Marley and me Part 6

Jenny met me at the door and together we stood in the front window watching the drama unfold on the street. Our neighborhood looked like the set from a police television drama. Red strobe lights splashed through the windows. A police helicopter hovered overhead, shining its spotlight down on backyards and alleys. Cops set up roadblocks and combed the neighborhood on foot. Their efforts would be in vain; a suspect was never apprehended and a motive never determined. My neighbors who gave chase later told me they had not even caught a glimpse of him. Jenny and I eventually returned to bed, where we both lay awake for a long time.

"You would have been proud of Marley," I told her. "It was so strange. Somehow he knew how serious this was. He just knew. He felt the danger, and he was like a completely different dog."

"I told you so," she said. And she had.

As the helicopter thumped the air above us, Jenny rolled onto her side and, before drifting off, said, "Just another ho-hum night in the neighborhood." I reached down and felt in the dark for Marley, lying beside me.

"You did all right tonight, big guy," I whispered, scratching his ears. "You earned your dog chow." My hand on his back, I drifted off to sleep.

It said something about South Florida's numbness to crime that the stabbing of a teenage girl as she sat in her car in front of her home would merit just six sentences in the morning newspaper. The Sun-Sentinel Sun-Sentinel's account of the crime ran in the briefs column on page 3B beneath the headline "Man Attacks Girl."

The story made no mention of me or Marley or the guys across the street who set out half naked after the a.s.sailant. It didn't mention Barry, who gave chase in her car. Or all the neighbors up and down the block who turned on porch lights and dialed 911. In South Florida's seamy world of violent crime, our neighborhood's drama was just a minor hiccup. No deaths, no hostages, no big deal.

The knife had punctured Lisa's lung, and she spent five days in the hospital and several weeks recuperating at home. Her mother kept the neighbors apprised of her recovery, but the girl remained inside and out of sight. I worried about the emotional wounds the attack might leave. Would she ever again be comfortable leaving the safety of her home? Our lives had come together for just three minutes, but I felt invested in her as a brother might be in a kid sister. I wanted to respect her privacy, but I also wanted to see her, to prove to myself she was going to be all right.

Then as I washed the cars in the driveway on a Sat.u.r.day, Marley chained up beside me, I looked up and there she stood. Prettier than I had remembered. Tanned, strong, athletic-looking whole again. She smiled and asked, "Remember me?"

"Let's see," I said, feigning puzzlement. "You look vaguely familiar. Weren't you the one in front of me at the Tom Petty concert who wouldn't sit down?"

She laughed, and I asked, "So how are you doing, Lisa?"

"I'm good," she said. "Just about back to normal."

"You look great," I told her. "A little better than the last time I saw you."

"Yeah, well," she said, and looked down at her feet. "What a night."

"What a night," I repeated.

That was all we said about it. She told me about the hospital, the doctors, the detective who interviewed her, the endless fruit baskets, the boredom of sitting at home as she healed. But she steered clear of the attack, and so did I. Some things were best left behind.

Lisa stayed a long time that afternoon, following me around the yard as I did ch.o.r.es, playing with Marley, making small talk. I sensed there was something she wanted to say but could not bring herself to. She was seventeen; I didn't expect her to find the words. Our lives had collided without plan or warning, two strangers thrown together by a burst of inexplicable violence. There had been no time for the usual proprieties that exist between neighbors; no time to establish boundaries. In a heartbeat, there we were, intimately locked together in crisis, a dad in boxer shorts and a teenage girl in a blood-soaked blouse, clinging to each other and to hope. There was a closeness there now. How could there not be? There was also awkwardness, a slight embarra.s.sment, for in that moment we had caught each other with our guards down. Words were not necessary. I knew she was grateful that I had come to her; I knew she appreciated my efforts to comfort her, however lame. She knew I cared deeply and was in her corner. We had shared something that night on the pavement-one of those brief, fleeting moments of clarity that define all the others in a life-that neither of us would soon forget.

"I'm glad you stopped by," I said.

"I'm glad I did, too," Lisa answered.

By the time she left, I had a good feeling about this girl. She was strong. She was tough. She would move forward. And indeed I found out years later, when I learned she had built a career for herself as a television broadcaster, that she had.

CHAPTER 14.

An Early Arrival.

John." Through the fog of sleep, I gradually registered my name being called. "John. John, wake up." It was Jenny; she was shaking me. "John, I think the baby might be coming."

I propped myself up on an elbow and rubbed my eyes. Jenny was lying on her side, knees pulled to her chest. "The baby what?"

"I'm having bad cramps," she said. "I've been lying here timing them. We need to call Dr. Sherman."

I was wide awake now. The baby was coming? The baby was coming? I was wild with antic.i.p.ation for the birth of our second child-another boy, we already knew from the sonogram. The timing, though, was wrong, terribly wrong. Jenny was twenty-one weeks into the pregnancy, barely halfway through the forty-week gestation period. Among her motherhood books was a collection of high-definition in vitro photographs showing a fetus at each week of development. Just days earlier we had sat with the book, studying the photos taken at twenty-one weeks and marveling at how our baby was coming along. At twenty-one weeks a fetus can fit in the palm of a hand. It weighs less than a pound. Its eyes are fused shut, its fingers like fragile little twigs, its lungs not yet developed enough to distill oxygen from air. At twenty-one weeks, a baby is barely viable. The chance of surviving outside the womb is small, and the chance of surviving without serious, long-term health problems smaller yet. There's a reason nature keeps babies in the womb for nine long months. At twenty-one weeks, the odds are exceptionally long. I was wild with antic.i.p.ation for the birth of our second child-another boy, we already knew from the sonogram. The timing, though, was wrong, terribly wrong. Jenny was twenty-one weeks into the pregnancy, barely halfway through the forty-week gestation period. Among her motherhood books was a collection of high-definition in vitro photographs showing a fetus at each week of development. Just days earlier we had sat with the book, studying the photos taken at twenty-one weeks and marveling at how our baby was coming along. At twenty-one weeks a fetus can fit in the palm of a hand. It weighs less than a pound. Its eyes are fused shut, its fingers like fragile little twigs, its lungs not yet developed enough to distill oxygen from air. At twenty-one weeks, a baby is barely viable. The chance of surviving outside the womb is small, and the chance of surviving without serious, long-term health problems smaller yet. There's a reason nature keeps babies in the womb for nine long months. At twenty-one weeks, the odds are exceptionally long.

"It's probably nothing," I said. But I could feel my heart pounding as I speed-dialed the ob-gyn answering service. Two minutes later Dr. Sherman called back, sounding groggy himself. "It might just be gas," he said, "but we better have a look." He told me to get Jenny to the hospital immediately. I raced around the house, throwing items into an overnight bag for her, making baby bottles, packing the diaper bag. Jenny called her friend and coworker Sandy, another new mom who lived a few blocks away, and asked if we could drop Patrick off. Marley was up now, too, stretching, yawning, shaking. Late-night road trip! Late-night road trip! "Sorry, Mar," I told him as I led him out to the garage, grave disappointment on his face. "You've got to hold down the fort." I scooped Patrick out of his crib, buckled him into his car seat without waking him, and into the night we went. "Sorry, Mar," I told him as I led him out to the garage, grave disappointment on his face. "You've got to hold down the fort." I scooped Patrick out of his crib, buckled him into his car seat without waking him, and into the night we went.

At St. Mary's neonatal intensive care unit, the nurses quickly went to work. They got Jenny into a hospital gown and hooked her to a monitor that measured contractions and the baby's heartbeat. Sure enough, Jenny was having a contraction every six minutes. This was definitely not gas. "Your baby wants to come out," one of the nurses said. "We're going to do everything we can to make sure he doesn't just yet."

Over the phone Dr. Sherman asked them to check whether she was dilating. A nurse inserted a gloved finger and reported that Jenny was dilated one centimeter. Even I knew this was not good. At ten centimeters the cervix is fully dilated, the point at which, in a normal delivery, the mother begins to push. With each painful cramp, Jenny's body was pushing her one step closer to the point of no return.

Dr. Sherman ordered an intravenous saline drip and an injection of the labor inhibitor Brethine. The contractions leveled out, but less than two hours later they were back again with a fury, requiring a second shot, then a third.

For the next twelve days Jenny remained hospitalized, poked and prodded by a parade of perinatalogists and tethered to monitors and intravenous drips. I took vacation time and played single parent to Patrick, doing my best to hold everything together-the laundry, the feedings, meals, bills, housework, the yard. Oh, yes, and that other living creature in our home. Poor Marley's status dropped precipitously from second fiddle to not even in the orchestra. Even as I ignored him, he kept up his end of the relationship, never letting me out of his sight. He faithfully followed me as I careened through the house with Patrick in one arm, vacuuming or toting laundry or fixing a meal with the other. I would stop in the kitchen to toss a few dirty plates into the dishwasher, and Marley would plod in after me, circle around a half dozen times trying to pinpoint the exact perfect location, and then drop to the floor. No sooner had he settled in than I would dart to the laundry room to move the clothes from the washing machine to the dryer. He would follow after me, circle around, paw at the throw rugs until they were arranged to his liking, and plop down again, only to have me head for the living room to pick up the newspapers. So it would go. If he was lucky, I would pause in my mad dash to give him a quick pat.

One night after I finally got Patrick to sleep, I fell back on the couch, exhausted. Marley pranced over and dropped his rope tug toy in my lap and looked up at me with those giant brown eyes of his. "Aw, Marley," I said. "I'm beat." He put his snout under the rope toy and flicked it up in the air, waiting for me to try to grab it, ready to beat me to the draw. "Sorry, pal," I said. "Not tonight." He crinkled his brow and c.o.c.ked his head. Suddenly, his comfortable daily routine was in tatters. His mistress was mysteriously absent, his master no fun, and nothing the same. He let out a little whine, and I could see he was trying to figure it out. Why doesn't John want to play anymore? What happened to the morning walks? Why no more wrestling on the floor? And where exactly is Jenny, anyway? She hasn't run off with that Dalmatian in the next block, has she? Why doesn't John want to play anymore? What happened to the morning walks? Why no more wrestling on the floor? And where exactly is Jenny, anyway? She hasn't run off with that Dalmatian in the next block, has she?

Life wasn't completely bleak for Marley. On the bright side, I had quickly reverted to my premarriage (read: slovenly) lifestyle. By the power vested in me as the only adult in the house, I suspended the Married Couple Domesticity Act and proclaimed the once banished Bachelor Rules to be the law of the land. While Jenny was in the hospital, shirts would be worn twice, even three times, barring obvious mustard stains, between washes; milk could be drunk directly from the carton, and toilet seats would remain in the upright position unless being sat on. Much to Marley's delight, I inst.i.tuted a 24/7 open-door policy for the bathroom. After all, it was just us guys. This gave Marley yet a new opportunity for closeness in a confined s.p.a.ce. From there, it only made sense to let him start drinking from the bathtub tap. Jenny would have been appalled, but the way I saw it, it sure beat the toilet. Now that the Seat-Up Policy was firmly in place (and thus, by definition, the Lid-Up Policy, too), I needed to offer Marley a viable alternative to that attractive porcelain pool of water just begging him to play submarine with his snout.

I got into the habit of turning the bathtub faucet on at a trickle while I was in the bathroom so Marley could lap up some cool, fresh water. The dog could not have been more thrilled had I built him an exact replica of Splash Mountain. He would twist his head up under the faucet and lap away, tail banging the sink behind him. His thirst had no bounds, and I became convinced he had been a camel in an earlier life. I soon realized I had created a bathtub monster; pretty soon Marley began going into the bathroom alone without me and standing there, staring forlornly at the faucet, licking at it for any lingering drop, flicking the drain k.n.o.b with his nose until I couldn't stand it any longer and would come in and turn it on for him. Suddenly the water in his bowl was somehow beneath him.

The next step on our descent into barbarity came when I was showering. Marley figured out he could shove his head past the shower curtain and get not just a trickle but a whole waterfall. I'd be lathering up and without warning his big tawny head would pop in and he'd begin lapping at the shower spray. "Just don't tell Mom," I said.

I tried to fool Jenny into thinking I had everything effortlessly under control. "Oh, we're totally fine," I told her, and then, turning to Patrick, I would add, "aren't we, partner?" To which he would give his standard reply: "Dada!" and then, pointing at the ceiling fan: "Fannnnn!" She knew better. One day when I arrived with Patrick for our daily visit, she stared at us in disbelief and asked, "What in G.o.d's name did you do to him?"

"What do you mean, what did I do to him?" I replied. "He's great. You're great, aren't you?"

"Dada! Fannnn!"

"His outfit," she said. "How on earth-"

Only then did I see. Something was amiss with Patrick's snap-on one-piece, or "onesie" as we manly dads like to call it. His chubby thighs, I now realized, were squeezed into the armholes, which were so tight they must have been cutting off his circulation. The collared neck hung between his legs like an udder. Up top, Patrick's head stuck out through the unsnapped crotch, and his arms were lost somewhere in the billowing pant legs. It was quite a look.

"You goof," she said. "You've got it on him upside down."

"That's your opinion," I said.

But the game was up. Jenny began working the phone from her hospital bed, and a couple of days later my sweet, dear aunt Anita, a retired nurse who had come to America from Ireland as a teenager and now lived across the state from us, magically appeared, suitcase in hand, and cheerfully went about restoring order. The Bachelor Rules were history.

When her doctors finally let Jenny come home, it was with the strictest of orders. If she wanted to deliver a healthy baby, she was to remain in bed, as still as possible. The only time she was allowed on her feet was to go to the bathroom. She could take one quick shower a day, then back into bed. No cooking, no changing diapers, no walking out for the mail, no lifting anything heavier than a toothbrush-and that meant her baby, a stipulation that nearly killed her. Complete bed rest, no cheating. Jenny's doctors had successfully shut down the early labor; their goal now was to keep it shut down for the next twelve weeks minimum. By then the baby would be thirty-five weeks along, still a little puny but fully developed and able to meet the outside world on its own terms. That meant keeping Jenny as still as a glacier. Aunt Anita, bless her charitable soul, settled in for the long haul. Marley was tickled to have a new playmate. Pretty soon he had Aunt Anita trained, too, to turn on the bathtub faucet for him.

A hospital technician came to our home and inserted a catheter into Jenny's thigh; this she attached to a small battery-powered pump that strapped to Jenny's leg and delivered a continuous trickle of labor-inhibiting drugs into her bloodstream. As if that weren't enough, she rigged Jenny with a monitoring system that looked like a torture device-an oversized suction cup attached to a tangle of wires that hooked into the telephone. The suction cup attached to Jenny's belly with an elastic band and registered the baby's heartbeat and any contractions, sending them via phone line three times a day to a nurse who watched for the first hint of trouble. I ran down to the bookstore and returned with a small fortune in reading materials, which Jenny devoured in the first three days. She was trying to keep her spirits up, but the boredom, the tedium, the hourly uncertainty about the health of her unborn child, were conspiring to drag her down. Worst of all, she was a mother with a fifteen-month-old son whom she was not allowed to lift, to run to, to feed when he was hungry, to bathe when he was dirty, to scoop up and kiss when he was sad. I would drop him on top of her on the bed, where he would pull her hair and stick his fingers into her mouth. He'd point to the whirling paddles above the bed, and say, "Mama! Fannnnn!" It made her smile, but it wasn't the same. She was slowly going stir-crazy.

Her constant companion through it all, of course, was Marley. He set up camp on the floor beside her, surrounding himself with a wide a.s.sortment of chew toys and rawhide bones just in case Jenny changed her mind and decided to jump out of bed and engage in a little spur-of-the-moment tug-of-war. There he held vigil, day and night. I would come home from work and find Aunt Anita in the kitchen cooking dinner, Patrick in his bouncy seat beside her. Then I would walk into the bedroom to find Marley standing beside the bed, chin on the mattress, tail wagging, nose nuzzled into Jenny's neck as she read or snoozed or merely stared at the ceiling, her arm draped over his back. I marked off each day on the calendar to help her track her progress, but it only served as a reminder of how slowly each minute, each hour, pa.s.sed. Some people are content to spend their lives in idle recline; Jenny was not one of them. She was born to bustle, and the forced idleness dragged her down by imperceptible degrees, a little more each day. She was like a sailor caught in the doldrums, waiting with increasing desperation for the faintest hint of a breeze to fill the sails and let the journey continue. I tried to be encouraging, saying things like "A year from now we're going to look back on this and laugh," but I could tell part of her was slipping from me. Some days her eyes were very far away.

When Jenny had a full month of bed rest still to go, Aunt Anita packed her suitcase and kissed us good-bye. She had stayed as long as she could, in fact extending her visit several times, but she had a husband at home who she only half jokingly fretted was quite possibly turning feral as he survived alone on TV dinners and ESPN. Once again, we were on our own.

I did my best to keep the ship afloat, rising at dawn to bathe and dress Patrick, feed him oatmeal and pureed carrots, and take him and Marley for at least a short walk. Then I would drop Patrick at Sandy's house for the day while I worked, picking him up again in the evening. I would come home on my lunch hour to make Jenny her lunch, bring her the mail-the highlight of her day-throw sticks to Marley, and straighten up the house, which was slowly taking on a patina of neglect. The gra.s.s went uncut, the laundry unwashed, and the screen on the back porch remained unrepaired after Marley crashed through it, cartoon-style, in pursuit of a squirrel. For weeks the shredded screen flapped in the breeze, becoming a de facto doggie door that allowed Marley to come and go as he pleased between the backyard and house during the long hours home alone with the bedridden Jenny. "I'm going to fix it," I promised her. "It's on the list." But I could see dismay in her eyes. It took all of her self-control not to jump out of bed and whip her home back into shape. I grocery-shopped after Patrick was asleep for the night, sometimes walking the aisles at midnight. We survived on carry-outs, Cheerios, and pots of pasta. The journal I had faithfully kept for years abruptly went silent. There was simply no time and less energy. In the last brief entry, I wrote only: "Life is a little overwhelming right now."

Then one day, as we approached Jenny's thirty-fifth week of pregnancy, the hospital technician arrived at our door and said, "Congratulations, girl, you've made it. You're free again." She unhooked the medicine pump, removed the catheter, packed up the fetal monitor, and went over the doctor's written orders. Jenny was free to return to her regular lifestyle. No restrictions. No more medications. We could even have s.e.x again. The baby was fully viable now. Labor would come when it would come. "Have fun," she said. "You deserve it."

Jenny tossed Patrick over her head, romped with Marley in the backyard, tore into the housework. That night we celebrated by going out for Indian food and catching a show at a local comedy club. The next day the three of us continued the festivities by having lunch at a Greek restaurant. Before the gyros ever made it to our table, however, Jenny was in full-blown labor. The cramps had begun the night before as she ate curried lamb, but she had ignored them. She wasn't going to let a few contractions interrupt her hard-earned night on the town. Now each contraction nearly doubled her over. We raced home, where Sandy was on standby to take Patrick and keep an eye on Marley. Jenny waited in the car, puffing her way through the pain with sharp, shallow breaths as I grabbed her overnight bag. By the time we got to the hospital and checked into a room, Jenny was dilated to seven centimeters. Less than an hour later, I held our new son in my arms. Jenny counted his fingers and toes. His eyes were open and alert, his cheeks blushed.

"You did it," Dr. Sherman declared. "He's perfect."

Conor Richard Grogan, five pounds and thirteen ounces, was born October 10, 1993. I was so happy I barely gave a second thought to the cruel irony that for this pregnancy we had rated one of the luxury suites but had hardly a moment to enjoy it. If the delivery had been any quicker, Jenny would have given birth in the parking lot of the Texaco station. I hadn't even had time to stretch out on the Dad Couch.

Considering what we had been through to bring him safely into this world, we thought the birth of our son was big news-but not so big that the local news media would turn out for it. Below our window, though, a crush of television news trucks gathered in the parking lot, their satellite dishes poking into the sky. I could see reporters with microphones doing their stand-ups in front of the cameras. "Hey, honey," I said, "the paparazzi have turned out for you."

A nurse, who was in the room attending to the baby, said, "Can you believe it? Donald Trump is right down the hall."

"Donald Trump?" Jenny asked. "I didn't know he was pregnant."

The real estate tyc.o.o.n had caused quite a stir when he moved to Palm Beach several years earlier, setting up house in the sprawling former mansion of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the late cereal heiress. The estate was named Mar-a-Lago, meaning "Sea to Lake," and as the name implied, the property stretched for seventeen acres from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway and included a nine-hole golf course. From the foot of our street we could look across the water and see the fifty-eight-bedroom mansion's Moorish-influenced spires rising above the palm trees. The Trumps and the Grogans were practically neighbors.

I flicked on the TV and learned that The Donald and girlfriend Marla Maples were the proud parents of a girl, appropriately named Tiffany, who was born not long after Jenny delivered Conor. "We'll have to invite them over for a playdate," Jenny said.

We watched from the window as the television crews swarmed in to catch the Trumps leaving the hospital with their new baby to return to their estate. Marla smiled demurely as she held her newborn for the cameras to capture; Donald waved and gave a jaunty wink. "I feel great!" he told the cameras. Then they were off in a chauffeured limousine.

The next morning when our turn came to leave for home, a pleasant retiree who volunteered at the hospital guided Jenny and baby Conor through the lobby in a wheelchair and out the automatic doors into the sunshine. There were no camera crews, no satellite trucks, no sound bites, no live reports. It was just us and our senior volunteer. Not that anyone was asking, but I felt great, too. Donald Trump was not the only one bursting with pride over his progeny.

The volunteer waited with Jenny and the baby while I pulled the car up to the curb. Before buckling my newborn son into his car seat, I lifted him high above my head for the whole world to see, had anyone been looking, and said, "Conor Grogan, you are every bit as special as Tiffany Trump, and don't you ever forget it."

CHAPTER 15.

A Postpartum Ultimatum.

These should have been the happiest days of our lives, and in many ways they were. We had two sons now, a toddler and a newborn, just seventeen months apart. The joy they brought us was profound. Yet the darkness that had descended over Jenny while she was on forced bed rest persisted. Some weeks she was fine, cheerfully tackling the challenges of being responsible for two lives completely dependent on her for every need. Other weeks, without warning, she would turn glum and defeated, locked in a blue fog that sometimes would not lift for days. We were both exhausted and sleep deprived. Patrick was still waking us at least once in the night, and Conor was up several more times, crying to be nursed or changed. Seldom did we get more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep at a stretch. Some nights we were like zombies, moving silently past each other with glazed eyes, Jenny to one baby and I to the other. We were up at midnight and at two and at three-thirty and again at five. Then the sun would rise and with it another day, bringing renewed hope and a bone-aching weariness as we began the cycle over again. From down the hall would come Patrick's sweet, cheery, wide-awake voice-"Mama! Dada! Fannnn!"-and as much as we tried to will it otherwise, we knew sleep, what there had been of it, was behind us for another day. I began making the coffee stronger and showing up at work with shirts wrinkled and baby spit-up on my ties. One morning in my newsroom, I caught the young, attractive editorial a.s.sistant staring intently at me. Flattered, I smiled at her. Hey, I might be a dad twice over now, but the women still notice me. Hey, I might be a dad twice over now, but the women still notice me. Then she said, "Do you know you have a Barney sticker in your hair?" Then she said, "Do you know you have a Barney sticker in your hair?"

Complicating the sleep-deprived chaos that was our lives, our new baby had us terribly worried. Already underweight, Conor was unable to keep nourishment down. Jenny was on a single-minded quest to nurse him to robust health, and he seemed equally intent on foiling her. She would offer him her breast, and he would oblige her, suckling hungrily. Then, in one quick heave, he would throw it all up. She would nurse him again; he would eat ravenously, then empty his stomach yet again. Projectile vomiting became an hourly occurrence in our lives. Over and over the routine repeated itself, each time Jenny becoming more frantic. The doctors diagnosed reflux and referred us to a specialist, who sedated our baby boy and snaked a scope down his throat to scrutinize his insides. Conor eventually would outgrow the condition and catch up on his weight, but for four long months we were consumed with worry over him. Jenny was a basket case of fear and stress and frustration, all exacerbated by lack of sleep, as she nursed him nearly nonstop and then watched helpless as he tossed her milk back at her. "I feel so inadequate," she would say. "Moms are supposed to be able to give their babies everything they need." Her fuse was as short as I had seen it, and the smallest infractions-a cupboard door left open, crumbs on the counter-would set her off.

The good news was that Jenny never once took out her anxiety on either baby. In fact, she nurtured both of them with almost obsessive care and patience. She poured every ounce of herself into them. The bad news was that she directed her frustration and anger at me and even more at Marley. She had lost all patience with him. He was squarely in her crosshairs and could do no right. Each transgression-and there continued to be many-pushed Jenny a little closer to the edge. Oblivious, Marley stayed the course with his antics and misdeeds and boundless ebullience. I bought a flowering shrub and planted it in the garden to commemorate Conor's birth; Marley pulled it out by the roots the same day and chewed it into mulch. I finally got around to replacing the ripped porch screen, and Marley, by now quite accustomed to his self-made doggie door, promptly dove through it again. He escaped one day and when he finally returned, he had a pair of women's panties in his teeth. I didn't want to know.

Despite the prescription tranquilizers, which Jenny was feeding him with increasing frequency, more for her sake than for his, Marley's thunder phobia grew more intense and irrational each day. By now a soft shower would send him into a panic. If we were home, he would merely glom on to us and salivate nervously all over our clothes. If we weren't home, he sought safety in the same warped way, by digging and gouging through doors and plaster and linoleum. The more I repaired, the more he destroyed. I could not keep up with him. I should have been furious, but Jenny was angry enough for both of us. Instead, I started covering for him. If I found a chewed shoe or book or pillow, I hid the evidence before she could find it. When he crashed through our small home, the bull in our china closet, I followed behind him, straightening throw rugs, righting coffee tables, and wiping up the spittle he flung on the walls. Before Jenny discovered them, I would race to vacuum up the wood chips in the garage where he had gouged the door once again. I stayed up late into the night patching and sanding so by morning when Jenny awoke the latest damage would be covered over. "For G.o.d's sake, Marley, do you have a death wish?" I said to him one night as he stood at my side, tail wagging, licking my ear as I knelt and repaired the most recent destruction. "You've got to stop this."

It was into this volatile environment that I walked one evening. I opened the front door to find Jenny beating Marley with her fists. She was crying uncontrollably and flailing wildly at him, more like she was pounding a kettledrum than imposing a beating, landing glancing blows on his back and shoulders and neck. "Why? Why do you do this?" she screamed at him. "Why do you wreck everything?" In that instant I saw what he had done. The couch cushion was gouged open, the fabric shredded and the stuffing pulled out. Marley stood with head down and legs splayed as though leaning into a hurricane. He didn't try to flee or dodge the blows; he just stood there and took each one without whimper or complaint.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" I shouted, grabbing her wrists. "Come on. Stop. Stop!" She was sobbing and gasping for breath. "Stop," I repeated.

I stepped between her and Marley and shoved my face directly in front of hers. It was like a stranger was staring back at me. I did not recognize the look in her eyes. "Get him out of here," she said, her voice flat and tinged with a quiet burn. "Get him out of here now."

"Okay, I'll take him out," I said, "but you settle down."

"Get him out of here and keep him out of here," she said in an unsettling monotone.

I opened the front door and he bounded outside, and when I turned back to grab his leash off the table, Jenny said, "I mean it. I want him gone. I want him out of here for good."

"Come on," I said. "You don't mean that."

"I mean it," she said. "I'm done with that dog. You find him a new home, or I will."

She couldn't mean it. She loved this dog. She adored him despite his laundry list of shortcomings. She was upset; she was stressed to the breaking point. She would reconsider. For the moment I thought it was best to give her time to cool down. I walked out the door without another word. In the front yard, Marley raced around, jumping into the air and snapping his jaws, trying to bite the leash out of my hand. He was his old jolly self, apparently no worse for the pummeling. I knew she hadn't hurt him. In all honesty, I routinely whacked him much harder when I played rough with him, and he loved it, always bounding back for more. As was a hallmark of his breed, he was immune to pain, an unstoppable machine of muscle and sinew. Once when I was in the driveway washing the car, he jammed his head into the bucket of soapy water and galloped blindly off across the front lawns with the bucket firmly stuck over his head, not stopping until he crashed full force into a concrete wall. It didn't seem to faze him. But slap him lightly on the rump with an open palm in anger, or even just speak to him with a stern voice, and he acted deeply wounded. For the big dense oaf that he was, Marley had an incredibly sensitive streak. Jenny hadn't hurt him physically, not even close, but she had crushed his feelings, at least for the moment. Jenny was everything to him, one of his two best pals in the whole world, and she had just turned on him. She was his mistress and he her faithful companion. If she saw fit to strike him, he saw fit to suck it up and take it. As far as dogs went, he was not good at much; but he was unquestionably loyal. It was my job now to repair the damage and make things right again.

Out in the street, I hooked him to his leash and ordered, "Sit!" He sat. I pulled the choker chain up high on his throat in preparation for our walk. Before I stepped off I ran my hand over his head and ma.s.saged his neck. He flipped his nose in the air and looked up at me, his tongue hanging halfway down his neck. The incident with Jenny appeared to be behind him; now I hoped it would be behind her, as well. "What am I going to do with you, you big dope?" I asked him. He leaped straight up, as though outfitted with springs, and smashed his tongue against my lips.

Marley and I walked for miles that evening, and when I finally opened the front door, he was exhausted and ready to collapse quietly in the corner. Jenny was feeding Patrick a jar of baby food as she cradled Conor in her lap. She was calm and appeared back to her old self. I unleashed Marley and he took a huge drink, lapping l.u.s.tily at the water, sloshing little tidal waves over the side of his bowl. I toweled up the floor and stole a glance in Jenny's direction; she appeared unperturbed. Maybe the horrible moment had pa.s.sed. Maybe she had reconsidered. Maybe she felt sheepish about her outburst and was searching for the words to apologize. As I walked past her, Marley close at my heels, she said in a calm, quiet voice without looking at me, "I'm dead serious. I want him out of here."

Over the next several days she repeated the ultimatum enough times that I finally accepted that this was not an idle threat. She wasn't just blowing off steam, and the issue was not going away. I was sick about it. As pathetic as it sounds, Marley had become my male-bonding soul mate, my near-constant companion, my friend. He was the undisciplined, recalcitrant, nonconformist, politically incorrect free spirit I had always wanted to be, had I been brave enough, and I took vicarious joy in his unbridled verve. No matter how complicated life became, he reminded me of its simple joys. No matter how many demands were placed on me, he never let me forget that willful disobedience is sometimes worth the price. In a world full of bosses, he was his own master. The thought of giving him up seared my soul. But I had two children to worry about now and a wife whom we needed. Our household was being held together by the most tenuous of threads. If losing Marley made the difference between meltdown and stability, how could I not honor Jenny's wishes?

I began putting out feelers, discreetly asking friends and coworkers if they might be interested in taking on a lovable and lively two-year-old Labrador retriever. Through word of mouth, I learned of a neighbor who adored dogs and couldn't refuse a canine in need. Even he said no. Unfortunately, Marley's reputation preceded him.

Each morning I opened the newspaper to the cla.s.sifieds as if I might find some miracle ad: "Seeking wildly energetic, out-of-control Labrador retriever with multiple phobias. Destructive qualities a plus. Will pay top dollar." What I found instead was a booming trade in young adult dogs that, for whatever reason, had not worked out. Many were purebreds that their owners had spent several hundred dollars for just months earlier. Now they were being offered for a pittance or even for free. An alarming number of the unwanted dogs were male Labs.

The ads were in almost every day, and were at once heartbreaking and hilarious. From my insider's vantage point, I recognized the attempts to gloss over the real reasons these dogs were back on the market. The ads were full of sunny euphemisms for the types of behavior I knew all too well. "Lively...loves people...needs big yard...needs room to run...energetic...spirited...powerful...one of a kind." It all added up to the same thing: a dog its master could not control. A dog that had become a liability. A dog its owner had given up on.

Part of me laughed knowingly; the ads were comical in their deception. When I read "fiercely loyal" I knew the seller really meant "known to bite." "Constant companion" meant "suffers separation anxiety," and "good watchdog" translated to "incessant barker." And when I saw "best offer," I knew too well that the desperate owner really was asking, "How much do I need to pay you to take this thing off my hands?" Part of me ached with sadness. I was not a quitter; I did not believe Jenny was a quitter, either. We were not the kind of people who p.a.w.ned off our problems in the cla.s.sifieds. Marley was undeniably a handful. He was nothing like the stately dogs both of us had grown up with. He had a host of bad habits and behaviors. Guilty as charged. He also had come a great distance from the spastic puppy we had brought home two years earlier. In his own flawed way, he was trying. Part of our journey as his owners was to mold him to our needs, but part also was to accept him for what he was. Not just to accept him, but to celebrate him and his indomitable canine spirit. We had brought into our home a living, breathing being, not a fashion accessory to prop in the corner. For better or worse, he was our dog. He was a part of our family, and, for all his flaws, he had returned our affection one hundredfold. Devotion such as his could not be bought for any price.

I was not ready to give up on him.

Even as I continued to make halfhearted inquiries about finding Marley a new home, I began working with him in earnest. My own private Mission: Impossible was to rehabilitate this dog and prove to Jenny he was worthy. Interrupted sleep be d.a.m.ned, I began rising at dawn, buckling Patrick into the jogging stroller, and heading down to the water to put Marley through the paces. Sit. Stay. Down. Heel. Over and over we practiced. There was a desperation to my mission, and Marley seemed to sense it. The stakes were different now; this was for real. In case he didn't fully understand that, I spelled it out for him more than once without mincing words: "We're not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around here, Marley. This is it. Let's go." And I would put him through the commands again, with my helper Patrick clapping and calling to his big yellow friend, "Waddy! Hee-O!"

By the time I reenrolled Marley in obedience school, he was a different dog from the juvenile delinquent I had first shown up with. Yes, still as wild as a boar, but this time he knew I was the boss and he was the underling. This time there would be no lunges toward other dogs (or at least not many), no out-of-control surges across the tarmac, no crashing into strangers' crotches. Through eight weekly sessions, I marched him through the commands on a tight leash, and he was happy-make that overjoyed-to cooperate. At our final meeting, the trainer-a relaxed woman who was the ant.i.thesis of Miss Dominatrix-called us forward. "Okay," she said, "show us what you've got."