Fifty Acres and a Poodle Read online

  And now here he is again. Whatever. Whatever. I step off the sidewalk, onto the street, and move to the other side, over here where that nice-old-man violin maker lives.

  Lately, in this city I love, this neighborhood I love, all I seem to notice are the intrusions. Hot air. Reeking garbage. Lunatic neighbors. Bus fumes. I am inventing filters. Air filters. Stinky-garbage filters. Lunatic-neighbor filters. Noxious-bus-fume filters. Sometimes I imagine plugging a big air conditioner into the front of my head so I can block the rest of the world right the hell out.

  That’s not right.

  That can’t be right.

  Okay, a dollar fifty for the paper. Thank you very much. Yes, a bag. Thank you, Mabel.

  As I approach the house, I can see Alex waiting in the yard. That’s a breath of fresh air. He’s sitting under the spruce tree, introducing the dogs to a Frisbee. He looks so cute sitting there. I know; men don’t like being called cute. But he is cute. He’s cute the way, say, a beagle is cute. Smart and tough and silly and innocent all at once. His body is strong and sturdy and densely muscled. He has an intelligent face, a professor type with pushed-back black hair, and little intellectual glasses surrounding the softest brown eyes.

  He’s trying to engage Marley in a game of Frisbee. Oh, this should be good. I stand by the fence and watch. He tosses the bright pink disk, sends it sailing toward the lilac bushes. “Go get it, boy!” he says. Marley looks in the direction of the Frisbee. Marley looks at Alex. Looks at him like “Why are you throwing stuff?”

  Betty zooms in, a flash of yellow light. Betty zooms and grabs that Frisbee. “Well, good girl!” Alex says. “Now, bring it here! Bring it here!” Betty runs toward Alex. This is great! A dog that can actually fetch! Alex stands, eager to receive the prize. But Betty keeps on zooming, right past Alex, up the hill, where she sits in the shade and commences shredding the Frisbee.

  “All right,” Alex says, sighing. “Never mind.”

  “Hey!” I say.

  “There you are!” he says, flashing an easy grin.

  “I went to get a paper,” I say.

  “I was trying to teach the dogs to play Frisbee,” he says.

  “I saw.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “Maybe it’s too hot for fetching,” I say. “It’s so stinkin’ hot.”

  “It’s not the heat,” he says.

  “I know …”

  “It’s the hu-man-ity,” he says.

  “Right.” But I don’t laugh. Because he always says this. And we are past the part of a relationship where you have to laugh at every little thing. Plus, he’s a repeater. He’s one of those people who says the same joke over and over and over again, so pretty soon the humor is in the repetition, not the joke.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I walked into the store and saw a sign that said ‘All men’s pants half off’?” he’ll say.

  “Oh, please,” I’ll say, rather than suffer yet again through the punchline, which, for the record, is something about him pulling down his pants and taking one leg out because that’s what the sign said to do. Something like that. It was worth a snicker or two—the first time.

  “So what do you think about this patio?” he asks me, tracing his toe along the edge of the brick he has put down to indicate a border. “Do you think it should be bigger? Wider? But if it’s too wide, it might look, I don’t know, bulky.”

  I never actually asked him to build this patio; he just decided one day that I needed a patio. He loves building stuff.

  “I think we shouldn’t think about the patio today,” I say. “It’s too hot.”

  “Too hot to think about a patio?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You want to go farm shopping, don’t you,” he says.

  “Well, I did get the paper. And we haven’t checked the ads in a while.”

  “But I really thought I could get this all dug out today,” he says, slumping as if in defeat in a big white Adirondack chair under the tree.

  “Ugh,” I say, plopping myself into the other one. “If you work on the patio, then that means I’ll work in the garden. Because I’ll feel like a slug sitting here. And I can’t bear to work in the garden. I can’t. It’s too hot. And look at this place. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “All right. You’re right.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘You are right, dear.’”

  “Thank you very much.”

  It is always worth stopping and noticing when one of us says the other is right. Because being right is something we each love. It’s a routine we have.

  “You were funnier than I was tonight,” I’ll say, after a night out with friends.

  “No, you were funnier,” he’ll say.

  “No, you were!”

  It will go on like this, until one of us gives in. “You’re right. I was funnier.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘You’re right, dear.’”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Who plays which role in these conversations is completely interchangeable.

  It’s fun. Being in love is so much fun. I’m surprised how quickly I took to being a “girlfriend.” To having a “boyfriend.” I’m surprised how well I am still doing with continual loss of order. Which is not to say it isn’t difficult for me sometimes. I don’t get nearly as much work done as I once did. My rigid running and exercise regimen, my sleep schedule, my patterns are thoroughly disrupted. I eat things I would never eat before. I eat Miracle Whip and ham on Wonder Bread. So many of my rituals—doing my nails, say, every week while watching 60 Minutes—are completely kerflooey.

  But kerflooey feels surprisingly good. It feels wonderful to think: It doesn’t matter. Life will go on if I don’t get my nails filed by eight o’clock on Sunday nights, if I don’t have the laundry folded by nine. And of course, kerflooey feels predictably horrible. My garden is the very symbol of kerflooey. I can’t even bear to look at it.

  Maybe this is how you integrate the inward and the outward life. Maybe you learn not to look too hard at either one. Or you learn to periodically shut your eyes.

  Anyway, we’re definitely not doing yard work today. Thank God. We’re sitting here under the spruce tree reading the paper. There aren’t too many ads for farms for sale. Not that it matters. Because I really have no intention of buying a farm. Alex, a lifelong city dweller, has even less intention of buying a farm than I do. Plus, I mean, it’s not like we live together or anything. He has his house in East Liberty, about ten minutes away, and I have my house here. Couples who don’t live together don’t go off and buy farms together.

  Farm shopping is just something we do. Like all happy little lovebirds, we enjoy a day in the country. We’ll pack a picnic, put our bikes in the car, and look at land. We might go to the Youghiogheny River, dip our toes in the water, and bike the trails. On the way home we’ll stop at some cozy country inn and sip sherry by the fire.

  And of course, we talk. We talk the dreamy talk all lovers talk. “Let’s stay in this moment forever.” And “Let’s run away and live like this forever.” And “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in this place forever?”

  It’s the way you’re supposed to talk. But that’s all it’s supposed to be: talk. I can’t say for sure why the talk hasn’t stayed talk for me, why it seems to have oozed inside me, like a slurp of water feeding a wilted zinnia. I can only say that lately I have been thinking “Hmm.” And “Why not?” And “Surely it must be possible.”

  TWO

  HEY, HERE’S ONE,” I SAY TO ALEX, AS I CIRCLE one of the ads. “‘Fifty acres. Four-bedroom farmhouse, new addition with skylights. Cedar barn circa 1880. Lily pond. Natural gas well. Open house today between two and four.’”

  “Where is it?” he says.

  “You’re not going to believe it,” I say.

  “Where?”

  “Scenery Hill.”

  Scenery Hill is smack dab in the middle of our favorite farm-shoppin
g place—Washington County, about an hour south of Pittsburgh. Suburban sprawl hasn’t touched that area, so it’s not like you find yourself winding through farms that used to be farms but now are developments with farmy-sounding names. We love the hills of Washington County, rolling hills, brown and purple and vermilion hills you expect to see depicted on canvases in museums. We love the history of Washington County. An ancient village in the area, known as Meadowcroft Rockshelter, dates back to at least 12,000 B.C. and is the earliest known human settlement in the whole western hemisphere. There is something quite seductive about going to a place where time seems to have begun.

  And we think it’s interesting—no, amazing—that about five years ago, way before we fell in love, when we were both off leading entirely separate lives, different friends, different worlds, when we were just buddies sitting around one day over coffee, we talked about buying property in Washington County. We said, let’s split it. I’d take it one weekend, for my friends. And he’d take it the next weekend, for his friends. We sometimes wonder if, even back then, five years ago, we knew that our time was beginning.

  “Well?” I say. “Should we go?” I must have that look in my eye.

  “It appears the train has already left the station,” he says, folding up the comics.

  The train leaving the station is what Alex says when he knows I’ve got my mind made up about something. Because when my mind gets made up, it is hard for me to unmake it. He loves this train metaphor. He’ll tell my mother it’s the secret to our relationship success. “When the train leaves the station, you can either go for the ride or get out of the way,” he’ll say. “But you cannot stop the train.”

  My mom will laugh. My mom loves the train metaphor, too.

  I am not particularly impressed one way or the other by it.

  “Should we take the dogs with us?” Alex says.

  “You’re kidding, right? Marley would be dead.”

  “True.”

  Marley gets carsick. Yes, well. (“I am dating a shrink with a carsick poodle.”) Yes, well.

  PROBABLY I SHOULD PAUSE HERE AND EXPLAIN the history of this poodle. Because it is important to note that Alex did not have this poodle when I fell in love with him. I did not know that Alex was a poodle person when I fell in love with him. Repeat: did not know.

  Alex dropped the poodle bomb about a year into the relationship. He said it so casually at dinner one night; he said it as if it were the most inconsequential piece of information for a man to impart to a woman.

  “Poodles,” he said. “Poodles are my favorite dogs.”

  “Poodles?” I said.

  “Standard poodles,” he said. “Not those little yappy things.”

  “Uh-huh.” But it was a blow. I’m telling you it was a terrible, terrible blow. Because, as I said, I come from mutt people. People who believe in normal dogs. Dogs that slobber and scratch and sleep all day. Dogs that aren’t suffering from doggie nerve disorders due to an estrangement from their own inner dogs. Dogs that don’t spend their days posing for pastel artists who have set up easels at the mall.

  Not that I am a stranger to poodle people. When I was nine, my very good friend Bridgette Davidson had poodles. She lived in a pink house. Her mother, who skated in the Ice Capades, had an entire room full of blond wigs, which we were not allowed to play with. Which we did. Which was why we got yelled at—which was when her mother’s teeth fell out. Well, not on the floor, just all the way off the gums, which was horrifying enough.

  Poodle people.

  So imagine my shock when I discovered I was dating one.

  “Poodles,” he said. “Poodles are my favorite dogs.”

  “Poodles?” I said.

  “Standard poodles,” he said. “Not those little yappy things.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Standard poodles are really smart,” he said. “Did you know they were used as sentry dogs in Vietnam?”

  No, I did not. But even if poodles could pilot helicopters, I didn’t think my stance on them was likely to budge. He got a little huffy with that remark.

  We agreed to disagree on the poodle issue, while I secretly planned, as anyone would, to convert him.

  A few months later: The Big Dilemma. I was at my friend Marge’s. She runs a small kennel out of her home, where I leave Betty when I go out of town. We were sitting in her kitchen next to that giant parrot thing she has in a cage that goes raaaaaack raaaaaack at Betty all the time. Betty is terrified of this bird. But she has learned to put up with it because putting up with it means she gets to be upstairs with Marge (who adores Betty) instead of downstairs in some cage with all those mangy mutts Marge cares for. (Betty doesn’t actually know she is a mutt.)

  Anyway, one day I was leaving Marge’s and the bird was going raaaaaack raaaaaack and Marge happened to mention that she was looking to find a home for a nine-month-old puppy that some family had abandoned because their spoiled teenager had decided she wanted a horse instead. The dog, a purebred, had cost more than a thousand dollars but was now free to a good home.

  “It’s a standard poodle,” Marge said, “a really great dog.”

  “A poodle?” I said. “Marge—you like poodles?”

  “Oh, poodles are my favorite dogs,” she said. “You know, standard poodles.”

  I was feeling surrounded.

  The more Marge told me about the dog, the more I realized it was probably Alex’s dream dog.

  So what was a girlfriend to do? Tell the boyfriend and run the risk of becoming a woman who is dating a man with a … poodle? Or not tell him and live with the guilt?

  I told him. “Let’s just go see it,” I said. “You may not like it.”

  “Okay, let’s go see it,” he said, but not with his Mister Enthusiasm voice. And this was because of what was going on in his life. For months Alex seemed to have been living in some sort of fog. Some days he seemed on the verge of getting swallowed up by it. Maybe it was a midlife thing. He had raised two children as a single dad. His daughter, Amy, had just graduated college, and his son, Peter, was about to. His house was empty. And his work, well, it didn’t seem to give him quite the joy it once did. He was feeling burned out, as probably any shrink feels, after sitting in people’s misery for twenty-five years.

  I thought: This guy needs a dog.

  So that’s how it happened. That’s how we came to show up at Marge’s that day to look at a standard poodle that was free to a good home. Marge showed us into a room with a couch and a TV, and she went to get the dog. A few minutes later, into the room came charging sixty pounds of jet black curls. I had no idea poodles could be so big. The dog came bounding straight for Alex, as if he knew, somehow knew, that this guy was his ticket out of the place. He jumped into Alex’s lap, threw his paws on his shoulders, and began licking his face, his glasses, his ears, his entire head.

  Alex was laughing. Giggling like a little boy. Rolling over, a child again.

  Then the dog came over and tackled me. “Whoa,” I said, and “Oh” and “Ugh.” The dog was all over me, bombarding me with love. I forgot, for an instant, that it even was a poodle. I forgot, for an instant, all about the pink house and the wigs and the Ice Capades and those teeth. Because this was not some nervous little froufrou thing. This was a handsome, slobbery, shaggy creature with real dog breath. My God! (You can go your whole life not knowing how closed-minded you are until the object of your own bigotry is suddenly in your lap.)

  The hair on top of the dog’s head was long and had grown over its eyes in dreadlocks.

  “Marley,” Alex said, naming the dog after Bob Marley.

  Or so I thought. “Lively up yourself,” I said.

  Alex laughed. “No, not Bob,” he said. “Jacob.”

  “Jacob Marley?”

  “This dog is my warning to pay more attention to what is going on in my life,” he said.

  It must be hard going through life as a shrink.

  The dog sat in the front seat of Alex’s car on the ride h
ome. I was in the back, watching. Marley sat there looking at Alex. Just sat there studying his new owner. And the drool coming out of that dog was, well, wow. A lot of drool. But Alex didn’t care. It was his dog. His dog! I could see Alex’s eyes in the mirror, the proudest, smiling eyes.

  I felt so good playing a role in cheering this man up. It had been so long since I felt that good. Had I ever felt that good? I felt like doing something for Alex again. Again and again. I felt like a starving person ready to gorge. Gorge on the act of giving. I felt like going out and buying Alex a whole set of plates with poodles on them. I felt like buying him a tie with poodles on it. I felt like decorating his living room with pink-and-green poodle art.

  But—my God! The drool coming out of that dog’s mouth. Soon it was long strands of drool, like heavy rubber bands hanging from his mouth. This wasn’t happiness drool. Oh, no. This was something else entirely.

  Alex pulled up to his house, opened the car door. Marley got out, heaved, and threw up.

  “Oh, dear,” Alex said. “Oh, my …”

  Well, that’s basically how we got Marley. Something about that carsick poodle cemented our relationship. It may sound strange to say. But looking back, I can see that it did. Because already I was saying “we” got Marley. I was becoming a part of a “we.” How I loved adding that word to my vocabulary. It had been so long since I was part of a “we.” Was I ever really part of a “we”?

  SO, IT’S A FARM-SHOPPING DAY. ALEX IS AT THE wheel of the Passat, and we are headed down to Scenery Hill on a stinking hot Sunday in June. I am telling Alex my thoughts on processed air. On my need for filters. “That’s what it is,” I say. “That is the whole problem with living in the city. You can’t be happy unless you block most of your awareness out.”

  “But …,” he says.

  “Why live in a place where you are forced to shut down your senses?” I say. I am gesticulating wildly, for emphasis. “I want to be in a place that encourages my eyes to open wider! My ears to hear an increasingly wider range! My nose and taste buds to go to new extremes! Not a place where I am forced to go numb in order to stay sane.”