That night my dad flipped aimlessly through the network channels, something he never does. The TV’s usually just stuck on PBS. We happened upon a news entertainment show. A woman’s pleasant voice said, “Celebrating birthdays on December twenty-second are Ralph Fiennes, who turns thirty-six today; Diane Sawyer, fifty-three; and the Bee Gees’ twin brothers Maurice and Robin Gibb, both ‘stayin’ alive’ at forty-nine.”
Suddenly my dad bolted from the couch, leaving the TV on (something else he never does), and went to his room. I gave him his space, but through the doorframe I saw him open the closet and go inside. He stayed in there while two more sitcoms played, then got ready for bed.
Once I heard his apnea kick in, I got up from my bed and crept over to the closet door. It was still open an inch or two. I wedged my nose in the crack and pushed it open until the automatic light inside turned on.
It was a rare walk-in Manhattan closet, and the cedary scent of his clothing around me was like him cradling me in his arms. I looked around, unsure what had kept him in here for so long.
Then I spotted, hidden underneath a row of hanging pants, a warped Adidas shoebox, its top slightly askew.
He was still snoring, and the light from the closet was barely penetrating the room. I nosed the shoebox top a little, and it slid off.
There was a stack of pictures inside, but I could only see the top one. It was a Polaroid of my smiling mother, younger and prettier than I could ever remember, leaning over a table, about to blow out a candle planted in a cupcake like a watchtower. Snow crusted the panes of a backgrounded kitchen window I didn’t recognize. In the frame’s center, my dad’s sheepskin coat hung on the back of a high chair, haloing like a lion’s mane the downy reddish-brownish-blond pate of a drooling infant. Swaddling his body was a blue blanket — my blue blanket.
I couldn’t see any more pictures beneath that one, and I didn’t want to. I got out and closed the door with my paws. The bedroom darkened suddenly. I lay down on my bed and smelled the Kung Pao leftovers my dad exhaled through his mouth.
* * *
My mother ran around greeting guests and checking in with the caterers at her New Year’s Eve party. After I’d fruitlessly humped Trevor a second time earlier in the week, she caged me for a full day, with just one walk. Since then I’d left him alone — I had to, he’d practically moved in by now — and my reward was free rein of the apartment during the party, except her bedroom, which she kept closed to store the guests’ coats. I hid under the dining room table through most of it. I didn’t want a bunch of drunken idiots manhandling me.
She introduced all her friends to Trevor. His broad shoulders filled out his tux, and she’d been riding the exercise bike an hour daily the last two weeks to fit into her new black Donna Karan dress. She was wearing this incredible vanilla perfume for special occasions. My dad, I knew, would be watching “The Honeymooners” marathon on Channel 11, like he did every New Year’s unless my mother forced him to attend a party.
After a while the adults gathered around the TV and counted down like children playing tag. My mother and Trevor and all the other couples kissed as noisemakers assaulted my ears. He whispered in her ear, and she nodded and smiled, a full teeth-baring I hadn’t seen from her in a long time.
When the buzz subsided, my mother tinkled her flute of champagne with a fork in the center of the room. “Everyone, I have an announcement.” She transferred her glass and fork to one hand, then slid the other onto Trevor’s lower back and rubbed his black coat. I had a bad feeling in my stomach, and my nose suddenly went warm. “The New Year seems the appropriate time for this.” She looked around expectantly, proudly. “All of our dear friends here are invited to my and Trevor’s wedding on the first day of spring.” Everyone applauded, and my mother kissed Trevor again. Shelly and the other women hugged her, and all the men shook his hand.
I walked up next to my mother, who continued fielding well-wishers on the Oriental rug, and, unnoticed by the adults towering over me, evacuated everything I’d eaten and drunk that day.
Only when the last few droplets of urine were dribbling out did the stench hit her. She inhaled sharply, as if punched in the stomach. “No!” she said, ignoring her coworker Amy. “Oh, you bad dog! You bad, bad dog!”
She yanked me by the collar past the guests into the bedroom, calling me a bad dog the whole way, and closed the door behind us.
One hand still on my collar, she turned on her bedside radio and cranked up the volume. An unidentifiable classic rock guitar solo screamed out and yielded to a DJ’s obnoxious baritone. If I was going to be locked up with the radio on to muffle my potential barking, at least she could have tuned it to NPR. I dug my claws into the carpet.
“You may be miserable living here,” she said as she finally forced me into the cage, “but get used to it — you’re as much mine as his.”
I turned around as the vertical spring-lock pins on the door shot into place with a rifle’s blast. Through its steel bars I watched her stalk to the door in her high heels. I wasn’t going to let her have the last word.
Baring my teeth, I growled gutturally to warm up, summoned my inner Johnny, and unleashed from within my bowels the loudest, sharpest, angriest bark of my life.
And what came out were three perfectly enunciated words:
I hate you.
I don’t know how it happened. It was a normal male human’s voice, of indeterminate age, but it issued from my lungs. My mother’s hand froze on the doorknob. I could tell she was trying to convince herself it was the DJ, even though he’d already put on “Piano Man,” a song I detest, mawkish tripe my dad would never subject me to. I bet she didn’t even think about the singer’s name.
The first verse ended as he sang the lines, “But it’s sad and it’s sweet and I knew it complete / When I wore a younger man’s clothes,” and I thought, as she stood by the door in her black dress and I scented the evaporating trail of vanilla, All you need to do is open up my cage. Open it up, smother me in your arms, kiss me like you used to, and all will be forgiven, even Trevor. I’m here. I’m still here.
I opened my mouth. Out came a wailing bark. Her ears winced, and I knew that was it. She turned the knob and strode out, her heels clacking on the wood like a horse’s hooves, and then I heard only the sound of the door slamming shut.
