Authors: Katie Crouch
Men and Dogs (4 page)
T
HERE WAS A rattling. It woke Hannah up.
She shut her eyes and tried to push herself back into sleep, but the sound persisted.
The sound of a car. Her mother on the phone. The front door opened and closed. Her mother was still talking. Hannah couldn’t make out the words exactly, but she could hear the spikes of anger.
Time passed. Hannah waited for the rattling to stop. It did, only to start again, joined by a banging. She put her head under her pillow. When this didn’t work, she sat up and got out of bed.
Bare feet on old wood. The sound was coming from the laundry room. It was the dryer. The door was shut, so she opened it and turned on the light. Someone was on the floor, under a pile of towels.
She stood for a while.
What are you doing? she finally asked.
My soccer clothes, her brother said. They’re dirty.
What’s banging?
My shoes.
She nudged the human-towel pile with her foot.
I like to sleep in here sometimes, he said. Under the towels.
But the shoes are banging.
Deal with it.
Dad come home yet?
No. I don’t know. Probably.
I didn’t hear him come home yet.
Just leave me alone, Hannah, OK? Leave.
She left for a while, then came back.
Can you take your shoes out, please?
No.
I’m telling Mom.
If you get out of here, I’ll take out the shoes.
OK.
Don’t tell Mom, narc.
OK.
She remembers her brother yanking the dryer door open. There was dirt under his fingernails. She can still see the scraped knuckles. He took the shoes out and threw them on the floor.
Hannah turned out the light and went back to her room. She got in bed. She’d promised not to tell her mother, but she could still tell her father. It seemed important. Something was happening to Palmer.
OK, OK. I’ll tell Dad tomorrow. At breakfast, maybe. Or after, when we’re alone again.
W
HEN TOM ANNOUNCES his desire to have a baby, it is Friday. Palmer is annoyed. Friday is not the day to bring up new relationship issues. Much better to deal with those on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, when one is already problem solving at the office. Friday is supposed to be a day of pleasure. It’s the day Palmer rotates his herb plants, has lunch with his mother, and takes time off from the gym. It’s the day before Saturday, set aside for shopping or some sort of outdoor activity, which is the day before Sunday, set aside for sex and laundry and reading the imported
Sunday Times
. Unless Palmer happens to be on one of his semiannual vacations (one out of the country, one in), he does not stray from this routine. When people tease him about being fastidious, he shrugs his shoulders and says, I’m gay.
The presentation itself: an amateurish effort at manipulation. A cappuccino on the counter, the fleshy scent of homemade crepes. Palmer frowns. Crepes are the sort of thing one has to act thankful for but are more trouble than they are worth.
He’d rather have plain yogurt and black coffee. He feels the same about morning sex, another of Tom’s constant offerings.
Disruptive, messy, but he partakes because the easy sweetness is there.
“Crepes,” Palmer says, feigning enthusiasm. “Yum!” Tom slides the plate in front of him on the table; Palmer tucks into his paper. This is when, gullible as a retriever, he reaches out for the leaflets next to his plate.
ADOPT! ; SURROGACY . . . FOR YOU? ; GAY DADS, GAY MOMS: A BEAUTIFUL PARTNERSHIP.
“What the hell are these?” Palmer asks.
His lover casts his eyes down and instantly retreats. “Never mind.”
“Tom?”
“It’s just an idea.”
Palmer takes a breath. Tom’s a tantra enthusiast and has been coaching him on meditation. It’s all bullshit, but sometimes
Palmer kind of likes it. He reaches inward to that calmer place.
“What idea?”
“I just think it would be good for us. You know, a baby. I think it maybe would be helpful for us to love something more than we love ourselves.”
“I don’t particularly love myself.”
“
You
know what I mean. Experience a new emotion.”
Palmer pushes his plate away. “I’ve had plenty of experience with emotions, Tom.”
“Palmer.” Tom’s voice trembles, causing Palmer to wince. Friday is certainly not the day for fucking
tears
. “This is very important to me.” He takes a breath. “This is something I want.”
Palmer nods. Jesus. “OK, then. Let’s talk tonight, why don’t we?” he says, standing. “I’ll make dinner.”
The lowcountry fall air is thick and wet; the back door of his office sticks. Palmer uses his shoulder to push it open, already sensing the hum of activity within. He frowns at the smell. No matter how much steam cleaning or how many high-end home scents he pays for out of the petty cash, nothing rids the place of the sharp, sweet scent of urine (dog, cat, gerbil, the occasional reptile) that permeates the rooms. It will be a busy day at Palmer’s veterinary clinic. The
Post and Courier
just ran an article about a rabid cat, and the waiting room is already jammed with anxious pet owners warily studying their animals for a possessed glint in the eye. He dives into work as soon as he gets in, studying the charts over black coffee.
At thirty-seven, Palmer Legare is a startlingly handsome man—tall, thin, and blond, almost Nordic. His looks give him certain advantages (note the reception area, filled with loyal female clients), such as being able to work without making idle conversation.
There is something about a beautiful man silently handling an ill animal that affords respect, so clients rarely disturb him;
today, Palmer uses the time to think over this new problem.
He will have to leave Tom now, of course. Palmer knew it would happen eventually. He’s been waiting for the factor—could it be called a tipping point?—that would push the relationship into that dead place. He’s surprised only that it hasn’t happened sooner. It’s been almost a year, the longest Palmer’s ever gone. A shame, really. He likes Tom. He likes cohabiting with him—his architectural tastes, his sense of humor, the sex. He wouldn’t say he loves him, really—he has never been able to say that about any man in his adult life. But he loves many things
about
him. He also sort of loves himself around Tom. He is nicer, somehow. More giving.
The giving is itself new relationship strategy for Palmer. He came across it quite by accident. It was one of those
aha!
moments he arrived upon when, one day, he picked up Tom’s favorite moisturizer at Belk’s just because he saw it, then brought it home and tossed it without ceremony on the counter next to the groceries; to his surprise, Tom embraced him and began wheeling him around in a sort of junior high school dance.
“Oh, sweetie!” Tom murmured into his shoulder. “You get it! You finally, finally
get
it.”
And, awash in a warm bubble of personal epiphany, Palmer had to admit that yes—yes! He did! No wonder he’d had so many failed relationships before this . . . he’d never understood the needs-of-others part! The day of the moisturizer, he felt as if he’d been secretly allowed some oracular whisper. Ever since then, Palmer has made a concerted effort to meet Tom’s needs,
and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. When Tom told him he felt “emotionally neglected,” Palmer bought him a juicer. When he wasn’t “connecting,” Palmer had a privacy fence built (male nude sunbathing being not especially popular in
South Carolina yet). Palmer is happy because he is making Tom happy, and Tom is, well, happy to be happy. The thing is working,
and while Palmer never expected to sustain it forever, it has been very good, moment to moment.
But a baby. This is much bigger than moisturizer. It’s not that Palmer does not like children. A great many of them are smart and cute, and he’d like nothing more than to shop with Tom for T-shirts to send to, say, a nephew, godson, or other such nicely distanced baby. But one of the privileges of being gay, along with being forgiven for sex with strangers and the ability to sport a year-round tan without excuses, is that you can forgo reproducing without people telling you you’re selfish. If you are a man, it seems to Palmer, you are either gay
or
a father. It’s hardly necessary to be both.
So he will have to end it. The logistics of this will be so much harder than the others. Against his better judgment, he agreed to let Tom move in with him just a few months ago. Tom is an architect, and has ensconced himself in Palmer’s life by making actual changes to his residence. The caulk around the plunge pool is still dewy; the paint on the walls of the home gym still fresh. Usually, when Palmer ends a relationship, he pulls a fade-out. In the best cases, the other person doesn’t even realize it’s happening until it’s over. But this break will be tiring and dramatic. Tom will disintegrate.
In the afternoon, Palmer does a bit of research on the Internet. As he does, he becomes less concerned. Perhaps this is not a deal breaker. For it seems, according to the chat rooms and forums, that the chances of adopting as a gay parent in South
Carolina are quite slim. They could always find a partner couple—two lesbians, say, who also want a baby and want dads in the picture and are willing to share the spawn. But here Palmer feels he is safe, because Tom, though lovable, is a bit of a snob toward lesbians. “I’m a Southern boy,” Tom has said more than once, shrugging his shoulders faux apologetically.
“I’m sorry, but I like my ladies to wear makeup and to like men.”
Palmer switches off his computer and moves on to the next patient, satisfied. He won’t keep Tom forever; they’ve been lucky to have lasted this long. Still, he doesn’t feel like breaking up today, and now he doesn’t have to. He can wait it out, at least for a couple of months. And, more important, his child-free existence is safe.
Or is it? Because tonight, Tom arrives home breathless, bearing truly distressing news.
“I’ve found a surrogate!” he calls out, running in the door with yet more pamphlets. Rumpus—the Norwich terrier Palmer brought home two months ago when Tom caught him flirting with a construction worker—sambas at his heels.
“Oof !” the dog croaks. Rumpus is in remission from throat cancer and therefore has no voice box. Her owner fled at the sight of the bill, which is how the dog ended up in the adoption ward. Palmer thought Rumpus’s inability to make noise would be a bonus, but the dog is desperate to vocalize, meaning Palmer and Tom’s conversations are now punctuated with frantically whispered yodels.
“Ooooooooooooof.”
“God,” Tom says. “That
dog
.”
Palmer fights to remain calm. He has been happily cooking and sipping the Riesling he selected to go with tonight’s menu of salmon and vegetables en papillote. With a baby, would there even be Riesling? Or papillote?
“What surrogate? Who?”
Tom explains. He’s found a woman who will have their baby: Naomi—a healthy twenty-two-year-old artist who needs money and wants to “help a couple out.” Naomi works as a checkout girl at Earth Fare, which is where Tom happened upon her. She wants to have a baby, she says, but she doesn’t want to
have
a baby. Tom took her out for lunch, where she agreed to be his surrogate for $20,000 under the table, plus expenses.
“Now,” Tom says, eyes shining, “all we have to do is find an egg.”
Palmer feels his insides grow hotter. (And not just figuratively; Palmer has an intensely hot core temperature, a condition he treats with herbs, though with limited success.) In just one day, this badly sketched-out whim has become a blueprint with other people involved.
Shit, he thinks. Who but Tom could go to the grocery store and come back with a mother for our child?
Palmer instantly hates this Naomi, just as he does any person who wins Tom’s easy affections. There always seems to be some new neighbor/lifecoach/raw-foods chef who will “change their life.” And invariably, once Tom realizes that this person is, in fact, a freak, it’s Palmer’s job to get them out of it. Obviously, Naomi is a gold digger, a drug addict, or worse.
Once one or all of those flaws become clear, Palmer will be tasked with extracting her from their lives. Not that Palmer can say any of this yet. Tom is too excited. There is just one piece of this ridiculous puzzle left. The egg. Palmer can still block the egg.
“Not a big deal,” Tom says when Palmer gently questions him on this point. “Don’t you see? We have a woman who will schlep the fetus. The
egg
is easy!”
“The egg is not easy, sweetheart. It’s the
baby
. It accounts for who the baby will
be
.”
“We can find one on the Internet. Hell, we can find an Oxford-educated supermodel that won the gold for curling at the Olympics.
And I don’t even know what the hell curling
is
. But imagine it! It’s even better than having a regular baby with a wife, because there are always things you don’t like about your wife, things you don’t want in your baby. For instance, if you were a woman, I’d be, like—Well, I wish we could delete the huge forehead gene—”
“Thanks.”
“Or, you know, the whole crazy-suicidal-dad thing. But we don’t have to deal with that! We can pick what we want in our baby!”
“Look,” Palmer says. “I made dinner.”
“Oh, I’m too excited to eat.”
Palmer plates the fish anyway, fanning the vegetables out on the china. I just want someone to eat fish with, he thinks.
A bit of conversation, shared trips to Costco, a blow job every now and then, and nice quiet dinners of fish. Why can’t I
just have this? Why does everyone always want so much more?
“Tom,” he says, “I think being a father would be”—Keep it in the conditional, he thinks—“a beautiful thing. But I want the egg to be someone we’ve at least met before.”
Finally, there is the cadence of actual thought. Palmer can hear his partner processing the last point.
“You’re an asshole,” Tom says suddenly, pushing his plate away. “Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”
“Tom . . .”
Just then, the landline rings. Upset by the noise, Rumpus emits a silent howl.
“Hello?”
“Palmer, it’s your mother.”
“Hi,” Palmer says, actually relieved to receive the call. Bracing himself for this lesser evil, he watches Tom sip his wine with fury, a feat only his partner could pull off.
“We have a situation,” she says.
Oh, Mother, you have no idea.
“What?” Hearing the dullness of his own tone, he is slightly sorry for it.
“We were having a
conversation,
” Tom hisses from the table. Palmer makes a helpless face and points at the phone.
“It’s your sister—she’s out of control.”
“And this is news?”
“Listen to me, Palmer.” His mother sniffs. “This isn’t funny. It’s serious.” Daisy goes on to tell Palmer the recently reported details, though none of it is anything he wants to hear: the infidelity (check), the drinking (disappointing), the three-story fall (fairly amusing and, to a brother, even a little bit impressive).