Fifty Acres and a Poodle

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  I was terrified of love. Love was so chaotic. Love was freedom and passion and Wittiest and Peppiest in the Eighth Grade. Freedom and passion meant you flunked. Freedom and passion called for intervention. Freedom and passion meant you should wear a uniform. You should stop having freedom and passion and start having a structured environment. Well, you had a choice. You could have an intellectual and spiritual life. Or you could have love.

  You couldn’t have both. You couldn’t have inward and outward. It was impossible. Inward was order and outward was chaos. How could you have both?

  I chose order. Of course I did. We always choose the familiar path first.

  And so this is how I ended up, at thirty-seven years old, at 136 South Eleventh Street, the last house on the right. I spent my days writing stories and magazine articles. I had a garden, a cat, a dog, a good life.

  And I had a farm dream, a song I couldn’t get out of my head.

  ONE

  ONCE AGAIN THE AIR CONDITIONER IN MY LIVING room is not keeping up. I should have gotten the 12,000 BTU. Obviously. Because these are high ceilings. And this is a brick house. And it’s so hot out. It’s the hottest summer in Pittsburgh’s history. Well, not really, but it might as well be. I feel like a loaf of bread. I feel like a bloated loaf of bread in an oven experiencing a teeny, tiny draft. A pathetic little breeze. My God, with all the clunking and clanking and complaining this air conditioner is doing, you’d think it would have more to offer.

  And now look. Now Bob is coughing. Bob is my cat, sitting beside me here on the couch. Okay, why is he coughing? The vet did not say anything about coughing. It’s all right, Bob. Calm down. That’s right…. God, you shed. One thing I am not going to miss is the way you shed. All right. You can stay here a few minutes longer. But stop staring at me. Go on, now. Go to sleep, Bob. You are a … cat. Take a nap, Bob.

  He’s okay. And don’t worry; I am not a person who has long, complicated cat conversations. Technically speaking, I am not a person who even talks to cats. Because I never say the words out loud. And Bob does not talk back with any cat telepathy or anything. We’re normal, me and Bob. We are not the kind of overinvolved cat and cat owner you see in photographs on bags of premium cat food or anything. But we are a unit, me and Bob.

  Bob is a big orange cat, like the one in that movie Thomasina I saw as a kid. I always wanted an orange cat like that. I remember nothing about that movie except it was about a girl who had a deep love for her cat. So of course I related.

  But Bob isn’t just a big cat. Bob is a huge cat, a very tall cat. I tell people Bob used to play basketball in college. Bob has a very luxuriant tail, a thick tail, a tail like a raccoon’s with stripes that go in circles, orange, white, orange, white, all the way up. It’s a tail I think any cat would be proud to own, although I cannot verify that. The only other particularly noteworthy feature about Bob is his love for me. Bob drools with pleasure at the very sight of me. I can’t let Bob in my bedroom at night because he will sleep on my head and slobber with happiness. Sometimes when I’m holding Bob, he’ll purr so loud, I’ll feel it in my teeth. You’ll never meet a happier cat than Bob when he is in the presence of me. And I’m not saying this to brag. In fact, I don’t know why I’m saying this, except to say that sometimes saying is easier than feeling. And when it comes to Bob, I am sick of feeling.

  A few months ago, the vet said, “I’m sorry.” He said, “Bob is dying.” That was a blow. Because for eleven years I’ve had Bob. For eleven years he’s been Bob, the wonder cat, the mighty cat; he’s been Ram-Bob, defender of my universe, or at least of my yard, or at least of my heart, and now he is dying. Only no, he doesn’t look like he’s dying. He doesn’t look like some pathetic, skinny, scrawny, icky thing you are afraid to touch. He looks … normal. So it’s hard to remember that he’s dying. But the vet says he is. The vet says the combination of feline leukemia and feline HIV is a one-two punch, leaving Bob with a lethal disease and no immune system to fight it. In fact, the vet was awfully surprised that I got Bob past that last infection. But I did. Because I will do anything for Bob. Because for so long—for so, so long—it was just me and Bob. Bob was all the love I could handle, all the love I wanted. And I know, there is something pathetic about that, woman-with-cat. Young-writer-and-her-cat. There’s something so cartoonish about that. You could imagine, if you were a lesser person, me and Bob appearing as a silhouette on a bath towel or something. But it really was the truth, my truth, for a decade. And yes, things are a lot more complicated now, but don’t think there aren’t days when I don’t yearn for just me and Bob, the unit. And now Bob isn’t allowed outside, because there is no way he could survive another fight, or even a little scratch—and really, I am doing fine. I am totally finished feeling anything about this. I am done being hysterical. I cried for three straight hours the day the test results came back, wailing like an infant in the living room, having no idea that Lois, the cleaning lady, was upstairs listening, or trying not to. That will cut into your crying. That will bring reality back into your gut with a thud. Hey, it’s a cat. A stinkin’ cat. And Lois, jeezus, the life that lady has lived? With all those divorces and kids being born and a few dying and those men beating her up? Lois has lived fourteen lives in the time that I’ve lived just a third of one puny one, just me and Bob. And I know, Bob is dying. That is a fact I do not need to be reminded of. In fact, I would really prefer if we not discuss it at all.

  Well, then.

  Okay, then.

  I just wish this air conditioner had more oomph. And to tell you the truth, I’m starting to hate the way I have to have an air conditioner going in order to concentrate, in order to sleep at night. In order to live. Isn’t it a bad thing when you need a giant air compressor plugged into your life in order to survive?

  That can’t be right. That’s not right.

  I have to get out of here, away from this clunking noise. I should go farm shopping. This is my current favorite escape. No, I have no intention of actually buying a farm. Of course not. This is a fantasy, a game. Farm shopping is a reason to get away, a reason to sit in my swanky new VW Passat with the sunroof, leather seats, and most excellent air-cooling system.

  All right, Bob. Excuse me. I am standing up. I am not going to waste this Sunday sitting around whining about… air. I’m going to go down and get a paper so I can look at the ads.

  I open the back door, slam through the wall of heat, and step outside to find Betty, my dog, chewing a large piece of garden vegetation formerly known as a variegated hosta.

  “Oh, come on, Betty. Give me that.” Betty, a mutt of unknown lineage, has made a complete mess of this little garden. She dug up my petunias. She trampled my dahlias. Now she’s working on my hosta, making little dog beds where the plants used to thrive. My poor hosta. My poor garden.

  Ugh. I know; I’m starting to sound like Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace or something. What a whiner. Who cared about his stupid flowerbeds?

  Actually, now that I look at her, Betty does have a Dennis the Menace quality to her. She is blond. She is short. She is a rascal. But in order to really capture the essence of Betty, you’d have to cross Dennis with, say, Ginger, on Gilligan’s Island. Betty is a beauty queen. A mischievous, privileged princess.

  “Betty, sit. No, girl, down!”

  Betty is a jumper. I really have to work on that. Betty has dainty paws that belie their digging and scratching potential. Also, Betty has extremely beautiful brown eyes. Everyone comments on her eyes, which seem to be encircled in eyeliner. Some people say Betty would make a very convincing canine Marilyn Monroe. These are the people who haven’t seen her with a variegated hosta in her mouth.

  My poor garden. Before Betty came along, I had a perfect garden. Well, not perfect, but definitely on the way. Gardening is all about the urge for excellence, which a gardener never achieves, which is what keeps the gardener hooked. Gardening is about power. You are the master of that world. You are the king and the queen and the duke and the duches
s. You see what happens when you can tame a four-by-six slice of nature, and pretty soon you think: What about ten by twenty? You tame, and you tame, and you tame, and all you can see is what is not tamed.

  Taming the land. Controlling nature. This was one of the ways in which, up until recently, I was able to keep my life extremely tidy. Writing was another way. The control! The characters in your stories did what you wanted them to do. The people cried when you wanted them to. Love happened exactly on the page number set by you. I have only very recently discovered that this was all a ruse. I mean, I certainly was not conscious of the fact that my ordered life, my near-perfect garden, my carefully structured stories, my rigid exercise schedule, my first-this, then-that way of life was a protective cover for my heart.

  Well, it doesn’t matter. Because Betty came along and ruined everything. Well, not everything, but she might as well have. And, ouch. If she would just stop this jumping. “Down girl! Yee-ouch! Betty, you either have to cut your nails, or I am going to have to stop wearing shorts.”

  I got Betty two years ago at the pound. Just walked in one day and saw her, an eight-week-old puppy curled up in a cage. The tiniest little angel puppy. Who knows how it happens? I fell instantly and thoroughly in love. I plunked down thirty-five dollars and took her home and loved her. God, how I loved her. But not quite like I loved Bob. This was not a replacement love for Bob. This wasn’t some kind of insurance-policy love. I don’t know exactly what kind of love it was, but it was something entirely new.

  I couldn’t stop staring at her. For weeks I sat there staring at the little angel mutt with the bedroom eyes. Then one day, when we were in the garden and I was staring at her, she got stung by a bee. Her neck started to inflate. Inflate like a balloon. It kept getting bigger and bigger. Jeezus! Soon it was as big as a beefsteak tomato. It was the most horrifying sight. I stood there with my mouth dropped open, paralyzed.

  To make matters worse, I had a date. Some handsome young man I hardly knew was due to pick me up within the hour. I didn’t want to have a date. I didn’t like dates. I didn’t even like the word. I would say “fig” instead. I would tell the babes, “I have a fig tonight,” and they would say, “Good for you!” It was, they said, good to have a fig. A single woman in her thirties was supposed to have figs. Whatever.

  So, panicked over the sight of my little love puppy with the neck the size of a beefsteak tomato, I called the guy. I told him there was an emergency, that I would have to cancel. I thought perhaps he would hear the terror in my voice and offer to help.

  He said: “So what am I supposed to do with these theater tickets?”

  I gave him another chance.

  “My puppy,” I said. “Something is terribly wrong. Her neck is blowing up!”

  He said: “See, this is why I don’t have pets. Pets are so much trouble—”

  I hung up on him. Hung the hell up on him. Because now Betty was throwing up, over and over again, violently.

  I called Alex. He was a friend, a friend for some six years. He’s who I would always call. He said, “I’ll be right there.” He dropped everything and zoomed over and whisked me and Betty to the vet’s. And Betty lost consciousness, right there in the waiting room. She suddenly and completely went limp. The nurse grabbed her, yelled something to another nurse, everybody started running. They stuck an IV in her little leg. I stood there horrified, seeing my puppy lying limp on a shiny silver table, looking most definitely dead.

  Then … a twitch of her paw. Then another paw. Then … eyes. The most beautiful eyes! A resurrection! I was crying my eyes out, watching this, feeling this intersection of fear and longing and hope and elation. And Alex was there. Just as Alex was always there. And he was holding me. He was assuring me, he was saying, no, this isn’t stupid. It’s never stupid to cry your eyes out. Go ahead and wail. Alex was always there. And maybe deep down, I always knew. Maybe he knew, too. But neither of us had ever said it. It all seemed so impossible. He was so much older than me, fifteen years older than me. We’d come from such different worlds, traveled such different paths.

  I stood in that vet’s office for a long time, a blubbering fool.

  Over a dog.

  But not just over a dog. Because I was cracking up. Or maybe cracking open? Crack, crack, crack. The cracks were doing me good. It’s only when you crack, really crack open, that someone else can get in.

  I hugged Alex. I mean, he’d been holding me all along, but I turned to hug him, to thank him. We’d hugged a million times before. Hugged when we said hello. Hugged when we said good-bye. We were friends who hugged. But this hug was different. This hug was important. Not so much like two friends expressing affection as in the past, but more like two people holding on to an awakening and undeniable future.

  A few months later, I confessed to Alex, and he confessed to me. Because it was the truth, and the truth was so simple. The truth is never hard to explain. Lies are what take up all your time.

  NO, BETTY, YOU WAIT HERE. I’M JUST GOING TO RUN down and get a paper. You wait here for Alex, and I’ll be right back.” Alex is on his way over, due any minute. I’m sure he’ll be up for a Sunday drive; any excuse to get out of this heat. I hope he has Marley with him, though, because then we can leave Marley in the yard with Betty, and we won’t have to hurry home to do dog duties.

  Marley is Alex’s poodle.

  Yes, well. A poodle. “My boyfriend has a poodle.” Sometimes I have to practice saying that. Because I come from a long line of mutt people (i.e., people who laugh at poodle people). Alex is a psychologist. Yes, I know. I practice saying that, too: “My boyfriend is a shrink.” When I am feeling very courageous, I practice saying the whole thing: “I am in love with a shrink with a pet poodle.” Whew. You never know where you’re going to end up.

  Alex’s grandfather and my grandfather were born in the same tiny town in Lithuania. Alex doesn’t have any Irish in him, though. Not even a drop. His mother was pure Russian. As Jews living in Eastern Europe, his parents fled to America early in World War II, with a baby daughter, Marina, in their arms. When the war was over, they got word that nearly the entire rest of the family had perished in the Holocaust. Then they had Alex, their only son.

  Alex has no willow tree in his yard. He is fifty-two years old, and he calls himself a city-person, but I don’t think categories like that matter as much to him.

  Okay, the newspaper. I’m heading down to Mabel’s newsstand for the paper. I feel the heat bounce from the concrete as far up as my knees. It’s amazing how concrete radiates heat. It’s way too amazing. They should have more grass in South Side, that’s what I’m thinking. Lately I find myself drawn to the weeds growing between the cracks of the concrete. Lately I find myself identifying with the weeds growing between the cracks. Misplaced, choking, what am I doing here?

  A blast of exhaust from the neighbor’s air conditioner hits me in the face. Oh, that was nice. Then the stench from an overflowing Dumpster, baking in the sun, slugs me in the throat. And now, oh, great. Now here comes that neighbor brat with the crazy eyes who, for lack of a more interesting hobby, has taken up terrorizing Helen, the old lady who lives across the street from me. Poor Helen. I love Helen. Helen has lived in that green insulbrick house her whole life. She was born in that house. She is eighty-five years old, and she is probably going to die in that house. She doesn’t even have an air conditioner. I should buy her an air conditioner.

  I don’t want to die at 136 South Eleventh Street. I don’t. If I wanted to die in my house, I would have put in hardwood floors. But I just put down carpeting. I said it’s not worth investing a lot in a house you’re not going to own for long. I never intended to live in this house for ten whole years.

  And now here’s the neighbor brat. Oh, God. I’m not even going to look at him. I’m going to avoid those crazy eyes. How can an eleven-year-old boy have so much power over my life? The other day he decided to play hockey with raw potatoes, using Helen’s front stoop as his goal.

 
“Stop it!” I said out my front door. “What are you doing? Leave Helen alone.”

  He gave me a look. A look of “Well now, this is getting fun.” And then he stuck his tongue out. He swirled his tongue up and down, wagging it, shutting his eyes, then opening them, shutting them, opening them, like that toy monkey banging cymbals. His point was well taken: “I am a lunatic.”

  So then he switched the direction of play. He started firing potatoes at my front stoop. I got even more upset. I stepped out of the house, dodging the potatoes, and went to speak to the boy’s mother. I knocked on her door. The boy’s teenage sister answered. She knew why I was there.

  “He won’t take his medication!” she said. “I can’t get him to take it!” She told me her mother was at work. She said this had happened before. She said the only thing she knew to do when her brother was going bonkers like this was to lock herself in her room and hide. She suggested I do the same.

  Great. Just great. I was being terrorized by an eleven-year-old boy, and all I could do was surrender. Hide. Shield myself from the wrath of his crazy potatoes. So this is what I did. I went back to my house and shut the door and tried to ignore, through dusk and into nightfall, the thunk, thunk, thunk on my front stoop.