The Case of the Missing Fish

A fish is a hard thing to lose. Hard but not impossible. One night—flush with the success of keeping our new goldfish alive for three weeks—we brought home a companion for him from the pet store. By the next morning, he was gone.

“He can’t be missing,” I said to my son. This was probably just a ruse to get me out of bed so I could pour him some Cheerios. “Put on your glasses and look again.”

I got up and joined the hunt. We looked behind the plants in the tank; we peered into and even disassembled the filter (perhaps he’d jumped upstream, into the water flowing from the pump); we looked in the mouth of the dragon ornament my son had picked out; we stirred the rocks, in case he’d burrowed under them for some weird fishy reason. Nothing.

“He can’t have disappeared. Do you think the other fish ate him?” We looked skeptically at Mr. Fishy, swimming nonchalantly around the tank. His sides bulged orangely in the water.

“He does look fatter,” my son said, tilting his head. He’s eight. He only recently stopped believing in Santa, but this required some serious suspension of disbelief.

Wouldn’t there be bones? I wondered. A few scales left over? Even the dead fish at the store linger at the bottom of the tank, freaking me out with their ghostly cadavers while their supposed friends peck at their flesh. Usually, the head remains.

My husband seemed to think this was all due to my particular brand of ineptitude, that I had somehow “lost” the fish. I get it—this was all about me.

“I put him in the water!” I said. “He swam around! He looked at his reflection in the glass!”

I searched the floor around the tank, beside the cables for the iPod and the Nintendo DS, amidst—okay—a few dust bunnies. I stood in the middle of the room and turned in an aimless circle, feeling like David Byrne: This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. This is not my beautiful fish. It's really not my beautiful fish, because he's missing.

It’s true: We do have two cats. But as my cats do not have opposable thumbs, I doubt they’d opened the lid, scooped out one fish, ate him, closed the lid, and left not a trace behind. My cats can’t even reliably jump on the kitchen table without knocking over the salt or a vase of flowers. Nimble, they’re not.

I put on my sternest face. I planted my hands on my hips. “Are you guys playing a joke on me?” I asked. They looked as stumped as I felt.

It had to be the dragon, a resin “bubbler” that we’d never figured out how to get bubbling. The thing had a large mouth and a hollow, sinuous body, open at both ends. I poked it. Nothing happened. My husband lifted it out and we peered into both ends, with a flashlight. He—the new fish—could certainly have fit in the mouth opening, although he’d have to have gone in sideways. There could be no other explanation.

My son’s shoulders slumped. We’d already survived the death of our first fish, Mr. Fishy’s short-lived predecessor. Now we had a proper aquarium, and dechlorination drops, and we knew all about the procedure for water changes. We thought we were making progress.

Maybe this was the time to have a meaningful talk with my son about the cycle of life. Perhaps it was time for one of the hard lessons of childhood. It was bad enough I’d had to teach him recently that you couldn’t always poop when you wanted to, that sometimes you had to hold it till a more convenient time. Now this?

I looked at the dragon again. If only we’d gone with something a little less murderous, like that Buddha I had my eye on. The question is: Will he come out? Can he? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you see a small black fish with a fantail and goggly eyes—possibly with a backpack on his tiny shoulders—please give me a call. His family misses him.

Your Dog

I’m sorry, did you think this was my dog, simply because I take pictures of him looking adorable and post them on Facebook? Or because I drive two thousand miles on vacation so I can take him with me, rather than board him in a cold, metal cage where he’ll be deprived of love and kindness for hours at a stretch? Or because I call his little stump of a tail “the nubbin of love”?

Well, you’re wrong. He’s not my dog; he’s a foster dog! I—out of the goodness of my heart—took this poor mutt home from a shelter, where he’d been languishing for 24 hours, fully intending to place him in a loving home one day. And that day is today, and you could be the lucky owner! 

After two years of painstaking research, I’ve determined that you are the future owner of this dog, formerly known as T.J., now known as Toby. But you can call him whatever you want, because he’s yours! You can call him Lampshade, for all I care, as long as you take him, his leash, his other leash, his five to seven stuffed toys, his various water bowls, his upstairs bed, his downstairs bed, his epilepsy medicine, his antidepressant, his Benadryl for car trips, his rain coat, his winter coat, and … most important of all, his black-light urine detector.

That’s right, folks, this dog pees a lot. If you’ve ever owned a spaniel, or a spaniel mix, or a dog that was next to a spaniel at the shelter, then you know what I’m talking about. Spaniels speak with their bladders. They pee when they’re scared, excited, lonely, anxious, in new situations, when it’s too wet or cold to go out, when they’re unsure of who to vote for, or what to wear, when they’re bored, or when they’ve been separated from you for so long that they can’t stand to be separated for even the additional length of time it takes to pee outside, properly, like a normal dog would.

The only time spaniels don’t pee is when you take them to the vet to determine if they have a bladder infection or maybe prostate trouble, so that the vet has to take them “in back” and catheterize them, thereby making you pay to have your dog pee, which is the precise behavior you’re asking your vet to help curb in the first place.  

Here are some recent items my dog—now your dog—has peed on: a backpack, a beanbag chair, the oven, the microwave cart, a basket of kitchen utensils, shoes, a lunchbox, Grandma’s couch, Grandma’s chair, Grandma’s brand-new comforter, a futon, a bag of dog food, a bag of cat food, a plastic container of dog food, the kitchen cabinets, and … you get the picture.

I understand unconditional love. I love this dog even though he bites me (just a little), even though he bites my child (just a teeny bit, and only when he steps on him), even though he bit my husband (once or twice), even though he steals pizza and runs through the house with it until I have to I stand there and watch him eat it on my white bedroom rug because he will bite me (hard) if I try to take it from him. I love him even though he irritates the doggy-heck out of everyone who comes to the door by jumping all over them, especially the mailman, who’s convinced that 17-pound Toby would tear him to shreds if he ever broke free. I love him even though he obsessively licks the furniture and the floor and, if I let him, my hands and feet. I love him even though he eats his poop. (But not immediately after that. I’m not a saint.)

I love him because he loves me. I love him because he cries when we’re reunited after a long time. I love him because he cocks his head so appealingly when I say “walkies,” and then jumps in the air like a circus dog. I love him because he looks at me with such optimism, as if to say, “You’re going to give me that hamburger today, aren’t you?” even though I never do. I love the way he sleeps with his legs splayed, like a dissected frog. I love the way the hair between his ears is mussed, making him look like a newborn baby duck.

But I’ve discovered that there’s a limit to unconditional love. A condition. And that condition is inappropriate elimination. Up till the ten-thousandth pee I had hope. I forgave him, over and over again, through bottle after bottle of enzyme cleaner. But one day, I woke up and said, “No more, dog. I don’t love you. You have peed on my feet for the last time. You’re dead to me.” (Maybe that last line was from a “Sopranos” rerun. I don’t know.)

I’m still nice to him. I experience bursts of love, which last until the next time he pees on, say, the toaster. On our annual pilgrimage to Florida, I secretly hoped that someone would steal him during one of our pit stops, when I hooked him up in the shade with a fresh bowl of water and danced off to the bathroom, imagining myself free of the burden of a dog with separation anxiety.

You see, if I never left the house, and nobody ever came over, Toby would be fine. In fact, after the initial yearly pee at Grandma’s house (new situation), he was fine. My mom (who is very forgiving) kept saying what a good dog he was. That’s because nobody came to the door. He didn’t know the mailman’s schedule. There were no kids playing outside to torment him. For two weeks, we lived in seclusion. And he loved it.

Except when we left. Then, the untrustworthy dog would be banished to the lanai, where he had all of the comforts of home but air conditioning. He had food and water and shade and a comfy spot to lie. He had a pool to gaze in, or even to take a dip in, if he chose (he didn’t). He had screens to keep the mosquitoes at bay and darting lizards to keep his mind occupied. The only thing he didn’t have was me. And he was miserable. He soon figured out that if he was put outside alone, it meant we were leaving. He began to be alert to the putting-on of shoes. He started to fret if I so much as brushed my teeth.

As soon as the door closed, Toby’s anxiety kicked it. He pawed the glass. He panted, paced and barked. He jumped on the table, to get a better look at us abandoning him. Of course, he peed.

What can you do with a dog like this? We worked one-on-one with a trainer. We took a class, where Toby spent much of the time hiding behind my legs. We tried Prozac and Xanax. Nothing helps. Nothing seems to make a dent in his particular brand of craziness.

So we’re stuck. My husband tolerates him. My son hates him. I am torn between love and hate (in fact, they’re tattooed on my knuckles), but mostly I’m just stuck, wishing that he’d get a tumor in some inoperable place and then feeling awful about it. I’m evil! Who can look at that little face and have a thought like that? I should be the one euthanized.

Yesterday, I watched “The Dog Whisperer.” Cesar, I thought, please save me! Please bring your perfect white choppers to my house and transform my naughty dog into a well-behaved Stepford dog! I thought about putting Toby in an envelope and mailing him to California. With no return address. But I know it’s always the owner who’s at fault in bad-dog situations, blah blah blah.  

It’s always "blame the victim"! Must have been those provocative shoes I was wearing.

A Bad Phone Day

I have Cellular Asperger’s Syndrome. No silly, not Asperger’s at the cellular level, Asperger’s of the cell phone! I hate, hate, hate talking on the phone, so much so that it really causes me problems. For instance, a friend recently recommended me for a small, recurring newsletter job. I was basically “in” without having to do much, other than make a phone call. Three weeks later (or maybe it was six), I had yet to make that call. Then I ran into one of the people involved.

“Still want that job?” she asked, looking mildly perplexed. Did I want the job? Did I not want the job? Why didn’t I call anybody back?

To be fair, something major came up and, for a while, I wasn’t sure I could take the job (because I would be living in the back of my car, and there’s no Internet access there). But once the something major was resolved, The Call became an insurmountable task. The longer I put it off, the worse it became. Some days I would pick up the phone, look at the number, and be unable to force myself to dial. Finally, the editor e-mailed me … and asked me to call him.

Argh! Why can’t the whole world run itself via text and e-mail! It’s so much easier! No awkward pauses, no dry mouth, no sweaty pits. No chance of misspeaking or mumbling or revealing my lisp, which is only charming on a ringleted five-year old girl.

Yesterday, the editor left me a voicemail message, and I swore I would call him back. The next day. Today is the next day. My phone just rang. I did not pick up. It could be him.

My phone problems go way back. When I was a kid—maybe ten or sixteen—my mom started making me schedule my own hair appointments. This was agony. I would beg her to make the call, but to no avail. She was really, really cruel about it! Clearly, this was supposed to help me get over my phobia, but it only made it worse.

Thank god for the Internet! Thank you, Steve Jobs or Al Gore or whoever it was who thinks he invented e-mail, so I could talk to way fewer people than I used to have to. Thank you, Google, for letting me make dinner reservations online and book airline travel, for letting me look up the hours of any business in America, the Netherlands or Spain, and schedule service calls and resolve customer service issues to my (virtual) satisfaction.

Generally, if I’m having a bad phone day, I can make myself dial if I use speakerphone. If I can imagine the other person is far away, not trying to bore into my brain, like an earwig in a science fiction movie. Other times, it helps to talk and focus my eyes far on something far away—out the window and over the hedges into the blameless blue sky. It’s a dissasociative technique familiar to abuse victims worldwide. Just me and the Spanish Inquisition, blocking out the pain.

Recently, I stopped by my dentist’s office to make appointments for my son and me. I stopped by. In person.

“I was just passing by,” I explained, “so I thought I’d stop in.”

Oddly, the receptionist thanked me. Said it was much easier to schedule the multiple appointments I needed in person than over the phone. We looked at the doctor’s schedule together on her monitor, and while I was there, we resolved an insurance issue that had been ongoing. They gave me a sticker and some dental floss before I left.  

It’s not people, you see, but the phone that’s the problem. I can talk to someone face to face. I’m shy, but chatty. I’m an introverted extrovert! I would have done extremely well to have lived in the Victoria Era—minus the corsets, and the inability to vote or wear pants or have an epidural—due to the practice of visiting and leaving one’s calling card. So civilized, wouldn’t you say? Much better than yakking away on a handheld device that’s probably going to give you cancer from radiation. At least I won’t have to talk on the phone when I’m dead. Unless I go to Hell. There, I’ll probably be assigned to the reception desk.

I had my cholesterol checked. In March. Sure would like to know what those results are. Too bad I can’t call!

Or I could, if I focused on the robin in the back yard, perched on the telephone wire, the sweet little robin who’s never had to pick up a phone in her life, but who clutches the wire leading to the phone pole with her unsuspecting yellow feet.

“Just close your eyes,” I would say to her, if she ever needed to make a call. To her husband, for example, to ask if he needed her to pick up some extra earthworms on her way back to the nest. “Close your eyes and think of England.”

Lions and Tigers and Bears

Something about today is not going well. I’m puttering around the house, cleaning, dusting, organizing—some of my least favorite activities. Every few minutes, I go into the kitchen to send the fax I’ve been trying to send for the last day. Finally, it occurs to me to check the jack with an old rotary phone I keep around for its vintage charm. Nothing. I try the jacks in the dining room and all of the bedrooms. Nothing. I say the F word every twelve seconds, sotto voce, because my son has a friend over.

Perhaps it’s the presence of the friend that has me off kilter. Playdates—there should be a special place in hell for whoever invented them. “Hey, why don’t you trap yourself in your house all day with your own kid and someone else’s. And try not to go insane!”

Just when you’ve figured out a few things about your own child, he enters the era of playdates, and you have to figure out all of his friends. Some of them are picky eaters. (“You’ve never had a cherry?” “You don’t like pretzels?” “You won’t eat anything green?”) Others, more irritatingly, want to be fed all the time. (Your son has learned not to expect food very often, and when he does, his standards are low. Buttered noodles are haute cuisine. High-fructose corn syrup and Red Dye No. 5 are your frenemies.)

Some children are rude, asking pointed questions about things that are none of their business, like why your dog is so badly behaved, or what that funny smell is in the basement. One wants to know why your teeth are so crooked; another wipes a booger on your front door, where it bakes in the sun and you can’t get it off for several weeks, because every time you try, you gag.

Still others want to sit on your bed and watch TV, and the sight of their dirty socks makes you tremble and shake. They eat Doritos and touch your couch. One does not seem to be accustomed to benign neglect, and follows you around the house wanting to know what you’re doing and why it’s taking so long. Perhaps he thinks the playdate is with you, rather than your son.  

Some kids seem to think you come from another planet, a very distant one, where customs are different from their own. Every question, no matter how innocuous, will be greeted with a blank stare, as though the poor child is trying to figure out the right thing to say to prevent the alien across the table from sprouting tentacles and eating him.

You are not used to these kinds of kids. You are used to kids who are tiny 40-year olds. Kids who read the jokes in The New Yorker and laugh, even if their interpretation is not the same as yours. Kids who profess to like the taste of coffee and declare the one sip of wine they had once was “fruity!” You are used to kids who play videogames rated “M” for mature (“The blood’s fake, Mom!”) and who read over your shoulder, pointing out typos.

When a friend recently asked me if I knew anybody who might want a job teaching at her son’s preschool, I said, “What about me?” It sounded like a cushy job, a cute job. Toddlers would hug and kiss me, cry when we had to be parted at the end of the day and they were returned to their mothers, with whom they’d grown bored. I would never, ever be bitten, vomited on, or pooped on. Plus, every two weeks, someone would give me an envelope with a couple of bucks in it. Sweet!

“You have to like kids,” my friend said drily.

“Oh. And I guess it’s in the morning, huh?” That left me out.

Still, I was stung. I’d always assumed I was a good mother, a loving mother. I had a vagina, how could I not be? It’s not that I don’t like kids; I do! I just like them just fine … from afar. I like them the way zoo-goers like their lions and tigers and bears—behind glass. I like them in small numbers, ideally one at a time. As the mother of an only child, I’m easily overwhelmed when small creatures, no matter how dear, outnumber me. Bunnies are adorable, but I don’t want them crawling all over me. Mice are adorable, but put me in a room full of them and I will faint dead away.

If you’re a friend of mine, I’ll forgive your kids for their little peccadilloes, like correcting me when I say “crap” or when I introduce topics of discussion they don’t think are appropriate, such as when I point out “the boobies” on the figurehead of the pirate ship ride at an amusement park.

If I really like your kids (or you, more accurately), I will suck up to them to try to make them like me. I will—as with my imaginary preschoolers—hug and kiss them, buy them presents on their birthdays and at significant milestones. I will “like” their funny anecdotes on Facebook.

But today, well, I just can’t seem to get my groove on. Perhaps it’s the rain—thirty straight hours and my neighbors are building an ark. Or maybe it’s that my husband’s out of town and I haven’t spoken to another adult for more than five minutes, except the woman behind the counter at the duckpin bowling alley.

Whatever the reason, my heart or my shoes, I think wine-thirty should start a little early today. Say, right after I take that the nice little boy home to his mother, who he’s pretty sure is not going to sprout tentacles and eat him, no matter what he says.

   

My Trip to Crazy-Town

If you’ve never slept in the backseat of your car, you really should try it, if for nothing else than the novelty of the experience. True, there are many novelties that shouldn’t be tried. Pink hair, Justin Bieber concerts, fish served with the head attached—but don’t let that stop you. I didn’t.

As you try to “sleep” in your makeshift bed, you’ll soon find yourself wishing you could lop off your legs at the knee. There’s no way for the human body to accommodate itself to the back of a Toyota, unless that body is two-years old and 35-inches long. You can try wedging your feet in front of you, between the seat and the door, or try placing them flat on the floor while the rest of your body slumps sideways, as though you’ve been shot while sitting there, minding your own backseat-of-car business. Neither of these approaches will work.

Something weird will happen to your blood pressure. The slight elevation of your hips—or your waist, more accurately—at the bump between the seats will cut off circulation to your brain. Your nose will begin to feel stuffy. Your eyes will bulge. You’ll wonder if you’re losing consciousness. 

Perhaps a little fresh air might help, but you’ll be afraid to crack the window, although you know for a fact that not even Cujo can violate an intact automobile. Not even an axe-wielding killer in the woods can get you, as long as you stay where you are. It’s the fools who get out of the car who run into trouble, and despite the fact that you’re sleeping beside a dumpster in a parking lot to begin with, your mama didn’t raise no fools.

Of course you’ll sleep in your shoes, so that you’re ready to run at the slightest hint of danger. You’ll be frightened as the first few cars pull up beside you. You’ll hold your breath. You’ll try to appear small. Surprisingly, none of the teenagers intent on using the pool at the Hampton Inn will bother to look in the backseat of the “mom car” parked next to them. No one will shriek at the sight of the presumably dead body, curled—or crammed—in the backseat. What’s a girl gotta do to get a little attention these days?

Imagine the embarrassment if you are caught. Will the Hampton Inn night manager call the police? Will they suspect you are homeless, indigent? Your clothes are a little rumpled by this point. Your breath not-so-fresh. Your car looks as though it’s on the verge of being abandoned, but it always looks that way.

Eventually, the teenagers go away. The guys in the pickup with monster-truck tires bigger than your car go away. Everybody’s snug inside their rented rooms, with pillows and blankets. With mattresses. Soon, all you hear are crickets chirping and semis trundling up and down the highway. All you see is empty sky and the insanely bright glow of halogen street lamps.     

This gives you time to think. Time to wonder if this is the best course of action, if perhaps this particular domestic dispute could have been solved in a more reasonable fashion. Perhaps you don’t have to run away from home when your spouse disappears with your child and doesn’t answer your calls or texts for seven straight hours. Perhaps he said good-bye, but you were busy with your spade and your iPod and didn’t hear or even notice his absence for several hours, until you wander inside, hot and tired from gardening, to see if anyone will feed you. Perhaps he’s not abandoning you, but afflicted with poor cell-phone reception. Soon you begin to wonder if you’ve come unhinged. Now there’s a scary thought.

Your phone pings reassuringly, voicemail or e-mail. Somebody loves you. But how to go home without losing face? Fortunately, you are rescued by your own body. You have to pee. It’s a good hour-long drive, so you leave at once. You sneak inside at two a.m., whispering to the dog to be quiet, leaving the light off in the bathroom. You slip beneath the covers, you cuddle up with the eight or ten glorious pillows on your bed.

Your husband touches your shoulder. “Where were you, Honey? Where were you?”

How to explain that you’d been to Crazy-Town. That you nearly set up residency. But you came back.

Your husband looks at you. Tomorrow you will apologize, using the words “ridiculous” and “miscommunication,” punctuated with lots of eyelash fluttering. One of your friends, when you tell her the story later, will comment: “You must be good in bed.” Hmm, you hadn’t thought of that. You will think back on your arsenal, trying to come up with something extra good.

But for now, you close your eyes and go to sleep.