Giant George

by Dave Nasser

  Except she didn’t—not today. She said something completely different. She said, “And you’ll never believe what I’m going to tell you…”

  She was pregnant again. George and I hurried home.

  CHAPTER 13

  Guinness on Tap

  This time we decided to tell no one—not a soul. We weren’t superstitious people, so it wasn’t that we thought we’d jinx things; we just didn’t think we could handle the emotional strain of talking to family and friends about it if the worst happened and we lost this one too. No, we decided to keep it in our little family—just me, Christie and George. It was our big secret.

  And from that point on, it felt like we were in this weird limbo, like the rest of our lives were on hold. Sure, we carried on as normal, did our jobs, met with friends. Even though Christie’s sudden refusal to drink wine was attributed to her being particularly tired (which she was) or having work in the morning (which she mostly did), when it hadn’t stopped her before, happily no one seemed to notice.

  And we had plenty of other things to occupy our minds: we had all but finished the building work part of remodeling the house, and for Christie, at least, we’d gotten to the fun part. Where I liked nothing better than to be wielding a drill or ripping up and ripping out stuff, for Christie, though she could knuckle down and get her hands dirty (and had done), the best bit was when you got to start making the place your own.

  And I was happy to let her become our new project manager, and to defer to her on all the decisions that needed to be made about decorating, furnishing, which color went with what—all that inexplicable cushions ’n’ candles stuff. For once I was also happy—though this was strictly a temporary arrangement—to have her drag me into all those stores full of unfathomable girl-things and attempt to pass sensible judgment on various items, many of which I couldn’t properly identify as having any sort of function whatsoever.

  What we didn’t do—didn’t do at all, not for a moment—was make plans for our new lives as parents, or allow ourselves to look at any baby stuff. We’d go to a shopping mall and it would be like we were both wearing blinkers. We didn’t even window-shop when we passed a baby store. In fact, we’d speed up and hurry past.

  But, happily, the days and weeks passed, one by one, and each scan (every one an exercise in holding our breath) was completed without drama or bad news. And finally, somehow, we arrived at that momentous date—twenty weeks—and the scan, of all the scans and examinations and procedures the one that had loomed so large and heavy on our horizon.

  As ever, we were braced for the worst, but, having done her examinations and taken all her measurements, the doctor told us that everything looked normal. And, by the way, would we like to know the sex?

  We exchanged glances. Did we want to know that? Did it even matter? We’d already heard the news we’d wanted to hear: our baby was okay. I don’t think either of us cared about the baby’s gender right now.

  But Christie raised her eyebrows at me as the nurse wiped her belly. “Do we?” she asked me.

  I shrugged. I wasn’t sure. Did I? I pondered. Maybe I did. “I guess…” I said finally. “Why not?”

  Because perhaps, in truth, we’d already had enough surprises—all of them, up to this point, pretty bad ones.

  “Yes,” I said again, nodding. “Go on. What are we having?”

  “A girl,” the doctor told us. “You’re having a baby girl.”

  We were both a little shocked by this news. Me for the completely illogical reason that we hadn’t really talked about a girl’s name for this one, and Christie because this pregnancy had felt so like her first one that it had never occurred to her it wouldn’t be a boy. She’d also privately—and she only confessed this to me later—been anxious about not feeling sicker than she did. We both knew that suffering from bad morning sickness might be grim to deal with, but it was also a sure sign that you were pregnant—and all the folklore says you have it worse if you’re carrying a girl. Bang goes that theory, then.

  And now, at long last, it felt properly real. We were having not a boy but a little baby girl, and, finally, we felt we could make plans for her arrival. It felt, if not quite like all our Christmases had come at once, at least like we could allow ourselves to get excited.

  Right after the ultrasound, Christie started focusing on baby stuff at last. She’d been so longing to be able to share her joy with everyone. At the beginning of June, her sister-in-law organized a baby shower for all her family and friends back in California. Then her Tucson friends, wanting to get involved too, organized another one for her in July.

  We started decorating, creating our baby’s nursery, and bought a new crib for it. We already had a beautiful dresser, handed down by Christie’s grandma, so we painted that a rich dark red mahogany to match the crib. And since we knew it was a girl, we had no reason to be neutral, so we wallpapered the whole room with butterflies. That done, it was simply a question of more waiting, as the days and weeks began to stack up.

  George naturally ignored almost everything about this. While we immersed ourselves in the idea of becoming parents to our new daughter, life, for him, carried on pretty much as normal. And why wouldn’t it? Though interested in our various decorating antics and purchases (he particularly enjoyed chewing up the crib’s giant box), he hadn’t the slightest inkling of how comprehensively his life—life for all of us—was about to change. All he did know was that his mom was getting steadily bigger and, as a consequence, less inclined to be sat upon, which was just something he had to put up with.

  Life in general was pretty good for George. He particularly enjoyed our Friday-night happy hour excursions. They were by now becoming an institution of sorts, though little did either of us realize back then that they’d have life-changing consequences for him.

  It was mid-August by now, and we’d just returned home from the doctor’s office. Christie was only a few weeks from her due date, so we were beginning to count down to the big day. Another day, another exam, another clean bill of health. We were both, I think, feeling this thing beginning to hit us. In a matter of days, after waiting such a long time, we were finally going to put our traffic avoidance plans into action, get to that hospital and, God willing, become a real mom and pop.

  I felt full of energy. But then, I guess, I wasn’t the pregnant one, was I? “We should do something,” I said when we got home from the clinic. “Take George to the dog park, then go out for food? What d’you fancy? Chinese? Thai? Mexican? Or maybe go for a steak?”

  But Christie, who was getting to that point down the line where her gut had little room left to fully appreciate the many options, considered for a moment, and then shook her head. “You know what? Actually, I’m pretty tired tonight, honey. Why don’t you take George around to Paul’s for a couple of hours, then grab Chinese takeout on the way home.”

  “You sure?”

  She grinned, wrapping an arm around her enormous round belly. Then she laughed. “Trust me, I’m super-sure. If I never have heartburn again, ever, it’ll be too soon, and Chinese is the absolute worst. Plus this body’s had quite enough exercise for one day. So I—or, rather, we”—she ran her hand across her bump—“shall go have a long soak in the tub, while you boys”—she paused to kiss George on his snout—“go off to happy hour and do all your boy-stuff.”

  It was just getting dark when George and I headed over to Paul’s house, the buzzsaw sound of cicadas loud in the still air. It was a warm evening, and, as we often did on balmy nights like these, we were having cocktails outside in the gazebo. Well, most of us were; I’m mainly a beer man, and Paul was, as usual, drinking Guinness.

  “Hey,” he said, brandishing his glass, as I grabbed myself a bottle of beer from the cooler. “Dave, I have news. Did you manage to catch that piece in the paper this week?”

  I’d been distracted, watching the antics of his ten-year-old son, Liam, who was playing with George in the yard. It seemed incredible to think that in a few weeks f
rom now I would be a father too, and have my own child—Christie and I would have our own little daughter—and that one day, God willing, she would be playing out in our own yard with Georgie.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, realizing that I’d been miles away, and finally registering that he was talking. “The paper. Of course.”

  “So did you read it?”

  “Let me see, now. What did I read? I read a piece about new trends in the real estate market. And, yes, a fascinating article about the Arizona tree frog. Either of those pieces the piece you mean?”

  He put his glass down to fetch himself another beer and shook his head.

  “No, I meant the Guinness piece,” he said, nodding again to his own glass as he brought it back over. “There was an article about the Guinness World Records I thought you might be interested in. Wednesday, I think I saw it.”

  I sipped my own beer. “Oh, I’ve got you now. You mean there was a piece about the record for the world’s biggest dog?”

  Paul rolled his eyes. “No, I mean the record for the biggest number of paper clips you can fit up your nose at one sitting when there’s an R in the month. Of course I mean about the record for the dog.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, and it turns out the world’s tallest dog’s a Great Dane too. Name of…” He raised his voice a little. “What was the dog’s name, Lee?”

  “Gibson,” said Dana, who’d just emerged from the house with a bowl of freshly made popcorn. “His name was Gibson.”

  “ ‘Was’ being the operative word,” added Paul. “He just died.”

  I shook my head. “That’s a shame.”

  “But he held the record for four years, apparently,” said Dana.

  “So how tall was he?”

  “A little over forty-two inches,” said Paul. “To the shoulder, that is. That’s how you measure them, apparently—to this very precise point on the shoulder. You think George could top that?”

  I glanced over at him. Who knew? I shrugged. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Lee!” called Paul. “Honey, you got a tape measure in there?”

  We didn’t know if George could beat the record, of course. Not at that point. We’d gotten the tape and measured him, but not knowing exactly where the measurement should be taken from—a “shoulder” not being a place with a lot of obvious precise points—all we could say with any certainly was that he seemed to be around that sort of height. And despite the whole idea of it being kind of fun, I had other, more important things on my mind, like the fact that I was about to become a dad.

  Three Friday-night happy hours later, however, Dana had an update for us all. She came with a bunch of copies of something she had found online, buried in the news, while she’d been having lunch. Dana worked in PR and marketing, so she was pretty on the ball about what was happening in the media. “They obviously move fairly fast,” she said, handing things out to us. The piece she’d given us was an Associated Press article she’d come across about a woman who was claiming that her dog was now the tallest in the world. The dog, who lived with her up in North Dakota, was a Newfoundland, who was also named Boomer, like Dana and Jim’s Lab. He was a lovely-looking dog, but the tallest in the world he was not—his height from floor to shoulder was just thirty-six inches.

  “Thirty-six inches? Three feet?” I said, incredulous. “But that’s way less than George is to his shoulder.”

  “Exactly,” said Dana, laughing. “That’s exactly what I thought. I mean, there’s really no contest here, is there?”

  “Doesn’t seem to be,” I agreed.

  “None at all,” Paul confirmed. “None whatsoever. You know, Dave, you really should look into this a bit further. Why don’t you go take a look at the Guinness World Records website and see how you can make a submission? I think it’s a pretty straightforward business.”

  “And it would be fun, wouldn’t it?” said Dana.

  “Great fun,” agreed Paul.

  “A project,” I agreed. “An official happy hour project.” I raised my glass. “Okay—let’s do it. Here’s to Team George!”

  Christie was in bed fast asleep when George and I got in, so I poured myself a glass of wine and opened the Chinese takeout I’d grabbed on the way home. I then fired up my laptop on the kitchen counter and read up on Gibson and this North Dakota Boomer for myself.

  There wasn’t much more to tell. Gibson had been a harlequin Great Dane—a beautifully marked dog, with black and white patches—and he’d lived in Grass Valley, California. Right away you could see he would have been our boy’s equal in height, but George definitely had him on weight. George was at least seventy pounds heavier than Gibson, and you could tell he was much more massive generally.

  Gibson had died of bone cancer, apparently, at around seven years of age—not old for most dogs but a pretty good age for a Great Dane. He’d have been much loved, I didn’t doubt, because these dogs are so lovable; I imagined he’d be badly missed.

  I then googled Boomer, the Newfoundland from North Dakota, but there was less to learn about him. Another beautiful animal, certainly, but Dana had been right: there was no contest between them; George was so obviously the much taller dog.

  As if to confirm it, George, who’d come to join me in the kitchen, now placed a questing snout down onto the counter, in the hopes of charming me into donating some food. I swiveled the screen of my laptop so he could take a look for himself.

  “What d’you think?” I asked. “You’ve got six inches on this North Dakota Boomer, you reckon?”

  In response, George swiped his tongue across the granite top, sweeping up all the rice that had fallen from my box.

  CHAPTER 14

  And Baby Makes Four

  Our daughter decided she wanted to come join the party right in the middle of yoga.

  Christie had been attending prenatal yoga classes once a week for much of her pregnancy. She’d always enjoyed yoga and this class was specifically aimed at pregnant women. It would, apparently, help with her labor when the time came, and she thought it was kind of neat that she would tell our baby about all the things she’d been doing when she was still in Christie’s womb.

  Today Christie had felt funny right off the bat. She’d been doing squats early on and had felt a bit strange, and then, once she got down for the relaxation phase at the end, she’d become aware she might be leaking. Understandably, she really, really hoped no one would notice, but while she was putting her yoga pad away more fluid leaked out over the floor, so there was no way she could keep this to herself.

  Naturally, Christie was mortified. You read all the time—well, it seems women do anyway—about the many embarrassing possibilities for early labor, and all you want (and all you pray for) is that, when the time comes, it’ll happen in such a way that you won’t suffer public humiliation.

  But, in that regard, it obviously wasn’t Christie’s lucky day. One minute she was elegantly lowering herself to the floor, the next—well, almost the next, and certainly as a result of it—she’d created a pretty big puddle on the floor. Still, as I helpfully pointed out, at least it was prenatal yoga, and not the ordinary kind, so there hadn’t been any guys there.

  Sorting herself out with the minimum amount of fuss, Christie explained what had happened to the instructor and reassured her that she’d be okay. She then called her ob-gyn to warn her she was coming, and then me to put our plan into action.

  It was clear she intended to retake control of the situation, after having had it so abruptly snatched away before. No, she didn’t need picking up from yoga, and yes, she was absolutely fine—right now, anyhow—and the easiest thing, given we were currently slap bang in the middle of the rush hour, would be for me to go home, grab the bag she’d packed, which was in the hallway, drive to the hospital with it and meet her there.

  While women, I’m sure, harbor all sorts of secret anxieties about the huge leap into the unknown that constitutes giving birth, men, in their turn, do their par
t. Mainly, it must be said, they are real experts on the stress front. And, yup, right now I was feeling pretty damned stressed.

  Like any other man, I made the trip to the hospital with my head buzzing with unspeakable scenarios. There’s nothing to beat labor for full-on intensity, I’m sure, and let’s be honest, the women of the world are welcome to it, thanks. But, at the same time, giving birth is pretty scary for a man too, because there’s pretty much nothing you can do. Nothing you can do to help the process, barring just being there, and not a lot you can do to influence the outcome.

  Naturally, as I drove toward the hospital, the outcomes that weighed the most heavily were the worst-case scenarios that I simply couldn’t shake from my thoughts. What if this? What if that? What if the other suddenly happened? The list of possible complications seemed endless. I’ve since found out that I wasn’t alone in this, of course, because I’m told almost every other man feels the way I did. But at the time all I could think of was what a huge thing it was, this whole business of bringing a new life into the world. We’d been taught that particular grim lesson already. There were just so many things that could go wrong here.

  So when I arrived at the hospital to find Christie checked in, looking calm and not even mildly in agony, my racing brain calmed down no end. She told me what had happened at the end of her yoga class, and that she’d been examined and it was all systems go.

  She’d been admitted around six thirty in the evening, and within no time at all, she began having contractions. We were transferred to a private room and settled down to watch TV; they’d told us it would probably be a while before things got going and she wanted to catch the latest installment of Project Runway. But then they decided to press on and give her an epidural and, within minutes of having it, she began to sleep.