THE WEEK THAT WAS

         The phone was ringing at seven a.m. It was one of my business lines. I could hear the metallic sound from where I was standing in the front doorway, hustling the dog back into the house. I knew it must be Pam, though I did not see her instant message warning me because I was outside. I tried to sprint and pick up the receiver before the answer machine kicked in, but the newly shorn dog got in the way. I grabbed the headset, punched the correct line, but heard my dulcet voice going into its song and dance.

         "Hold on," I shouted and galloped down the cellar steps, catching the message as I was giving out my fax number. A lot of good this did; the phone line was filled with static that drowned out her sexy voice. "Call me back on my home number, the line is full of static." Back up the steps I went to answer the bedroom phone when it rang. Once again the dog threw her hat into the arena; she looked up at me with pleading eyes, as if to say, "After the week I've had you dare to ignore me?"

         She had a point. Yesterday a dog groomer with a thick brogue shaved away her graying coat. Each year I must go farther afield to find a person willing to put up with the friendly animal and her irresponsible owner, who permits her coat to get so matted. Calls to the previous specialists go unanswered, and if we show up unannounced to beard them in their den, their doors are locked and shades are drawn. Joan, yesterday's victim, was different. She attacked the project with the lilt and charm of Michaeleen Oge Flynn trying to convince Will Danaher that the way to the Widow Tillane’s heart was to permit his sister to marry. With a twinkle in her eye, she even suggested that perhaps a bath was not necessary, a credo subscribed to by both the four-legged listener and the gentleman standing near with the wallet. At the end, at least one of us was happy, and the canine had a lovely twenty-five mile ride home.

         The dog can't talk, but I am positive the grooming session was better than her bout with the tornado Monday night. The twister set down ten miles north of the house, cutting a swath straight into Vermont. Down here, winds uprooted trees along my road and tore down power lines, though up on the top of the hill where my house is, nothing was destroyed. The house was plunged into darkness around nine o'clock that night, not to regain electricity for twenty-four hours. The dog would not leave the bedroom after the storm, or so the kind woman who stopped to walk her told me the next day.

         I'd been smart. I’d beat a retreat to New Jersey on Monday afternoon, there to spend the evening stealing recipes for potato and macaroni salad from Pam. She was making provisions for her company picnic. Wisely she did not permit me to sample the merchandise; I would have put a serious dent into the inventory. She diverted me with a root beer float, which held me until I arrived home the next morning.

         By that time the dog had taken to the cellar, but hearing a familiar voice talking on the phone, telling Pam that he had no electricity, she came out. She shot me a look that said, "Hey Pilgrim, you deserted me in that scary storm." I reminded her that God would never send her off to Oz without Dorothy. From the way she turned her back, I don't think she felt I made a very good heroine, let alone a cowardly lion. What could I do but ignore her and go on with the day in the house without power? I even had to ration the water, which is electrically pumped from the well. I rued that I did not possess the gasoline generator that I could hear running at my neighbor's estate. I should ask him where he got it, but I doubt he would reply, I being of the wrong political persuasion. I wondered if he would have let me in his tornado shelter? He must have one. I think he'd probably accept the dog but let the registered Democrat go back to his house and wait for the birch tree to fall on it. None of these ‘should’ves' made my pet any happier.

         I guess she thought I should have suffered too. It was not my fault that heavy weather skipped New Jersey. Maybe I should have sliced off a thumb cutting potatoes to compensate. That would have fit right in with the message of Pam's call this Friday morning. She’d been jolted awake at midnight by her son. Her youngest granddaughter had lost the tip of a finger, getting it caught in a door. It had been reattached in the emergency room.

         Once the frission of horror had subsided, my sense of being drawn into this family was accentuated. Pam remarked that it reminded her of her daughter, who had lost the tip of a finger to an accident in childhood. Pam was there; I wasn’t. My brain flew back to being seven, moving to an L-shaped ranch house in Venezuela and playing a game of chase with my younger sister the first day we arrived. The shouts of two happy children racing through the empty Spanish-style home resounded off the walls until replaced by screams when the wind blew a door shut on my sister’s finger.

         My father would explain to others that Janet had to have what her brothers possessed. Three years before that, I had managed to place my thumb in the way of a closing car door. Two years after Janet evened the score in Venezuela, I went one up by trying to slip into the same revolving door partition as my father at the Corn Exchange Bank in Philadelphia. The domed building, now part of an upscale hotel, is still standing, but my head that became lodged between the frame and the rubber on the door has never been the same. Had my Dad been smart, he would have used me as a cover to stick up the place, since the guards rushed to the screaming child, but Dad never spoke of the incident again. The sheer stupidity of what I had done must have prevented him from mentioning it in the same sentence with the words, “My son.”

         I’d best quit while I am ahead. Oh my, I made a funny. I wonder if they would have sewn my head back on that day had the door hit my neck rather than my brain. If not, I’m sure I would have a part-time job with the Ichabod Crane School District up here. Their mascot is the Rider. With a saddled sheepdog under me, I believe I could play the other role in the pageant. Boy, would my father have been proud of me!

Valatie July 25, 2003