My Dad Told Me to Shoot Our Dog
This is fiction set in the 1970s. Originally published under the title, “Kill Fonzie,” in a slightly modified form.
***
It’s Thursday, spaghetti night. I’m at the sink washing out last night’s dirty pot when the phone rings. It’s Dad’s boss at the real estate office where he works the Xerox machine. Mr. Anderson says, “Is your mother there?”
“No, sir.” I stretch the phone cord so I can keep scrubbing the gunk off the pot while I talk. “She’ll be home in an hour.” If she hasn’t hit traffic. Ima works at Loving Hearts Day Care center. She just got awarded “Employee of the Month” because she’s such a hard worker. I stop scrubbing a second — why would Mr. Anderson want to speak with my mother? — but he’s already asking where my brother is, so I say, “Doron’s at football practice.”
He pauses. The Hebrew name throws him, as it does everybody in this town, no matter how many times people hear it. I buried my own Hebrew name in fifth grade: Osnat. Sounded too much like Oh snot. Ima always says, in Israel, where she’s from, it’s a beautiful name. As if that helps diddly-squat here in Des Moines.
“So . . . you’re the baby of the family.” Mr. Anderson seems hesitant.
Something is eating him. “I’m fourteen years old,” I inform Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Anderson clears his throat and it sounds like someone’s shoveling pebbles. “Young lady, I don’t know how to tell you this but your father — “He stops, interrupts himself. “Has he been under a lot of stress lately?”
“What do you mean?” My voice comes out slow and slurry, as though talking underwater.
“He’s going ham or something. One minute he was at the Xerox, the next we found him crouching behind a fire hydrant shouting things. Looks like some kind of breakdown to me.”
My brain itches, from deep inside. Dad shouting things? Having a breakdown? “Nothing’s wrong with him,” I say loudly.
“Maybe not,” he says, “but I had some folks from emergency services bring him to Holy Name Hospital to check him out.”
There’s a roaring in my ears. “Check him out?”
“Just to make sure he’s okay before they bring him home,” he says, and then he does that pebble-throat clearing thing again and I realize he’s waiting to be told how great he is for having dealt with this mess of a situation, so I mumble a thanks and get off the phone fast.
I start chopping onions for the spaghetti sauce. Then garlic. The juices of the raw onion make my eyes sting and I stick my face into the freezer. The cool air revives my eyes. Breakdown, breakdown. I dice the garlic into tiny and tinier bits as though I’m chopping up the word. Had to be a mistake. Mr. Anderson’s got it all wrong. He doesn’t get Dad. I do. But I won’t even think about it. No I won’t.
The onions fry and let off their juices, and Fonzie starts pawing the walls and whinnying. The smell of onions frying drives him wild, so I open the door to the backyard. He bounds outside, deliriously jumping over a rusted lawn chair and burrowing into a pile of old leaves. I can’t help but feel upwellings of love, just looking at him. He turns his sleek black head and catches my eye, and I could swear to God he’s smiling back at me. Fonzie knows he’s irresistible. I won him in a family chart contest for good behavior when I was ten. I beat out Doron and my sister Lital by doing extra chores.
The phone rings again. I grab it, my heart rattling in my rib cage. It’s just my friend Brigitte, though. “So what are you making tonight?” Brigitte starts right off.
“Spaghetti,” I say, after a second or two, “but the sauce is fancy.” I took over doing the suppers just this year, when Lital went off to college. Thanks to Ima, I’m an excellent cook. Our best moments — really, our only good moments — happen over food, when Ima tells me what to make each week and explains exactly how to make it.
Brigitte is cooking macaroni with white sauce tonight. Ima scoffs at that “goy food with no taste.” She thinks she’s a Super Jew because she eats hummus and falafel and gave her kids Israeli names. When I first changed my name to Suzie, she got so angry she didn’t talk to me for a day. Then she said how Jews throughout the centuries were willing to die to hold onto their traditions. But why die for a name that sounds like mucus or for the right to eat a greasy falafel ball? Doesn’t make any sense.
Anyway, the last Jewish thing this family did was Doron’s bar mitzvah three years ago. I remember the cake was decorated to look like the Israeli flag.
“What’s Doron’s job around the house?” Brigitte asks. “How come he doesn’t have to do anything?”
I’m rolling my eyes at my reflection in the kettle because Brigitte will use any excuse to bring up Doron’s name. She has a crush on him the size of Wyoming. One time he danced with her at a party — some Elton John song — but what she doesn’t know is, it was a mercy dance. I bribed him to ask her.
“Doron’s job is not to mess up,” I say shortly.
“But that’s not fair,” Brigitte pushes on, “that you had to give up the swim team, and Doron gets to be a quarterback and do whatever he wants.”
I’m about to explain how my mother regards boys as holy, and since he’s an only son, he’s the holy of holies, when suddenly I’m feeling loose in the stomach and have to get off the phone. I dash to the bathroom, make it to the toilet just in time, then wash my hands and return to the kitchen. I pour a can of crushed tomatoes into the frying onions, and it makes a sizzle like radio static, and I lower the flame, but before I know it, I feel that pull in my stomach and I’m back on the toilet. It’s the best place to think and space out. Or not think. I sit on the toilet and stare at the weird wallpaper pattern that shows four shaving buckets in a row, with the words Tom, Dick, Harry, and then the last bucket Bertha?, with a cracked mirror on top, and then it starts to come back to me — the night Dad knocked on my bedroom door — was it two months ago?
**
“Are you busy, Suzie?” Dad had asked. He looked like he wanted to talk.
Actually, I was trying to get all the words down to a Donny Osmond song on my new cassette recorder. But I said, “Nope, I’m not busy,” because anyway I was glad Dad had come to talk to me and not big shot Doron, or Lital, like he always used to until she went off to college.
“I keep hearing something in my bathroom vent.” He had a spooked-out look on his face. “Could you follow me, honey?” he said in his flat accent, an accent that I can’t seem to pick up, although I’ve lived in Iowa all my life. I once read that children of parents from different countries get radio voices, voices that could be from anywhere.
I padded down the green shag-carpeted hallway into his tiny bathroom. He motioned to me to put her head closer to the vent. “Do you hear them?” he asked, his eyes small and anxious.
“Hear what?” I wished I’d worn slippers because the tile floor was slick with his shaving hairs.
“Angels,” he said. “And sometimes devils.”
I almost blurted, “Daddy, that’s loopy!” But he stood there looking so forlorn in his faded pajamas, I just put my head closer to the vent as if maybe I could hear the angels, too. Not that I believe in angels. I always thought that was a Christian thing. Just when I almost half-convinced myself I might’ve heard a faint ringing sound, he straightened and said, “Nah, they’re gone. They’re tricky that way.” Which made me think — maybe I really had heard an angel. After all, if Mrs. Connor who lives next door said she once saw the Virgin Mary in a windowpane, or if Ima said her uncle once saw Elijah the Prophet at the dry cleaners in Tel Aviv, what’s so terrible if Dad thought he heard angels in a bathroom vent?
I put the whole episode out of my mind. Just one of those quirky Dad moments like the time I found him outside near the bushes putting a stethoscope to a flower, listening as if to get its heartbeat. He caught my eye and we both cracked up. He could be funny that way.
But after that bathroom episode, something changed. Dad began seeking me out, regularly. We’d do the grocery shopping together, some bargain city place, and after all the groceries got packed in the trunk, we’d sit in the front seat in the parking lot, drinking pop and eating potato chips, and that’s when he’d confide in me.
“Your mother, she never lets up,” he said. Every day — no, every hour — she hammered away at the honking way he sneezed, his baggy trousers, his body odor, his meager salary, his Milton Berle jokes, how he chewed his food, even the passive way he made love.
Ewww. I held up my hand and turned my face away. “Dad, please.”
Come to think of it, Dad’s habits and hygiene were kind of hard to take. I had to imagine it couldn’t be that pleasant for Ima, though it grossed me out to think about it.
“Anyway, Suzie,” he said, and gave me a meaningful look, “you know firsthand what I’m talking about, because she’s always had it in for you, too.”
I nodded. True. Maybe it was because I wasn’t the oldest and smartest, like Lital, or the only boy, like Doron. I was just the second girl. Osnat with the knobby knees, hardly-there eyebrows and pale blue eyes — fishy eyes, Ima once called them. Doron and Lital inherited her dark Israeli good looks, while I looked like Dad — pale, with light brown hair. Not really blond or brown.
“Remember that time we were driving to Grandpa’s, and your mother and I were having an argument in the car, and you made some harmless comment and she just whirled around and slammed you in the face?”
Of course I remembered. I was sitting in the back seat and Ima reached back and slapped me. When I stammered through my tears, “But what did I do?” Whack! — came the second slap. I was nine then.
“You know what I regret most?” he said in a low voice.
I shook my head.
“That when you were growing up, I couldn’t protect you from her.”
I was silent, remembering how Dad just sat there when she slapped me. I said quietly, “I’m still growing up.”
Dad’s head sank and sank until it touched the steering wheel. Finally he said, “Darlin,’ you know I’ve run out gas.”
What that meant was, he had a bad heart. When he was in his twenties, he underwent a heart operation and since then needed to be careful about avoiding stress. That’s why he had to pick his battles. I frowned. “But why does she have to act so mean?”
He pinched his chin, considered. “She used to be a beauty, you know, before” he held out his hands on either side of the steering wheel “she spread.” He got a faraway look, probably remembering the first time they’d met, at a synagogue dance in Charleston. “She’d already had proposals from a doctor in Jerusalem, a Tel Aviv lawyer, and even a famous band leader in Haifa. She could’ve had a nice life but had the dumb luck to choose me, a poor man with a bad heart who lived in Iowa, of all places.” But Dad was charming and handsome then and still is the sharpest dancer on any dance floor, even with his weak heart.
He was always going on how it wasn’t fair of him to have courted such an innocent and beautiful young girl who didn’t know the language so well, and had no mother there to guide her toward a better match. I almost felt bad for Ima but then I burst out, “Still, why does she take out her life on me?”
“It’s that sabra hot temper of hers. That’s how her father treated her, so she does the same to you and all of us.”
“Is it like in the genes or something? Does that mean I’ll be mean to my own kids?”
“Hell no,” he said. “You need only one parent to love you to turn out normal.”
That made me feel better.
He griped about the office, how most of the workers were half his age and not very bright and how Mr. Anderson never gave him any compliments, even when it was a really complicated Xerox job. I nodded and listened to every word. It burned my soul to see my smart, creative father going off to that stupid job every morning. He spoke about his mother who died when I was two and how she’d believed in him and thought he would write a novel one day. He had three plotlines running through his head. He still hadn’t written anything down, but I enjoyed listening to his ideas, or just him, his stories. It was a special time, just the two of us. Lital had always been sucking up all of Dad’s attention with her brilliance and manic intensity. And who could compete against Doron, the quarterback? So this time alone with Dad was nice. My turn, in a way.
“You’re different from the others,” he said to me another time. “You’re like me. You’ve always been different.”
A shiver went through me. He was saying out loud what I’d always kind of thought, too.
“You’re kinder, more spiritual,” he paused, squinting, reaching for the word — “weak,” he ended.
“Weak?” I flinched, stung. “I’m the fastest swimmer in my grade,” I retorted. “You need muscles for that.”
He flicked his wrist. “That’s not what I meant, Suzie. You’re gentle, you’re a helper. Your brother and sister take what they want. They’ll take everything, they’ll always be grabbers, just like your mother and her whole side of the family. Israelis. “
I nodded uncertainly. He said Israelis like the way certain people in Des Moines said Jews, like they were spitting dirt. Anyway, it didn’t seem right, him bad-mouthing Lital and Doron and Ima. But it felt sort of good, too, that he singled me out as special.
Dad took out a letter he’d just written to Ima. He smoothed it down as though it was precious. “’No matter how much you try to crush me and make me into less of a human being,’” he read out loud, “’I will not be crushed by you. I am a person created in the image of God and you can never take that away from me.’”
Dad’s confiding in me, I thought. I felt incredibly mature to be hearing his problems. It made sense. I was fourteen now, not a kid. I cooked and cleaned the same as an adult. “Dad, when are you going to send it?”
“Maybe tomorrow,” he said, already folding it away.
“Go for it,” I encouraged him.
Suddenly he whipped his head around. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” I asked, a little frightened by the look in his eyes.
He got out and walked around all four sides of the car. Then he looked above on the roof, and below, kneeling and sticking his head under the belly of the car. He got back in. He shrugged. “Nah, they’re gone.” He crumpled an empty bag of potato chips and shoved it into his pocket.
I said slowly, “What do you mean, Dad? Who’s gone?”
He licked his lips. ”Now this stays between you, me, and the lamppost.”
“Sure, Dad,” I said.
“See, these forces,” he paused, glancing at me then away, “they’re constantly playing tricks on me, tapping me on my lower back, but when I turn around no one’s there.” He looked over both shoulders, as if surprised to still find no one. “Or else they’re making me think someone’s ringing the bell, for instance. They keep teasing and taunting me to open the door and I try to not pay attention, but then sometimes I can’t help myself and if I open the door, and nobody’s there, damn!” He snapped his fingers. “They won. But if I can only resist, then I’ll win.” He smiled, and his mild blue eyes got animated. “But it’s not just me. When I win, the whole world wins with me.”
I looked down at my lap, hugging my elbows. This isn’t normal — went through my mind. Dad’s crazier than a loon, went through my mind. My head felt dizzy, wobbly, like it wasn’t hinged to my neck. No, Dad couldn’t be crazy. Then who would there be left? Ima and her stupid falafel balls?
I stared at Dad’s forehead. It kept crinkling and uncrinkling while he talked about angels turning into devils and back again. His hands cupped the air while he spoke, as if he could sense secrets there. I almost said, Dad, Jews don’t believe in angels or devils or any of this stuff, but who cared what people believed, so I just leaned back against the head rest and let words pass over me. After a while, all I heard was his voice. I felt like some rock getting bumped and carried down a stream, not pushing, not resisting, just swimming along, not hearing a word he said. It was peaceful, relaxing almost. And then something in my brain shifted and relented. I could see — actually see — how a thought could leap up and become something so real you could hear it speak and it could touch you, maybe even bless you, or make you do something you didn’t want to.
Just then he grabbed my lower arm. “I’ve got all my eggs in your basket,” he said.
His fingers closed around my wrist, and for the first time I knew, in my throat and head and arms I knew, what it felt like to be the chosen one.
Every Tuesday, after we did the grocery shopping, we talked in the car — or really, he did the talking and I did the listening — and it always came back to this battle in which people weren’t really people but always stood for something else, which made sense in a way, the more I heard him tell it. It was like I had slipped and swum through a hole and ended up in a different land, just like Alice. An alternate world. It was happy there almost.
I’m sitting on the toilet, letting all our old conversations wash through me, and then I thump my head. Stupid! What had I been thinking of? I must’ve been hypnotized, that’s what! Dad isn’t well. Really not well. I should’ve realized. Fool that I was, I got lulled, sucked into his way of thinking.
The thought keeps banging in my head — should’ve told someone: Mrs. Connor who’s a nurse (but she’s the one who messed up Dad with all that angel talk), or maybe the rabbi of the synagogue we never go to except on Yom Kippur, the big-cheeks rabbi who looks like Santa Claus, or Grandpa if he wasn’t going senile, or Doron or even Ima but just the idea of telling on him makes my toes bunch and my intestines curl.
I push myself off the toilet and go to the sink, rub my fingers against a stub of soap. Through the frosted bathroom window, I see Fonzie spread out on the ground like a black sheep rug, looking a little downcast. I knock on the window. His head lifts and he spots me, and he leaps up so quickly, so enthusiastically, I nearly weep, especially since he’s expecting me to come out and throw Ima’s old slipper in the air and romp around, and to let him down like that just hurts. But I can’t play. Supper isn’t even finished.
The pungent smell of fried onions, garlic, and tomato sauce pricks my nostrils. I lower the flame and run a soggy sponge around the counter, rubbing out tomato sauce splatter. What next? Right — boil the water for the noodles, but first should I call Ima? It’s no use. She’s unreachable, still in transit from work. I heave a pot of water to the stove, turn on the flame. Finally, I get to the fun part where I can throw into the sauce pan any old spice that strikes me (basil, bay leaf, za’atar, thyme, marjoram), when Doron lumbers in, pulling his football jersey away from his neck, lines of sweat streaming down his neck. His eyes have that glazed post-game look that blocks out the world.
“Dad’s boss called and said he’s having a breakdown,” I say really fast before he disappears.
“Yeah?” He looks confused for a split second, then he takes out a carton of orange juice from the fridge. He drinks from the spouted mouth and grabs a few plastic-wrapped Debbies and clomps off to his bedroom in the basement.
I’m standing there holding the spatula. I shout after him, “Mr. Anderson said Dad’s having a breakdown.”
He calls up from the basement, “Hey, Oh Snotty, Mr. Anderson’s having a breakdown!” and turns on the television really loud.
Breakdown, I mumble to myself. What a strange word. Cars break down, dishwashers break down. How can a Dad break down?
I dip my pinky into the sauce for a taste. Not bad, although it needs a pinch of sugar, which I add. I break the noodles right over the bubbling pot to catch the fly-away pieces and drop both handfuls into the boiling water just as the phone rings. I lunge for it.
“Suzie, is that you?””
“Daaaady!” I burst out. Then, “Where are you?” I ask, hoping he’s already headed home.
“At Holy Name Hospital.”
I squeeze the phone. “What are they doing to you?”
“Anderson made them run some tests on me.” He lets out a whoosh of exasperated air. “Insisted on it. “
I press the phone so hard to my temple, my ear burns. “When are you coming home?”
“In a few minutes,” he says in his calm father way. “They said I was fine. Anderson as usual doesn’t know his rear end from third base.”
I throw my head back and hoot. He sounds so Dad. My chest nearly explodes with relief.
“Darlin’, Suzie — ” he says. His voice goes low and warm, the way it does in the car.
“Yes, Daddy?” I’m desperate to hold onto his voice.
“I have a favor to ask you, sweetheart.”
“Sure, Daddy.” My throat clogs with love. I don’t care if the whole world was on one side and it was just me and Dad on the other — there is nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Somehow, I’m still holding a few sticks of noodles in one hand. I toss them into the pot and a drop of hot water scalds my wrist.
“Kill the dog,” he says into the phone.
The steam from the boiling pot hits my cheeks. “Kill Fonzie?”
“Take my gun — it’s in the top drawer of the night table,” he explains, “and shoot Fonzie. Make sure to do it outside because of the blood.”
“Fonzie?” My voice hikes up so high it sounds stupid. “I — but..” I stretch the phone cord and peer out the back window at Fonzie who is sniffing the trunk of the cherry tree, rooting about for a place to pee. Finally, he finds the right spot. He looks humble as he always does when he goes to the bathroom. Dad always says Fonzie has a pure soul. I swallow the saliva gumming up my throat. “But — why?”
“He’s evil.” He stops, then adds, “He’s the devil. I’ll explain it all later.”
“But Daddy,” I squeak, “I can’t — ”
He breaks in roughly, “Tell Doron to do it then. He won’t be scared.” He gets off the phone.
He won’t be scared. The word he sears into me hot as poison. I’m still pressing the phone into my ear, and finally I hang up. More specks of tomato sauce have traveled over the side of the pan, and I flick off the stove. Done. I walk over and knock on the basement door. Doron calls up, “Yeah?”
I open the door and peer down. Doron is sprawled, shirtless, on his waterbed that he bought with his own money. He’s watching a Starsky and Hutch rerun and eating a Debbie. Plastic wrappers lay scattered like jellyfish on his bed.
“Dad just said to kill Fonzie,” I say like I’m reporting boring weather.
Doron tries to sit up but the watery bed has no traction. “No!” he chokes out. Crumbs fly from his mouth. “You’re faking me out!”
“Uh uh,” I say. “He wants you to do it because I said I wouldn’t.” I don’t know why but I want him to know that Dad picked me first. I stare at his hairless chest. A big baby, I think.
“Where is he?” he asks.
“Some people from the hospital are bringing him home.” I hug my elbows, wrap my arms tightly over my stomach.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he demands.
I shrug. I tried to, but after a game, it’s like he’s not a human being.
“Where’s Ima?”
“She’ll be home in around forty minutes.” Suddenly I’m craving for Ima to be home. Let her be tired or angry or mean — I don’t care, just let her be home, so I don’t have to deal with this. I watch Doron pull on a crumpled T-shirt, and then it hits me: What if Dad gets home first? What if he tries to kill Fonzie? My stomach splits in two. “How are we going to protect Fonzie from Dad?” I whisper.
Doron is squeezing his chin, worried. “I’ll bring him over to the Connors,” he decides.
Then I remember. Ima’s zucchini and egg — I forgot to make it — plus the cottage cheese weighed on a scale. Ima just joined Weight Watchers a month ago. I run upstairs. In the kitchen, I peel the zucchini, cut it up in big jerky slices, open an egg into a small pot, barely beat it.
Meanwhile, Doron sprints to the backyard to deal with Fonzie. I dash around, stuffing sneakers and jackets into the entrance closet. I don’t want those emergency staff people peeking into our house and saying something’s wrong with us. When Doron comes back inside, I scream: They’re coming any second! Clean up! Amazingly, he gets into the act, throwing his shoulder pads and football gear down into the basement. I pause for a minute: Should I sweep the rug in the hallway really fast or straighten the bathroom? Just then the bell rings.
The air in my mouth goes sour. I rub my palms against the sides of my jeans and open the door. Three men stand in the doorway. At first I can’t recognize Dad there in the middle. It’s the same features and everything, but his face looks — wrong, something that’s been baked or toasted, sucked dry. Not so’s anyone else would notice it, but I do. He’s staring down at his shoes. He’s wearing baggy trousers and a brown jacket with the sleeves pushed back and his arms are white and bony. He stands there, a mouse squashed between two foxes, even though both the emergency workers don’t look mean but kind. The taller one — his eyebrows keep moving up and down to show his concern. I can’t stop swallowing and swallowing, like there’re tears in my throat. Doron is standing nearby squeezing a tennis ball. A huge urge comes over me to run over and hug my father, but maybe the emergency people will think that’s strange, so I decide no.
“It’s been some day,” the shorter worker says to Dad. “But you’re fine, Mr. Levin.” He grasps Dad’s shoulder in a warm way. “Looks like your boss overreacted a little.”
“A little?” Dad snorts and shakes his head, and his face loses some of that vacuumed-out look. He’s smiling at them now, thanking them, apologizing for them having to come out here in the middle of their supper time, no doubt. The taller one with the jumpy eyebrows hands Dad some papers. “Dr. Mathews will give a call tomorrow to see how things are going and give you a prescription.”
At the word prescription, Dad lifts both hands up a little. “I’m fine now,” he protests in a mild voice.
“Standard procedure. The medicine will settle you a bit,” says the shorter one.
Dad shakes their hands just as they’re leaving.
The door shuts. I can hear the car revving up on the other side. I’m standing near the coat closet, about to bear hug Dad when he suddenly throws himself, collapses into Doron’s huge arms. He cries, hard, and his thin shoulders jiggle, and in between his sobs he squeaks, “Doron, Doron,” and Doron holds Dad tight, propping him up in his big football arms. I stand there, watching them, waiting for Dad to open one arm to include me, but it doesn’t happen. It’s as if . . . I’m not even there.
Finally, Dad takes his head off Doron’s shoulder, wipes his eyes, and it’s as if the tears never happened, a summer storm, here and then gone. “What’s for supper?” he asks me.
“Spaghetti,” I say.
Even though Ima hasn’t come home yet — she’s at least twenty minutes away — we all go to the kitchen for supper. It feels almost normal. A knot of tension unloosens in me. Whatever happened, happened. The worst is over. If those men from emergency service brought Dad home, he’s got to be okay.
I pour the tomato sauce into the pot of noodles, and realize too late that I forgot to first drain the water from the noodles. I pour the whole slushy mess into a serving bowl. It’s way too watery for plates so I put out plastic bowls instead.
Dad stares at the spaghetti, frowning. He makes an attempt to twirl the spaghetti around his fork, then gives up and just tunnels his fork in. He chews a few times, then sets down his fork. He says, “How could you mess up something as simple as spaghetti?” He chews some more and swallows. “This tastes like crap, sweetheart.”
I’m eating my spaghetti and I start to cry. Dad doesn’t notice. He’s got one hand on Doron’s shoulder and he’s saying, “The devil made a bargain with me. He said I could be anyone in the world, and I chose to be Robert Redford. But then I changed my mind. I didn’t want to be him anymore but me. But Redford wouldn’t listen and he was coming for me. The safest place to hide was the fire hydrant, but then I suspected the postman of being in on it, too . . .”
Robert Redford? Postman? Doron’s nodding with a serious, absorbed look on his face but I can tell he wishes Dad would shut up and never open his mouth again. What about me, I want to say. I’ll listen, Dad. You know I get you, you know I listen best. Didn’t you once tell me that? But Dad keeps his eyes fastened on Doron, and again it’s like he can’t see me. I take a deep breath. You know what? I think. That’s nothing. I’ll get the real story later, when it’s just the two of us, alone in the car. Just him and me.
I bend my head over the spaghetti, but the thing is, I can’t eat it because it’s too slippery and I’m gulping back my tears and my nose is running, so I put down my fork and blow my nose with a paper towel. It makes a loud gross sound. If only Dad would turn his head and look at me when he talks, just once or twice to show he notices I’m there, but he doesn’t flick his eyes even once in my direction.
Through the blur of tears and snot, I see Dad half standing, demonstrating how he shouted at the postman and told him where to get off, and how Mr. Anderson pulled on Dad and tried to make him go inside and how Dad fought him off. Doron’s shoveling in the spaghetti while he fake listens.
Why won’t Dad look at me? Is he angry at me? But that’s not it. When Doron or Lital are in the room, I fade away, he can’t see me. To him, I’m not there, really not there. And it’s always been that way, I can’t fool myself anymore. The best I can hope to be is a tissue for him to cry on and blow his nose into. I stare down at my fingers, my hands. They look small and pale and crushed, like old people’s hands. I feel myself dissolving into nothing, turning into wallpaper. I’m just background is all I am.
Then I hear it. Faint distant yelpings. It’s the Miller’s dog, I think, has to be. But I wonder: Did the Connors let Fonzie out? My arm pits go wet with fear. Dad turns his head in the direction of the sound. He says to Doron, “You killed Fonzie, didn’t you?”
My lungs close down, stop breathing, while I wait for Doron’s answer. He acts indifferent. “Oh sure thing,” he says, but then his cheeks get that raw, wind-slapped look, and I feel so bad for him but I can’t waste my pity. It’s Fonzie barking out there, I know it, and I beg God who’s suddenly my best friend, No, please don’t let anything happen to Fonzie, because then I’ll have nobody. I stand up casually, my stomach knotting and unknotting, and look out to the neighbor’s backyard. Whew. He’s not there. But I can still hear him barking ever so faintly from wherever the next-door-neighbors put him.
Maybe I should turn the radio on loud, but now Dad’s head is swiveling this way and that with a vaguely confused expression. Doron is bent low over his bowl of spaghetti, refusing to meet anyone’s eye, his fork moving up and down. I can see the fear in his big, bowed shoulders.
Dad says, “Maybe I’ve got a screw loose but I could swear I hear Fonzie barking.” He looks with suspicion around the kitchen, at the Frigidaire, the stove, and the electric can opener. “You shot him, didn’t you, Doron?”
Doron’s fork stops moving. He looks over, not at Dad, but at me, and his hazel eyes bleed panic.
My stomach is writhing, like somebody’s squeezing my intestines.
I close my eyes and see Fonzie, think how humble he is and how much he just wants to play. He’s the very opposite of the devil. I think how we belong to each other; how he knows me, recognizes my hand that opens his can of dog food each day, the same hand that pets and plays and cleans up after him, and how every single day he saves me with his love, and a faint-as-a-feather feeling comes over me, brushing my spine like a wand.
I reach over and lay my hand on Dad’s wrist. “Angels,” I whisper. “That’s what it is.” I smile our alone-in-the-car private smile. “Don’t worry, Dad, relax,” I say in a voice as soothing as milk, a voice that could fool anyone. “I can hear them, too.” And I reach over and squeeze his wrist harder.
Originally published in Michigan Quarterly Review
