I got my dog Charlie on the same day my mother burned her apartment to the ground and suffered second and third degree burns over half her body.
It was three months after my father's death and I suspect my getting a new dog and my mother setting herself on fire were-in some crazy way-a statement of how we both felt about the future and my father's untimely passing.
He was a great guy and far too decent to go the way he did, dying on the toilet seat in the middle of the night when we were all sound asleep and snoring.
We always thought he'd go much more dramatically since he was a heavy gambler and up to his neck in debs with the local loan sharks who'd think nothing of breaking a man's legs or tossing him into the Hudson River, but after finding him in the can like that, alone, with his pants down, we knew the loan sharks had nothing to do with it.
Still, it was a great shock naturally, and for the longest time none of us could use the bathroom without thinking about him and remembering how sad it was when the Hoboken ambulance people came to take him away to the city morgue.
Nobody could get his legs straight-one of the doctors told me later that rigor mortis had already set in-and so they had to carry him off on the stretcher with his legs and feet sticking up in the air like some weird wooden mannequin that had fallen over backwards in a store window.
I started worrying that the people in Bosworth's Funeral Home would have trouble fitting him into the casket, but my brother reassured me.
"Oh, they'll get him in alright," he said. "You don't have to worry about that. They'll just break his legs if they have to, but they'll get him in, believe me. They do it all the time."
As always, my brother was right. Everybody who came to see my father at the wake said his legs looked straighter than two long-stemmed roses lying side by side in a flower box.
Which made my mother happy, naturally. She was always a great one for worrying about what the neighbors thought. In fact, it positively delighted her when several people commented favorably on the choice she had made for my father's suit and tie.
"I bet you paid a good penny for them," I heard the daughter of one of her close friends whisper into my mother's ear as we stood in front of the casket. "I bet ya ten dollars to a donut, quality like that didn't come from Mickey Finn's Bargain Basement."
"Oh, you're right," my mother beamed. "I wouldn't dream of sticking Charlie into something from Mickey Finn's. Not on this day, at least. That's real wool. One hundred per cent real wool."
Shortly after the funeral, however, my mother's spirits began to slump quite noticeably. For weeks she refused to eat anything other than salted peanuts and pastrami sandwiches-two things my father had always loved and used to order whenever he happened to be in Muller's Deli on Fourth and Park where they make delicious German potato salad and the best rice pudding you ever tasted in your life.
I'd come home from work every day and find her sprawled in her Easy-Boy recliner in front of the T.V., her eyes blank as paper plates, the floor littered with greasy, empty bowls and little white napkins smeared with mustard.
"Hey, Ma, what's goin on?" I'd say, trying my best to communicate. "You crackin' up or something?"
She'd mumbled a bit, give a little sigh, and then lapse back into another long, icy silence.
"Look, Ma," I'd say. "You've got to face it. Pop's gone now. There's nothing we can do about it. We got our own lives to live now, right?"
But she wouldn't listen to me and as time went on, she continued to get worse. She began to lose weight. She started smoking Camel cigarettes, and she'd spend hours sitting on her bedroom floor rummaging through moldy cardboard boxes of old family photographs and my father's World War II medals. One day she stopped talking altogether.
"Relax," my brother tried to reassure me. "Let her alone. It's just her way of grieving. She'll be O.K."
But she wasn't O.K. Some days I'd find her talking and laughing to herself in the toilet where my father had died. Other days she'd leave the house long before dawn and not return until way past midnight, offering not a word or one single shred of information about where she had been.
"Look, I can't take this anymore," I told my brother one night after I came home and discovered my mother kneeling on the floor in front of a lighted, brightly glowing statue of the Blessed Virgin. "You don't live here like I do. You don't know what goes on. Ma is carrying this mourning crap too far. She's losing her head."
"So what'da ya want me to do about it?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I've got my own problems. Life goes on, as they say."
"Well, I just want you to know I can't take it anymore. I'm leaving. I'm moving out. Understand?"
"Moving out?" my brother repeated, looking really surprised. "But where will you go? Who'll look after Ma?"
"She'll have to look after herself," I told him. "I'm goin' find an apartment somewhere, that's all."
"Look, you're making a big mistake," he warned, staring me straight in the eye. "A big mistake. You'll be as lonely as hell living all by yourself in an apartment. And besides you'll have to pay rent."
"I won't be lonely," I said. "I'll get a dog. I always wanted a dog. I'll get a real nice dog who'll keep me lots of company. It'll be a fresh start. The beginning of a whole new way of life."
"You can't keep a dog in an apartment nowadays. Supers don't allow it. They'll kick you out."
"I'll get a real quiet dog. The kind nobody will notice. I'll take him out at night when there's nobody around."
"It won't work," my brother said, shaking his head. "I'm telling ya, it won't work. Landlords don't allow dogs in apartments nowadays. You'll be out on your ear before you know what hit ya."
"Wanna bet?" I said. "Wanna put your money where your mouth is?"
"Yeah," my brother replied, thrusting up his thick chin into my face. "How much you wanna bet?"
"Twenty bucks," I said. "Twenty bucks I find and keep the home of my dreams."
* * *
Three weeks later I found an apartment, four flights above a seedy-looking drug store with a big, colored advertisement for rat poison and a sign saying No Dogs in the front window. It was a cold-water dump on Fourth and Adams Street in downtown Hoboken with no shower and no tub, and a hallway that reeked of urine and moldy mop water, but since it was relatively cheap and within walking distance of the Lackawanna Railroad station where I hopped the Path train to work in Manhattan every morning, I decided to grab it.
Once I was safely moved in, and relatively free from the nosy scrutiny of the landlord-a short, hairy little guy with a shiny bald head and lots of gold teeth who lived in the apartment opposite me-I was determined to go shopping for my dog.
I wanted a nice, calm, reliable mutt. Nothing expensive or fancy or snotty like some of those little dogs you see on Fifth Avenue who go parading around with ribbons in their hair and are always shivering and growling and sneaking nips out of people's ankles. As far as I was concerned, those kinds of dogs were for the birds. They were spoiled, neurotic, and really hard to handle, and since I was fed up with neurotics, having spent the past few months living with my mother, I wanted no part of that scene.
I just wanted a real laid-back, Steady-Eddie-type-dog who would fetch my slippers, lay his head on my knee, and make me feel like any other normal person who looks forward to coming home every night.
To my surprise I didn't have to search long. I found just the dog I was looking for in the Hoboken pound. He was a tan and white mutt who seemed a cross between a fat sheep and a wet pig. The dog warden led me to him right away when I told him what I was looking for.
"This guy's so calm you can set a bomb off under his rump and he won't bat an eye," the warden assured me. "See what I mean?"
The dog lay sprawled and panting in the middle of his cage, his large flat head hanging sleepily between his tow enormous paws, his pink tongue rolled out and drooling.
"Well, he sure does look calm alright," I told the warden. "In fact, he looks so calm he seems comatose."
"Comatose?" the dog warden repeated. "What are you talking about? This dog's fine. He's just sleepy, that's all."
"But don't you think his eyes look kinda glassy?" I asked, taking a step closer to the cage. "They're awfully shiny."
"Look," he said. "I'm telling ya, he's fine. He's a perfectly healthy, calm dog, and he's the dog for you. You just look around here. You won't find a calmer, quieter, more relaxed dog than him, believe me. Here. I'll show you."
The warden opened the mesh wire door of the cage an clipped a small cloth leash to the dog's collar.
"Come on, boy," he yelled, trying to tug the animal to its feet. "Come on. Come on."
The dog did not budge. He just sat there, looking dazed and sleepy, a large fat lump, drooling spittle down the front of his furry chest.
"See?" the warden said, turning to me with a smile. "How much calmer can you get than that? Anything calmer and this dog would be dead."
He thrust the leash into my hand and stepped away from the cage.
"Go ahead, talk to him," the warden said. "See for yourself."
"Hello, doggie," I said, cautiously stooping down and petting the dog on his wet nose. "How's things?"
The dog stared up at me blankly, gave a little snort, closed his eyes, and tumbled over.
"See? What did I tell you? He loves you."
I began dragging the dog out of the cage.
"You think I'll have a problem getting him home?" I asked. "I mean right now it doesn't look like he's in the mood for walking."
"I'll drive ya," the warden said. "Don't worry about a thing. I'll have the two of you home before you know it."
* * *
Charlie-I decided to name the dog in memory of my father-slept all the way home in the car. I had the warden carry him up the three flights of stairs in a big blanket just in case the landlord was snooping around. However, even after we got Charlie into the apartment, and I placed a bowl of hot hamburger meat before his nose, he still continued to sleep.
"Well, at least he isn't goin' to be any trouble, I said to myself, stepping back and forth over his large, inert body as I made my way around the tiny kitchen. "At least no one will know he's here with me."
* * *
And no one would have known either if my damn mother didn't decide to go and torch herself that very same night.
Around two in the morning, just about the time Charlie and I were getting used to one another, someone began banging on my apartment door. Charlie didn't even bark, God bless his heart. I got up and opened the door. There were two cops standing there.
"You Hope Stirling?" one of them asked, staring down at my bare feet.
"Yeah," I said, trying to speak softly so as not to wake up any of the neighbors. "What's up?"
"Your mother's in the hospital."
"What's she doin' there?" I asked, grateful that Charlie was keeping a low profile behind me and not growling up a storm like some other dogs I happened to know.
"She fell asleep with a cigarette, apparently. Set the place on fire."
"Holy Jeez," I said, spotting the landlord's door beginning to open. "Of all the rotten stinking luck."
I thought of pulling the cops into my apartment, but I didn't have time.
"Is there a problem?" the landlord asked, eying me and the cops as he stepped out into the hall. "Is something wrong?"
"Oh, no" I said. "Just a little personal matter, that's all. Something concerning my mother."
"Your mother?" he asked, sniffing the air suspiciously. "I didn't know you had a mother. She doesn't live here with you, does she?"
"She's in the hospital," one of the cops said, cutting him short. "Fell asleep with a cigarette."
"Oh, how awful," the landlord said, straining his neck to see into my apartment. "I hope there was insurance."
He spotted the bowl of chop meat on the floor.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing above my shoulder.
"That?" I said, trying to block his view.
"Yeah. That."
"Nothing. Just a bowl of chop meat."
"What's it doing on the floor?" he asked, looking at me closely. "You don't have an animal in there, do you?"
"Look, we better be goin' now," I said, turning toward the cops. "For all I know my poor mother may be dying right this very minute."
"Stop!" he insisted. "Before you leave I must know if you have an animal in there. Now do you or don't you?"
"Look, fella, hit the road," the burlier of the two cops said. "This lady's had a terrible tragedy in her family. Where's your respect?"
And so that night Charlie and I were let off the hook. But not for long really, because the next day the landlord came back after I had returned from visiting my mother in the hospital. Despite my protests, he insisted on inspecting my apartment. He found Charlie snoozing under the kitchen sink, which was dripping terribly.
"Either he goes or you go," the landlord warned, not mentioning one word about my poor mother's precarious condition.
"You're cruel," I said. "You have a heart made of stone."
"I'm a landlord," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "What do you expect? Life is tough."
* * *
The next day I took Charlie back to the pound. I certainly didn't want to, but what choice did I have? I mean, I couldn't very well lose the apartment, could I? Especially since I knew I would never be able to find another one so convenient and so cheap. And I certainly couldn't go home again, thanks to my mother. There was no home. So what else could I do? I had to survive, didn't I.
* * *
"What the hell happened?" the dog warden asked when he saw me dragging Charlie through the front door of the pound. "He didn't bite you or anything, did he?"
"No, he was just great," I said, trying not to get all choked up and sentimental as I bent down to kiss Charlie good-bye. "He was the best friend I ever had. Slept continually the entire time we were together."
"So what's the problem then? I don't understand. Why are you bringing him back?"
"I'm bringing him back because I've got a rotten landlord and a fruitcake of a mother in the hospital. That's why."
"Gee, that's too bad," he replied. "I'm really sorry to hear that. You and that dog seemed made for one another."
"Well, I guess that's the breaks," I told him, "but as they say, life goes on, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," he sighed.
I took one long, last look at Charlie as I edged my way out the door.
"Well," I thought, "at least I saved twenty bucks."
Patricia Flinn lives in Warren, New Jersey with her husband, Eugene, who is also a writer. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines including Studia Mystica, Green Feather, Ripple's Poetry Magazine, Crab Creek Review and The Rampant Guinea Pig. This is her third story to be published in Sign of the Times.
For more stories by Patricia Flinn, click here.
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