Kathy didn’t mind me pulling.

“Get used to it,” I said, and placed him in a sit

position. I adjusted the choke chain so it rode high

on his neck, where experience had taught me it

had the most effect. “Okay, let’s try this again,” I

said. He looked at me with cool skepticism.

“Marley, heel!” I ordered, and stepped briskly

off on my left foot with his leash so short my left

hand was actually gripping the end of his choke

chain. He lurched and I tugged sharply, tightening

the stranglehold without mercy. “Taking advan-

tage of a poor woman like that,” I mumbled. “You

Marley & Me

ought to be ashamed of yourself.” By the end of

the walk, my grip on the leash so tight that my

knuckles had turned white, I finally managed to

convince him I wasn’t fooling around. This was no

game but rather a real-life lesson in actions and

consequences. If he wanted to lurch, I would

choke him. Every time, without exception. If he

wanted to cooperate and walk by my side, I would

loosen my grip and he would barely feel the chain

around his neck. Lurch, choke; heel, breathe. It

was simple enough for even Marley to grasp. Over

and over and over again we repeated the sequence

as we marched up and down the bike path. Lurch,

choke; heel, breathe. Slowly it was dawning on

him that I was the master and he was the pet, and

that was the way it was going to stay. As we turned

in to the driveway, my recalcitrant dog trotted

along beside me, not perfectly but respectably. For

the first time in his life he was actually heeling, or

at least attempting a close proximity of it. I would

take it as a victory. “Oh, yes,” I sang joyously.

“The boss is back.”

Several days later Jenny called me at the office.

She had just been to see Dr. Sherman. “Luck of

the Irish,” she said. “Here we go again.”

C H A P T E R 1 1

The Things He Ate

❉

This pregnancy was different. Our miscarriage

had taught us some important lessons, and

this time we had no intention of repeating our

mistakes. Most important, we kept our news the

most closely guarded secret since D-day. Except

for Jenny’s doctors and nurses, no one, not even

our parents, was brought into our confidence.

When we had friends over, Jenny sipped grape

juice from a wineglass so as not to raise suspicions.

In addition to the secrecy, we were simply more

measured in our excitement, even when we were

alone. We began sentences with conditional

clauses, such as “If everything works out . . .”

and “Assuming all goes well.” It was as though we

could jinx the pregnancy simply by gushing about

it. We didn’t dare let our joy out of check lest it

turn and bite us.

John Grogan

We locked away all the chemical cleaners and

pesticides. We weren’t going down that road

again. Jenny became a convert to the natural

cleaning powers of vinegar, which was up to even

the ultimate challenge of dissolving Marley’s

dried saliva off the walls. We found that boric acid,

a white powder lethal to bugs and harmless to hu-

mans, worked pretty well at keeping Marley and

his bedding flea-free. And if he needed an occa-

sional flea dip, we would leave it to professionals.

Jenny rose at dawn each morning and took Mar-

ley for a brisk walk along the water. I would just

be waking up when they returned, smelling of

briny ocean air. My wife was the picture of robust

health in all ways but one. She spent most days, all

day long, on the verge of throwing up. But she

wasn’t complaining; she greeted each wave of

nausea with what can only be described as gleeful

acceptance, for it was a sign that the tiny experi-

ment inside her was chugging along just fine.

Indeed it was. This time around, Essie took my

videotape and recorded the first faint, grainy im-

ages of our baby. We could hear the heart beating,

see its four tiny chambers pulsing. We could trace

the outline of the head and count all four limbs.

Dr. Sherman popped his head into the sonogram

room to pronounce everything perfect, and then

looked at Jenny and said in that booming voice of

Marley & Me

his, “What are you crying for, kid? You’re sup-

posed to be happy.” Essie whacked him with her

clipboard and scolded, “You go away and leave her

alone,” then rolled her eyes at Jenny as if to say,

“Men! They are so clueless.”

When it came to dealing with pregnant wives,

clueless would describe me. I gave Jenny her

space, sympathized with her in her nausea and

pain, and tried not to grimace noticeably when she

insisted on reading her What to Expect When

You’re Expectingbook aloud to me. I compli-

mented her figure as her belly swelled, saying

things like “You look great. Really. You look like a

svelte little shoplifter who just slipped a basketball

under her shirt.” I even tried my best to indulge

her increasingly bizarre and irrational behavior. I

was soon on a first-name basis with the overnight

clerk at the twenty-four-hour market as I stopped

in at all hours for ice cream or apples or celery or

chewing gum in flavors I never knew existed. “Are

you sure this is clove?” I would ask him. “She says

it has to be clove.”

One night when Jenny was about five months

pregnant she got it in her head that we needed

baby socks. Well, sure we did, I agreed, and of

course we would lay in a full complement before

the baby arrived. But she didn’t mean we would

need them eventually; she meant we needed them

John Grogan

right now. “We won’t have anything to put on the

baby’s feet when we come home from the hospi-

tal,” she said in a quavering voice.

Never mind that the due date was still four

months away. Never mind that by then the outside

temperature would be a frosty ninety-six degrees.

Never mind that even a clueless guy like me knew

a baby would be bundled head to toe in a receiving

blanket when released from the maternity ward.

“Honey, c’mon,” I said. “Be reasonable. It’s

eight o’clock on Sunday night. Where am I sup-

posed to find baby socks?”

“We need socks,” she repeated.

“We have weeks to get socks,” I countered.

“Months to get socks.”

“I just see those little tiny toes,” she whimpered.

It was no use. I drove around grumbling until I

found a Kmart that was open and picked out a fes-

tive selection of socks that were so ridiculously

minuscule they looked like matching thumb

warmers. When I got home and poured them out

of the bag, Jenny was finally satisfied. At last we

had socks. And thank God we had managed to

grab up the last few available pair before the na-

tional supply ran dry, which could have happened

at any moment without warning. Our baby’s frag-

ile little digits were now safe. We could go to bed

and sleep in peace.

Marley & Me

❉ ❉ ❉

As the pregnancy progressed, so did Marley’s

training. I worked with him every day, and now I

was able to entertain our friends by yelling, “In-

coming!” and watching him crash to the floor, all

four limbs splayed. He came consistently on com-

mand (unless there was something riveting his

attention, such as another dog, cat, squirrel, but-

terfly, mailman, or floating weed seed); he sat con-

sistently (unless he felt strongly like standing); and

heeled reliably (unless there was something so

tempting it was worth strangling himself over—

see dogs, cats, squirrels, etc., above). He was com-

ing along, but that’s not to say he was mellowing

into a calm, well-behaved dog. If I towered over

him and barked stern orders, he would obey,

sometimes even eagerly. But his default setting

was stuck on eternal incorrigibility.

He also had an insatiable appetite for mangoes,

which fell by the dozens in the backyard. Each

weighed a pound or more and was so sweet it

could make your teeth ache. Marley would stretch

out in the grass, anchor a ripe mango between his

front paws, and go about surgically removing

every speck of flesh from the skin. He would hold

the large pits in his mouth like lozenges, and when

he finally spit them out they looked like they had

John Grogan

been cleaned in an acid bath. Some days he would

be out there for hours, noshing away in a fruit-

and-fiber frenzy.

As with anyone who eats too much fruit, his

constitution began to change. Soon our backyard

was littered with large piles of loose, festively col-

ored dog droppings. The one advantage to this

was that you would have to be legally blind to ac-

cidentally step in a heap of his poop, which in

mango season took on the radiant fluorescence of

orange traffic cones.

He ate other things as well. And these, too, did

pass. I saw the evidence each morning as I shov-

eled up his piles. Here a toy plastic soldier, there a

rubber band. In one load a mangled soda-bottle

top. In another the gnawed cap to a ballpoint pen.

“So that’s where my comb went!” I exclaimed one

morning.

He ate bath towels, sponges, socks, used

Kleenex. Handi Wipes were a particular favorite,

and when they eventually came out the other end,

they looked like little blue flags marking each fluo-

rescent orange mountain.

Not everything went down easily, and Marley

vomited with the ease and regularity of a hard-

core bulimic. We would hear him let out a loud

gaaaaack!in the next room, and by the time we

rushed in, there would be another household item,

Marley & Me

sitting in a puddle of half-digested mangoes and

dog chow. Being considerate, Marley never puked

on the hardwood floors or even the kitchen

linoleum if he could help it. He always aimed for

the Persian rug.

Jenny and I had the foolish notion that it would be

nice to have a dog we could trust to be alone in the

house for short periods. Locking him in the

bunker every time we stepped out was becoming

tedious, and as Jenny said, “What’s the point of

having a dog if he can’t greet you at the door when

you get home?” We knew full well we didn’t dare

leave him in the house unaccompanied if there

was any possibility of a rainstorm. Even with his

doggie downers, he still proved himself capable of

digging quite energetically for China. When the

weather was clear, though, we didn’t want to have

to lock him in the garage every time we stepped

out for a few minutes.

We began leaving him briefly while we ran to

the store or dropped by a neighbor’s house. Some-

times he did just fine and we would return to find

the house unscathed. On these days, we would

spot his black nose pushed through the miniblinds

as he stared out the living room window waiting

for us. Other days he didn’t do quite so well, and

John Grogan

we usually knew trouble awaited us before we

even opened the door because he was not at the

window but off hiding somewhere.

In Jenny’s sixth month of pregnancy, we re-

turned after being away for less than an hour to

find Marley under the bed—at his size, he really

had to work to get under there—looking like he’d

just murdered the mailman. Guilt radiated off

him. The house seemed fine, but we knew he was

hiding some dark secret, and we walked from

room to room, trying to ascertain just what he had

done wrong. Then I noticed that the foam cover to

one of the stereo speakers was missing. We looked

everywhere for it. Gone without a trace. Marley

just might have gotten away with it had I not

found incontrovertible evidence of his guilt when

I went on poop patrol the next morning. Rem-

nants of the speaker cover surfaced for days.

During our next outing, Marley surgically re-

moved the woofer cone from the same speaker.

The speaker wasn’t knocked over or in any way

amiss; the paper cone was simply gone, as if

someone had sliced it out with a razor blade.

Eventually he got around to doing the same to the

other speaker. Another time, we came home to

find that our four-legged footstool was now three-

legged, and there was no sign whatsoever—not a

single splinter—of the missing limb.

Marley & Me

We swore it could never snow in South Florida,

but one day we opened the front door to find a full

blizzard in the living room. The air was filled with

soft white fluff floating down. Through the near

whiteout conditions we spotted Marley in front of

the fireplace, half buried in a snowdrift, violently

shaking a large feather pillow from side to side as

though he had just bagged an ostrich.

For the most part we were philosophical about

the damage. In every dog owner’s life a few cher-

ished family heirlooms must fall. Only once was I

ready to slice him open to retrieve what was right-

fully mine.

For her birthday I bought Jenny an eighteen-

karat gold necklace, a delicate chain with a tiny

clasp, and she immediately put it on. But a few

hours later she pressed her hand to her throat and

screamed, “My necklace! It’s gone.” The clasp

must have given out or never been fully secured.

“Don’t panic,” I told her. “We haven’t left the

house. It’s got to be right here somewhere.” We

began scouring the house, room by room. As we

searched, I gradually became aware that Marley

was more rambunctious than usual. I straightened

up and looked at him. He was squirming like a cen-

tipede. When he noticed I had him in my sights, he

began evasive action. Oh, no,I thought—the Mar-

ley Mambo. It could mean only one thing.

John Grogan

“What’s that,” Jenny asked, panic rising in her

voice, “hanging out of his mouth?”

It was thin and delicate. And gold. “Oh, shit!”

I said.

“No sudden moves,” she ordered, her voice

dropping to a whisper. We both froze.

“Okay, boy, it’s all right,” I coaxed like a hostage

negotiator on a SWAT team. “We’re not mad at

you. Come on now. We just want the necklace

back.” Instinctively, Jenny and I began to circle

him from opposite directions, moving with glacial

slowness. It was as if he were wired with high ex-

plosives and one false move could set him off.

“Easy, Marley,” Jenny said in her calmest voice.

“Easy now. Drop the necklace and no one gets

hurt.”

Marley eyed us suspiciously, his head darting

back and forth between us. We had him cornered,

but he knew he had something we wanted. I could

see him weighing his options, a ransom demand,

perhaps. Leave two hundred unmarked Milk-

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 836