A week later Jenny left for Orlando—a three-and-a-half-hour drive away. That evening after work, a Friday, I returned to the breeder’s house to fetch the new addition to our lives. When Lori brought my new dog out from the back of the house, I gasped audibly. The tiny, fuzzy puppy we had picked out three weeks earlier had more than doubled in size. He came barreling at me and ran headfirst into my ankles, collapsing in a pile at my feet and rolling onto his back, paws in the air, in what I could only hope was a sign of supplication. Lori must have sensed my shock. “He’s a growing boy, isn’t he?” she said cheerily. “You should see him pack away the puppy chow!”
I leaned down, rubbed his belly, and said, “Ready to go home, Marley?” It was my first time using his new name for real, and it felt right.
In the car, I used beach towels to fashion a cozy nest for him on the passenger seat and set him down in it. But I was barely out of the driveway when he began squirming and wiggling his way out of the towels. He belly-crawled in my direction across the seat, whimpering as he advanced. At the center console, Marley met the first of the countless predicaments he would find himself in over the course of his life. There he was, hind legs hanging over the passenger side of the console and front legs hanging over the driver’s side. In the middle, his stomach was firmly beached on the emergency brake. His little legs were going in all directions, clawing at the air. He wiggled and rocked and swayed, but he was grounded like a freighter on a sandbar. I reached over and ran my hand down his back, which only excited him more and brought on a new flurry of squiggling. His hind paws desperately sought purchase on the carpeted hump between the two seats. Slowly, he began working his hind quarters into the air, his butt rising up, up, up, tail furiously going, until the law of gravity finally kicked in. He slalomed headfirst down the other side of the console, somersaulting onto the floor at my feet and flipping onto his back. From there it was a quick, easy scramble up into my lap.
Man, was he happy—desperately happy. He quaked with joy as he burrowed his head into my stomach and nibbled the buttons of my shirt, his tail slapping the steering wheel like the needle on a metronome.
I quickly discovered I could affect the tempo of his wagging by simply touching him. When I had both hands on the wheel, the beat came at a steady three thumps per second. Thump. Thump. Thump. But all I needed to do was press one finger against the top of his head and the rhythm jumped from a waltz to a bossa nova. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump! Two fingers and it jumped up to a mambo. Thump-thumpa-thump-thump-thumpa-thump! And when I cupped my entire hand over his head and massaged my fingers into his scalp, the beat exploded into a machine-gun, rapid-fire samba. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump!
“Wow! You’ve got rhythm!” I told him. “You really are a reggae dog.”
When we got home, I led him inside and unhooked his leash. He began sniffing and didn’t stop until he had sniffed every square inch of the place. Then he sat back on his haunches and looked up at me with cocked head as if to say, Great digs, but where are my brothers and sisters?
The reality of his new life did not fully set in until bedtime. Before leaving to get him, I had set up his sleeping quarters in the one-car garage attached to the side of the house. We never parked there, using it more as a storage and utility room. The washer and dryer were out there, along with our ironing board. The room was dry and comfortable and had a rear door that led out into the fenced backyard. And with its concrete floor and walls, it was virtually indestructible. “Marley,” I said cheerfully, leading him out there, “this is your room.”
I had scattered chew toys around, laid newspapers down in the middle of the floor, filled a bowl with water, and made a bed out of a cardboard box lined with an old bedspread. “And here is where you’ll be sleeping,” I said, and lowered him into the box. He was used to such accommodations but had always shared them with his siblings. Now he paced the perimeter of the box and looked forlornly up at me. As a test, I stepped back into the house and closed the door. I stood and listened. At first nothing. Then a slight, barely audible whimper. And then full-fledged crying. It sounded like someone was in there torturing him.
I opened the door, and as soon as he saw me he stopped. I reached in and pet him for a couple of minutes, then left again. Standing on the other side of the door, I began to count. One, two, three…He made it seven seconds before the yips and cries began again. We repeated the exercise several times, all with the same result. I was tired and decided it was time for him to cry himself to sleep. I left the garage light on for him, closed the door, walked to the opposite side of the house, and crawled into bed. The concrete walls did little to muffle his pitiful cries. I lay there, trying to ignore them, figuring any minute now he would give up and go to sleep. The crying continued. Even after I wrapped my pillow around my head, I could still hear it. I thought of him out there alone for the first time in his life, in this strange environment without a single dog scent to be had anywhere. His mother was missing in action, and so were all his siblings. The poor little thing. How would I like it?
I hung on for another half hour before getting up and going to him. As soon as he spotted me, his face brightened and his tail began to beat the side of the box. It was as if he were saying, Come on, hop in; there’s plenty of room. Instead, I lifted the box with him in it and carried it into my bedroom, where I placed it on the floor tight against the side of the bed. I lay down on the very edge of the mattress, my arm dangling into the box. There, my hand resting on his side, feeling his rib cage rise and fall with his every breath, we both drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 4
Mr. Wiggles
F or the next three days I threw myself with abandon into our new puppy. I lay on the floor with him and let him scamper all over me. I wrestled with him. I used an old hand towel to play tug-of-war with him—and was surprised at how strong he already was. He followed me everywhere—and tried to gnaw on anything he could get his teeth around. It took him just one day to discover the best thing about his new home: toilet paper. He disappeared into the bathroom and, five seconds later, came racing back out, the end of the toilet-paper roll clenched in his teeth, a paper ribbon unrolling behind him as he sprinted across the house. The place looked like it had been decorated for Halloween.
Every half hour or so I would lead him into the backyard to relieve himself. When he had accidents in the house, I scolded him. When he peed outside, I placed my cheek against his and praised him in my sweetest voice. And when he pooped outside, I carried on as though he had just delivered the winning Florida Lotto ticket.
When Jenny returned from Disney World, she threw herself into him with the same utter abandon. It was an amazing thing to behold. As the days unfolded I saw in my young wife a calm, gentle, nurturing side I had not known existed. She held him; she caressed him; she played with him; she fussed over him. She combed through every strand of his fur in search of fleas and ticks. She rose every couple of hours through the night—night after night—to take him outside for bathroom breaks. That more than anything was responsible for him becoming fully housebroken in just a few short weeks.
Mostly, she fed him.
Following the instructions on the bag, we gave Marley three large bowls of puppy chow a day. He wolfed down every morsel in a matter of seconds. What went in came out, of course, and soon our backyard was as inviting as a minefield. We didn’t dare venture out into it without eyes sharply peeled. If Marley’s appetite was huge, his droppings were huger still, giant mounds that looked virtually unchanged from what had earlier gone in the other end. Was he even digesting this stuff?
Apparently he was. Marley was growing at a furious pace. Like one of those amazing jungle vines that can cover a house in hours, he was expanding exponentially in all directions. Each day he was a little longer, a little wider, a little taller, a little heavier. He was twenty-one pounds when I brought him home and within weeks was up to fifty. His cute little puppy head that I so easily cradled in one hand a
s I drove him home that first night had rapidly morphed into something resembling the shape and heft of a blacksmith’s anvil. His paws were enormous, his flanks already rippled with muscle, and his chest almost as broad as a bulldozer. Just as the books promised, his slip of a puppy tail was becoming as thick and powerful as an otter’s.
What a tail it was. Every last object in our house that was at knee level or below was knocked asunder by Marley’s wildly wagging weapon. He cleared coffee tables, scattered magazines, knocked framed photographs off shelves, sent beer bottles and wineglasses flying. He even cracked a pane in the French door. Gradually every item that was not bolted down migrated to higher ground safely above the sweep of his swinging mallet. Our friends with children would visit and marvel, “Your house is already baby-proofed!”
Marley didn’t actually wag his tail. He more wagged his whole body, starting with the front shoulders and working backward. He was like the canine version of a Slinky. We swore there were no bones inside him, just one big, elastic muscle. Jenny began calling him Mr. Wiggles.
And at no time did he wiggle more than when he had something in his mouth. His reaction to any situation was the same: grab the nearest shoe or pillow or pencil—really, any item would do—and run with it. Some little voice in his head seemed to be whispering to him, “Go ahead! Pick it up! Drool all over it! Run!”
Some of the objects he grabbed were small enough to conceal, and this especially pleased him—he seemed to think he was getting away with something. But Marley would never have made it as a poker player. When he had something to hide, he could not mask his glee. He was always on the rambunctious side, but then there were those moments when he would explode into a manic sort of hyperdrive, as if some invisible prankster had just goosed him. His body would quiver, his head would bob from side to side, and his entire rear end would swing in a sort of spastic dance. We called it the Marley Mambo.
“All right, what have you got this time?” I’d say, and as I approached he would begin evasive action, waggling his way around the room, hips sashaying, head flailing up and down like a whinnying filly’s, so overjoyed with his forbidden prize he could not contain himself. When I would finally get him cornered and pry open his jaws, I never came up empty-handed. Always there was something he had plucked out of the trash or off the floor or, as he got taller, right off the dining room table. Paper towels, wadded Kleenex, grocery receipts, wine corks, paper clips, chess pieces, bottle caps—it was like a salvage yard in there. One day I pried open his jaws and peered in to find my paycheck plastered to the roof of his mouth.
Within weeks, we had a hard time remembering what life had been like without our new boarder. Quickly, we fell into a routine. I started each morning, before the first cup of coffee, by taking him for a brisk walk down to the water and back. After breakfast and before my shower, I patrolled the backyard with a shovel, burying his land mines in the sand at the back of the lot. Jenny left for work before nine, and I seldom left the house before ten, first locking Marley out in the concrete bunker with a fresh bowl of water, a host of toys, and my cheery directive to “be a good boy, Marley.” By twelve-thirty, Jenny was home on her lunch break, when she would give Marley his midday meal and throw him a ball in the backyard until he was tuckered out. In the early weeks, she also made a quick trip home in the middle of the afternoon to let him out. After dinner most evenings we walked together with him back down to the waterfront, where we would stroll along the Intracoastal as the yachts from Palm Beach idled by in the glow of the sunset.
Stroll is probably the wrong word. Marley strolled like a runaway locomotive strolls. He surged ahead, straining against his leash with everything he had, choking himself hoarse in the process. We yanked him back; he yanked us forward. We tugged; he pulled, coughing like a chain smoker from the collar strangling him. He veered left and right, darting to every mailbox and shrub, sniffing, panting, and peeing without fully stopping, usually getting more pee on himself than the intended target. He circled behind us, wrapping the leash around our ankles before lurching forward again, nearly tripping us. When someone approached with another dog, Marley would bolt at them joyously, rearing up on his hind legs when he reached the end of his leash, dying to make friends. “He sure seems to love life,” one dog owner commented, and that about said it all.
He was still small enough that we could win these leash tug-of-wars, but with each week the balance of power was shifting. He was growing bigger and stronger. It was obvious that before long he would be more powerful than either of us. We knew we would need to rein him in and teach him to heel properly before he dragged us to humiliating deaths beneath the wheels of a passing car. Our friends who were veteran dog owners told us not to rush the obedience regimen. “It’s too early,” one of them advised. “Enjoy his puppyhood while you can. It’ll be gone soon enough, and then you can get serious about training him.”
That is what we did, which is not to say that we let him totally have his way. We set rules and tried to enforce them consistently. Beds and furniture were off-limits. Drinking from the toilet, sniffing crotches, and chewing chair legs were actionable offenses, though apparently worth suffering a scolding for. No became our favorite word. We worked with him on the basic commands—come, stay, sit, down—with limited success. Marley was young and wired, with the attention span of algae and the volatility of nitroglycerine. He was so excitable, any interaction at all would send him into a tizzy of bounce-off-the-walls, triple-espresso exuberance. We wouldn’t realize it until years later, but he showed early signs of that condition that would later be coined to describe the behavior of thousands of hard-to-control, ants-in-their-pants schoolchildren. Our puppy had a textbook case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Still, for all his juvenile antics, Marley was serving an important role in our home and our relationship. Through his very helplessness, he was showing Jenny she could handle this maternal nurturing thing. He had been in her care for several weeks, and she hadn’t killed him yet. Quite to the contrary, he was thriving. We joked that maybe we should start withholding food to stunt his growth and suppress his energy levels.
Jenny’s transformation from coldhearted plant killer to nurturing dog mom continued to amaze me. I think she amazed herself a little. She was a natural. One day Marley began gagging violently. Before I even fully registered that he was in trouble, Jenny was on her feet. She swooped in, pried his jaws open with one hand, and reached deep into his gullet with the other, pulling out a large, saliva-coated wad of cellophane. All in a day’s work. Marley let out one last cough, banged his tail against the wall, and looked up at her with an expression that said, Can we do it again?
As we grew more comfortable with the new member of our family, we became more comfortable talking about expanding our family in other ways. Within weeks of bringing Marley home, we decided to stop using birth control. That’s not to say we decided to get pregnant, which would have been way too bold a gesture for two people who had dedicated their lives to being as indecisive as possible. Rather, we backed into it, merely deciding to stop trying not to get pregnant. The logic was convoluted, we realized, but it somehow made us both feel better. No pressure. None at all. We weren’t trying for a baby; we were just going to let whatever happened happen. Let nature take its course. Que será, será and all that.
Frankly, we were terrified. We had several sets of friends who had tried for months, years even, to conceive without luck and who had gradually taken their pitiful desperation public. At dinner parties they would talk obsessively about doctor’s visits, sperm counts, and timed menstrual cycles, much to the discomfort of everyone else at the table. I mean, what were you supposed to say? “I think your sperm counts sound just fine!” It was almost too painful to bear. We were scared to death we would end up joining them.
Jenny had suffered several severe bouts of endometriosis before we were married and had undergone laparoscopic surgery to remove excess scar tissue from her fallopian tubes, none of
which boded well for her fertility. Even more troubling was a little secret from our past. In those blindly passionate early days of our relationship, when desire had a stranglehold on anything resembling common sense, we had thrown caution into the corner with our clothes and had sex with reckless abandon, using no birth control whatsoever. Not just once but many times. It was incredibly dumb, and, looking back on it several years later, we should have been kissing the ground in gratitude for miraculously escaping an unwanted pregnancy. Instead, all either of us could think was, What’s wrong with us? No normal couple could possibly have done all that unprotected fornicating and gotten away with it. We were both convinced conceiving was going to be no easy task.
So as our friends announced their plans to try to get pregnant, we remained silent. Jenny was simply going to stash her birth-control prescription away in the medicine cabinet and forget about it. If she ended up pregnant, fantastic. If she didn’t, well, we weren’t actually trying anyway, now, were we?
Winter in West Palm Beach is a glorious time of year, marked by crisp nights and warm, dry, sunny days. After the insufferably long, torpid summer, most of it spent in air-conditioning or hopping from one shade tree to the next in an attempt to dodge the blistering sun, winter was our time to celebrate the gentle side of the subtropics. We ate all our meals on the back porch, squeezed fresh orange juice from the fruit of the backyard tree each morning, tended a tiny herb garden and a few tomato plants along the side of the house, and picked saucer-sized hibiscus blooms to float in little bowls of water on the dining room table. At night we slept beneath open windows, the gardenia-scented air wafting in over us.