Ever by My Side (4 page)

There are several possibilities as to how this pivotal moment in my early life might have played out. For starters, I couldn’t swim, so a selfless, heroic act in which I rescued a drowning dog as motivation for a career helping animals in need was never in the cards. Besides, I’m pretty sure my mother had not packed my inflatable rubber ring.

At this point you would be forgiven for gasping in horror if you feared the possibility that I was some sort of malicious Damien child, a furtive witness to poor Marty’s exodus, seizing the opportunity to be rid of my nemesis and rival for Grandma’s attention by squandering precious time pointing out a particularly fascinating variety of seaweed before offering an inquisitive but nonchalant “So, where’s Marty?”

Don’t worry, what really happened struck me as far more impressive and has nothing to do with guilt or the quest for redemption. Seeing Marty bobbing helplessly in the waves my grandma jumped into the roiling waters and began swimming out to sea.

Bear in mind, to my way of thinking, my grandma was at least two hundred years old and could hardly walk, let alone swim. She was fully clothed, not bothering to remove her coat or sweater or shoes. She just dove in like she was all lubed up for a Channel
crossing and headed for the little white drowning rat bobbing up and down on her horizon.

For what seemed like forever, the angry waves mocked Grandma’s rescue bid, pushing her toward Marty only to pull them apart at the last moment, until finally she had him in her arms, swimming back to shore and clambering back up the beach on all fours, Marty released into the shallows, able to break free, trot off, and shake himself down.

“What were you thinking?” my mum screamed, helping Grandma to her feet, taking off her own coat and putting it around her mother’s shoulders. That classic cocktail of anger driven by fear had gotten the better of her. “You could have got yourself killed! And for a dog!”

Grandma was shaking all over, her false teeth acting just like those wind-up false teeth, chattering uncontrollably. We began walking back up the beach, back to the car, Marty staying right by her side, and I asked, “You okay, Grandma?”

She looked down at me and smiled one of the coy, conspiratorial smiles that she occasionally let me see, as though she knew she had been a naughty girl, but it had been worth it.

And right then it hit me that my grandma had actually put her life on the line for a creature sent by the devil to instill fear in children. I could have understood if this was Cleo, but this was Marty. What strange spell had this toy poodle cast over my grandmother?

What has stayed with me, all these years later, is my incredulity over an unthinkable rescue followed by a realization that something mysterious and powerful was at work between my grandma and Marty. Trudging through the wet sand, watching a mother and daughter together, their roles reversed, and a pathetic little dog, frightened of straying and consequently getting underfoot, I was forced to concede that Grandma must really love her poodle. Their relationship did not look like my relationship with Cleo and I
couldn’t imagine it felt anywhere near as good, but right then I realized that different is not the same as less important.

It had to have something to do with the same feeling that came over me whenever I hung off Cleo’s neck after giving her a big hug. Or it could have been similar to how my neighborhood friends and I all felt after rescuing our bagful of discarded kittens. Whatever it was, I had witnessed one remarkable consequence of the warm, fuzzy, soothing sensation that could develop between certain animals and people, and this realization made one thing perfectly clear—I needed to learn how to swim.

M
y earliest attempts to acquire a pet of my own, of any type, were always met with some variation on a recurring theme. Dad was undoubtedly the softer target, and he seemed genuinely receptive to the idea, but every time I tried to pin him down he would say, “Go ask your mother,” which I have come to understand is universal code among fathers for “I’d love to help, but when it comes to major decisions it is my wife and not I who actually wears the trousers in our relationship!”

Whenever I approached my mother, no matter how I phrased the request—piggybacked onto a stream of compliments, offered as barter for completion of chores, whimpered in a weak voice from a sickbed—her answer went something like this:

“Oh, Nicholas, don’t be so silly. You can’t even look after yourself let alone a pet.”

Disappointed, eyes filled with tears, I would trudge back to my bedroom, fall face down on my bed, and try to cry loud enough to be heard—kicking, thumping my fists, and wailing. No one ever checked on me to see if I was all right, except perhaps my sister, and only then so that she could savor my anguish or report back on the
satisfactory state of my distress. Eighteen months is all that separates me from my only sibling and no matter how hard I tried—how much quality Barbie time we spent together, how large the stash of candy I offered in the bribe—Fiona seemed lackluster in her support for us getting a pet.

To be honest I didn’t really care whether it was a dog or a cat. Either was as ridiculous as a rhinoceros to my mother, but my father did show a deliberately detached interest in the possibility of us acquiring a dog, so it was in this species that I invested my very best effort, pretty much exhausting every trick in the “How kids get what they want from their parents” handbook.

Having failed with temper tantrums I decided to move on to negotiations and deals, which, for most kids, equates to telling out-and-out lies. To a parental chorus of “Uh-huh,” “Right,” and “Of course you will,” we kids promise to take our new pet dogs for walks, to feed them regularly and without needing to be nagged, to happily replenish their empty water bowl when necessary and, as though it goes without saying, to supervise their potty training. Naturally we have thought none of this through. We are convinced that our parents will be so bowled over by the shock of our gesture, so consumed by the decency in its intent, that one if not both will crack, guaranteed to hold this promise over us for the life of the animal, understanding that
they
will be the ones charged with all these tasks when the novelty wears off and the real work of raising a puppy begins.

This ruse was fooling no one, least of all my mother, so I quickly moved on to pouting, moodiness, and impersonating a Trappist monk for extended periods of time. I had just started kindergarten and the adjustment to school life was proving difficult. Surely, if I appeared increasingly reclusive and socially stunted, Mum might see the benefits of having a puppy in a new light. Sadly, for me, my
mother seemed to welcome my attempt at isolation and indifference, but then, given her choice of career, I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was accustomed to such tactics.

My kindergarten teacher was, to my dismay, disproportionately strict with me compared to my fellow classmates. She seemed indifferent to my academic effort and participation, constantly ignoring my raised hand. She never sent me home with a report card at the end of each term and if I ever misbehaved, ordered to face the wall at the back of the room, my threats to report her to my father were met with howls of laughter. Worst of all my parents appeared to be unreceptive to my distress.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not all that bad,” said Mum, almost willing me to grow a British stiff upper lip and tough it out.

“But Mum,” I whined, “I thought you loved me?”

My mother flashed me a perfunctory smile before being distracted by the culinary demands of mixing powdered potato with boiling water.

“Of course I do,” she said, “it’s just that at school, things are different. Now, be a good boy and go and set the table.”

So I did, dispirited by my own inconceivable bad luck in having a mother who was not only a kindergarten teacher but was also
my
kindergarten teacher.

And so, faced with the unrelenting rejection of every reasonable ploy I attempted to obtain a puppy, I made the fatal mistake so many children turn to as a last resort—the desperate, always disastrous tactic of the ultimatum.

“If you don’t let me get a dog I’m going to be the naughtiest boy in your class.”

I think I stamped some authority on my bravado by folding my arms across my chest and delivering a firm nod of my head combined with a loud huff.

Tolerance finally gave way to anger and a stare with the kind of icy intensity that instantly broadcasts “You have gone too far.”

“Nicholas. You are
not-getting-a-dog
. Do not ask me again.”

This time my silence and the single tear rolling down my cheek were grounded in a new and unprecedented reality—failure.

Fortunately, at that age, all memory is pretty much short term and as soon as the potency of my mother’s command had started to wear off, I again turned to my father to take up my case.

“Duncan, we can hardly afford to feed ourselves, let alone a dog.”

It was bedtime and I was finding excuses to avoid heading upstairs, sitting in front of the TV, trying out “just one more minute” for the fourth time, when I overheard a whispered conversation in the kitchen.

“I know, I know,” said Dad too loudly, before being reprimanded and continuing in a softer tone, “but I think this new job is really working out. I like training to be an electrician. I can see myself sticking with it, doing it for a living. People will always need their TV or their radio fixed and they’re always telling me how the money’s going to start getting better pretty soon.”

There was a pause and I edged toward the kitchen door, drawn by the silence, hanging on this moment of capitulation, poised to run in, screaming, hands waving in the air, ready to join my parents in a celebratory group hug.

Instead I stared and although the words said it all, it was what I saw that found its mark.

“That’s great,” said Mum, but her flat tone belied any genuine enthusiasm. “I’m glad.”

And in her eyes she couldn’t hide the frustration and familiarity of having heard it all before.

Dad may have reeled from the blow to his ego, but I could tell that in part, he thought he deserved it.

He caught me standing in the doorway.

“Go brush your teeth and get into bed,” he ordered, and then added, softening, “I’ll be up in a minute to tuck you in.”

I did as I was told and waited.

“Mum will never let us get a dog, will she?” I said as soon as he joined me.

Dad flinched, wanting to convince me otherwise but uncertain where to begin. He perched on the bed beside me.

“Your mother’s just worried about money, that’s all. Buying a dog let alone keeping a dog is expensive and it’s not helped by me jumping from one job to the next. Just promise me you won’t end up like your old man.”

This was well-trodden territory, Dad rambling on about his misspent youth, his lack of high school qualifications and his desperate attempts to carve out a career path while starting a family. He had already told me the story of how he tried his hand at being a door-to-door salesman and a truck driver delivering toilet rolls (which I believe I was meant to find both amusing and demeaning).

“But now you are mending TVs,” I said. “Now you have a good job. A job you like.”

He eyed me with a sideways glance, instantly forgiving the sneaky eavesdropper.

“Let me tell you a story about when your mother and I were first married.”

I grinned and squirmed in my bed, getting comfortable, savoring this unexpected extension of lights out.

“I used to play drums in a three-piece jazz band at some of the pubs around Liverpool.”

“What’s jazz?”

Dad looked displeased at the interruption.

“A type of music.”

“Okay,” I said. But before he could start up again, I added, “What type of music?”

He inhaled, paused, and then tried to mimic a hissing rhythm leading the way for a rambling double bass.

It sounded awful but I affected approval.

“Late one night, we had already been playing for hours and I was asked if I was interested in making a little extra money playing drums at …,” he hesitated, wondering how best to phrase this next part. “… a different type of place altogether.”

I frowned and knitted my downy little brows to let him know he would have to do better than that.

“It’s called a gentleman’s club. It’s a place where certain women slowly take off their clothes to music while men watch.”

Now he had completely lost me. For starters, at my current age, close proximity to girls, including my sister, fully clothed or otherwise, was unthinkable. Why on earth would members of my sex ever want to witness such a spectacle? Yuck! Double yuck!

With this troubling image trapped inside my head, he went on to explain how then, like now, he was desperate for cash, and though he was exhausted he agreed, finding himself playing drums in a dark corner of a smoke-filled stage on which a young woman was beginning to undress.

It is my understanding that the British strip clubs of the early sixties were relatively tame by today’s standards, committed to the “tease” in striptease. Thus my father bore a heavy burden of responsibility, as his talents were essential for the appearance of modesty through the coordination between the artist and the man working the lights. He was told that at the climax of each act, the stripper would glance in his direction and this was the signal to begin his
drumroll, building to a crescendo of crashing symbols coordinating with the briefest flash of naked female flesh before the lights went out to predictable groans of manly frustration.