become.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have love in my heart anymore. But the object of that love had changed.
I felt bad about it all and bent down to hold my poor old dog, my fingers running down her spotted ears, her lumpy coat. “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said. “You’re a good girl.” Her sad tail thumped against the floor. “You are. You’re a good girl.”
Only the margin left to write on now. I held her in my arms, as if she were already gone, as if all these days had long since become a distant memory.
“Poor Penny,” I said.
III
Matt the Mutt, 1979
I had a dog like that once, the man said.
Now I got a bird.
Holy shit! It’s Matt the Mutt! He’s here! He’s there! He’s got Penny in a corner! He’s got his front paws on her back! What’s he doing? Tee-haw, Matt the Mutt! Now he’s satisfied, and he’s off: trotting down the hall, running down the staircase. Wait, what’s this? He’s paused on the second-floor landing—he’s lifting his leg, and whoo-hoo! He’s whizzing right there on the wall! Matt the Mutt cannot be stopped! Was that the back door? Look out below! He’s running down the stairs two steps at a time, arriving in the mudroom precisely in time to attack my father, who’s lumbering through the door. Dad had hoped to sneak into the house without Matt the Mutt hearing about it, but Matt the Mutt cannot be stopped! He’s leaping into the air and barking and pushing back upon my father’s shoulders with both paws before falling back onto the floor and then leaping once more while barking and trying a second time to tackle my father and bring him to the floor. My mother’s footsteps are coming swiftly, but not swiftly enough. Matt the Mutt leaps into the air again, barking and snarling. Dad is trying to ward him off with his briefcase. Dad is not succeeding.
“No,” my mother says, reaching for the dog’s collar. “No!”
Matt the Mutt doesn’t like being hauled off of my father, and now he’s barking at Hildegarde, who’s put her hands over her ears. My father is shouting something at her, but she can’t hear him, what with the barking and the covered ears. Matt the Mutt bounces into the air again and shoves my father against the door! Dad puts his briefcase down. Matt the Mutt raises one leg and pisses on it.
“Noo,” says my mother. My father reaches for his briefcase, but he gets dog piss on his hand, and now Dad is yelling and my mother is shouting and Matt the Mutt is barking some more and leaping into the air.
Upstairs, in the library, Penny looks languidly up from the place where she lies and thinks, Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, to thee I send this written embassage, to witness duty, not to show my wit.
* * *
Meanwhile, at Wesleyan University, where I am now a senior, Donna and I have reached my dorm room, and we kiss to say good night, and the kiss goes on for a while, and it’s all very sweet. Donna has big brown eyes. She says, “The thing is, I don’t have my diaphragm. Can you wait while I go and get it?”
“Your diaphragm,” I say to her. I’m in a tight spot. Because of course I really like Donna, and making out with her is really great. But I don’t love her, at least not with all my heart and soul. So I’m of two minds about what—if I’m understanding Donna’s suggestion properly—is her proposal that we have actual sex.
“Yes,” says Donna. “It’s back at the house.”
“Well,” I say. “Well-dee-well-dee-well.”
At Wesleyan I have inexplicably become cool, in part because I have both the hair and the glasses of John Lennon, who at that exact moment is not yet dead. I have a radio show during which I simultaneously play, on twin turntables, the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” as well as T. S. Eliot reading “Burnt Norton.” In my sophomore year, I write and produce a radio serial entitled Squid Family, which becomes very popular among a certain demographic. I play the college carillon each day at noon and feature theme songs from 1960s television shows, including F Troop and The Brady Bunch.
Sometimes I play the Christian hymn “How Can I Keep from Singing?” It would be a long time before I come to terms with my faith. In order to