Speak

OCTOBER-3

After the dog was dry, and I'd changed clothes, I seated myself in my armchair, propped my feet on the coffee table, and called my therapist and best friend, Trish. Who also just happens to have dogs. (You're welcome, Trish).

"Let me get this straight. You picked up a random mutt in a parking lot and brought him home?" In the background, her husband Kevin's voice rose, and she shushed him, asking him to make sure their daughter got her homework done.

I studied the dog. He still needed a haircut, but I could see that his true color was more silver than gray. It gleamed in the lamplight as he made a circuit around the living room, looking under and behind furniture, strolling across end tables, jumping up onto the kitchen table and licking at interesting smelling spots. I seem to remember Don telling me dogs shouldn't be allowed on furniture and I wondered if I should let him do that. "Uh. Right."

"And he's already forced a confrontation between you and your father?"

She had a point. I typically go out of my way to avoid arguing with Dad. I either comply or at least appear to until he looks away again. "Yeah." His explorations done for the time being, he checked out the couch, first sitting in it, then laying down, his bright, button-black eyes watching me.

She chuckled. "I like this dog. How did you talk your dad into letting you keep him? He doesn't care for dogs much, does he?"

I don't even recall telling you that, Trish.

"I told him yesterday was my birthday."

"But your birthday is in March."

"He doesn't know that." Ordinarily, this admission would be accompanied by a moment of feeling sorry for myself. Just then, I felt powerful.

She sighed an echoey sort of sigh. The kind that manages to be both sympathetic and exasperated at the same time. "Ellen."

"I'm giving him a five-hundred-dollar pet deposit," I added. "So, I guess I'll have to skip the next couple of sessions." She'd offered to take me on for free, but she deserves compensation for listening to me on a bi-weekly basis. Ours is a friendship in which money and goods regularly exchanges hands. I pay for therapy sessions. Trish tells me things a best friend should say. Later Trish buys me clothes with the money I pay her, so I arrive for blind dates not looking like I was dressed by a bag lady.

"I'm fairly sure I've been replaced anyway. Call me when you're ready to taper off those antidepressants."

Trish wasn’t the therapist who prescribed the anti-depressants. I was twenty-two, still in college, and had just changed my major from business to journalism. When my father got word of this, he called me to scream at me about all the ways I was failing. He informed me he would no longer be paying for my college education. A few days later, I found myself in a doctor's office telling the man all my problems—most of which centered around Dad—and asking whether I should buy a plane ticket to some small country somewhere or get a tattoo some place embarrassing and change my major back to business. He suggested antidepressants and therapy instead.

The little dog rose and jumped from the armchair to the couch and laid down on the cushion beside me. Not close enough to touch me, but within petting distance. "No one could replace you, my dear," I told Trish. "So now what? Do I let him sleep in my bed? Buy him a kennel-thingy like you have?"

"The first thing you need to do is take him to the vet. And while you're there, have them check him for a chip."

"A microchip?" Being me, I imagined government conspiracy type stuff. Sort of "Big Brother is watching you," but more like, "Big Brother is using your dog to watch you."

"That's really a thing?" I asked.

Trish knows me all too well. Her reply is patiently amused. "For identification. In case they get lost."

"Oh." Though I'd only had him for a few hours, the idea of him belonging to anyone but me made me want to cry. And I don't cry, by the way.

The dog licked my fingers, his tail wagging for the first time. "Who the hell would let their dog get into this condition?" I said in my new role as his defender.

"Lots of people, sadly enough. But it's also possible someone lost him somehow and has no idea where to find him."

I didn't like it, but she was right.

She also suggested I lay off the cream of mushroom soup and buy him some kibble instead if I didn't want to pay to replace all the carpeting in this place. Then she reminded me of the dinner invitation I've been pretending I didn't get.

I assured her I would be there, and she offered to help me coordinate an outfit. Trish's sense of what does and doesn't look good on me is a well-honed skill. She's been doing it since college. For her own part, she would look good in anything—including my dismal wardrobe.

However, the comment was a dead giveaway that this was going to be another blind date.

I thanked her and promised not to show up dressed like a bag lady. I had no intention of showing up at all, so I could keep that promise.

After I hung up, I studied the small animal laying on my couch. He stared at me as though waiting to see what was next.

"I've got to call you something, don't I?" He raised his head. "Do you have a preference? Rat? Rex? Spot? Ralph? Rags?" I threw words out at random. The dog rose and jumped from the couch to my chair, perching on the arm.

Now that he wasn't a whirling dervish of activity, I could take in the details of his face—noting the squareness of it, the length of his nose, and the steady, dark eyes.

I considered naming him after Nicholas but rejected it. He needed something of his own.

I ran through another short list of names, saying some of them aloud as I thought about dogs I'd read about in literature. "Buck? Toto? Fang? Argos?" None of them fit.

"Maybe you're not a character in a book. Maybe you’re a writer." I scanned the spines of the many books lining my bookshelves on the opposite wall. I felt sure he didn't have a poet's soul, nor did he seem like the sort who would live in a Virginia Woolf story, which let out most of them.

"Sorry dog. I'm a writer which means I'm capable of complicating the simplest tasks." I scratched him under the chin. "But I should be better at this."

His tail wagged. Just behind him, on the end table, sat a plaque Don gave me as a graduation gift when I got my Masters.

I have no idea how to write a column, but nobody seems to have noticed.

— Emmett Watson: Seattle Columnist from 1946 to 2001

I looked from the dog to the plaque and back. I didn’t remember a lot about the old reporter, but I did remember Emmett Watson didn't do anything according to formula which garnered him a fair amount of notoriety. I also remembered he had a poodle named Tiger, which he'd written entire columns about.

"You don't look much like a tiger, though." Besides, it wasn't all that unique as names go and I wanted him to have a name all his own. He studied me, his eyes a pool of questions and concerns. I had the impression I was still being weighed and measured. "Maybe an Emmett?"

At the sound of my voice, he climbed into my lap. "Emmett," I repeated, and he pressed himself against me. I suspected the old reporter would not mind having a dog named for him. I wrapped my arms around his small, warm body. He placed his head under my chin, his sigh a soft song of joy.

"Emmett," I whispered in time to our matching heartbeats. "Emmett..."

Note to self: Finish Flanders Obit by Tuesday and refill Citalopram

Also: Come up with a GOOD excuse to duck Trish's dinner invitation.

October 30th

Sorry for the lapses between entries, Trish. I could type "Met a guy. Got married. Am happier than I've ever been," if you want.

Or I could type. "Went to office. Wrote obituaries. Edited another reporter's sloppy work. Came home. Walked the dog. Played with the dog. Called Don. Didn't read sad poetry," which is the truth and a slight improvement on previous entries. But not terribly interesting or especially therapeutic. However, I'm OK with that, and so is the dog.

Note to Self: You're now out of citalopram. When is the last time that happened?

Call for a refill.

October 31st

This evening I sat next to my brother Peter at his congratulations your dad gave you a promotion party, and I made the mistake of complaining my life wasn’t working out the way I thought it would.

We sat in my parents' large living room, littered with overstuffed leather chairs and couches, done in my mother's favorite shades of gray and white. Mostly white. During the day, the room is well-lit by large windows. In the evening, it's lamplit. It would be pretty if it wasn't associated with years of being told not to touch anything. I feel like I'm eight again every time I enter.

I was too far from Dad's well-stocked bar to be surreptitious about drinking too much. Peter could get away with it—he's successful and successful men can get sloppy-fall-down drunk at their own "congratulations you're the boss's son" party.

Shadowy people stood and leaned around the room making quiet conversation, probably wondering when they could excuse themselves without offending the boss. No. Wait. I was the one wondering that.

"I thought by now I'd have lived more." I clinked the ice around in my empty crystal glass, wondering if I should risk a refill of whatever the barkeeper had poured me, and this time ask him to put enough alcohol in it to cure me of navel-gazing.

"Life is rarely the way people think it will be." Peter shoved his large, puffy form away from the table, a cigarette clenched between his teeth. I noted the gray glints in his already thinning red hair (the same shade my mother's used to be). He squinted his eyes, blue like my father's but lacking the ice. "There's my life for instance."

"Well, newly promoted Vice President of Shipping and Imports Incorporated," I said, "From where I stand, it sure looks like it all came together for you pretty easily."

He snorted. "Sure. I planned to be forty pounds overweight, most of it scotch and bourbon, and paying two thousand dollars a month in alimony by age of thirty-four. We've covered this, but let's review, just for the hell of it. If you don't like how your life is working out, then change it—"

I opened my mouth to point out trying to change my life was what got me into this mess, but he knew what I was going to say and held up a hand to silence me.

"Or stay where you are. But—for God's sake—quit whining."

Again, I opened my mouth and again the hand stopped me. "I warned you when I tried to talk you out of taking this job—"

"Because Dad told you to—"

"Mostly yes, but that's not the point. I told you this would be hard and it might be a long time before you saw the rewards. You got all pissed off and told me you wanted to pay your dues. Guess what! This is what paying your dues feels like. It's f*****g hard and it involves a bunch of s**t work. But if you're tired of it, you can always do what Dad wants you to do and go to work for our company—all you have to do is let the Old Son-of-b***h run your life into the ground like he has his favorite son."

"Damn," I said. "That's the most self-aware statement I've ever heard you make."

He sucked on his cigarette, blew out the smoke, and did a very un-Peter-like thing. He shrugged. "It's all still words right now, but I'm getting there."

"Seeing a therapist?" I asked. Peter thinks therapists are for people who can't cope with reality.

I'm not sure he's wrong. (Sorry, Trish).

He rolled his eyes. "Have you forgotten who you're talking to? No. I've got a buddy named CJ who kind of calls me on my s**t. It's helping."

"He must be a good friend."

"She actually." He changed the subject. "So how about you quit playing with your glass and go get me a refill? Hey! Here comes the man of the hour!"

I glanced over my shoulder and spotted our father making his way across the room toward us. I took his glass and mine and scurried off to the bar, hoping Peter would redirect him while I was gone. With my brother's recent successes fresh in his mind, Dad would want to talk to me about my lack-thereof.

I spent the remainder of the evening playing emotional tag with my father and pacifying my constantly worrying mother. Then I listened to several verses of how great Peter was in a speech given by my father and watched my brother pour himself into his red Corvette. For just a moment, I was grateful I wasn’t the favored child.

When no one was looking, I scraped the filet mignon I was too stressed to eat into a Ziploc bag I had in my purse. Then I slipped away to my apartment when my parents were saying goodbye to their other guests.

An effusive Emmett greeted me, all leaps, licks, and frantic paws.

"You don't fool me," I said. "You just want me for my money." I smiled though; it's nice to be wanted, even better to be needed.

If you haven't already surmised this, there was no chip, and no one answered my ads. I can't decide whether I'm more dismayed by some human's heartlessness, or relieved. Either way, he's here to stay.

I dumped the contents of the Ziploc bag into his dish and mixed it with dry kibble. He chewed and gulped his food as if it might disappear before he finished. The vet tells me this is a holdover from living on the streets and will fade with time.

Another holdover, and more of a challenge to live with, is his need to cram himself into small spaces and not come when his panicked owner is turning over heaven and hell trying to find him. The other day I came home from work to this. When I called, and he didn't appear, I searched all his previous nooks and crannies. No luck.

Stumped as to where else to look, I sat down on the edge of my bed, trying not to panic. Did he get outside somehow? How? And if he did, was he was on the grounds somewhere? Jesus.

What if Dad found him out there?

The old asshole had sounded mysteriously happy when he reamed me for driving up the driveway too quickly.

Too happy…

I prepared for battle, picturing an epic struggle with my father for the return of my dog, the likes of which have never been seen in our home. Then I heard a scrabbling sound, claws against metal, and a soft thump.

Emmett scrambled out from under the bed and jumped up beside me, tail wagging at whirlwind speed.

Puzzled, I dragged the mattress and frame away from the wall and discovered that he'd managed to pull off the metal vent cover leading to the ductwork.

From the damage to the sheetrock, I suspect he spent hours worrying at it with his claws and teeth. The hole couldn't have been more than twelve inches wide and six inches tall. I peered inside. He'd dragged one of my shoes, a shirt, and two toys into his self-made burrow.

At this rate, he's well on his way to spending my pet deposit.

It's late, and I've been up since five, but I can't let go of what Peter said. He had a point. I was naïve enough to believe having a Master's degree and a transcript full of 4.0s would be my ticket to success. I was supposed to be the exception. I turned out to be the rule. Millions of people graduated with a Masters in Journalism the same year I did, and all of us were hunting for work in the same places. I am luckier than many. I have a part-time position as a proofreader and Obit writer for a newspaper in a small town in the Missouri Bootheel. I'm one of a staff of six—which includes a secretary, an editor, and three reporters.

It's like adulthood is a series of levels—Level 1—College with beer and pizza and waking with lots of bad decisions. Level 2—Entry-level job with all the accouterments of never enough money, still eating lots of pizza, but waking up alone. Level 3—Grown-up job that pays enough to get by—eating better food, in a committed relationship (or not), but no longer having to wonder how you got where you are.

It's like I'm involved in one of those role-playing video games, but I have no sense of how to break through to the next level.

No wonder Dad is so disappointed in me. I'm disappointed in me too. And now I'm getting depressed.

My cell phone is ringing. It's Don. I need a strong dose of his sarcasm right about now. Later, Trish.

Note to self: Find out why the dog ate my shoes. Is it a vitamin deficiency?

Also: Buy new shoes.