Or Not to Be by Laura Lanni Read Free Book Online Page A

it. I don’t know how or why, but I’m pulled back
to Eddie.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    9
Running with
the Dogs
     
    “ I wonder if the dogs took away a part of my mind,” I said to Eddie. He was driving the
van. Behind us, six-month-old Joey snoozed in his car seat. We were on our way,
as a family, to pick up Bethany from her first middle school dance.
    That morning when I ran, I was chased by a
small but intense dog. I stopped running, but I wasn’t scared like when I was a
little girl. My distress was comprised mainly of annoyance. I charged at the
dog, and it backed away.
    A woman was watching from her porch. I
asked if it was her dog.
    She said, “No, but you should report it.
That dog’s a menace.”
    I started jogging
away, and the little rodent dog came barking at me again, nipping at my shoes.
Then, out of nowhere, the owner was chasing her
rat-dog. She was limping along with one shoe on. She swung her other shoe rather fruitlessly at
her idiot dog.
    The mutt ignored her and charged at me, so I stopped
running and growled back at it.
    The shoe-waving owner yelled, “You hear
that, Nelly? You be nice!” Little Nelly turned on her and tried to eat her
ankles.
    “Is this your dog?” I demanded as the dog
latched onto the cuff of her jeans. When she nodded, I said, “Well, it scared
the shit out of me,” not because it did, but because I was so mad that it
tried.
    She said, real sweet, as she attempted to
unclench her dog by spastically swinging the shoe at its flanks, “Oh, I’m
terribly sorry.”
    Well, that fixes everything, right? I was
supposed to back off from being a jerk about her obnoxious dog. But the
incident challenged my admittedly shrinking mental control, and I heard myself
say, “Does your rat-dog stink up 113 or 115?” I pointed at the two houses
behind her.
    She managed to look offended and offered
no further apology but did not admit to the crazy runner where she lived.
    I heard my mouth say, “113? Right! Get a
leash,” and away I ran with my mind somewhere off to my left.
    I had relayed all of this to Eddie over
the phone earlier that day while I stood guard on lunch duty in the cafeteria.
He’d heard my complaints about dogs before. He listened patiently and then
launched into his best rendition of Repairman Husband, earnest to fix every
problem for me. “Why don’t you do what my mom always did?”
    “What was that?” I worried where this
would go.
    “Write a letter to the owners and
complain,” he said simply.
    I thought he was joking, but I was clearly at the desperate
stage, so I’d drafted a dog memorandum instead of grading tests during my break
that day. I dug the pages out of my purse while we sat in the line of cars full
of tired parents in front of the middle school. “Listen to this, Ed. I drafted
my letter.” His smile encouraged me.
    I began, “Dear Neighbors: I have lived
among you in silence and misery for a long time. I avoid confrontation. I’d
rather be mad at you than have you mad at me. This is a costly way to live.
Among other things, it appears to be costing me my mind. Granted, it is not the
only thing wearing down my mental capacity, but it is one of the obvious
things, and I have deemed it fixable, so I am compelled to write you this
letter.”
    Eddie smiled and nodded, yet looked oddly
saddened by my words. I continued.
    “My husband is the true dog hater at our house. He yells
out the windows and into your yards for your barking dogs to ‘shut up.’ He
rides to your house on warm evenings on his bike and rings your doorbell at
midnight to wake you up and tell you ‘your dog is barking.’ He calls your house
in the middle of the night with the same message. Why don’t you hear it? We
don’t know. Maybe your mind is missing, too.” This made Eddie snort a laugh,
which made Joey stir in the backseat .
    We both froze. “Oops, sorry,” he
whispered. Laundry duty for a week was the consequence in our family for waking
a sleeping baby. I was