As I Lay Frying

by Fay Jacobs

  Once I got through to Visa I had to give them my social security number 000-00-001 (not the real number. I just feel that old), and my mother’s maiden name, Kelsey (True. How that happened to the little Jewish family at Ellis Island is another story.) and convince the operator I couldn’t read her my credit card number because I lost it, and she’d better hurry and cancel it because as we were speaking some terrorist organization was probably charging para-military uniforms from L.L. Bean.

  Next I called the bank to find out how much cash I had since I was now cut off from plastic.

  “Welcome to your automatic reply line. Then I had to punch in my lengthy account number, pin number (my dog’s birthday), zip code, and maiden name thing again.

  By the time I got the depressing balance, my voice mail button was blinking and I had to punch in my mailbox code 666 (not the real number, but what the hell) to retrieve my message.

  It was my daily spousal call (look how low I’ve sunk to shore up my once-sharp memory) to make sure I pick up the dry-cleaning.

  Next I powered up the computer and typed my convoluted virus-avoiding cryptogram password (I’m not even going to make one up here. With my luck I’d accidentally give those terrorists with my credit card access to the Federal Reserve) and typed in about a million http//dotcoms. I was looking up information about my recent cholesterol test results.

  I typed my good cholesterol numbers and my bad cholesterol numbers and my e-mail address so some skinny doctor could analyze my fractions and tell me never to eat another Twinkie.

  Then I checked my e-mail, wracking my bulging brain to recall which deliciously campy screen name went with which Tom, Dick or Larry. When I finished typing omputer gibberish, I had an epic voice-mail message with instructions for contacting a colleague by beeper.

  Oh, for a few stolen moments with an old-fashioned ink-smeared Washington Post—perhaps in the bathroom, where computers fear to tread. So far.

  The phone rang. “I just opened the cellular phone bill and it’s $856!” shrieked Bonnie. “What have you been doing, conferring with the Psychic Network on your way home?”

  “No! If I had I would have known when to intercept the bill!!!”

  So I called the phone company (“Your call is very important to us so stay on the line until hell freezes over”) to learn that some computer geek had electronically cloned my cell phone number and was, by now, shouting orders to the credit-card wielding terrorists in Paraguay.

  They assigned me another password, admonishing me, for safety sake, just to memorize it, not write it down. I told them not to worry. If I wrote it I’d only forget where I put it. Maybe I should just tattoo my compendium of codes and passwords on my person.

  The final straw came later, when having a pizza delivered seemed the only sensible way to end the day. Now I don’t know about you, but I find that businesses using clever wordplay for their phone numbers make me nuts. My brain is teeming with anagrams for pizza (227-FAST) and plumbers (1-800-HOTWATER) but I never find the matching key pad digits fast enough to stave off the telephone company distress signal. Craving pepperoni and urgently hunting for the alphabet on the phone, I slowly tap F-A-S-T, get through, and order the damned pizza.

  “Phone number?” the dispatcher asks. I pull it up from my grey matter. “Address?” I spout my street and house numbers. “Name?” Um...um...it takes forever for me to spit it out!

  It’s any wonder I can remember it at all. After all, I hardly use it anymore. Whole days go by when my bank, HMO, personal computer, and e-mail haven’t a clue Fay Jacobs exists. She’s a pin number, account number, screen name, social security number, or zip code.

  Now I’m sitting here madly calculating dog years to figure out when those puppies were born so I can come up with my ATM pin number. I’m absolutely sure humans were designed for a simpler time. If God meant us to store this many codes and passwords he’d have given us upgradable memory.

  Luckily, I don’t have room on my hard drive to worry about it.

  April 1997

  THREE DOG NIGHTS: OY TO THE WORLD

  Years ago, my father told me that the little infuriating things in life —and even some of the really big bad things—aren’t half so bad if you wind up with a good story to tell.

  It’s been his best advice to me—especially since the rest from that era tended toward “It wouldn’t kill you to wear a dress to your sister’s wedding” and “You’ll never find a husband if you buy a house with another girl.”

  We’ve come a long way since then. For the record, wearing a dress to the wedding didn’t kill me, but the shoes almost did. And buying the house with Bonnie pretty much covered that finding-a-husband thing. And go figure—Dad even sent us an anniversary card this year.

  But the advice about turning lemons into stories about lemonade really stuck. I try to find something worth smiling about in just about every stupid, annoying or awful thing that befalls me. It’s gotten me through some tough stuff.

  But I thought I’d met my Waterloo last fall when Bonnie and I found out our dog Max was sick. There was nothing to smile about—not his three surgeries to remove the cancerous cells, not the uncertain prognosis, and surely not the staggering vet bills.

  But now that it’s spring and woman’s best friend is doing better than expected, I realize that despite our fragile feelings on the subject there are some tales to wag.

  First, there was the ritzy New York Animal Medical Center our vet referred us to after she removed a cancerous tumor from Max’s leg.

  Virtually indistinguishable from a people hospital, the Center had signs directing visitors to Admitting, Cardiac Care, Dialysis, Surgery, and of course, the Cashier.

  “Dr. McKnight to Oncology” crackled the loud speaker as scrub-coated aides and concerned “parents” accompanied spaniels, retrievers and Siamese felines from place to place.

  I don’t know what this says about the state of our own hospitals, but one thing I didn’t see was a hallway full of moaning, abandoned patients.

  In Admitting, Bonnie, Max and I sat amid other patients and their companions. Nearby, a woman clutched a squiggling tube sock to her chest. This worried me, as I refused to see ANY movie until Anaconda departed the multiplex, lest I see even a poster.

  So I was greatly relieved when a bald rodent popped out of the sock. Somebody get the Rogaine. The woman’s beloved ferret was being treated for hair loss.

  To our right sat an Armani-clad cover girl type with a white poodle shaved into topiary; on our left was an unshaven, rumpled bag man clutching a cat carrier. He got the same VIP service as everyone else.

  When our turn came, Max went to Oncology, where his new specialist ordered tests to see if Max’s aggressive form of cancer would respond to radiation. He would stay for six weeks of treatment at a cost roughly equivalent to our spending the same six weeks in Barbados—but there would be a 95 percent chance of remission.

  Unfortunately, tests revealed a cancerous lymph node and poor Max underwent the knife again—eliminating the radiation option and sending us home to a course of Schnauzer chemotherapy.

  Not funny. Especially not the sobering visit to the hospital cashier, or the added insult of having to drive back to the beach on Thanksgiving Eve, the worst travel day of the year. We had 10 hours to creep and weep our way down the Jersey Turnpike with a groggy post-op dog.

  But from there things got so weird we had to laugh. First it was the pills. Doggie chemo is taken orally. Not, however, willingly. For the first week, we spent ten minutes, three times a day prying Max’s jaws open, depositing five dollars worth of pills, and having him spit them back at us until—worn to a frazzle by Bonnie’s refusal to give up—he’d gulp.

  By week two he pretended to swallow and ran, making us race to find whatever chair, sofa or shoe he used for a spittoon.

  So we started embedding the fistful of pills in people food like smoked salmon cream cheese, frozen custard, and hummus. Max’s palette was getting so sophisticated he
should have been doing the N.Y. Times restaurant reviews.

  Along with the chemo, Max took Tagamet. Great. With my gallbladder gone, I no longer subsist on Tums but I’m paying $9 a week for antacids anyway.

  Another medication had Max constantly gulping water. Every night from November to March, Bonnie or I had to drag our butts out of bed in the middle of the night so Max could visit a fire hydrant and impersonate it. We had one, two and sometimes three dog nights.

  Would he use newspaper? No way. We’d say “Please, Max, here’s an old issue of Letters from CAMP. I swear, the editor won’t mind....” But no. Lucky for her, June Allyson missed Max modeling Depends.

  Totally sleep deprived, we barely survived the holidays, our work weeks, and the inevitable exhaustion-caused snippiness. Meanwhile, between pees, Max slept like the Gerber Baby since his regimen also included drowse-inducing Benadryl.

  After spending our nights jumping up and down to let him out, we got some measure of revenge every morning by not letting sleeping dog lie. “Wake up! Max, rise and shine,” we’d holler, shaking him awake. One morning I could swear he said “Ten more minutes....”

  Meanwhile, as his thirst subsided, ravenous hunger took over. Once a picky eater, Max started swallowing everything but his bowl. And who could deny a poor ailing creature?

  Before, when Rehoboth shopkeepers gave him treats, he’d just push them around. “He doesn’t like to eat out,” I’d sheepishly explain. Now, Max shoves his furry face through the door at our pet shop, rushes for the dog cookies and runs up a tab.

  On one beach commute, our formerly polite pooch waited until Bonnie was busy paying the Bay Bridge toll, lunged up like Jaws and—just when you thought it was safe to go through the toll booth—separated Bonnie from her Big Mac.

  Naturally, Max started porking up and bursting out of his tiny Canine Klein T-shirts. Short of sending him to Jenny Craig, we tried lo-cal Rawhide chews. Now he’s addicted to them and needs Rawhidette gum.

  Lest you think the dog is suffering, let me tell you he’s having the time of his life. He goes everywhere with us, like a pampered European pet—including being invited into certain Rehoboth coffee bars which should, in the name of propriety, remain nameless. He can, however, tell you where to find terrific Biscotti.

  And he’s far more socially plugged in than we are. Max and I crossed Rehoboth Avenue last week to hear somebody call, “Hi ya Max!” What am I, chopped liver?

  We were shopping one day when somebody we barely knew ran up to us and asked if Max could wait—her mother was just finishing up at the cash register and would be right out to see him. I feel like his personal assistant—“Have your people bark at my people and we’ll do lunch.”

  The dog turned 13 last month (“Max will be barking the Torah at 11:30 with luncheon to follow”) and celebrated his Bark Mitzvah. Okay, okay, I realize we may be in denial, but Bonnie and I have been sublimating our fear of losing him and making every day count.

  But now that the chemo treatment is over, it’s a little harder. When he was swallowing 14-k gold pills, we felt we were being pro-active. Now we just wait to see what happens.

  We’re hoping for the best, but know that things can go downhill fast. But in the meantime, we feel like we’ve done everything possible for Max—even if we’ve been overly permissive parents. In fact, I think we’ve turned him into a spoiled SCHNAP (Schnauzer American Prince).

  Last week during my Ellen-Comes-Out party he begged hummus and pita, accepted an offer of Boursin cheese and crackers, snagged several slurps of Merlot and, in a brazen move, made off with a slice of pizza while my back was turned.

  If he lives, we’re gonna kill him.

  May 1997

  MY LIFE AS BALLAST

  The realtor caught us by surprise. “There’s a gay square dance group in town May first. You want a rental?”

  It was waaay too soon. The thought of stuffing a whole winter’s debris into our owner’s closet and schlepping onto the boat seemed idiotic, especially with morning frost still on the boardwalk and the boat on land in a big baggie. Besides, no way we’d give up our favorite spring mornings in town.

  “They’re willing to pay a lot.”

  “Show me the money!” we hollered and started packing. And I confess, I was less nuts this time. Last year I stripped the place of so much stuff it looked like an abandoned crack house. But now that I know the tax advantage of buying stuff for a rental, I’m encouraging our tenants to break or steal things so I can buy them again this fall.

  With the condo secured, we arranged to do launch and drive the boat back to the marina in Dewey. Our actor son joined us and naturally, we’d picked a cold, rainy day.

  With clothes, bedding and bare necessities (TV, blender, CD player), we set out from our winter storage site up river back to Rehoboth Bay. At best it’s a dicey trip, since one narrow channel is the only route our boat with its 3-foot draft can travel. Go an inch off course, and the propeller hits bottom, getting chewed up like a spoon down a garbage disposal.

  So we set out—and couldn’t find the channel markers. They were missing. The Delaware Coast Guard must have taken them to the dry cleaners and forgotten to pick them up.

  We blundered forward in the rain and fog, with Bonnie watching the depth finder plummet to 2 feet, 5 inches. And some of that was mud. “Go stand out front,” Bonnie said to me, “maybe it will help raise the prop in the back.” Great. I can call my autobiography My Life as Ballast.

  “You look like Barbara Stanwyk, heading for a Titanic lifeboat,” said our-so-the actor. “Are we stuck?”

  “Not yet,” said Captain Bonnie throttling forward into the goo and then jolting to a stop.

  “Now we’re stuck,” I said, from the bow pulpit at the boat’s nose where I’d landed from the short stop. Below me, the water shone ankle deep. The leading man joined me on my perch and we both leaned over and stared.

  “Ohmigod, those are clams,” he said.

  Then Max trotted out to join us and Bonnie hollered, “That’s it, everybody back in the cockpit.”

  Easy for her to say. The three of us clung to the teeny platform like survivors from Wallenda’s seven-man pyramid. Finally the captain had to crawl onto the deck herself, and with outstretched hands, guide the three wimps back into the boat.

  “We could be stuck here all day. Call the marina and ask somebody to come get us,” I said, thinking it a valid solution.

  To Bonnie it ranked with “stop at the gas station and ask for directions” or “call Microsoft Tech support”—not to be tried in the first two hours of any crisis.

  “Maybe somebody will come by and tow us home,” Sir Laurence Olivier wished outloud.

  “There aren’t any other morons out here,” I said, glancing at the depth finder. Two feet, three inches. “Maybe we should just get out and walk back.”

  By this time Bonnie had the boat in reverse, trying to dislodge us from the muck.

  “We won’t be missed until Steve wonders why I didn’t turn in a column this week.”

  “And I’ve got an audition on Thursday...to be or not to be.…”

  “Forget that,” it looks like the dog is thinking, “to pee or not to pee, that is the question.”

  Bonnie finally had enough. “Will you two cut it out. You aren’t helping.”

  In uinison: “We were supposed to be helping???”

  “Just what she needs,” mumbled Marlon Brando, “two sissies in the front seat giving her moral support.”

  With that, Bonnie gunned the engine and we shot backwards, sending everything in the boat flying. But we were afloat. After that, I don’t think the captain found the channel, as much as dug a new one.

  Back at our marina, gusty winds and tsunami waves rocked the boat while the cabin had sheets, towels, and small appliances flung everywhere. I couldn’t tell if I was home or in a Goodwill Collection box.

  Out on the pier I found a note from the phone installer. “Your phone service is working. I insta
lled the line as far as the Rate of Demarcation Point near the marina. If you have any questions call…”

  I had a question. If my phone service was on and I was paying for it, where the heck was my phone jack? Bonnie and I went out onto the blustery pier to look for it, but found none behind our boat or anywhere between the slip and the parking lot. As we lay on our bellies searching for under-dock wiring we wondered if Natalie Wood had been looking for her phone jack when she went down.

  Wind howling around me, I called the phone company from a nearby pay phone.

  “What problem are you reporting?”

  “I can’t find my phone.” That stopped the conversation. I explained that I’d expected to find a phone jack installed on my dock.

  “What? I can’t hear you. You’ll have to speak up.”

  “You can’t hear me because I’m outside at a pay phone, we’re having a cyclone and I can’t find my effing telephone. We both started to laugh and she assured me that an installer would return the next day and fix me up.

  Back in the boat, Bonnie, Max and I huddled for warmth and surfed off to sleep, dreaming of lucky square dancers do-si-do-ing back to a warm condo which wasn’t pitching and rolling.

  By morning we dragged ourselves out of berth, threw on crumpled clothes and drove to town for breakfast…driving by the condo to gaze wistfully at it on our way.

  At our favorite coffee shop, our favorite waitperson took one look at us and said, “Whoa. ough night?”

  “First night on the boat,” Bonnie grunted, “We have renters.”