Out to Lunch

by Stacey Ballis

The dinner is casual and very tasty, and everyone talks easily of their upcoming holiday events while I bustle a bit, keeping the latkes frying until everyone is bursting at the seams. Brian is charming with everyone, asking Benji about his plans, telling Andrea he wants the recipe for her root veggies. Turns out he actually likes ballet and had seen Eloise perform, which made her go all giggly. It actually feels nice to have him here, and I think they all like him. But I do wonder a little bit about what Nancy said, the whole fitting-in thing. Brian suddenly reminds me a little bit of Jack, easy in a new situation, finding the right thing to say to everyone to make them happy. I can’t help question the genuineness of this. Is he really ever going to cook those root veggies, or does he just know that asking for the recipe is the way to Andrea’s heart?

  Plus, I have to admit; the ski trip thing is more than a little scary. I haven’t yet confessed to him that I have never skied, and have no intention of starting at this age. Strapping my unathletic fortysomething self to a pair of planks and hurtling down the side of a mountain on purpose seems like a stupid way to die. And a whole week together, that seems too soon. We haven’t even done a whole weekend yet. But it was very sweet of him to want it, to want me, especially since he has old friends who will be there. We have settled into such a pattern of cooking at home and staying in, as much my preference as his, but still . . . any girl might wonder if she were something of a secret guilty pleasure.

  We all clean up, and then set up Eloise’s cookies on the coffee table in the living room for dessert. While I’m in the kitchen making tea for everyone, I hear the bell and then voices. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I haven’t seen Wayne in person since the Library debacle, and despite the numerous phone apologies, my spine is still a little clenched at the prospect of him being here. Then I hear giggles and shrieks of delight, and some very happy barking from Volnay, the same kind she uses in the dog park. I leave the teapot on the stove and head out to face the music.

  As soon as I get through the door from the kitchen, I see a copper-colored blur heading my way, and then it levitates off the floor, hitting me full force in the stomach, and knocking me right on my ass. My breath shoots right out of me in one powerful whoomph, and before I can even register what is going on, my face is being attacked with enormously wet licking. My first thought is that Volnay’s pain pill contained some sort of amphetamine, but then I realize that Volnay, who is not averse to the occasional delicate kiss, has a much smaller, less sloppy tongue, not to mention a much less monumental weight. I reach down and grasp the wiggling blur to see what I’m dealing with.

  There, in my lap, all legs and huge paws and mouth and floppy jowls, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, is a puppy.

  “Surprise!!!” Noah is jumping up and down.

  “Happy Chanukah, Jenny,” Wayne says, his hands on Noah’s shoulders, both of them beaming at me.

  “Holy shit.”

  “Um, what?” I say, not registering, while the puppy begins to gnaw on my arm with shockingly sharp little puppy teeth.

  “He’s for you,” Wayne says. “A Dogue de Bordeaux. You know, like the wine. A French dog named after a French wine region, you know, because you love France and you love wine and everything.” I’m noticing that he is working on a soul patch. The least funky man I know.

  “Dad says you were thinking about getting a puppy for Volnay to play with, and my mom’s friend Josh breeds these, and someone backed out of buying him for Christmas, so we thought that it would be perfect!” Noah is so excited. “Look, she loves him!” Volnay has come over, and immediately begins cleaning the puppy, who wriggles in joy, flips over on his back, and begins to maul my shoe absentmindedly while submitting to her strangely efficient ablutions.

  And despite my every fiber wanting to scream out You idiot, I don’t need a puppy! I don’t WANT a puppy. Especially not this slobbery monster! I don’t. Weirdly, I just start to laugh.

  Noah gets down on the floor to play with the puppy, and Brian comes to help me up. “Oh boy,” he whispers in my ear. I look at him, eyes wide, and nod.

  “Wow, Wayne, Noah, that is a REALLY big surprise.” I feel like my heart is beating about four times per minute, everything seems to be in slow motion.

  “He’s adorable!” Benji says.

  “So sweet,” Eloise says.

  “Isn’t that Hooch? At least it’s a good ’80s dog.”

  “HOOCH!” Andrea says in shocked recognition.

  “Oh, god, it IS Hooch,” Brian says.

  “Who’s Hooch?” Noah and Benji say in unison.

  “God, to be born after Turner and Hooch. You’re going to have to show those boys that movie ASAP.”

  “Maybe you should name him Hooch,” Wayne says.

  “I’m not naming him Hooch,” I say, because really, what else can I say.

  “Let’s get the rest of the stuff, Dad!” Noah says.

  “Bri Guy? Give us a hand, will you?” Wayne says. Can’t wait to hear what Brian thinks of being called Bri Guy for the rest of his natural life.

  “Hey, dog! Quit it,” Benji says, going to save the cookie platter from a clearly interested puppy. Volnay nips the puppy’s ankle, as if to say, Not on my watch, mister.

  “Oh boy, he really is doing everything possible to prove me wrong about this whole thing, huh?”

  You THINK?

  Eloise and Andrea move everything edible to the taller console table, while Benji holds the beast back, and I can look at him fully for the first time. He and Volnay are two shades of the same color, her deep auburn a complement to his brighter, brasher cinnamon. He has light hazel eyes, squished-up floppy ears, and a large square head atop a body that is built like a little tank. He looks a lot like a miniature orange mastiff. His paws are enormous. Not to mention some other obvious parts of his anatomy. This isn’t going to be some elegant little thirty-pound girl. This is a serious BOY dog. And he’s going to be HUGE.

  But he does have the advantage of being a puppy, and all puppies are adorable so that you don’t kill them. He’s curled up in Benji’s arms, licking his ear, and I can’t help it, he is pretty goddamned cute. I’m in real trouble.

  Brian, Wayne, and Noah come back in, laden with a box that says it contains an extralarge dog crate, and half a dozen bags from Petco. I give Wayne credit; he didn’t miss a thing. While he and Brian and Noah set up the crate in the kitchen, the girls and Benji and I unpack the rest of it, puppy food, bowls, toys, leashes and collars and blue bags, endless things to chew on. The puppy immediately co-opts Volnay’s bed, and I think I’ll have to order another one from Ayers, my favorite company for home accessories and furniture, which makes dog beds so beautiful and elegant that they look like they are a part of your interior design and not accidents. And then I watch as he begins to chew the leather off of the corner of Volnay’s little perch, and think, maybe I’ll go with Costco instead.

  “What are you going to call him?” Noah asks.

  “Well, he’s a dog from Bordeaux, so I guess, maybe Latour or Lafite, the best wines in Bordeaux?” I say.

  Noah looks disappointed. “Oh.”

  “What were you thinking, buddy?” Clearly he has something in mind.

  “Chewbacca! Because he likes to chew stuff!”

  Oh, hell no. But then I look at his sweet, eager face. Oh well, in for a penny. “Chewbacca it is. Thanks Noah, perfect name.”

  “AWESOME! DAD!! She liked my Chewbacca idea for his name!” Noah runs back to tell his dad the good news.

  “You are a serious menschette.”

  Yeah, and a complete pushover. With a puppy I didn’t want. Who now has a name I hate.

  “Well, maybe now Nancy will cough up the Xanax.”

  Maybe. Or the ECT.

  Over the course of the next two hours, Chewbacca knocks over a plant, eats a dish towel and half of a glove, and pees on Benji’s backpack, which is thankfully waterproof, and demolishes Volnay’s dreidel rawhide, which he promptly throws up, along with the p
reviously consumed textiles, on the living room rug. By the time everyone leaves, I am coming out of my shell shock and the reality is beginning to set in.

  Puppy. A fucking puppy. A puppy that is going to become a huge dog, and probably eat my whole house in the process.

  At the very least, according to Wayne, the twelve-week-old dog has already been crate trained and partially housebroken, and that the peeing was likely nerves and territory marking, and the throwing up just excitement. And to his credit, after an energetic last walk around the block with Volnay, who is already fussing over him like a mother hen or a British nanny, he goes right into his crate with a chew toy and schlumps down to go to sleep. And Volnay, who usually comes upstairs to sleep with me, lies down in her bed across the room and curls up, looking up at me with a face that says “I’m the night nurse. Scat.”

  Brian and I head upstairs.

  “So, were you really thinking of getting a puppy for Volnay?” he asks.

  “NO. Wayne thought I should get a puppy because he’s heard it is good for older dogs to have younger ones around.”

  “Yeah, sounded like his logic not yours. You gonna keep him?”

  “What can I do? Forget Wayne, I don’t really care about what he would think, but Noah would be crushed. And he is sort of cute. It isn’t like I have a lot on my plate, there is plenty of time on my schedule for training.”

  “He is cute. But he is going to be a bruiser.”

  “I know. Did you see those paws?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Well, you’re a better person than I am, if that guy gave me a dog I had no interest in or plans for, I’d have read him the riot act.”

  “I dunno. I’m working on trying to see beyond my knee-jerk reactions to him, and see the good behind what he does. After all, he knows that Volnay is getting older, and how much she means to me. He thinks that having this puppy will be good for her, but also good for me for when she is gone. So I have to focus on the part of this gift that is really very thoughtful and sincere.”

  “As opposed to the part that is really inappropriate and annoying and presumptuous.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, better you than me. Oooofff!” Brian says as something flies onto the bed and lands on his stomach.

  “CHEWBACCA!” I say. The dog is practically grinning ear to ear as we chase him around the bed and then around the bedroom.

  Over the course of the night, the puppy escapes his crate four times, making Brian check him half sincerely for thumbs, and sending me searching in the middle of the night on my iPad in the dark for a puppy-proof crate.

  I think the Voix may in fact be correct, Nancy is going to have to admit that this new development is even more Xanax worthy than Wayne. And that is saying a lot.

  13

  I’ll pay for the kennel,” Brian says, exasperated.

  I’m trying to explain that I can’t possibly go with him to Snowmass for Christmas. Despite the fact that it would get me out of going to Indiana with Wayne, which I want more than world peace, it would not be good for Chewie’s training for me to be away for any length of time right now. And I’m still not ready for a whole week away with Brian, especially if skiing is involved. “It isn’t about that, it’s about needing to be consistent with his training so that I don’t end up with a hundred-and-twenty-pound dog I can’t control. By the time a dog is twenty weeks old, something like ninety percent of their habits and things are set and really hard to undo. Besides, I can’t put him in a kennel till he’s had his sixteen-week shots anyway. I’m sorry Brian; we can make plans to go away after the New Year sometime. But I just can’t do Christmas.”

  “Okay. Sorry. Didn’t mean to be petulant. I’m just disappointed. I really wanted you to meet my friends, and I thought it would be nice for us to get away.” He is saying the right words, but his voice is still annoyed, and for the first time since we began dating I feel on strange and uncertain ground.

  “Trust me, I would love to meet your friends and be away with you. But I’d already promised Aimee’s family I would be there for Christmas, I think it would be bad form to go back on that this year.”

  “I get it. Truly. We’ll make plans for a long weekend away in the New Year. How is the pup doing?”

  “Well, he continues to Houdini himself out of his crate every night, but so far he can’t get past the wall gate I put up in the kitchen, so other than methodically eating Volnay’s dog bed a little bit at a time like he’s whittling it with his mouth, and the loss of one pair of boots, it’s okay. He’s a sweet boy, and actually very trainable, even if he is something of a natural disaster for the moment. He’s the star of his puppy kindergarten class, and can sit, lie down, roll over, and high-five. But stay and heel are hard for him because he has so much playful puppy energy. He’s also gaining about ten pounds a day, and I think maybe I should have named him Clifford, because I fear he’s going to be bigger than my house by the end of the month.”

  “Well, at least Volnay likes him.”

  “Whatever else is wrong with him, Wayne was right about one thing. Volnay seems to be happier and perkier. She’s helping train him, which I think is the only reason he hasn’t eaten the entire neighborhood by now, and she has absolutely adopted him. Which is hilarious, because she is so alpha, and he is already bigger than she is. When he’s full size, it is going to be pretty funny!”

  * * *

  I’m glad we were able to turn the conversation around, but still have a small knot in my stomach from having to say no to him, and how much it upset him. And I know part of the knot is guilt because of how relieved I am to not have to go.

  I go back to the kitchen and lead Volnay into the kitchen library and slide the door shut. I now have to feed her in here because she takes so long to eat and Chewie can’t stand it, so he just pushes her aside and demolishes her food if I leave them both in the kitchen. Once she’s set up, I leave her in there with the door closed and go to feed the beast.

  He hops up and down, butting my calves with his big head, and licks my hands. He is very affectionate in a Lenny “I didn’t mean to hurt her, George” kind of way. I get his bowl full of kibble and put it down on the floor.

  Three . . . two . . . one . . . empty. And that heart-wrenching puppy look that says “Please, sir, can I have some more?” Lord love him. I take the bowl and rinse it out. It’s one thing to not have my weight under control; I refuse to have overweight dogs. Breaking the cycle.

  I go upstairs to change, and when I come back down, I let Volnay out of her private dining room, and she immediately pushes Chewie out of her bed and settles in for a nap. I toss him a bully stick, and close the kitchen gate. Might as well get this over with.

  * * *

  Jenny!” Wayne throws the door open for me, and grabs me in a big hug. The soul patch is gone, and in its place, the beginnings of a Fu Manchu mustache.

  “Sweet mother of crap, what the hell has he done to my house?”

  Why did you never tell him to stop doing that stupid shit with his facial hair?

  “It’s his face.”

  Well, now it’s his house.

  Aimee’s impeccable wide foyer is full of garbage bags that seem to have strange plastic weapons sticking out. I can see past him into the living room, which looks like a video game convention has exploded.

  “Hey Wayne, how are you?”

  “I’m good. Had the guys over last night for a big games party, so things are kind of a mess.”

  “No worries.”

  “Worries! Many worries! My poor house . . .”

  “Come on in, I’ve got the drawings in the kitchen.”

  I follow Wayne down the hall into the kitchen, where the remains of a major guy party are in evidence. Empty pizza boxes and KFC buckets. Open bags of Doritos and packages of Oreos. A zillion empty beer bottles. It looks like a frat house, not the elegant home of a forty-four-year-old man.

  “I’m weeping. WEEPING IN HEAVEN.”

  “Right
over here,” Wayne says, motioning me to the dining room table.

  I wander over and take a seat at the table, which Wayne has thoughtfully cleared off. There is a large folder in the center of the table, which I presume has the exciting new sketches in it.

  “So, how’s Chewie?” Wayne asks, handing me a can of LaCroix grapefruit flavor, which my friend Alana got me hooked on a couple of years ago. Aimee hated it. But she always had it in the fridge. It’s sweet of him to have remembered to have it on hand for me.

  “He’s doing pretty well. Still having plenty of puppy moments, which are to be expected, but the training is going okay, and Volnay has taken to him like she was born to be a mother.”

  Wayne beams, I can practically feel the joy coming off him in waves. “I’m so glad. When Noah told me about the puppies he had gotten to meet and that one of them had been rejected, everything just clicked!”

  “Well, it was very unexpected, but very thoughtful.”

  “So, I thought if it was okay with you, I would drive us down to the Brands’ next week? My car is big enough to hold all the gifts.”

  Last week I had gotten the pleasure of spending the better part of three hours on the phone with Wayne searching on Amazon to get the holiday shopping done. Between Noah and Aimee’s family, there was no way to stay within the December budget, especially since he had blown a decent chunk on my new family member and all his accoutrements. For every gift, for every person, there were at least five ideas that were terrible until we finally found something rational for everyone. The ensuing headache was epic, and lasted nearly a whole day.

  But apparently everything has arrived intact, and Wayne has been wrapping like mad; I can see a stack of gifts on the dining room table, covered in bright paper, awkwardly done with lots of what appears to be packing tape, and ribbons with floppy bows. Poor guy. Aimee was always in charge of gift wrapping, her impeccable packages crisply covered with pristine paper, invisible tape, and perfect bows. That is a tough act for anyone to follow. But the wrapping doesn’t matter, it will be shredded and garbage in thirty seconds, and I do think it is sort of sweet that he put so much effort into it.