Mother so badly. There was one of those starter logs that caught on its own among the firewood. There wasn’t any need for newspaper!

  Ned’s nostrils flared at the smell, and he sneezed.

  “Daddy?” Perry asked.

  Father swiveled his head in their direction. Ned trembled and Patricia petted him, and he calmed, but only for a bit. She scratched him behind the ears and his leg did that involuntary jitter that always weirded him out, but for some reason felt good at the same time.

  “Yes, Perry?” he said. Father didn’t look young any longer. He was very pale, and his dark hair stood out starkly, and his pale blue eyes seemed washed out. His breath smelled like plastic. Like burning plastic. Ned’s heart began to pound so loudly he couldn’t understand why no one seemed to notice.

  “Can we open something now?”

  Ned knew that his brother had spent the last two days shaking and weighing his boxes. Perry knew by now which one he wanted to open.

  “Why?” Father asked. The fireplace was really going now. It was a little alarming. And Father hadn’t put the fire screen up, and Ned was worried his father might catch on fire himself.

  “Because I want my Tamagotchi!”