Give it a once over, then go.

But I told her with a smile and a fluff of polite words so I didn’t sound like a bitch for being frank.

Frankness comes off bitchy to these people. So I fluff it and get dry mouth for the obsequious chatter. She might understand if I told her where I’m coming from—don’t beat around the bush, don’t be a Chatty Kathy—but then I couldn’t say words like obsequious, or I’d confuse and insult her all over again. More is more is the game, and I have to play or else poison my home with her insecurities and unvented resentments. It takes a gracious woman to have gracious help.

What about deep-cleaning help?

She said she did the sink two hours ago, but the water’s backed up after only one saucepan (so how clean was it, really?). It must have been the sloppy joes. Chunks in the pipe. Chunks in my kids, who would squirm in the night or, worse, get a taste for red meat and fuss for it and pudge. I could say that because I had been made fun of for being fat, whether or not I actually was. I was made to feel it. Kids are mean. They’re also grease fiends. If she kept feeding them slop, they’d have pot bellies and trauma.

June didn’t always use her head. Salt of the earth.

I say that with fondness. It’s adorable how she volunteers things from her upbringing. Sloppy joes, pick up sticks, sack race—with our Sak’s garment bags! She feels welcome to share, and I should take it as a compliment to my management style. But there must be a line. Her twelve-cent recipes go down easy, and Cody likes them because he doesn’t know what to like, but when the kids develop high cholesterol and poor taste, don’t expect a peep of surprise from me.

She fixed the sink, said “Goodnight, Mrs. Osbourne,” and banged with her many bags out the door.

* * *

They wanted one.

I knew it was coming when they came in, all innocent voices and hands behind their backs. No in-fighting. If I had had the prescience to nip it in the bud, I’d have stuffed their mouths with crackers, or even the slop, to keep them from asking the dread question.

Mom hack: chewing stops the talking.

The kids came in yesterday, removing their boots with a projectile kick that sprayed slush on the walls. They were always animals when June wasn’t there. She must have sent them ahead while she shoveled the front steps. She couldn’t have taken the time, I guess. Too industrious for a proper work ethic.

“Hi, Xander. How was school?”

He collapsed on the couch, backpack and all, and turned on the TV. Annika went straight for the fruit gummies.

“Hi, Annika. Any drawings today?”

She answered, but the words came out garbled and wet.

June came in with Cody’s dry cleaning and a report from Xander’s teacher (never reliable; Mrs. Caldwell and the rest were unmarried, bourgeois do-gooders with gray gums and medieval hair; barely a notch above public school; don’t know why we pay the money) and went to change the laundry.

And then the rush was over. It would revive at dinnertime, at which point I would take a mini bottle of Prosecco to the study while June cooked and entertained the children. But it felt dismally still now. Lonely.

The kids were here—Annika, not four feet away—but lost in their own worlds. They always got sullen, glazed, wormlike, when it was just us. Forgiving their rudeness, it is a truth universally acknowledged that moms do all the work. They could at least pretend to know I was here too.

I marched up to the TV and pushed it off by the button on the frame. Xander blinked, as if wondering how the screen went dark, before noticing me with a sharp, “Hey!” He aimed the remote and switched it on again. I switched it off and stood in front of whatever senser processed the controller commands. I won.

“Lame,” he said.

What 2000s reruns had he gotten into?

“I asked you a question, Xander,” I said. “When you came in. Do you remember what I asked?”

He mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you.”

“How am I s’posed to know?”

“Supposed. I asked you how school was.”

“Fine.”

“Courtesy. Or no Xbox later.”

“It’s a PS5.”

“That too.”

He flipped me a look to wither me with my own lameness, and enlightened me.

After pulling teeth to learn that Math was hard, Reading was boring, Social Studies was stupid and Chinese was foreign, I took a shower to cool off and re-strategize. Xander was nine, a pissy age. But, as he neared double digits, I started to think he was just a pissy kid. It wasn’t my doing, since he saw the Mmes. Grundy and June more than he did me. And Cody had the most pull of anyone, for those precious moments he graced the kids’ waking hours.

But I was their Mother.

It used to mean something. I didn’t get stretch marks and depression for this.

It had to mean something.

The next day, I gave June the afternoon off and picked the kids up myself. I didn’t usually drive, but I was damn good at it, whatever the honkers have to say. Honking is a personality, not a reaction.

All the way home there was a  strange energy. I was perfectly cheery, but the backseat had an expectant hush, like a movie theater before the previews. Anything could play on that big, big screen. Even I waited to see.

But we weren’t spectators. We had forgotten that we were the actors.

Enter Annika. “Wasn’t he cute?”

“Who, honey?” I said. Desperate.

But six was too young for boys. Or had sex positivity trickled down to first grade?

“He was okay,” Xander sulked.

“He was perfect. My mind’s made up.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re just mad because you want one.”

“No, I’m mad because I won’t get one. Neither will you.”

Annika grew quiet. “You don’t know that.”

Xander jabbed a finger at the windshield. “Don’t you?”

Annika started to cry.

“What’s going on back there? What did you say to your sister?”

I peeked in the rearview. Priphery vision synced with the actual placement of things, and I realized my son had pointed at me.

“Nothing,” they said in unison.

“Then why is Annika crying?”

“Because I’m never getting a puppy!” she wailed.

The road was empty behind us. I stopped and twisted to face them. “Who says?”

They looked at each other.

“You…hate animals,” Xander said.

“What ever gave you that idea?”

A fusillade of accusations.

“You hate Princess.”

The chihuahua in the wheelchair. Wheels herself into ruts and puddles like a sad Roomba.

“You hate Mr. Mittens.”

Downstairs cat who yowls in the night.

“You yell at us when we feed the pigeons.”

The signs say not to. And fuck pigeons.

“You make fun of the commercials.”

The Sarah McLachlan adds? Who doesn’t?

“You call squirrels sky rats.”

Fight me.

“So what I’m hearing,” I said, “is that you kids don’t want a dog?”

And suddenly I went from Miss Gulch to Miss McLachlan herself.

* * *

The kids and I had become co-conspirators. After the car ride, they formally asked for a dog, and I said why not. We googled for the acceptable breeds. Xander printed off Wikipedia pages on African wild dogs, and Annika drew in a frenzy. She broke three crayons. Sweet kids.

They understood, of course, that it would never happen. We were only playing a game, making a fuss for the fun of it. It was just talk. And wasn’t it nice to be talking again?

I had forgotten about it until the next day, when they came home breathless and hairy. Fine white hairs waved like hedgehog quills from their Canada Goose jackets. Annika wanted a baggie to keep her hairs under her pillow. They came from Nimbus, short for Cumulonimbus, the Samoyed that had gotten them talking of dogs in the first place. Nicholas’s mom had schlepped it over to show Nicholas’s friends during Pickup, no doubt holding up all the cars—who would happily wait.

Mrs. Flanders—Philomena—delightfully self-deprecating Phil to everyone who knew her, who loved her, who was everyone—was a living saint. She volunteered at the nursing home, the library, and the church, but she wasn’t in anyone’s nose about it. The volunteering or the religion. Her financer husband died of prostate cancer and left her rich beyond decency, but she never showed off. She loved her children so manifestly that it hurt, taking them for weekend adventures, making up clever crafts. How could they miss their father after a hike and a meteor shower? She was brilliant, generous, hardworking, wholesome, surprisingly funny for all the wholesomeness, and well-endowed.

Fucking evil.

I hadn’t known before that the kids’ inspiration was her dog. Not that that changed anything. I mean, the possibility of the dog somewhat calcified. If she could do it, I could. She inexplicably found joy in the drudgeries of motherhood, but raising a puppy wasn’t childcare.

Nor was it a small expense! I googled Samoyeds and despised Phil. If the kids only knew…

If Cody knew!

He would probably fall asleep and forget.

I’d tell him when he came home tonight. It was Friday, so he would be late. In the meantime, I had dinner with June and the kids. She seemed twitchy about my presence, my condescension to eat macaroni and cheese—I wasn’t so prudish of carbs—but then Xander brought up the malamute.

“It’s one of the closest ones to a wolf,” he said proudly. It was an urgent thing for him, to prove his maleness through the larger or more aggressive dog breeds. At least he had come off wild animals.

Annika piped up. “I want a teacup pig!”

“We’re getting a dog, Stupid.”

June shot me a look. She covered it up fast, dumping Xander’s bowl over the trash for being rude, but for an instant I thought she was angry with me.

She obliged Xander to sit until the rest of us had finished, and then until he apologized.

He mumbled something.

“Xan,” she said calmly. “You’re better than that.”

He uncrossed his arms. Exhaled. Looked his sister in the eye. “I’m sorry for calling you stupid. I only upset you because I was upset.”

“Thank you for the apology.” She accepted it without gloating. “I forgive you.”

“I thought we both wanted a dog. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

An apology? A reprise of an apology? The fuck had she done to my kids? She got them to talk, resolve, connect. It was witchcraft. Maybe abuse. She had to have broken their spirits a little in order to instill better anger management skills than most adults had.

“So,” said June, washing up, “Xander and Annika want a dog?”

She had interviewed at Fordham this morning—I had to get started on that letter of recommendation—and come straight to the house to clean. Otherwise she would have driven the kids and heard all about it. Her look of surprise made sense, then.

I forgave her.

“You know kids. Their classmate got one, and they don’t want to be out of style.” By that logic June was born an adult, but I kept quiet and took my Prosecco and purse.

“What do you think?”

The scouring pad hissed over the pan. There was that expectant energy again.

“Well, pets are an experience that a lot of kids have and learn from.”

“Would you consider getting one?” Pushy. Unlike June.

Or exactly like her. The secret, seething her.

“On a rainy day,” I said to be mysterious, wanting nothing more than to slip off to the study.

But I stayed to watch her clean the sink.

* * *

The city of steel and dirty limestone was a distant bother in our nestle of town. The kids were finally put to sleep and the fire was high. The unfolding coziness of the alcohol and the quiet after a day well done mingled with the woodsy yet professorial shine of the bookshelves which had a luxurious, simply orgasmic, effect. I could have dissolved into the sofa.

Cody came home.

He usually cut for the shower, too exhausted to microwave the plate June would prepare and cellophane for him. But tonight there was the kiss and clink of the refrigerator door, followed by silence.

I found him eating the cold mac and cheese. “That was the kids’ lunch.”

“Like you’d let them bring leftovers to school.” He wiped his mouth with the dish towel before kissing me. His lips were cold and greasy, with a note of dish soap blue.

I knew him well. I would tell him of the dog and the conversation would go like this:

“But you hate animals.”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Childhood. Xander’s birthday.”

“I mean, what gave you the idea?”

The Samoa, or whatever it was called. The extravagant floof.

He would probe me with the vigilant eyes of a doctor. “I’m all for it. The kids would have to pitch in. Take it out, clean the messes. Xander would learn to work and care for something beyond himself. Too harsh?”

It struck me that Cody would have no idea how it would go. He was too much an optimist, too much a fly in, fly out figure in this household, to foresee the reality. He imagined the children melting and remolding into sturdy, responsible scouts of virtue.

They might tend to the dog, and they might bond over the burden, but after a week they would tire of it as they did all their toys. Out of puppyhood it would become a nuisance, a relic, a house chore for mother me.

I could still get out of it. He looked tired anyway.

But Cody saw me watching him and stepped closer. “What are you thinking, Viv?”

I told him.

“I always wanted a black terrier,” he mused, blinking sleepily. “Good idea, Viv.”

Then he shuffled off to shower.

* * *

An afterword on the fantasy:

“You’ve had a long day,” I would say, taking the container and dumping it over the sink with an innocent simper. Not to discipline him, unless he wanted it.

But it was never about what he wanted. Cody was not that sort of lover. It was about what I wanted, and the pleasure he derived from mine. For their distance and literal-mindedness, men could be grand.

And needy and changeable, when they love a woman.

* * *

“What should we name it?”

They looked at each other. Xander said, “Pizmo!”

“Tell me your second choice. Annika?”

“Vegetable Oil.” She giggled, giving herself up. She had that one in the chamber. She must have been helping June bake again; she heard the words, marinated in them, and bided her time for the most random and outrageous regurgitation.

Annika was clever. So clever, in fact, that when she looked at me with her squinty smile of lexical triumph, she looked as if I were a person. Most kids see their moms as moms, as in: pillars of the law, pillows on legs, lunch. Sometimes Annika saw through that. She had eyes like walnut stakes that could pierce the air of illusion and authority.

Did she do the same with June? See her not as a nanny, but as a grad prospectus, all plaid and ramen and Freudian theory? Is that where she learned to interpret people?

“Pizmo it is.”

They scampered away, reckless in their socks, and I swear I heard Xander whisper, “She fell for it!”

* * *

She didn’t have to be a bitch about it.

I make a lot of excuses for her rough-around-the-edges demeanor, but there are times when human decency demands a little more polish than a fishfaced, “Oh,” and the reservoir of accusations enwrapped in that single, underwhelming yet capable crotch shot of a syllable.

It started when I brought up the Flanderses. June was scrubbing out the kids’ lunchboxes. Annika leaves her plastic wrap in there because for some reason she’s self-conscious about throwing it out in front of her friends, and Xander leaves a crime scene. June was nitpicking over a stain with the edge of her thumbnail.

 “Have you heard about Nicholas?”

“What is it this time?” She saw my hesitation and softened. “The kid is a menace. I’m worried Xander’s picking up his bad manners.”

“He got a dog,” I said, before we could derail. “The children are fixated. Xander can’t get a play date fast enough, and Annika says she’s never loved anything so much.”

“Including Socrates?”

The plush hippo June got her for her birthday. “I think so,” I said, not knowing either way. But here’s hoping. Annika falls asleep hugging it each night. The fur had begun to spike and stink from child drool. A dog might put some healthy distance between her and her toddler filth.

 They’re passionate kids,” June said, smiling herself into a squint. It did not flatter her snaily eyes.

“It got them thinking… They don’t have one. And we have the space, and the park two blocks down. What are your thoughts?”

June scratched harder, squinted thinner. “About you getting a dog?”

“We were thinking a puppy.”

“Have you ever had one?”

“We had a golden growing up, Karat. He was ancient. We used to ride him around the garage.”

June made a hiccupping noise and stuck her thumb under the water. The nail had snapped at the quick. “There’s a lot to do and a lot to research,” she said without skipping a beat. “Obedience training, potty training, even the adoption process—”

“We’ve picked out a breed.” Not quite, but it wouldn’t be a mutt. And it wouldn’t shed or drool. “And the children have a name picked out.”

Now she looked pained, shrinking into herself. “They’re involved.”

“It was their idea.” She could be so dense. And I didn’t care for her tone, forcedly mild. Withholding. Insinuating. She said:

“Oh,” and went for a Band-Aid.

I was gone by the time she turned around.

* * *

She might have meant by her passive remarks and monosyllabic accusation that I had better keep a tight rein—a leash, more appropriately—on the situation before it got out of control. But what does out of control signify, really? People use it when they suddenly, belatedly, surmise the consequences of their actions. Their decisions manifest and reckon with them.

Getting a dog was decision and consequence wrapped up in one, so our trip to the shelter was not a reckless derailment, but an intentional culmination of a whole week’s buzz. We also needed something to do, with June visiting MIT and Cody called into work. He would have liked to see the animals in their cells. It would expose the kids to animal behaviors, animal smells, and invest them in the responsibilities of dog ownership.

The volunteer took us through an aisle of enclosures, each with a dog sulking somewhere within. From what I could tell, they looked to be boxers and pitbull mixes. Junkyard dogs. They shook and peed when we stopped to look. The children curled their fingers through doors and gave them a rattle, as if at the zoo, only to say hi and suss out the offerings. The volunteer had advised against it, but why else take the tour? Some of the dogs barked spittle through the chain links. They must have been the new arrivals, their spirits not yet wilted by anxiety and shredded towels, or the dropped eggs. You know, the lost causes who somewhat knew it.

The afternoon took a depressing turn, each enclosure growing more possible, more crucial, for some satisfaction beyond curled ears and sniggering teeth. There was a pug that danced for us, but half its face was missing and even Xander turned away. Then, in the second to last enclosure, something even worse—

A poodle.

Against all reason, and resources, it had a red bow.

The kids mooned forward. It didn’t give them much for their efforts, but its carriage and eyes held an intelligence apart from the other rescues. Apart from any puppy I’d seen. It might make a classy pet, self-regulated and charming once we had the groomer give it that snowman all poodles had. It might be an enviable creature. And as long as we were getting a dog, what difference did breeding make? There was the wait list, the price, the background checks as if we were criminals, and not least of all the hassle the defects of the thing. Pugs with no noses, born to choke. Goldens too big to birth. Hip and knee problems all around. These mottles here were healthy, if banged up, and knew enough of the hard life to want only to be swooped up and cuddled. So that was the training problem solved. And this poodle was a noble beast if I ever saw one, with its puffed chest, helmet head, and mysterious red bow, though not as glamorous as the Samoyed…

Annika crushed her face up to the door.

“We haven’t seen all of them,” I said. “Come away.”

She spoke to the dog. “Pizmo.”

It nosed forward.

I wasn’t crazy about a secondhand, second-class puppy, but the kids would not be dissuaded of what they took to be a sign from God. When the volunteer asked if I’d like to fill out some paperwork, they almost yanked the buttons off my coat. Xander, who could overlook the so-called girliness of the poodle on account of its impressive teeth, promised to walk it twice a day, and Annika wailed to the point of scattering the other rescues like minnows. Who could refuse that kind of passion? Cody, or Fantasy Cody, had made a compelling argument for the learning experience. And it was a pretty dog. Think of it on a smart leather leash. Or licking the edge of the table for scraps, obliging me to remind the kids, Not at dinner, and turning a blind eye anyway.

We would come back tomorrow for Pizmo.

On the ride home, the kids begged to call June and tell her. I put the phone on speaker and let them have at it. They shouted over each other and had to go again. And again.  When she understood, she congratulated them with that stiff undertone.

I took her off the speaker and told her so.

“Is there something you want to tell me, June?”

“I’m allergic.”

* * *

It wasn’t my fault the paperwork was signed, the kids attached, and the bowl rush-ordered. Pizmo in French font.

June rebelled because she hated me. She always had, and with one foot out the door, why keep pretending? The allergies were her meager, passive-aggressive fuck you. She did have them. And she had mentioned them on occasion, come to think of it. And they gave her a perpetual spring cold. But she had medication. Or she should have.

Really, my heart went out to her. Surrounded by the lovely life that Cody earned for us and then shuttling home to a shoebox uptown. Would she resent a good man an honest living? She did, by the grit of her teeth when she spoke in that stiff clip. Grind them down, little girl, and see what an uninsured dental bill costs.

And I’m the bad guy, for thinking of you.

She came back from her errands and saw my things on the counter. Bone, collar, and leash. They reeked of pet store rubber and dander. We were going for Pizmo tonight.

“I wish I didn’t have a problem,” she said, eyeing the scraped curve of the bone. “But I do.”

 I said I was very sorry to hear that.

She narrowed her eyes. “Mrs. Osbourne—” She licked her lips. She had rehearsed!— “I’ve been in this house for four years. An animal is a major decision that deserves, at the very least, a conversation. We never properly discussed the care of this puppy, and I worry that I’ll be the one responsible, which wouldn’t be fair for either of us.”

I told her the children were very invested.

I did not appreciate the scornful kickback of her head. “Xander wants to fit in with Nicholas, and Annika wants something to love her.”  

“You grossly underestimate them.”

“I know them.”

We stared at each other. Diffusing across immaterial pathways, branched and bolted by a sympathy of outrage, the blood drained from my face and into June’s. It started under the eyes. Her scrutinizing, price-checking, snaily eyes. They shone like bottle glass through the toadstool blight of her excitement. Her slander. Her audacity and shame. She hung her head. The coward.

“I don’t want to offend you, Mrs. Osbourne.”

She went on about her devotion to the kids, all-consuming and adamantine (yet shaken by puppy fur) and then wound up with: “If you go through with this adoption, I need you to send the dog to day care during my hours, or accept my resignation.”

Now wasn’t the time to affirm her importance in my house. I had a Pizmo to pick up.

With a curt sigh, she dropped the dog things in my bag and handed it to me. “I regret to leave things like this, Mrs. Osbourne.”  

And she packed up her things.

* * *

She thought we were finished.

As she shouldered her bags and headed for the mudroom, I followed her. “You can forget about that recommendation.”

She didn’t turn.

“And for future gigs, you should really put on your profile Hates animals.”

 She stopped at the doormat. “I don’t want a dog, and neither do you. You care only about being Phil, or beating her, and when that dog doesn’t fix you, you’ll dump it in doggie day care and retreat to your study.”

“You want me to pull the plug? Hey, kids!” I marched back toward the living room. June followed, by the plop of the bags on the mudroom floor and the fast steps behind me. “Kids!” Their heads bobbed over the back of the sofa. I flashed them the Daddy’s Not Coming grimace. “No Pizmo.”

“What?” Xander leaned over the sofa back, shoulders jabbing against the weight of the world.

I sighed. “We’re not getting a dog.”

“You’re lying.”

Oh, he was mad. I looked at June, and for once she didn’t snail up. She looked like something that snarled and lunged. For a second I thought she might. “Don’t,” she said.

Of course. She wouldn’t dare. But the menace was titillating.

“June,” I said, “isn’t letting us get a dog.”

Silence.

Xander mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you,” I said, stepping back so he could look at June. Let her have it, kid.

“I said you’re a bitch!”

But he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at me.

Annika burst into tears. Both were crying. Looking at me and crying.

June rushed forward and made everything okay. There was nothing I could do. I went upstairs.

---

I’m not convinced you ever learn to love something. You scrape by. You soften. A fondness surprises you, but you do not forgive the burden and how it bends you.

I could handle a dog. I could handle the pissing and shitting and the stepping in piss and shit. The barking all night. The nipping. The chewed shoes and the kids’ unflappable delight when it skidded across the floor to welcome them home. I could handle the headache and stink on top of all the things June used to do because she wasn’t better than me. Phil wasn’t better. So Pizmo ruled the house and dragged me with poop bags and paper towels through the days.

After two less than civilized weeks, Cody asked me if I wouldn’t be happier with a nanny.

How he tiptoed. Just say June. Wouldn’t things run easier with me tucked in the study, with her dinners in the fridge. “Believe me,” I told him as he shrugged off his T-shirt, his face a ghoulish swell against the cotton, “no one regrets her leaving more than I do. June is always welcome in our house.”

Cody surfaced and shook his head of the static. “Could be for the best. She’ll have her hands full with school.”

“If she gets in.”

“She better,” he grinned.

He had written her letter.

It came to light that prior to her departure June asked him to do it. Didn’t matter that I was already doing it. She circumvented me and my good nature to take advantage of Cody’s repute, all the while preying on his poor taste. Feed him lard, fold his socks, and he’s yours. He wasn’t around to see the control beneath the helpfulness, the condescension that fletched every Mrs. Osbourne, the snailing down the halls. He didn’t feel her slime.

Maybe he wanted to.

We wouldn’t have had the accident if it weren’t for that letter. June would have come back otherwise and learned to appreciate the dog as another subject of her control. As it happened, I was taking Pizmo to the park, when the stupid thing lunged for a fallen creamsicle, nearly dislocating my shoulder, and got itself T-boned by a scooter.

We went to the vet. The girl on the scooter came and cried the whole time. Pizmo had a few broken ribs and some creamsicle in its fur. The vet estimated four to six weeks of bed rest, which would require constant vigilance, constant cleanup, and physical therapy. If Pizmo stopped breathing, I would have to force respiration. The vet showed me how to funnel my hands over the muzzle. The dog watched us through half open eyes, dark and oily-looking from the sedatives. First the shelter, now this. There was only one thing to do: the humane thing.

I was the bad guy, of course, for leaving Pizmo on the table, buying a pretty little urn, filling it with flour—ashes were morbid—and nurturing the children through their sadness. It brought us closer, the three of us. Phil swooped in with flowers and play dates, and the kids mourned for Pizmo in the excitement of Nimbus. I would know, picking the fluff from their clothes. And when the novelty of Nimbus wore off, and Xander and Nicholas feuded over a girl with braids, and Annika renewed her fixation with pigs, what else could be said but that the poodle was like all things—an experience to be felt and forgotten?