Sex and bring his Labrador retriever along?

How twisted did these two think I was? As I

pulled a newspaper out of the box in front of the

store, a car arrived—Harold, I presumed—and

the girls drove off with him.

I wasn’t the only one witnessing the burgeon-

ing prostitution trade along Dixie Highway. On a

visit, my older sister, dressed as modestly as a

nun, went for a midday walk and was proposi-

tioned twice by would-be johns trolling by in

cars. Another guest arrived at our house to re-

port that a woman had just exposed her breasts

to him as he drove past, not that he particularly

minded.

In response to complaints from residents, the

mayor promised to publicly embarrass men ar-

rested for soliciting, and the police began running

stings, positioning undercover women officers on

the corner and waiting for would-be customers to

take the bait. The decoy cops were the homeliest

hookers I had ever seen—think J. Edgar Hoover in

drag—but that didn’t stop men from seeking their

services. One bust went down on the curb directly

John Grogan

in front of our house—with a television news crew

in tow.

If it had been just the hookers and their cus-

tomers, we could have made our separate peace,

but the criminal activity didn’t stop there. Our

neighborhood seemed to grow dicier each day. On

one of our walks along the water, Jenny, suffering

a particularly debilitating bout of pregnancy-

related nausea, decided to head home alone while I

continued on with Patrick and Marley. As she

walked along a side street, she heard a car idling

behind her. Her first thought was that it was a

neighbor pulling up to say hello or someone need-

ing directions. When she turned to look into the

car, the driver sat fully exposed and masturbating.

After he got the expected response, he sped in re-

verse down the street so as to hide his license tag.

When Patrick was not quite a year old, murder

again came to our block. Like Mrs. Nedermier,

the victim was an elderly woman who lived alone.

Hers was the first house as you turned onto

Churchill Road off Dixie Highway, directly be-

hind the all-night, open-air Laundromat, and I

only knew her to wave to as I passed. Unlike Mrs.

Nedermier’s murder, this crime did not afford us

the tidy self-denial of an inside job. The victim

was chosen at random, and the attacker was a

stranger who snuck into her house while she was

Marley & Me

in the backyard hanging her laundry on a Saturday

afternoon. When she returned, he bound her

wrists with telephone cord and shoved her be-

neath a mattress as he ransacked the house for

money. He fled with his plunder as my frail neigh-

bor slowly suffocated beneath the weight of the

mattress. Police quickly arrested a drifter who had

been seen hanging around the coin laundry; when

they emptied his pockets they found his total haul

had been sixteen dollars and change. The price of

a human life.

The crime swirling around us made us grateful

for Marley’s bigger-than-life presence in our

house. So what if he was an avowed pacifist whose

most aggressive attack strategy was known as the

Slobber Offensive? Who cared if his immediate

response to the arrival of any stranger was to grab

a tennis ball in the hope of having someone new to

play catch with? The intruders didn’t need to

know that. When strangers came to our door, we

no longer locked Marley away before answering.

We stopped assuring them how harmless he was.

Instead we now let drop vaguely ominous warn-

ings, such as “He’s getting so unpredictable

lately,” and “I don’t know how many more of his

lunges this screen door can take.”

We had a baby now and another on the way. We

were no longer so cheerfully cavalier about per-

John Grogan

sonal safety. Jenny and I often speculated about

just what, if anything, Marley would do if some-

one ever tried to hurt the baby or us. I tended to

think he would merely grow frantic, yapping and

panting. Jenny placed more faith in him. She was

convinced his special loyalty to us, especially to his

new Cheerios pusher, Patrick, would translate in a

crisis to a fierce primal protectiveness that would

rise up from deep within him. “No way,” I said.

“He’d ram his nose into the bad guy’s crotch and

call it a day.” Either way, we agreed, he scared the

hell out of people. That was just fine with us. His

presence made the difference between us feeling

vulnerable or secure in our own home. Even as we

continued to debate his effectiveness as a protec-

tor, we slept easily in bed knowing he was beside

us. Then one night he settled the dispute once and

for all.

It was October and the weather still had not

turned. The night was sweltering, and we had the

air-conditioning on and windows shut. After the

eleven o’clock news I let Marley out to pee,

checked Patrick in his crib, turned off the lights,

and crawled into bed beside Jenny, already fast

asleep. Marley, as he always did, collapsed in a

heap on the floor beside me, releasing an exagger-

ated sigh. I was just drifting off when I heard it—

a shrill, sustained, piercing noise. I was instantly

Marley & Me

wide awake, and Marley was, too. He stood frozen

beside the bed in the dark, ears cocked. It came

again, penetrating the sealed windows, rising

above the hum of the air conditioner. A scream. A

woman’s scream, loud and unmistakable. My first

thought was teenagers clowning around in the

street, not an unusual occurrence. But this was not

a happy, stop-tickling-me scream. There was des-

peration in it, real terror, and it was dawning on

me that someone was in terrible trouble.

“Come on, boy,” I whispered, slipping out

of bed.

“Don’t go out there.” Jenny’s voice came from

beside me in the dark. I hadn’t realized she was

awake and listening.

“Call the police,” I told her. “I’ll be careful.”

Holding Marley by the end of his choker chain,

I stepped out onto the front porch in my boxer

shorts just in time to glimpse a figure sprinting

down the street toward the water. The scream

came again, from the opposite direction. Outside,

without the walls and glass to buffet it, the

woman’s voice filled the night air with an amazing,

piercing velocity, the likes of which I had heard

only in horror movies. Other porch lights were

flicking on. The two young men who shared a

rental house across the street from me burst out-

side, wearing nothing but cutoffs, and ran toward

John Grogan

the screams. I followed cautiously at a distance,

Marley tight by my side. I saw them run up on a

lawn a few houses away and then, seconds later,

come dashing back toward me.

“Go to the girl!” one of them shouted, pointing.

“She’s been stabbed.”

“We’re going after him!” the other yelled, and

they sprinted off barefoot down the street in the

direction the figure had fled. My neighbor Barry, a

fearless single woman who had bought and reha-

bilitated a rundown bungalow next to the Neder-

mier house, jumped into her car and joined the

chase.

I let go of Marley’s collar and ran toward the

scream. Three doors down I found my seventeen-

year-old neighbor standing alone in her driveway,

bent over, sobbing in jagged raspy gasps. She

clasped her ribs, and beneath her hands I could see

a circle of blood spreading across her blouse. She

was a thin, pretty girl with sand-colored hair that

fell over her shoulders. She lived in the house with

her divorced mother, a pleasant woman who

worked as a night nurse. I had chatted a few times

with the mother, but I only knew her daughter to

wave to. I didn’t even know her name.

“He said not to scream or he’d stab me,” she

said, sobbing; her words gushed out in heaving,

hyperventilated gulps. “But I screamed. I

Marley & Me

screamed, and he stabbed me.” As if I might not

believe her, she lifted her shirt to show me the

puckered wound that had punctured her rib cage.

“I was sitting in my car with the radio on. He just

came out of nowhere.” I put my hand on her arm

to calm her, and as I did I saw her knees buckling.

She collapsed into my arms, her legs folding fawn-

like beneath her. I eased her down to the pavement

and sat cradling her. Her words came softer,

calmer now, and she fought to keep her eyes open.

“He told me not to scream,” she kept saying. “He

put his hand on my mouth and told me not to

scream.”

“You did the right thing,” I said. “You scared

him away.”

It occurred to me that she was going into shock,

and I had not the first idea what to do about it.

Come on, ambulance. Where are you?I com-

forted her in the only way I knew how, as I would

comfort my own child, stroking her hair, holding

my palm against her cheek, wiping her tears away.

As she grew weaker, I kept telling her to hang on,

help was on the way. “You’re going to be okay,” I

said, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. Her skin was

ashen. We sat alone on the pavement like that for

what seemed hours but was in actuality, the police

report later showed, about three minutes. Only

gradually did I think to check on what had be-

John Grogan

come of Marley. When I looked up, there he

stood, ten feet from us, facing the street, in a de-

termined, bull-like crouch I had never seen be-

fore. It was a fighter’s stance. His muscles bulged

at the neck; his jaw was clenched; the fur between

his shoulder blades bristled. He was intensely fo-

cused on the street and appeared poised to lunge. I

realized in that instant that Jenny had been right.

If the armed assailant returned, he would have to

get past my dog first. At that moment I knew—I

absolutely knew without doubt—that Marley

would fight him to the death before he would let

him at us. I was emotional anyway as I held this

young girl, wondering if she was dying in my

arms. The sight of Marley so uncharacteristically

guarding us like that, so majestically fierce,

brought tears to my eyes. Man’s best friend?

Damn straight he was.

“I’ve got you,” I told the girl, but what I meant

to say, what I should have said, was that wehad

her. Marley and me. “The police are coming,” I

said. “Hold on. Please, just hold on.”

Before she closed her eyes, she whispered, “My

name is Lisa.”

“I’m John,” I said. It seemed ridiculous, intro-

ducing ourselves in these circumstances as though

we were at a neighborhood potluck. I almost

laughed at the absurdity of it. Instead, I tucked a

Marley & Me

strand of her hair behind her ear and said, “You’re

safe now, Lisa.”

Like an archangel sent from heaven, a police of-

ficer came charging up the sidewalk. I whistled to

Marley and called, “It’s okay, boy. He’s okay.” And

it was as if, with that whistle, I had broken some

kind of trance. My goofy, good-natured pal was

back, trotting in circles, panting, trying to sniff us.

Whatever ancient instinct had welled up from the

recesses of his ancestral psyche was back in its

bottle again. Then more officers swarmed around

us, and soon an ambulance crew arrived with a

stretcher and wads of sterile gauze. I stepped out

of the way, told the police what I could, and

walked home, Marley loping ahead of me.

Jenny met me at the door and together we stood

in the front window watching the drama unfold on

the street. Our neighborhood looked like the set

from a police television drama. Red strobe lights

splashed through the windows. A police helicopter

hovered overhead, shining its spotlight down on

backyards and alleys. Cops set up roadblocks and

combed the neighborhood on foot. Their efforts

would be in vain; a suspect was never apprehended

and a motive never determined. My neighbors who

gave chase later told me they had not even caught a

glimpse of him. Jenny and I eventually returned to

bed, where we both lay awake for a long time.

John Grogan

“You would have been proud of Marley,” I told

her. “It was so strange. Somehow he knew how se-

rious this was. He just knew. He felt the danger,

and he was like a completely different dog.”

“I told you so,” she said. And she had.

As the helicopter thumped the air above us,

Jenny rolled onto her side and, before drifting off,

said, “Just another ho-hum night in the neighbor-

hood.” I reached down and felt in the dark for

Marley, lying beside me.

“You did all right tonight, big guy,” I whis-

pered, scratching his ears. “You earned your dog

chow.” My hand on his back, I drifted off to sleep.

It said something about South Florida’s numbness

to crime that the stabbing of a teenage girl as she

sat in her car in front of her home would merit

just six sentences in the morning newspaper. The

Sun-Sentinel’s account of the crime ran in the

briefs column on page 3B beneath the headline

“Man Attacks Girl.”

The story made no mention of me or Marley

or the guys across the street who set out half

naked after the assailant. It didn’t mention Barry,

who gave chase in her car. Or all the neighbors up

and down the block who turned on porch lights

and dialed 911. In South Florida’s seamy world of

Marley & Me

violent crime, our neighborhood’s drama was

just a minor hiccup. No deaths, no hostages, no

big deal.

The knife had punctured Lisa’s lung, and she

spent five days in the hospital and several weeks

recuperating at home. Her mother kept the neigh-

bors apprised of her recovery, but the girl re-

mained inside and out of sight. I worried about

the emotional wounds the attack might leave.

Would she ever again be comfortable leaving the

safety of her home? Our lives had come together

for just three minutes, but I felt invested in her as

a brother might be in a kid sister. I wanted to re-

spect her privacy, but I also wanted to see her, to

prove to myself she was going to be all right.

Then as I washed the cars in the driveway on a

Saturday, Marley chained up beside me, I looked

up and there she stood. Prettier than I had remem-

bered. Tanned, strong, athletic—looking whole

again. She smiled and asked, “Remember me?”

“Let’s see,” I said, feigning puzzlement. “You

look vaguely familiar. Weren’t you the one in front

of me at the Tom Petty concert who wouldn’t sit

down?”

She laughed, and I asked, “So how are you do-

ing, Lisa?”

“I’m good,” she said. “Just about back to nor-

mal.”

John Grogan

“You look great,” I told her. “A little better than

the last time I saw you.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, and looked down at her

feet. “What a night.”

“What a night,” I repeated.

That was all we said about it. She told me about

the hospital, the doctors, the detective who inter-

viewed her, the endless fruit baskets, the boredom

of sitting at home as she healed. But she steered

clear of the attack, and so did I. Some things were

best left behind.

Lisa stayed a long time that afternoon, following

me around the yard as I did chores, playing with

Marley, making small talk. I sensed there was

something she wanted to say but could not bring

herself to. She was seventeen; I didn’t expect her

to find the words. Our lives had collided without

plan or warning, two strangers thrown together by

a burst of inexplicable violence. There had been

no time for the usual proprieties that exist be-

tween neighbors; no time to establish boundaries.

In a heartbeat, there we were, intimately locked

together in crisis, a dad in boxer shorts and a

teenage girl in a blood-soaked blouse, clinging to

each other and to hope. There was a closeness

there now. How could there not be? There was

also awkwardness, a slight embarrassment, for in

that moment we had caught each other with our

Marley & Me

guards down. Words were not necessary. I knew

she was grateful that I had come to her; I knew she

appreciated my efforts to comfort her, however

lame. She knew I cared deeply and was in her cor-

ner. We had shared something that night on the

pavement—one of those brief, fleeting moments

of clarity that define all the others in a life—that

neither of us would soon forget.

“I’m glad you stopped by,” I said.

“I’m glad I did, too,” Lisa answered.

By the time she left, I had a good feeling about

this girl. She was strong. She was tough. She would

move forward. And indeed I found out years later,

when I learned she had built a career for herself as

a television broadcaster, that she had.

C H A P T E R 1 4

An Early Arrival

❉

John.”

Through the fog of sleep, I gradually regis-

tered my name being called. “John. John, wake

up.” It was Jenny; she was shaking me. “John, I

think the baby might be coming.”

I propped myself up on an elbow and rubbed

my eyes. Jenny was lying on her side, knees pulled

to her chest. “The baby what?”

“I’m having bad cramps,” she said. “I’ve been

lying here timing them. We need to call Dr.

Sherman.”

I was wide awake now. The baby was coming?I

was wild with anticipation for the birth of our sec-

ond child—another boy, we already knew from the

sonogram. The timing, though, was wrong, terri-

bly wrong. Jenny was twenty-one weeks into the

pregnancy, barely halfway through the forty-week

John Grogan

gestation period. Among her motherhood books

was a collection of high-definition in vitro photo-

graphs showing a fetus at each week of develop-

ment. Just days earlier we had sat with the book,

studying the photos taken at twenty-one weeks

and marveling at how our baby was coming along.

At twenty-one weeks a fetus can fit in the palm of

a hand. It weighs less than a pound. Its eyes are

fused shut, its fingers like fragile little twigs, its

lungs not yet developed enough to distill oxygen

from air. At twenty-one weeks, a baby is barely vi-

able. The chance of surviving outside the womb is

small, and the chance of surviving without seri-

ous, long-term health problems smaller yet.

There’s a reason nature keeps babies in the womb

for nine long months. At twenty-one weeks, the

odds are exceptionally long.

“It’s probably nothing,” I said. But I could feel

my heart pounding as I speed-dialed the ob-gyn

answering service. Two minutes later Dr. Sherman

called back, sounding groggy himself. “It might

just be gas,” he said, “but we better have a look.”

He told me to get Jenny to the hospital immedi-

ately. I raced around the house, throwing items

into an overnight bag for her, making baby bot-

tles, packing the diaper bag. Jenny called her

friend and coworker Sandy, another new mom

who lived a few blocks away, and asked if we could

Marley & Me

drop Patrick off. Marley was up now, too, stretch-

ing, yawning, shaking. Late-night road trip!

“Sorry, Mar,” I told him as I led him out to the

garage, grave disappointment on his face. “You’ve

got to hold down the fort.” I scooped Patrick out

of his crib, buckled him into his car seat without

waking him, and into the night we went.

At St. Mary’s neonatal intensive care unit, the

nurses quickly went to work. They got Jenny into

a hospital gown and hooked her to a monitor that

measured contractions and the baby’s heartbeat.

Sure enough, Jenny was having a contraction every

six minutes. This was definitely not gas. “Your

baby wants to come out,” one of the nurses said.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make

sure he doesn’t just yet.”

Over the phone Dr. Sherman asked them to

check whether she was dilating. A nurse inserted a

gloved finger and reported that Jenny was dilated

one centimeter. Even I knew this was not good. At

ten centimeters the cervix is fully dilated, the

point at which, in a normal delivery, the mother

begins to push. With each painful cramp, Jenny’s

body was pushing her one step closer to the point

of no return.

Dr. Sherman ordered an intravenous saline drip

and an injection of the labor inhibitor Brethine.

The contractions leveled out, but less than two

John Grogan

hours later they were back again with a fury, re-

quiring a second shot, then a third.

For the next twelve days Jenny remained hospi-

talized, poked and prodded by a parade of perinat-

alogists and tethered to monitors and intravenous

drips. I took vacation time and played single parent

to Patrick, doing my best to hold everything

together—the laundry, the feedings, meals, bills,

housework, the yard. Oh, yes, and that other living

creature in our home. Poor Marley’s status dropped

precipitously from second fiddle to not even in the

orchestra. Even as I ignored him, he kept up his end

of the relationship, never letting me out of his sight.

He faithfully followed me as I careened through the

house with Patrick in one arm, vacuuming or toting

laundry or fixing a meal with the other. I would stop

in the kitchen to toss a few dirty plates into the dish-

washer, and Marley would plod in after me, circle

around a half dozen times trying to pinpoint the ex-

act perfect location, and then drop to the floor. No

sooner had he settled in than I would dart to the

laundry room to move the clothes from the washing

machine to the dryer. He would follow after me, cir-

cle around, paw at the throw rugs until they were

arranged to his liking, and plop down again, only to

have me head for the living room to pick up the

newspapers. So it would go. If he was lucky, I would

pause in my mad dash to give him a quick pat.

Marley & Me

One night after I finally got Patrick to sleep, I

fell back on the couch, exhausted. Marley pranced

over and dropped his rope tug toy in my lap and

looked up at me with those giant brown eyes of

his. “Aw, Marley,” I said. “I’m beat.” He put his

snout under the rope toy and flicked it up in the

air, waiting for me to try to grab it, ready to beat

me to the draw. “Sorry, pal,” I said. “Not to-

night.” He crinkled his brow and cocked his head.

Suddenly, his comfortable daily routine was in tat-

ters. His mistress was mysteriously absent, his

master no fun, and nothing the same. He let out a

little whine, and I could see he was trying to figure

it out. Why doesn’t John want to play anymore?

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 824