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Why? Christ knows. Love’s a mystery to everyone except the poets, I guess, and nobody sane can understand a thing they write about it.
I don’t think most of them can understand it themselves on the rare occasions when they wake up and smell the coffee.
“But Lulubelle never gave me that dog so she could have it, let’s get that one thing straight. I know that some people do stuff like that—
a guy’ll give his wife a trip to Miami because he wants to go there, or a wife’ll give her husband a NordicTrack because she thinks he ought to do something about his gut—but this wasn’t that kind of deal. We were crazy in love with each other at the beginning; I know I was with her, and I’d stake my life she was with me. No, she bought that dog for me because I always laughed so hard at the one on Frasier. She wanted to make me happy, that’s all. She didn’t know Frank was going to take a shine to her, or her to him, no more than she knew the dog was going to dislike me so much that throwing up in one of my slippers or chewing the bottoms of the curtains on my side of the bed would be the high point of his day.”
L.T. would look around at the grinning men, not grinning himself, but he’d give his eyes that knowing, long-suffering roll, and they’d laugh again, in anticipation. Me too, likely as not, in spite of what I knew about the Axe Man.
“I haven’t ever been hated before,” he’d say, “not by man or beast, and it unsettled me a lot. It unsettled me bigtime. I tried to make friends with Frank—first for my sake, then for the sake of her that gave him to me—but it didn’t work. For all I know, he might’ve tried to make friends with me . . . with a dog, who can tell? If he did, it didn’t work for him, either. Since then I’ve read—in “Dear Abby,”
I think it was—that a pet is just about the worst present you can give a person, and I agree. I mean, even if you like the animal and the animal likes you, think about what that kind of gift says. ‘Say, darling, I’m giving you this wonderful present, it’s a machine that eats at one end and shits out the other, it’s going to run for fifteen years, give or take, merry fucking Christmas.’ But that’s the kind of thing you only think about after, more often than not. You know what I mean?
“I think we did try to do our best, Frank and I. After all, even 273
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though we hated each other’s guts, we both loved Lulubelle. That’s why, I think, that although he’d sometimes growl at me if I sat down next to her on the couch during Murphy Brown or a movie or something, he never actually bit. Still, it used to drive me crazy. Just the fucking nerve of it, that little bag of hair and eyes daring to growl at me.
“ ‘Listen to him,’ I’d say, ‘he’s growling at me.’
“She’d stroke his head the way she hardly ever stroked mine, unless she’d had a few, and say it was really just a dog’s version of purring. That he was just happy to be with us, having a quiet evening at home. I’ll tell you something, though, I never tried patting him when she wasn’t around. I’d feed him sometimes, and I never gave him a kick (although I was tempted a few times, I’d be a liar if I said different), but I never tried patting him. I think he would have snapped at me, and then we would have gotten into it. Like two guys living with the same pretty girl, almost. Ménage à trois is what they call it in the Penthouse ‘Forum.’ Both of us love her and she loves both of us, but as time goes by, I start realizing that the scales are tipping and she’s starting to love Frank a little more than me. Maybe because Frank never talks back and never pukes in her slippers, and with Frank the goddam toilet ring is never an issue, because he goes outside.
Unless, that is, I forget and leave a pair of my shorts in the corner or under the bed.”
At this point L.T. would likely finish off the iced coffee in his Thermos, crack his knuckles, or both. It was his way of saying the first act was over and Act Two was about to commence.
“So then one day, a Saturday, Lulu and I are out to the mall. Just walking around, like people do. You know. And we go by Pet Notions, up by J.C. Penney, and there’s a whole crowd of people in front of the display window. ‘Oh, let’s see,’ Lulu says, so we go over and work our way to the front.
“It’s a fake tree with bare branches and fake grass—AstroTurf—
all around it. And there are these Siamese kittens, half a dozen of them chasing each other around, climbing the tree, batting each other’s ears.
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“ ‘Oh ain’ day jus’ da key-youtest ones! ’ Lulu says. ‘Oh ain’t dey jus’ the key-youtest wittle babies! Look, honey, look!’
“ ‘I’m lookin,’ I says, and what I’m thinking is that I just found what I wanted to get Lulu for our anniversary. And that was a relief.
I wanted it to be something extra-special, something that would really bowl her over, because things had been quite a bit short of great between us during the last year. I thought about Frank, but I wasn’t too worried about him; cats and dogs always fight in the cartoons, but in real life they usually get along, that’s been my experience. They usually get along better than people do. Especially when it’s cold outside.
“To make a long story just a little bit shorter, I bought one of them and gave it to her on our anniversary. Got it a velvet collar, and tucked a little card under it. ‘HELLO, I am LUCY!’ the card said. ‘I come with love from L.T.! Happy second anniversary!’
“You probably know what I’m going to tell you now, don’t you?
Sure. It was just like goddam Frank the terrier all over again, only in reverse. At first I was as happy as a pig in shit with Frank, and Lulubelle was as happy as a pig in shit with Lucy at first. Held her up over her head, talking that baby-talk to her, ‘Oh yookit you, oh yookit my wittle pwecious, she so key-yout, ’ and so on and so on . . .
until Lucy let out a yowl and batted at the end of Lulubelle’s nose.
With her claws out, too. Then she ran away and hid under the kitchen table. Lulu laughed it off, like it was the funniest thing she’d ever had happen to her, and as key-yout as anything else a little kitten might do, but I could see she was miffed.
“Right then Frank came in. He’d been sleeping up in our room—
at the foot of her side of the bed—but Lulu’d let out a little shriek when the kitten batted her nose, so he came down to see what the fuss was about.
“He spotted Lucy under the table right away and walked toward her, sniffing the linoleum where she’d been.
“ ‘Stop them, honey, stop them, L.T., they’re going to get into it,’
Lulubelle says. ‘Frank’ll kill her.’
“ ‘Just let them alone a minute,’ I says. ‘See what happens.’
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“Lucy humped up her back the way cats do, but stood her ground and watched him come. Lulu started forward, wanting to get in between them in spite of what I’d said (listening up wasn’t exactly one of Lulu’s strong points), but I took her wrist and held her back. It’s best to let them work it out between them, if you can. Always best.
It’s quicker.
“Well, Frank got to the edge of the table, poked his nose under, and started this low rumbling way back in his throat. ‘Let me go, L.T. I got to get her,’ Lulubelle says, ‘Frank’s growling at her.’
“ ‘No, he’s not,’ I say, ‘he’s just purring. I recognize it from all the times he’s purred at me.’
“She gave me a look that would just about have boiled water, but didn’t say anything. The only times in the three years we were married that I got the last word, it was always about Frank and Screwlucy.
Strange but true. Any other subject, Lulu could talk rings around me.
But when it came to the pets, it seemed she was always fresh out of comebacks. Used to drive her crazy.