Or Not to Be (7 page)

A woman was watching from her porch. I
asked if it was her dog.

She said, “No, but you should report it.
That dog’s a menace.”

I started jogging
away, and the little rodent dog came barking at me again, nipping at my shoes.
Then, out of nowhere, the owner was chasing
her
rat-dog. She was limping along with one shoe on. She swung her other
shoe rather fruitlessly at
her idiot dog.

The mutt ignored her and charged at me, so I stopped
running and growled back at it.

The shoe-waving owner yelled, “You hear
that, Nelly? You be nice!” Little Nelly turned on her and tried to eat her
ankles.

“Is this your dog?” I demanded as the dog
latched onto the cuff of her jeans. When she nodded, I said, “Well, it scared
the shit out of me,” not because it did, but because I was so mad that it
tried.

She said, real sweet, as she attempted to
unclench her dog by spastically swinging the shoe at its flanks, “Oh, I’m
terribly sorry.”

Well, that fixes everything, right? I was
supposed to back off from being a jerk about her obnoxious dog. But the
incident challenged my admittedly shrinking mental control, and I heard myself
say, “Does your rat-dog stink up 113 or 115?” I pointed at the two houses
behind her.

She managed to look offended and offered
no further apology but did not admit to the crazy runner where she lived.

I heard my mouth say, “113? Right! Get a
leash,” and away I ran with my mind somewhere off to my left.

I had relayed all of this to Eddie over
the phone earlier that day while I stood guard on lunch duty in the cafeteria.
He’d heard my complaints about dogs before. He listened patiently and then
launched into his best rendition of Repairman Husband, earnest to fix every
problem for me. “Why don’t you do what my mom always did?”

“What was that?” I worried where this
would go.

“Write a letter to the owners and
complain,” he said simply.

I thought he was joking, but I was clearly at the desperate
stage, so I’d drafted a dog memorandum instead of grading tests during my break
that day. I dug the pages out of my purse while we sat in the line of cars full
of tired parents in front of the middle school. “Listen to this, Ed. I drafted
my letter.” His smile encouraged me.

I began, “Dear Neighbors: I have lived
among you in silence and misery for a long time. I avoid confrontation. I’d
rather be mad at you than have you mad at me. This is a costly way to live.
Among other things, it appears to be costing me my mind. Granted, it is not the
only thing wearing down my mental capacity, but it is one of the obvious
things, and I have deemed it fixable, so I am compelled to write you this
letter.”

Eddie smiled and nodded, yet looked oddly
saddened by my words. I continued.

“My husband is the true dog hater at our house. He yells
out the windows and into your yards for your barking dogs to ‘shut up.’ He
rides to your house on warm evenings on his bike and rings your doorbell at
midnight to wake you up and tell you ‘your dog is barking.’ He calls your house
in the middle of the night with the same message. Why don’t you hear it? We
don’t know. Maybe your mind is missing, too.” This made Eddie snort a laugh,
which made Joey stir in the backseat
.

We both froze. “Oops, sorry,” he
whispered. Laundry duty for a week was the consequence in our family for waking
a sleeping baby. I was lucky: my voice never woke Joey. It just made him smile
and gurgle in his sleep.

Eddie said, “Take that last part out, will
you?”

I made a dramatic X through the offensive
section that pinned the dog hate on him.

“Thanks. Go on. I’m still listening,” he
whispered.

“Your expressions of love have resulted in
your dog behaving like a brat. He does not know or follow traditional, standard
dog rules. He barks excessively. He does not stay in your yard because you have
no fence. You do not leash him. You let him out the front door, and you stay
inside. He runs free to my yard and craps on my lawn. He crushes flowers and
runs through bushes. He has no idea where his boundaries are. You are happy
because you love your dog. He is happy because he does not know any better. I
am miserable because of you and your dog. The anxiety and frustration of your
actions are overwhelming.

“I honestly have never lived in or even
heard of a place where packs of large dogs ran free through neighboring yards.
Where they barked and played and crapped wherever and whenever they pleased. It
is baffling and has led to a partial loss of my mind.

“I feel better for having told you. Now
you can be mad at me. Hopefully, while you hate me, you are also keeping your
dog quiet and at your home. Then the cost of sending this letter was worthwhile
and, maybe, part of my mind will return to me.”

“Good!” he declared. “Let’s stop at
Kinko’s on the way home and make copies. But don’t sign it. Then tomorrow in
the middle of the night, we’ll drive around the neighborhood with our
headlights off and put one in every mailbox. Nobody will suspect us.” He was so
brilliantly deadpan, I couldn’t help laughing.

“I could never send it, Eddie. But it felt
good to write it.”

“I know. I’m glad you did.” He put his
large hand on my leg and squeezed.

“What other kernels of advice do you have
for me, Mr. Fixit?”

“How about this? When Joey learns to walk,
we’ll get him a little shovel and train him to pick up poop in our yard and
fling it into the street. If we start early, he’ll think it’s just naturally
his job and never complain.”

“Nope. My son will not be exploited as a
pooper-scooper. Next idea, please.”

“Then you could do it. Each day, pick up
the piles of fresh dog droppings and dump them in a paper bag. Then deposit it
on the dog-owning-neighbor’s front porch, set a burning match to the bag, ring
the doorbell, and run.”

“No! I’ll burn their house down!”

“I doubt it. They’ll open the door, find
the burning bag, and put out the fire by stomping on it.”

I lost myself in giggles. He was crazy.

For the next few
months, I developed my own strategies—which also failed. Daily, I called my
neighbors or found their children outside playing. I reported the newest loads,
and I asked them to pick up the poop, which, of course, they always did. But it
was usually a big production and rather embarrassing for all involved. Often
they came to my door and insisted that I come out and help them
find
the smelly heap.

Finally, without
any real forethought, I tried a new tactic. After arriving home to find Goliath
happily relieving himself by my garage door, I ordered the wind to hold my
caution and all calls, and I abandoned my mind. I picked up the mess, gross and
still warm, in a plastic bag and walked across the street to
deliver
it. I didn’t intend to set it up in flames and run.
Instead, I rang the doorbell with the stinking bag in my hand, a sick look on
my face, and Goliath prancing around and occasionally sneaking a sniff at my
crotch. Sometimes in life, I wondered how I ended up where I did. Exactly like
now. How can I be dead?

That
night, I confessed my impulsive strategy to Eddie over dinner, with Bethany
groaning in embarrassment and Joey gleefully tossing mashed potatoes at the
wall.

“It was a large load, Ed. Sorry, you’re
eating. But you’re a doctor, so you’re used to blood and poop, right?”

“Actually, no. The nurses are good with
that stuff. I still have a weak stomach.” He put down his fork and rinsed his
mouth with milk.

“Anyway, Lisa didn’t open the door. Her
sister did, and she invited me to come in.”

“With the poop?” Bethany asked.

“Yep, with the poop. She didn’t know what
it was—yet. Don’t worry, I didn’t go in. I said I couldn’t come in with ‘this,’
so she offered to take it.”

“Oh, Mom,” Bethany complained, “why can’t
you just be nice?”

“Me? I
am
nice! I’m not the one pooping on their lawns!” It was
impossible to make a teenager see justice when her primary goal was acceptance.

Eddie stepped in. “What did you do, Anna?”

“Well, it obviously wasn’t going as
planned. Is there a good way to effectively deliver poop? I considered whether
I should just hand the bag to her. I thought about doing it.”

“So you just lit it with a match and ran
like I told you?” Eddie teased.

“You
guys
! What is
wrong
with you?” Bethany threw down
her fork. “I have to live in this neighborhood, you know. I have to go to
school with those kids!”

“No,
I didn’t light it up,” I said to Ed.

“No,
I didn’t hand it to her,” I said to Bethany.

I spooned mashed
potatoes into Joey’s open mouth. “You don’t care
what
I did, do you, Joey?” He
gurgled.

I
took a big gulp of wine and continued with my poop saga. “I just shook my head
like an idiot and told her she shouldn’t take it into the house. Finally, Lisa
came to the door all chipper. You know how fake nice she is? I smiled back, but
mine was more a shit-eating grin.”

“
Language
!” my daughter admonished me.

“Well,” I continued, ignoring my teenage
conscience, “then I just gave in and did it. What else could I do? I handed the
bag of shit to her,” I glanced at Bethany, daring her to correct me again, “and
said, ‘I believe this is yours.’” Eddie snorted milk out his nose. “I explained
its origin, and asked, as sweetly as possible, that she keep her dog at her
house.”

Eddie declared, “Good for you, Anna!”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. It wiped that smile
off Lisa’s face, for sure. She said I didn’t have to bring it over. She would
have come to pick it up if I’d just called. Damn. She completely missed the
point.”

“Lang—!” Bethany started. Eddie cut her
off by holding up his hand, palm to her. She would pick at me, but she wouldn’t
defy her father.

Mr. Fixit morphed
into Professor Wixim. “Think about it, Anna. This has two distinct sides.
Although we want Lisa’s dog to
never
crap in our yard,
she
is confident that her mere willingness to clean up
the individual piles at your daily request is sufficient to keep peace and
harmony. No amount of explaining can fix this. It’s just the way people are.
Not people like us. But the rest of them.”

Bethany groaned.
“People like you two. I’m one of
them
.”

“We
know, Bethany,” I said. “After dinner, you can pooper-scoop the whole yard for
us. That might help you appreciate the Wixim perspective.”

She
ran to her room and slammed the door. Joey began to wail. Stink the cat licked
spilled milk off the floor under the highchair. Eddie laughed and came over to
hug me. As my mind returned to me, I realized that attempting to comprehend the
reasoning ability, or lack of it, of the rest of the human race was exacting a
huge toll on my own intellect.

Best to just give up.

| | | |

Back on the day after I died
, Eddie sits alone on our driveway and throws a wet,
chewed tennis ball for Lucy, our neighbor’s black Labrador. Although we were
declared “not dog people” by the rest of humanity, this sweet canine never got
the memo. She adores Eddie. Lucy chases the tennis ball as it bounces through
the trees and turns to race back to her friend. Although he’s watching her,
Eddie doesn’t react when Lucy pauses to dump a fresh load on the edge of our
lawn.

Whoa, he is really gone. No, I am really
gone. Poor Eddie.

Then I feel the tug—so much like when he
crept into our bedroom at night, no talking, in the dark, and got into the bed.
That feeling of having him nearby, so close and quiet. Wanting to roll to him,
my Eddie. But no, it hurts too much. I will not listen to him think. Keep me
out of that head. I think he knows I’m here, but I will not go into that head.

Lucy romps joyfully back to Eddie, who
sits on the driveway and wraps his arms around her neck. This playful three-year-old
twitches with excitement whenever she sees him and wants to play fetch, but she
settles down in his arms and lets him hold onto her.

Eddie is sitting still.

Lucy is sitting still.

These are things that never happened when
I walked among the living. How did things change so fast? And why am I wasting
time thinking about dogs?