“It’s gorgeous,” I said.
“Babe, I know you’ll say you aren’t hungry but we ordered for you anyway,” said Justin, on his way down the stairs.
“Black and white shake, right?” you said, moving a speaker over so I could sit on it, “I figured I knew what you’d want.” We sat by the window. Looking across the park, I realized that if it wasn’t for one tiny square of a building, we could have waved at each other from our windows. We watched the snow and the people struggling to make it down MacDougal without slipping on the ice. The snow was still fairly pristine so no one was bitter about it yet. We sat there over ten years ago, no idea where we’d be now, but starting to grasp that we couldn’t predict anything. We’ve been terrifically wrong about an awful lot but we did okay. We’re still watching each other’s dreams be dashed or actualized. Still saving each other a seat.
Dear Cerberus,
This is a once upon a time that happened too much.
I’m telling this grim tale to you three. You were the worst of those I called darling. There you are now, cowering. Well, Konnichiwa! Remember me?
I’m the gal who sat dumbly in a living room on the Upper East Side while one of your kind lifted me off the couch by my hair in the few seconds it took your wife to go fetch more pistachios. Didn’t you. I put my fingertips to my scalp and they came away bloody as you whispered, “Keep your mouth shut about this.” Didn’t you.
Now don’t be frightened. This isn’t an indictment. This is addressed to you, yes, but also to myself, because guess who stood for it?
I don’t believe in endings, happy or sad, so my relationships with you continue to this day. They are the kind of relationships you have with a pair of skis you know you’ll never have to strap to yourself again. Maybe you never really liked skiing, but enjoyed being a person who could say, “Looks like I’ll be hitting the slopes this weekend!” So you kept on even though it cost too much to get down a hill. Gave you windburn. I see nothing weird about keeping those skis in the basement. They offer a little nostalgia for crappier times. More importantly, they serve as a reminder that I no longer have to ski.
Wake up, please. I listened to you enough. I listened until I thought you made sense, which is saying a lot.
I can do anything now, from where I sit. I have five decades behind me, practically an elder, and I’m turning you into:
One mangy dog with three heads.
You are Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of Hell. I’m in this story, too! I get my own Disney soundtrack, coming to a speaker near you. You’ll hear it whenever a hummingbird lands on me, or a dwarf ambles by hammered on Jägermeister. Rufus Wainwright can sing it if he is avail.
Don’t pout. You’ll still have a pack of fans. You’ll appeal to those women who write letters to convicts in flowery script, affixing good job! and nice try stickers to their letters. They’ll still call.
Get comfy. Curl up on your vintage gynecological chair with your flask or your cigar. You’ll see yourself in one of the heads of this angry dog. You mistreated me. You know who you are.
There was a time and there was a girl she was funky and dreamy, with real baby fat and a wiggly mouth. Floating through the East Village, she was a muse waiting to happen.
She was I.
One afternoon I stopped on Spring Street for a soda break. I tugged at my tutu and looked across the way at an abandoned couch. There you sat, squinting. You didn’t growl. You sniffed the air, acknowledging me with a head cock as I knelt down.
“Oh my goodness,” I said. “You’re so sweet!”
I tried to run my fingers through your coat but it was dreading on top. You needed someone. “Let’s go back to my place,” you said, putting your head in my lap. My head started to spin and you said
Please come back with me. When I’m not with you all I’ll do is think of you
I moved into your cage that night. There was plenty of floor space for my routines, which delighted you. I discovered I had a gift for making you laugh. Sometimes my antics worked on the street and that was the best—you’d throw your head back in hysterics and pull me close, kissing my forehead. We looked like a candid photo from a tabloid with everyone staring. I felt famous. I’d always wanted to be that girl! The one with a dog so consumed with her that every passerby would take one look at us and want to go home and overdose. It was glorious; faces of all nationalities falling into the same mask of failure: I’ll never be loved like that, they all seemed to say, while you pawed me.
One evening you came home with a pair of yellow stockings for me and I put them on and did a jig that made you howl. I was your favorite, you said. There was loads of time for me to read while you went to your therapist, who would call me privately to remind me to make your life more fun. “Smiles are contagious!” she advised. “Be his ticket to F-U-N! If you are gloomy it will only hurt you!” I said, “You can count on me, Doctor,” and she said, “What?” and I said, “CAN DO, DOC!” She reminded me that she was clinically deaf and I should listen more than speak.
One night you called me to the office. Your eyes were icy. I started to do a time step but you said, honey, this is serious. I stood in the corner while you played back my answering machine. Any messages from dogs, which said, even, “Hey, I’m in town, call me,” or “Hey, my house burned down, call me,” or “Hey, this is the pharmacy, returning your call, call me,” no matter what, you’d look at me and point to the machine until I said, “It’s okay to erase that one,” and you’d hit erase while we stood listening to those voices all high-pitched and jumbled as they ran away. I wondered why everyone sounded the same sped up like that, earnest and slightly hysterical, like cartoon mice planning a funeral. When you’d finished with that you patted me on the head and a second before the door slammed you shouted, “Be back later.”
I went into the bedroom. My legs were quivering; I laid down, whispered “help.” Lately I’d said my prayers standing up, before I got into bed. There was no time, once I crawled into bed with you. By then God was too busy. God was always closed.
Two weeks later you came back not speaking and wouldn’t look at me. When we went out I tried to break up the bar fights and miscommunications with gas station attendants. I showed up at your favorite restaurant in a sassy new outfit: black leather vest and tight mustard-colored riding pants. Rickrack was sewn across each butt cheek like a parenthesis so you’d understand that my ass was always right in the middle of a thought. This seemed clever, and F-U-N, but you were L-I-V-I-D, dragged me to the bathroom by my hair. Pushing my nose to the mirror you said, “You look like a slut!” I said, “Ouch, my hair!” You barked, “Honey! You need to quit picking fights,” but then you shoved your hand down my pants and said, “Don’t get me wrong, you never looked hotter, but these pants are beneath you.” You ripped them down and rammed inside me from behind as a woman came out of a stall and said, “Hey, aren’t you that dog?” You snarled, “Lady, could we have some privacy, please?” “Oh sorry,” she murmured, slipping out as you slipped out too and threw your sweater at me, muttering, “Cover yourself.” You left me staring in the bathroom mirror, pants down. That’s actually a swell game if you play it right, but this was not that.
I found my way to the table but there were only men there.
“Hey, weren’t my friends coming?” I asked, and you pointed to my two girlfriends on the street outside the restaurant holding each other and crying. “The redhead didn’t like men, I could feel it,” you shrugged, “the blonde was just out of line.”
I laid my head down on the table, eyes even with the dish of olive oil. I didn’t need to look up. I knew the girls would come back, and they did, kneeling by your chair and asking for your forgiveness. I saw your hand on the lower back of one of them, moving in small squares. I had dry mouth. I said I was tired. No one heard me. I got up to go. No one said bye.
I walked home and marched to the office, took the top drawer out of your desk, and carried it with me to the bedr
oom without ceremony. I dumped it on the bed and started to go through every piece of paper. In about four seconds I thought, OH. I thought MY, I thought, DUH, I thought, OUCH.
There was a note from the salesgirl who’d sold you my yellow stockings telling you to wash them because they’d “gotten messy” when she modeled them for you in the dressing room. It seems you’d met a thirteen-year-old girl at the arcade? Her mother’s lawyer wrote about complications from the plastic surgery you got her and there were nude pictures of her holding a stuffed gorilla. (Nudes were of the mother, not the daughter.) The dog-walker had written lovingly about your affair (this almost made me like you because she had a withered arm, which made you seem like an equal-opportunity misogynist), letters from a Dutch girl, a French girl, and a girl from the Yucatán peninsula, where you’d been last week when you said you had a charity thing. Ripped in half were photos of a blonde with you in Norway, sitting on a raft.
I was too weak to be angry and I could not get the theme song from “It’s a Small World” out of my head. At least now I was cured of devotion, and phew to that. Phew.
You were at work when I left. I admit I took back my green sweater that you liked to wear, and my garlic press. As I ran onto the elevator your housekeeper dropped her hands at her sides sadly and said
Oh not you, too. I hoped this was different but they always leave crying.
Years later, you came a callin’ Dog #2
There were whispers of your canine reputation but you seemed too good to be true. We went out at night, coming home and falling into bed with an eagerness that was embarrassing, both of us shocked by the comfort of the other’s skin.
We wrapped in quilts and watched Looney Tunes. We ate fried fish sandwiches and did shots of tequila while soaking our feet in the kitchen sink. After two days the bed would look like a crime scene but we’d stay in until someone had the dentist or jury duty. I was covered in bruises and teeth marks, and your back looked like you’d been attacked by a raccoon. You wrote me letters when I napped and I woke to a crinkling sound when I turned my head, an envelope under my pillow.
Then your pack came to town.
Some quality male time was in order, you said. I cheered, go get ’em, tiger, and you said don’t wait up, and I said, I won’t, have a blast!
The next day I realized you’d slept through breakfast and then lunch. I was famished but you were disappointed when I ate without you so I waited, spacing out with a cat’s cradle on the beanbag chair.
I snapped to it when a hissing sound came from your general area. It was like a radiator turning on, and your shoulders were twitching. I fell back, horrified. The neck of your bathrobe drew down and another black wet dog snout emerged, followed by new dog eyes and ears appearing in slo-mo. I gulped. An extra head lay on your pillow and it belonged to the mangy dog I’d escaped years before. Sitting up, both of you looked at me. The new head grinned at me and went flaccid. It hung there attached but only panting.
Was he your understudy? Were you so spent from a night of carousing that you had to call for second team? I didn’t want to be rude, so I acted breezy and made a choice to ignore the bonus dog head.
“Do I have something in my eye?” I asked lightly.
“Come here. I don’t have X-ray vision,” you said.
I opened my eyes wide.
“Your eyes are fine, I see nothing.” You laid back and adjusted your extra head without comment.
I tried not to stare but your eyes were different. They reminded me of the foam that comes in with the tide after an oil spill. Water combined with a compound not meant to marry anything clear. You sighed. You said last night was a throwback to the days when you worked the Underworld. “Those were some times.” You sighed.
“I can believe it!” I said cheerfully, my stomach churning acid. “Hey, if I go to the drugstore do you need anything?”
“An extra toothbrush,” you mumbled. I stopped at the door and turned. You were nearly asleep again but one of the new eyes winked at me, and the new snout whispered something in your ear, which put you in floods of tears. I couldn’t make out every word, but you were sputtering about how we never did anything since I was always working and you never got enough respect. Bonus head mouthed the words “Blow me, chickadee” to me as you wept. I set about calming you, made you a grilled cheese and rubbed your feet until both of you drifted back to sleep, two heads snoring in stereo.
The next day I came in modeling my new parka. “Let’s go to Dubai!” I jumped up and down holding first-class tickets and the hotel brochure, with photos of the indoor skiing school. I’d set it all up. “Cool,” you said.
A week after we were back you both began to sulk. I scrambled for a solution.
“Who’s up for a dude ranch?” I ran in dumping bags of cowboy boots, and fell in your lap. I flashed a picture of your own personal stallion, Digger. I’d set it all up. “Cool,” you said.
In airport security on the way home you got wistful. You missed Digger.
“Who’s ready for a week with holy men in India?” Bonus head yawned, but you swatted at him, said,
“Cool. Do I have to pay for anything?”
“Oh. Uh. You could tip the Sherpa?”
“How much is that?”
“We can sort it out.”
“Cool. Can my mom come?”
On the way back from India you had a meltdown, saying you were always surrounded by my life. “I need to get back to my roots,” you said. “I want my family to come visit.” I said sure, but it was a challenge. Your brother pinched my sister’s nipples on his way to the fridge, and your sister sat farting on my Civil War quilt, calling me a lousy feminist. She was correct, but still. Your mother said my aura was off and I should go in the closet and jump, to clear it, which I did, just as an excuse to get my circulation going since you’d been patrolling the thermostat. You required a cold temperature to paint your canvases, you said, or you would never connect to the chill in your soul. I said I bet you can access that chill even in a heat wave and you said don’t get sassy with me, I said sorry but you haven’t painted in months and my fingers are turning blue. I snuck into the living room one afternoon to turn up the heat but Bonus head ratted me out. Marching to the center of the room, you whistled. You clapped and stamped one foot and I hopped up, thinking, oh cool, square dancing! You were not interested in dancing, though, you were issuing an edict and you said
Everyone needs to remember at the end of the day that they are under my roof
This threw me because it was I who wrote the check for that roof and it cleared my bank.
You said
Who wears the pants in this family, who works harder than me?
I said I um. I said I do. I said please get out and that means cousins in the guest room, too. You said I’m leaving. I said, yes, you’ve been asked to. You said, I’m going and once I leave I’m not coming back, and I said yes, please pretend like it was your very own idea if you like, just shoo.
You said does this mean I can’t go to Hawaii?
Years sped by, I had two wee ones of my own. Romantic love felt silly by comparison. I was useful.
One evening I made some tea and went into my den, and there you were. You were on your phone and when you saw me you waved excitedly. Putting your hand over the receiver you whispered, “One sec, I’m on with the president.” You blew me a kiss.
“Who are you?” I asked.
You held up your hand and whispered, “Five more seconds, sorry!”
I took a sip of my tea. You definitely looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember from where. You hung up your phone and sauntered over.
“I’m in such a different place now.”
“From when? Do I know you?” I asked.
You put a finger to my lips to shush me and said, “I promise not to be fatuous.”
It started to dawn on me. You were that guy. For years you would drift into my personal space and goose me. Yes! The guy with the vocabulary who did all the
mean imitations that had people in stitches! We had taken a trip together? And then you had disappeared. Then we’d taken another trip together? And you’d disappeared again. I’d blocked most of it, but you seemed so nice now.
You made a pouty face and said, “I think we could pull it off: being married, kids, all of it. I rented a villa in Italy for your birthday and everything. I bid on it and got it. Go, or no?”
“I guess go?” I said.
There was a lentil in your front tooth. You leaned in, said, “This feels like home to me. The corner of carnal and home.”
How strange, I thought. He sounds like someone wrote him. It would be like having a prosthetic arm that I didn’t really need, or a toy vegetable garden.
We moved slowly. Appearances were made and you mingled beautifully. You could decorate and play backgammon. It all felt adult and you remembered to bring flowers and carry suitcases. There were weeks of disappearing but I was used to that.
Winter came. After five days of radio silence you blasted in smelling of gin. You were in a state. After hacking your ex-wife’s email you discovered she was telling everyone you were a dog and that I needed to brush my hair. This time you were not letting go, you said. Face slick with sweat, you stormed to the bathroom and your shirt hit me in the face as you ripped it off and threw it. My view was partially blocked but in the mirror opposite the medicine cabinet, I saw them. I backed up in shock and nearly fainted. The two dog heads I’d disentangled myself from in years gone by were back. They hung from either side of your collarbone like shoulder pads with noses. I almost rolled my eyes. Three? Though maybe this was the answer? With better weight distribution and symmetry maybe you’d be the man I could count on? Or maybe I should call the cops? Now I understood why all the ascots. I was worried my little ones would wake and see you so I threw a towel around you and steered you to the bed. I tried to put my hand to your forehead to feel your temp but the other two heads snapped at me. Your eyes flew open as if you were remembering your cue and you stuck your tongue out at me, and said, “I want to say all roads are leading me pertinaciously to you but you don’t do any social media.” You belched. “Go pray, why don’t you. Go meditate.”
Dear Mr. You Page 8
