Free Puppies to Good Homes

By Michael Horton

Featured art: “Rhythm with Soft Blue” by Edward Michael Supranowicz

Not prepared to have herself proclaimed a marvelous and a precious thing this morning, my wife leaves the breakfast table in a huff. I munch on the piece of toast I made for her, which she didn’t finish, and appraise her slim backside as she passes like a crowd back and forth between the bedroom and the bathroom.

"I love your stringy back and lean hams," I shout.

“Bug off,” she replies in passing.

She doesn’t understand.

"Your eyes are as lovely as the marbles I used to play with in my untrammeled youth," I yell after her into the bedroom, "—even the clearies." I meant the compliment sincerely.

"Marbles to you, buddy."

I really did love those marbles, each little crystal world of them, but since I spent more time looking at them than practicing with them, my friends ended up with my collection.

"Well, didn't I fix you a nice breakfast?"

That stops her midway.

"Cereal?"

"But I got everything out. I set it up for you. I made toast. I even made the coffee."

She disappears into the bathroom. She doesn't drink coffee, never more than a cup. I don't drink anything else. I once went through a three-pound can in a week. 

"I'll take you to work," I offer.

"No—and you're going to make me late if you don't stop talking." She exchanges bathroom for bedroom.

She is already late. I set the alarm clock for five this morning, to get a head start on my work, and forgot to reset it when I fell back asleep.

I could smell the iron heating up in the bedroom. We don't have an ironing board and she does her clothes on a towel on the bed. Her next temporary image between doors is skirted, sweater-ed, her hair still slick brown from the shower.

"Little Joe was an otter," I caroled, "sleek and brown as a bun...."

When I was little my paternal grandmother read Burgess's animal stories to me. A stiffly religious woman, my grandmother read everything as though she were reading the Decalogue. Little Joe Otter was my favorite. 

"You ought’er come kiss me," I hint.

I receive a busy silence and the scent of Fresh Lemon from the bedroom. My wife is taken with cosmetic counters lately. Usually, she doesn't buy, reserving her interest for the samples. At times she can smell of three exotic scents at once. We are both excellent window shoppers, by inclination as much as necessity.

"I'll make you a nice dinner tonight." Though I like doing the cooking, occasionally I make her feel guilty about it.

"If you want." She arrives in the kitchen rushed, scented and still damp. "But don't worry with it." She pats the hair off my forehead with a slight frown. When I have been very charming, she lets me lay my head in her lap and pets my forehead until I’m in a state of bliss. 

"You're beautiful this morning," I say.

No chance. A woman on the first day of her period, on her way to work, and ten minutes late already, is rushed and cranky, not beautiful. At least that was the impression I got. My charm wasn’t going to be appreciated.

Rebuffed, I look at her and cock my eyebrow, the left one, as I can't work with the right. Her kiss misses my mouth completely, catching me on the chin as she passes out the door. I am disconcerted—we've only been married three years last August.

It was a spontaneous and unpremeditated event when it happened, our marriage. Like a hero, she believes that I rescued her from a life planned out and plotted by her mother. For me it was different.

The first time I saw her, I knew I’d seen the future. It was our senior year in college, and the months that followed were magical. A month after receiving our BA’s, standing in my sister’s backyard in the hot sun, we exchanged handwritten vows. Mine pierced my wife’s heart and made her cry; hers, simple and straightforward, made me apprehensive at how special I appeared in her eyes.

As the sound of her car fades up the road, I pour another coffee, and, with scissors in hand, attack the local grocery flier. I am still in my PJs. There are days when mornings fall short of expectations.

Another Folgers fifty-cent’er. I already have four coupons for coffee that I forget to take to the store. I did remember for the three-pound can—this puts me back to five. I also cut out one for fifty cents off Isle O’ Gold margarine. Stuffing both into a metal box meant for index cards, I head off for the bathroom.

Shaved, showered, and appropriately dressed, I go to my room to work. There are three bedrooms in our apartment, the top half of a duplex with its bottom empty. We have divided them into my room, her room, and our room. I throw my dirty clothes in her room, where the basket is and her sewing. I sleep with my wife in our room, where the slow pulse of the lighthouse on the point brightens our walls in counterpoint to our lovemaking. And I sit twitching with coffee in my room. Trying to write. 

In college, I wrote like a house afire, received high marks all round, edited the biannual literary review, and was my creative writing professor's bright promise. It was a small college.

This last summer I sold candied apples, stale peanuts, and hundreds of pounds of Colonel Cloud’s Fancy Grade Hulless Popcorn out of a booth on the boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ. 

The ancient Greek couple who ran the concession hired me because I had curly hair and all the Greek boys were employed. When they weren't petrifying soft apples in red sugar syrup, they were keeping one eye on me and one eye on the cash register. Their greatest foreboding was that one or the other of us would shortchange them. In a red-striped apron and bright red ball cap, I did this ten hours a day, six days a week for the Jersey Shore's summer season.

For me, it was the perfect job. Between us, my wife and I managed to amass a few thousand dollars to ride out the winter on, freeing me to do great things on paper. In one form or another we have been doing this since we married. Me furiously working my short flurry, my wife working steadily that I might write. Occasionally, I admit I am disappointed. I expected fame much earlier. To date I've published three poems, all during the first year of our marriage.

Alone, my wife’s weekly checks don’t meet the monthly drain. Our savings, hidden away in the recesses of a branch bank, get consistently smaller. Last Friday when my wife brought home a new pair of shoes, then cried for spending the money, I felt so guilty. Usually, she only cries when she gets angry, confused, or frustrated with me or herself. She never cries over shoes. But whatever her reason, it makes me nervous when she cries. It makes me feel my inadequacies. To get her to stop, I sing, dance, make faces (I don’t mind her laughing at me), and always I try stories.

When frustration or confusion brings on her tears, I tell the same story. It’s a nice story, a fairy tale about a charming young couple who live in a cottage with a dog, a cat, and the thought of children. I pick Indian summer for the season because of its perfect light and because my wife loves summer—the heat and the memories she has that go with it—and because I like summer least of all, but Indian summer is different. The cottage and accessories change but the season is always assumed. The young couple who settle into this picture and live out full happy lives is also assumed. This time I had a feeling it wasn’t the story to tell. So, I told her about Betty Nitts, an old friend, a very old girlfriend, I hadn’t thought of in years.

My wife knows all my old girlfriends by heart and she had never heard of Betty. I explained I had forgotten all about her until my wife’s new shoes reminded me. My wife, whom I was holding in an attempt to comfort, tried to pull away, but I held tight.

Betty had beautiful feet, I told my wife, and quickly went on to explain how she would bring home art books, Drawings from Life, etc., to compare her feet against feet sketched by the old masters. Hers won hands down. In private she would swing her feet as provocatively as other women swing their hips. In a crowd I described how Betty walked like a Chinese princess whose feet had been bound since infancy: she walked protectively. My wife stopped crying but refused to relax. She told me bluntly that Chinese princesses couldn’t walk, they had to be carried everywhere. She had seen it in a movie.

I was surprised. Usually she never questions my storyline, but I persisted. I explained only those who would have grown large ugly feet couldn’t walk. As for the rest, they pit-a-patted about so that it was hard to keep track of them. Finally my wife laughed for me. I told her she had only so-so feet and needed all the shoes she could get to disguise the fact. At that she punched me, hard, and went into her room.

* * *

A combination secretary-bookkeeper, my wife goes to work daily, and like this morning, she often goes in late. She wishes I wouldn’t play with the alarm clock, but I’ve explained to her that I have plans. There are days I do get up early, and many days I remember to reset the alarm. At work they think she’s wonderful. Her bosses, electrical contractors, are middle-aged men and only joke about her being late. To make up for it she stays past her quitting time nightly.

Every day she sits at her desk framed in a huge picture window where the sun fades her clothes and makes her hair hang limp as a curtain. The curtains on the window are only for show, two narrow twelve-inch panels stiff with dust. She is not a complainer, and the men are out on jobs most of the time and don’t know what it is like for her in front of that window. In the past, someone affixed the now-brittle yellow film to the glass to cut down on the glare. Curtains would have been easier, Venetian blinds would have been the answer, but the electricians settled on yellow film.

On days when I keep the car and can’t work, I drive by and look at her framed in the window in shades of yellow, a dark, amber yellow like new motor oil. It is a relief in the evening to find her skin still clear and fresh. For the clothes, I don’t really see them fading, I only see them when they’ve faded.

* * *

I work in my room with two windows on the bay. My wife allotted the rooms, and I painted them, all the same shade of pearl gray. (Some winter afternoons the sun shines so bright on the water, it is like an alternate universe. I imagine myself transported there, where everything is clear, sharp, and luminous.) The ergonomic keyboard on my desk is a new one my wife bought as a combination birthday, anniversary, and surprise gift. She brings me pencils and paperclips from work which I save in a coffee can in the middle of my desk. Two weeks ago I bought a pencil sharpener that accommodates up to eight different pencil diameters.

I have one story and four poems I am working on, but lately I’ve been spending a lot of time rearranging my space. I am also rereading Auden, and I find I take his stuff much more seriously now that I’m out of school. His Musee des Beaux Arts with Icarus tumbling out of the sky for flying too near the sun is my favorite. Occasionally I type copies of it on my new keyboard, hoping to season it like a cast-iron skillet.

At noon, I break whether I’ve written anything or not. Today I stopped, getting down six lines. This is the time my wife usually calls unless the office is crowded with electricians.

At ten after twelve the phone rings. This morning, if I’d asked her to call me, she would have waited until two. She also has her dark side.

“Hello, Hon,” I answer on the second ring.

She waits just long enough for me to wonder if I’ve made a mistake before she asks me what I’m having for lunch.

The same as last night, my menu consists of peas, tuna, cream of mushroom soup, and Uncle Ben’s converted rice. I pretend I’m proud of this concoction and find it delicious. When I cook I follow recipes very closely, I love the definitiveness of them. The rice dish served eight.

“I’m starving to death,” she says.

I’d already guessed this, but she goes on to describe just how hungry she is, using a vulgar and extended metaphor which I coined and which for a short time she refused to use. I didn’t get up soon enough to fix her lunch this morning, and she won’t make one for herself because she is afraid of getting fat.

We don’t talk well over the phone; the calls are just checks and don’t last long. Afterward, I go back to my room and work at sorting and arranging my files until just before she gets home.

We are always wary of each other when we meet at the end of the day. We look to see who has changed, or if anything was forgotten. Occasionally we argue. Tonight we decide to fight, but we fight quietly.

My wife politely refuses dinner and eats a yogurt. I bloat myself on the leftover rice and tuna, then clink the dishes furiously in the sink. Washing is her job but I won’t let her do them. Since she didn’t eat any of the dinner, she didn’t dirty any of the dishes. I try to be scrupulously fair when I’m angry.

When I finish, I decide to drive to the newsstand. Wednesday is the day our local paper comes out, and each week I look forward to it as though it were an event. I read the gossip from the surrounding towns, the local news, and I am diligent about the classifieds, though I’m unsure what it is I am looking for. When my wife doesn’t ask to go along, I go without her.

I feel better when I get back; I know how hard it is for her to ignore me when I’m not around. I tell her it is windy out and getting colder. The traffic light, which only blinks yellow this time of the year, was dancing over the intersection. At the shore, it isn’t snow one connects with winter, but the wind. It never ceases and its sound is an underlying tension. In summer it grows inaudible, disguised as a breeze.

I hand her eight pages, her half of the newspaper. We are in the habit of reading it simultaneously, she from the front, me from the back. She finishes before me and has to wait because she only scans it, while I am careful in my reading. My half has the ad about free puppies.

I read, “Free puppies to good homes.” Ever since we window-shopped in a pet store we have wanted a puppy. And ever since we decided we wanted one, we have taken turns arguing against it. Over the summer it was easy, neither of us had time.

“They’re beagle puppies,” I tell her, “free beagle puppies.”

We had agreed a dog would tie us down. She said a puppy would chew the furniture. I said they were terrible for carpets. The decision had been postponed.

“I’m not going to call,” I say.

She takes the paper from me and reads the ad. After she reads it she says I should be the one to call—she knows how I hate to make telephone calls to strangers.

After she calls, getting directions, she tells me I can’t have one. I say of course not and for her not to get her hopes up. In all innocence, we decide just to go look.

* * *

On our way home with the last tiny part-beagle, part-unknown male puppy, we stop at the store for dog food, Milk Bones, and a flea collar. There is an excellent chance he has worms—and we think he is just wonderful.

After covering half the kitchen floor in newspapers, we pick out two bowls for him, and my wife immediately plunges into feeding him, his nourishment essential to her, both a cause and a purpose. We will get bone meal, cod-liver oil, calcium tablets and powdered milk to add to his dry food. Canned food would be too much for our budget, but we both feel a puppy’s diet is so important for the first few months. 

Like most people, my wife and I cannot get over how adorable a puppy is. Clumsiness is the most characteristic charm of a puppy, and there was no question ours was charming. He tumbles about like a brand-new elephant with more bulk than ability. We start making plans over him, his education, leash, bedding, and worrying over a name.

We stand there watching him. My wife leans lightly against me, holding my arm in both her hands. She smiles delighted at him as she squeezes my arm. Glancing from our puppy to her, I catch the look of first love in her eyes and know just how surely it will grow into commitment. Commitment, loyalty, love, and a belief in the innate goodness of things comes naturally to her.

“Seymour,” she bursts out, struck with the lightning of a name.

Salinger is her favorite author. Sometimes I think she has me vaguely related to the Glass family in her imagination. I’m not. Certain days I know just how far past the age of precociousness I am. I think if I am related to any literary character it is Auden’s down-spiraling Icarus. I don’t mention this to her, nor will I argue with her choice of a name. But looking at our puppy surrounded by newspapers, standing with a back foot in the water bowl, his ears dipping in his food, I have my doubts.

When he looks up at us, or in our general direction, neither of us certain just what he can see, I know my wife’s heart is captured forever. Me, it catches differently.

I suddenly see past his unarguable adorableness, past the short charm of a puppy, and glimpse the disappointment he could turn out to be. Before we are aware of it, he will be old and mean-tempered in his old age, a child-biter, and a threat to guests. He will begin to smell, his coat patchy, his eyes rheumy, his breath a disaster. He will be jealous of his place, a constant demand, and he will bark endlessly from the confines of his narrow yard.

Before either of us knows what has happened the only things recognizable about him will be the pointless pleasure he takes in himself whenever he is petted, praised, fed, or walked—that and his inborn ability as a selfish creature to manipulate my wife to his ends. It is this charm that shines around him now like a golden light as he poses in his food, so awkward, defenseless—so enslaving. Just one glance at my wife proves this.

Watching her expression, the growing commitment in her eyes, I experience a start of awareness.

I suddenly want her to look at me. Really look. I want her to see the mistake she may have made? How the story could actually end? 

But she doesn’t look. She is absorbed watching her puppy stumble into sleep. In a moment he is unconscious.

Michael Horton has worked as a factory worker, janitor, prep cook, bookmobile librarian, head of housekeeping, purchasing agent, and IT guy, but writing is what he does. His stories have appeared or are upcoming in Glimmer Train, Iron Horse Review, Raleigh Review, Whitefish Review, Porter House Review, Red Rocks Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. His work has been nominated for “Best of the Net” and the Pushcart Prize.

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet.