Joint Custody

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  There ensued a period in which I did everything in my doggy power, including a suicidal run-in with a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates, to bring them back together. But all my efforts were to no avail once The Woman met New Man, a bestselling novelist and a dead ringer for Henry Golding. How could The Man, how could any man compete with that? Not to mention, New Man was an extrovert too, who loved doing all the things The Man hated to do, so they had the stuff-in-common thing going for them as a couple too. Feh.

  I wanted to hate the guy—for a long time I did hate the guy—and I certainly let him know it. But after a long journey of pushing him away and a failed reconciliation between The Man and The Woman, I had an epiphany if you will: When you love someone, you should want what’s best for them, not what’s best for them in relation to you.

  Cliché, it may be, but I read the writing on the wall, and that writing told me that New Man was right for The Woman in ways that The Man never had been and never could be, not without at least one person winding up miserable. The Man and The Woman had come together over their shared love of me. The Woman and New Man, however? They fell in love with each other.

  So, here’s where we left off the last time. It was August. The Woman and New Man had recently become engaged and were in the audience at an author event at the 92nd Street Y. On the panel were The Man and one other person, one of The Woman’s authors, who I’d previously thought of simply that way. But a lightbulb went on over my head when I noticed that the author, Hispanic and cute in her braids, was a female version of The Man, right down to her backward Mets baseball cap and her clear antipathy for anything social. Could this person actually be New Woman? Could these two find love in the same way The Woman and New Man had? Could there be romantic hope for The Man yet?

  I hope we’re all on the same page now. Well, obviously we are, since I’m writing it and you’re reading it.

  Now that that’s been established, we can turn that page together . . .

  Chapter One

  September

  Most people reckon the New Year begins on January 1, but I favor September. Maybe it’s the school-year thing. Sure, I’ve never been to school myself, not even obedience school—why would I ever need such a thing?—but it is when all the kids traditionally go back. It’s also the month Rosh Hashanah falls, the Jewish New Year, and while The Man is currently nonpracticing, I like to keep abreast of all the major holidays. You never know what could happen; you never know when things might suddenly change; you never know when good ol’ Gatz might be called upon to don a yarmulke. I bet I’d wear one with elan.

  So, September: a time for new beginnings, a season of renewal, change in the air.

  What better time for The Woman to finally move in with New Man?

  By this point, they’d been engaged for several weeks already. And while some might wonder why they didn’t move in together immediately upon their engagement, I didn’t. Hey, it’s enough for me to be able to figure out all the general vagaries of human behavior, I don’t need to get lost in the weeds of every little detail. If I thought about it at all, I probably figured the delay had to do with deciding what to do about her own place, which her parents actually owned, or maybe she didn’t want to rush-rush everything like she’d done when she first met The Man; you know, maybe she was doing the live-and-learn thing.

  Anyway, Moving Day had arrived!

  I confess to being a bit anxious about it myself. Not everyone realizes this, but moving from one domicile to another is a Top Ten item for humans when it comes to anxiety. And while I try to be as zen as possible about most things, I had my concerns.

  As anxious-making as it can be to move in general, it’s got to be exponential when you’re moving into someone else’s space. If the place is new for everyone then it’s equally new for everyone. But if one of the people already lives there, it’s not equal: it’s their space! Similarly, if you’re the person whose space it already is, then when someone else moves into it—bringing along her dog, say—it wouldn’t be surprising if that person experienced some sense of invasion, like: Hey, you’re in my space!

  So, yeah, I had my anxieties about it. And on some level, I must have assumed that they wouldn’t want me around on Moving Day, even though it occurred on the weekend, my normal time to be with The Woman, that and most holidays as per her joint-custody agreement with The Man. I figured that it might be a bit of a nuisance, having a dog underfoot when you’re trying to figure out if the credenza should stay where it’s always been or if maybe it would work better against another wall.

  New Man, however, was having none of it.

  “Of course, Gatz will be with us on Moving Day,” he said, flashing his beautiful, charming, sweet smile at The Woman when she suggested that maybe it would be more convenient if she and The Man flipped their days with me that week. “Who else is going to tell me where to put my credenza?”

  This guy, man. He was growing on me by the second.

  New Man lives in the penthouse of a high rise—actually has a special key to use in the elevator—and it’s already decorated to perfection. With the exception of the mirrored bathroom floor—which I happen to like, but I get that others might find tacky—everything is perfectly appointed, every design decision exuding understated elegance. Because when you have a view like New Man’s—a floor-to-ceiling giant pane of glass spanning one entire wall and offering a view of the city that I doubt could be rivaled anywhere else in the city—you don’t need to gild the lily with a whole bunch of tacky gold this and tacky gold that.

  Not that any of The Woman’s possessions are tacky. She herself is taste personified, which probably should’ve given me pause in her previous relationship with The Man, who is anything but. I guess it never had, though, until they broke up, because I happen to love the schlub myself, just as he is.

  So, no, I hadn’t worried that her things would clash with New Man’s, but I had worried about the logistics of things. When she’d moved in with The Man, he’d first made space in the closet, made space in the bathroom, and, most important of all, made space in his bookshelves. The Man, though, wasn’t much of a nester. Except for his collection of books and a few select articles of clothing, he wasn’t married to any material objects. It didn’t matter. But all the items of New Man’s were so well chosen, so well placed, how could he not object to us bringing along our own stuff and messing with his fêng shui?

  The Woman and I took the elevator up to the penthouse apartment using her own new special key. The Woman carrying a box in her arms, and me carrying some toys in my jaw. She grinned down at me, and I looked up at her (my eyes glistening at her beauty, I’m sure).

  “Are you ready, Gatz?” she asked me.

  That was The Woman all over. She always thought of me. She always thought of us all.

  I dropped my toys and barked my approval.

  When we arrived, me trotting in more anxious still, it soon became apparent that New Man hadn’t done anything in advance of our coming.

  Did he not know what day it was?

  “I kept thinking I should be doing something,” he said, running a hand through his gloriously thick black hair. “I should be making room, clearing a shelf in the bookcase, adding a hook for your coffee mug next to mine even though I don’t hang my mugs on hooks, moving all my clothes over to one side of the closet. But then I thought, why do that?”

  Because it’s the polite thing to do?

  “That would be going about it all wrong.”

  It would be?

  And, may I add here that The Woman and I shared a perplexed look at this turn of events. Perhaps she too had been experiencing some advance anxiety over an anticipated transitional awkwardness?

  “From the looks on your faces,” New Man said, “I can tell I’m expressing myself wrong.”

  Clearly.

  And him a writer—HAH!

  “If I�
�d done that,” New Man said, trying again, “then you’d always feel, both you and Gatz, like ‘OK, then, this is my small space here—my small place in the closet, etcetera—within his much larger space.’ Do you see how wrong that would be?”

  I was beginning to. From the growing curiosity in her eyes, I could tell The Woman was beginning to see it too.

  “I want it all, everything here and every inch of it,” New Man said, spreading his arms wide, “to be our space—all three of ours, whenever Gatz is here.”

  “Meaning?” The Woman said.

  “Put your stuff wherever you want it, move anything you want to move, get rid of anything you hate. Like, for example, the credenza. Gatz, what do you think? Is it right where it is, should we move it, or even get rid of it entirely?”

  I tilted my head to one side to better regard the piece of furniture in question. Eh, I had no quarrel with the credenza.

  While I was doing that, The Woman closed the space between her and New Man, landing a passionate kiss on his lips. When the two pulled away, a surprised blush escaped across his face. “What was that for?”

  “For being you.” She smiled, holding him close in her arms. “For wanting it all to be ours. And for making me feel instantly like it all is.”

  I thumped my tail enthusiastically and let out a happy bark so they’d both know that I felt the same.

  Immediately, all my anxiety left me. What had I been so worried about?

  That’s the funny thing I’ve learned about anxiety, worry, and a whole host of negative emotions: Unless feeling it is going to make you do something to change your behavior in a positive way, what good does it do? What purpose does it serve? Nothing whatsoever, except to make the person experiencing it feel bad. And, worst of all, lots of times you feel these things in advance, and then the thing you were advance-anxious about never comes to pass, and all your anxiety is for naught. Yeah, I know all this, on an intellectual level. But on an emotional level? In the moment, I do tend to forget.

  “So,” New Man said, “what do you want to change first?”

  “Nothing,” The Woman said, laughing. I guess all the anxiety had left her too. “We can do whatever needs doing later. But what I’d really like right now is . . .”

  Oh, please say dinner! Please say dinner! Please say dinner!

  “. . . dinner,” she finished.

  YES!

  So that’s what we did. We ordered takeout, glorious takeout, and while we waited for it to arrive, The Woman did make one tiny design change to New Man’s penthouse; I mean, their penthouse. Or, better yet, our penthouse.

  On my first-ever visit there, I’d noticed that in the hallway leading to the master bedroom, New Man had family photos on the wall; I’d been particularly struck by the one of what I assumed to be his younger sister. Now, The Woman dug out her own framed family photos. New Man found her a hammer and some nails, and beside his family photos, she hung pictures of her parents; her brothers, Tall (the nosy one) and Short (the food-obsessed one), with their own spouses and kids; and me.

  Now family photos stretched down the hallway wall as far as my eye could see.

  New Man put his arm around The Woman’s shoulders. She put her arm around his waist. They tilted their heads together as they looked at the wall.

  “Ours,” they said at the same time, exhaling happy sighs.

  My heart was full to bursting.

  Here’s the thing about happy families: they can’t exist without happy people, and my family was full of them. We had happy people who ate takeout together, and happy people who talked books together, and happy people who shared joint custody of the ol’ Gatzer together. What else could one want?

  So suck it, Tolstoy. Happy people are infinite in their variety, and fascinating, and fairly devoid of conflict. I don’t know about you, but I am living a pretty high life over here. Was there anyone who did happy families better than we did?

  I must confess, I was feeling pret-ty smug about that fact.

  And, as great as I felt then, I felt even better when the doorman called up to say our takeout had arrived.

  And that was topped when New Man placed a carton of moo shu chicken on a china plate, but leaving the food in the carton, just the way I like it, and all for me.

  I figured maybe New Man would want them to eat their first meal as cohabitants at the dining room table. But he had other plans.

  “I was thinking,” he suggested, “movie marathon?”

  What could be better? I thought, as he brought the food into the TV room, where the biggest home entertainment system I’d ever seen lived, with a curved screen and everything.

  I’ll tell you what could be better—he let me pick out the movies!

  It was a dog-movie marathon from start to finish, all the greatest hits: Benji, Beethoven, The Incredible Journey, although there is also a cat in that last one. But for once, I didn’t mind. In fact, the only time I objected was when New Man tried to offer me a Lassie movie. Color me not a fan. That dog just sets the bar too high. Plus, I’m a city dog. When am I ever going to get a chance to save Timmy from the well? It’s just an impossible standard to measure up to.

  But the standard of happy people?

  We were better than all the people.

  We won at being people.

  Photo by Erin Clarke

  Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of forty books for adults, teens, and children, including the Sisters 8 series for young readers, which she created with her husband, Greg Logsted, and their daughter, Jackie. Her books have been published in fifteen countries. She has yet to meet a jigsaw puzzle that could defeat her. Lauren lives with her family in Connecticut where, surprisingly, she has a cat.

  Jackie Logsted is a college student studying film, screenwriting, and American Studies, training to write and direct movies. She created the Sisters 8 series with her mother and father, and had a short story published in Ink Stains, vol. 7. She knows her cat would be jealous to find out she wrote a book about a dog, so she chooses not to tell him. At college, she runs into many dogs, and never condescendingly calls them “buddy.”

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