Dog Eat Dog

by Laurien Berenson

  Davey had been staring with rapt fascination at the bright red Trans-Am. Now he seemed to notice Bob for the first time. “Wow,” he said. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s your father.”

  Silence. I’d expected screaming. Judging by the response I’d gotten earlier, I’d thought Davey would launch himself from the car and wrap his arms around Bob’s legs. But now that the time had finally come to meet his father, my son was feeling shy.

  “Let’s get out,” I said.

  But Bob was already there. He opened Davey’s door and leaned his head inside. I saw him start to reach for his son, then hesitate. If I wasn’t such a cynic, I’d have sworn there were tears in his eyes.

  “Davey?” He swallowed heavily. “I’m your Dad.”

  “I know.” Davey’s tone was matter-of-fact, but he still hadn’t moved.

  “Do I get a hug?”

  Davey thought about that. He looked away and made a show of unfastening his seat belt. Then, when Bob withdrew, Davey climbed past him and out of the car. Standing beside his father, he looked up.

  “You’re pretty tall,” he said.

  “So are you.” Bob knelt beside him and held out his arms. “How about that hug?”

  Decision made, Davey threw himself forward. An embrace like that would have knocked me over, but Bob stood firm. He wrapped his arms around my son—around his son—and held on tight.

  I got out and slammed my car door. Just for effect.

  The two of them broke apart. Bob walked over and fished through a worn canvas back-pack he’d left sitting on the ground.

  “Look what I brought.” He held out a shiny toy car that looked much like the Trans-Am sitting in the driveway. “Do you like cars?”

  “Wow!” cried Davey, snatching it away. In seconds, he was zooming it down the driveway.

  I watched, not happily. It was flat out bribery. Not only that, but it was working.

  Inside the house, Faith was jumping on the front door, barking to be let out. As Davey came zooming back, he heard her, too. “Hey!” he cried. “We have a dog, a real live Standard Poodle. Want to see?”

  “Sure.” Bob grinned. “Where is he?”

  “It’s a she, and her name is Faith. She’s in the house.”

  “Here Davey.” I handed him the keys. “Why don’t you let her out for a run in the backyard first? Bob and I ... Your father and I will be along in a minute.”

  “Okay!” Holding his new car carefully, Davey snatched the key-ring and ran for the steps.

  That left the two of us. Standing there. Staring at each other. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized that on some level, I’d been half afraid that there’d still be some sort of a spark.

  There wasn’t. I held out my hand. “Hi, Bob.”

  “Mel!”

  He ignored my outstretched hand. Two long steps was all it took and I found myself wrapped in Bob’s arms just as Davey had been. Maybe with his convenient memory, my ex-husband had forgotten how we parted, but I certainly hadn’t. I stood stiffly until he let me go.

  “Yes, well ...” He stepped back awkwardly. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Years,” I said succinctly.

  To my surprise, Bob had the grace to blush. I felt myself softening. “How did you know about the toy car?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Davey loves cars. You brought him his favorite thing.”

  “Lucky guess,” Bob said, shrugging. “I was nuts about them when I was his age.”

  Father and son. Maybe even after all this time apart, the bond was stronger than I had guessed. Or cared to admit.

  An uncomfortable silence fell. We were on my turf. I figured that meant I didn’t have to break it.

  Left to his own devices, Bob cast around and settled on the first thing he saw. “Don’t tell me you’re still driving this old heap.” He patted the Volvo’s worn gray fender. “You got that car when you were in college and it wasn’t new then.”

  I knew he was fumbling. A nicer ex-wife would have helped him out. Maybe one who hadn’t been abandoned with a ten month old child.

  “As opposed to what?” I let my gaze drift in the direction of his shiny sports car. “Something like that, maybe?”

  He swallowed and I knew he saw the trap coming. It still didn’t stop him from putting his foot in it. “Well, yeah.”

  “Cars like that cost money, Bob.” I smiled sweetly. “So does food. Sometimes it’s all a matter of priorities.”

  “Give me a break.”

  He looked up at the small cape behind me, yellow with green shutters. They were white when he lived here, but I’d since taken them down and repainted them. I’d also planted a new row of rhododendron bushes out front. Neither improvement totally disguised the fact that the house itself needed painting and the driveway was beginning to crack.

  “I left you the house,” said Bob, working hard to sound like an aggrieved good Samaritan.

  “You left me the mortgage.”

  “You had a job.”

  “Part-time.”

  “And a graduate degree. You could have taught.”

  “I do teach. That’s why we’re not out on the street.”

  Bob frowned, pulling his denim jacket more tightly around him. It didn’t look as though it would offer much warmth. “Look, I didn’t come here to fight, okay?”

  “Maybe we have to get the fighting out of the way first. Maybe after that I’ll be able to be civil.”

  “Jeez Mel. Do we have to go back over all that? It’s been four years.”

  “Did you think I’d forget how you left me?”

  “Maybe I just hoped you’d be over it by now.” Bob sighed. “Look, do you mind if we continue this inside? I’m freezing out here.”

  I came around and closed Davey’s door. The anger was fading, I could feel it draining away. Bob was right, what had happened was in the past. It belonged to a totally different part of my life, one I was happy to have left behind.

  “Sure, let’s go in. But I don’t want to argue in front of Davey.”

  “Suits me fine.” Bob paused on the walk so I could precede him to the door. “He looks like a good kid, Mel.”

  “He’s a great kid. The best.”

  “You’ve done a good job.”

  “In spite of—” Hand on the door knob, I stopped. Put it behind you, I told myself firmly. I looked back and gave Bob a small smile. “Yes, I have. Thanks.”

  On that note of cautious rapprochement, we found Davey and Faith in the kitchen. The new toy car was on the counter. The back door was sitting open so I guessed the puppy had already been out. Davey was pouring himself a glass of milk and they seemed to be sharing a box of shortbread cookies.

  Faith takes this guard dog business very seriously. She took one look at Bob, a stranger in her house, and leapt toward him, barking ferociously.

  “Good God!” Bob stumbled backward. “That’s not a Poodle. That’s a bear!”

  I looped my arms around Faith’s neck and caught her mid-pounce. “It’s really mostly hair. And she’s very friendly once you get to know her.”

  Bob righted himself in the doorway, trying to look nonchalant, as if an oversized Poodle puppy hadn’t just scared him off his feet. He stared at Faith, who was now sniffing his legs.

  “Do you realize she’s wearing earrings?”

  “Yes.” Like I hadn’t heard that before.

  “Ear wraps,” Davey said importantly. Aunt Peg must have been teaching this child more than I’d realized. “They’re for keeping the hair out of the way. Faith’s my dog. Isn’t she great?”

  “Great.” Bob smiled at his son.

  “You couldn’t have gotten him a German Shepherd?” he mouthed at me, over Davey’s head.

  “Trust me,” I said. “You had to be there.”

  Bob glanced at the refrigerator. “Do you suppose ... ? I got up in Pennsylvania this morning and drove straight through. Is there any chance you could make me a san
dwich?”

  “Not much,” I said. Fostering domestic independence in the male half of the population had begun to seem important to me lately. Probably because I was raising a male who seemed to think that his every wish should be catered to. “But you can help yourself. I’m pretty sure there’s some turkey and swiss.”

  As soon as the words were out, I regretted them. Turkey and swiss. Bob’s favorite. Now he’d think I’d remembered that on purpose; when it was really just a fluke, fate’s way of having a good laugh at my expense.

  Bob dug around in the refrigerator, then laid the supplies he’d found on the counter. “Bread,” he muttered, crossing the kitchen and pulling open the right drawer. I cringed inwardly at his familiarity. Too bad I was such a creature of habit. It would have been nice to see him fumble around. Instead, getting out a plate, silverware, and a napkin to go with it, Bob looked right at home.

  “Hey!” cried Davey. “How come you know where everything is?”

  Bob slathered a heavy coating of mayo onto a slice of bread. “I used to live here.”

  “When I was a baby,” Davey prompted.

  Bob nodded.

  “When I was only this big.” Davey held his hands about a foot apart.

  Piling turkey onto the bread, Bob nodded again.

  “You used to be my daddy. Then you went away.” Bob stopped what he was doing and turned to face his son. “You’re right, I did.”

  “Mommy said you had to go.”

  Bob spared me a glance, then hunkered down in front of his son. “At the time I thought I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was confused. Because I was scared. Because suddenly it seemed as though my whole life was rushing by and I was just standing there watching it.”

  I wasn’t sure Davey would grasp all that, and he didn’t. Instead he walked over to the counter and picked up his new car. Then he looked at Bob’s sandwich and said, “Can I have a bite?”

  “Sure, when it’s ready.” Bob stood up and went back to work.

  I stared at my ex-husband’s back, frowning. Davey may not have understood, but I did. Communication had never been a strong point between us. That was the first time I’d ever heard him voice the feelings that had driven him away. Having gone through something similar myself recently, I knew how he must have felt.

  That didn’t make me like what he had done, however. Nor did it make me forgive. But it did lessen the hurt, just a little bit.

  “You must be hungry.” Bob had offered Davey half the sandwich and watched as his son bit off a piece a good deal larger than he could comfortably chew.

  “We ate lunch at the dog show,” Davey informed him, talking happily around his full mouth. “With Aunt Peg.”

  “Aunt who?”

  “Do you remember my father’s brother, Max?” I asked.

  “Not really.”

  “He died last summer. Peg was his wife.”

  “She has Standard Poodles,” said Davey. “A whole house full. And even more in a kennel out back.”

  “Standard Poodles as in ...” He nodded in Faith’s direction.

  “You got it.”

  “Aunt Peg takes us to dog shows,” Davey announced. “And she let me drive her car.”

  Bob and I both stared.

  “She did not,” I said.

  “Did too.” If he hadn’t still been chewing, he might have stuck out his tongue.

  “She sounds like an interesting woman,” said Bob.

  “She is.”

  I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. “So, how long do you suppose you’ll be staying in Connecticut?”

  “How long?” Bob repeated. “Didn’t I mention that?”

  Something-intuition maybe—curled in the pit of my stomach. “Mention what?”

  “I figured on a couple of weeks, or so. After that, I’ve got to be heading back. I guess I didn’t get around to telling you. I’m getting married at the end of next month.”

  Fourteen

  After that major bombshell was out of the way, the rest of the afternoon went remarkably smoothly.

  Bob finished his lunch and let Davey take him for a tour of the house. I doubt that it looked much different than it had when he’d left; but Bob managed to comment with appreciation on each point of interest my son highlighted. Trailing along behind, I discovered that these included the back yard, the dining room table, and what was probably the largest toy car collection in the entire western world.

  Davey had gotten over his initial shyness, but I noticed he hadn’t gotten around to calling Bob “Dad” yet. Nor did he refer to him by name. For the time being, “hey” seemed to be serving as the attention-getter of choice. It wasn’t as polite as I might have hoped for, but I liked the fact that Davey was dealing with things at his own speed.

  Faith, meanwhile, was shamelessly easy. Having been slipped a piece of turkey from Bob’s sandwich, she’d decided she’d made a new friend. When Bob and Davey went out back to throw a baseball around, she accompanied them happily. I stood at the kitchen sink and watched the three of them out the window. We could have been any happy suburban family sharing a quiet Saturday afternoon.

  In the twilight zone, maybe.

  Meanwhile I was fielding phone calls. The first, not unexpectedly, was from Aunt Peg. She said she wanted to check and make sure we’d gotten home okay.

  Right.

  Aunt Peg’s curiosity ranks right up there with her sweet tooth—it takes a lot to satisfy her. And when she heard that Bob had already arrived, nothing short of all the gory details would do. She loves crash-and-burn adventure stories so I left her mulling over the notion of Bob’s upcoming nuptials. It was the closest I could come.

  Sam checked in a few minutes later. At least his motives were more altruistic. I assured him everything was fine, and tried to sound more convinced than I felt.

  Bob and Davey progressed from baseball, to checking out the Trans-Am, to coming back inside for a game of Nintendo. I did my best to keep an eye on things and stay out of the way at the same time. To all appearances, Davey was simply having a play-date, albeit with a much bigger friend. They might not have been tackling the larger issues, but on the other hand, I wasn’t seeing any emotional trauma either. Anxious as I’d been about Bob’s coming, even I had to admit, things seemed to be going well.

  I was mixing Faith’s food that evening when Bob announced he was taking us all out to dinner.

  “Yea!” cried Davey. “McDonalds!”

  “Think again,” I told him.

  “Pizza!”

  “You got it,” said Bob, the big spender.

  “Go find your shoes,” I told Davey. The first thing he does upon entering the house is kick them off. You’d think that would mean they’d be by the door, but for some reason it never does.

  As Davey bounded from the room, Bob leaned back against the counter. “You’ve been avoiding me all afternoon.”

  “No, I haven’t.” I looked up, surprised. “You told me you wanted to get to know your son. I was trying to leave you alone so you could do that.”

  “And you haven’t asked me anything about Jennifer.”

  “I don’t even know who Jennifer is.” I could guess, but I said it anyway.

  “The girl I’m going to marry.”

  “Girl? Don’t you mean woman?”

  I thought his consciousness might need raising about the status of women in the nineteen-nineties, but it turned out I was wrong.

  “Maybe. She’s not that old.”

  This time I stared. “How old, Bob?”

  “Twenty. Almost twenty-one.”

  “My God, she can’t even drink yet. How can she marry you?” I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I swear.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it—”

  “No, I do,” I said quickly. “I really do. How did you two meet?”

  “I was doing some work for her father. He owns a sporting goods store. One day she came by to drop off s
ome information I needed.”

  Twenty years old. Working for her father in his sporting goods store. At least she wasn’t a student, I suppose that was something.

  “Have you known her long?”

  “We met right before Christmas. It’s been about three months.”

  Three months. I needed a beer. I went to the refrigerator, got two out, and offered the other one to Bob. I could hear Davey rummaging through closets upstairs. He’d never put away a pair of sneakers in his life. Why he thought he’d find them there, I had no idea.

  “That seems kind of fast, doesn’t it?”

  Bob popped the top on his can and took a long, slow swallow. “When it’s right, I guess you just know it.”

  Not necessarily. Otherwise, he and I wouldn’t have been standing here having this conversation.

  “Was this before or after your oil well came in?”

  “Before. At least that’s when we met. But when we found out I’d have some money coming in, it just seemed to make sense to start talking marriage.”

  At least to Jennifer, obviously. Was I the only one who saw a giant neon sign flashing the word G-O-L-D-D-I-G-G-E-R?

  Apparently so, because Bob said earnestly, “She’s really a nice girl. I think you’d like her. And she just adores kids ...”

  He let that thought dangle, as if I was meant to respond. Did that mean I had Jennifer to thank for Bob’s sudden interest in his son? If so, I’d rather not.

  “We figured we’d wait a while before starting a family though. After all, Jennifer’s pretty young. And besides, that will give her more time to get to know Davey first.”

  More time to ... “What?”

  “She’d like to get to know Davey, Mel. He’s going to be part of the family, too.”

  My fingers grasped the edge of the counter behind me. I could feel my knuckles turning white. I fought for calm, hoping I’d misunderstood.

  Speaking as slowly and clearly as I knew how, I said, “Davey’s going to be part of what family?”

  “Mine, of course.” Bob set down his beer. “Now that I’m going to be getting married, I figured we’d work out some sort of joint-custody arrangement.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Mel, just think about it—”