Dog Lived (and So Will I) (9 page)

“Please let the doctor know I called and ask her to call me immediately about that FedEx package.”

The doctor did not call for two more days. She did not mention the delay, the late mailing of the slides, or in any way acknowledge that I’d called. She gave me the lab results—clear margins, precisely what the other results had shown—and nothing else. I tried to understand what this information gave us that we didn’t already know and to find out if this was an “optional” report. She dodged me again. Which, in a sense, was all the answer I needed. I hoped whatever research Seamus had just participated in was worthwhile. At least we could now schedule his treatments.

Seamus would start chemotherapy on December 17. It seemed inevitable to me that I would have another crappy holiday, filled with doctors and medication and looming heartbreak. I filled the prescriptions for prednisone and doggie Benadryl. I stocked my household with chicken, rice, cottage cheese, high-protein dog food, dog toys, and pumpkin pie filling. I cooked and stored chicken for Seamus. I let him sleep on my bed, on the couch, on my lap. I talked incessantly to Seamus but almost no one else—until Chris came out to my house five days before Seamus was to start chemotherapy and we picked up our discussion of his family and our holiday plans.

“I’m not going anywhere. My parents are both out of town for the week, and I’m obviously not welcome at your parents’ house,” I said.

“They didn’t say that.”

“Uh, they kind of did. I’m not welcome in your life.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll just go over there for Christmas Eve, and then I’ll be back here with you and Da Moose for Christmas.”

In hindsight, I can see I wanted his parents punished for daring to not approve of me. And I can see I was angry about a lot of things. Perhaps I was feeling a tad sorry for myself. “Seamus has his second chemotherapy on the twenty-third, but sure, you go spend Christmas Eve with your family and leave us here alone. That will certainly show them! Boy, they’ll know you can’t be pushed around.”

“That’s not fair.”

Fair? Fair? When did fair enter into anything?? And around we went again. Until finally we agreed to take a break from arguing. Chris tossed and slept in fits in my bed upstairs, and I cried, silently and alone, on the couch downstairs. Seamus, only days away from starting chemotherapy, moved between us all night—up and then down the stairs and then up again. A little before six in the morning, Chris came downstairs to me.

“I need to go,” he said.

“You’re going home?” I stared up at him.

He was holding his overnight bag and another bag filled, I knew, with the items he’d begun to leave at my house. “I need to figure things out for myself. I need to be alone to do that. I don’t know what I want, and this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I think I just need to be alone.”

“You’re breaking up with me?”

“I don’t know. I guess I am. I don’t know. Do you want me to stay?”

Many Decembers ago I was a front-seat passenger in a vehicle that drove off a freeway embankment and rolled down a hill, landing upside down. It is true that events like that are experienced in slow motion. My instinct, as the ground slowly rose up to meet the corner of the car roof right above my head, was to dive. I turned to the left away from the earth and rolled, a half-somersault of sorts; the back of my right shoulder took the brunt of the crash and I landed on the ceiling of the now upside-down car toward the back and clear of the front seat—where the roof had slammed in on the seat, tearing through the fabric where I’d been sitting only a moment before. The paramedic told me this was the one-in-a-million car accident when not wearing a seat belt saved my life. So did my instinct to dive and cover. That instinct was returning now.

Chris stood before me waiting for my answer, waiting for me to reach out to him. I wanted him to stay. I wanted this relationship. I just couldn’t step over my own baggage to get there. All I could think was that Chris’s mother’s style put my two former mothers-in-law to shame in the intimidation department. Her methods were ingenious—a combination of pure aggression and passive-aggression that kept us off balance and defenseless. She’d been so kind to me at Thanksgiving; she was so polished and polite. I had no idea she objected to me or the relationship in the slightest. And yet forty-eight hours later she sat Chris down and demanded he end his relationship with me. Frozen by my fear, I couldn’t even muster the strength to go down fighting.

“I want you to do whatever you want to do. I don’t want you staying here because you feel like you have to. But I don’t want you leaving just because your mom says so, either.” Dive. Cover.

Chris’s face tightened. “See, just saying that tells me you don’t understand what I’m going through. I’m trying to make my own decisions here, but I need to know you’re on my side. It doesn’t feel like you are. You can’t even tell me what you want.” He paused and stepped back, away from me. “I think I need to do this alone. I need a break. I’ll figure things out, and maybe we can work things out. Maybe later. I don’t know. I just think I need to go.”

He picked up his bags and leaned down to kiss me. I turned my head, contorting my face to stop the tears. He kissed the top of my head.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I love you.”

My face flooded with tears. I couldn’t speak in response. How can you say you love me and then leave? Through my tears, without saying a word, without saying any of the things I wanted to say or should have said or needed to say, I watched him walk out the door.

Seamus raced out the door after Chris, howling. I watched through my tears and the glass doors as Chris stopped and bent down to Seamus. Seamus quieted, sat, and stared up at Chris, those big brown eyes pleading. He curled into Chris and tried to climb up into his lap, pawing at him. I could hear the howl turn to small, pleading whimpers.

I knew what Seamus was feeling. When I was about six years old, my parents separated, not for the first or last time. I stood in the driveway of our home watching my father pack suitcases and a few bags into his small convertible. When he went back into the house for another item, I took a bag out of the passenger seat to make room for myself. My dad came back outside and put the bag back on the seat. I reached to move it out again, telling him I needed a place to sit. He placed his hand over mine and put the bag back down in the seat. “I’ll come back for you,” he said, “as soon as I can.” Weeks later, he did come back, but I didn’t know that as I stood alone in the driveway watching as my crying father drove away.

Chris stayed in the courtyard petting Seamus and talking to him for several minutes. I doubted he was telling him he’d be back. He put his forehead to Seamus’s for a moment, kissed the soft top of the dog’s head, and then walked out the gate.

My sobs were not only alarming the dog; they alarmed me. I could not recall ever crying that hard. I woke in the middle of the night, gulping in air as I sobbed big, heaving, painful sobs. Seamus leaped up onto my bed and sat next to me, nervously looking up at me and sniffing my wet face. I petted him until I was calmer.

I hadn’t cried this hard over either of my divorces. I’d cried a lot during the last days of my first marriage, but the sadness didn’t last long and it wasn’t the same. That husband had been a drunk and a cheater, which made the marriage much more difficult than the divorce, even though the divorce took over three years and left me with $50,000 of debt I hadn’t known “we’d” incurred. (The great state of California decreed that debt he incurred supporting his girlfriends, expanding his alcohol and drug habit, and buying more cars than anyone could possibly drive was “community debt,” by which they meant my debt since by then I was the only party gainfully employed.) Anger dried my tears quickly.

I also cried during the last years of my second marriage, but I didn’t sob. I was sad at the end, of course, but had come to realize my mistake. I’d rebounded into a marriage with someone who would never drink to excess, never cheat, never use a charge card (let alone ones I never even knew existed); I married someone who would stay in a safe, comfortable, compact world. Which worked very well until I recovered sufficiently from my first marriage and divorce to want to leave that small world where I’d sought refuge and begin to explore a larger and more meaningful world. I left my first marriage thinking about the past—about what I didn’t want to repeat. I left my second marriage thinking about the future—about what I wanted and what options were available to me. I left intending to pursue life. I did not leave crying, let alone sobbing, which is all I seemed to be doing now.

In the middle of the night, Seamus by my side, I tried to think about the future. In one moment I’d be thinking, I’ll go back to my alphabet life. I’ll be alone and I’ll be fine. And then I’d think, no, the problem wasn’t dating; it was that I’d moved too fast again. I never should have dated Chris. He was too young. It was all wrong. I should be choosier. Or just date for fun. That’s it—I’ll date all sorts of guys and really analyze what I was looking for. Don’t just go on a date and a week later land in a relationship. And at all costs, do not meet the parents!! In fact, I’ll date orphans. Only orphans. At my age that can’t be too difficult, can it? Date men whose parents—well, at least their mothers—have already passed on. Oh, and no kids. He can’t have kids either. In my state of mind, I didn’t know if that was setting the bar high or low.

I gave up trying to sleep and got out of bed at sunrise. I could use a few extra hours in the day. Seamus dutifully followed me downstairs to the kitchen. Among the things I unfairly blamed Chris and cursed at the universe for was the timing of his breakup. In the five days ahead I had to host my office Christmas party alone, attend three holiday parties, and take Seamus to his first chemotherapy treatment. By Monday morning, the thought of the holidays moved me to the next stage of my grief—anger.

Fuck him. I am woman. I am strong, independent woman. Fuck him. Fuck his mother. Fuck them all. I can handle this all. By. My. Self. Fuck everybody! I will do it all!

Well, not all. I called my friends Tom and Kris, who own an Italian restaurant in a neighboring town, and got them to cater our office Christmas party in my home, since Chris was no longer available to cook. I asked my law partner Jane if her husband Francis, who makes a wicked martini and is the most charming man on earth (not unrelated traits, in my book), would bartend, and she said he’d be delighted.

I then decided that I could use the “my dog has cancer” excuse to get out of two holiday parties. Some non–dog people of course would look askance at this, but I didn’t care about that. Hell, I didn’t care that even a dog person might know that the dog—having fully recovered from surgery and not yet started chemotherapy—was not showing any signs that he was sick. I concluded that if I just appeared at the biggest, toniest, and most coveted invitation-only holiday party in town, I’d be seen by enough people that I’d look like I’d participated in all the horrendous holiday cheer. Plus, there would be booze. Copious amounts of free booze.

My friend Sheryl, an intelligent, beautiful brunette a few years older than me, who’d been single for fifteen years, agreed to be my date to the party.

“Are you sure you’re ready to go out?” she said.

“I need to do this. I’ll be fine.”

“Well, I’ve always wanted to go to this party. It’ll be fun.”

I dressed like a woman recently dumped—high heels, low-cut “his loss” red dress, smoldering eye makeup—and stormed off to the party.

Standing in the line at the bar, I noticed a man watching me from another bar line a few feet away. He smiled when he caught my eye. I barely remembered to smile back, but then I noticed how tall he was. And handsome. Very handsome.

“Who is that?” Sheryl said.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I said, turning my attention back to the drink menu.

“I do. And you should. There are not that many single, good-looking men in these parts. He’s gorgeous. And he’s definitely checking you out.”

“The only man I care about right now is standing behind that bar.”

“Well, at least you’re not bitter.”

In an effort to fake festive, for Sheryl’s sake as much as my own, I ordered a candy-cane cosmo. It was that or a mistletoe martini. Oh, how I wish I were kidding. Normally, I can’t stand my martinis to be violated by anything more than a bleu cheese–stuffed olive. But everyone seemed to be holding green or red or sparkly drinks. Insult was added to my injured drink when the bow-tied bartender, the current man in my life, hung a small candy cane from the side of my glass.

The drink tasted worse than it looked—which was saying a lot since something acidic in the drink was very quickly curdling the sprayed “snow” topping of whipped cream. As I sipped and winced at my drink, I again caught the eye of Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome. He was chatting in a group of people not far from where I was, but since both of us stood taller than most of the folks in the room, we easily made eye contact. He raised his glass in my direction. I was impressed to see that his drink had no garish holiday adornment.

Another friend approached, mistletoe hanging from her glass. “Isn’t this ridiculous?” Michelle said, motioning toward it.

“I’m not sure which one is worse,” I said, touching my candy cane to her mistletoe. “But I hear there’s a wine bar in the next room.”

“Good to know,” she said. “So, how are you? How are things with the cub?”

Once I let my friends know I was dating a man twelve years younger than me, the cougar jokes had flown fast and furious. Chris was quickly dubbed “the cub.”

“Um, well. Not so good. Or, I don’t know. Maybe this makes me a good cougar. Or good at being a cougar. I don’t know. Anyway, he broke up with me.” I set my curdled cream drink down on the tray of a passing waiter. “It’s over. Fun while it lasted though.” I was not feeling flip, but it was that or bursting into tears in the middle of a large, cheerful holiday party with everyone in town as my witnesses.

“Oh, no! I’m shocked. You were my hero! You got divorced after me but were right back out there and dating a younger man even. I was so impressed. I’m devastated on behalf of us all!” Michelle said.

“Sorry to disappoint. Wine, anyone?” I headed in the direction of the wine bar, and Sheryl quickly followed. Michelle hung back, no doubt preferring to enjoy the party with someone more festive.

“You sure you’re okay?” Sheryl said.

“Probably not. But I’m trying.”

My “trying” involved a few glasses of Chardonnay and whining to several friends in a pathetic attempt at sympathy. This is how I’d learned that several of my friends never did think Chris was good enough for me and always wondered what I saw in him. Jane thought I’d blown it again? I have no taste in men whatsoever? Zee and Sue thought I should have been warned off merely because he voted Republican? And Karen thought I’d jumped in too quickly when it took me a year to even admit I was dating him? This is not useful information for a drunk, broken-hearted, humiliated, middle-aged woman to learn during the holidays! Fookin’ December!!

Later in the evening Sheryl and I again encountered Mr. TDH standing in a group of four or five people whom I knew. As if on instant replay, our gazes met across the tops of other people’s heads. I looked away, but I couldn’t help smiling. He was very, very good-looking. And I was very, very Chardonnay-ed.

“Okay,” I said to Sheryl, “he’s talking to Barbara. Let’s go ask Doug who his wife is talking to. See what we can find out.”

“So now you’re interested? Brava!”

“I’m sure it’s the wine talking, but sure, let’s go find out.”

Doug knew who Mr. TDH was, of course. The running joke in Riverside is that there are actually only two hundred people here, all attending each other’s events and parties. You can’t have six degrees of separation here. Two or three would be the maximum.

“You’d like him, Teresa. Great guy. Been in the commercial real estate business for years. He’s very successful. Very.”

“How come I’ve never seen him before? It seems I would have met him at some point.”

“Well, he spends a lot of time in northern California, for business and personal reasons. He’s divorced. Single, but divorced. His former wife and kids moved up to northern California so he bought a second home up there to be near his kids. Which tells you what a great guy he is.”

It did? Kids? I should have backed away then, but I was concentrating on being open-minded. And Mr. TDH was being very handsome. “So he has kids. Any idea how many?”

“I think three. It might even be four.” Doug was smiling. I was speaking to a man who had been married to the same woman for nearly fifty years and they’d happily raised four kids together. From his vantage point the information he was providing me was a glowing review.

I felt a small scream welling up inside me. Then Doug continued, “I’ll tell you what a great guy he is: he brought his eighty-year-old mother as his date tonight. Isn’t that the sweetest thing?”

“Oh. Shit.” The scream was escaping. I needed to flee. “Thanks, Doug. Never mind the introduction.” I backed away, nearly spilling my drink in my hurry. Shit! Shit! Shit!! His mother? As his date? Lord, I can sure pick ’em. I turned to Sheryl. “It’s clearly time for me to go.”

Sheryl snorted laughter as she followed me back through the crowd: “I can’t believe you found the one guy who brought his mother!”

“As his date!! At least I know up front what that relationship is like and I can avoid it right away. See what progress I’m making?”

“Maybe his mother isn’t all that bad.”

I stopped and turned back to Sheryl. “Sure, now. But she will be a heinous bitch the moment she meets me. I am every mother’s worst nightmare, this much I’ve learned. No more mothers. I will date orphans only.” As I said this I saw over Sheryl’s shoulder that Mr. TDH was making his way toward me, looking determined to introduce himself.

I’m sure he thought I’d seen a ghost. My face froze, my eyes widened, and every nerve in my body screamed “RUN!” I turned my back on him and left the party.

As Sheryl and I drove home, we discussed plans to go speed dating together. I had this candy-cane-cosmo-soaked idea that if I met eight or ten men together in one evening, I would at least be able to compare and contrast and perhaps figure out exactly what it was I was looking for. I might choose better, as Jane had encouraged. Sheryl teased me that an opening question of “Is your mother dead yet?” was not going to make me a big hit. I didn’t care.

Again I couldn’t sleep. I tossed around and flopped from my back to my right side, to my stomach, and then to my left side. I thought about speed dating, which seemed absurd at my age. I’d have to call Sheryl in the morning and tell her it was a bad idea. I wouldn’t even know what I was looking for. Did I even want a relationship? Could I choose better?

I tried to think of something that would be better than what I had with Chris. I tried to complete the sentence, “Next time I’ll find somebody who…” And everything led me back to Chris. Someone funny of course. Someone who got my sense of humor. (Like Chris.) Someone smart. Smarter than me. (Like Chris.) Someone I could rely on in a crisis. (Like Chris.) Someone who loved literature and art and travel. (Like Chris.) Someone with day-to-day compatibility. Someone like Chris. I’d marveled at how easily Chris and I moved through a day together. We were both late-night people, both preferred hot weather to cold, both loved food and wine, reading, writing, and board games, could talk all day or not talk at all, could keep a joke going on a riff—taking joy in topping each other—for hours. I’d never known that kind of compatibility. I’d never even known it existed, so I had no idea how important it was. I wanted that kind of compatibility back. I couldn’t think of a single thing to look for in a man that would be better than what I had with Chris.

Except a deceased mother.

And then I realized it was like letting the genie out of the bottle. As long as I thought relationships were like my marriages, it was easy to think the alphabet life would sustain me. But now that I knew how good things could be, now that I knew love like that…now I could see how incomplete my alphabet was. I needed the letter
L
. I needed someone who really understood me and loved me anyway, even if his mother didn’t.

I’d never even given Chris the chance to prove that last part.

This time my sobbing caused Seamus to scurry off my bed and return to his own. I got up and wrote Chris a letter. I mailed the letter later that day.

• • •

Seamus’s chemo infusions would be done at the Orange County clinic of the Veterinary Cancer Center, which was only thirty miles from my home. I was now thankful I wasn’t driving into Los Angeles, closer to Chris. Also, I hoped by switching locations a new oncologist would be assigned to Seamus’s care.