Butterbean

Halloween will be the small brown dog's 15^th birthday.

I glance at her peacefully sleeping on my pillow and am amazed at how the time has flown by. She struggles with congestive heart failure these days and her coughing distresses me but she's still just as active, just as alert, and just as nimble as she ever was. It's not terribly hard to keep the thought of losing her at a safe distance. Her time is coming, I know, but it won't be today.

She was the last of a giveaway litter, a tiny bundle of brown fur with big ears and sad eyes.  I could almost hold her in the palm of my hand.

"Her mama was a Yorkie," the young man in the overalls and feed cap parked in front of the Walmart told me as he lifted her out of the milk crate, "But we ain't real sure 'bout her daddy.  Travelin' man, mos' likely."

I had both my Schipperkes then plus a houseful of cats.  Taking on a new puppy was madness on every level and I knew it - I cringed at the very thought of the housebreaking, the vet bills, the added cost of food, the responsibility, and God alone knew how the cats would take to her - but I couldn't find it in my heart to leave her.

"Tell you what," I said with a sigh, knowing I was lost but not wanting to face it directly, "If no one's taken her by the time I've finished shopping, I will."

The boy grinned and tucked her inside his jacket.

"Yes'm," he said politely, "We'll be waitin'.  If'n nobody else wants her, that is."

People still ask about her. I joke that when I run into some old photo store customer that I haven't seen in years, they don't ask how I'm doing but they always ask about Butterbean. It pleases me enormously to tell them she's still with me - a little grayer, a little pudgier, aren't we all - but very much still with me. It invariably makes them smile. They then tell me how much they miss having a real photo store in town and I force what I hope is a pleasant expression and don't remind them that if they'd supported us more, they still might. It's a stretch, of course, and not entirely fair. The digital revolution did us in every bit as much as dismal management and customers who preferred to shop at the big box stores. Adapt or perish, as the saying goes.

So Happy Birthday, little girl. You're been a comfort and a blessing and one of the best decisions I ever made. You are loved.

Breakfast Buffet

It was far too quiet at the breakfast table for anything good to be brewing. I slid into my usual place and hoped for invisibility.

My grandmother was smoking and scowling at my mother. My mother was trying to pretend she didn't notice and doing a poor job of it. Her hands shook when she raised her coffee cup and she looked haggard and sick, all the easily recognizable signs of a hangover were in place. The boys began to squabble over the jam pot and Nana snapped at them to leave the table. From her tone of voice, it was clear that she'd tolerate no argument and the boys willingly slinked off.

“I'm not hungry,” I ventured and Nana glared at me.

“Drink your juice and make yourself some toast,” she ordered, “It's window washing day and your mother is going to be no help at all.”

My mother surrendered but not peacefully.

“Mother, I'm sick!” she wailed, then slammed her coffee cup down, burst into a flood of tears and fled like a frightened rabbit. My grandmother looked disgusted but calmly lit a Kent 100 and added two tiny sacachine tablets to her coffee.

“Sick, is it,” she said clearly, spitting the words, “Goddam drunk, more's the pity. Just like your grandfather.”

So much for invisibility, I thought dimly, downing down my juice and toast in quick swallows and furiously casting about for an exit. I loved my grandmother with only a little less passion than I hated my mother but her wrath could be just as fearful. I watched her deliberately chain smoke her Kents and drum her white knuckled fingers on the table top while my mother sobbed methodically upstairs, wondering if it might just be the calm before the real storm. As soon as I was pretty sure she'd forgotten I was there, I muttered something about getting the window washing things and slipped away like a thief in the night.

In retrospect, it does seem as though there was very little love lost among the women of my family. My mother and grandmother were at each other's throats constantly with neither having much use for the New York contingent who spent much of their time sniping and bickering at us or each other or at my daddy's sisters who they saw as uniformly lower class.

And of course my headmistress Aunt Helen, who had married in, was universally and enthusiastically disliked by one and all, including - at times, at least so it seemed - her own husband. In less charitable moments, my daddy had been heard to say that her one redeeming feature was her unintentional ability to unite the family, particuarly the women, against a common enemy.

As they almost always did, Nana and my mother worked out a shaky truce by lunch and each gave me a quarter for the windows. I suspected it was more for my silence than my hard work.

Carpenter Logic

It comes as no great surprise to me that the so called “easy fix” the first plumber so tranquilly promised me last week is not to be.

“Wood's rotten,” the second one tells me with a shrug and a scowl, “You gon' need a carpenter.”

I protest mildly, explaining that the prior plumber assured me it was no more'n an hour's work, hardly anything involved, complicated or ridiculously expensive.

He gives me a sullen, blame-shifting glare and stubbornly repeats, “Gon' need a carpenter.”

Of course I am, I think dismally, why in the world would I have believed otherwise just because it was what I was told. Everybody lies, I remind myself. There's no point in losing your temper, I remind myself. It is what it is. I show the second plumber to the door and pointedly don't tell him thank you. I don't need his attitude, I tell myself, I have one of my own. When I call for the carpenter, I consider mentioning this breach of manners but then realize how futile it would be. They would apologize, assure me that he'd be talked to, and promptly do nothing whatever. Because that's how the world works these days. Rudeness and poor service are practically as fashionable as stupidity and just as ubiquitous.

It's three days and two more phone calls before the elusive carpenter calls me back. We agree on a time and day and he arrives on a frosty morning, exactly when promised. I'm marginally encouraged by this but it doesn't last after the first half hour of what can only be excavation. The noise is deafening and dollar signs are buzzing before my eyes like bees. Another half hour passes and I'm beginning to feel like a bystander at an accident scene. My stomach is in knots and I can't bear to look but I'm overwhelmed by curiosity. Too late I realize that a homeowner shouldn't have to be present for this kind of thing. When I discover there's a 4'X4' hole in the bathroom floor from which I can see clear to the grass and mud beneath the house, I hand him a latch key and issue a stern warning (“I'm leaving you with 5 cats in this house. If there are not 5 cats in this house when I get back, have no illusions – there will be blood.”) and flee to the sanctuary of the office.

By the end of the day, the bathroom is still out of order but the plumbers have come and made their repairs, the floor has been built back up and “floated”, and all 5 cats are accounted for.

The carpenter calls to tell me he'll be back in the morning to re-lay the tile and re-attach the fixtures. When I get home, I resist the urge to open the door and take a peek, trying to focus on the carpenter's cheerful reminder that it's fortunate I have a second bathroom.

You can't argue with irrefutable logic.

Middle Ground

I grew up in a loud and angry house and there isn't much that shuts me down faster than being yelled at. In the time it takes to draw a single breath, I'm suddenly a child again, with fear knots in my belly and tears at the ready. Even if the raised and angry voice isn't directed at me, all I care about is finding an exit, the quicker, the better. I despise and am shamed by my own reaction but there it is. Rome can burn, but it will burn without me.

And now we live in a loud and angry world and I feel as if I'm under assault nearly every minute of every day. Everybody's yelling and there's no escape, no shutting it out. It's like re-living the very worst days of my second marriage and I cringe to remember those hate filled shouting matches in between the silences. It's impossible to know which was more painful.

Verbal violence is a desperate creature. It grows fangs and talons and a taste for blood. It develops a will of its own. I think of it as a virus, airborne, highly contagious and eventually, all consuming.

I wonder if there isn't a middle ground, somewhere between flight and the urge to fight back, but so far I haven't found it.

Keep the Porch Light Burning

It was coming up on midnight when I made the final dog run. The night was still warm, clear and quiet with a half moon high in the sky. I locked the door behind me, stepped through the porch gate and latched it, and was about to cross the lawn when I noticed the man innocently walking down the street. He was tall and thin and not young, wearing shirt sleeves and jeans, and doing absolutely nothing wrong or threatening or even suspicious. The sudden and wholly unexpected stab of fear that went from my belly to my ankles caught me completely off guard and all rational thought deserted me. I ran for my car, slammed the door so hard it rattled and jabbed savagely at the door lock with one hand and the ignition with the other. By the time I realized that the innocent passerby had barely given me a glance, I'd fought off the panic and was feeling totally disgusted with myself.

I accept that my city has become a dangerous place to be. I understand criminals care nothing about time of day or zip codes, fences or guard dogs or even the risk of getting shot. I get that we're not protected anywhere anymore. I've gotten somewhat used to scanning crowds, paying more attention to my surroundings and taking more than the usual precautions. I don't open my door to strangers, I stay in more after dark, I watch where and when I drive. And all it gets me is an unreasonable panic attack over a stranger minding his own business on a dark street. I suspect I'd never have given him a thought as little as five years ago.

I get home and lock the door behind me, check the windows just to be sure, flick on both the front and back porch lights and settle in with the dogs. I tell myself things will look better in the morning but a part of me wonders if anything will ever be the same again.

The Night the Kitchen Caught Fire

My grandfather was an abusive, combative and ugly drunk and in ways that never made the slightest sense to me, was admired by many for it. He took inordinate pride in the fact that he could out smoke, out drink, out gamble and out philander any man alive and he liked to say so, loudly and often. What little he had to do with raising my mother was done with an iron hand and a mean mouth and every great once in awhile, I think I ought to be more charitable to her memory. And I might could if forgiveness was in my nature or if pigs could fly.

“I suppose,” my daddy once remarked to me in a rare, unguarded moment, “You could say your mother comes by it honestly.”

“Her drinking or her parenting?” I'd asked nastily and even when my daddy paled and looked so desperately hurt, I couldn't find it in my heart to take it back.

The conversation had taken place in what was left of the kitchen after my mother had spilled a glass of her favorite cooking sherry onto the broiler. It ignited a grease fire which rapidly spread to the dishtowel she was using as an oven mitt and then, when she jerked the broiler out and tossed it into the sink, to the curtains and the cabinets and the wicker baskets of paper plates she kept atop the refrigerator. Hearing my mother's helpless screams and the wild howling of the dogs brought my daddy running otherwise the whole room, maybe the whole house, would've been ablaze. He yanked open the under the sink cupboard - where the fire extinguisher should have been - only to discover several cardboard cartons of empty beer bottles, each individual bottle inexplicably wrapped in a paper towel, but no fire extinguisher.

“Holy Jesus Christ, Jeanette!” he roared and my trembling, hysterical mother, still clutching her sherry bottle, staggered and fell to her knees with a whimper.

“Wet towels!” he yelled at my brothers and me, “Now! And get her the hell out of here!”

We got the fire put out with a combination of the sink sprayer, water soaked towels and a pitcher of lemonade. The curtains, not to mention the steak on the broiler, were a total loss and the kitchen with its singed and blackened cabinets smelled of smoke for days. My mother made it halfway up the stairs before collapsing in a drunken, sodden heap and for the first and only time in my life, my daddy let her lay. Both my brothers protested, wanting to carry her the rest of the way and into her own bed but my daddy was adamant.

“Leave her be!” he told them sharply, “Let her wake up right where she is!”

The boys were shocked into silence and crept away. I was wondering when he'd discovered he had a spine and thinking it wouldn't last long.

“I have to leave this house late at night a couple of times every week to drag your grandfather's sorry ass up the stairs and into his bed,” he said and his voice was colder and harder than I'd ever heard it, “It would mean my job if I didn't but I'll be goddamned if I'll do it with your mother too!” Then he sagged against the stairway wall and finally crumpled, burying his face in his hands. “Dear God,” I heard him say, “Dear God, I can't keep this up.” It was shattering to watch. For a brief moment, the world I knew had been turned upside down. For a brief moment, my daddy and I had changed places and I had become the adult, the clear thinker, the strong one. It was beyond my understanding.

“Go to bed,” I told him, “I'll clean up.”

He raised his face, cleared his throat, distractedly brushed his hair out of his eyes and the world shifted back to its original and familiar orbit. Only not completely.

“No,” he said quietly, “Your mother caused all this. For once, she can clean it up.”

Strong words from a man who had spent his entire marriage drowning in denial, making excuses for her behavior, covering up her drinking and teaching his children to do the same, only better. I didn't doubt he was sincere, at least for the moment, but suspected he would have a change of heart in the not too distant future. He was wearied out and angry but he wouldn't stay that way. He wasn't made for hate, couldn't sustain it. I had no such difficulty. I stepped over my mother's body and left.