Dog Dads

a short story | fiction

I step out from the changing room, sagging in olive satin.

“It’s way too big,” I say. 

“Way too big,” Sylvester agrees. His eyes travel up and down the dress.

“I lost weight.”

“Did you?”

“Almost twenty-three pounds.”

He raises his eyebrows and says, “Good for you. I’ve been trying to lose ten for the past thirty years.”

He chuckles, so I laugh too.

“Ever try Weight Watchers?” he asks. “My wife had me on it for a while, but I was starving the whole time. Total rip off.”

“I think my hormones just changed,” I lie. “A second puberty, I guess.”

“Huh,” he says, bending over to adjust the position of the wooden step stool. “Never heard of a second one.” He scoots the stool in front of the mirror and motions for me to stand on it. “Here, sweetheart. I’ll get my pins.” He disappears into a sea of acrylic prom dresses and houndstooth suits.

I wait for him, silently scanning the space. I love Sylvester’s store—its stillness, the creaking of the cherry oak floorboards, the smell of cigarettes. The door to his shop is painted red with a small sign that reads, Sylvester the Tailor in metallic gold that winks in the sunlight on cloudless days.

“Okay,” he says, reemerging. “Let’s see what we can do.” He heaves towards me, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, carrying needles and chalk in his calloused, swollen hands. Sylvester is a mouth breather. Sometimes it sounds like there's a little whistle hidden in the back of his throat. He pinches some fabric at my waist from behind and then looks at me in the mirror.

“What do we think?” he asks. “If we bring this in here, then it flares nicely. Do you see that?”

“I like that.”

He nods and pushes a needle into the satin. Then another on the opposite side.

“It’s for my sister’s wedding,” I say. “I’m a bridesmaid.”

“When’s the big day?” he asks with pins in his mouth.

“December fourteenth.”

“A winter wedding. Not many people do those.”

“She loves Christmas.”

“Who doesn’t.”

“I don’t,” I say.

Sylvester gets on his knees slowly and methodically.

“You’re like my wife.” He smiles. “She hates the holidays.” He folds a half an inch of hem at my shins. “And we can bring this up to here?”

I look at the bottom of the dress in the mirror. My legs—prickly with week old stubble—are the only redeeming part of my body, and I make a point of showing them off. I have a disproportionately wide and flabby stomach compared to my slender limbs. A boy in high school once referred to my body type as: a marshmallow on two toothpicks.

“Maybe one more inch?” I say.

He folds in more fabric, so the hem now falls just below my knees.

“There?” he asks, looking up at me.

“Perfect.”

He marks the spot with white chalk.

“My sister and I…we don’t get along,” I say.

“No?”

“No.”

“Family’s tough,” he says, nodding to himself.

When Sylvester stands up, his face is so red, it’s a little bit purple. Blood vessels explode like fractals across his cheeks.

*

The following Saturday I am alone and mostly naked. My cotton underwear creates red indents in the fuzzy crevices of my crotch where elastic threatens circulation. November light pours through my windows, illuminating my room with a silver, offensive brightness. I sit down on the corner of my bed and swipe though pictures of men with oily foreheads in tuxedos holding champagne flutes. Or in damp tee shirts holding fish. Or flushed, in sweat wicking long sleeves on top of mountains with their arms stretched wide like conquerors.

I swipe right—yes—on a man kneeling next to a black and white terrier. His arm is wrapped around the sitting dog like it’s an old pal he debates Steph or Lebron with. He has a Coors Light in his other hand. In his bio he describes himself as a “dog dad.”

*

I sit at the far end of a long wooden table at a French fusion bistro that serves bottomless mimosas until 2 p.m. Eight glossy-haired women in leather jackets and busty tops surround me. We are here to celebrate Olivia's birthday. Olivia is a college friend. We used to be very close but aren't anymore. Our friendship is in the middle of its end. I hate the slowness of it and would prefer if one of us would commit some act of scathing betrayal so we can just get it over and done with. I probably won't be invited to next year’s birthday brunch.

In college, Olivia and I would only go to parties with each other. People would say our names like it was one word, EvaAndOlivia. We would take turns loosely dating men at fraternities who we would smooch at winter formals in dank basements. When one of us would momentarily slip away to refill our plastic cup, the other would say to the beefy, flushed boy, “Don’t you dare hurt her. She’s my best friend.” An empty, erotic threat that was really an opportunity to flirt with each other’s boyfriends. We were always doing that: using each other.

I know some of the women sitting at the table peripherally and others not at all. The total strangers are Olivia’s friends from her new life. One of the women is in her second year of medical school and talking about how she’s going to be an OBGYN.

A selection of greasy appetizers arrives. The women descend like birds of prey, feverishly plucking away various finger foods and putting them onto their small white plates. The future gyno stops talking about medical school for just a moment and holds up a red basket of fried balls. “Does anyone want the last arancini?” she asks. “Because if not, I'm gonna kill it.”

*

At my sister Nina’s wedding reception, every table has a bouquet of yellow roses. I am not the maid of honor. Nina’s ginger-headed college friend holds the title instead. People (mostly greying women) gush at how beautiful I look. What they are really saying is: you look skinny, make sure you stay that way. Nina says: wow. What she is really saying is: I will never forgive you for being skinnier than I am on my wedding day.

I don’t have a date, so my assigned seat is with the other singles for dinner. I’m in between Mrs. Duhamel (recently widowed, on the board of the country club, once scolded me when I was nine years old for being too loud at the pool) and Mr. Paxton (dad’s old business partner, divorced, ex-wife is with a woman now). Mrs. Duhamel asks me what I do for work.

“I have interviews lined up,” I say.

“How exciting,” Mrs. Duhamel says. She picks some lint off her yellow blazer. “You graduated last year, right?”

“Nine months ago,” I say.

“Your dad tells me you’re a writer,” Mr. Paxton says from my other side.

“Journalist,” I say. “I do freelance stuff.”

“Those are more important than ever,” Mrs. Duhamel says. “Journalists.”

“Big time,” Mr. Paxton says, nodding. He leans forward over the table to look at Mrs. Duhamel. “And I’m sorry—I don’t think we’ve properly met. I’m Patrick.” He reaches past me to shake Mrs. Duhamel’s hand.

“Debra Duhamel,” she says. Her jacket rides up as she extends her arm in front of me, exposing blue veins that meander under the thin skin of her wrist. “Or Debbie,” she says, “whichever.” She smiles, bearing her yellow teeth, and pushes a piece of blondish white hair behind her ear. Her lobe is weighted down by a chunky diamond stud. Mrs. Duhamel and Mr. Paxton keep discussing the horrors of Fake News, but I’m hung up on Debbie.

*

I sit at a bar next to a man with floppy brown curls. He’s wearing a green flannel, and his name is Julian. In front of us is a glass case of raw fish slabs. On the other side of the display is a man in chef’s whites slicing through the symmetric fat of sustainably sourced salmon. A bowl of edamame steams between us.

“So, tell me about your dog,” I say.

“Rufus? He’s the best.”

In Julian’s Hinge bio he wrote: if Rufus doesn’t like you, I don’t like you either.

“Do you think he’d like me?” I ask.

“Oh yeah. He likes everyone.” He takes a sip of his Sapporo.

“Must be a lot of work taking care of him.”

“He’s a good boy, so not too bad.”

“Not like raising a kid,” I say. Dog dads don’t have to worry about their golden retrievers developing mood disorders and scribbling down deranged manifestos on loose-leaf paper that cops later discover crumpled under a bed.

“No,” he says, “but when he was a puppy, it was way more work. He’d pee every time he saw me. Here. I’ll show you a picture.” He pulls out his phone. The blue light of the screen makes his face glow.  

“I don’t think I want kids,” I say. I make a point of slipping this into conversations on first dates. My indifference in motherhood is a real deal breaker for guys. I’m twenty-three, but still, they find it alarming. Usually, when I mention this, they take a sip of their drink and look at me with a crease between their brows.

Sometimes they ask why, and I say, because what if the child becomes a bad person.

They respond with something vague and meaningless like, we’re all a little bad, aren’t we?

(Or, that one guy, Kevin, who was a second year Philosophy PhD student at Brown: from a utilitarian perspective, morality is entirely subjective.)

I clarify: like if they shot up a mall or something.

Not my kid, they say, clearing their throats.

(Or Kevin: do you know what deontology is? Have you heard of the Trolley Dilemma? Okay so five people are tied to a track and then, on the other track is just one person…)

But Julian doesn’t react. His finger keeps swiping for puppy pictures of Rufus. I wait. Finally, he flashes his screen at me.

“He’s such a good boy,” Julian says again.

*

A visit to the tailor is a task that I classify in my brain as a nonimperative errand. Other tasks, imperative errands, always seem to crop up and take priority: buying a box of tampons after two and half days of free bleeding, purchasing a bottle of purple grape Pedialyte with trembling hands, getting a throbbing cavity filled because I have this habit of eating Sour Patch Kids in bed at night and sometimes in the early morning before the sun has risen, and before the rest of the world has woken up, and when time and reality are suspended in waning periwinkle.

Life is basically that: one errand after the next until you die. In Heaven, I imagine errands don't exist. In fact, that's Heaven's trademark feature—the absence of menial tasks. And Hell is simply a never-ending loop of going to the post office, and then the grocery store, the optometrist, and then to CVS, where our bodies eventually explode while we’re buying a green bottle of shampoo. A piece of our abdominal flesh will dangle off the cheek of a baggy eyed cashier with cystic acne. Our viscous blood won't quite penetrate the synthetic fiber of the carpeted floor. And the prompt on the red splattered checkout screen will ask us if we want to donate $2 or $5 or $10 to American Red Cross. Then, cruelly, our dismembered bodies regain tact, and the loop restarts. That’s Hell, violent, merciless, unending.

*

“We can bring fabric from here to expand the waist,” Sylvester says. He’s on his knees, and his fingers are fluttering at the hem of my pinstriped pants that are unbuttoned because they won’t close.

I’ve gained all the weight back and then some (twenty-six point seven in a month and a half), and I’ve asked Sylvester if he can do anything about all the too-small trousers I purchased when I was skinny and thought I'd be skinny forever. By the way, that's a cold, hard truth: you're never skinny forever, honey.

“I have a final round interview at the Boston Globe,” I say.

“Wow,” Sylvester says. “Hot shot.”

“We’ll see,” I say. “I wanted to wear these pants to the interview, but when I tried them on yesterday…”

“When is it?”

“Next week.”

“I can get them done by then.”

A woman with matted hair and a sagging trash bag slung over her shoulder enters Sylvester’s store. The door jingles as she steps in. I can’t tell how old she is. It’s February, and snow from a week earlier has turned to grey ice sludge so sharp it could cut. The blue handles of her Hefty bag are hooked around her middle and pointer fingers that are going white at the tips. Sylvester glances at her and points to a chair in the corner of the store.

“You can sit there,” he says.

“Thank you,” she responds with a voice tangled in uncleared phlegm.

I stand in front of the mirror while Sylvester pinches and pins. In the reflection, I watch the woman sit down, rub her hands, blow into them, and shimmy them underneath her. Then she closes her eyes.

Sylvester says he will be able to salvage three of the five pants. He's a crafty man. I’ve been taking lithium for one month now.

*

I get a call from a 617 number while I am in the meat section of Stop & Shop.

“We’ve decided to go in a different direction,” Margaret from HR tells me.

“East? West? Which direction is that because I’ve gone through six—no, seven—rounds of interviews and a ‘different direction’ is a pretty unsatisfactory explanation.” My voice is loud and trembling (no, not shrill). A man reaching for organic chicken thighs glances at me. 

“I’m sorry, Ms. Chandor. We were very impressed with your resume, but that’s all the information we can provide.”

My college transcript (mostly A’s, a few A minuses) is what I have to show for myself, and people tell me that I’m full of promise and potential, but I get a feeling that will stop soon.

“Well great,” I say. I’m staring at the produce in my shopping cart. “I’ll just go shove a cucumber up my ass.” I’m still speaking loudly, and the man, now holding drumsticks, looks at me again, a little longer this time.

“What?” Margaret from HR says.

“I said, I’ll just go shove a cucumber up my butt.” I’m quieter now. 

I will tell my psychiatrist about this incident next week. She will remind me how important it is to take my medications consistently, as prescribed. Okay? She’ll say looking over her glasses perched on her nose. You promise? I’m worried about you, she’ll add, sighing, shutting her leather notebook quickly so that it makes a conclusive, sharp snapping noise. That’s never a great sign—making your psychiatrist nervous. Isn’t the whole point that they know how to deal with people like you.

*

On our fourth date, Julian takes me to a microbrewery near the harbor with high ceilings and exposed metal vats. We both drink three grapefruit IPAs, and halfway through his last, he tells me he likes “doing characters.” I nod, and he asks me what I like. I tell him that I enjoy being told that I’m a good girl. We kiss, and his mouth feels gooey and tastes like hops.

When we get back to my apartment, Julian bends me over my white, silicon desk. The IPA is wearing off and sits heavy in my stomach. I am not certain it’s a good idea, but his chinos are already bunched at his ankles, and his fingers are busy lifting my skirt and slipping into the waistline of my black tights.

My desk thumps arrhythmically against my bedroom wall. I stand—bent and waiting. Julian's thrusts are spastic and powerful. He slows down and asks me if I am okay. I say, “yeah,” and he says, “cool,” and then he speeds back up. My breathing audibly hitches. The edge of the desk is digging into my fleshy stomach. Misinterpreting it for pleasure, he says, “Good girl.” It doesn’t do much for me, but it gets him going even more, and the clapping noises quicken.

“You’re such a good girl,” he goes on. Then he mutters something garbled and inaudible. The only word I think I can hear is homework, but I know better than to ask someone to repeat themselves during sex.

Then, more clearly, he says, “I’m not giving you an extension this time. If you want to be a good girl, you have to turn in that essay—” He slaps me hard from behind with a splayed palm. It stings. “Make sure to spellcheck. Good girls don’t make sloppy spelling errors.” Grunt. Clap. Clap. Grunt. “And it better be double spaced, or I’ll—”

It’s over before I realize. I feel a warm trickle down my inner thigh, and Julian is saying something like, “Ahhh sorry.”

After he zips up his pants and leaves, I pull out the desk from the wall to assess the damage—severe scuff marks blemished the plaster. My landlord will not be happy. I’ll need to go purchase a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and take care of that either today, or tomorrow, or the one after that. I add that to my list of nonimperative tasks.

*

Tulips poke through mulch, and pale legged people in shorts get goosebumps in the breeze. I leave a musty Goodwill with three bags of ugly clothes, deluded that with just a little cinching and trimming, they will be un-uglied, and so will I. When I get home, I call Sylvester. I put the phone on speaker, and as the ring crackles, I trace the outline of a mole on my forearm. A woman with a thick Boston accent answers.

“Sylvester the Tailor,” she says, out of breath, as if she had run to the phone.

“Hi,” I say. “I'm wondering if Sylvester has any time this afternoon? I have a few things—five skirts—that need to be hemmed. And I can be very flexible if he has any availa—”

“—Sylvester died, honey,” she says before I can finish.

“What?”

“He passed last week,” the woman says. “The shop’s closed. Do you have any pieces still here that you need to pick up?”

“I have a dress there that he altered—or was going to alter,” I say. “Floral patterned. Yellow.” I bring my fingertips up to my lower lip and can feel my voice getting all shaky. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

“There's a service at St. Catherine's on Tuesday at 11 a.m. All are welcome. And you can pick up the dress on Friday. I don’t know if he ever got around to fixing it, though.”

*

St. Catherine’s is an enormous church with stained glass depictions of Jesus Christ looking classically chiseled and somber. I’ve always found it comical that they made Jesus so hot. All of his disciples getting on their knees for him, taking interest in his interests, ruminating on him constantly—it strikes me as horny and deeply juvenile. His hotness was an obvious artistic choice, too. A heinous, one-eyed, yellow-toothed Jesus would be far more interesting.

The church and its expansive graveyard are surrounded by scuffed, single family homes with vinyl cladding and asphalt roofs. When I walk in, I am handed a program. The church is crowded. Kids play Tag, and mothers shush and scold. The collective murmuring creates a hum. I cross my arms and hold them tight like maybe I'm afraid they will fall off. Quickly, I slip into an available pew where a woman is readjusting a fussy baby on her hips. She has on shellac makeup, and her lipliner is darker than her lipstick. The baby is making noises that tell us one wrong move, and it’ll start wailing. It spits its binky to the floor, and as the woman bends down to pick it up, she bonks the baby’s head on the bench in front. Game over. My ears ring.

Ahead, I see the casket is open and think to myself, oh jeez. The priest is wearing a white cassock and a purple silk sole. He’s young and fresh faced, full of Jesus, recognizably handsome. He clears his throat into the microphone, and the room goes silent.

“We're gathered here today,” the priest says. “To say Farewell to Sylvester Silva and to commit him into the hands of God.”

The priest then launches into a speech that includes a lot of ye's and unto's and Jesus's and behold's and shall's. I glance at the program. This must be the Homily part. He's reading from John 14: 1-3 and Revelation 21:3-6.

“…And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with Men….”

I have to pee. The mother with the formerly angry baby (it’s now sleeping, very cherub-like) is extending her neck, watching the sermon with a concerned focus. She rubs her thumb across the soft hairs of her child’s head. She’s blocking me, so I whisper, “I'm so sorry I have to use the restroom.” She nods and angles her panty hoed knees, so there is a small space for me to slip by.

The bathroom is in the church’s cool basement. I don't get the relief I am looking for on the toilet. It's a small tinkle, and I still have a pressure in my bladder that tells me I have more to give, but here I am, cheeks splayed, and nothing else comes out. Piano notes ring from above.

When I reenter the nave, everyone’s singing a melancholic jingle about blood.

Blood of my savior

Bathe me in thy tide

Wash me with water

Streaming from his side.

I look around, and most are boohooing. My maternal pewmate with the thick foundation is delicately dabbing the corner of a tissue on the lower rim of her eye so that tears don't ruin her look. The last note lingers, and when it finally dissolves into the church walls, the priest says, “let us pray.” My boobs hurt.

I lower my head into my pressed palms, unsure if I'm doing it right. After some silence, the priest starts back up again. He has a lot to say about eternal life—God’s, ours, Sylvester’s. He goes on about that for a while and concludes with: amen. The church echoes back to him: amen.

Then, suddenly, everyone is filing into a line, and here I am, doing it with them. And I realize we are headed up there, towards the altar, to see Sylvester, laying in a box with the lid open. We are inching closer and closer. My knees feel like they are full of carbonation. Now, only a few feet away, I catch a glimpse of Sylvester's sausage fingers poking out of the casket. They've laced them together and perched his clasp on the apex of his rotund belly. He was one of those older men whose stomach took the shape of a large, inflated ball (beach, exercise, what have you). The coroners couldn't figure out a way to deflate that? I look behind me for an escape route, and it’s the mother again, now glaring at me with her cat eyelids. Her baby, awake now, ogles up at her.

“I might have to go to the bathroom again,” I say like it's a question.

She nods ahead at Sylvester. “We're almost there,” she says.

“I really have to go.”

“It's your turn.”

*

The first pill I take, mifepristone, is large, chalky, and egg shaped. A nurse named Dominique, who wears eggplant purple scrubs and smells like vanilla, hands me a waxed paper cup of water and the tablet. “This will stop the growth,” she says. I nod, swallow, and feel the pill jostle in my throat.

“There might be a bit of bleeding from this one, but not a lot,” she continues. “Heavy bleeding will happen after the second pill, misoprostol.”

I can still feel the cool jelly in between my legs from where the other nurse in pink pushed the condom-covered rod into me and said, “Yep, about six weeks.” The glow from the monitor washed over her face as I lay on the table in the dark, being penetrated by the machine.

“Would you like to see it?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She swiveled the screen towards me, and I saw what looked like coarse white brush strokes across a black digital canvas.

“I don’t see it.”

She craned her neck around so she could look on as well.

“It's right…right there. Oop. It's gone now. Did you see that?”

“No.”

“There! There it is again. See?”

“Oh, yeah.”

*

When I looked at Sylvester in his casket, he was puffy and pale. His grey hairs were brushed into a neat combover held stiffly by gel. His eyelids were slightly purple, and his cheeks, for the first time, unflushed. In his sermon, the priest emphasized that Sylvester's life was just beginning. But as I stared at Sylvester's cold, fat, still body in the silk lined casket, it seemed clear to me that Sylvester's life was very much over. I felt a hand on my back and realized my face was wet and my shoulders were shaking. The woman with the baby reached into her purse and offered me a crumpled tissue, smeared with bronzer.

*

The misoprostol sits on my bedside table in glossy packaging full of warnings: blood clots bigger than lemons, hemorrhaging, infection. My armpits are damp and ripe. There’s a crusted egg yolk stain on my oversized tee shirt that I’ve been wearing since yesterday morning. Clothes that still don’t fit me and probably never will are strewn across my bedroom floor. I snatch the packaged pill and rip open its box. A tightly folded brochure of medical information falls out onto my duvet. I place the misoprostol under my tongue. “Sublingually,” the nurse had instructed, “and wait thirty minutes for it to dissolve.”  I stare at my wall. Eventually, after enough time passes, I take a swig of room temperature Gatorade.

*

The door jingles familiarly when I walk into Sylvester’s store. I took three Tylenol and changed into a fresh maxi pad before leaving my apartment. This is the only thing I’m doing today, and I will be returning home immediately after, but I’ve still stuffed three extra pads into my jacket pockets. I’ve been bleeding heavily for four days. It’s been five since I took the first pill. I guess I’m still mid-abortion but past the worst of it. It’s downhill from here. Or is it uphill? What I’m trying to say is that things are going to get better. They’re supposed to be better now. 

“Hello?” I say. The mirror and stool are no longer there. Much of the furniture is gone. The racks have thinned out, too, though several plastic covered garments still hang, awaiting retrieval.

“Just a second!” a raspy voice calls back to me. Plastic crackles, and Sylvester’s wife steps out from behind the racks. She resembles Sylvester—stout and craggy. Her hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, and baby fly aways frame her face.

“Can I help you?”

“I think we spoke on the phone. I’m Eva. I’m here to pick up a dress I left with Sylvester.”

“Last name?”

“Chandor.”

“With an ‘s-h’ or ‘c-h’?”

“C-h.”

She retreats into the clothing and starts shuffling things around. The hangers screech against the metal rack as she pushes garments back and forth. I’m not sure what to say, but she starts speaking before I can think of something.

“Sylvester was a good man,” she says. Her hands keep moving. “I wish he took better care of himself. But you know, he was the type of person who took better care of others and—” her voice cracks. She bows her head into her hands that are gripping onto the shoulder of a boxy wool jacket. Her body silently shudders. After a moment, she looks up, her face now blotchy.

“I’m sorry,” she says, taking a deep, wet inhale. “I’m still grieving.”

 “He was a good man,” I say. “He helped me a lot.”

She nods. “He was a talented tailor,” she says. “He had a gift.”

 The phone rings.

“Give me a second, dear,” she says to me. She moves further into the back of the store behind the racks, and I hear her answer.

“Sylvester the Tailor? Yes. Yeah. Thank you. I’ll be here until four. Monday? Okay yes, I can stay that late. No, no. It’s no problem. Dawson, you said? Suits? How many? Two? Brown and blue. Got it. I’ll have them ready. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Buh bye.”

My uterus starts to ache, and wish I could sit down, but the chair in the corner is also gone.

“Sorry about that,” Sylvester’s wife calls out. “People need their clothes, you know? You said Chandor right?” she’s continues swiping the hangers. “With a c-h?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll tell you one thing about Sylvester—heart of gold—but that man did not know how to organize. I mean look at this! It’s like he didn’t know the goddamn alphabet!” Her hands move faster, and she sniffles. “Here we go,” she plucks my dress off the rack. “Floral dress, right?” She lifts it up for me to see. “This it?”

“That’s it.”

“It’s gorgeous,” she says, holding it next to her and peering around at it. “I don’t know if he was able to do the altercations, but either way, I’m not charging anyone. I’m not dealing with that headache. It’s already too much.” Mid-day sunlight floods through the window and refracts off the silk, peony patterned fabric. “Oh, you’ll look just stunning in this, sweetheart,” she says. “Absolutely stunning.”

I gaze at the dress with her. Even from afar, I know it will never fit.              

##